Two for the Road

There are two obvious headlines to take from this past weekend in golf. Tiger Woods did just enough to win the ten million dollar FedEx Cup, while Phil Mickelson found his form of years past to win the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia.

If anyone on the PGA Tour could pass on ten million bucks, it’s Tiger. Money isn’t what motivates Tiger,competition is. The FedEx Cup was designed to bring a playoff-type atmosphere to crown the best player in golf. It has succeeded on two levels. First, most golf fans this weekend knew that Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker, Kenny Perry, and Jim Fyryk (amongst others) all had a chance to win the big money prize. After all, fans actually have somewhat of an understanding of what is going on is important. Secondly, the system worked.

The conclusion of the FedEX Cup was a statement of fact more so than any sort of buzzworthy headline. Although Woods failed to win a major in 2009, he was dominant in stretches with six wins and fourteen top tens in seventeen starts. If anyone outside of Woods had won the title, I wouldn’t be the only one who viewed the title holder as a mere pawn on Tiger’s board.

Phil Mickelson’s victory at the Tour Championship is rightfully the dominant headline of the weekend in sports. It’s more impressive than anything that happened on the gridiron or the asphalt when you stop to consider what Lefty has been through this year. Not only was his wife, Amy, diagnosed with breast cancer, but his mother Mary also came down with the disease. As a result, Mickleson took two months off the tour schedule in 2009, and struggled with consistency upon his return in August.

The 2009 golf season has come to a close. Tiger didn’t win a major. Instead, three first-time winners made names for themselves ( Lukas Glover, Stewart Cink, & Y.E. Yang). Argentinian Angel Cabrera showed he’s not a one-hit wonder. The fact that Phil Mickleson was able to overtake Tiger Woods from four shots down to win by three strokes on a pressure-packed season finale Sunday provided the perfect close to an interesting year in golf.

The Tour Championship could be a look back on the way things were, but also a preview the way things will be. Golf is more interesting to all parties involved when Tiger has a legitimate rival, and Phil has shown in the past that he’s not afraid to tangle with sport’s most successful and intimidating athlete. Here’s to Phil & Tiger: Thanks for making 2010 something to which we can all look forward.

Is Talk Actually Cheap?

Rivalries in college football have always featured some form of trash-talking. Most of the time, however, such talk goes on between opposing players, not opposing coaches. Most rivalries aren’t Tennessee and Florida, whose coaches, Urban Meyer & Lane Kiffin have taken the rivalry to a new level in the past eight months, at least from a media perspective.

It all started on December 1, 2008, when the new Tennessee coach told reporters he was looking forward to “singing Rocky Top all night long after we beat Florida.” Obviously, Kiffin’s comments were in jest. He couldn’t have actually thought he inherited a group of players capable of knocking off the best team in the nation.

It didn’t stop there, however, as just 4 weeks later, Kiffin told Tennessee boosters about a recruit the Vols lured away from Florida. Kiffin explained that he loved the fact that “Urban had to cheat and still didn't get him. ” Once again, Kiffin was simply being Kiffin. He probably knew word was going to get out. That might not have been a bad thing. After all, no press is bad press.

In case you thought those two zingers were enough, they weren’t. In the aftermath of last week’s semi-competitive game between the Vols and the Gators (in which Florida was a 30 point favorite), Meyer told a local television affiliate he felt Tennessee “wasn’t going for the win” by handing the ball off late in the heated contest. Meyer also stated that the flu had played a role in his team’s performance. He spoke of a “panic level of proportion I've never seen before” in regards to the flu concern in his locker roon. Kiffin wouldn’t be outdone, telling reporters that “we'll wait and after we're not excited about a performance, we'll tell you everybody was sick.”

A little talk never hurt anyone, but at the end of the day, results are what people really remember. Urban Meyer drew first blood in the latest chapter of one of the SEC’s most visible rivalries. Lane Kiffin has an entire year to get ready for Florida’s trip to Neyland Stadium in Knoxville next September. The smart thing to do would be to spend the coming year recruiting, scheming, and coaching to even up the playing field with the Gators.

