I went into Sunday evening with the thought that, despite my apprehension about the Madonna halftime show at the Super Bowl, I would not be writing about said show as my column for this week. After all, I wrote about the same subject a mere two years back, when they dug up The Who to underwhelm us. I hate to repeat myself, but it is occasionally unavoidable. This is one of those times. What a total crapfest.

I am really curious to know who makes the decision as to who will perform each year. I am also curious as to how that person keeps his or her job. I know that the Super Bowl is an event that transcends football, and that the audience is far more varied than it would be for any other game. Even so, did someone really think Madonna would hit the sweet spot here? Apparently, women over 35 and gay men comprise far more of the viewership than I would have expected. It seems unlikely to me that anyone else would have enjoyed that embarrassing display of awkwardness. I will grant you that I have never been a fan of Madonna, even when she was the biggest act on earth. She had a song or two that I liked, but for the most part, I was always pretty allergic to anything she did. This time, on the biggest stage of her career, she lip-synced her way through a bunch of songs, surrounded by gladiators, cheerleaders, and a neck-less Cee-Lo Green. Madonna attempted to dance in high-heeled boots and did not do it well. She stumbled more than once, and at one point, I thought she might fall off the back of the stage. The entire thing seemed awkward and poorly done. I am a fan of live music, and really dislike lip-syncing. In this case, it did not even sound like she had made new recordings of the vocals or anything. Instead, it sounded like original recordings, some from more than two decades ago. So she didn’t sing, and she danced poorly. What a treat.

I don’t know who would be a good choice for the halftime show, but I know that most of the recent ones have been awful. I understand why most of the recent choices have been closer to retirement than to the beginning of their careers, as I would expect that the lion’s share of people watching are adults, and acts like The Who, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince are comfort food to many people my age. Age-wise, Madonna fits into that group. Fanbase-wise, though, she sticks out like a sore thumb. Combine that with a hideous performance like that one, and it really is a stunning miscalculation. Even my wife, who was always a huge Madonna fan, was unimpressed. They tried to appeal to a younger audience by including some current acts like Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., LMFAO (I wonder if the NFL bigwigs know what that stands for), and Cee-Lo Green, but that simply added to the mess that was the halftime festivities. My Twitter and Facebook feeds supported my opinion, as there were far more negative comments than there were positive, and most of the positive ones were to the effect of “it wasn’t that bad.”

So thanks, NFL, for giving me column fodder, if nothing else. They also helped all of the channels putting on counter-programming during halftime, as I imagine many channels were changed around that time. Next year, maybe they can get that Man Vs. Food guy to sit on stage and eat a 10-pound hamburger or something. I would find that far more entertaining.

Bad sports, continued:

2) I thought this was worth its own entry. During the god-awful cheerleader portion of the Madonna fiasco, British singer and rapper M.I.A., who was flanking Madonna along with Nicki Minaj, took a brief turn at the lead vocals. When she reached a part of the song “Give Me All Your Luvin’” where she would normally say a scatological profanity, she skipped the word but instead decided to flip the bird to the 105 million people said to be watching. I am sure that was not quite what the NFL and NBC had in mind when they booked this act in this post-wardrobe-malfunction world.

3) In one of the worst examples of violence I have ever seen connected to sports, 79 people were killed and hundreds were wounded when violence flared at the end of a soccer match between two Egyptian clubs in Port Said, Egypt. The violence appears to have been politically motivated.

4) Legendary boxing trainer Angelo Dundee, best known for training Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, died on Wednesday at the age of 90.

5) Roger Lewis, a high school football star in Ohio who was expected to sign with Ohio State on Wednesday, was arrested and charged with rape this week.

6) A bizarre battle is raging between the Utah Jazz and the greatest player in the team’s history, Karl Malone, who retired back in 2004. Malone has been outspoken about the team’s treatment of former star DeRon Williams, who was traded to the New Jersey Nets last year. Malone and team owner Greg Miller have been taking shots at each other on Twitter.

7) One day before his team was going to play in the Super Bowl, Tiquan Underwood, a reserve wide receiver, was cut by the New England Patriots. The team decided it needed a better special teams player for the game, so they cut Underwood in favor of Alex Silvestro, who was on the team’s practice squad. I think they should have cut him for that hairdo.

8) Cassanova McKinzy, a high school football player who was deciding between Clemson and Auburn this week, chose Auburn because he was concerned about the lack of a Chik-Fil-A on campus at Clemson. Yes, he actually said that. Awesome. Even better, Clemson actually does have the restaurant on campus. I guess McKinzy failed to do his research. He seemed like such a smart kid, too.

Good sports:

1) After the embarrassment that was the NFL Pro Bowl last week, league commissioner Roger Goodell said this week that he would actually consider eliminating the Pro Bowl entirely if they can’t come up with a way to make it better. Considering how bad the game has gotten, nixing it sounds like a great idea. Newly minted league MVP Aaron Rodgers, earlier in the week, was complaining about the play of his fellow players during the exhibition, which managed to make preseason games look competitive.

2) Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, considered by many to be the greatest cyclist of all time, was cleared of all doping charges by federal prosecutors this week. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has yet to make its ruling, but I would expect the same conclusion.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

10. The television screen was so small, you had to take turns watching

9. Every five minutes, some old guy was yelling, “Where’s Knute Rockne?”

8. You missed most of the first half so the host could tell you all about Scientology

7. Somebody had already licked all the orange dust off the Cheetos

6. No New York Giants fans, no New England Patriots fans, just Beyoncé fans

5. There’s a big screen TV, but it’s stuck on a station showing “Matlock” reruns

4. The guacamole was moving

3. It was held on Saturday so no one would miss church

2. When the host ran out of beer, he started serving NyQuil

1. The only snacks were what you could find under the couch cushions
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

A very challenging situation is developing in Indianapolis. Peyton Manning, arguably one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, may be seeing his time in that Midwestern city coming to an end. It could, in fact, be his NFL career that is ending. The only part that is certain is that Colts fans are experiencing plenty of agita right now, and it is likely to last a little while.

