Harshing my McCarver buzz

"Thank the sweet lord" my buddy Pizz wrote on his Facebook page, linked to a Deadspin story that Tim McCarver is retiring after this season.

''I wanted to step down while I know I can still do the job and proud of the job I've done,'' the 71-year-old McCarver said during a conference call Wednesday.
His health is good, McCarver said. So are his passion and energy for the game.
It was just time.
''It's not a tough call,'' he said. ''It's not a sad thing for me.''

I don't blame Pizz for invoking a higher power, given that I was hearing heavenly choirs of angels at the news myself and having my sometimes-shaky belief in a loving, caring God strengthened.

Then there was a knock at the door, which is unusual, because Mrs. Last Honest and I don't get a lot of visitors who aren't related to us, and both of our families are currently spoken for in and around their respective homes.

So it was with some curiosity that I checked to see who was there, and it was none other than my good friend Cy Nical, the man who can find a cloud in any silver lining.

"You seem awful happy today," Cy said to me.

"Well, just a few minutes ago I saw a story that Tim McCarver was retiring at the end of the season," I replied.

"That's cool. Did it say anything about Joe Buck?"

"No, other than him saying he learned more about broadcasting from McCarver than anyone, including his own father."

"Hmmm...that's a ringing endorsement. So Buck is going to stay?"

"As far as I can tell. Assuming McCarver is telling the truth, and I have no reason to believe he isn't, it seems like this is his call to retire, so unless Buck can't stomach calling baseball with anyone else, I imagine he'll stick around."

"You see, that's part of your problem; you actually believe people. But so we're still going to be stuck with Buck. Anything about McCarver's replacement?"

"Not that I saw."

"So they could hire anyone ... F.P. Santangelo, perhaps?"

And with that, right as I began cursing him for invoking the name of the man who could make Bryce Harper unwatchable, Cy took his leave.

And now it's all over

The first exposure to college basketball that I can remember was the 1984 Big East Tournament.

I was 11, and I hadn't ever seen anything like it. Cable TV was still fairly new back then, but we didn't live in a place that had it, anyway, but a local independent television station that's now a Fox affiliate carried the games. (At least I assume that's who it was. I can't imagine any of the other three stations we got showing it, and in later years the station would also show Celtics and Yankees games, which I watched religiously, even thought I hated the Celtics at the time.)

It was the year Syracuse's Pearl Washington put on a show before the Orangemen lost to Georgetown in the finals. I was enthralled, and it actually set the stage for a lot of my college basketball fan days since then: loving Syracuse, hating Georgetown and Syracuse mostly finding a way to blow it at the end, including tonight's epic collapse against Louisville.

In the years since, teams have come and gone, and some like TCU came and left before they ever arrived. But every March, Syracuse, Georgetown, Connecticut, St. John's, Villanova, Providence, Seton Hall, Pittsburgh and whoever else was in the league would gather at Madison Square Garden for the conference tournament.

It was my favorite team, in the best arena and the best tournament. How many tournaments have provided moments like Gerry McNamara's run, Kemba Walker's five games in five days or a six-overtime epic? And that's just Syracuse and UConn, and that's just since 2006? (By the way, I watched the entire six-overtime game. After two overtimes, I thought about going to bed; after four overtimes, I thought, "Screw it. I've put this much time into it, I might as well stay until the end.")

Of course, we've all known that it was all about to change in a big way. With Syracuse and Pitt leaving, how could it not? And then the Catholic 7 leaving ripped off any Band-Aid of thought that the conference might still look a little like the Big East we've grown to know and love. It was going to be, as Sean McDonough put it numerous times tonight, "the end of the Big East as we know it."

(For one, Mrs. Last Honest, a Connecticut fan who still doesn't know what the Huskies did to be the one kid without a chair when the music stopped and thinks the program is in serious trouble unless the ACC finally decides to take them in, has already said she refuses to call the Catholic 7 plus however many members they add the Big East.)

And then I read this week's Sports Illustrated story about the end of the Big East to see this:

“Syracuse’s departure would result in nothing less than a mutation in the conference’s DNA, the equivalent of North Carolina or Duke joining the Big Ten or SEC.” 

And this:

“That's why Syracuse's departure essentially finished the league. 'OK, BC left,' (Bill) Raftery says. 'Virginia Tech, Miami -- we can live without 'em. But 'Cuse leaving, that's the one that pierced everybody. Syracuse won the Oscar every year for interest, for reputation, and they always had a chance to win it all.'” 

My attitude about Syracuse -- seen through Orange-colored glasses, no doubt -- has always been that going to the ACC was what they had to do and what anyone else would have done, that in a world where football and the TV money that comes with it makes all the decisions, they had to get in the best place for themselves and that the ACC was that place. The thought of conference games with Duke and North Carolina didn't hurt, either.

