What was uglier last night - the Magic's play, or Magic's suit?

The gut feeling after Orlando's stupendous chokejob Thursday night was that it would be too hard for them to recover for Game 5. That's exactly what happened, although the Lakers are the better team anyway. This is being portrayed as Kobe's triumph, and to some extent that's true although that doesn't mean his selfishness wrecking his first three title run Laker team should be ignored or minimized. When Mark Jackson said Kobe was as good as we've seen at the two guard spot I just shook my head. He's not even close to Michael Jordan's stature yet, and I don't see him getting there. As for the Magic, we'll see what they do about Hedo Turkoglu. It certainly won't be a real good way to say thanks for the new arena if they don't keep him. To honor the Laker victory, please turn your speakers all the way up and enjoy the musical stylings of the mid Eighties Lakers with their Just Say No rap. No one breaks it down quite like Kurt Rambis.

Two months ago, high school basketball star Jeremy Tyler announced he would head to Europe and skip his senior year of high school. Now Bryce Harper's going to do him one better. The Nevada high school baseball stud, who was on the cover of Spots Illustrated a couple of weeks ago, is bailing after his sophomore year to turn pro quicker. I suppose this is better news than another plan Harper's family had reportedly been considering at Scott Boras's suggestion - moving to the Dominican Republic so he could be a free agent rather than go through the draft process. Maybe Harper will handle things just fine, but ten years ago Josh Hamilton was supposed to be the same kind of can't miss prospect. He wound up taking a major detour because he couldn't deal with the money and expectations. I hope Harper can avoid that, but this is a very disturbing trend. High school years have value, and anything that encourages greedy and/or delusional parents to shove their kids through as quick as they can to try and get the big score is bad news.

UF beat writer Joseph Goodman's blog on the Miami Herald features a post with the headline You've Got to Have Thugs To Win Football Games. That is a load of crap. You've got to have athletes who are true competitors to win. Some players who fit that description are also thugs, but not all thugs fit that description. With all the hype about UF's arrests in the past four years, how many of those arrested guys played a meaningful role in the 2008 championship? Louis Murphy and Brandon James had pot charges during their time at UF - if that makes them thugs then I went to school with a lot of thugs. If having "thugs" is so important to winning, how come UF's didn't amount to anything on the team that won it all? I like Goodman, but what he's doing here is taking the easy, cynical approach. Some schools choose to win with bad guys, but that's not the only way.

Joe Buck's new HBO show makes its debut tonight. It's clear that Buck thinks he's a really funny, hip guy. My question is why anyone else would feel that way. The guy reacted to Randy Moss's simulated moon of Green Bay fans like he'd pulled a Pee Wee Herman in the end zone. Buck tried to get himself a sitcom at FOX. The same network that has said yes to Michael Strahan's acting debut turned him down. That should speak volumes, but Buck's comedy dreams live on. I don't think I'll be tuning in tonight.

Living in Columbia is very different than living in Florida was. When a weird story makes news these days, I always expect it to have happened somewhere in Florida. There's nowhere near as much of that kind of thing here, but unfortunately there are stories like this. It is in fact 2009 here - I checked again today just to be sure.

"The body post" won't be happening on this blog

My first trip to Boston was an enjoyable experience. A few notes on that before getting into the more typical blog fare...

1. Going to Fenway Park is enjoyable, but Wrigley Field is better. Some may try and tell you the experience is better because they'r true baseball fans and Cub fans are just there to party. Those people never sat behind someone who felt the need to get up for more beer as a pitcher was in the middle of working on the final out of his to that point perfect six innings. The Red Sox gameday experience is good, but everything in Chicago was a little bit better

2. Jon Lester was the pitcher for the Red Sox who was shutting down the Rangers Saturday night. He wound up getting 6.1 innings of perfect ball in before Michael Young broke it up with a double deep to center. I'm not sure I've ever seen someone carry a no hitter past about the third inning, so watching Lester work was pretty cool. Two days later, we ran into Lester while on a Duck Boat tour of Boston. We didn't bother him for a picture or autograph, but since some people did we took a picture of that which appears to the right of this.

3. Went to the Institute of Contemporary Art. They have an exhibit right now featuring the works of Shepard Fairey. He's the artist who did the red white and blue HOPE Obama portait last year that was on the cover of multiple magazines. I didn't know much about Fairey's work, so I was surpised to learn the primary image in much of his art is Andre the Giant. Can't say I saw that coming. Fairey's talented, but I'm always amazed at what passes for art.