Peyton Manning missed all of last season after having surgery on his neck in early September. He had actually had surgery several months earlier to repair a bulging disc, but his recovery did not go well and he ended up needing the second operation, in which he had two vertebrae fused together. The real complicating factor came two months after the first surgery, when he signed a 5-year, $90 million contract extension. He was paid $26 million for the 2011 season, during which he did not take a snap. The contract was structured in such a way that the team could walk away from it by cutting Manning before the end of the league year, which is in early March. With Manning not yet fully recovered (or even close, by most reports), it would appear to be an easy choice for the team, who will owe him a $28 million dollar payment on March 8th. Of course, it is not nearly as simple as it sounds. Manning has played his entire storied career in Indianapolis, during which he has made 11 Pro Bowls, won four MVP awards, and led the Colts to a Super Bowl title in 2007. He is one of the most popular players in the league, and severing ties with him could be disastrous for the Colts. Aside from the loss of a great quarterback, the P.R. hit alone could be catastrophic. With Manning missing last season, the team had the worst record in the league, finishing 2-14 after an 0-13 start. They have the first pick in the upcoming NFL Draft, and are likely to pick Andrew Luck, the quarterback from Stanford who is at the top of every draft board.

Perhaps the Colts are ready to wipe the slate clean and start over. After all, they recently fired Bill Polian, the architect of the team over the last 15 years, along with his son Chris, who held the title of general manager for the last three seasons. Head Coach Jim Caldwell was let go, along with the rest of his coaching staff. Chuck Pagano, the former defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens, was hired as the new head coach. If Peyton Manning weren’t Peyton Manning, this would be a pretty easy decision. Let the new coach draft his own guy and build his own team. In a lot of ways, Manning has been like a coach on the field, calling his own plays and making decisions on the fly. That could be a challenge for a new staff looking to make its own mark on the team. When you add in the huge amount of money at stake, Manning’s age (he’s 35), and the nature of his injury, it seems to me that the Colts have to cut ties with him, regardless of the public relations hit. That said, if Manning were to go on to play for another team, what would that be like for Colts fans? What if he were to lead another team to a title? The backlash would be something to see. Colts owner Jim Irsay, who will make this decision, has to be hating life right about now. There was a bit of back and forth through the media this week between Irsay and Manning, which was very unlike these guys, who have always seemed to have such a great relationship. They issued a statement of solidarity late in the week, trying to dispel the idea that they were at odds, but the situation at hand is not one that can be easily smoothed over.

It will be fascinating to see how this situation is resolved.

Bad sports, continued:

2) 19-year-old Australian tennis player Bernard Tomic was ticketed for driving violations twice on Thursday, after which he holed up in his house in an attempt to hide from police.

3) Philadelphia Eagles tight end Brent Celek was involved in a car accident early Thursday morning when a car in which he was a passenger crashed into a concrete barrier. The driver, who is not a football player, was arrested for DUI.

4) Speaking of DUIs, Aldon Smith, who had a spectacular rookie season for the San Francisco 49ers this year, got one of his own on Friday night. He was arrested in Miami.

5) Last week, the Pittsburgh Steelers announced that offensive coordinator Bruce Arians had retired and would not return to the team. This week, he was hired as offensive coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts. Based on the fact that his contract with Pittsburgh was up and the team reportedly wants to return to more of a running, ball-control style of offense, it seems that his retirement was something less than voluntary.

6) Back in November, I mentioned a story about Yale quarterback Patrick Witt, who had apparently turned down the chance to do a final interview to be a Rhodes Scholar because he was unwilling to miss Yale’s rivalry game against Harvard. It appears that this was not actually true. His candidacy for the scholarship had been suspended due to a sexual assault accusation made against Witt by a fellow Yale student.

Good sports:

1) Victoria Azarenka, a 22-year-old tennis player from Belarus, had quite a week. She won her first career major, defeating Maria Sharapova for the Australian Open title on Saturday. In doing so, she took over the number one spot in the world rankings for women’s tennis.

2) Novak Djokovic picked the new year up right where he left off in the old one, winning the Australian Open in dramatic fashion. He won a marathon five set match against Rafael Nadal after nearly six hours. This was the longest final match in a Grand Slam tournament ever.

3) Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel came to the assistance of a neighbor whose house was on fire Thursday night. Cassel and his wife saw flames coming from the home’s chimney, and the quarterback ran over to the house and pounded on the door until the owner, who was unaware of the fire, came out.

4) I am not sure what would possess someone to ski across Antarctica, especially alone, but that is exactly what Felicty Aston did over the last two months. She completed her journey on Monday. I am not sure this is exactly sports, but I think it’s pretty impressive, if a bit nuts.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

I am going to preface this column by saying that I understand that there are people out there for whom the recently revealed events at Penn State involving Jerry Sandusky, children from The Second Mile, and the leadership of the university and the football program completely invalidate the incredible career and contribution to the school of Joe Paterno. I am not one of those people. I am not here to debate this point or to belittle the opinion of others. Rather, I would like to simply express my feelings about the passing of Joseph Vincent Paterno on Sunday.

I have admired Joe for as long as I can remember. As a college freshman at Penn State’s University Park campus, I remember being in awe of him and everything else that went along with that football program: the players, Beaver Stadium, and the sea of people and RVs that surrounded the stadium on gameday. The man himself, though, was the main attraction for me. The rolled up pants, the black shoes, the coke bottle glasses, and the squeaky voice all combined to make a man that was simply larger than life. The town of State College was filled with pictures of Joe, from posters to cardboard stand-ups, to t-shirts. He was everywhere. Several times, I saw him walking around campus, chatting with anyone who made a point to talk to him. When the choir I was in was preparing to perform on the Beaver Stadium field before a football game, Joe addressed us and told us how much he appreciated our contribution to the festivities. Although I had always liked Penn State football, I was not a huge fan of the team until I got there. I was such a huge sports fan, though, that I was ripe for a complete conversion to wild Nittany Lion fandom when I arrived on campus. The fact that the team went undefeated and won the national championship that season simply cemented it all as a core part of my being. 25 years later, I am an even bigger fan than I was then, if that is possible. Joe had so much to do with that.

I can’t tell you the number of people to whom I have talked about Paterno over the years. The way he ran that program, graduating more of his players than anyone else while still putting great teams on the field on a regular basis, was astonishing. Joe would quote Shakespeare during press conferences, lead pep rallies with the enthusiasm of a student, and pace the sidelines like a caged (Nittany) lion. He arrived at Penn State as a young man who just graduated from Brown in 1950, planning to be an assistant coach for a year before going to law school. He never left. His longevity will never be matched, especially when you consider that he spent all 60+ years of his coaching career at the same school. He won more games as a head coach than anyone in major college football history, and he did it without ever compromising his belief that the players were students first and athletes second.

