Recent Articles on BleacherReport.com

Since the Kobe-LeBron / Christmas Day article post in late December, here are some others that I wrote for BleacherReport.com:


December 30: Defense and Depth Are Positioning Cavaliers for a Serious Title Run

January 1: Ohio State's Sustained Excellence Is Underappreciated (a re-post of an article I had originally posted here a year ago)

January 2: The Cleveland Cavaliers, On a Mission, Start 2010 With Most Wins in NBA

January 4: Eric Mangini Does the Impossible; Cleveland Browns Fans, Media Thinking Twice

Hope you enjoy reading them. Remember, you can register at BleacherReport.com for free and then comment on my stories, or others that you read -- or even start writing yourself.

Happy New Year!

Random Thoughts -- InfoCision Stadium, Jim Tressel, and the Browns

Had a chance to see the new InfoCision Stadium in Akron this past weekend. Took in the Akron-Indiana game, and you have to give the stadium a thumbs-up. Mind you, it’s all bench seating, but that’s football. There’s not a bad seat in the house. There are more than 27,000 of them, and attendance can top 30,000 when the hillside and standing-room areas are filled. I was impressed, too, with the relative affordability. Tickets are reasonably priced, parking on nearby lots is five bucks, and the food in the concession stands, while more expensive than your neighborhood burger joint, is still more affordable than the obscene professional venues. Service was fast and the lines were short -- for food, souvenirs and in the rest rooms. To be honest, everything about the experience was pleasant, and I would definitely go again.

About 18,000 fans watched as the Zips lost to the Hoosiers, 38-21, having lost their starting quarterback to a suspension and then enduring four interceptions thrown by his sophomore backup. A disappointment, no doubt, but Indiana was bigger and faster -- which is no surprise, with them being a Big Ten school. Perhaps the highlight of the day, however, was when Zippy –- Akron’s much-hyped mascot –- entered on a segway, one of those single-rider “people movers” that hit the streets a decade or so ago. As the delighted crowd cheered the erstwhile kangaroo, ol’ Zip fell right off the segway. He quickly climbed back on, whereupon it promptly stopped and lurched forward, leading to a face plant that left Zippy a little dazed and confused. If it didn’t make ESPN’s highlights that night, it should have. Sorry, Zippy, but that was funny.

A nod to Jim Tressel...

CBS Sports' Gregg Doyel writes online columns that elicit all sorts of emotional responses from readers. Sometimes you agree, often you don’t. But Tuesday he posted one that was right on target. Doyel compared the coaching performances of Ohio State’s Jim Tressel and USC’s Pete Carroll over the past decade, and pronounced Tressel the better of the two. I’m not concerned about who is actually better, but I was glad to see someone on the national stage defend the Buckeye’s leader. I wrote about it here last December, recognizing Ohio State’s sustained excellence since 2001. Doyel strikes the same chords. You can read his thoughts here.

Ah, the Browns!

A week ago I advocated taking it easy on the Browns after their season-opening loss to Minnesota. This time, after the debacle in Denver, not so much. That was a terrible performance, and it’s truly getting disgusting rooting for a team that simply cannot score a touchdown on offense. How pitiful can things get? That said, I’m not ready to give up on Brady Quinn, not by a long shot. I’ve mentioned before that I lived in Texas when the Dallas Cowboys drafted Troy Aikman, and the team ushered in the Jimmy Johnson era that year by going 1-15. They were terrible, something you just can’t be in Dallas, and fans and the media were wringing their hands in panic over what was happening. But, slowly, surely, Johnson molded a team that rose to the pinnacle of the sport, eventually winning two Super Bowls (and a third under Barry Switzer). Aikman struggled through his rookie year, but was, in short order, crucial to the rise of that team. His leadership and career accomplishments landed him in the Hall of Fame.

When the Browns returned to the league as an expansion team in 1999, Tim Couch (left) was the toast of the town. Within four years, he had led the team to the playoffs. Remember that? They were 9-7 that season. But Couch suffered a broken leg in the last game of the year. Kelly Holcomb rang up a ton of yards in the playoff loss to Pittsburgh, Butch Davis and the fans fell in love with Holcomb and, for whatever reason, out of love with Couch, and #2 was sent packing. I’ve always felt that Couch got a raw deal here. (Would you take 9-7 right now? I would.) That Couch pretty much disappeared from football after the next season isn’t the issue. He ended up with shoulder problems and was never the same. But he’s still the best quarterback the Browns have had in the 10-plus seasons since the team was reborn. Maybe Quinn will be better than Couch was, maybe he won’t. But two games at the helm of a pitiful offense is not enough to form a judgment on the kid. Leave him alone and let’s see what happens. The team isn’t going anywhere, so let’s stop kidding ourselves and play this season with the future in mind.