But still, it's hard when your wife talks about Syracuse in slightly bitter tones, especially considering that an athletic director at Boston College who did wonders to wreck his own program before retiring apparently kept UConn out of the ACC all by his lonesome. I don't blame her for it, but it's still hard.

And now, even though the Big East was likely always going to meet a bad end because it made all the wrong moves regarding football and money -- I've long thought that they should have seized their own bowl when the BCS first started, instead of being a floater that could easily be cut off -- it's also kind of hard to read that  their leaving might have been the beginning of the end for the league.

So it was a little sad watching tonight's game (even though as I write this it's now early the next morning), even before but especially after Syracuse tossed up its massive fail of a second half. What I first discovered as an 11-year-old has ended.

Sure, I probably won't think about it when Syracuse plays at Cameron Indoor Stadium, North Carolina comes to the Carrier Dome or they hopefully kick the crap out of BC, but it'll probably hit home sometime next March, when instead of settling in to see the Orange at MSG, they'll be playing in Greensboro in front of crowds that will always see them as the outsider.







 

Basketball from back home

My buddy Rob posted this on his Facebook page the other day:

"Who remembers the 1988-89 Siena men's basketball team? And who remembers where they were the day the Saints marched into the NCAA Tournament for the first time by beating Boston University in an empty Hartford Civic Center due to a measles outbreak that started in Loudonville?"

I don't actually remember where I was that day, just reading about it in the paper the next day, or that the tournament was in what is now the XL Center. Not only did the tournament have no spectators, but its winner had no nickname most of the year, as Siena had dropped its Indians name that season and didn't choose its current Saints moniker right away.

I do remember it being an exciting time for all of us in the towns small and large around Albany, NY, as Siena's Loudonville campus is just a short ride up the Northway from New York's capital city. (Rob still lives a stone's throw from the campus, and I used to live a couple miles away.)

Like a lot of New York, except for maybe the immediate New York City area, I grew up in Syracuse country. When Syracuse won the 2003 national championship, they played the East Regional in Albany, and the only way they could have had a bigger home-court advantage was if the games were in the Carrier Dome itself.

Yes, the RPI men's hockey team won the 1985 national title, but where I grew up, big-time college sports meant Syracuse, much in the same way that professional sports mostly means the New York City teams and the Buffalo Bills, at least when the Bills are good. Rob has actually lamented on this often over the years.

And then Siena came along. I was a high school junior, and my social studies teacher/baseball coach promised us that if Siena beat Stanford in their first-round NCAA tournament game, we wouldn't have a quiz  the next day. During baseball practice, we got the news ... Siena had done it! I happened to be standing next to the coach when we found out, and he sort of gave me a hug.

(Because of the quiz being called off, I've always remembered that the game was on a Thursday, because our quizzes were Fridays.)

We taped the game at my house, and as soon as I got home from practice, we all watched it together. If memory serves, CBS had the rights for all the tournament games back then, but didn't produce all of them for broadcast, including the Siena-Stanford game, so the NCAA produced the game in-house and made it available locally on the CBS affiliate.

It was amazing to watch back then -- and I am so going to have to watch the video of the game linked to above -- but not just because the local team pulled off the huge upset. It was almost certainly the first time in my and my friends' lives, and probably the first time for most of the people I knew, that our region had hit the big time in sports.

Siena has made other NCAA tournaments since then, and even sprung another big tournament upset. Of course, they were all exciting, but for me, there will be nothing like standing in my high school gym, next to my baseball coach, and having someone tell us that Siena had just knocked off Stanford.

* * * * * 

Things haven't been as good for the Saints lately. Their history since the mid-1980s has been success when they get the right coach (Mike Deane, Paul Hewitt, Louis Orr, Fran McCaffery) and failure when they don't (Bob Beyer, Rob Lanier, the recently fired Mitch Buonaguro). However, the University at Albany Great Danes have stepped into the Capital Region void, advancing to this morning's America East championship against Vermont.

My master's degree is from UAlbany, but I'd be lying if I said I have especially fond memories of the place. It wasn't horrible, but the good times were more about living on my own in an apartment for the first time, the woman I dated at the time (no, not the one who ultimately became Mrs. Last Honest) and the radio station I worked at for my graduate internship and the friends I made there.

As for the actual grad-school experience? Meh. I went to my office hours for my advising job in the communication department, went to classes and went home. I don't have any friends among my professors or classmates, and if I talk about it, it's mostly about the idiot undergrads I dealt with. (I once had one threaten to sue because I wouldn't let her keep an advising appointment for missing a mandatory meeting that was cleverly called the "mandatory meeting" and spelled out in black-and-white on a letter. Her excuse? She hadn't read that far.)

It's basically the difference between a school being a place where you go and a place where you are, such as my undergrad days.

So I haven't really kept up with the Danes. I don't know who anyone is on their team. I'm glad to see that Will Brown is still the coach, though.

But today? With a chance to go to the NCAA tournament? I'm watching ESPN2 as I type, and today, I change from an ambivalent alum to an excited one.

Is it jumping on a bandwagon? 

Yup. 

Do I care?

What do you think?

Great, someone let the idiots out again

Last night, Deadspin did us all the valuable service of exposing various morons who weren't thrilled with ESPN showing the World Baseball Classic game between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in Spanish by simulcasting its ESPN Deportes feed, which it could do as the Spanish-language rights-holder while MLB Network showed the game in English.

But being the kind soul I am, even as I condemn people who say stupid, racist things for being ... well, people who say stupid, racist things, I want to offer them help. So I have a few suggestions. Feel free to share as necessary.

1. Stop, just stop -- Really, pull this one off, and everything else solves itself. While asking if ESPN has been "taken over by wetbacks" may be popular in certain precincts, it's actually not cool, and neither is the attitude that leads to questions like that.

2. If suggestion No. 1 doesn't suffice for the people who just can't drag themselves into the latter half of the 20th century, much less the 21st, try to be a little less stupid -- I realize that Mexicans are the all-purpose boogeyman these days, but there is no "Mexican" language any more than there's an "American" language. We mostly speak English; they mostly speak Spanish. Furthermore, while Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, like Mexicans, are Hispanic and are very likely to speak Spanish, they're not all the same. And let us not forget ... Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.

3. Step away from the Twitter machine -- I really thought we had figured this out with the whole Obama-speaking-during-Sunday-Night-Football thing, but Twitter is no friend of the stupid racist (No one or nothing else should be, either, but we're specifically talking Twitter here.) Everybody can see anything anyone writes, as long as they look in the right places, and if Deadspin gets hold of it, they will publish it, by name.

And sometimes there are even consequences.

Bo Ryan don't need your stinkin' stats

I was watching the Wisconsin-Purdue game today on ESPN when Bob Wischusen and Dan Dakich broke out the statistic that Wisconsin had won 19 or more games four times in its history (which dates back to 1898) before Bo Ryan came along in the 2001-02 season, and they've done it every year since.

It was at least the second time this year I've heard that statistic, and it smelled funny both times. So I decided to do some research (if looking at the program's Wikipedia page -- grains of salt being tossed -- counts as research) and found it smelled even worse than I thought, for a few reasons.

1. It assumes that Wisconsin basketball was terrible that whole time -- The Badgers actually had a pretty illustrious history through the late 1940s, with 14 conference championships and a national title in 1941. Granted, they only won 19 games a couple times during that span (1915-16 and 1940-41), but they didn't play much more than that. For example, in that 1940-41 season, the national title season, they were 20-3.

Things kind of went downhill after 1947, if you consider no postseason tournaments for 42 years and no NCAA bids for 47 years to be downhill. Nearly 50 years of futility is pretty impressive, but it pales to more than 100 years.

Which brings me to my next point.

2. Ryan finished what others started -- I mentioned two of the four 19-win seasons; the other two were in 1998-99 and 1999-2000 (22 both years, with a Final Four appearance in 2000) under Dick Bennett. They also won 18 in 2000-01, the year before Ryan became head coach. Overall, the Badgers made four NCAA tournaments and one NIT in the six years Bennett was there, if you count 2000-01, where Bennett retired just a few games into the season and Brad Soderberg coached the team the rest of the way.

In other words, while Ryan has taken the program beyond what anyone had done since the first few decades of the 1900s, the turnaround had started before he got there.

3. Why 19 or more? Why not 20 or more? -- This one should be easy. Ryan's win totals at Wisconsin have been 24, 25, 25, 30, 31, 20, 24, 25, 26, 20 (so far this year) ...

... 19 and 19.

Even though the "four times winning 19 games before Bo Ryan" would have still been four times winning 20, it doesn't sound quite as impressive to say Ryan has won 20 games every year but two in Madison. It's equivalent to NASCAR announcers saying "Driver X has seven straight top-13 finishes;" that means there's at least one 13th-place finish in there.

Today's inexplicable loss to Purdue notwithstanding, Bo Ryan is a terrific basketball coach, and it doesn't take overblown, manipulated stats to show it.

The curious case of Tim Tebow

There's a guy I've been friends with for probably close to 30 years in spite of the fact that we're about as politically different as two people can be. He's an extremely conservative Christian, and I'm ... well, I'm not. It has made for some lengthy discussions over our disagreements on the Facebook machine.

But I felt less argumentative and more intrigued the other day when he posted the following about Tim Tebow backing out of an appearance at First Baptist Church in Dallas.
  

"What do you think? Should Tebow have backed out of this event?"

For those unaware, the First Baptist pastor, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, "has taken polarizing social stances, fanning flames of controversy in exactly the kind of way that the NFL works tirelessly to avoid."

"In a 2011 interview, for instance, Jeffress declared that Islam and Mormonism were religions that are 'heresy from the pit of hell,' took a hard line against Judaism, and claims that America is being 'brainwashed' into accepting a homosexual agenda." 

"Also in 2011, he criticized the Catholic church as 'the genius of Satan' and 'corrupted' by cults. Say what you will about Ray Lewis, but his public displays of religion were inclusive and inspirational, not exclusive (well, except for the ones that excluded everyone who wasn't Ray Lewis)."

As someone who doesn't care what religion you belong to, or none at all, as long as you're not hurting anybody; supports gay rights and is married to a Catholic (although Mrs. Last Honest would probably be the first to tell you she's not a particularly good Catholic), I don't like Jeffress' worldview. I think it's safe to say he wouldn't like mine, either. So be it.

But back to Tebow, my friend didn't offer an opinion about the First Baptist event, and I'm not going to either. However, it did get me to thinking about Tebow's place in American sports culture, the likes of which I'm not sure we've ever seen.

Of course, the possibility exists that whatever Tebow's beliefs on other religions, gay rights, abortion or any other social issues, his Christianity has other priorities. His messages on Twitter announcing he was cancelling his appearance (the quote below is from the article about him backing out linked above) could perhaps hint at that.

"While I was looking forward to sharing a message of hope and Christ's unconditional love with the faithful members of the historic First Baptist Church of Dallas in April, due to new information that has been brought to my attention, I have decided to cancel my upcoming appearance. I will continue to use the platform God has blessed me with to bring Faith, Hope and Love to all those needing a brighter day. Thank you for all of your love and support. God Bless!"

Yet there is another possibility, which to me is where things get interesting.

Tim Tebow is extremely popular and extremely polarizing. How popular? If you believe Deadspin, the dude caused ESPN to change the way it covers sports. That's some serious stroke, folks.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, with the possible exception of the areas in and around Gainesville, Fla., a lot of that appeal is due to his open and overt Christianity. Now that I'm on that limb, I'm going to wander out onto a branch and say that the people who love him for his Christianity are probably conservative.

He's one of them, except for one little thing. While I don't have any illusions -- let's just say I don't envision him doing any events with Chris Kluwe or Brendon Ayanbadejo any time soon -- Tebow has pretty much stayed out of politics. Even the content from Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad from a couple years ago that caused so much controversy before that game wound up being a whole lot of no big deal.


So what that leads to is Tebow being a pretty polarizing athlete, but for two reasons that aren't necessarily polar opposites. Yes, some people find his public expressions of faith off-putting, but the dislike for that pales in intensity to that of the people who love him for it, and the backlash that does exist is probably as much about him not being a good NFL quarterback and all the attention he gets in spite of that.

Yet however much he may turn some people off, particularly those on the left, I don't think there are too many people who hate him, which means he's safe to do endorsements. (I actually think this TiVo ad is pretty good. I'm OK with people who can laugh at themselves.)


The only way I can see this sort-of-uneasy truce between what people are pretty sure he is and not holding it against him is him becoming what he hasn't shown to be yet ... someone who would call Islam and Judaism "heresy from the pit of hell," say America is being "brainwashed" into accepting a homosexual agenda or other such stuff ... or at least someone who would publicly associate with a pastor who feels that way.

That could give his critics as much reason to despise him as much as his fans love him, because then, it's personal.

Now, let me say again that it is entirely possible that Tebow is not interested in espousing his Christianity the same way Jeffress does. Absent any evidence to the contrary, he is due the benefit of that much doubt from the people who are offended by Jeffress' beliefs.

However, the story of the cancelled First Baptist Church appearance does show that if Tebow and his advisers are interested in maintaining his commercial viability, he walks perhaps a tighter rope than Michael "Republicans buy sneakers, too" Jordan ever did.

Perhaps the worst kind of sports fan

"I can't believe they still boo Chara."

This was from one of my co-workers Thursday, the day after the Boston Bruins played the Montreal Canadiens in Montreal, where the fans apparently treated Zdeno Chara with the minimum high regard that they always do.

Without even getting into the fact that Chara is the captain of the Canadiens' hated rivals, I did remind her there was an incident a couple years back that might have colored fans' views of him.



Let us not forget that there was talk of prosecuting Chara for that hit.

My co-worker, her memory refreshed of Chara running Max Pacioretty head-first into a pole, could only reply with, "He didn't do it on purpose. They should just get over it!"

I don't think he did it on purpose, either, and told her so, but saying Montreal fans should "get over it" defies all logic.

The conversation caused me to think that my co-worker may be the worst kind of sports fan ... the one whose passion (and to be clear, she is a serious, serious Bruins fan) makes them not just a hypocrite (as all fans are), but blinds them to all logic so much that a rational conversation can be nearly impossible.