That damn 'Tessie'

Can I let you in on a little secret?

I can't stand Boston sports. No, I really can't stand any team in that town. It doesn't matter if we're talking Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, Boston College or anything else. Cleveland doesn't even have a hockey team, and I'd probably still find myself grinding my teeth if the Bruins won the Stanley Cup. That sentiment probably puts me in league with a lot of Cleveland fans -- and fans across the country, for that matter.

I can't stand the way their teams win with such regularity, the way the national media fawns over their every success, the incredible superiority complex it lends their fans, and the way their fans take that superiority complex to your town, your stadium, your arena, your bars and your neighborhood. You think every Sox fan lives within a traffic jam of the Mass Pike? The one who lives down the street from you just bought his first David Ortiz shirt in 2004. Right about the same time his Derek Jeter shirt got buried at the bottom of his dresser drawer.

I can't stand the way every Boston championship after even a quasi-dry spell is painted in the media as a triumph for all mankind. OK, I'll give them 86 years without a World Series title. But 22 years between NBA titles? Get bent. Far over. Please.

I can't stand Kevin Garnett's scowling, Cowher-esque jaw-jutting and F-bombs. I can't stand Paul Pierce and his screaming at the rafters. I can't stand Rajon Rondo busting Chicago's Brad Miller in the chops and getting off with a slap on the wrist.

I can't stand the fact that Manny Ramirez accomplished everything there that he couldn't here. I can't stand the 2-0 series lead the Indians blew in the 1999 division series and the 3-1 ALCS lead they blew in 2007. I couldn't stand Pedro Martinez then and I can't stand Jonathan Papelbon now. I can't Dustin Pedroia's snotty MVP video game commercial or the way they call Ortiz "Big Papi" in that New England accent that anglicizes everything. It's supposed to sound like "Poppy," not "Pappy."

I can't stand Tom Brady's elevation to the status of Ultimate Alpha Male. I can't stand the fact that Bill Belichick is a borderline-sinister tactician who didn't perfect his craft until he arrived in New England, until it was too late to save the Browns from the clutches of Baltimore. And I hate that the current owner of the Browns is locked in a perpetual, and likely futile, series of attempts to discover his own version of Belichick.

Jealous much? You're damn right. Because Boston is one of those cities where, when they're on top, you know it. You can't ignore it. It's been that way for years -- decades, actually.

Boston's sporting brashness was likely born in the working-class saloons of 19th Century Irish-immigrant Boston, when Boston was still a National League town and baseball games were the exclusive territory of men who could hold down a few pints. Then Boston became an American League town in 1901, and two years later, won the first-ever World Series by beating the Pittsburgh Pirates.

During that series, Boston's fans -- led by the "Royal Rooters," baseball's first widely-recognized group of superfans, helped their American League team's cause by making sure the song "Tessie" stayed in the ear of Honus Wagner and his Pittsburgh teammates. "Tessie" was featured in a Broadway show called "The Silver Slipper" that debuted in 1902. By 1903, the song was famous enough that the Royal Rooters adopted it, made up some new lyrics and used it to harass the Pittsburgh players.

After the series, Pittsburgh outfielder Tommy Leach gave an assist in Boston's triumph to "that damn 'Tessie' song.'" And an obnoxious heritage was born.

Now, whenever a Boston team is better than your team, you know it. Their fans make sure of it. Even during a cold, damp April baseball game in Cleveland, as was the case when several thousand Red Sox fans descended on Progressive Field Tuesday, making sure that they did everything in their power to match and surpass the volume of the home crowd. I can only assume the same scene played out on Monday and Wednesday.

The Cleveland crowd, subdued by rain, cold and yet another cruddy April by the home team, was subjected to the ear-grinding passion of the fans -- bandwagon and otherwise -- of a deep-pocketed baseball team that is always one October away from another World Series title. Bambino? Curse? Didn't Bambino play for the Royals back in the '80s? Or was that Balboni?

In my personal experience on Tuesday night, I was subjected to the high-pitched whine of a particularly enthusastic Boston fan sitting right behind me.

"C'mon Youk! YOUUUUUUK!!! C'mon Pappy!! BIIIIG Pappy! WOO!" All that, and he was clapping his hands approximately three millimeters from my ear canal, too.

Eventually, he left his seat, and my eyes were drawn to another Boston fan sitting one row down and about five seats over. Every time Red Sox starter Brad Penny fell behind in the count, this man would start to get agitated. When an Indian got a base hit, he'd throw his hands in the air and glare at the diamond like a man who just found an obscenity scratched into the paint of his car hood.

I've been to other Indians-Red Sox games and I've seen similar Boston behavior during those games, too. But I left Tuesday's game with the overwhelming feeling that it is impossible to enjoy a baseball game for the game's sake when you are with Boston fans. Perhaps outsiders feel the same way about Cleveland fans at a Browns game.

There is no atmosphere to absorb. There is no hanging out at the ballpark to take in the sights and smells during breaks in the action. There are wins and losses. Games won and lost, innings won and lost, at-bats won and lost. That's that.

Perhaps that's the price some Boston fans pay for their passion. There is no now. Now is just a precursor to whatever is next.

Even "Tessie" couldn't stand pat. She got a facelift when the rock band Dropkick Murphys covered the song in 2004. The year Boston's curse ended. The year Boston fans became obsessed with the future instead of the past.

Now, every title Boston wins only feeds that obsession. And every time one of their teams comes to Cleveland, we get to take it all in, every ounce of the endless soap-opera drama that is Boston sports and their legions of fans. Whether we want to or not.

A trail of tears

Legendary Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey once said that a baseball team in any city is quasi-public institution, but the Dodgers were public without the quasi.

When a city loses a public institution, the ripple effects can last for years. Few cities took it on the chin harder than New York, which lost both its National League teams in the same offseason prior to 1958. The Dodgers and Giants, both staples of New York summers dating to the 19th Century, packed up and moved to the West Coast.