Orlando is done in the NBA Finals after blowing another game late. Technically there are three games left to play in the series, but there's a better chance of me being the host of Dance Fever than there is the Magic closing out with wins in game 6 and 7 in Los Angeles. It'll be easy to overfocus on Dwight Howard missing free throws, which was certainly a problem. That does not explain why Jameer Nelson was on the floor for 25 minutes, including the time Derek Fisher's ghost made those two three pointers. For an obviously gifted coach, Stan Van Gundy has done some incredibly stupid things in this series. His use of Nelson ranks at the top of the list.

If you listened closely yesterday, you could hear the sound of laughter coming from Alabama as the NCAA announced their "penalties" for their textbook scandal. The Crimson Tide got told very sternly that they had been naughty. They lost 43,900 dollars and they can't officially claim credit for 21 wins. That's it. Alabama shouldn't have been hammered for this, but there should have been some penalty going forward. Claiming things didn't happen is not a punishment, it's a delusion. Can you imagine disciplining your kid by telling him "You've never been to Disney World, and you're not allowed to say you have or enjoy the memories" when you took him there last summer? It would be absurd, yet that's what the NCAA just did with Alabama. Think they'll take the "Bama Is Back" covers from after they thrashed UF in 2005 off the walls anywhere in the state? Yeah, me neither.

The Tank Black scandal was one of the most challenging topics I dealt with during my run in Gainesville. In case your memory has gotten foggy, Black was the agent who turned out to have given players like Jevon Kearse money and benefits prior to them being done with their college careers. He also was involved in a variety of other frauds, including liquidating Ike Hilliard's stock portfolio to put it in a car title loan scheme. Black didn't just play the race card when he was accused, he played the whole deck. He got civil rights leaders involved in his defense despite the fact the government had him dead to rights. Now Black is out of prison and has written a book claiming to air all the dirty laundry from his agent stint. I'd like to read it, but there's no chance I'll give him money to do do that.

ESPN the Magazine has announnced its plans to do a body issue of the magazine. What that means is that should you subscribe, one day your mailbox will feature an issue with lots of sports people posing nude. Why ESPN feels that would be appropriate journalism for them to ask sports figures to do, I have no idea. How do you cover someone credibly as a sports journalist and then turn around and say "oh by the way, we'd like to move some serious amounts of magazines and think a nude issue will do the job. How'd you like to drop trou for us?" If someone posted the pictures they'll put in your magazine in an ESPN cubicle, the guy doing it would be in real trouble with human resources for sexual harassment but this is supposed to be okay? Ridiculous. Enjoy your weekend and I'll see you back here Monday.

Total autographs I've signed: 3. None were on another guy.

I'm not sure why a Congressman thought the NBA's one year out of high school requirement before a kid can enter the draft was an important issue to address this week. I dont think Steve Cohen has the right idea about any kind of congressional involvement, but he's right that the rule should go. Now that we're seeing Europe becoming the workaround for the rule, it's outlived its usefulness. I do think there will be kids who make terrible decisions and wreck their futures once they can ignore academics because they think they're going straight to the league. That'll be unfortunate, but it's better than having a slew of one and done guys who aren't even pretending to abide by NCAA rules.

You may think you're a sports fan, but how many autographs from your favorite team do you have tattooed on your body? If your answer is anything less than 92, it appears you've lost to this guy from Chicago. The thing that surprises the most is that this guy got 92 other dudes to write on him. I talked with Tim Tebow about that last year. He's signed a few signatures that he was told were going to be turned into tattoos, and did feel that was a little creepy. Wish I could have been there for this freak to explain to Mike Ditka that he needs him to sign the back of his neck.

Gary Parrish of CBSsports.com deserves the credit for noticing the current state of the Memphis compliance website. As Gary pointed out to his Facebook friends last night, it's "temporarily under construction". I would imagine it is - the school has its appearance before the NCAA Saturday.