If there’s one thing Coach Kiffin has shown in his brief career as a college football head coach it’s that he likes the spotlight. The spotlight doesn’t mesh as well with a quiet soul as much as it does with someone who likes to stir the pot.

For Tennessee’s sake, the play on the field needs to match the coach’s talk, otherwise Kiffin may have a much shorter leash.

Fans Gone Wild

Some people are simply more forgiving than others. Such a quality shows how truly wonderful some individuals really are.

Leodis McKelvin, the Buffalo Bills cornerback whose kickoff return fumble cost his team a chance at beating the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football is one such person.

As if McKelvin’s battering across local and national media outlets wasn’t enough, he arrived home late Monday evening to find that his front lawn had been vandalized. Some true and blue teenage Buffalo fans voiced their displeasure by taking white paint to the cornerback’s lawn, not only immortalizing the score, but also a symbol that is synonymous with a certain four letter word that rhymes with tuck.

Major life mistakes, car accidents, petty lies, and even some monumental fibs (think Bill Clinton circa 1996) are forgivable. Moronic behavior in the name of sports, however, is anything but forgivable. McKelvin has said publicly that he didn’t take the vandalism to heart, and he just hopes it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

For that reason, McKelvin is a better man than I. Criminal charges need to be brought against the two young offenders, preferably something along the lines of a thousand hours of community service.

Sports have the power to do amazing things. They can bring people of different backgrounds together, take people’s minds off of their problems, and bring smiles to people in dire life situations.

Sports also bring out the worst in people. It’s not like painting someone’s lawn is that awful of an act, it’s not, but it’s another example of people using the context of sports to do something that is otherwise socially reprehensible. People need to understand that the emotional connection they have to sports isn’t an excuse to misbehave.

A message can be sent here, and even if McKelvin doesn’t want to be the send it, someone has to.

An Inauspicious Beginning

Things don’t always go according to plan, just ask Jay Cutler. The much ballyhooed regular-season debut of the new Bears quarterback came and went, without any results to match the hype.

Four interceptions and a quarterback rating of 43.2 put the new Bears gunslinger in cahoots with Henry Burris and Jim Miller more so than Jim McMahon.

It’s always difficult to place blame on one individual in a team sport. In the case of Sunday’s debacle, however, it’s rather easy to place the blame on veteran offensive coordinator Ron Turner. The Bears offensive meltdown at Green Bay has as much to do with Turner as it does with Cutler, second-year running dynamo Matt Forte, or scoring threat Devin Hester.

Turner failed to adjust the offense when it became clear the Packers’ pressure was giving the Bears problems. Matt Forte is in the backfield for that exact reason, and a few running back screens, along with calculated draws, would’ve gone a long way to equalize said pressure. It's Turner's job to put Cutler in a position to be successful, and Sunday's gameplan simply didn't do it.

Jay Cutler isn’t without blame. He was uneasy and unspectacular Sunday night at Lambeau Field. The quarterback, however, can only do so much. The receivers need to finish their routes and communicate properly with Cutler if adjustments need to be made. The team needs to give Forte the ball in creative ways, and also let him pound the rock, which would give Cutler’s play action fake some real bite.

The Bears still have an opportunity to win the NFC North in spite of Brian Urlacher’s season-ending wrist injury, because of their trademark defense. It’s week one, not the playoff run. If the offense doesn’t adjust, it won’t matter. The Bears have all the tools to have a dynamic offense, they just need to put the work in to do so.

Jay Cutler will be the cover boy for the team’s offensive woes, not only because he’s a franchise quarterback, but also due to the nature of his departure from Denver. At the end of the day, however, Ron Turner is the guy who needs to look in the mirror and get it going.

Final Countdown: 72 Hours or Bust

Just because the NFL season kicks off tomorrow doesn’t mean everybody is excited about it. Three teams and their fans have a legitimate reason not to be excited: San Diego, Jacksonville, & Oakland. San Diego withstanding, Jacksonville & Oakland may not be excited to begin with. Both teams are projected to be the worst teams in their respective divisions (AFC South & AFC West), with Oakland additionally known as the worst-run franchise in pro football.