My Twitter and Facebook feeds were absolutely dominated by talk of Joe on Sunday. The outpouring of grief and admiration from current and former players, other coaches, and various other sports dignitaries, was amazing to see. I read statements by Mack Brown (Texas football), Mike Krzyzewski (Duke basketball), Urban Meyer (Ohio State football), and even Dick Vitale (college basketball commentator). There were so many others too, each one talking about the amazing impact Joe had on the world of sports and on the lives of countless people. One theme that I saw over and over again, especially from his former players but also from many fans, was the feeling that people had lost a member of their family. I share that feeling as well. I did not know Joe Paterno, but I feel like I did.

Again, I know there are people who can only see the mistakes Joe made. He was far from perfect, just like the rest of us. I do know that there will never be another one like him, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience his incredible career as a student and as a fan.

Good sports, continued:

2) Before Friday, Amy Rodriguez was a solid, if unspectacular, member of the U.S. Women’s Soccer team. That all changed in less than a half against the Dominican Republic, when she scored an amazing five goals to help the Americans to a 14-0 victory. She became only the fifth American woman to score five goals in a match.

3) Continuing the theme of great soccer performances by Americans, Clint Dempsey, who plays for Fulham of the English Premier League, scored a hat trick to help his team to a victory over Newcastle on Saturday.

Bad sports:

1) Roy Williams embarrassed himself, his team, and his team’s fans last weekend at the end of the Tar Heels massive loss to Florida State. North Carolina, who entered the game ranked third in the country, was crushed by the unranked Seminoles, 90-57. Not content to simply get blown out, Williams pulled his team off the bench and into the locker room to try to avoid the inevitable students-rushing-the-court scene that was about to happen, since the game was at Florida State. The problem was that there were still 14 seconds left in the game, and five reserve Tar Heel players were still on the court. I guess Williams made it clear how much those guys meant to the team.

2) Orlando Magic forward Glen Davis, known as “Big Baby,” responded to a foul call in very odd fashion on Wednesday during a game against the San Antonio Spurs. During an argument with an official, Davis decided it was time to drop his pants. A technical foul immediately followed, as you might have guessed.

3) As I have said before, social media can be a dangerous thing, especially for people with little common sense. Charles Mainor, a politician in North Jersey, was trying to show his support for the New York Giants by posting this on his Facebook page:

“We are not going to just lay down, we come to play. Who the hell do you think we are the DALLAS COWGIRLS OR THOSE GAYBIRDS FROM PHILLY . . . NO WE ARE THE NEW YORK GIANTS.”

Oops. That wasn’t so smart. He then apologized and busted out the “I have friends that are gay” line that always works so well.

4) The Texas Rangers just spent over 100 million dollars to sign a pitcher who has never thrown a pitch in a Major League game. Yu Darvish, a star in Japan, will be joining the Rangers and making a whole lot of money.

5) Sarah Burke, a freestyle skier who made her name in the X Games, died this week after a recent crash while training. She was 29.

6) If you didn’t see that pathetic rendition of the National Anthem forced upon us by Steven Tyler before the Patriots-Ravens game on Sunday, consider yourself lucky. If you are a masochist, watch it here.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

Society forgives a lot. Don King killed two people — yes, he really did kill one person, then decide this wasn’t enough so he later killed another — before he pulled his life together and entered that most honorable of professions: boxing promotion. (And in fairness, in the first case he was trying to protect one of his illegal gambling houses and in the second the guy owed him money.) Likewise, Mike Tyson served time for rape, but now most people tend to ignore that in favor of the nobler moments from his life, like when he sang along to “In the Air Tonight” in The Hangover or beat the hell out of Don King. Perhaps the only crime you can’t redeem yourself from over time is child abuse. And this may be why there doesn’t seem to be a measured response to it: it is an offense that seems either to get ignored completely or for which everyone connected in any way must be destroyed immediately, disregarding the possibility that they might actually be innocent.

Penn State has pursued both of these methods. It’s well-known that upon the initial accusations against former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, virtually nothing was done. It’s also now been revealed that Penn State’s Board of Trustees, upon learning about the criminal investigation of Sandusky, sprang into action and…elected to continue the policy of doing nothing, as it had worked so very well up to that point. Indeed, it was only when the media storm hit with Sandusky’s arrest that they did something, firing Joe Paterno immediately. Then, just to show they meant business, they denied JoePa’s 80-something wife access to a Penn State pool. (Really.) Finally, they issued a memorandum to Penn State security guards reading: “Should you come upon Joe Paterno’s dog, kick it in the face. Go, Nittany Lions!”

I made up the last one. But whatever his moral failings, Joe Paterno has not been convicted of a crime. And he will apparently not be convicted of a crime, because he has not been charged with a crime, which is the first step in a conviction. And, for that matter, Jerry Sandusky hasn’t been convicted of a crime himself yet by an actual court, no matter how shifty he seems on camera. (And he does seem amazingly shifty: if a man could be tried purely on body language, Jerry would have started a life sentence weeks ago. Not to mention he gave his autobiography the there-is-surely-no-horrific-double-meaning-hidden-in-this title Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story — this is a man itching for prison time.)

I’m pretty confident something criminal happened, but I was certain those Duke lacrosse players were guilty of rape. (In case you have a short memory, they were not.) Prosecutors makes mistakes: sometimes honestly, sometimes as a result of deciding a conviction’s a conviction, even if you’re prosecuting someone innocent. (And remember, when you prosecute the innocent, you violate everything America stands for and, as a fun bonus, enable the guilty to get away with it.) Former New Orleans D.A. Harry Connick Sr. is a particular expert at this (read about one case here, in which his office willfully hid a blood sample proving a man’s innocence even as he sat on death row) — next time you listen to Harry Jr. crooning, ask yourself if the song sounds the same knowing his old man is Don King, only minus the hair and the high moral standards.

And in an age when the internet makes it possible for anyone to be part of the media but there’s less and less money for actual reporting so “news coverage” means “Here’s some crap I saw on a blog that I cut and pasted onto my blog”, it’s important to remember that justice can move too fast as well as too slow.

It is possible that we will discover more damning things about Joe Paterno during the trial of Jerry Sandusky. It is possible this scandal will not just taint his legacy, but overshadow it completely. But Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, the Syracuse assistant basketball coach similarly accused of sexual abuse (who, since being fired, has already had one accuser admit he lied about the whole thing), those Duke lacrosse players, and every other person, be they innocent or guilty, deserves due process. Before dispensing justice, Penn State’s Board of Trustees had a brief meeting behind closed doors, one they neglected to inform Paterno about until they phoned to tell him he was fired.