One of the great mysteries of baseball broadcsting is how a self promoting blowhard like John Sterling continues to hold the Yankees play play job. His latest masterpiece was this week, when he called a Hideki Matsui home run. Aside from the fact he was so busy doing his schtick that he forgot which player homered, it was a particularly brilliant touch to make an already inappropriate "A-bomb" reference to a Japanese player. I'm sure Charles Albury, whose death was disclosed yesterday, felt his work at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was very similar to a Yankee hitting a homer.

I was sorry to learn that Scot Brantley has been having major health issues lately. The former UF and Tampa Bay linebacker and color analyst has had heart surgery and also has lost vision in his left eye due to a "mini-stroke". The thing that stood out about Scot's broadcasting work was its authenticity. He doesn't have the classic broadcast voice or the smoothness of a polished announcer, but when listening to him you felt like you were getting what he really thought. Hopefully things will improve for him soon.

I will be traveling this weekend, and will not be back in Columbia until Wednesday. There may be post from the road depending on time and internt availability, but if not things will resume as normal here on Thursday. Have a great weekend.

Apparently Lane thinks UF's third string would beat its first string

It's been funny watching Lane Kiffin try to get Tennessee going in the SEC by rebuilding out of Florida's trash can. He's pursuing Cameron Newton, the laptop thief QB dismissed from the team who was clearly not going to play ahead of John Brantley. Now he's landed John Brown, the defensive tackle out of Lakeland who never was able to accomplish anything in his UF career and was hopelessly behind academically when he had to leave this spring. I doubt Brown will ever play a meaningful snap for the Vols - watching him at practice and talking to coaches, he just wasn't that good. This signing screams Ed Orgeron at a very high volume. As Jerrell Powe can tell you, Ed really doesn't care too much if you have any business in college or not. The broader Oregeron's influence shows, the more convinced I am that the Kiffin era will be a debacle for Tennessee.

It's undisputed that Lou Holtz is a terrific speaker. That doesn't make him a good presence on television, and one of the reasons why is because he is either unwilling to be honest about certain teams or is simply not willing to be objective about them. Ever since Holtz left South Carolina he's focused primarily on emphasizing the Notre Dame portion of his career, which presumably is why he is predicting the Fighting Irish will go 11-1 and finish in the top ten. This might seem credible if hadn't made almost the exact same prediction last year. Notre Dame's 2009 schedule includes a number of winnable games against "name" programs that are currently terrible like Purdue, Washington and Washington State. They should unquestionably have a winning season. To say they will not lose to anyone but USC is ridiculous though. This same bunch found a way to lose to Syracuse last season. Now they'll be on cruise control against the likes of Michigan State? Sorry, no. Mark this down - Nevada will either beat or scare the hell out of Notre Dame in South Bend the first week of the year.

Alex Rodriguez is involved with Kate Hudson now. Didn't matter much to me when I heard about it, although if I was a Yankee fan I'd be annoyed. Dating a celebrity actress, particularly one who needs some positive press since she hasn't made a good movie since Almost Famous nine years ago, isn't the best strategy for someone looking to fly under the radar. Now Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated reports via twitter that Hudson and three Rodriguez hangers on are pouring wine on the field before his at bats. Maybe it's a Kabbalah thing left over from the Madonna affair, or perhaps A-Roid wants a reality show. How hard is it not to be aggressively weird in public for a month or two?

I mentioned Monday that I was curious to see how long it would take for a major sport to duplicate what the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury are doing by putting a corporate logo on their actual game uniforms. The NFL took the first step toward that yesterday, by allowing teams to put sponsor logos on practice jerseys. We'll see what kind of a price teams can get for this, since it will get the sponsor major exposure only on local TV news and in the papers for the month or so of training camp and possibly a little during the season. If companies bite on this limited opportunity in a down economy, count on the league eventually putting it on the real uniforms in games when the price seems right.

The hits just keep on coming with the current economy. It seems like once a week some venue I enjoyed is suddenly gone. This might not mean anything to you if you aren't from Tampa, but I was disppointed to see Valencia Garden has suddenly shut down. My grandparents took me there a bunch of times over the years. It's one of the few restaurants my grandmother would still eat at today. The food was good, it had nice atmosphere and it was an authentic Tampa place. Given the way things are these days, they'll probably replace it with a freaking Applebee's. Also, my buddy Cole Pepper had his sports director position at WOKV in Jacksonville eliminated in budget cuts by the soulless corporate weasels at Cox Radio last week. He's still deciding what course of action to take longterm, since his work for the Jaguar network isn't a fulltime gig. In the meantime, he's started a blog of his own - drop by and say hi.