The reason said teams are sweating bullets is due to the NFL’s “blackout rule,” which has been in effect since 1973. To be succinct, the blackout rule states that all games must be sold out 72 hours before kickoff in order to be shown on local television.

The obvious goal of such a rule is to encourage a city to support its team in the stands so that the entire fanbase can watch their team for free every Sunday. For teams with rabid followings (Dallas, Philadelphia, Tennessee, etc.) blackouts have never been an issue. Teams that are formerly expansion teams (Jacksonville), have historically underperformed in recent years (Oakland), or have decrepit stadiums (San Diego) are the ones that have faced blackout scenarios over the last few seasons.

Jacksonville may miss have their entire eight game home schedule on local television. The team is in the smallest media market in the league, and has lost nearly 20,000 season ticket holders from a year ago. San Diego, on the other hand, has struggled to sell tickets to a stadium that was built in 1967 and has yet to be renovated. Oakland, meanwhile, is just plan terrible. Any sports fan (think Bengals, Clippers, etc.) can sympathize with fans refusing to pay for season or single-game tickets to see a team that would have a tough time beating LA’s real pro team, the USC Trojans.

The NFL’s position is understandable: they want teams to do their best to sell tickets, even to the point of threatening to alienate the game from most of its fans in order to achieve sellouts. There are certain times, however, that rules should be relaxed. The economic downturn of the present is one of those times. The NFL gave the city of New Orleans a reprieve after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the city has responded by selling out games constantly, even with the city still in recovery mode.

When the average person is struggling to pay their mortgage, it makes absolutely no sense to punish a city by pulling their favorite team off the local airwaves. Professional football in America has become “America’s Pastime” over the last decade. Why risk that title just to make a point? The NFL needs to realize that in order to stay true to their product, they have to stay true to their consumer.

Pushing Past the Limit

Rich Rodriguez has had anything but a seamless transition to head football coach at the University of Michigan over the last eighteen months. First, there was the lawsuit from West Virginia, who felt that he owed them the total value (four million dollars) of his contractual buyout. Then, there were the transfers. Rodriguez has overseen the exodus of some thirty-one players from the Wolverine roster since taking over the program in the winter of 2007. Now, Rodriguez finds himself under immense scrutiny due to allegations of practice and workout limit violations.

The question as far as possible violations are concerned is, was the extra preparation voluntary? Two players, one currently on the roster, and one former player, went on the record to say that although the workouts were under the guise of involuntary in nature, they were voluntary and conducted by the Michigan coaching staff.

It’s probably the right thing to give Rodriguez a pass here. After all, anyone who says the weekly twenty hours of in-season preparation and eight hours of off-season preparation is enough to build a national powerhouse has never been around big-time college football. That said, it’s not as if Rodriguez and his staff were just a bit over the limit, they were almost tripling it.

In an emotional press conference on Monday, Rodriguez proclaimed that the team and its staff “know and follow the rules.” The assertion by many outside the program that such practice standards illustrate just how little regard Rodriguez has for the student portion of the term “student-athlete” seemed to be what hurt the coach most. The fact that the head coach had no qualms about the emotional nature of the press conference speaks to the fact that Rodriguez and his staff do in fact care about the well-being of their football players.

Breaking the rules, no matter what the context, is wrong. Michigan will be punished if they have maliciously violated NCAA rules. The most important thing that can come out of the latest Rodriguez firestorm has nothing to do with rules and everything to do with team unity. If the Wolverines use the media spotlight to bond and do the work necessary to be successful, they’ll be well on their way to forgetting last year’s 3-9 record. If they do the opposite, however, and continue to let infighting bubble to the surface, the Michigan football program may get worse again before it gets better.

To buy into Rich Rodriguez’s system, the team needs to believe in the man. He showed Monday that he believes in the young men on the team, now it’s their turn to return the favor.