I suspect Barack Obama wishes he'd never answered Chris Berman's question the night before the election on ESPN about a change he'd like to see in sports, because now his answer keeps coming up incessantly. Sunday during the Super Bowl pregame show, Matt Lauer once again asked the President about his thoughts on a playoff system. As the famous 1992 Clinton campaign message said, right now "It's the economy, stupid". At least there's a reason Obama has been discussing it, since people keep asking. Congressman Gary Miller, a Republican from California, has no such excuse which makes his latest bill so embarassing. H.R. 599 requires cutting off federal funding to all D-1 schools unless they create a playoff to pick a champion. Hopefully Rep. Miller's constituents will let him know how much they appreciate him being focused on the important stuff.
What would you describe as being Bud Selig's biggest accomplishment as baseball commissioner? The massive performance enhancing drug scandal? The cancelled 1994 season and frequent labor problems? The tied All-Star Game and resulting overreaction of making that game the determining factor for World Series home field advantage? I can think of absolutely nothing the man has done which could be classified as special leadership. (Pooling all MLB internet sites into one entity was something anyone in his spot should have done, and the World Baseball Classic is meaningless.) Yet somehow Selig made over eighteen million dollars last year. How can a guy with no leverage of any kind - seriously, who would even joke about hiring him away - be making seven million dollars more than any other head of a pro league?
Tom Verducci's book The Yankee Years, an account of Joe Torre's run in the Bronx, is out today. While lots of attention's been paid to his thoughts on guys like Alex Rodriguez and Carl Pavano, very little has been said about the inside scoop on the game day routine of Roger Clemens. After boiling himself in the whirlpool, the Rocket would have the trainer "rub the hottest possible liniment on his testicles". For the money Selig's getting paid, that should have been part of his job.
A bad year for Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy got worse yesterday, with WLWT in Cincinnati getting ahold of his arrest video from December and putting it on the web. The single goofiest thing in the video is Kennedy telling one of the arresting officers that this will be "an international altercation". I will say Kennedy has every right to object to the behavior of the first police officer on the tape. That guy has an enormous chip on his shoulder from the beginning and acts like a total jerk throughout. The Cincinnati PD would be wise to get that guy some extra training on dealing with people. As for Kennedy's ongoing nightmare, we can only hope this does not further reduce his wife's ardor.
Last week I mentioned the banality that is Pete Carroll's Twitter feed. Ashton Kutcher, who's exactly the kind of person I'd expect to feel we need constant updates on his status, used his Twitter to break the news Lawrence Taylor will be on the next season of Dancing With The Stars. Set your Tivos now.
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It was funny that Andy pulled the do you know who I am card. However, the officers' demeanor really seemed to change from the beginning to the end. They (the first one in particular) really treated Andy like a jerk in the beginning but seemed to calm down during the encounter. It makes me wonder if they started to realize that they would indeed be judged under increased scrutiny because of who was being arrested. Also, the part where the officer states something like we deal with the Bengals all the time was funny.
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