After 1957, Ebbets Field never saw big league baseball again. It was knocked down a few years later. The Polo Grouds, the Giants' oddly-shaped landmark of a park in extreme northern Manhattan, remained vacant until the Mets moved in for the 1962 season. By 1964, however, the Mets had moved to Shea Stadium and the Polo Grounds followed Ebbets Field into the crosshairs of the wrecking ball.

The sports history books are loaded with teams leaving various locales and arriving in others. Baseball, in particular, went through a glut of relocation over approximately 20 years. In addition to the Dodgers and Giants, the Braves left Boston in 1953 for Milwaukee, then moved south to Atlanta in 1966. The Athletics left Philadelphia for Kansas City in 1954, then moved westward yet again to Oakland in 1968.

The St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles in 1954. The Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins in 1961, replaced a year later with an expansion Washington Senators franchise, which became the Texas Rangers in 1972. The Seattle Pilots left the Pacific Northwest after one unremarkable expansion season, becoming the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970.

It makes for good reading if you are into sports history and like to memorize random facts. But the impact felt by the fans losing their team is hard to appreciate until it happens to one of your teams.

In 1995, we felt it in Cleveland. Most people still remember where they were when Art Modell stood on that stage in Baltimore and announced to a throng of enthusiastic fans and city leaders that he was filling the pro football hole in their hearts by creating one in ours. What followed was an ugly several-year sequence involving the NFL, the governments of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County and tens of thousands of irate fans who will see to it that Arthur B. Modell is unwelcome in Cleveland, Ohio for the remainder of his natural life.

We retained the Browns name and history. We also received a hastily-constructed stadium and expansion team for our trouble, a team virtually guaranteed to not contend for at least five years. Nearly 10 years and two regime changes later, we are only now starting to see evidence of a well-run, winning Browns organization begin to sprout.

Meanwhile, Modell hoisted high the Vince Lombardi Trophy in January 2001. He handed the Baltimore Ravens off to new ownership in 2004, having won the Super Bowl title we still covet.

Ever since the dominoes of despair started falling on that Autumn day in 1995, I've been sensitive to the plight of fans losing their teams, particularly if the fans have supported the team for decades through thick and thin.

Even when the Expos' situation in Montreal was well beyond repair, I thought about the loyal Expos fans, though small in number by the team's 2004 end, who were losing a small part of themselves so the franchise could move on to greener pastures in Washington, D.C. -- which was getting a nearly unheard-of third chance as a baseball town.

You simply don't lose a franchise after 35 years without twisting a knife in someone's back -- thousands of times over. Which is why, when the latest franchise to pogo-stick out of a city made their move official last week, I once again felt that same special brand of contempt that I felt when the Browns moved. That certain type of contempt that can only be reserved for incredibly rich businessmen and politicians who treat the sports team into which you invested so much of your heart and paychecks over the years like a bargaining chip.

The story of the Sonics' exodus to Oklahoma City is, like so many other franchise moves, the story of powerful men attempting to throw each other under the proverbial bus. It's the story of a relationship that had become so contentious between Seattle leaders and team owner Clay Bennett that the sides negotiated a settlement that would allow the Sonics to leave town ahead of the 2010 expiration of the team's lease with the supposedly-outdated Key Arena, just so the sides wouldn't have to deal with each other anymore.

It's the story of former owner Howard Schultz selling his team to Bennett, an Oklahoma businessman, then suing Bennett for control of the team because, of course, Schultz wants to stand up for Seattle in the face of this Oklahoma carpetbagger. It's a move that now seems like a shallow attempt by Schultz -- whose tenure as the Sonics' owner is not remembered fondly by most in Seattle -- to save face with the thousands of now-former Sonics fans who drink his notoriously-overpriced Starbucks coffee.

It's the story of Seattle government refusing to buckle to pressure and finance the building of a new arena, and paying the price for doing what is right --though the city might end up with an extra $75 million out of this whole fiasco as part of the settlement with Bennett and his investors. But if Seattle wants NBA basketball back, it will likely have to spend that amount several times over to build a new arena, sooner or later.

It's the story of legal wrangling and finger-pointing and a lot of hot air. But most of all, it's the story of 41 years of basketball, about Dennis Johnson and Jack Sikma and Lenny Wilkens and the only pro sports title in Seattle's modern history, claimed in 1979.

It's the story Gary Payton's slick handle at the point guard spot, of the pre-Cleveland Shawn Kemp, one of the most astonishing athletic specimens the game had ever seen. It's the story of Nate McMillan, Sam Perkins and all the other players who made a mark on Seattle in four decades of pro basketball.

That is what the fans lost. The ability to make more memories, the ability to watch the latest Sonics phenom, Kevin Durant, blossom into a superstar.

The years will pass, Seattle might land a replacement for the Sonics -- and it might even carry the Sonics name. But it won't be the same, even if they fall in love again.

We in Cleveland, who remember those bitter Sundays on the lakefront in the spartan confines of Cleveland Stadium, turning it into a disorienting vortex of noise for anyone wearing the opposing team's colors, can attest to that.

Life goes on, but you can't ever really, truly go home again.

SB42: The new world order

Kickin' it freestyle with some observations on Sunday's triumph of good over evil.

"When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are

Anything you heart desires

Will come to you...

Eli Manning! You and the New York Giants just thwarted Bill Belichick's plans for world domination! What are you going to do now?"

"Um ... Well, first I'm going to grab my bomb-ass girlfriend and bang her like sex is going to be illegal as of 6 a.m. tomorrow. You have no idea what a win like this does to your libido. I feel like I could impregnate every hot chick in the five boroughs just by looking at them right now.

Then, I'll probably hit every dance club in Manhattan with a VIP section. I'm going to sit in all of Jeter's corner booths, where he usually macks it with a honey on each arm. How long has it been since you won a ring, Jeter? Eight years? Yeah ... eight years is a long time in Enn Why See. Oh wait, I think I'm getting a cell phone call, Jeets ... yeah, it's Mark Messier. He wants to have some coffee with you, talk about those good old days back in the '90s when you all ruled New York.