The firing may turn out to be justified — indeed, it very likely will — but based on the fact they knew and didn’t care about Sandusky until the press showed up, it’s hard to think anything other than these were panicky little people trying to overcompensate for their own failings. (I wonder if anyone in the secret meeting said, “Hey gang, we’re firing Paterno for knowing and not doing enough…when we knew and didn’t do anything. Shouldn’t we resign or something?” I bet that guy got a beating.)

Having buried Paterno, Penn State proceeded to pee on his grave. After a drawn-out search, Penn State announced the hiring of a new head coach: Bill O’Brien. It is, to put it mildly, an interesting choice. O’Brien has no head coaching experience. His main qualification is that he’s the offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots. Indeed, he is the third New England offensive coordinator to be snatched up for a head coaching job since 2004. The first two were Charlie Weis and Josh McDaniels.

Despite Weis going into the college ranks with Notre Dame and McDaniels staying in the pros with the Denver Broncos, they turned out to have a similar coaching style, one that might best be described as arrogant off the field, incompetent on it. They burned enough bridges they might have lost their jobs even if they’d managed to win games. Fortunately, they did not: Weis led Notre Dame through the worst stretch in Fightin’ Irish history with a 16-21 record over his final three seasons (all the while bragging about how he’d blow some minds once he installed his “pro-style offense”) and McDaniels went 11-19 before he got the axe midway thru year two after it was revealed he had concealed that his team had been violating league rules by illegally taping opponents’ practices…all the while the New England Patriots continued to score at will, suggesting coaching is easier when you have Tom Brady throwing the ball and Bill Belichick looking over your shoulder.

Understandably, Penn State looked at this rich tradition of Patriot assistants and said, “Wait, there’s a third one of these guys? We’re booking a seat on this gravy train!”

Of course, O’Brien does have one big thing working in his factor: he has no connection to Penn State. (And, by extension, no link to Joe Paterno, since he’d been the head coach there since 1966.) Over the decades there have been hundreds and hundreds of players (and dozens and dozens of assistants) in no way connected with any of the abuse allegations who came to Penn State, won games, and graduated. (This may sound a small achievement, but any fan of college sports can tell you, the athlete who plays at an elite level and still consistently finds time for class is a rare beast.) Many of these alumni are outraged that Penn State now considers them at best irrelevant and at worst toxic when no one, not even Jerry Sandusky (who, it’s worth noting, stopped being an official part of the program in 1999), has yet been convicted.

I don’t blame them.

I should note I have decidedly mixed feelings about Joe Paterno. I think there’s much to admire about the man (how many coaches would use their own money to build their school a library?). On the other hand, he’s buds with Republican presidential candidate (and former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania) Rick Santorum, which for me is only a few steps above pulling a Rumsfeld and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. Santorum is a devout Catholic and views his faith as a license to be cruelly judgmental of others, notably homosexuals; Paterno is also Catholic and presumably agrees with this, based on how supportive he’s been of the Santorum clan. (Religious disclosure: I also come from Catholic stock. And yes, I feel about this much the same way I feel about Joe Paterno.) Of course, the irony is that while attacking the wickedness of others, acts of true evil were occurring closer to home, with child abuse rampant within their beloved Catholic Church and, it appears, in the Penn State family as well.

(Side note: During John Paul II’s time as pope, child abuse in the Church was ubiquitous all over the globe. When confronted with these offenses, the Church tended to look the other way or, on a number of occasions, actively protected the priests, sometimes transferring them to other parishes where they could safely continue to molest children. For presiding over all this, John Paul II is — you guessed it — going to be rushed to sainthood in record-shattering time, with Pope Benedict making a point of waiving the five-year waiting period normally required after a candidate’s death. And suddenly being an Episcopalian seems less ridiculous…)

That said, the fact remains that in 1996, a security guard named Richard Jewell was named as the top suspect during the Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, as the FBI speculated that he placed the bomb himself so he could play hero. The media jumped on the lead and discovered it made perfect sense: after all, this guy was fat. And didn’t he live with his mom or something? Airtight case! Except it turned out he was not only innocent, but by spotting the suspicious package he had indeed saved dozens and dozens of lives. (Incidentally, Richard Jewell died at 44 of natural causes — sure the three months of constant public humiliation had no impact on this at all.)

And for a long time many people believed Ted Bundy to be innocent because no one so charming and handsome could be a serial killer.

The point is, the justice system works best when it moves steadily. The next time a scandal like this breaks, let’s hope the victims’ accusations are acted upon immediately, but also — no matter how heinous the crime — that everyone takes enough time that someone’s not only punished, but that we get the right person.

In conclusion, I suspect Joe Paterno got what he ultimately will deserve. But he got it much too soon and I think there are a lot of other people — looking at you, Penn State Board of Trustees — who warrant a much harsher fate.

Final musing: By his own account, Mike McQueary discovered Jerry Sandusky in the shower with an underage boy and was convinced there had been sexual contact between them. McQueary was already 27 at the time; he stands 6’4” and weighs over 200 pounds. Sandusky was approaching 60 and considerably smaller than that. McQueary responded to this situation by leaving both Sandusky and the boy, then telling Paterno about it THE NEXT DAY.

This still makes no sense to me.

This has been one of the bleakest winters ever for Met fans.  We lost Jose Reyes to free agency, a body blow though anyone could see it coming.  And our general manager acquired a few adequate relief pitchers while all our division rivals bulked up.  Meanwhile, the team continues to hang from a financial thread. But things are looking up: they recently signed Omar Quintanilla to a minor league contract.

Quintanilla is a baseball phenomenon. Thirty years old, and thus highly unlikely to improve, he managed just one hit in 22 at-bats last year for the Texas Rangers while striking out 9 times; and in 2,327 ccareer major league at bats, the equivalent of 4-5 full seasons, he compiled a  batting average of .213 with two homeruns and three stolen bases. It may be some sort of a record for non-achievement.

It’s not clear to me by what kind of alchemy the Mets will make gold from his dross. But then, I’m just a fan.

Meanwhile,  the owners have signed up another heavy hitter, CRG Partners, a financial advisory firm that specializes in bankruptcies among sports franchises. Like I said, skies are blue over Citi Field.