Memphis also was stunned by the sun rising in the east

The focus of discussion about Memphis's NCAA situation has been the Derrick Rose SAT score controversy. How is it fair to expect them to have declined to play someone who get approval from the NCAA's Clearinghouse? What people haven't been paying attention to is the other part of the charges, with Rose's brother traveling on the team charter for two games and not being charged. It was "an oversight" - sure it was. Having charged him for some games gives them cover in this situation, but 1. it was no accident, because nothing about the planning on those kind of team trips is an accident, 2. it's a violation, period. Meanwhile, Gary Parrish of CBS Sports reports that Georgia declined a future Memphis teammate of Rose's, Robert Dozier, because they didn't believe he'd taken his own SAT. It was fine for Memphis though - imagine that. Poor, poor Memphis. Who could have ever guessed that a John Calipari program might do some things a little funky? I'm sure that everything in Lexington will be absolutely upright and honest at all times.

The announcement is being made today that Patriots safety Rodney Harrison is retiring from the NFL to join NBC. This isn't just another ex-jock in the booth, though. Harrison is widely considered one of the dirtiest players in the NFL for the past decade and was suspended four games for HGH just a couple of seasons ago. He may have a lively personality, but doesn't there have to be some kind of standard about hiring a guy who made a punchline out of the league's rules for the last decade?

Nick Calathes may not be the last SEC player to take his game overseas this year. Tyler Smith of Tennessee acknowledges he's considering making the same move. Unlike Calathes Smith doesn't have a natural European tie, and I wonder just how much money someone would be interested in signing him for. Getting paid is always nice but it seems like Smith could improve his stock, even for Europe, with another year in Knoxville. The deadline for him and all the other NCAA/NBA stragglers is twelve days away.

Did you know the Beatles have sold more records than any artists this decade other than Eminem? It's true, in part because you can still hear the Beatles music played on several different radio formats to keep them relevant. Despite that, some people in the music business are hoping to force radio to begin paying royalties for every song they air. If this bill passes, it will be the end of oldies formats for radio. Most music stations will either refuse to play any artist who doesn't "voluntarily" grant them a reprieve from this or they will switch formats altogether to some variety of talk programming. The story of the Golden Goose wasn't big reading in the music biz, it appears.

"Don't taze me, bro" references are ultra lame at this point

Janoris Jenkins found trouble over the weekend, getting tasered in the bargain. This adds a 24th player to the list of arrests under Urban Meyer. That's the current popular criticism of the program, thanks to Dave Hyde's Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel column from last week trying to decree UF the new Thug U. Unfortunately people quoting this number don't bother to see how many of those arrests actually led to charges, what they were for, or what the discipline was for them. All arrests are equal, right? Dorian Munroe putting a parking boot in his trunk, Tony Joiner being impatient about getting his girlfriend's car out of a tow lot and Jamar Hornsby's theft and repeated use of a dead girl's credit card - no difference there at all. Here's a hint - two of those guys remained on the team and one didn't. Guess which one. Jermaine Cunningham is there when Jon Demps throws a sandwich at a Jimmy John's clerk in a dispute over a bag of chips. Somehow Meyer let that guy stay on his team. On the other hand guys like Avery Atkins, Marcus Thomas and Ronnie Wilson got second chances under Meyer and failed to live up to their end of the bargain. They were booted. Generally under Meyer, the serious cases have ended up that way. Is he the toughest disciplinarian in college football? No - but people trying to cobble together some sort of "out of control" program rep for UF are being silly.

The Columbus Dispatch did an excellent story documenting just how much the way schools apply the Buckley amendment varies wildly from place to place. It's supposed to protect academic records, but that's the law athletic departments love to hide behind when they want to avoid providing information on what's going on in their programs. UF, for example, refuses to release any uncensored info on violations in football or basketball. When the man who wrote the Buckley amendment is saying this is not in any way what the law is supposed to do, it's time for the NCAA to step up and order its schools to begin complying with federal law. How arrogant are some ADs? A few simply refused to comply with the Dispatch's public records requests, despite the fact as tax-supported institutions they're required to do so. Stonewalling can work for a period of time, maybe even forever. Just ask USC's athletic program about that.