Then, I'll probably talk to Peyton. I used to be insanely jealous of him. But now that Tom Brady is the Manning Family Bitch, I just want to hug him and play a dysfunctionally-competitive game of Monopoly with him. You know, the kind where the loser flips the board off the table before he can actually lose.

Then, I'll probably open a restaurant with ... what? Say what line? Oh ... then I'll go to Disney World."

Some of the more notable snippets from Bill Belichick's postgame presser:

"...wubba wubba wubba made more plays than we did wubba wubba wubba good game wubba wubba wubba fuck the world wubba wubba wubba don't know what else to say wubba wubba wubba I want to drown kittens and club baby seals wubba wubba wubba...."

Eli was awarded a Cadillac Escalade for winning the Super Bowl MVP. Some people think Eli should give the Caddy to David Tyree. I think he should give it to Corey Webster.

Webster's knock-away of Brady's desperation heave to Randy Moss on the Pats' final drive honestly won the game. If Brady finds Moss -- and he almost did -- that pass is worth six points and an undefeated season, or at the very least, a game-tying field goal that leads to overtime, the inevitable New England win on the coin flip and a subsequent game-winning field goal.

Webster managed to prevent Moss from reaching back to catch an underthrown pass, and he did it without incurring a pass intereference call.

You know and I know if that's the Browns and Leigh Bodden is covering Moss, it's a shower of yellow cloth hitting the field. But Webster played it right, and was the equivalent of a closer nailing down the deciding save of the World Series. Touche, Mariano Rivera.

Eli's pass to David Tyree on the Giants' winning drive will go down in history as the greatest Super Bowl play ever. How can it not? You can have your helicopter runs and Montana hookups with John Taylor and Lynn Swann acrobatics. Nothing like Eli's pass to Tyree will ever happen again.

Look at the play frame-for-frame, and tell me it's not the most amazing play in NFL history. A slow-footed, pocket-passing QB looked like some freakish genetic combination of Randall Cunningham and Barry Sanders. He was sacked, purely and simply. He was down. It was over, and he spun out of the pocket and into daylight.

He then proceeded to throw a desperate, ill-advised passed to a covered receiver in the middle of the field. The ball should have been picked. Tyree should have been pile-driven into the ground the nanosecond the ball arrived. There is no way on this planet it should have been a catch. But Tyree pinned the ball against his hard, plastic, spherical helmet, and held on as he fell, inverted, to the ground -- with another set of hands grabbing for the ball, mind you.

This will never happen again. It can't possibly ever happen again. If it does, it will be like Halley's Comet and reoccur 76 years from now, when there is a franchise in Guam and they're healing torn ACLs with magnets.

The Patriots thought they had the game won when Brady tossed his TD pass to Moss with a little over two minutes to play. While Moss was celebrating with half the team in the end zone, Tedi Bruschi was hugging Junior Seau as if to say "We did it! You're going to get your ring!"

I never liked the way Seau let himself be the subject of a grand farewell retirement tour, then abruptly came out of retirement to try and piggyback on the Pats for a ring. So I can't say I'm terribly sorry to see him walk away without a title.

That TD celebration sequence was a microcosm of New England's we're-so-good-we-can-take-it-for-granted arrogance that seeps into the mindset of any team that has had the avalanche of success the Patriots had this year. Whether it was Belichick going for it on fourth-and-long when a field goal would have been sufficient, or the Pats celebrating a Super Bowl title two minutes before the clock runs out, there had to be an element of "Whatever we do, it will all work out in the end, because it always does."

And when it didn't, Belichick muscled his way past the officials who were trying to tell him that there was still two seconds left on the clock.

For a coach who led his team through a 2007 season that amounted to a scorched-earth campaign to spite the NFL over "spygate," seeing the final vindication of his coaching greatness slip through his fingers was just too much. So he hurriedly -- and I'm guessing tersely -- congratulated Tom Coughlin and disappeared into the bowels of the stadium.

As Belichick stormed off the field, it wasn't about the Patriots losing to the Giants. It was about Belichick losing the proof he needed to show the NFL uppity-ups that he could kick everybody's ass without the illegal advantage of clandestinely-recorded practice tape.

Of course, if Bill was doing it all along, there are probably 31 other NFL coaches who at least thought about it. Heck, Romeo Crennel had a front-row seat to 0018-and-1's spy activities when he was the Pats' D-coordinator. Not that anyone really knew what was happening. Belichick is the best coach at saying something without really saying anything since Casey Stengel.

...wubba wubba wubba...

Back up to speed

Apologies, but a planned weekend trip followed by an unplanned early-week bout with the flu caused my blog to once again fall dormant for an extended period.

As the straggling virus bodies still swimming around in my head are making it difficult for me to concentrate long enough to pen a coherent full-length column on a single subject, let me just offer up a few thoughts on the most recent newsworthy sports stories:

1. BCS Title Game ... ick

At first I thought Jim Tressel was on to something with this whole "do exactly the opposite of what you did last year against Florida" thing. He opened the floodgates, let Todd Boeckman pass downfield on first down, and used that to set up the run. It looked like a genius move when Chris Wells scampered 65 yards for one of his patented objects-in-mirror-may-be-faster-than-they-appear touchdowns.

Alas, reality soon set in, and when the Bucks had to settle for a field goal and a 10-0 lead instead of a touchdown and a 14-0 lead, I could feel the air starting to leave the sails. The rest of the way, LSU looked composed and confident, while the Buckeyes -- especially Boeckman -- looked like the little team on the big stage.

Ohio State was an athletically overmatched team Monday night. Even if you are Big Ten to the bone and loathe all things SEC, you have to admit that Monday's game pretty much signed, sealed and delivered everything you wanted to disprove about the two conferences.

Monday, it sure as heck looked like the best the Big Ten has to offer couldn't hang with the best the SEC has to offer. You can counter-argue with Michigan over Florida in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, but that appears to be the exception -- not to mention Michigan was trying to send Lloyd Carr out a winner.

The Big Ten teams that made it to BCS games were manhandled. Like the Buckeyes, Illinois didn't deserve to be in their game. It was embarrassing for the entire conference to watch Illinois get smoked by USC in the Rose Bowl.