Met fans at this point have probably experienced more trauma over the past five seasons than any other fan base in the nation – maybe since Met fans of the early 1960s.  Don’t pass the pity, but I happen to belong to both classes.

It’s been downhill ever since The Pitch: that is, since the moment when Carlos Beltran, the Mets’ then-stellar centerfielder, took a called third strike on an unhittable curveball from Adam Wainwright to hand the St. Louis Cardinals the 2006 National League Pennant.

Shea Stadium was rocking that night – literally. I was sitting in the upper deck (I had an excellent long-distance view of Endy Chavez’s brilliant catch over the left field wall, robbing Scott Rolen of a homer) and several times during that crisp October evening I could actually feel the entire deck shaking. Not just vibrating or trembling; really shaking.  It was kind of scary.  It didn’t shake that way when Ron Swoboda made his diving catch in right field in ’69.  And then came that final pitch.

The shaking proved to be the onset of the earthquake that hit the team, bringing down the old ballpark and now threatening to take the franchise along with it.  It was brought on by incompetent front office leadership and (even more) by the owners’ affiliation with Bernard Madoff.  Money can cover up incompetence in the big leagues, but competence can’t cover up poverty.

Throughout the fall of 2010, the principal owner, Fred Wilpon, insisted the team was in good financial shape despite a spot of bother with Madoff. Meanwhile he had secretly borrowed millions of dollars from Major League Baseball.

 There seemed to be a single silver lining to this downward spiral when the team hired Sandy Alderson as their general manager. At least that was something to hang hope on; Alderson is considered among the better baseball minds.  But now comes Omar Quintanilla. Why do I feel like I’ve been vaulted back fifty years to 1962, when the rules governing the expansion draft guaranteed that the Mets would be awful?

 Now all we have left is the best broadcasting crew in baseball. That’s nice, but a good team would be even better. And there’s scant sign of that happening. Some talent is coming along, especially pitching talent; but this team is a long way from being competitive in its division because (just our luck) all the other teams are well-run and well-financed.

We Met fans may be professional sufferers (if it were just about winning we’d all simply root for the Yankees, Q.E.D.) but we aren’t stupid. We know that only one thing can save this franchise, the morally superior one in New York, and it isn’t a gaggle of $20 million vanity investors who might get to meet Mr. Met and throw out the occasional first pitch, but wouldn’t have any control over the team. (By the way, the luxury booth still costs extra.) The only thing that can save this team is its outright sale.

          If I were Bud Selig, Mario Cuomo, Michael R. Bloomberg, Sandy Koufax, or any of the other big shots with direct access to the Wilpons, I would insist on that outcome, and the sooner the better. There is no other way: it’s either sell to a deep-pocket investor  looking to turn something around – something big and troubled and unwieldy but with a big upside – or go the Quintanilla route, and Quintanilla (I’m speaking figuratively – it’s a minor league contract and one hopes that he doesn’t make the team) means continued huge losses (they lost $70 million last year, and owe some $440 million to banks and $25 million to MLB) in the nation’s biggest sports media market, and bankruptcy. It’s time for the Wilpons to face facts and get off the field.  Not share the field; not get farther off. All the way off.

When you watch, read about, and write about sports, you come across an awful lot of cliches. Many of them originated in the world of sports, but lots of them come from elsewhere too. With as much talking as sports commentators have to do during a broadcast, I guess it makes sense that they lean on the same old expressions over and over again. Cliches become cliches for a reason, though. One big one in football is “defense wins championships.” No title was won this weekend, but this old expression certainly showed that it has some truth behind it as the New York Giants beat the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers beat the New Orleans Saints.

The NFL regular season was an odd one this year, as several teams with awful defenses had fantastic regular seasons due to their prolific offenses. Two notable ones were the defending Super Bowl champion Packers, along with the Drew Brees-led Saints. Both of these teams masked their sieve-like defenses with firepower that few teams could stop. Quarterbacks Brees and Aaron Rodgers led the league in touchdown passes (Brees with 46 and Rodgers with 45), and threw for tons of yards. It didn’t seem to matter that they let other teams move up and down the field at will, as they could either outscore them or force turnovers to make sure they came out on top. To be fair, two of the teams that won this weekend, the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, also struggled to stop people all year, but those teams had been expected to be strong on the defensive side and had underachieved. When it came time to play a postseason game, though, those teams remembered what mattered. The Patriots stifled the Denver Broncos, who did them the huge favor of starting Tim Tebow at quarterback, allowing them to focus their efforts on stopping the run, as the pass was not much of a threat. The Giants stopped the Packers continually, beating them in convincing fashion, 37-20. The Saints went up against the 49ers, who had one of the best defenses in the league this season. The New Orleans offense is so good that even the 49ers defense was hard put to stop them, but in the end, the Niners came out on top, 36-32. It was a spectacular game, by the way, especially the last several minutes. With less than a minute to go, when the Saints needed their defense more than ever, they had no answer for Alex Smith and Vernon Davis. They will now go home, while the Niners move on to play the Giants.

My rooting interests were difficult to pin down this weekend. I did not want to root for the Patriots, as offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien is Penn State’s new head coach, and I would love for him to be able to focus on the last month of the recruiting period, but anyone who reads this column knows that I was not rooting for Tebow and the Broncos. I am ambivalent about the Packers, but I won’t root for the Giants under any circumstances. The Saints-49ers and the Ravens-Texans matchups did not move me emotionally either way, really. I am happy, though, that defense made a difference in these games. I am always bothered when people complain that defensive battles are “boring,” while high-scoring affairs are “exciting.” This may be true, to some extent, if you don’t study the game. If you do, though, you know that when it really matters, you’d better be able to stop someone. Because they couldn’t, the Packers and the Saints saw their seasons end.

Good sports, continued:

2) I mentioned it briefly above,  but if you did not see the end of the 49ers-Saints game, check out the highlights. The last four minutes were pretty unbelievable, with the lead changing hands four times over that period. I have never given San Francisco quarterback Alex Smith any credit at all, but he went up several notches in my eyes after that performance.

3) Barcelona forward Lionel Messi, only 24 years old, won his third player of the year award from FIFA this week, a remarkable achievement for someone so young. Messi also plays for Argentina’s national team.

4) It’s not enough, but it’s a start: the NCAA and the BCS seem to be zeroing in on a plan to have a four-team playoff in college football‘s highest division starting in 2014. Mark Emmert, the NCAA president, is in favor of it, as are the leaders of several of the major conferences, including some who had previously opposed it, like the Big Ten’s Jim Delany.