Ohio State's Sustained Excellence is Underappreciated

An article in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer pointed out the apparent ongoing resentment directed at the Ohio State Buckeyes football team, mostly by the media, but also by college football fans around the country.

I don’t get that.

The rationale is that the Buckeyes are typically overrated. They beat fair to average teams. They lose to top-tier teams. And so on, and so forth, blah, blah, blah.

Except, dear critics, answer me this: Other than USC, which has far outpaced any college program for the last decade, name me a school that has consistently outperformed Ohio State in recent years.

You can’t, because there isn’t one.

Remember when all this overrated talk started, back when, somehow, the Buckeyes topped the darling Miami Hurricanes to win the national championship? That was at the 2002 Fiesta Bowl, and I guess the nerve of Ohio State to actually topple “The U” was more than the whiners could take. Since then the Buckeyes have been the target of the college football world’s wrath.

OK, let’s look at where things stand.

Here are Ohio State’s final BCS rankings for the last seven years, beginning with 2001, the year they went on to win the national title: 2 – 5 – 25 – 4 – 1 – 1 – 10. Six out of those seven years, they were ranked in the top ten, and their only slip was the 25th place ranking in 2004.

Skipping over USC for the moment, the only other team who can boast similar numbers for the past seven years is Oklahoma: 7 – 1 – 2 – 23 – 10 – 4 – 1. The Sooners, like the Buckeyes, slipped to 23 one year, but have remained in the top ten otherwise, including two #1 rankings – just like Ohio State.

And that’s it. For the past seven years, USC, Ohio State and Oklahoma have been the most consistently high-performing teams in the nation.

Florida won a title two years ago, and is back in the championship game this season. But the Gators finished out of the top ten five of the past seven years. LSU, mighty winners a year ago, didn’t even make the top 25 this year, and was nowhere to be found in the top ten four of the last seven seasons.

Miami, Michigan and Notre Dame? O, how the mighty have fallen. Georgia? Not bad, but their best finish – third – came seven years ago. Texas was strong this year, and won the championship three years ago with Vince Young, but followed that up with two 19th place finishes in a row. They’re similar to Georgia – strong, but not consistently elite.

Oregon? Oregon State? Auburn? Tennessee? Please.

Which brings us back to our point. Yes, the Buckeyes were a disappointment in two consecutive national championship games. You can’t change that. The games were embarrassing. But they didn’t negate the fact that Ohio State was there, and has been at or near the top for this entire decade.

The fact is, Jim Tressel has run a superb program during his eight years at the helm, and is one of the top college coaches in the land. His game plans against Florida and LSU in the last two national championship games left much to be desired, but his overall record of 83-18 at Ohio State speaks for itself – including four Big Ten championships and a 7-1 record against archrival Michigan, which elevates him to near god-like status among the Buckeye faithful.

Everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion, but the notion that the Ohio State Buckeyes are consistently overrated is ignorant of the facts, plain and simple.

USC, Georgia, Florida -- Even Ohio State -- Got It Right

So, a big weekend of college football saw lots of top teams get knocked off their perches.

Big deal.

If history is any indicator, they'll all hover around the top and, more than likely, one of them will be right back there by season's end. I'd guess it will be USC, but time will tell.

It all comes down to polls, which, in all honesty, are a silly way to determine any type of champion. For years, that's all there was. Now, the BCS tries to even the score -- mostly to no avail.

Who said that any team should be ranked where they are? Writers. Coaches. It's all based on opinion, not fact. Not performance. Opinion. Where in sports does that count for anything, except in college?

Before a college team plays a down -- or in basketball, scores a basket, or in baseball, scores a run -- opinions determine where they rank.

And so, when they lose, opinions determine how far they should fall in the polls -- if at all. Ohio State loses big to USC? They drop about 10 spots, to push them, for all practical purposes, out of national title contention for good. That's probably as it should be, considering their lackluster performances against YSU, Ohio and even Troy.

Now it will be interesting to see where USC lands, after losing to Oregon State, a team that previously lost to -- wait for it -- Stanford.

Fact is, it always comes down to how you perform on the field. Teams lose. Sometimes, they lose games they're not supposed to, like when the New England Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants. After the USC debacle on Thursday night, favored teams like Georgia and Florida were upended on Saturday.

So we end up waiting breathlessly for the polls to come out, so we can determine who, for now, is the #1 team in the land.

Why? Why do we need to know that now?

We don't know who the best team in Major League Baseball is, and won't until after the World Series is played. What a novel concept. Play the season, play the playoffs, and let performance on the field be the only arbiter.

Same goes for the NFL, where we won't have a clue until the Super Bowl is played. Oh, sure, last year everybody thought the Patriots were tops -- perhaps the best ever. Performance said otherwise. And they were beaten by a Giants team that, had polls been relied upon, might have been excluded from the playoffs altogether.