Monday, it sure as heck looked like the only reason Ohio State made it to the BCS title game was by eating snack food for a non-conference schedule and then beating up on inferior Big Ten competition the rest of the way. Everything you wanted to believe wasn't true was, in fact, as real as the nose on your face.

This year, with its upsets and world-turned-upside-down rankings, was quite possibly the best argument for a playoff system yet. If it prevents Ohio State from being held up as a national title contender when they are certainly not, I'm all for it.

2. GMAC Bowl ... ick-squared

I guess I can't complain. Bowling Green has won five of their last seven bowl appearances, which already gives them a higher winning percentage than Ohio State. But .... losing 63-7. To Tulsa. On the eve of what would prove to be a miserable BCS title game. It's just too much.

The game was supposed to be a match-up of high-powered offenses. Double-40s for a final score wasn't out of the question. Of course, Tulsa had the best offense in the nation this year -- historically great, actually, as they became the first NCAA team ever to post a 5,000-yard passer, two 1,000-yard receivers and a 1,000-yard rusher.

I've watched Mid-American Conference football for seven years. I covered it for one season as a student reporter at BGSU. And there is one prejudice I don't know if I will ever overcome after seeing this debacle.

MAC teams can't play any friggin' defense. Nope. Show me all the stats you want. I'll never believe that there has ever been such a thing as an "elite" MAC defense. In the MAC, defenses are placeholders intended to give the offense time to breathe between possessions.

I have a crackpot theory about this: When a major-conference school recruits Johnny Blue-Chip QB from Anytown High School, U.S.A., they might want to switch Johnny to safety or cornerback. They might want Johnny to start out on special teams and get a better idea of where he fits in.

When a midmajor school like those in the MAC recruit Johnny, the only real trump card they have over the Ohio States and Michigans of the world is they can guarantee Johnny he will stay a QB. Hence, all the top-notch talent that can make a MAC football team competitive is at the choice positions like QB and receiver, because that's how a MAC school gets Big Ten-level talent into their program.

Translation: contending MAC teams score and score some more. But it wasn't happening for BG. Not Sunday, anyway.

3. Chud, Romeo and Mr. Anderson

If reports on Wednesday are true, we know three things about the 2008 Browns: Romeo Crennel will enter the season with a nice extra wad of cash thanks to a new contract extension, offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski will do the same, and Derek Anderson will open training camp as the starting quarterback with a new deal of his own.

Crennel and Anderson made fans chafe at times this season, and there was some grinding of teeth over Chud's reported interview for the Baltimore Ravens' vacant head coaching job last week. But all in all, I'd have to say that stability is a very good thing for the Browns, who haven't seen a lot of it.

Too often, fans get caught up in what moves it will take to get the team to the "next level." Even as this 10-6 season wound down, there were fans convinced that Crennel wasn't the right man for the job, or that Anderson should be ushered out of town to make way for Quinn.

But sometimes, experience is the main ingredient needed to turn a competitive team into a perennial playoff contender. This year was a stepping stone, but the Browns won't be able to build on it if certain key parts of the team are tossed back to square one.

I still think Brady Quinn is the long-term solution at quarterback. I still don't know if Crennel's retirement or Browns football in late January will arrive first. But for an organization that just experienced it's first non-disastrous football season in quite a while, I say stay the course for now. The time for change will make itself evident. There's no need to hasten it.

4. It's about time, Cavs

As I'm writing this post, the Cavs just finished laying a nice, stinky egg in Atlanta. But even with that performance against an admittedly-improved Hawks team on the second night of back-to-backs, you can't argue with six wins in eight games.

This is the Eastern Conference championship club I knew from last year. The starting lineup of Larry Hughes, Sasha Pavlovic, LeBron, Drew Gooden and Z is the best Mike Brown can trot out there, and it's set up a nice bench rotation of Andy Varejao, Devin Brown, Boobie Gibson and Damon Jones.

Danny Ferry did right in playing hardball with Andy and not caving to his contract demands. But with the impact Varejao has had in solidifying the Cavs bench, Ferry had better be prepared to offer him a substantial extension next year. Andy is very important to this team. He is to the bench bunch what LeBron is to the starters. He's the enging that makes them go.

As an aside: Mike Bibby again? If it didn't mess with the Cavs' main rotation, maybe. If it involves Drew Gooden or Boobie, I would respectfully decline. I would also pay for the boot to kick Ferry in the rump if he accepted.

The end of an era

I'm not usually one to talk about my alma mater around here. When you're from a smaller school like Bowling Green, your feelings toward your alma mater's sports teams tend to become like your feelings toward your family: strong, and intensely private, lest you get ridiculed for it.

No one, outside of other BG alums, need know that I sometimes bleed brown and orange for a team other than the Cleveland Browns. But when I found out (courtesy of Joel Hammond) that big changes might be coming to BG, I couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore.

Anderson Arena, the home of BGSU basketball since 1960, is facing the beginning of its end. Construction will reportedly begin in 2010 on a new convocation center on the east side of campus, part of a $150 million campus improvement project mean to coincide with the university's centennial celebration.

Progress is progress, I guess, but as some who covered BG men's basketball for two years and women's basketball for one year, I'm finding it hard to accept the fact that the old steel-and-brick barn at the center of campus is approaching its last chapter.

Anderson Arena is what sets BG basketball apart from other Mid-American Conference programs. The Ohio University Bobcats play in an aging-but-spacious convocation center (called, quite creatively, the Convocation Center). Kent State and Toledo, BG's two most bitter rivals at the time I attended, play in bland bleacher-filled boxes that reek of ambiguity. Standing in the lobbies of Toledo's Savage Hall or Kent's MAC Center, I could clear the crowd noise out of my head and not really know if I was in a classroom building, a rec center, an administrative building or what.

The Bowling Green Falcons, they have a homecourt advantage all their own.

Anderson Arena has been Northwest Ohio's answer to Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium and any other old, dark house of the masses that has since been consigned to history in favor of the bigger and, supposedly, the better. It is small, cramped and musty in places. Layers of flaking paint have turned some of the handrails and bleachers into a mosaic of orange, black, and in places, green.