5) I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I need to say it: can we please stop talking about Tebow now? The Patriots hopefully put the conversation to rest for a while. I listen to sports radio, but I had to avoid it for most of last week, as it was all-Tebow, all the time.

Bad sports:

1) It’s bad enough that the BCS “championship game” was a rematch of a game that happened earlier this season between LSU and Alabama. No one outside of the fans of the SEC wanted this anyway. The fact that the game was a snoozer was the real problem. I am not contradicting my earlier statement here about enjoying defense. I like the fact that the Alabama defense was so good. This game was completely lopsided, though, and that makes for some boring viewing. LSU could not even manage 100 yards of total offense, which is embarrassing.

2) Tragedy struck the family of Joe Philbin, the offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers, this week. His son Michael, originally reported missing last Sunday, was found dead on Monday when police pulled his body from a river in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. His death appears to have been an accident. After several days away from the team, Philbin was with the team for its game on Sunday against the Giants.

3) Francisco Rodriguez Jr., a high school soccer goalie in Los Angeles, was shot and killed at his front door on Wednesday, shortly after playing a game against a local high school.

4) Well this is embarrassing. I think I saw someone do this when I was a kid playing soccer at camp.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

Sports draws the traffic. On the talking box, on the intertubes, to the stadium and in chit-chat; sports is the universal solvent of unacquaintance and disunion. It’s a somewhat paradoxical effect given the habits of hockey fans and Olympic attendees to occasionally jeer or attack the other side but even the bitterest footie yob who would bite the ears off another ticketholder for wearing the wrong colors can find a kinship there while he could only blink in amazement at any suggestion that, hey, it’s just a game. Discouraging words like that are passing rare, as heresy deserves. Interest in a sport and adherence to one team or another cut across other demographic divides combining races, classes, those who do and do not wear glasses into a single SportsNation whose language is as loud as it is untranslatable. But the outside elements do intrude. Even a militant sports detractor like Yours Truly knows that there has scarcely been an event in forty years where some guy in the stands with a painted face and rain-fro wig hasn’t been waving an enigmatic sign; John 3:16. It is not too inscrutable. As the non-sportsman still knows who won the World Series, so even the most rabid secularist recalls or can find out that this is a citation to a verse in the King James Bible, (from recently refreshed memory) For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that he who believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. As a drunken Billy Graham might have put it, this is Christianity for Dummies, or those with busy schedules. Religiousity has been part of sports as it has been part of life all along. Chariot racers competed for the favors of Athena and Mars. The Aztecs played ball to decide who would be sacrificed, and who executed. Knute Rockne, whether in life or as depicted in that bastard child of two distractions; the sports movie, was a praying man, publicly so and so were his players, his staffers, his imitators and his fans. So no need to denounce Tebow as a usurper or opportunist since he has brought a quick, ritualized endzone bow into the previously dignified world of touchdown celebrations.

But denounced he is. The cry reaches out even to those who avoid sports and sports-related talk as part of THEIR religion. Foremost comes the muddy, nasal griping of a pygmy in all regards; a man who delights in faux rebellion, who denounces with abandon and demonic relish all things outside his sophisticated approval. The guy that makes Newt Gingrich sound like William F. Buckley and look like Fred Astaire is perhaps (and thankfully) too obscure to need no introduction. That puke’s name is Bill Maher. He doesn’t come over the airwaves unbeckoned any longer. One must volunteer and PAY to hear his belchings and (ugh) witness his hijinx but the world where objectionable persons or material could be quarantined to channels you don’t watch is long, long gone. The media paddle-mixer is always running, in this instance drawing in a drop of Maher from the twitterverse and presenting it as News on par with the demise of Kim Jong-Il. We refer, of course to The Tweet Heard ’round The World! (although they all are) “Wow, Jesus just f**ked #TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve!”

This bit of ecstasy was precipitated by Tebow’s Broncos getting a stiff (though far from historic) shellacking at what Maher seems to think is an ecclesiastically significant moment. He would deny that HE thinks so, pro forma. This is what they call “satire” which seems often to mean little more than a bit of mockery that needs explaining. Maher appropriates what he THINKS Tebow and his numberless co-religionists consider significant. And that IS comical, certainly. As everyone knows Christmas is a fraud. The historical figure Jesus of Nazareth was not born on December 25th and even if he were it is unlikely in the extreme that there would be picturesque snow drifts around his place of birth in Bethlehem. The date comes from various pagan traditions and in any event, whatever the virtues of Christian teachings or that old malcontent’s brave acceptance of execution by torture, there was no divinity in Christ because there is no divinity in anything. There is no such thing as “Divine” as there is no such man as Santa Claus.

These are hard truths that Maher is selling (yes, literally selling) as an alternative to what he describes as malign self-deceptions. An opposing case is difficult to construct though many a sucker is enticed into doing so on Maher’s home turf. What it always comes down to is Faith, a term that draws Maher’s hole into its most patently vile smirk and brings the howl of hungry cur from his smug audience in studio or at home. 0.2 cheers for Maher though. While an obnoxious antagonist, and far from an Equal Opportunity Offender, unlike nearly any other public figure you could name, he does have critical words for islam. Not merely does he apply the same skepticism to Mohammed as he does to Christ, which would be remarkable enough, he also sees that even if the full-blown atheist case is empirically true, still there is much to prefer in a Christian neighborhood over a Muslim one. And he does venture into the lion’s lair. While he is justly avoided by serious news shows due to his serial vulgarity on live broadcasts, he is routinely found before hostile questioners. Famously he took on Keith Ellison, the out-and-proud Muslim member of the House from Minnesota. Ellison cried. But foundationally Maherism still falters as it is based on a derisive dismissal of Faith as revealing of anything other than a psychological state, perhaps beneficial but dangerously blinkered. But that too, is Faith.