I'd love to say I'm shocked that some jerks thought it would be a good idea to make death threats to Tennessee Vols quarterback Jonathan Crompton last year, but I'm not. Losers whose entire self image is tied in with whether their team wins or loses actually feel they have every right to be abusive to a young man who fails to live up to their expectations. Sure the kid probably has NFL hopes, has worked for months to try and play well, and feels like he's let his teammates and coaches down, but what will really motivate him is knowing that Vern from Bugtussle says he's going to kill him. Maybe Lane Kiffin's staff can spin this as a positive because it "shows how much Vol fans care", but if I was a parent there's not a chance in hell I'd let my kid play for a school whose fans acted like that.

Silly me, I always thought being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader was a pretty simple gig. Look hot, show some dancing skills and personality and you're good. Little did I know the cheerleaders are also required to pass a test which includes questions like "name a country that borders Iraq". I'm not sure exactly when that's likely to come up - maybe during the making of the swimsuit calendar they play Trivial Pursuit? - but at least you can admire them for ther big brains next time you see them.

I meant to mention this last week. Extremely quirky musical group They Might Be Giants is sponsoring ten Little League teams. If your child is in a Little League and you need a sponsor for the team, you can get the whole story here. Kids will feel much cooler about being sponsored by the people responsible for Doctor Worm and Boss of Me than they would Chico's Bail Bonds. It'll be more enjoyable than collecting baseball cards too. When I was a kid that was a big thing for me, but then corporate greed ruined the hobby by creating way too many products and printing far too much of them. Now instead of looking for some red hot rookie, kids are supposed to get excited about possibly finding a rare autographed Kim Kardashian card. Gee, how thrilling.

I was almost over the Chris Chandler trade, too.

I've mentioned before on this blog my distaste for college baseball. Among numerous things, I don't care for the way regionals typically come down to who is completely out of pitching. I assume that's what happened to Ohio State, as FSU destroyed them 37-6 yesterday to advance. Florida cruises on to next week as well, with an impressive effort against Miami. I'll find out tonight whether South Carolina keeps the discussion topic relevant here for another week. It's good for business if they do, but that's as far as my interest in aluminum bat baseball goes.

Sometimes things just sneak up and sucker punch you. I was reading Mike Lombardi's notebook column on the National Football Post discussing the St. Louis Rams being a franchise actually interested in signing Michael Vick when I got to the part about not making too big a deal about how rookies are performing during the early workouts with their new teams. Lombardi, a former NFL GM, mentions that when he was with the 49ers they had an early disappointment who they looked to deal off. They offered him to Tampa Bay for a conditional tenth round pick, and the Bucs said no. The player in question: John Taylor! That's right, the franchise that traded a third rounder for Stephen Starring around the same time to "help" the wide receiver position decided to draw the line at a tenth rounder for Taylor. Great - just great. I didn't know the story until Sunday, and it irritated me so much I wish I still didn't.

Lots of people are piling on LeBron James for not speaking to the press or shaking Dwight Howard's hand Saturday night after the Magic finished off Cleveland. I agree it was a mistake, but I think people are being way too harsh in their evaluation of it. That guy put everything he had into the series. He hit the amazing shot in game two and then single handedly won game five in the fourth quarter. LeBron has handled his fame and riches incredibly well considering how young the guy still is. He won a gold medal for the US last year. He cares about the right things. I don't know why LeBron didn't talk - maybe he was afraid of what he would say - but to me commentators ranting about him being "a punk" because of it are going overboard.

Anything the Phoenix Mercury does will be a minor story to most of us, because the odds are you are not a hardcore WNBA fan either. Today they're announcing that they're putting a patch for an ID theft protection service on the front of their uniforms. It'll be interesting to see how quickly other leagues duplicate this. I've always thought one day there will be a team here hard up enough for cash that they'd change the whole name of the franchise from, for example, the Columbus Blue Jackets to the Nationwide Blue Jackets. NFL uniforms would look like a NASCAR driver's suit if every interested sponsor got to add a logo somewhere on the players.

If you're looking for a little something to jazz up your backyard, may I recommend the scoreboard from Notre Dame's football stadium? Curiously, the ad makes no references to all the great victories that scoreboard's been there for since 1997. There's Navy, Michigan a couple of times, Navy, a close call against USC, and who can forget Navy?