The upstairs concourses are dark linoleum and smell of pizza and popcorn during games. The press box is cramped and hidden way up top, almost in the rafters.

The doors to the coaches' offices are wooden, the restrooms are outfitted in pale gree tile and the postgame press conferences are held in a classroom with barely enough room to fit more than one camera crew looking for a soundbite from the coaches before they'd pack up and leave those of us in the print media to continue the interview.

So many games have been dissected and analyzed in that room. It's the place where always-opinionated former BG coach Dan Dakich got on his soapbox in his weekly media chats, where Akron coach Dan Hipsher lost his temper, probably on more than one occasion, where Miami Ohio coach Charlie Coles could always be counted on for a one-liner with enough zing to get everyone laughing.

If those were the only reasons to lament the end of Anderson Arena as a basketball house, that would be enough. But none of those reasons are the real reason I love Anderson Arena.

I love the place because 5,000 people can sound like 20,000 when the place is rocking and BG basketball is the talk of the campus. At Anderson Arena, the student section is right on top of the court, adding to the noise and intimidation factor for opposing teams. It's a feature no longer present in today's security-minded arenas.

In November 2001, BG upset Michigan at Anderson Arena, 65-59, in one of the biggest regular-season games in school history. As the final seconds ticked down, the noise in the old house grew to jet-engine levels. As the clock hit zero, the entire student section stormed the court. The highlights made it onto SportsCenter.

I have no doubt in my mind that the crowd helped lift BG to a win that night, and to another win several weeks later over UNC-Wilmington, 84-83 in overtime. The fans stormed the court after that one, too.

Those are the memories I took with me as I left BG. Walking out of a broiling-hot arena after a game, heading across campus to the journalism building on a bitter-cold night, my game notes in my bag, knowing that I was carrying the story that would be the talk of the campus the next day.

I'm sure the new convocation center will be quite a sight when it opens. I'm sure it will have all the latest amenities to aid student-athletes, enhance the game-day experience for fans, and with any luck, give recruiting a boost.

But with the move, the BG basketball program is going to lose a great piece of what makes it the BG basketball program. In a sanitized-for-your-protection convocation center, high on comfort and low on personality, like scores of other college convocation centers around America, 5,000 fans will sound like just that -- 5,000 fans.

There will be no place for the sound to go but up and away, dissipating echoes joining the noise from seasons past at Anderson Arena. At that point, those of us who follow BG basketball might realize just how much we've lost.

(Photo credit: Jordan Flower, BG News)

Sean Taylor update

The cause of Sean Taylor's murder earlier this week now points to a burglary gone bad.

Four males were arrested Friday, two men and two juveniles, and according to the confessions Miami-Dade County police reportedly received from the quartet, they entered Taylor's house looking for items to steal. When they entered Taylor's bedroom during the early Monday morning incident, Taylor surprised them and one of the intruders shot him.

The Associated Press, via ESPN, reported that the four suspects did not expect Taylor to be at his Miami home during football season, but Taylor had been rehabbing from a knee injury primarily at home for several weeks, leading to the fatal confrontation.

The AP identified the four suspects as: Venjah K. Hunte, 20; Eric Rivera Jr., 17; Jason Scott Mitchell, 17; and Charles Kendrick Lee Wardlow, 18. Charges had not been filed as of Saturday morning, but are expected to be related to murder and burglary.

Mitchell and Wardlow had prior connections to Taylor, according to the Miami Herald via ESPN. Mitchell did chores around Taylor's house. Taylor's sister reportedly dated Wardlow's cousin.

Friday's news took the Taylor story in an entirely new direction. Prior to the arrests of the four suspects, widespread opinion was that someone from Taylor's sometimes-troubled past had targeted him. Arizona Cardinals cornerback Antrel Rolle, a childhood friend of Taylor's, told the AP that a number of acquaintances "had been targeting him for three years now," and that "he lived his life scared every day of his life down in Miami because those people were targeting him."

Taylor, 24, died early Tuesday morning due to massive blood loss when a bullet severed the femoral artery in his leg. His girlfriend and 18-month-old daughter, who were also in the bedroom at the time of the shooting, were not injured.

Real life

Two stories broke Monday, one local, one national.

The local story was kind of troubling. Anderson Varejao doesn't want to play for the Cavs anymore. He thinks Danny Ferry hasn't acted in good faith during the way-too-long negotiating process that probably reached an impasse at about the time Ferry tried to perform an end-around and negotiate with Varejao directly during a trip to Brazil last month.

Worse yet, according to ESPN.com NBA writer and noted Cavs skeptic Chad Ford, LeBron James views this as a step backward. Consider the source -- Ford's was an unnamed person "close to LeBron," and it sometimes seems like the ESPN trio of Ford, Marc Stein and Ric Bucher go out of their way to paint the Cavs in a negative light -- but when the scuttlebutt is that your superstar is growing increasingly unhappy with the lack of improvement in the roster around him, it's something worth paying attention to.

Anyone who read that story before going to bed on Monday, as I did, could be excused for wondering if 2008 was going to be 12 months of payback for what has been a pretty darn good 2007 for Cleveland sports.

Then we got up, checked the e-mail, turned on the TV, whatever it is you do while the a.m. coffee is brewing, and the public pout-fest of Varejao, the breach of protocol by Ferry, even the gathering impatience of LeBron, all took a back seat. More than that -- anyone with a heart and soul should have felt like a first-rate dope for spending one second worrying about fallout from the Varejao contract saga.

Redskins safety Sean Taylor had died. At some point while you were snug in your bed overnight, resting up for just another routine weekday, a 24-year-old man with magnificent athletic talent, an 18-month-old daughter, a future wife and every reason in the world to live expired. He bled to death because a bullet from an intruder's gun hit him in the femoral artery.

Taylor hung on for a little more than 24 hours after the now-murderer entered his house and shot him in the leg. But the loss of blood was too much for even his well-conditioned body to overcome.

Taylor's death should shed light on an aspect of professional sports that has become almost an accepted fact of life. Young athletes too often can't or won't sever the ties to past lifestyles once they reach the money-laden pinnacle of their profession. Instead of fame and fortune creating distance between a professional athlete and trouble, in many ways it compounds problems.

Professional sports teams and leagues put their young players through the paces with rookie symposiums, classes and mentoring programs. They try to tell guys like Taylor that they will be targeted for their fame and wealth, that if they hang out at nightclubs festooned with gold and diamonds, beautiful girls hanging on their arms, driving an expensive SUV, trouble will find them. If they go around brandishing guns to settle disputes, as Taylor allegedly did two years ago, trouble will find them.

But once the classes end, it's up to the player to stay out of trouble. They're grown men, after all, and are responsible for their own welfare. Some apparently just don't fully realize what that means.

It means if you fancied yourself a gun-toting thug in college, you have to abandon that lifestyle because your employer has invested millions of dollars in your ability to keep yourself safe. If you fancy yourself a motorcycle daredevil, like Kellen Winslow and Ben Roethlisberger did, you have to give up a potentially-dangerous hobby because if you crash and kill yourself, you could set your team back years on the field.

By all accounts, Taylor had come to the realization that he needed to change his ways. Some attribute it to the birth of his daughter. Some attribute it to a reality check Taylor received during his 2006 armed assault trial, stemming from a 2005 incident in which Taylor allegedly brandished a firearm at a person over two reportedly-stolen all-terrain vehicles. Whatever the reason, interviews with Clinton Portis and other Redskin teammates since his death painted a picture of a new, less volatile Taylor with a newfound commitment to being a family man.

Unfortunately, even if you're ready to let go of a self-destructive lifestyle, sometimes the lifestyle isn't ready to let go of you.

About a week before Taylor was murdered, an intruder reportedly broke into his house, rifled through his belongings and left a strategically-placed kitchen knife on his bed pillow. Authorities haven't said as much yet, but one would have to strongly consider the possibility that the incident is tied to Taylor's death.

Taylor apparently knew he was in danger. News reports said that when he heard his soon-to-be murderer enter the house, he grabbed a machete that he kept near the bed for protection and closed the door to the room where he, girlfriend Jackie Garcia and their daughter were sleeping. After Garcia had taken the baby and hid herself under the covers of the bed, the intruder reportedly broke down the door to the room and shot Taylor.

In other words: This almost certainly wasn't a random burglary. If that story, as relayed to authorities by Garcia, is true, the person who broke into Taylor's house did what they came to do -- injure or kill him. Burglars interested in material loot generally try to stay away from people when committing a crime.

Taylor is now a statistic, a cautionary tale about the dangers of extreme wealth combined with a volatile lifestyle. It's a lesson too few professional athletes learn, and a lesson some learn too late.

In a world where money reigns supreme and contract squabbles burn bridges, everybody in professional sports can learn a lesson from Taylor, both in life and in death. It's not just about the money, it's about how you handle yourself once you have money. Once you get drawn in to a volatile, sometimes-violent lifestyle, stepping out of that lifestyle can be anywhere from excruciatingly difficult to nearly impossible.

As with any untimely death, the real tragedy here isn't necessarily the loss of Sean Taylor. His mortal suffering is over. It's the life he left behind, the daughter who will never know her father, the family that will never be.

What I've been doing...

I've been neglecting my blog for about a week and a half, but I haven't been ignoring the world of sports.

You can read my Indians midterm grades for hitters here, and pitchers and management here.

With any luck, I'll have another column posted in the next day or so.

The Border War

Michigan.

Woody Hayes hated the state so much he wouldn't buy gas there, or so the legend goes. He wouldn't even refer to it by its proper name, calling it "that state up north."

Of course, much of Hayes' burning dislike of Michigan centered on maize and blue and the city of Ann Arbor. And that's where most Ohio sports fans aim their venom. Ohio State and Michigan have a ready-made blood feud that gets renewed on the football field every November, usually with a Big Ten title, BCS bowl berth, national championship game berth, or some other heavy hardware on the line.

If you're a Cleveland fan, it's about the only reason you've had to not like Michigan for the past half-century, unless you are into pure, raw jealousy over the sports scenes in each state's largest metropolitan area. The pro sports teams of Cleveland and Detroit have taken divergent paths. No one needs to tell anyone on this side of the state line who took the low road.

It's not just the eight pro sports titles Detroit has won since Cleveland's last in 1964. It's the fact that, for the most part, Cleveland hasn't even been there to challenge Detroit. And on the lone occasion a Cleveland team -- the Indians -- improved to the point that it could vie for a title, its Detroit counterpart was mired in a 15-year stretch of miserable baseball.

In short, when it comes to pro sports, Cleveland and Detroit have largely been like ships passing in the night.

Sure, there were the four NFL title games the Lions and Browns played in the '50s, with the Lions winning three, but that's like finding the building blocks for a rivalry in the 1908 Cleveland-Detroit AL pennant race, in which the Tigers edged the Naps by a half-game. Most people old enough to remember that are dead. You can look it up.

When the Pistons were good enough to win it all in 1989, the Cavs were only good enough to bother them, not knock them off. Then a man named Jordan got in the way of a possible Cavs-Pistons playoff series with a rather famous jumper over Craig Ehlo.

Hockey ... should I even bring this up? The Red Wings are one of the Original Six, with a rich history that includes Gordie Howe as the centerpiece. Cleveland had one of the premier minor league hockey teams -- the AHL Barons -- until 1973, but since then, our pro hockey scene has been a fractured mess that included a two-year tango with an NHL team that was on the verge of bankruptcy, and had to be merged with the Minnesota North Stars to avoid folding.

So, as a Cleveland fan, you can be excused if all this Cleveland-Detroit rivalry stuff is rather new to you. But the flames are being fanned, aren't they? You are starting to really not like losing to Detroit.

With the Cavs trailing the Pistons in a playoff series for the second straight year, you are starting to grind your teeth when you see Rasheed Wallace's huge mouth and goofy grin. You are starting to feel the bile welling in your esophagus when you hear the talking heads in the national media constantly stroke the egos of the Piston players, talk about how they embody the concept of "team" and how Joe Dumars is a genius architect who gleaned mismatched parts to put together a champion.