Like all sophisticates, Maher bases his objections to Faith on a Socratic framework. The only true knowledge lies in knowing that you know nothing. Now, that is not an absolute nothing but a relative nothing. As the Greeks figured out that wherever the sun is, it is so far away that its light is functionally parallel across the entire earth, and therefore the size of the earth can be construed through it, so are we all functionally equally ignorant since not the most genius of us could hope to know the tiniest fraction of what there IS to know. Principled claims to ignorance are only a superficial part of Maherism, however. Like a baseline coach who signals a pitch or play, but then must disguise that signal in a pantomime of counter-signals, so does Maher always claim a purity of skepticism and willingness to entertain even the Gods of Aristotle if only one would speak up. But if that were so his protestations would be based in humility and self-examination rather than the arrogant, bilious rage that is his bread and butter. There HAS been a certified miracle in the land though. As is the nature of twitter, this could change any minute, but as of now the stunning come-from-behind win by the Broncos in overtime, producing an odd confluence of numerical improbabilities has left Bill Maher…. speechless.

It’s not quite the loaves and the fishes but it will do. Could it be that somewhere Bill Maher is wrestling with a headache? If it has kept him from his smartphone, it must be a doozy. It is now a historical fact as much as the inflation rate in Weimar Germany that Tebow threw for 316 yards including the Hail Mary capper. This was the result of 10 completions, likewise giving him a pass yardage average of 31.6. Naturally any ten pass game would produce the same result, but if the universe IS, as Maher (but not Socrates, BTW) claims nothing more than so many tiny billiard balls still bouncing about from the break, isn’t this… curious? Those who make sports statistics their daily bread can say, so I will merely ask, what are the odds of any particular three-digit number coming up in this context? What are the odds of a ten-pass game? If the Faith of Tebow is meaningless outside the psychological advantages of a supernatural cheerleader then we must see this sort of thing time and again, right? Or maybe Tebow, whether consciously or not, has perpetrated a fraud? But that would take genius and skill nearly god-like in scope and up until now, his talents have been highly suspect. It is his showboating piety that draws the fans (more fools they) and allows a subpar quarterback to claim a position he has not earned and should not have. This was the chant which I transmit only with the observation that such complaints were made of Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick but were dismissed as mere bigotry. Like last year’s investment advice, these pronouncements are currently subject to review.

Now Tebow is getting HIS review and the reviews are good. It may well be that Maher is playing a little media scamola of his own. Perhaps he is not particularly hostile to Tebow The Phenomenon but is hitching his wagon to it as court jester. His silence speaks against it though. Is he feverishly but privately trying to brush up on his long-lost mathematics skills to figure out, man, just how much of a long-shot was this? And if the rain of 316s is to be dismissed in the game stats, are the ratings, which drew a 31.6 share also to be ashcanned? Not likely. If Maher had a Holy Book it would come out weekly and be the Nielsen’s. But mathematics, the language of the ancient Greeks, so much revered by the brainy secularists, has other questions for the Big Bangers. In the so-called Intelligent Design field you will find questions based on biochemistry and brain science that reveal, as far as we know now, the emergence of Life is so astronomically unlikely as to be impossible. The development of that wet, repository of consciousness between your ears, likewise is so complex it makes the rest of our knowledge a mere dustmote against Mount Ararat against a neutron star. Wouldn’t a genuinely skeptical, as opposed to opportunistically credulous gnome like Maher have to at least admit that what is unseen is far larger than the seen or the seeable?  Once such an admission is made the slippery slope has been mounted. Now we must discuss and contest; what is the nature of this “unseen” scene? What is it made of? What does it do? Does it impact our measurable reality? None of these questions have proven answerable in the same way to all people but all the combatants claim Faith, the Evidence of Things Unseen in the end and craft their absurd rituals and myths from that resource. Perhaps somewhere in a posh hermitage Bill Maher is pondering these questions and staring, staring, staring at that 31.6 share, as if something, somewhere KNEW that he could easily dismiss the numbers from the game but THIS seems aimed squarely at an Audience of One. The secularist conclusion is obvious: yes the universe is indifferent but is indifferent to me with special malice and certainty.

Or put another way, God is pissed with ME, Bill Maher. Not too much though. Certainly we will patch it up.

I suppose it might be because my team is not participating, but I found the NFL playoffs particularly painful this weekend. It is probably because of gambling and fantasy football, but I have found that most football fans watch the playoffs, even when their team did not make it, which is different than what I have seen with most other sports. I normally enjoy these Eagles-free games just because they are football, but I found these games pretty awful. As always, I make no pretense of being objective. My own dislikes had a lot to do with my disgust, although bad officiating and bad play certainly entered into it.

The first negative for me occurred on Saturday during the game between the New Orleans Saints and the Detroit Lions. In the second quarter, with the Lions up 14-7, Drew Brees fumbled when hit by Willie Young, a defensive end for the Lions. After a bit of bouncing around, the ball was picked up by linebacker Justin Durant, who had a wide-open path to the end zone and a two-touchdown lead. For no apparent reason, though, a referee blew his whistle. That signaled the play was dead, and that was that. Sure, the Lions still had the ball, but this was a huge moment in the game. Instead of having a quick 21-7 lead and all the momentum, the Lions went three and out and punted. The Saints went on a drive that ate up the remaining time in the first half, which ended with a field goal that cut the Lions’ lead to 14-10. The Saints went crazy in the second half, scoring touchdowns on all five of their possessions, winning 45-28. Would the game have turned out different if that ref had not screwed up that play by blowing the whistle? There is no way to know. With the way that football is affected by momentum, it is certainly a possibility. Sure, officials make mistakes, but this was a pretty bad one.

Sunday was worse. First, the Atlanta Falcons laid an absolute egg against the New York Giants, losing 24-2. Yes, they scored two points in a playoff game. Two points, against a Giants defense that was ranked 27th in the league in yards allowed and 25th in points allowed during the regular season. The Giants allowed 28 or more points in ten of their sixteen games this year, and the Falcons managed two. Oh, and by the way, the two points came on a safety, of course, when Eli Manning was called for intentional grounding in his own end zone. So the Falcons offense actually scored zero points. Awful. Please note by the way, that as an Eagles fan, I despise the Giants. Later in the day, things got worse. I am, in no way, a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I have noted here previously the disgust I have for their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger. I would normally enjoy a Steelers loss, but even that enjoyment was taken away from me, as the loss was to Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos. Tebow is possibly the worst quarterback I have ever seen, yet he manages to find ways to win. The Steelers defense, unlike that of the Giants, was ranked first this season in both yards allowed and points allowed. Despite that, they looked awful on Sunday against Denver. Tebow threw only 21 passes, and completed less than half of them as usual, but those ten completions went for 316 yards, including 80 on the first play of overtime on a touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas. Revolting. I had to close Twitter, as my feed exploded with Tebow-mania. I am pretty sure that is something for which I will never be in the mood.