Granted, there's never been an equitable method determined to have a college football playoff, and chances are there never will be.

And so we have the odd system of determining rankings by opinion. And that takes us back to the headline on this post. The teams that have already lost are in a better position to be higher ranked than any team that loses down the road.

Oklahoma and Alabama are sitting pretty right now. But, should they lose a game later on, look out! They'll tumble several spots, and one or more of the teams that have already lost will move ahead of them. We see it every year. A loss late in the season is far more costly than a loss early in the season.

It's silly, but that's the way it is. Don't be surprised if one of the early losers -- USC, Florida or Georgia -- finds its way back up the rankings and into the BCS title game. Not because somebody else just as deserving lost more games, but because they lost one at the wrong time -- late in the season.

OK, I'm Back

Enough of that silly retirement stuff. So I took a month off -- sue me. The whole Brett Favre thing still bores me. So much so that I got bored satirizing it!

Now then:

-- Anyone who honestly thought Ohio State was going to make a game of it against USC was kidding themselves. That they barely beat Ohio University was evidence enough. Fortunately, I had an event to attend that night, and didn't see a down. No loss. I'm a fan, but in the way I'm a fan of my son's high school team. I follow the team, and I hope they'll win, but I sleep fine either way. This Buckeyes team is not national championship material, so let's enjoy the season and be realistic about things.

-- I'm tired of the Browns' act. Really am. This is a team in disarray. They don't come to play. They're unprepared. Opposing teams punch them in the mouth and take over games before they know what hit them. After the talent on display last year, there's no excuse for it. There's a reason the experts had high expectations for the team this year -- THEY WERE EXPECTED TO BE EVEN BETTER. Instead, they stumbled through the preseason and stumbled through the first two games of the season. One can only assume they stumbled through training camp, too. It's ridiculous. I don't know Romeo Crennel, and I don't know as much about football as Romeo Crennel, but something is very, very wrong with this team and its ability to compete. I do know that he is responsible for that.

-- Cliff Lee has turned in one of the most remarkable pitching performances in baseball history, but I could care less if he wins the Cy Young Award or not. I suspect that it's not at the top of his list, either. It's great to win awards, but the list of sports awards from over the years is littered with one-hit wonders. And that's not what Lee wants. It remains to be seen if he'll be able to string together several excellent seasons, but, hearing his comments this year, it seems that's what he's most focused on -- being consistent, and giving his team a chance to win game in and game out. If he keeps that focus, he'll go down as one of the best in the game. That's more important in the long run than any individual award in one season.

-- I get a kick out of all these NASCAR rivalries and wars of words. This guy cut off that guy, this driver ran that driver into the wall, blah, blah, blah. Come on - these people are flying around oval tracks at ungodly speeds. Of course there are going to be bumps and bangs and crashes. Shut up and drive, and be glad you come out of these insane events alive.

-- I thought what Michael Phelps did was cool. People expected him to win eight gold medals, people wanted him to win eight gold medals, and he won eight gold medals. I can't even fathom how good he had to be to do that, and how many things had to go just right for it to happen. Good for him. Best ever? Who knows? Who CARES? It was remarkable, and that's enough for me.

-- The USA men's basketball team, on the other hand, was overhyped and surprisingly weak, I thought. Early in the qualifying rounds, Dwayne Wade actually said something about how the team was "growing" after they barely edged one of those tiny countries with a couple of factory workers and a baker on its roster. Growing? The best the NBA has to offer, and they're GROWING? Please. The decline of the NBA game -- lousy outside shooting, phantom defense, standing around on offense -- was on display for all to see. The Dream Team of Magic, Bird, Jordan, et al, simply dominated all comers. The "Redeem Team" would have lost to that group, based on what I saw this year. They may be athletically superior, but they're fundamentally inferior. A game between the two teams wouldn't have been close, I don't think.

Good sport, of a different sort

Last weekend I had the chance to rub shoulders with one of the most famous chefs in America, if not the world: Cat Cora, best known from her knockout performances on The Food Network's "Iron Chef America." Cat was in Northeast Ohio for a benefit for Meals on Wheels of Stark & Wayne Counties, where I do PR. She is, quite simply, the real deal -- a total delight, gracious and patient and kind in every way. A star, yes. But never a prima donna, even if she had the right to be, considering her exceptional talents and bonafide fame. Cat delivered meals for the agency, did a book signing at the local Borders Books, and wowed 230 guests at a fundraiser. She was down-to-earth and a blast to be around. The pic to the left includes her assistant, Ashley Campbell, and my wife Doreen. A great time, and a great memory.

So there. I'm back. Let me know what you think.