You want to throw the remote at the TV when Rip Hamilton tells Ahmad Rashad how the Pistons need to win a title for C-Webb and Antonio McDyess, because they weren't there the last time Detroit won it all, way back in '04. (Man! 2004? Might need to dust some cobwebs off that trophy pretty soon.)

Your anti-Michigan reflexes were tested when you had to watch Jim Leyland, he of the store-bought 1997 Marlins, lead the Tigers out of nowhere and into the World Series last year. You felt some measure of satisfaction watching the Tigers implode against the Cardinals, just so you wouldn't have to watch Leyland -- an Ohio turncoat, no less -- win another championship.

Now the Indians and Tigers are locked in what should be a season-long duel atop the AL Central. Two young, pitching-based teams trying to figure out how to beat each other, with each loss adding another layer of resentment for one side or the other.

The centerpiece of the Ohio-Michigan rivalry will always occur on the last weekend of the Big Ten football season, but the Border War is gaining more dimensions than ever before. The Pistons are no longer just another opponent from a nearby city. An Indians-Tigers game is no longer just another lazy evening at the ballpark. Now, we play to beat these guys.

With the Browns unable to locate the same competitive zip code as the Steelers and Ravens, with the combination of an unbalanced schedule and interleague play choking the Tribe's rivalries with the Yankees and Red Sox, Detroit sports is filling the us-against-them void that Clevelanders seem to crave.

They're more established. They're bigger. They have many more rings. And they're just across the border. Heck, you probably know some of their fans. They might even be in your family, which only makes it more personal.

Welcome to Ohio vs. Michigan, just as the founding fathers envisioned it: Heated, passionate, and now, all-too-familiar.

Why I wouldn't want to be a race horse

Look at the life of a thoroughbred race horse. I mean, look at it.

Earthly kings wish they were this destined for greatness upon birth. Even before birth.

Your mother and father are handpicked for their genetic superiority. From the get-go, you already know that you are going to be bigger, stronger and faster than ol' Trigger out on the range. Your coat is going to be shiny and lush. The hitch in your gait is going to be tap-dance perfect.

People will be awed just by looking at how physically perfect you are.

From very early in your life, your every need will be attended to. Once you leave your equine mother, an army of human mothers and fathers will brush you, bathe you, feed you and speak snoogy-boogy baby language to you while they scrape the dirt off your hoofs.

And while humans generally have to wait decades to fulfill their potential, you can become a legend in less time than it will take for the Olympic torch to travel from Athens to Beijing.

By year three, you have matured into a breathtaking specimen. You are eligible to compete in the three most prestigious races in the world: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.

In the span of one race you can go from handsome nobody to beloved somebody. In the span of three races, you can go from beloved somebody to cherished legend.

Just win 'em all, and nobody will forget you. Ever.

Then, it's off to stud, where your sole job for the rest of your life will be to sire offspring. Eat, sleep, sex. Until you die.

What's not to love?

Well, nothing. Until something goes horribly wrong, that is.

The sad case of Barbaro sheds some light on the bottom line-driven underbelly of the horse racing industry. The reigning Kentucky Derby champion didn't live to see this year's race. He was euthanized earlier this week after a long battle attempting to recover from a gruesome leg injury suffered just out of the gates in last year's Preakness.

The real tragedy is not when he died or even that he died. The real tragedy is why he died.

At the end, Barbaro might have been put down in order to stop his suffering. The added weight on his non-injured limbs caused laminitis, a condition that causes deterioration of the hoof. Eventually, all four limbs were affected.

But laminitis didn't kill Barbaro. In an age where human prosthesis limbs can contain robotic parts, I find it hard to believe that the armada of doctors and scientists available to try and save the life of a Kentucky Derby champion couldn't have produced something to make Barbaro's limbs serviceable enough to at least live on.

The truth is, Barbaro died because he couldn't earn his keep.

When a horse is retired to stud, he basically becomes nothing more than reproductive organs with a body attached. Sure, they still brush him and feed him and speak baby talk to him, but if he can't naturally mount a mare, sire a foal and pass on his genes to a new generation of potential Triple Crown thoroughbreds, his value is virtually nil.

With two bad hind legs, Barbaro's siring ability was ruined. It sounds cold and heartless, but to the people who pay millions to breed and train these horses, it's not worth it to pay the money to feed, outfit and look after a horse if he's going to do nothing for it.

And so, a magnificent beast met an untimely end.

The decision to end Barbaro's life might have been a humane one, but that was only a positive byproduct of the real reason.

Money killed Barbaro. More specifically, the money he wasn't going to be able to make his handlers in thoroughbred offspring.

Sire or die. If there is a more compelling reason to not want to be a race horse, I haven't found it yet.

A link to check out

My fellow member of the BGSU blogging mafia, Joel Hammond, left his Blogger site nearly a year ago to concentrate on his Crain's Cleveland Business blog, linked at "Joel's Sports Blog," to the right.

Unfortunately, due to circumstance beyond his control, he was prevented from posting his most recent column, an interesting take on the NCAA's proposed ban on women's basketball teams scrimmaging against male players.

In it, he interviews a former Bowling Green male scrimmager. He makes a compelling case for keeping male practice players.

Joel pulled his Blogger site out of mothballs to publish the piece. Check it out.

Livingston's war of words

Perhaps it has recently sunk in to the aging skull of The Plain Dealer's Bill Livingston: In all likelihood, he's going to look like a dope come June.

It was Livingston who predicted that the Cavaliers would win the NBA title this season, sticking by his flight-of-fancy prediction prior to last season. But the Cavs, at 25-19, look like a playoff team and nothing more at the moment.

It looks like Livingston will have some yolk to wipe off his face this spring. Of course, in maintaining the highest standards of journalistic integrity that would be expected of a long-tenured sports columnist such as himself, Livingston is apparently dealing with that by:

A) Humbly admitting he overestimated the team.
B) Defiantly sticking to his guns and maintaining his prediction.
C) Throwing the Cavs under the bus several times a week.

If you know the only-man-in-this-town-aging-faster-than-Eric-Snow Livingston that we've all come to know and love, you'll realize the only correct answer would be C.

That well-proportioned man in the Tower City RTA terminal? That's Livingston, who threw the Cavs under the bus and is now waiting to throw them under a rapid train. Next stop: The tarmac at Hopkins International Airport.

Ever since the Ohio State football season was unceremoniously ended three weeks ago, Livingston has come to the realization that his gutsy Cavs prediction is withering on the vine, and has proceeded to tell the entire organization that they suck, top to bottom, in no uncertain terms.

In the past several weeks, Livingston has torched announcer Fred McLeod (and by extension Dan Gilbert), Larry Hughes, Mike Brown, and Monday, this little Cleveland.com gem on Danny Ferry (scroll down if you click on the link).

Livingston does bring up a few good points about Ferry and Hughes, but why is he relentlessly dumping on them all of a sudden right now? The column on McLeod was day-late, dollar-short grumbling about a move that was made six months ago. That column belonged on a blog somewhere out this way, not in the newspaper.

Come to think of it, most of Livingston's columns concerning the Cavs have been a day late and dollar short, finding fault with long-term moves based on whatever has occurred in the previous several weeks.

It's easy to make a case that the Cavs are bumbling buffoons when they've lost eight of 10. The real debate-team winner can still make that case when they've won eight of 10. But I doubt Livingston would be backing his argument if that were the case. More than likely, he'd be writing poetic columns about scraped hands and scuffed leather balls on the Texas playground courts of his youth.

Livingston is basically a down-to-earth writer. At times, he can be an excellent wordsmith. But too often, he governs his columns based on the popular opinion of the masses. Any politician will tell you that's a bad idea.

Right after Ohio State was blown out of Glendale, Ariz., Livingston eloquently rebuked some fellow media members for suggesting that the Buckeyes lost because there were "too many Cleveland players on the team."

He said, in so many words, that the Cleveland media needs to stop feeding the fans' perception that the city is star-crossed. He called for Clevelanders to stop pity-partying and end their perpetual dance with misery.

But ever since that column, he has become the exact type of sulking, negativity-spewing Cleveland media member he was chastising in the postmortem Ohio State piece.

I'm all for being realistic. The reality is that the Cavs are not a title-contending ballclub. Not yet. But sometimes, especially in this town, the line between realism and rampant pessimism becomes seriously blurred. That's what Livingston is doing right now with his needlessly-protracted assault on the Cavs.

He is doing nothing but adding to the negative inertia that is already choking the sports culture of this once-proud city.

Show a fan a sunny day....

As sports fans, I think we're all delusional to some point. Emotion always seems to cloud our judgment.

After pulling off that blockbuster trade, your team can do no wrong. After disappointing you, your team can do no right. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but compromise makes for lousy debating.

Here is my midwinter musing: If you went around the country, and showed the sports fans of various cities a sunny day, how would they interpret it? I think I have a pretty good idea.

Show a New York fan a sunny day, and he'll say, "That's because God is a Yankees fan."

Show a Boston fan a sunny day, and he'll say, "That's because George Steinbrenner is going to hell for buying the Yankees."

Show a Los Angeles fan a sunny day, and he'll probably worship it as part of the Scientological, neo-Kabbalist, Wicca-practicing Sun God Ra cult he recently founded in hopes of becoming a B-level celebrity.

Show a Pittsburgh fan a sunny day, and he'll wonder why the moon is so bright tonight.

Show a Seattle fan a sunny day, and he'll say "What is that extremely bright round thing in the sky? I've never seen it before! Is the world ending?"

Show a Buffalo fan a sunny day, and he'll see it ... as soon as he digs out of the 24-foot snow drift encasing his house. He'll likely blame the snowstorm on Scott Norwood, then recant out of guilt.

Show a San Francisco fan a sunny day, and he'll pop pills until the Sun becomes purple and starts conversing with him in Mandarin Chinese.

Show a Philadelphia fan a sunny day, and he'll say," "Too bad it's storming out."

Show a Cleveland fan a sunny day, and he'll say, "Too bad a tornado is coming and we're all going to die."

Show a Cincinnati fan a sunny day, and he'll take it as a sign that Pete Rose should be in the hall of fame.

Show a Detroit fan a sunny day, and he'll think it's residual glow from the 40,000 smoldering cigarette butts in Jim Leyland's ash tray as he tries to smoke away memories of the World Series.

Show a Miami fan a sunny day, and he'll pray that it's 30 degrees and snowing back home where his family lives.

Show an Atlanta fan a sunny day, and he'll be moved to tears because he knows it's Richard Petty smiling from beyond the grave. Then, he'll realize Richard Petty isn't dead. It's easy to get your dead NASCAR drivers mixed up with your live ones.

Show a Chicago fan a sunny day, and he'll say "That's Ditka ascending to sitteth at the right hand of the Father. Or Jay Mariotti exploding. Either one."

Show a Democrat D.C. fan a sunny day, and he'll say "That's because my boys in the solar energy lobby greased the palms of the cloud makers, who are ancient Tiki gods that control the clouds with magical hemp wands. Or that's what my professor at Berkeley told me. Oh, and go Redskins, or something."

Show a Republican D.C. fan a sunny day, and he'll say, in a menacing tone of voice not unlike The Brain from "Pinky and The Brain":
"Once our vast, powerful oil lobby has purchased the Sun and put it out of business, everyone will have to come to us for their energy needs. We'll suck every drop of oil out of the Earth! It will look like a giant prune when viewed from outer space! And I will be filthy, stinking rich! Then, maybe, I can finally give these damn Redskins PSLs away without bankrupting myself.

Show a Dallas fan a sunny day, and he'll say, "I already own the Sun. Bought it last month. And it looks like the city of Washington D.C. is behind on it's first solar energy payment. So unless you want your mosquito-infested swamp of a city shrouded in perpetual darkness, I suggest you pay up!"