Count week one of the NFL playoffs as something less than stellar for me, I guess. I hope the weeks to come bring less unpleasantness.

Bad sports, continued:

2) University of Tennessee swimming coach John Trembley, in his 23rd year coaching the Vols, was fired this week and is being investigated by Knoxville police for an unspecified reason. The firing was for “gross misconduct,” so I am guessing the alleged crime is a pretty bad one.

3) I guess it had been a while since the national media had a reason to bash Philadelphia sports fans, so some idiotic Flyers fans decided to provide them with some real ammunition. After the Winter Classic on Monday, a group of fans were caught on video beating up a two men wearing New York Rangers jerseys outside a nearby restaurant. Perfect.

4) Pittsburgh Steelers running backs coach Kirby Wilson was seriously injured in a fire at his home on Friday morning. He is expected to recover.

5) Chicago Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro has been accused of sexual assault by a woman in Chicago. Castro denies any wrongdoing.

6) If I am somehow ever coaching in the Rose Bowl, I hope that I will make sure I am not on camera before I pick my nose and eat it. Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Rudolph can not say the same.

7) This is actually a professional bowler. Hahahaha.

Good sports:

1) Tim Howard, the soccer goalkeeper best known for his solid performance in goal for the U.S. National team during the 2010 World Cup, actually scored a goal of his own during an English Premier League game on Wednesday. Howard, who plays for Everton, scored a goal on a clearance that was affected by wind and got by Adam Bogdan, the keeper for Bolton (or was it Notlob)?

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

Bravado. For whatever reason, it would appear to be rampant in sports. I guess it makes some sense…athletes, especially those playing at the highest levels, are extremely competitive people by necessity. Sure, some of them motivate themselves quietly, finding everything they need to excel without having to make spectacles of themselves. Others need to play mind games, strut around like idiots, or taunt their opponents at every opportunity as ways to stoke their inner fires. On Sunday, the final day of the NFL’s regular season, there were several examples of bravado that were not only obnoxious, but also wildly misplaced, which is often another characteristic of this behavior.

Kyle Shanahan is the offensive coordinator for the woeful Washington Redskins. The guy has presided over an offense that is ranked 26th out of 32 teams in scoring offense in 2011, which is down a spot from their 25th ranked position in the 2010 season, Shanahan’s first with the Redskins. Beyond that, the team’s head coach happens to be his dad, Mike Shanahan. Yes, he had been the offensive coordinator for the Houston Texans for two seasons before coming to work for Dad, but he had been hired in Houston by Gary Kubiak, who had been an offensive coordinator for the elder Shanahan when he coached in Denver, so there is certainly a lot of nepotism involved here. Despite all of that, this gem decided that he would mouth off before his team’s game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. He was apparently offended by Eagles defensive coordinator Juan Castillo’s statements about how they would have made the playoffs if the New York Jets had managed to beat the New York Giants last week, neglecting to factor in that the Eagles would have still had to beat the Redskins this week.

“F–k him, f–k these guys.  In 2012 the Redskins are gonna be the NFC East champions, and that starts right f–king today.”

Classy. Misguided, too. If you are going to throw out statements like that, it would be a good idea to do something to back it up. Instead, the ‘Skins managed just 10 points against an Eagles defense that underperformed all year and that was giving significant playing time to a bunch of guys who played very little this season, and with good reason.

As I have discussed previously, Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh is definitely the type who needs to pump himself up by acting like a fool. This week’s example did not involve him stomping on anyone or taking cheap shots at his opponents, though. This time, it involved a mocking sack celebration that Suh performed late in the third quarter of his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers. After making the sack, Suh imitated Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ usual touchdown celebration, where he pantomimes slapping on a championship belt as if he were a boxer. Clever, right? Not so much. First, Rodgers was not even playing, having been given the day off in order to avoid injury and get ready for the playoffs. Instead, the sack victim was backup Matt Flynn. Second, the Lions defense was in the process of being absolutely embarrassed by the Packers, who put up 550 yards of total offense, including 480 yards passing and six touchdown passes by Flynn. Maybe this was not the best time to be celebrating a sack.

Finally, the Jets’ resident moron, Santonio Holmes, was at it again. Late in the fourth quarter, Holmes was seen screaming at his teammates in the huddle. Shortly after, he was pulled from the game and put on the bench, where he remained through the final gun. I am not sure what he was yelling about, but judging by the fact that he had exactly zero catches in the game, a 19-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins that ensured that the Jets would miss the playoffs, I hope he was complaining about his own play. The fact that Holmes was a captain for the Jets this season is one of the most astonishing things I heard during a bizarre football season.

Bravado, when you win, is acceptable, I suppose. When you lose, and do so in humiliating fashion, you should probably leave the attitude at home.

Bad sports, continued:

2) Rick Tocchet, who went from NHL tough guy to scorer to head coach, is in trouble again. Four years after pleading guilty to running a gambling ring, Tocchet was arrested at an airport in the Bahamas for failing to declare his winning from a local casino.

3) Chris Draft, a linebacker who played twelve seasons in the NFL and retired after the 2009 season, lost his wife of only one month this week. Lakeasha Draft died of cancer after a long battle.

4) It wouldn’t seem right if we didn’t have at least one player using racial epithets against another during a game each week. This time, Krys Barch of the Florida Panthers did the honors. On Saturday night against the Montreal Canadiens, Barch directed the comment at P.K. Subban, a player of Jamaican descent. Barch was ejected from the game.

5) Jorge Martinez crashed and died while riding a motorcycle in the Dakar Rally on Sunday in Argentina. Unfortunately, deaths at this race are not uncommon.

6) Maybe it was just me, but doesn’t it seem wrong that, in a year where college football is having 35 different bowl games (you read that right), a grand total of zero of them were on New Year’s Day? Due to the holiday being on a Sunday this year, and with the NFL’s regular season still happening, the usual January 1st games were moved to the 2nd. That just seems wrong to me.

Good sports:

1) New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees set the NFL’s single season record for passing yards on Monday night, breaking Dan Marino’s 27-year-old record on his final pass of the night. To put an exclamation point on it, Brees threw for 389 more on Sunday to close out the regular season.

2) Indiana University’s basketball team, so great back in the seventies and eighties but not so great since, is legitimately back this year. Three weeks after beating then number one Kentucky, the Hoosiers beat second-ranked Ohio State. They are currently 13-1.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday