Out of Bounds

Franzen’s Play Not Pretty, But it’s Pretty Important to Red Wings

2012-01-22T14:11:00.000-05:00

Ice hockey, the world’s fastest sport, is played at blinding speed by powerful men gliding along the rink on razor-sharp blades fastened to their boots, swinging fiberglass sticks at a vulcanized rubber disc.

It’s polo played on ice, sans the horses.

The thrills and chills come from the long, effortless strides of a puck-carrier as he bores down at the goalie from the wing, at some 25-30 miles per hour. Until he loses the puck, and the same thing happens, going the other way.

It’s a sport whose stoppages of play can come in rapid-fire fashion or as few and far between as an apology from Rush Limbaugh.

The typical rink is 200 feet long by 85 feet wide. That’s 17,000 square feet of frozen fun.

Yet despite all that area with which to work, an Italian-Canadian named Phil Esposito made his living operating within a fraction of it.

Esposito was a center man, or, to be true to his Canadian roots, a centre man. But he played the position as if he was employed by the Boston Celtics instead of the Boston Bruins, for whom he toiled in his heyday of the 1970s.

If the NHL had a three-second rule in front of the goal crease, Esposito would have led the league in violations.

The Bruins led the NHL in goals in the 1970-71 season, scoring nearly 400 in 78 games. Esposito scored 76 of those, by far a new NHL record. If you measured the distance the pucks traveled, those 76 goals likely traversed no more than the 200-foot length of a rink, combined.Esposito was immovable in front of the opponent’s goal. He never took a slap shot in his life. He didn’t shoot the puck, per se—he shoved and poked and pushed it past the goal line.

The single-season goal scoring record that Esposito shattered was held by Bobby Hull, who ONLY took slap shots. The two players’ styles couldn’t have been any more different.

Hull skated; Esposito planted.

As for their shooting skills, if they were pitchers, Hull was Nolan Ryan and Esposito was Phil Niekro.

Yet both hockey players made it into the Hall of Fame by scoring bushels of goals. It’s just that Hull did it from afar and Esposito did it from the goalie’s doorstep.

Esposito comes to mind as I watch this man the folks around town call The Mule play hockey for the Red Wings.

Johan Franzen wears No. 93, a number never considered to be worn in Esposito’s day. Hockey players back then didn’t wear a number higher than 35, and that was reserved for the goalies.

If a player was sent to the minors, his replacement simply took his number—kind of like a hockey doppelganger.A hockey player wearing No. 93 in Esposito’s time might as well have been all green with one eye in the middle of his head.

Doesn’t matter. Franzen plays Esposito-like hockey.

They call Franzen The Mule because, well, you ever try to move a mule that doesn’t want to be moved?

Like Esposito four decades ago, Johan Franzen takes a vast majority of his cracks at the net a stick’s length away from it.

Franzen is the bull to the goalie’s china shop. He has the finesse of a caveman and the grace of the town drunk. His goals have the beauty only a mother can love.

But hockey doesn’t award style points. Like its brethren, hockey is a bottom-line, end-of-the-day sport. Wins are doled out to the team with the most goals, not the most oohs and ahhs.

Every team should have a Johan Franzen. Yet not every team does.

It may seem that all Franzen does is throw himself at the net like a blind squirrel in search of a nut, hoping to pick up a few. But Franzen is a strong, powerful forward with a will to match. He is maybe the most purposeful player in the NHL.Especially come playoff time.

Since he’s been a regular with the Red Wings (seven seasons), Franzen has been his most lethal when the buds begin appearing on the trees and you can start smelling the charcoal and lighter fluid again.

In 83 career playoff games, Franzen has 37 goals—about 10 more than he averages per the same amount of games in the regular season.

An injury reduced him to just eight playoff games and two goals last spring, his effectiveness neutralized by his poor health. It was one major reason why the Red Wings couldn’t advance past the San Jose Sharks and the second round for the second year in a row.

Franzen is 6’3”, 225 pounds and doesn’t take no for an answer around the net. He plays like a bulldozer, but in reality he has hands as soft as rose petals. Often, you need to see the replays of his goals to appreciate his dexterity in such close quarters in the crease area.

Franzen has 18 goals this season in 47 games. On that pace, he’ll register about 30 for the year, which would be second to his career-high of 34, set in 2009. Of his 18 tallies thus far, all but a few have been scored while breathing down the goalie’s neck.

Franzen plays on a very intriguing line with center Pavel Datsyuk and right wing Todd Bertuzzi. I say intriguing because few lines in the NHL can match theirs in terms of creativity (Datsyuk), smarts (Bertuzzi) and sheer strength (Franzen).The line is becoming a beast in the league. All three of them are playing some of their best hockey right now. It’s a matchup nightmare for opposing coaches.

Johan Franzen isn’t likely to get a sniff of MVP talk, probably ever in his career. His play isn’t glitzy or glamorous. His goals don’t find their way on any of the ESPN highlight montages.

But try playing chunks of games without him and see how the Red Wings fare.

Not that I’m suggesting it.

Forget Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg et al—how Johan Franzen goes will pretty much determine how the Red Wings go. They are, after all, the only team that can saddle up a mule.

NHL “Iron Man” Wilson Deserved Better Upon News of His Passing

2012-01-15T16:57:00.000-05:00

He was the NHL’s original Iron Man—a man of perfect attendance, whose offices were located in six Taj Mahals of indoor sports venues.

Long before the tentacles of corporate sponsorship wrapped themselves around the naming of stadiums and arenas, the NHL of Johnny Wilson was played in a half dozen barns, each wonderfully devoid of anything remotely corporate in name, though several were botanical.

Chicago Stadium. Maple Leaf Gardens. The Boston Garden. Madison Square Garden. The Forum. Olympia Stadium.

The names of the arenas screamed hockey.

And Wilson screamed hockey by showing up to work everyday—580 consecutive times, to be exact.

This was the Original Six era—14 games played against each of your five opponents, for a 70-game schedule.

Which means that Johnny Wilson, playing for the Red Wings and Blackhawks in the 1950s, suited up for eight straight seasons without missing a game.

It was hockey without helmets, with shoulder pads smaller than those on today’s women’s attire and with cages around the rink, not Plexiglas.

Travel was by train, sometimes on the same cars as your opponent, if the teams were playing a home-and-home set. That made for some interesting commutes.

It was a race to see which would happen faster: players losing their teeth, or their faces being sewn back together.

All the players were Canadian.

The 70 games were scrunched together between mid-October and late-March. There was no two-month run of playoffs. Everything was wrapped up by mid-April, in time for the baseball season to take center stage.

Wilson joined the Red Wings late in the 1949-50 season, a 20-year-old from a town called Kincardine in Ontario. That was another constant—not only were all the players from Canada, they all hailed from towns that you needed a map to find.

Wilson, a left winger, picked a great time to debut in the NHL, because just weeks later, the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup.

Too young to crack the Red Wings’ talent-rich lineup on a consistent basis, Wilson bounced back and forth between Detroit and the minor leagues until midway through the 1951-52 season, when he got called up yet again.

That’s when he started his streak of 580 consecutive games played. No more minor leagues for him.

Three more Stanley Cups followed (1952, ’54, and ’55), with Wilson popping in the odd goal, and skating up and down his wing, dutifully, every night.

EVERY night.

The bottom line was this: Johnny Wilson got called up to the Red Wings in 1951 and didn’t miss a game the rest of the decade, despite a trade to Chicago in 1955 and back to Detroit in 1957.

The original NHL Iron Man.

Johnny wasn’t the only Wilson kid playing in the NHL—he just played in it longer. His brother, Larry, made it with the Red Wings for a time.

Larry also followed his big brother behind the bench as Red Wings coach.

More about that later.

Johnny Wilson died in Metro Detroit on December 27 at age 82, after an illness.

You’d hardly have known it, judging by the shameful under-reporting of his death by the Detroit newspapers.

Wilson was one of those Red Wings alumni who stayed in the area, hung around the team and who was always eager to talk hockey.

I should know.

In fall 2006, I moderated a roundtable discussion about hockey, comparing eras and talking about how the game has evolved since the 1950s.

The panel consisted of Ted Lindsay, Shawn Burr and Johnny Wilson.

Wilson was 77 at the time but he was as sharp as a scalpel, talking hockey and, more importantly, listening.

It was a wonderful hour.

Before we sat down and talked, I told Wilson that I thought he got a screw job, when he was fired as Red Wings coach after less than two seasons in 1973, and right after missing the playoffs by two measly points. I had wanted to tell him that ever since it happened.

He grinned and said, “Darkness with Harkness,” referring to GM Ned Harkness, who rendered Wilson's ziggy.

About four years after Johnny was canned as Red Wings coach, brother Larry came along and tried coaching the second half of a 16-55-9 year in 1977. Two years after that, Larry dropped dead of a heart attack, at age 49.

You may know Larry’s son—and Johnny’s nephew—Ron Wilson, coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Johnny Wilson was a great Red Wing. He wasn’t a prolific scorer; there were plenty of those on the roster. He won no MVP Awards nor had any remarkable seasons, statistically.

But he was there every night, in the lineup, for those 580 consecutive games. He won four Stanley Cups. And he kept himself closely aligned with the Red Wings, being active in the Alumni Association.

Wilson was also a pretty damn good coach who won a championship in the AHL before coaching the Red Wings.

He was a true gentleman who represented the Winged Wheel with class, dignity and respect.

He died on December 27 and his death barely got a sniff from the local fish wrap. Maybe everyone was too giddy about the Lions clinching a playoff spot just days earlier.

It was a shameful example of under-reporting, because Wilson was among the greatest of Red Wings.

As a player, he was as solid—and reliable—as they come. As a coach, he was innovative and settled the team down from the upheaval that existed when he took over.

As an alumnus, Wilson was active, involved and you knew there was a Winged Wheel tattooed on his heart.

He deserved better from the local papers, which should get a game misconduct for virtually ignoring his legacy.

Lions' Playoff Loss is Mayhew's Mulligan

2012-01-09T14:35:00.003-05:00

They say you should never bring a knife to a gunfight.

Well, the Lions didn't; they brought a shotgun. Trouble is, the New Orleans Saints have a howitzer.

The Lions, 45-28 losers on Saturday night in New Orleans, didn't get blown out because they don't have a good offense. The Lions lost big because the Saints' offense is better, and the Lions' defense is still a work in progress. If the Lions defense was a freeway, three lanes would be shut down and it would be filled with orange cones.

Did you notice any glaring differences between the Lions and Saints, when it came to having the football?

Don't look at the quarterbacks; Matthew Stafford and Drew Brees are pretty comparable.

Don't look at the receivers; the Lions have the best one on the planet, but the Saints have a cache of good receivers in their own right.

Did you happen to notice that the Saints have something called a ground game?

Oh, what the Lions offense could look like, if they had someone to run the football with any consistency.

My kingdom for Stephen Jackson of the St. Louis Rams.

But we'll just have to settle for a healthy Jahvid Best and Mikel Leshoure; which should occur next season, if Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside recover from concussion and Achilles injury, respectively.

The Saints gashed the Lions' supposedly dominant defensive line with the run all evening, as if Brees needs any help.

And as if the Lions' could have stopped him, even if your Aunt Mary were running the football.

Brees' surgery on the Lions secondary was complete. The Saints quarterback wielded his scalpel to the tune of 466 yards passing and three touchdowns. He left the Lions looking like Gerry Cheevers' goalie mask.

Now it's up to GM Marty Mayhew to make sure another scene of carnage never happens again to the Lions in a playoff game. This was Mayhew's Mulligan. He's allowed this implosion, because his team is still just three years removed from 0-16.

But next year, and the year after, and the year after, it will no longer satiate the fan base to simply qualify for the playoffs. We've fallen for that once before, in the 1990s, when the Lions went one-and-out in the post-season five out of six seasons in the decade.

That won't cut it, with a franchise quarterback and an All-Universe Receiver.

Mayhew's charge, in a way, gets simpler with the more success the Lions find, yet it also gets harder.

It gets simpler because the holes are fewer on the roster, thanks to Mayhew's astute drafting and slick trading and signings.

Yet it also gets harder because expectations have now been ratcheted up.

The Lions got carved up on Saturday and 626 total yards later, they were nothing but a carcass, the bones licked clean by the Saints' well-balanced offense.

Mayhew has to draft for secondary help this spring, and he needs to find a new center and left tackle, to be on the ready when Dom Raiola and Jeff Backus retire.

There needs to be more roster massaging before the Lions can truly call themselves Super Bowl contenders. No one gets bumped out of the playoffs in the first round, as soundly as the Lions did, and comes back with the same cast and crew and expects to make progress.

This was no fluke loss. You can't blame this one on the crazy bounces of an oblong pigskin.

The Lions were beaten, and beaten good, by the Saints, who are legitimately elite. The Saints are what the Lions would like to become, in short order.

The Lions can now check off "Make the playoffs" on their to-do list under the Mayhew/Jim Schwartz regime.

Next is, "Advance beyond the first round."

The biggest challenge yet for Maywartz.

Detroit Lions: Team of the 2010s?

2012-01-07T11:56:00.000-05:00

So here they come marching into New Orleans, this previously bedraggled pro football franchise, in seek of something which has eluded them 53 of the past 54 years.

It’s funny, in a way, that the Lions will be looking for just their second playoff victory since 1957 in New Orleans, a city that has vexed them and which has been the scene of many a crime against football humanity.

The Saints are winners now, and almost annual Super Bowl contenders these days. But from their inception in 1967 to nearly the dawn of the second decade of the 21st century, the New Orleans Saints were the Los Angeles Clippers of the NFL.

The Saints were slapstick, back in the day—a laughable franchise with a beaten down quarterback named Archie Manning, and with yearly won/loss records like 3-13. In 1980, the Saints managed to go 1-15.

The Saints were the ones getting their shirts and wallets lifted, like those audience participants at a magic show. Teams came to New Orleans for some gumbo, a little fun in the French Quarter and a 27-10 victory. The city’s nickname, The Big Easy, was perfectly apt—for opponents.

The Saints were the league’s coupon to a free victory.

Yet despite the pockmarked nature of the Saints franchise, the Lions suffered perhaps their most inglorious defeat of all time in New Orleans, on November 8, 1970, when Tom Dempsey thwacked a 63-yard field goal at the final gun to lift the Saints to victory.

In keeping with the times, the dramatic—and record-setting—victory was one of just two wins the Saints had in 1970.

The Lions haven’t won much in New Orleans, and just last month, the Saints ran away with a 31-17 victory.

The Saints have shaken their losing image like a caterpillar doing its butterfly thing.

No longer do teams fly down to Louisiana for a Big Easy win.

The Saints went 8-0 at home this season, and the scoreboard rings up like a pinball machine when they get into rhythm.

The Saints are 11-point favorites in Saturday night’s Wild Card game, and the NFL rarely sees those kinds of point spreads in the playoffs.

The game could turn into a disaster for the Lions, who have precious few players on their roster who’ve stepped onto the field for an NFL playoff game.

So the Lions will use that lack of experience to their advantage, or so they’ll try.

They’ve already talked of enjoying the underdog role, and that they have nothing to lose and that all the pressure is on the Saints.

The typical things teams who run the risk of getting run out of the building say as their execution approaches.

I look at the Lions now, just three years removed from the ignominy of 0-16, and I can’t help but think of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Steelers, the Team of the 1970s, were a wayward franchise in the 1960s, usually an also-ran and finding that football games were harder to win than a husband’s fight with his wife.

The bottoming out came in 1969, when the Steelers won on Opening Day for their bright young coach in his first season: Chuck Noll.

Then the Steelers lost their remaining 13 games.

From the ashes of 1-13, the Steelers drafted their franchise quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, in 1970. This was one year after the Steelers selected a brutally dominant defensive tackle named Joe Greene.

The Lions, just months removed from 0-16, drafted Matthew Stafford in 2009. In 2010, they added DT Ndamukong Suh.

The Steelers got better, and with defter drafting, they built a defense that became dominant, and an offense that could compete, too. By 1972, just three years from 1-13, the Steelers were in the playoffs.

The Lions are in the playoffs, just three years after 0-16. They’ve managed to do it with good drafting and smart free agent signings.

The Steelers began arming Bradshaw with weapons, adding a tough and fast runner, Franco Harris, in 1972 from nearby Penn State. They drafted a gazelle receiver in Lynn Swann in 1974.

The Steelers, via the draft, added pieces yearly. Trades were few and free agency didn’t really exist.

From the ruins of 1-13, the Pittsburgh Steelers won four Super Bowls in the 1970s—from 1974 thru 1979.

The Steelers won a miraculous playoff game in 1972—the famous Immaculate Reception game against Oakland. From that experience, the Steelers, with all their smart and brilliant draft choices, parlayed their Super Bowl credentials.

That’s how winning, perennially successful NFL franchises are built—through the draft. It has been the blueprint of the Steelers of the ‘70s, the 49ers of the ‘80s, the Cowboys of the ‘90s.

It says here that this same blueprint will be the success of the Lions of the ‘10s.

Lions GM Martin Mayhew is a smart man who learned from a dumb guy.

Mayhew, longtime second in command under the dunderhead Matt Millen, was promoted to GM after Millen’s firing early in the 2008 season. Quickly, Mayhew proved adept at the job. It was obvious that Mayhew took everything that Millen did, and did the exact opposite.

Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall in meetings that Millen held with Mayhew in attendance?

I can only wonder how many of those meetings Mayhew emerged from, shaking his head.

The 1970s Steelers didn’t take the NFL by storm right away. It took a couple of playoff losses before they found their footing. You know the rest.

The Lions have no business winning a playoff game in New Orleans, of all places, on Saturday night. They are three years removed from 0-16. Their quarterback is very good, but he’s all of 23 years old.

The Saints won the Super Bowl two years ago and could darn well do it again this year.

Only a delusional optimist would think the Lions can win this game.

And they probably won’t.

The Steelers needed a miracle play to win their first playoff game of 1972. Then they stumbled, and eventually learned how to win.

The Lions will likely lose on Saturday night, blocks from the French Quarter. It will be a necessity, almost, in their learning process.

The Team of the ‘10s?

Why the hell not?

The Best (and Worst) of Yours Truly, 2011

2011-12-31T10:24:00.000-05:00

In a flash, a whirr and a blur, another year in sports came and went. 2011, it seemed, might have been missed had you blinked.

And what a year it was.

Tigers AND Lions in the playoffs, for the first time in the same year since 1935.

Pistons with a new coach (again).

Red Wings almost coming all the way back from an 0-3 playoff deficit against the San Jose Sharks.

Michiganfootball resurging under new coach Brady Hoke.

And I wrote about it all—with varying degrees of premonition and soothsaying.

For the fourth year in a row, I take you through the calendar and share some of my bon mots—and why they were or were not some of my best.

January

(on Steve Yzerman putting together a winner inTampaBay)

You can dress him however you like, put him wherever you want, but you can’t take the will to win out of him.

There’s quite a story going on in the NHL, not that you’d know it, because it’s happening to a team closer toCubathanCanada.

Yzerman is Vice President and General Manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a hockey team that really does play in the NHL; I looked it up.

No team with which Yzerman has been associated has had a losing season since 1991.

Now he’s taking the slapstick Tampa Bay Lightning and making them the new Beasts of the East.

Yzerman is turning theTampa(freaking) Bay Lightning into winners in his first year on the job.

Surprised?

Stevie’s team made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals, as a matter of fact.

(on why the Pistons should hang onto veteran Tracy McGrady)

McGrady might be a Hall of Famer when all is said and done, except not all has been said, and it doesn’t look like all has been done; not even close.

The Pistons signed McGrady last August and it was the quintessential marriage of convenience. McGrady needed the Pistons so he could show the NBA that he still had game, and the Pistons needed another NBA veteran with a name; a player who wasn’t too far removed from his oohs and aahs days.

The Pistons didn’t need another swingman; in fact, they needed one like a hole in the head. And it wasn’t like NBA teams were knocking McGrady’s door down for

his services. But the Pistons figured they could get McGrady on the cheap (which they did), and maybe he could still score a little and provide a veteran presence.

It’s not a bad idea to keep dudes like this on your roster, if you can manage it.

The Pistons decided otherwise, and let McGrady walk away after one season in Detroit.

(on the once unthinkable retirement of former Piston Dennis Rodman’s number)

He worked as a janitor at theDallas-FortWorthAirportafter high school, but after another growth spurt he gave hoops another shot.

Keep in mind he played little to no high school basketball.

Turns out Rodman could play the game, after all, mainly because he had a fetish for rebounding. He played a semester for some place calledCookeCountyCollegeinGainesville,Texas, averaging over 17 points and 13 rebounds per game.

From there it was on to SE Oklahoma State, an NAIA school—which was not exactly the career path of choice if one hoped to crack the NBA.

The Pistons are going to do something on April 1 that, had you put money down on it in 1986, you’d be breaking the bank right about now.

On that date, Dennis Rodman’s No. 10 Pistons jersey will be raised into the rafters, which is appropriate because that’s often where you could have found Rodman himself, in his salad days as the league’s most ferocious rebounder.

Not long after, Rodman went into the Basketball Hall of Fame, too, for good measure.

February

(on the long overdue election of NFL Films founder Ed Sabol into the Pro Football Hall of Fame)

Ed Sabol is still around, thank goodness. He’s 94 years old.

I say thank goodness because only last week did the powers that be deem him worthy of induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

You heard me; it took them nearly 50 years after he fed his first footage into his 16 mm camera to put Ed Sabol into the Hall of Fame.

This is more overdue than a cure for the common cold.

Ed Sabol doesn’t just belong in the Hall of Fame, he should have his own wing. This is like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame realizing it hadn’t yet inducted the electric guitar.

It was very satisfying watching Ed, with son Steve by his side, giving his induction speech.

March

(on who should be the Tigers’ starting second baseman)

If I had a vote, I’d cast it for Will Rhymes to be the Tigers’ second sacker.

Rhymes, a lefty bat, is a prototypical second baseman. He’s hard-nosed and the front of his jersey is always dirty. He hit .304 in 191 AB last season, and he only made four errors in 53 games.

He’s a late bloomer, turning 28 on April 1, but that’s still seven years younger than (Carlos) Guillen.

Umm, you can’t win them all. Rhymes did indeed win the job in spring training, but he didn’t hit a lick and was lopped off the 40-man roster earlier this month.

(on the importance of leadoff hitter and centerfielder Austin Jackson to the Tigers’ cause)

Jacksonis the most important because if he gets a case of the sophomore jinxies, and the Tigers don’t have a reliable leadoff hitter, then the house of cards that is the team’s offense gets blown down.

Jacksonstrikes out a lot, which is understandable for a young player, but also more tolerable when that young player is hitting .300. It’s not so great if the batting average is .250 or .260.

Well, the batting average was .249, and the strikeouts jumped from 170 to 181. Yet the Tigers still won their division.

April

(on the sad state of veteran forward Mike Modano, who was on the outside looking in, for the most part, during the NHL playoffs)

Mike Modano, healthy scratch. For a playoff game.

Not what anyone had in mind when the Red Wings brought the veteran, home-grown kid back toDetroit.

Modano has gone on record as saying that this is likely his last chance at the Stanley Cup, because retirement is beckoning him.

“I can’t stay on the ice as long,” he told the media a few days ago. “I think my body is telling me that I’m near the end.”

Modano only got into two playoff games, and he retired over the summer, after having missed about three months of the season with a badly gashed wrist.

May

(on my frustration with the stubborn Tigers manager, Jim Leyland)

Jim Leyland, in case you haven’t heard, is a rocket scientist.

He presides over a job so sophisticated, so complicated, that it defies the understanding of those who aren’t rocket scientists.

He stands above all in his knowledge of his very scientific vocation, and therefore has no use for those whose brains simply cannot wrap themselves around the mesmerizing theorems, laws and corollaries that one must know in order to manage a baseball team.

OOPS; did I say Jim was a rocket scientist?

I made an assumption, since that’s how he treats his job, and those who dare question his logic.

The Marlboro Man had the last laugh, of course.

(on the prospects of new U-M football coach Brady Hoke)

Michiganfootball had been living in the penthouse and is now slumming. This is a program whose name wasn’t just spoken, it was said with a sneer—by both supporters and rivals.

Michigandidn’t get hurt, it inflicted it on others.

…But Hoke needs to start beatingMichiganState, too. And continue to beat Notre Dame. And he needs to keep having good recruiting classes. He needs to restore pride and faith inMichiganfootball once again.

Brady Hoke has one charge and one charge only: He has to saveMichiganfootball. That’s all.

And you know what?

I think he’s gouhnna do it.

That last sentence was my attempt at spelling how Hoke pronounces “gonna.” And, for the record, Hoke seems to be right on course, leading the Wolverines to a fine 10-2 season.

(on the Red Wings forcing a Game 7 in their conference semi-final series againstSan Jose, after dropping the first three games)

It’s now the thinkable.

The Red Wings are Secretariat in 1973, the ‘51 Giants, the ‘78 Yankees. They’re the ‘68-69 New York Jets, the 2004 Red Sox.

The tortoise has nothing on them, in that great race against the hare.

Check the calendar for a month of Sundays. Charlie Brown might get that kick off, after all, out of Lucy’s hold.

This isn’t happening, but yet it is. Even Disney’s Mighty Ducks never pulled something like this off.

The Red Wings are going to play a Game 7, which was a fantasy a week ago. Remember a week ago? A gut-wrenching overtime loss in Game 3? Devin Setoguchi with a hat trick, including a penalty in overtime and the game-winner shortly after he fled the box?

The Red Wings dropped that Game 7 to the Sharks, but they made Hockeytown so extremely proud of them.

(on why the Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera hasn’t been embraced by fans as a superstar player should)

We love the idea of Miguel Cabrera being on our team. But we don’t love him. In fact, there’s a bunch of us who may not even like him, because he’s not that likeable of a guy, frankly.

Which is all such a shame, because we probably have him figured out all wrong. His teammates liken him to a big, cuddly bear. That may be the case; they ought to know, after all.

But we don’t see that side because we don’t see him. All we see is a big, talented man wearing a Tigers uniform. That may be enough for some, but it falls way short for most.

We don’t know Miguel Cabrera because we never hear from him. This is his fourth season as a Tiger and the man is a blank canvas, save for some splotches that have been tossed onto it.

I stand by this, though he ingratiated himself more as the season wore on.

June

(on LeBron James, after the Miami Heat lost the NBA Finals toDallas)

The Miami Heat won’t soon live this one down, folks. Maybe not ever. History, me thinks, will be in a cranky mood when it passes judgment on the 2010-11MiamiHeat—the team LeBron James couldn’t wait to join. The team that so easily seduced him, but that he also disappointed by leaving during the NBA Finals.

Until he wins a championship—and there’s no guarantee that he ever will—LeBron James should go down as one of the most laughable “superstars” that pro sports has ever seen. He should go down as a less-than-brilliant, heartless, gutless player who managed to fool his public even while hiding in plain sight.

But LeBron didn’t just fool them; he failed them.

His name doesn’t belong in the same sentence as Michael Jordan’s, unless it’s to create a grocery list of reasons why it doesn’t.

Why don’t I tell you what I REALLY feel?

(on the death of former Tiger Jim Northrup, and my personal dealings with him)

Jim Northrup always got his hacks in—whether it was at the plate or at the table.

I remember conversing with him on the phone in advance of the roundtable and it was free form Northrup. He was in a mood to talk, as usual, so I obliged, feeding him batting practice pitches and marveling at the results.

I found out that he hated playing for Billy Martin because, according to Jim, Martin was quick to take the credit and even quicker to blame his players and others when the Tigers were in a losing funk.

I found out that when Norm Cash was released in 1974 (the day after my birthday), Norm found out on the radio, driving to the ballpark. Northrup told me that he was so upset about the way his friend and teammate was cashiered, that he burst into manager Ralph Houk’s office to vent.

He was one of a kind, Jim Northrup was. RIP.

July

(on the potential end of Red Wings goalie Chris Osgood’s career)

So it will be with Osgood, 38, who is likely to be among the last to acknowledge that his days as Howard’s backup are over with.

Osgood is coming off two less-than-stellar seasons that have been pocked with injury, most recently to the groin—a goalie’s worst enemy.

Osgood is another who isn’t making things easy forHolland. Ozzie hasn’t offered to be jettisoned, nor will he make such an overture. At least, it’s doubtful that he will.

But Osgood’s reticence hasn’t stoppedHollandfrom carrying on with his duties as GM. The Red Wings have some money to spend on a new/old goalie. They told Osgood (and Kris Draper) that a new contract wouldn’t be offered until after July 1, the date that free agents can begin to be signed. That is, if a contract would be offered at all.

It wasn’t, and Ozzie retired to help coach the organization’s young goalies.

(on the All-Star season authored by Tigers catcher AlexAvila)

Now I know why they call April 1, April Fool’s Day.

For that was the date, after just one game had been played in the 2011 season, that sports talk radio was lit up with phone calls from loudmouths on their cell phones, calling for the ouster of catcher Alex Avila from not only the Tigers starting lineup, but from the roster, from Detroit, and probably even the state of Michigan—to be on the safe side.

The Tigers had lost on Opening Day to the Yankees inNew York, and I won’t argue that it wasn’t one ofAvila’s crowning moments. He was shaky behind the plate and he looked overmatched with the bat—albeit he was going against southpaw CC Sabathia.

After one game, the callers were frothing at the mouth.

By mid-season, those same callers were urging fellow fans to vote for Avila for the All-Star team.

August

(on the importance of Lions QB Matthew Stafford staying healthy for the whole season)

Every timeStaffordgets hit, every time he scrambles around in the pocket—hell, every time he jogs onto the field for player introductions—Lions fans will wring their hands and rock back and forth in their seats.

The sales of candles and rabbit’s feet will explode in Motown this football season.

…The Lions are worthy of the buzz for reasons other thanStafford, I will grant you that.

There’s Ndamukong Suh, the wrecking ball defensive tackle, who might be, after just one season, the best in the business. Suh is the godfather of the D-line and sitting with him at the table are some very fearsome lieutenants.

There’s freakishly big Calvin Johnson, the receiver who gleefully gallops across the gridiron, making the football that he’s clutching look like a baking potato.

There’s more talent across the board than any Lions team we’ve been presented with in years.

But Matthew Stafford has to stay healthy. He just has to.

So far, so good.

(on my [then] disappointment with Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera)

Baloney, I say, to those who would tell me that I expect too much from Miguel Cabrera.

Look at his numbers, they’ll say. He grinds out an MVP-like season almost annually.

So how come Cabrera has never truly ever, in his four years as a Tiger, put the team on his back for any extended period of time?

Has he? Go ahead—I’ll wait while you come up with some examples. Or one, even.

Cabrera is doing it again, his timing again impeccably bad.

He has pedestrian numbers, this season, for a man of his talents. He swings too much at the first pitch. He grounds out to shortstop more than I thought was humanly possible.

This is the column that I took the most heat from. And Cabrera turned it around almost immediately and I gladly ate crow.

(on the Pistons hiring yet another new coach—Lawrence Frank)

They paraded another poor sap onto the lectern to be given his death sentence as the new head coach of the Detroit Pistons the other day.

There was Joe Dumars, team president, leading the march, and the way these things have gone over the years, you half expected to see Joe reading from a Bible n Latin, his head bowed.

The scene that unfolded on Wednesday was the seventh one presided over by Dumars since 2000.

It goes like this: Dumars leads his doomed coaching choice onto the lectern, says a few words tinged with hope and confidence that the man seated to his left is “the one.” Doomed coach speaks of work ethic and tradition and fends off questions about his past failures or mercurial history. The proceedings end with Dumars, the coach’s future executioner, shaking hands and smiling with his eventual victim as the cameras snap away.

Let’s hope Frank proves to be something other than just another Pistons coach who stays for a couple years then is jettisoned.

September

(on Lions coach Jim Schwartz)

Jim Schwartz has been the head coach of the Detroit Lions for nearly three years and I don’t trust him.

He doesn’t have “the look.”

How can he be the coach of the Lions and not look like he just saw Humpty Dumpty fall down and bounce back up?

The Detroit Lions coaches of years past have always had “the look.” The one that speaks the ghoulish thousand words.

...A look further at the hype reveals a common thread—the folks going ga-ga over the Lions do so because they all believe in the head coach.

“Smart” is the word that is most often repeated when describing Schwartz.

Jim Schwartz does know his football. He knows talent. And he knows what he’s doing as a head coach in the NFL.

Now THERE’S a look for you.

Schwartz has the 10-5 Lions in the playoffs, three years after 0-16. Looks good to me!

October

(on the prospects of the Red Wings without defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom)

Lidstrom, the Red Wings‘ all-universe defenseman, is 41 years old. In human years.

In hockey-playing years, he’s closer to 30, because he hasn’t used his body as a battering ram or for someone else’s target practice.

Lidstrom plays hockey like Bobby Fischer played chess and Minnesota Fats played billiards—literally. No one has seen that 200’x80’ sheet of ice better than Lidstrom, who is always a move or two ahead of his opponent. He’s the geometric hockey player—using the puck’s caroms and angles like Fats used those green felt rails.

There hasn’t been a defenseman like him, before or since he entered the NHL in 1991. I’ll put up a batch of my wife’s Pasta Fagioli that there won’t be one like him after, either. Ever.

Sooner rather than later, the Red Wings will have to pursue the Cup without Lidstrom, a frightening thought indeed.

(on why the Tigers beating the Yankees in the playoffs couldn’t really be celebrated)

It’s tempting to say that this is as good as it gets—that the moment is so savory as to be incapable of being eclipsed.

The problem with beating the New York Yankees in the first round of the playoffs—on the Yankees home field in a do-or-die game that boils down to the fate of the last batter, indeed the last strike—is how easy it is to feel like nothing can be tougher.

Or that nothing could be better.

As sweet as the Tigers’ 3-games-to-2 victory was over the Yankees in the American League Divisional Series (ALDS), it doesn’t change the fact that the Tigers are still just one-third of the way toward their post-season goal.

And that’s as far as the Tigers got, thanks to Texas’s Nelson Cruz.

November

(on why Lions DT Ndamukong Suh is good for the NFL’s business, good guy or bad guy)

It doesn’t matter if the publicity is positive or negative. The NFL loves Ndamukong Suh because, for the first time in decades, the league has a Bad Guy.

Suh’s entry into the NFL is the best-timed debut of any pro player since Magic Johnson and Larry Bird splashed onto the NBA scene in 1979. Before Magic and Bird, the NBA was scrambling for media attention. They were like the NHL has always been.

Prior to Magic and Bird, the NBA used to televise its Finals games on tape delay. No fooling.

The NFL has been desperate for a marquee name on defense for several years. The two guys who most fans think of when it comes to tough defense—Brian Urlacher and Ray Lewis—are on the back end of their careers.

Suh’s play on the field seemed to take a slight step backward in his sophomore season, but his presence in the league is still high-profile and impactful.

(on former Lions guard—and paraplegic—Mike Utley’s battle to once again walk sans crutches)

Utley then made one of the most famous gestures inDetroitsports history.

His life certainly flashing before his eyes, his fear of his own well-being no doubt palpable, Utley nonetheless thought about the fans and his teammates.

He managed to work his right hand into a position of hope.

Thumbs up!

The gesture just about brought the Silverdome down. The image was beamed onto the big JumboTron screen above the end zone scoreboard, so that the fans could see it, just as those watching at home on television could.

Thumbs up!

Utley’s message of hope became the rallying cry for the Lions, who didn’t lose another game the rest of the year until they succumbed toWashingtonin the NFC Championship game in January.

It’s hard to find a more inspirational figure than Mike Utley.

(on the mid-season struggles of Lions QB Matthew Stafford)

But someone has to get Matthew Stafford right. And fast. There’s no Dave Krieg 1994 or Eric Hipple 1981 standing by. The only way backup Shaun Hill starts is ifStaffordis hurt—there’s no QB controversy here.

Staffordisn’t right. His sluggishness extends back to the 49ers game on October 16.

The Lions have to fix him, or none of this playoff talk will mean a Hill of beans.

The Lions fixed him—i.e., his broken right index finger healed—and Stafford is as hot as they come heading into the playoffs.

December

(on a new era of Lions football, being ushered in by coach Schwartz, after the team clinched a playoff berth)

It’s a new age of Detroit Lions football. Jim Schwartz aims to make his the next great era. One that will make history not as kind to the Fontes years, after all.

If that happens, we just might look back to Christmas Eve, 2011 as the victory that started the Lions on their way.

We just might.

(on new Pistons coach Lawrence Frank and his dual charge: to make the Pistons competitive and likeable)

From this hodgepodge of a roster, coach Frank has to not only make the Pistons competitive but also make a team that people will want to see perform. He doesn’t have the luxury of a superstar player around whom the rest of the team satellites.

The Pistons’ fan base, I suspect, is ready to embrace a kinder, gentler team—even if it’s one that doesn’t produce a lot of wins right away. That’s how bad things have gotten here since 2008.

Frank has dealt with starting 0-16 inNew Jerseya few years ago.

The Pistons won’t scare him.

The Pistons’ new slogan, to replace the tired and worn “Going to Work,” should be a derivative of Al Davis’s mantra with the Oakland Raiders.

“Just Like Us, Baby.”

After three games, the likeable part looks to be more feasible than the competitive part, for now.

There you have it! 2011 in a nutshell.

See ya next year.

Lions Theft in Oakland Biggest Win in Years

2011-12-19T16:09:00.002-05:00

The man with half a foot and a stump for an arm trotted onto the field at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans on November 8, 1970. The least likely pro football record holder was a pudgy, roly-poly man with what looked like a block of wood for a right foot.

As Tom Dempsey strode onto the field, with two seconds remaining and the ball on his Saints' 44-yard line, his team trailing the Lions, 17-16, chortles began in the Lions defensive huddle.

Alex Karras has confirmed it, on many occasions. He and his teammates openly mocked the Saints and Dempsey for attempting a 63-yard field goal, when the current record was merely 56 yards.

But the Saints only needed three points for the win, and new coach J.D. Roberts (he took over for the fired Tom Fears that week) figured the chances were just as good, if not better, of Dempsey getting a good "foot" into one, rather than tossing a Hail Mary pass.

So the Saints lined up for the kick. In Dempsey's own words, as told to the Detroit Free Press's George Puscas back in 1992, "The goalposts looked far away."

They were.

Dempsey's kick was square and true. His club foot made a sound like a cannon going off, according to those who were there that day, when it made contact with the football.

The pigskin traveled like a missile instead of a kicked football. It didn't really go end-over-end, like a normal kick. Rather, Dempsey's shot kind of sailed with the ends of the ball parallel to the field. Only at the very end did it return to end-over-end status, and plopped just over the crossbar.

The Saints beat the Lions, 19-17. Karras, who moments earlier was among the mockers, had actually tried his damndest to block the kick but barely missed it with his outstretched hand.

It was impossible for old goats like yours truly to not flash back to that November day in 1970, when Sebastian Janikowski jogged onto the field in Oakland on Sunday, preparing to swing his left foot into a 65-yard field goal attempt.

The CBS announcer in New Orleans was Don Criqui.

"Dempsey will set a new National Football League record," Criqui said into the microphone, which can be relived courtesy of YouTube. "In addition to winning the game."

Janikowski would have set a new National Football League record with his kick. In addition to winning the game.

Could the Detroit Lions fall victim to such crapola twice?

If any franchise could, it would be the Lions, right?

Not this time.

Ndamukong Suh, compared by I earlier this season to the great DT Karras, succeeded where old no. 71 failed. Suh blocked Janikowski's kick, causing it to flutter harmlessly away from the goalposts.

And the Lions had sealed an improbable 28-27 win.

In the euphoria of such a win, i.e. the 24 hours or so after it happens, it's easy to overstate its importance, and its place in history.

It's so easy for those who rap on keyboards and who blab into sports talk radio microphones to get overly giddy about a win like Sunday's, in which the Lions trailed by 13 points with 7:47 remaining.

Go ahead. Get giddy. Everyone has my permission.

This wasn't just a win, after all. The bloggers and radio hosts are right this time.

The Lions franchise has turned the corner, I tell you. Four comeback wins of 13+ points in the same season---never before done in the 90+ year history of the NFL.

It's a team that can look maddeningly undisciplined and neutralized on the one hand, but then look like a juggernaut on the other.

But the NFL is perhaps the most "bottom line" of all the four major pro sports leagues. There are only 16 regular season games, and every one of them is the most important game of the year, starting with opening day.

So the only thing that matters in the NFL is this: did you win, or did you lose?

Period.

The Lions have been able to say they won nine times this season. Which, after 14 games, puts them on the precipice of their first playoff appearance since the 2oth century (1999).

The Lions are winning games this season like they've never won before. And the best part is that they haven't really lost like they used to lose, i.e. games they shouldn't have lost.

Look at who's beaten the Lions this season.

The 49ers, who are 10-3.

The Falcons, who are 9-5.

The Bears, who were riding a hot streak at the time.

The Packers. Enough said.

The Saints, who are 11-3.

So it's not like the Lions are losing to chopped liver.

You win for a reason in the NFL, and, more telling, you lose for a reason, too.

No team can look at their record after 16 games and say that luck or flukes played a factor.

You're 3-13 for a reason. And, conversely, you're 13-3 for a reason as well.

The Lions are 9-5 and that's that. They are a 9-5 team for a reason.

And they are tantalizingly close to that elusive playoff appearance. A winning record is already secured, their first since 2000.

Also in the 20th century, by the way.

The Lions are, like so many teams in the NFL, a flawed, imperfect platoon. They are capable of so much greatness, and so much exasperating play, too.

Just like every other team in the league, even the Packers.

A win like Sunday's in Oakland can do so much for the psyche of a football team, just like the crazy comeback wins engineered over the Vikings and Cowboys earlier this season, on successive weeks, both on the road.

Matthew Stafford leading a 99-yard drive with just over two minutes to play, sans timeouts, brazenly throwing the football to the man who everyone in the stadium knows shouldn't beat you (Calvin Johnson), was like Justin Verlander striking out three straight All-Stars with first base open to seal a win.

It shouldn't happen. But it did.

Stafford is the best quarterback not named Bobby Layne in Lions history. Already.

He's just getting started, and when you look at the Lions' young talent and developing depth, it's hard not to say the same thing about this team.

Go ahead, get giddy. It's about damn time.

Pistons' Frank Has to Make Team Likable AND Competitive

2011-12-18T11:39:00.001-05:00

Auburn Hills is a 35-minute drive north of Detroit. Make that almost an hour if you dare try it in the shadow of 5:00 traffic. It’s a rather uninspiring trek up I-75, with warehouses and impersonal office buildings surrounding you on the east and west.

The starkness of the Detroit city limits gives way to those of the industrialized Troy as you head north, with a lovely view of the Oakland Mall to your right. Your passengers can practically reach out and touch Macy’s.

Then there’s a woodsy interlude before more commercialization, in the form of the Great Lakes Crossing shopping complex. More retail outlets and fast food joints than you can shake a stick at.

Finally, there it is, to your left, off Lapeer Road. The Palace of Auburn Hills, sitting by its lonesome self, like the Silverdome did so infamously in Pontiac.

The Palace, built in the middle of the woods in 1988, is a state-of-the-art facility that continues to be a model of engineering for those seeking out new sports arenas.

It’s a delightful arena with wonderful sight lines and plenty of parking. You don’t have to settle for a space in another part of town and take a shuttle (or a People Mover) to get there. There isn’t a parking structure with which to contend.

The problem is that it’s too far away from…anything.

Certainly too far to travel to watch an unlikable pro-basketball team lose on a snowy January night.

Professional hoops has never been the easiest sell in our town. The Pistons, in their sometimes-inglorious 54-year history in Detroit, have heavily discounted and given away more tickets than all the community theater performances of “Annie” put together.

When the Pistons first arrived in our town back in 1957, they played Olympia Stadium like they were the Beatles’ opening act.

The maintenance crews would throw some would panels onto the ice surface so the folks in the expensive seats wouldn’t slip and fall on their fannies. The court was also laid on said ice, which resulted in some players sliding too.

The crowds were a couple thousand of the most curious, or those who happened to see a voucher on a fast food counter.

Then the Pistons took their act to brand new Cobo Arena in 1961. Cobo, a pill-shaped venue on the Detroit River, was gorgeous in its own way but too vast for the Pistons crowds. Cobo seated about 11,000 for basketball and on most nights about 8,000 of those were empty.

In 1978, the Pistons moved into the Pontiac Silverdome, an even more cavernous facility. It was like moving a mouse into a mansion.

Ten years later, the Pistons inched even further north, into the glitzy Palace of Auburn Hills.

For a time it worked. The team was winning championships—two for two in the first two years in the Palace. The drive north didn’t turn too many people away, as it turned out.

But as soon as the losing returned to a franchise that had been quite used to it—circa 1993-96—the Palace seemed like a faraway place.

The championship of 2004 and the near miss a year later made the Palace seem closer again. Funny how that works.

Today, the Palace is far away, once more.

Lawrence Frank is the Pistons’ new coach. His charge isn’t necessarily just to make a winning team. He has to make people like the Pistons—enough to want to venture to the Palace on a snowy night in January to see them battle the rest of the NBA. On most nights, those battles will likely end up in the other team’s favor.

Some would say that the challenge of making the Pistons likable again is more daunting than that of making them winners once more.

Let’s wind the clocks back to June 2004.

There the Pistons were, championship t-shirts and caps on their bodies and heads, confetti dumping on them from the Palace rafters.

World Champions!

There was no superstar on that Pistons roster, which was greater than the sum of its parts. The Pistons were bucking the trend that said you had to have at least one megastar, if not two or three, to win the whole shebang.

It was all a fluke, as it turned out.

You DO have to have at least one white-hot star on your roster to win an NBA championship. Two would be even better, thank you.

The Miami Heat notwithstanding, that’s the reality of today’s NBA.

The Pistons, who will begin play the day after Christmas to tip-off the truncated 2011-12 season, have no superstars. Not even close. They have a roster full of guys who are 6’8”. No one does anything particularly well.

The Pistons were last in the playoffs in 2008 and that ended in an ugly fashion on a May evening in Boston. The Pistons who had confetti rain on them in the Palace in 2004—Chauncey Billups, Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince, et al—had turned into petulant, shameful crybabies.

The 2007-08 season was the culmination of four years of almost greatness that instilled an unattractive sense of entitlement into a team whose players felt like all they needed to do was show up, and a return trip to the NBA Finals would be theirs.

The Pistons made it to six straight Eastern Conference Finals, but in the last three they progressively regressed physically and mentally.

It all ended with an ejected Wallace tearing his jersey off and the Pistons imploding in Boston in 2008. Billups was traded early the next season, and the die was cast.

Since then, it’s been three seasons of bad coaching hires, inmates running the asylum, questionable trades, suspect free-agent signings and general disdain.

Lawrence Frank has a rookie point guard, Brandon Knight, who might be something. He has a second-year big man, Greg Monroe, who showed promise in the second half of last season.

He has a healthy Jonas Jerebko, one of those 6’8” guys, but has some potential as an X-factor or a sixth man.

Frank has Tayshaun Prince, newly signed to a four-year pact. Another 6’8” guy that could have championship pedigree.

Frank also has the disappointing free-agent class of 2009—Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva.

Frank doesn’t have Hamilton any longer—but this is addition by subtraction.

That’s pretty much it. Everyone else is either a hard-worker, a role guy, or both, like the ancient warrior Ben Wallace.

From this hodgepodge of a roster, coach Frank has to not only make the Pistons competitive but also make a team that people will want to see perform. He doesn’t have the luxury of a superstar player around whom the rest of the team satellites.

The Pistons' fan base, I suspect, is ready to embrace a kinder, gentler team—even if it’s one that doesn’t produce a lot of wins right away. That’s how bad things have gotten here since 2008.

Frank has dealt with starting 0-16 in New Jersey a few years ago.

The Pistons won't scare him.

The Pistons’ new slogan, to replace the tired and worn “Going to Work,” should be a derivative of Al Davis’s mantra with the Oakland Raiders:

“Just Like Us, Baby.”

Lions Win, But Not Before Their Playoff Hopes Flash Before Their Eyes

2011-12-12T15:00:00.002-05:00

The penalty was for one yard. Three measly feet. Yet it seemed like a mile, and it felt like a reminder to us of Lions ineptitude and bad timing.

One more act of stupidity, right? One very Lions-esque thing to do, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and turn what had been a fun, festive Sunday afternoon into something that Stephen King might have penned.

Cliff Avril was the Lions player this time. He was the one looking to the heavens, shaking his head, wondering why he had just done what he had just done.

It's been a question asked too often by and about Lions players of the past.

What did Cliff Avril just do?? Are you kidding me?

Avril had inexplicably jumped offsides, as if he'd been shot out of a toy cannon, with the Minnesota Vikings on the Lions' two-yard line, sans time outs, and the clock heading for single digits.

The blunder stopped the clock, of course, with nine ticks remaining.

The infraction moved the Vikings merely a yard closer to paydirt, but that yard carried a big stick.

It was but a yard, but it appeared to represent so much more.

Avril's gift of a yard to the Vikings looked like it would be the three feet that QB Joe Webb needed to march his team to the winning score. The Lions led 34-28 but never before did a six-point lead look so fragile. It wasn't a lead, it was a fraying rope with a piano tied to it, hovering over the Lions' playoff hopes.

And Avril, it looked like, had just held a blowtorch to that fraying piece of rope.

He did WHAT?

Tell me that your thoughts didn't go back to Bobby Ross going for two or Marty Mornhinweg taking the wind. Tell me they didn't and I'll call you a liar.

Tell me, as the Vikings lined up at the one-yard line with nine seconds left, on the verge of wiping out a 21-point deficit and squeezing the life out of the Lions' season, that you didn't think back to the Matt Millen Era and the Paul Edinger field goal on the last play of the 2000 season which led to said Era.

Avril's random act of madness caused a packed house at Ford Field to cease breathing, which the faithful didn't re-commence doing until Avril, of all people, finally pounced on a football (aka the greased pigskin) that bounded some 50 yards downfield after it was slapped from Webb's hands by a blitzing DeAndre Levy.

The final play of Sunday's game was like the final scene of a horror movie---the kind where the girl is about to get killed and the hero shoots the villain from behind, when you didn't even know the hero was around.

It was a stunning finish to a game that the Lions should have had in their back pocket, except that pocket had a hole the size of Joe Webb in it.

The Lions had no clue as to how to deal with Webb, who bounced around like a pinball in the Vikings backfield, rattling off one would-be Lions tackler after the other, and always ending up in a bonus cup.

Webb ran around and around and around---sometimes appearing to run half the length of the football field, except horizontally and in zig-zag fashion.

As Lions coach Jim Schwartz said afterward as he was still catching his breath, his team tried everything against Webb. And still Webb almost led the Vikings back from a 31-14 second half deficit.

Webb started the comeback by managing to gallop from the pocket to the end zone, some 65 yards away, with no Lions defender within a 10-yard radius. He made Denard Robinson look like Scott Mitchell.

It all came down to the Vikings at the Lions' one, with nine seconds left. Three feet away from a tying touchdown and the near-certain go-ahead PAT.

Three feet from the apparent end of the Lions' season, or certainly the beginning of the end.

Three feet from another brutal loss that this town would be talking about for years to come.

Then Levy struck, blowing up Webb and the Vikes' hopes of an improbable victory.

"I was nervous, watching that football," Schwartz said afterward of Webb's game-ending fumble, his words captured by Fox 2 Detroit's post-game show camera. "I thought (Webb) would pick it up and start running around with it again."

Good thing Webb didn't. I don't think football fans can hold their breath that long.

The Not-Ready-For-Prime Time Players

2011-12-05T14:49:00.002-05:00

October seems like eons ago.

It was a grand time, October was.

The Tigers were thrilling us in the playoffs. The Red Wings were about to begin another Cup Quest. The Pistons were forcibly removed from our thoughts, thank God.

And the Lions?

The Lions, in October, were on a nine-game winning streak, in a broken arrow way dating back to last season. They were shoving memories of the "same old Lions" further into the recesses of our minds.

They seemed to be handling their new-found success just fine under head coach Jim Schwartz, a humorless sort who really should have been a Secret Service agent.

The Lions got off to a 5-0 jackrabbit start and their heads seemed of the proper proportions. They appeared to understand that Super Bowls aren't won in October, though they can be lost that soon.

Even a two-game stumble at home against San Francisco and Atlanta seemed to be tolerable after the Lions went into Denver and made those who believed in Tim Tebow look foolish.

Then came the bye week.

For whatever reason, the Lions came back from their week off as if they'd been brainwashed at a commune.

"Discipline bad. Thuggish behavior good," is what must have been drilled into their heads.

Since the bye, the Lions are 1-3, their star d-lineman has been shamed, suspended and ridiculed and they've twice embarrassed themselves on national TV with this Bad News Lions act that isn't cute anymore.

The Lions are disintegrating before our eyes, their playoff hopes dying a slow death as their play has been one part dumb, two parts exasperating.

The latest meltdown occurred last night in New Orleans, with all the world---and Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth---to see.

It was a night that saw three---THREE---offensive pass interference penalties on the same receiver. A night that saw the Lions shove, throw footballs and slap face masks. A night with 11 penalties for over 100 yards.

The Lions have had two consecutive shots to show the nation what they're made of. Two straight chances to validate their 5-0 start, and prove that it was no fluke. Two straight games on a big stage, against big time opponents---golden opportunities to wipe the smirks off the faces of football fans outside of Detroit.

The only thing that got wiped on anyone's face was egg on the Lions'.

I've said it before: NFL games are lost far more than they are won. The teams that make the fewest mistakes win on a ridiculously consistent basis.

The Lions' 31-17 loss to the Saints on NBC only stoked the fire that is raging about how the Lions play football on the brink of disaster.

They are like the guy in that old kids game, Tip-It. Remember him? The one who precariously balanced on top of the pinnacle, always destined to fall?

It was always just a matter of time when the Tip-It dude would come tumbling down.

The word is out on the Lions. The book on players and teams in the NFL spreads like wildfire. It doesn't take long for your opponents to catch on, and once they do, you'd better change your ways, and fast.

The book is this: the Lions can be baited. They can be toyed with, almost, until they do something suicidal in nature.

An ill-timed personal foul. A cheap shot. An unsportsmanlike foul. Just a little trash talk, or a slight shove after the whistle, and you can get the Lions off and running---toward their own goal.

One of the Packers players said as much after the Thanksgiving Day game.

Just be patient, the player said, and the Lions will do something stupid.

"They've done it all year," the Packers player, so wise, said.

Indeed they have, but it's getting worse as the year goes on, not better.

In the salad days of October, I heaped praise on Coach Schwartz for keeping his players on an even keel despite the heady 5-0 start.

But then Schwartz himself went sideways against 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh after that loss in Detroit, and ever since his team has followed suit with mind-numbingly stupid play.

If one is to give Schwartz credit for what happened in September and October, then he has to take the heat for the shameful play that has taken place since.

The Lions are 7-5 and even though their playoff chances are tenuous, they have pretty much lost games that we expected them to lose and won most of the games we expected them to win, i.e. against the bad teams.

They will likely beat Minnesota next Sunday and move to 8-5. After that it's a crap shoot.

So it's not that they're doing anything completely unexpected when it comes to wins and losses. Did you have them beating the Bears in Chicago, the Packers on Thanksgiving or the Saints in New Orleans?

I had them losing all three---and they obliged.

It's one thing, though, to get beat by superior teams. It's another to commit football Hari-kari and show yourself to be, in a way, the "same old Lions."

It's not like this is the first time stupid penalties and dumb play has vexed them.

It's just happening when the stakes are higher, that's all.

Red Wings Set in Goal With the Late-Blooming Howard

2011-12-04T09:13:00.001-05:00

The most celebrated goaltender in Red Wings history—indeed, maybe in NHL history—was a tormented man. It’s been said that you have to be a little off your rocker to want to throw yourself into the path of vulcanized rubber discs for a living. Terry Sawchuk may not have been crazy, but he wasn’t happy.

It’s been documented—by his teammates, by his son, by those who covered him. Sawchuk, the Hall of Famer who did three stints with the Red Wings from 1949 to 1969, was a tragically sad man, for the most part.

Sawchuk was like the comedian who makes your sides burst with laughter, but who himself is devoid of joy. Kind of like the troubled Lenny Bruce, who, like Sawchuk, was dead by age 40.

Sawchuk dominated NHL shooters in his day, racking up 103 shutouts (a record long considered unbreakable until New Jersey’s Marty Brodeur proved otherwise) and guarding the Detroit goal like an Irish beat cop in the Bowery.

He gave Red Wings fans much joy—and helped lead his teammates to three Stanley Cups—but Sawchuk was joyless in the process. He was afflicted with untreated depression, and nearly had a nervous breakdown in 1957 while playing for Boston.

It should be noted that Sawchuk, at age 37, led the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Stanley Cup in 1967. The Leafs haven’t really come close to winning it since.

Yet even the great Terry Sawchuk was dispatched out of Detroit because there was someone else to take his place. It happened in 1955, when the Red Wings, fresh off another Stanley Cup victory, dealt Sawchuk to Boston to make room for youngster Glenn Hall.

It was like trading Sinatra to make room for a young Perry Como.

The two-headed goalie in Detroit has been a monster seen all too often in the Motor City. The parallel between the Red Wings goalie situations and those of the Lions’ quarterbacks are eerily similar.

Both teams can point to the mid-to-late-1950s as to when the two-headed monsters made their debut.

On the gridiron we had Layne and Rote then Plum and Sweetan then Munson and Landry then…well, you don’t really want me to go on, do you?

On the ice it hasn’t been all that different.

Sawchuk gave way to Hall, then the Red Wings brought Sawchuk back and got rid of Hall, who is a Hall of Famer in his own right.

Sawchuk was with the Red Wings until 1964, then the merry-go-round in the Detroit net really began.

It hasn’t mattered if the Red Wings were atrocious, as they were for most of the 1970s until the late-1980s, or if they were annual Cup contenders, as they have been for the past 20 years.

The two-headed goalie monster has reared its head often, regardless.

Remember the two heads of Glen Hanlon and Greg Stefan? They led the Red Wings to the NHL’s version of the Final Four in 1987 and ’88.

How about Mike Vernon and Chris Osgood? They presided over a 62-win season in 1996, then took turns leading the Red Wings to the Cup—Vernon in 1997 and Osgood in 1998.

Dominik Hasek. Curtis Joseph. Manny Legace. Hasek again. Osgood again. Hasek again. Osgood again.

The Red Wings, with their two-headed monster between the pipes, won four Stanley Cups in an 11-year stretch.

The goalie controversies have been much kinder to the Red Wings than the QB ones have been to the Lions.

But you can say goodbye to both two-headed monsters—the one on the football field, and the one on the ice rink.

The Lions, with the young gunslinger Matthew Stafford, are set at quarterback for the next 10 years, his recent interception fetish notwithstanding.

And the Red Wings have no more worries in goal—provided they can keep Jimmy Howard shackled to a contract befitting his skills.

Howard, from the University of Maine, was the only Red Wing earning his paycheck for the first month of this season. And those are some big paychecks we’re talking about.

Howard is pretty much established now as one of the upper echelon goalies in the NHL. So say I.
He’s in his third full season, a late bloomer of sorts.

Howard is 27, and will be 28 in March. He didn’t become the Red Wings starting goalie until 2009, a full six years after being drafted in the second round.

He’s proving to be worth the wait.

Howard is no Sawchuk, and I mean that in a good way.

Jimmy Howard isn’t tormented. He isn’t in a dark place mentally. He hasn’t had to miss a half season at age 27 from mental exhaustion, as Sawchuk did back in 1957, when the media and fans in Boston rode him mercilessly.

And it’s not like Howard is playing incognito.

You can’t hide in Detroit if you’re a goalie. Or if you’re a quarterback. It’s not unlike other pro sports burgs that have NHL and NFL teams.

Goalie and quarterback, in most towns, are not positions for the faint of heart or weak of character.

Howard took over goaltending duties in 2009, somewhat shoving out the veteran Osgood, the starter for two of those four Cups between ’97 and ’08. There was some concern about Howard’s status come playoff time. Folks wondered aloud if the kid had what it takes to navigate through the choppy playoff waters.

Good thing the water is frozen in hockey, eh?

Howard acquitted himself well in the 2010 post-season, and even more so in 2011, even though the Red Wings didn’t make it out of the second round in either spring.

Now he’s got a stranglehold on the starting job, with only 35-year-old Ty Conklin around to back him up. Conklin will be lucky to appear in 20 games this season.

It took Jimmy Howard a wee bit longer than most NHL goalies to emerge and stake his claim to being the No. 1 guy in net.

Now all the Red Wings have to do is keep him signed and happy.

The happy part shouldn’t be a problem.

Howard is no Sawchuk, after all.

Lions’ Suh Wears NFL’s Black Hat, and the League Loves It

2011-11-27T10:02:00.001-05:00

Ndamukong Suh was born about 40 years too late.

Suh, the Lions' defensive tackle with a fuse shorter than Verne Troyer, would have been right at home playing in the NFL of the 1960s and '70s.

Suh would have been just one of many players back then who had the disposition of a bear awoken during hibernation.

The league some 40-plus years ago was filled with defenders who bent the rules like a double-jointed thumb.

None of them got suspended.

Dick Butkus made no bones about his intentions. The Bears' middle linebacker didn't try to sidestep anything. He didn't try to vex the media with double talk and sugarcoat his motives. Butkus tried to hurt his opponents—physically and mentally. Usually the fear of the former led to the latter.

Butkus was interviewed by NFL Films early in his career and expressed his fascination with the film "Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte."

Butkus described a scene from the movie, and as he did, his youthful, cherubic face started to display an almost psychotic-looking smile.

"I kind of liked it when that head come rolling down the stairs," Butkus told Ed Sabol's camera. "I like to project those things happening on the football field. And not to me."

Like I said, there was no question about Butkus' mindset when he stepped onto the gridiron.

Butkus used to verbally taunt Lions center Ed Flanagan. Then Butkus would spit on Flanagan's hands as the center grabbed hold of the football prior to the snap.

There have been multiple stories told of Butkus' antics, like the ones they tell of Bonnie and Clyde, or Ivan the Terrible.

There are tales of biting, scratching, stepping onto torsos, eyes being poked; some of Butkus' opponents recall him literally growling before the snap.

Butkus was like so many of his brethren—the maniacal defender on the field who was soft-spoken and cerebral off it.

Defensive lineman Deacon Jones, another of Butkus's contemporaries, has been credited with coining the word "sack" in reference to leveling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage.

Jones has also been tagged with the label of mad man on the football field. Jones wore the black hat and loved it. Deacon ate up the reputation—and even propagated it—of a dirty player whose intention was to maim.

Conrad Dobler was an eccentric, nasty offensive guard for the St. Louis Cardinals, New Orleans Saints and Buffalo Bills. Dobler, for several seasons, was widely recognized as the dirtiest player in the NFL for most of the 1970s. The things that Dobler did beyond the range of vision of the officials would have him up on charges in all 50 states.

Yet Dobler never got suspended, let alone arrested.

Neither did Butkus, Jones or any of their partners in crime. They didn't even try the political spin. Suh, had he played in those days, would have been held up as part of the NFL legacy of dirtiness, which is now folklore and winked at.

But Suh plays today and the NFL loves this kid. I believe that the more he transgresses, the more he's liked by the league.

Don't be fooled by the veneer of disgust and scorn that the NFL will publicly cast on Suh. Privately, the league can barely contain itself. The NFL, more than any of the four major sports leagues, subscribes to the words of literary giant Oscar Wilde.

"The only thing worse than being talked about," Wilde once opined, "is NOT being talked about."

The NFL welcomes all publicity—good, bad and ugly.

The league does a marvelous job of keeping itself in the public consciousness all year round. From the 24/7 NFL Network on TV to the games on Sundays, from January to December the NFL keeps itself on the forefront of its fans' minds.

It doesn't matter if the publicity is positive or negative. The NFL loves Ndamukong Suh because, for the first time in decades, the league has a Bad Guy.

Suh's entry into the NFL is the best-timed debut of any pro player since Magic Johnson and Larry Bird splashed onto the NBA scene in 1979. Before Magic and Bird, the NBA was scrambling for media attention. They were like the NHL has always been.

Prior to Magic and Bird, the NBA used to televise its Finals games on tape delay. No fooling.

The NFL has been desperate for a marquee name on defense for several years. The two guys who most fans think of when it comes to tough defense—Brian Urlacher and Ray Lewis—are on the back end of their careers.

The NFL has wanted a shining light on defense for a long time—and it doesn't matter if that light has a dirty tinge.

The league is filled with high profile heroes on the offensive side of the ball. There is no shortage of quarterbacks, receivers and running backs who catch the fans' fancy.

But on defense? Not so much.

Suh is a villain in the eyes of his colleagues, who recently voted him as the dirtiest player in the league. He's a villain in the eyes of the hypocritical media, who will lambaste Suh out of one side of their mouth, and privately ask their colleague, "Isn't this great?" out of the other.

Suh is even a villain among the fan base—some of them Detroit Lions supporters, newly on board the "Suh is Dirty" train after his shameful behavior in Thursday's nationally-televised game against the World Champion Green Bay Packers.

But here's the rub: it doesn't matter if the aura surrounding Ndamukong Suh is negative in nature. The league only cares that there is an aura.

Suh has people talking. He has people sneering in disdain. He even has folks who had previously defended him calling for suspensions in the wake of his stomping on Packers offensive lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith, which got him booted from the Thanksgiving Day game.

Suh will likely get suspended for his actions, even though Butkus, Jones, Dobler et al never did and they committed worse atrocities, more often, than Suh has so far in his young career.

The NFL will publicly assail Suh for his lack of anger management. Then the league will retreat to its private bunker and be positively giddy with the realization of what they have.

The NFL has a big name on defense who no one can stop talking about. The fact that the reason no one can stop talking about him is because of his violent, almost criminal behavior, is of no concern to the NFL.

The NFL has its new Dick Butkus.

The difference between Butkus and Suh is that Butkus didn’t offer up delusional, lame excuses for his sadistic ways, as Suh did after Thursday’s game.

If you think the NFL is legitimately outraged by Ndamukong Suh’s out-of-control behavior then you’re almost as delusional as Suh is.

The league loves this stuff. They have a Bad Guy on their hands and no one can stop talking about him. And he plays defense.

Ndamukong Suh, in a twisted way, is good for business.

Don’t you think otherwise.

Lions' Smith A Story Too Good To Be True?

2011-11-21T17:23:00.004-05:00

The Lions have a shiny 7-3 record because of a quarterback who came to Detroit after 0-16 and a defensive tackle who came a year after that.

The Lions are 7-3 because of a GM who followed the abysmal Matt Millen and began cleaning up almost as soon as Millen was fired.

The Lions are 7-3 because of a head coach who came from Tennessee, where he learned under the consistent and tenured Jeff Fisher.

The Lions are 7-3 because of three successful drafts and some deft personnel moves by the aforementioned GM.

The Lions are 7-3 because they have infused their roster with talent not seen in Detroit since the jolly Wayne Fontes coached here.

The Lions, though, are not 7-3 because they make it a habit of signing re-treads and bringing back reminders of that ghoulish 0-16 record.

Kevin Smith, you could say, is both of those things---a re-tread and a sour reminder of that dreadful 2008 season.

Smith, the running back who ran wild over, around and through the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, was a Lions rookie in 2008---the season of OH! and 16.

A couple weeks ago, Smith was a running back in training, and a doting father. He was watching the Lions from his sofa, like so many of us.

On Sunday, Smith was exactly what the doctor ordered for the Lions.

You could practically hear the Lions fans weeping in thanks.

A running game!

Smith gashed the Panthers for 140 yards on 16 carries. That's an 8.8 yards per carry average. The last time a Lions running back had numbers like that, he was wearing no. 20 and taking our breath away.

Smith scored two TDs on the ground and a third via pass. He was heaven sent, really. It's an old joke: the Lions have wanted to run the football in the worst way---and that's exactly how they'd been running it (cue rim shot).

I've had my eye on Stephen Jackson, the bruising runner for the pathetic St. Louis Rams, a team beneath his talents. Jackson is someone who would look delectable in Honolulu Blue and Silver.

But that's food for thought sometime in the future. Next year, maybe. For now, Kevin Smith looks to be the man lugging the football for the Lions the rest of the season, with Best apparently nowhere near ready for clearance.

If Sunday was any indication, the Lions may not miss Best at all.

Smith isn't as quick or explosive as Best, but he can run between the tackles better and the man looks energized and fresh---which you would expect of someone who has been playing with his kid, not with a football.

"Get up at 7 a.m., train till noon, play with my son," Smith told the media afterward about his daily regimen this autumn, before the Lions brought him in for a workout during the bye week.

Unless that kid of his hits like a 265-pound linebacker, you had to be surprised to see what Smith did on the gridiron on Sunday.

"I think the NFL would be hard-pressed to come up with a better storyline than Kevin Smith," Lions coach Jim Schwartz told the press after Sunday's game, in what surely must be considered a candidate for Understatement of the Year.

This performance of Smith's was about as unexpected as Clam Chowder served on a Tuesday.

But this is the NFL, which has a shelf life of seven days. The league is as crazily unpredictable as it's ever been. A team can look wretched one week and then look like Super Bowl contenders the next.

The NFL might not hear of Kevin Smith the rest of the season. In the Lions' remaining six games, Smith's production may turn pedestrian and insignificant.

Sunday's game might be it for Smith as far as productivity. Who knows?

But if it's not, and if the Lions have stumbled upon a Godsend here, then all of a sudden the team's one-dimensional offense in Jahvid Best's absence isn't so one-dimensional anymore.

If the Lions can somehow turn Kevin Smith from Flavor of the Week to the Special of the Month, then the running game may be solved---or at least just good enough to make Matthew Stafford and his receiving crew dangerous enough to be playoff-ready.

Which means that despite all the Lions' offensive weapons, their playoff fortunes might be resting on a player who was running Daddy Day Care just two weeks ago.

The NFL is a funny, funny league.

Former Lions Guard Utley Determined to Do His Own "Walk-Off"

2011-11-20T10:09:00.000-05:00

I don’t know if it’s in the front of the NFL player’s mind, the middle, or the back, but it’s in there somewhere. The idea that when you run onto the field, you might not run off is in there somewhere. It has to be.

The NFL is 60 minutes each week of locomotives running into each other at breakneck speed—sometimes literally.

But it wasn’t a high-speed collision that changed Mike Utley’s life. It was just another play in just another game, on just another Sunday.

It happened 20 years ago this past Thursday.

The Lions were hosting the Los Angeles Rams, and moving the football down the field. Utley, a guard, was doing his thing as part of the five-man chain gang that is an NFL offensive line.

Blocking, driving, lowering himself for leverage. Whatever it took to gain an advantage over his defensive counterpart.

The chain gang was succeeding. The Lions were moving the ball. They were nearing the so-called red zone—that prime real estate that lies 20 yards and closer to the goal line.

Then it happened—on just another play on just another drive in just another game.

Utley, a mountain of a man listed as 6’6” and 288 pounds, was pass blocking when he lost balance. His pass rushing opponent, David Rocker, was winning this particular down, and Rocker kept driving in his effort to reach the quarterback.

Utley fell awkwardly and onto his head, breaking his fifth, sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae.

If you ever want to hear how quiet a sports venue can be, try a pro football game with a player lying on the field, unmoving.

It’s a horrible, intestine-twisting silence.

Utley, after many pained minutes, was finally loaded onto a stretcher. Only when it was wheeled away did anyone in the Silverdome exhale, let alone make a sound.

But the Lions fans did indeed make a sound. It started as nervous applause, then as the stretcher made its way to the players’ tunnel, the applause turned into a small cheer, then eventually into a roar.

Utley then made one of the most famous gestures in Detroit sports history.

His life certainly flashing before his eyes, his fear of his own well-being no doubt palpable, Utley nonetheless thought about the fans and his teammates.

He managed to work his right hand into a position of hope.

Thumbs up!

The gesture just about brought the Silverdome down. The image was beamed onto the big JumboTron screen above the end zone scoreboard, so that the fans could see it, just as those watching at home on television could.

Thumbs up!

Utley’s message of hope became the rallying cry for the Lions, who didn’t lose another game the rest of the year until they succumbed to Washington in the NFC Championship game in January.

November 17, 1991 is a date forever etched onto Mike Utley’s brain.

It’s been 20 years, and still there is some unresolved business.

Utley intends to, once again, walk off an NFL field.

“A man walks on the field of battle, and he walks off the field of battle,” Utley explained last month to LostLettermen.com.

Utley has to do the walking off part yet—and without the benefit of braces, a walker, or anything else.

“I can walk with ankle braces, I can walk with crutches or a walker,” Utley says. “The problem is, it’s not really functional, as in to be independent, to be able to go to the grocery store. It’s still more feasible and—safety-wise—it’s more productive for me to be able to transfer into my chair and go to the mall, go shopping, get groceries, clean up around the house.”

Utley has no doubt in his mind that one day he will walk again, sans accessories.

It’s one reason why Utley, along with his wife Dani, started the Mike Utley Foundation—to find out more about spinal cord injuries and to help others battling paralysis. And, of course, to ultimately find a cure for such horrendous injuries.

Utley has the will, but he needs the science...and the dollars.

It’s among the biggest of moral victories, that Mike Utley can do as much as he can, considering from where he came on November 17, 1991.

But Utley is an NFL guy at heart and in the NFL there are no moral victories. You either win, or you lose.

You either walk...or you don’t.

So it’s up at 5 a.m. on most mornings in suburban Seattle (he attended Washington State University), pushing himself in physical therapy twice a week and lifting four times a week.

Normally, I don’t care for the athlete or the celebrity who talks about himself in the third person, but Utley is an exception.

“Mike Utley will walk off Ford Field, his game plan is today,” Utley says. “If it’s not today, it will be tomorrow.”

Since Utley’s injury, which was preceded and then followed shortly thereafter by other horrifying incidents, the NFL has become much more conscious of protecting players—especially when it comes to anything in the head or neck areas.

So you’d think that Utley, through his Foundation, would be totally on board with the rules changes the league has implemented.

“No,” Utley immediately says when prodded about potential drastic rule changes such as linemen beginning every play in a standing position. “Listen, let the fellas play. You want the best players in the world to get on that gridiron. You want the fastest and the best athletes. Let them play.”

OK then.

Meanwhile, between pushing himself to the limit physically in the pursuit of walking, Utley tirelessly raises money for the Foundation, speaks and encourages. It’s not uncommon for the NFL to bring Utley in to talk to players facing the ends of their careers due to injury, though they didn’t suffer the same horrific end that Utley suffered.

Utley, after all, was once read his last rites, when blood clots that formed after the injury almost killed him.

But slowly he made progress. In 1999, Utley stood up and moved his feet for the first time with the assistance of braces on his legs.

But it’s not enough. Just another moral victory.

Utley, to hear him tell it, will walk off Ford Field someday, finally finishing his unfinished business. And then?

“(I’d like) to be able to walk with the wife on the beach. Something as small as that,” he says.

Thumbs up!

Stafford Must Be Fixed For the Lions to Compete for Playoffs

2011-11-14T17:02:00.002-05:00

Maybe Matthew Stafford wore gloves so as not to leave any fingerprints as he committed crimes against football humanity.

If so, that idea backfired---as did the entire Detroit Lions offense---as Stafford and his offensive teammates (you can pronounce "offensive" with the emphasis on the second syllable if you'd like) laid an ostrich egg on the Soldier Field turf on Sunday.

This was an homage to Lions teams of the past. And when I say past, I mean the first eight years of the 21st century.

Watching the Lions' 37-13 dismantling at the hands of the Chicago Bears was like watching a twisted compilation reel of the Marty Mornhinweg and Rod Marinelli years.

All of your old "favorites" were back: pick-sixes; fumbles; bad special teams coverage/strategy; inopportune personal fouls.

They all came roaring back---no pun intended---in one game, and after a bye week, no less, when teams are supposed to be fresh and re-focused.

Stafford was a mystery, yet again.

The Lions' franchise QB was a ghoulish mix of Joey Harrington and Ty Detmer. He was far from the confident young gun that led the Lions to a 5-0 start. In the current 1-3 slide, Stafford has too often looked confused, beaten and devoid of confidence.

The 45-10 pummeling of the Denver Broncos propelled the Lions to 6-2 going into their week off, and they had set themselves up nicely for a second half playoff run. Stafford looked like he had solved whatever had troubled him in consecutive losses to the 49ers and the Falcons.

But the bye week wasn't refreshing at all. Instead, it set football back three years in Detroit.

The defense played OK. Ndamukong Suh and Company only surrendered 16 of the 37 points, and no back breaking big plays, either.

The Lions still would have lost, though, even without all those returns for TDs, because the offense with Stafford at the helm was a frightful blend of slapstick and masochism.

Please, sir, may I have another turnover?

You almost hope that something is wrong with Stafford physically, because the alternative is too disturbing to consider.

It's only one game, but is it?

Is it a one-game clunker, or is it part and parcel of a four-game rut?

The Lions beat who they should have in the past four games, and lost to three teams who are in the upper echelon of a suspect conference.

That, also, smacks of Lions teams of the past---even in the Wayne Fontes years when the Lions would fatten their record against the NFL's dregs then play brutal games against "real" teams.

A bottom feeder comes to town next week---the Carolina Panthers. The Lions should handle the Panthers, with their rookie QB, at Ford Field.

And unless they lose to the Panthers, I suggest that you look at it this way.

Did you truly have the Lions winning yesterday, in Chicago? With the Bears thirsting for revenge for what happened on Monday Night Football? And with the Bears desperate to stay in the playoff race?

I didn't.

So if the Lions win Sunday against Carolina and go into the Thanksgiving tilt with Green Bay at 7-3, that's OK with me. It will just be the Lions following suit---you know, when you play that schedule game of "WIN" and "LOSE" before the season as you tick down the list of opponents and where the game is being played.

There's no question that the way the Lions lost to the Bears far overshadows that they lost.

As Sparky Anderson said about a particularly bad Tigers loss back in the day, "There's not enough perfume in the world to make that one smell good."

But it was just one loss---and the first egg they've laid, and we're in mid-November.

That in of itself is an improvement. Usually we've had four or five of these abominations by now.

But someone has to get Matthew Stafford right. And fast. There's no Dave Krieg 1994 or Eric Hipple 1981 standing by. The only way backup Shaun Hill starts is if Stafford is hurt---there's no QB controversy here.

Stafford isn't right. His sluggishness extends back to the 49ers game on October 16.

The Lions have to fix him, or none of this playoff talk will mean a Hill of beans.

Paterno's Self-Suppression of Power Protected Wrong People

2011-11-13T10:33:00.002-05:00

The irony is, Joe Paterno could have covered the spread easily.

He had home field advantage. He had all the weapons at his disposal. It was a cupcake on the schedule. One of those pre-conference games against an opponent whose only goals were to get out of town with their wits and a cool paycheck from the gate.

Paterno could have swatted this one away with hardly breaking a sweat.

When you’re Joe Paterno, iconic football coach at a big time university, you can do some things. It’s like a playbook on 2nd and 1. There are options not available to a lower profile coach.

Football coaches like Paterno, who’s been at Penn State since the Lyndon Johnson administration, don’t walk around campus—they are the campus. They get things named after them—streets, buildings and practice facilities.

They make friends in high places. They show up at a restaurant and the staff can’t seat them quickly enough.

Coaches like Paterno, if they appear in a commercial for a dry cleaners, can put all the other dry cleaners around campus out of business.

Paterno, 84, looks like someone Al Pacino is set to play at the drop of a hat.

Lombardi had the gap-toothed grin.

Bear Bryant had the checkered hat.

Bo Schembechler had the sunglasses under the baseball cap with the block M.

Woody Hayes had the white shirt and the skinny black tie.

Paterno has the big glasses and the big nose and the raspy, New York accent. Pacino could play him in his sleep.

Paterno is as iconic as it gets in the world of college athletics—forget just football.

So let’s be real.

Joe Paterno wasn’t at any disadvantage, when presented with evidence that his defensive coordinator had sexually assaulted a young boy—in a Penn State football facility, no less.

Paterno—his name ironically so close to sounding like “paternal”—could have snapped his fingers and the weight of the university’s tradition, standards of excellence and integrity would have collapsed onto coach Jerry Sandusky like a 16 ton weight.

Sandusky would have been ruined—much sooner than he now is, and before untold numbers of additional boys were harmed.

Paterno could have rained hell down on Sandusky, had Paterno wanted.

Instead…

“In hindsight I wish I would have done more,” Paterno said in a prepared statement he released last week, when the tempest of the disgusting news swirling around PSU’s campus began to release its stench.

Paterno was referring to his role in the allegations—the role where he was told about Sandusky’s assault of a boy in a shower, and merely passed the charge on to the athletic director.

Paterno could have gone in for the kill. He had the other guys on their heels, in the shadow of their own end zone.

But Paterno chose to keep all of his power sheathed. It was a kneel down, a mercy job.

Sadly, Paterno chose to protect the wrong person.

A man of Joe Paterno’s stature doesn’t pass stuff like this along. He doesn’t treat charges of sexual abuse like a bag of peanuts in the middle of a row at a ballgame.

A man of Paterno’s importance at Penn State, just as with Bryant at Alabama, Schembechler at Michigan, et al, needs to be Harry Truman, not a middle man.

The buck should stop with them.

It’s an age-old debate.

Who is more culpable for certain heinous behavior?

The perpetrator, or the man who could have stopped him dead in his tracks?

Paterno should have done more than simply pass on the eyewitness account of Sandusky’s sick actions to his supposed boss. And Paterno knows it. He knew it long before he issued his milquetoast statement last week.

In hindsight, Joe? Really?

You needed hindsight to tell you that keeping inordinately quiet in the wake of such disturbing information was wrong?

Again, I ask, isn’t that worse, in a way, than what Sandusky allegedly did to who knows how many kids?

Paterno failed that child in the shower. And his willful suppression of his own powers failed subsequent kids.

Legally, they say, Paterno is in the clear. He did what he was legally obligated to do.

That may be, but I’m surprised Paterno has gotten a wink of sleep since.

You think all of this salacious behavior has been going on around Paterno without his knowledge? For almost 10 years?

The university did the right thing in firing Paterno and the school president, effective immediately. They saw Paterno’s offer to retire after the season and raised it.

They had to.

It was the only thing they could do and still salvage some of Penn State’s integrity.

A football program shouldn’t define a school, but it does in many people’s minds.

A football coach shouldn’t define a program, but he does.

And a terribly poor choice of judgment shouldn’t ruin a man forever, but it can, and it has.

Jerry Sandusky is small fish here, really. That sounds outrageous, because he’s the child predator, not anyone else in this story.

But see how the actions—or lack thereof—of someone like Joe Paterno can overshadow even a person with as vile of character as Jerry Sandusky?

Some say that this vile situation should put college football in perspective.

Bologna.

The bully pulpit of big time college athletics should have been used, by Joe Paterno, to put an end to Jerry Sandusky’s abhorrent acts against kids.

Paterno had everything at his disposal to stop the monster that might be Sandusky.

He took a knee instead.

Do I Miss the NBA? Depends!

2011-11-06T09:27:00.000-05:00

Right about now, if the Hatfields and the McCoys had been able to settle their differences (that would be the players and the owners, or vice versa), the NBA season would be just underway.

The season would have tipped off after weeks of exhibition games, during which time the Miami Heat and LeBron James would have been unmercifully mocked and taunted for losing in the Finals to the Dallas Mavericks. Followed by an entire 82-game regular season of the Miami Heat and LeBron James being unmercifully mocked and taunted for losing in the Finals to the Dallas Mavericks.

The Pistons would be just starting out under their new coach, Lawrence Frank, not long after stubbing their toe on him.

Do I miss the NBA?

Yeah, the same way I miss a root canal, Vanilla Ice and New Coke.

Do I miss looking at tattoos that make a player’s arm look like a 19th century treasure map? Do I miss shorts that go to the ankles?

Do I miss the NBA, you ask (or even if you didn’t)?

Do I miss wall-to-wall games on Christmas Day, the one day of the year in which the television should be turned off?

Do I miss Kobe Bryant? Do I miss the Charlotte Bobcats at the Palace on a Tuesday night?

Do I miss the NBA?

Do I miss that goofy, dotted half-circle under the hoop?

Do I miss a league where 95 percent of the players can’t execute a bounce pass? Or even know what one is?

Do I miss the NBA?

Do I miss four guys on one side of the court while the fifth dribbles the ball for 15 seconds, looking up at the shot clock?

Do I miss the final 30 seconds of a close game taking 30 minutes to play?

Do I miss the NBA?

Do I miss wondering on whose sidelines Larry Brown will turn up next?

Do I miss the latest season-ending injury suffered by Greg Oden?

Now, let me tell you about the NBA I do miss.

I miss shorts that went mid-thigh.

I miss the 24-second clock on the floor, in the corners.

I miss three-to-make-two.

I miss a final score of 132-127 that was played in regulation, not five overtimes.

I miss names like Coby Dietrick and Zaid Abdul-Aziz and Tom Boerwinkle.

I miss coaches like Doug Moe and Frank Layden, who were worth the price of admission just for their post-game comments. That, and Moe wore leisure suits and Layden looked like your tax guy.

I miss backcourt fouls and jump balls to start each quarter.

I miss every basket worth two points, even if you nailed it from 30 feet away.

I miss Pete Maravich and how he wore “Pistol” on the back of his jersey instead of his last name. And, of course, I miss his ball-handling skills, which even the Harlem Globetrotters would have been hard-pressed to match.

Do I miss the NBA?

Well, yes, if that NBA included arenas like the HemisFair and Kemper and the Fabulous Forum and Cobo.

I miss referee Earl Strom, the animated, Ron Luciano of the NBA.

I miss best-of-three playoff series.

I miss this oddball division: Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and PHOENIX.

I miss the year the Bullets were the Capitol Bullets—between being Baltimore and Washington.

While I’m at it, I miss the Kansas City-Omaha Kings.

I miss first round playoff matchups like Golden State and Chicago.

I miss the Vancouver Grizzlies, because how cool was it that the NBA was silly enough to put a team in Vancouver?

Do I miss the NBA?

I don’t miss Pau Gasol but I miss Swen Nater.

I don’t miss Phil Jackson the coach but I miss Phil Jackson the player. Oh, those shoulders.

I don’t miss Billy Hunter the players rep but I miss Billy Knight the scorer for the Pacers.

I don’t miss Gilbert Arenas calling himself Agent Zero but I miss John Williamson being called Super John.

Do I miss the NBA?

I don’t miss 6’11” small forwards but I miss 6’7” centers.

I don’t miss Nike but I miss Chuck Taylor. And I don’t miss leather but I miss canvas.

I don’t miss Jason Kidd but I miss Ernie DiGregorio.

I don’t miss the New Orleans Hornets but I miss the New Orleans Jazz.

I don’t miss Charles Barkley the commentator but I miss Charles Barkley the player. Because who wouldn’t miss someone dubbed “The Round Mound of Rebound?"

Do I miss the NBA?

Well, if you’re asking if I miss Gus the Dancing Vendor, hell yes. But if you’re asking if I miss the Automotion dance girls, hell no.

Don’t draw any conclusions from that, by the way.

I miss Leon the Barber.

I miss World B. Free, Harthorne Wingo, T.R. Dunn, Harvey Catchings and Joe C. Meriweather.

I miss David Thompson leaping from the free throw line for a dunk.

I miss the Buffalo Braves.

I miss smoke in the arenas drifting to the lights above.

I miss when basketball players were called “cagers.”

I miss 20-second injury timeouts.

Do I miss the NBA?

I don’t miss three days off between playoff games—in the same city.

I don’t miss Bill Walton the commentator, and I really don’t miss Bill Walton the player all that much, either. Except for his headband.

Speaking of headbands, I don’t miss them on today’s players but I miss them on Slick Watts, who was bald.

I don’t miss Kevin McHale coaching the Minnesota Timberwolves but I miss Bill Russell coaching the Seattle Supersonics.

I miss saying Seattle Supersonics.

So, do I miss the NBA?

Which one you talking about?

These Lions Are Not Your 2007 Version

2011-10-31T16:16:00.002-04:00

This time, the other guys are disillusioned about their supposed franchise quarterback.

This time, the other team has its falsely-hoped, tenuously-raucous crowd taken out of the game in the very first quarter.

This time, the other guys are mocked and made fun of.

This time, the serious questions about the health of the franchise are for the other guys to answer.

This time, the playoff talk isn't for the other guys.

The Lions are 6-2. But this isn't 2007's 6-2, which was a papier-mache 6-2.

The 2007 6-2 was also attained at the expense of the Denver Broncos, also in a blowout victory. The Lions beat them, 44-7 at Ford Field and the lingering image of that game was Shaun "Big Baby" Rogers rumbling for a touchdown after an interception.

How appropriate that it would be Rogers who took it to the house, because he partly symbolizes the false hope Lions. The Lions of unfulfilled promise.

The 2007 Lions were 6-2 by record only. Their true value would play out over the next 24 games, of which they lost 23.

There's no such feeling of foreboding about this version of the Lions, who got off their mini-schneide in a big way Sunday in Denver, thumping the Broncos, 45-10.

These aren't the Bucking Broncos---more like the Buckling Broncos.

The Broncos are a mess. They have a quarterback, Tim Tebow, who is less an NFL quarterback and more a suggestion thereof. They can't pass protect. Their receivers are mediocre. Their running game makes the Lions look like the Lombardi Packers of the 1960s.

There seems to be separation within the ranks in Denver about Tebow, and it's never a good thing when not everyone in an organization backs the guy under center.

Tebow was left in for every minute of Sunday's shellacking, which was just plain mean on the part of Broncos coach John Fox. If part of developing a young quarterback in the NFL is to handle his confidence like eggs, then Fox just made Tebow into an omelet.

Who knows how long it will take Tebow to recover, mentally, from Sunday's awful performance. The kid doesn't have it, didn't have it Sunday, and may never have it. But when it was painfully obvious that Tebow was little more than the Lions' pinata, why didn't Fox get him out of there?

Maybe because Fox is among those not sold on TebowMania?

Still, even if Fox isn't convinced that Tebow is his guy, the coach should be ashamed for not lifting the young man as early as midway through the third quarter. A day that began with hope ended with a bloodletting.

As for the Lions, they are 6-2 but as lovely of a win as Sunday's was, it's tempered by the fact that it came against the Broncos, one of the NFL's dregs and losing relevance by the week.

Denver's days of a playoff contender are so far in the rear view mirror, they are borderline in the category of "remember when?"

The 2011 Lions are not the 2007 Lions, by any stretch. A quick comparison of the rosters of the two squads should make that obvious.

I've written it before; any team can get lucky and fool folks for eight weeks. That happens almost every year. The contenders separate themselves from the pretenders in the next eight games---the ones they play in November and December.

The Lions are 6-2 and should contend in the season's second half, which begins after next week's bye.

The Broncos are 2-5 and you just have to wonder how bad the other teams were in Denver's two wins.

That's OK. Let the other team have to answer those kinds of questions. For a change.

Life Without Lidstrom Terrifying Thought For Red Wings, Fans

2011-10-30T10:54:00.000-04:00

Nick Lidstrom doesn’t block shots. He doesn’t body check anyone. He’s never thrown an elbow. His next fight will be his first.

The greatest hockey defenseman of his time—or maybe of any time—isn’t supposed to be so mild-mannered. He isn’t supposed to be less physical than a second baseman.

Lidstrom, the Red Wings' all-universe defenseman, is 41 years old. In human years.

In hockey-playing years, he’s closer to 30, because he hasn’t used his body as a battering ram or for someone else’s target practice.

Lidstrom plays hockey like Bobby Fischer played chess and Minnesota Fats played billiards—literally. No one has seen that 200’x80’ sheet of ice better than Lidstrom, who is always a move or two ahead of his opponent. He’s the geometric hockey player—using the puck’s caroms and angles like Fats used those green felt rails.

There hasn’t been a defenseman like him, before or since he entered the NHL in 1991. I’ll put up a batch of my wife’s Pasta Fagioli that there won’t be one like him after, either. Ever.

He’s 41 and despite his lack of wear and tear, Lidstrom is on the back end of his career. Only a delusional fool would believe otherwise.

The topic came up Monday night on “The Knee Jerks,” the podcast I co-host each week with Big Al Beaton of The Wayne Fontes Experience.

What will life be like, we wondered, when Lidstrom neatly folds his sweater and hangs up his skates?The word “terrifying” came up, more than once.

It’s an annual question—one that we ask without really wanting to know the answer. You ask the question and then bury your face in something, shivering.

Last spring, Nick made us sweat a little bit more than normal. It took several weeks after the Red Wings were once again eliminated in the second round of the playoffs by the San Jose Sharks for Lidstrom to consent to play his 20th season.

They could hear the sighs of relief from Detroit all the way to, well, San Jose.

It’s not just that Lidstrom has played 20 seasons, or that he’s played them flawlessly, or that he’s the perfect teammate or that he seamlessly took over as captain from Steve Yzerman, no less—which is like a singer stepping onto the stage right after a set by Sinatra and no one noticing.

No, it’s that Lidstrom has done all that while hardly missing a game.

His games-played column reads like an early-summer thermometer: 76, 78, 80, 77, 79, 80, 81.

The spooky notion of no more Nick Lidstrom is just as much the fear of the unknown as anything else.

We don’t want to think of the Red Wings without Lidstrom because we haven’t really seen the Red Wings without Lidstrom since before he was a Red Wing.

It’s History 101.The last time a Red Wings roster didn’t list Lidstrom’s name, George Bush The First was President. The Pistons were the defending NBA champs—but they were the Pistons of Isiah and Dumars, not Chauncey and Hamilton.

There was no Internet.

The kids graduating high school this year were still two years from being born.

Need I go on?

Lidstrom’s longevity is one thing; his durability is quite another.

As much as Yzerman is revered in Detroit—and he should be—Steve wasn’t exactly an Iron Man, unless you count his days spent in those hyperbaric chambers. Stevie Y was more Iron Lung than Iron Man.

Yzerman missed games in chunks, due to various injuries. He was the anti-Lidstrom, in a sense.

There was a serious knee injury in 1988. But that wasn’t the worst of it. As Yzerman got older, his body broke down more frequently. He played the 2002 playoffs on a knee so mangled that he managed to report to work for just 13 games the following season, recovering from the knee’s reconstruction.

There was more time lost in the 2005-06 season, Yzerman’s last as a player.

So we had heaping spoonfuls of Red Wings life without Steve Yzerman, making his retirement no less sad—just less of a shock to the system.Not so with Lidstrom, who has played with mind-numbing consistency and Lou Gehrig-like durability.

We have not been prepped for Lidstrom’s retirement.

If the Red Wings fan base thinks that another Lidstrom is being groomed, or that he can in any way be replaced, forget it. Not going to happen.

This is no affront to Niklas Kronwall or Brad Stuart or Jonathan Ericsson or to any of the prospects in the Red Wings’ system.

Players like Nick Lidstrom come by once in a franchise’s lifetime—if that.

How will the Red Wings ever replace him?

Did the Boston Bruins replace Raymond Bourque?

Yzerman, for all of his Hall of Fame worthiness, was in the process of being phased out by the time he retired in 2006. The cache of forwards the Red Wings employed made Stevie’s departure easier to digest.

All the Red Wings can do when Lidstrom finally bids farewell—and it’ll be sooner rather than later—is take a deep breath, exhale and hope that they have a defensive corps that can band together and do one of those “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” kind of things.

Because if you think he’s going to be replaced, you’re mad.The Red Wings have had four—four—players who’ve played 20-plus seasons for them: Lidstrom, Yzerman, Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio.

This is significant.

The Montreal Canadiens, for all their history and Stanley Cups, have had just one player—Jean Beliveau—play as many as 19 seasons for them.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have had only George Armstrong play 20 seasons wearing the Leaf.

The New York Rangers have no 20-plus-year men.

The Boston Bruins have only Bourque, who played a tad over 20 in Beantown.

The Chicago Blackhawks had Stan Mikita for 21 years. That’s it.

The Red Wings have had four such men. It’s significant.

The most recent of the Red Wings’ 20-plus-year men might leave a void that none of his predecessors left—not even Howe, for Gordie “retired” with the team well on its way to being miserable for an entire decade.

How do the Red Wings replace Nick Lidstrom?

They don’t.

I guess he’ll just have to keep playing until we figure something out.

Will Seven-Year Itch Doom Babcock, Red Wings?

2011-10-23T11:01:00.002-04:00

It’s hockey season in Detroit again. Time to put up with another 82-game grind. In our self-ascribed “Hockeytown,” it’s considered par, not impolite, to look past the months of October through March so that we can worry about playoff match-ups.

The 82-game regular season is something we tolerate. It’s a longer opening act than a bad comedian.

We actually had to pay attention, a little, to the regular season two years ago, when the calendar turned to 2010 and the Red Wings were still monkeying around, trying to secure a playoff spot. But that drama was short-lived and by the end of February, order was restored as the Red Wings distanced themselves from the bottom feeders.

It’s never a matter of if the Red Wings will make the playoffs. It’s, “How far will they go?”

The 2011-12 season is just underway, but I submit that this campaign might, just might, provide a legitimate sidebar.

Mike Babcock, the steel-jawed, facially scarred coach, is into his seventh season helming the Red Wings. Yes, seventh.

That’s longer than any Red Wings coach since Jack Adams, with two exceptions: Sid Abel (11 years) and Scotty Bowman (nine years).

The fear is this, simply: will the Red Wings get a seven-year itch with Babcock?

Is seven years, in this day of modern pro sports, too long for one coach with the same team?

I suppose we’re about to find out.

Coaching and longevity are fickle partners. You can be a coaching “lifer,” but that’s typically done with a whistle in one hand and a road map in the other.

The coach who stays put in one city for any longer than three years is, frankly, usually a “dean” in his division.

Terry Francona just had a rather messy break-up with the Boston Red Sox. All Francona did in his eight years as Red Sox manager was make the playoffs just about every year and win two World Series—ending the franchise’s 86-year drought with the first one.

Yet a bad September this year proved to be Terry’s death knell.

The seven-year itch inDetroitwhen it comes to Babcock and his players might just be the warped bleatings of a worry wart sports blogger.

Yet I suggest that the Red Wings are entering into a potential danger zone with Mike Babcock. And it has nothing to do with whether he’s the best coach in the entire NHL—which he is.

It won’t matter how good of a coach Babcock is if he can’t get his players to keep him tuned in.

The coach’s voice starts to grate after a few years, depending on the character of the team involved.

Which makes it a decent bet that my Chicken Little hand-wringing over the Red Wings and their seventh-year coach is much ado about nothing.

The Red Wings are veteran-laden. Their captain is 41 years old and his face doesn’t look a day over 30. They have worked in some younger players over the past several years but their core is still Nick Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk and Tomas Holmstrom—not a spring chicken among the group.

Hey, is Chris Chelios still on the team?

He may as well be.

The greatness of the Red Wings organization is that, for them, familiarity hasn’t bred any contempt.

They’ve had the same owner since 1982.

They’ve had the same GM since 1997.

They’ve had the same assistant GM since about that time, too.

They’ve had the same VP since 1990—and he started in 1982, too.

They’ve had the same trainers, equipment guys, masseuses and probably even the same mechanic for the Zamboni machine for years.

And, of course, they’ve had the same players, for the most part.

When you play for the Red Wings, you skate for them until they pull the sweater over your head and tell you that enough is enough.

Oh, they do it in a nice way, but Chelios, Kris Draper, Kirk Maltby and Chris Osgood have all departed in recent years, and in every instance, they were pretty much stared down by management.

In a nice way.

But the flip side to that is that when you’re done as a player wearing the Winged Wheel, you stay with the organization in some capacity. The Red Wings reward their fully-vested employees almost as much as Bob Ficano does inWayneCounty.

The ex-Red Wings, in addition to the aforementioned—who all have jobs with the club—dot the org chart.

There’s Mark Howe, who heads the advanced scouting department.

There’s Aaron Downey, who works in strength and conditioning.

There’s Jiri Fischer, whose domain is player development.

To name a few.

Yet the coach, Babcock, is the one we should keep an eye on. It’s always the coach, isn’t it? That is, if it isn’t the goalie.

Babcock brought in two new assistant coaches this season, perhaps as a nod to the concern of the players hearing the same voice, being preached the same thing in the same fashion.

The seven-year itch.

It didn’t get Bowman, who lasted nine. But they weren’t exactly nine blissful years. Just ask Steve Yzerman, or Brendan Shanahan. Two Hall of Famers, each who would have liked to jam a puck down Scotty’s throat from time to time.

Babcock, in six seasons as Red Wings coach, has delivered a Stanley Cup, two Finals appearances and three conference final appearances.

But the two most recent seasons have seen the Red Wings bumped out of the playoffs in the second round—to the same team.

This is Hockeytown, which is theBronxof the NHL. A season that doesn’t end with the Red Wings raising the Stanley Cup over their heads is a season wasted, followed by a summer of consternation.

It’s been that way since Bowman re-instilled a level of excellence that had been missing for decades.

Now Babcock is the keeper of that flame. He’s going on seven years of being on the job. That’s a mighty long time, anymore.

Just something to chew on, as you bide your time waiting for the playoffs.

Unlike in 1980, Smart Money Is on Lions in 2011

2011-10-02T10:42:00.000-04:00

The NFL season is chopped into fours, not unlike what the ponies have to deal with at Pimlico.

It’s often times just as foolhardy to put good money on the leaders at the first turn in pro football as it is on the fast starting horses sprinting out of the gate at the track.

The NFL gives us 16 games per team, per year—nice and divisible by four. The NFL has always been fond of quarters, as you know.

The first turn of 2011 is going to be made after Monday night’s game. Each team will have played four games. As usual, there are some horses making that turn that are either the real deal or destined for the glue factory.

OH—look at who’s charging on the outside. Our own Detroit Lions!

The Lions don’t charge out of the gate, as a rule. The past decade has been filled with false starts, if you will. If it were harness racing, many years the Lions would have been passed by the pace car before the gate folded up.

But here we are, at the first turn of 2011, and the Lions can be no worse than 3-1 after their game at Dallas on Sunday.

ESPN has the Lions ranked fourth in all the NFL after their 3-0 start. Fourth!

This is tortoise keeping up with the hare kind of stuff. It’s McGovern keeping pace with Nixon. The ’67 Arabs giving the Israelis all they can handle.

What in the name of Darryl Rogers is going on here?

Should you cash your paycheck and put it on the Lions’ Honolulu Blue number?

Even during the playoff years under Wayne Fontes, the Lions jumped out to a 3-0 start. They did 0-3—and still made the playoffs in 1995. They limped into the first turn in ’95 but finished 10-6. So you never know.

In fact, Jimmy Carter was president the last time the Lions started 3-0. It was also the last time they started 4-0.

Jimmy “Spiderman” Allen was an eccentric defensive back for the Lions in 1980. What else could he be, with a nickname like Spiderman?

Allen was also with the team in 1979, when the Lions lost starting QB Gary Danielson for the season to a knee injury in the final exhibition game, dooming Detroit to a 2-14 finish.

So when the 1980 Lions got off to a rollicking 4-0 getaway—thanks in part to the electrifying rookie runner Billy Sims, who was the team’s haul for finishing 2-14 in ’79—Allen got a bright idea.

Allen recruited several of his very willing teammates and cut a record.

It was a Lions take on the Queen hit, “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Coach Monte Clark wasn’t too keen on it. Clark blocked for Jim Brown in Cleveland as a player and assisted Don Shula in Miami as a coach. Monte was more buttoned down than Bob Newhart.

But when an eccentric puts his mind to something, there isn’t much you can do to stop him. So Clark winced and waited for the song to come out.

All the radio stations in town played Allen and company’s bastardized version of Freddie Mercury’s tune, which had lyrics like, “See Billy run—you can’t catch him with a gun.”

It wasn’t Grammy stuff.

But the fans loved it. The Lions were 4-0! They were among the leaders of the pack at the first turn.

The smart money wasn’t on the Lions, after all. During quarters two, three and four, the Lions fell back to the rest of the also-ran horses. They finished the season 9-7, out of the playoffs. Allen’s ditty took a nosedive on the radio play lists.

So it has been some 31 years since the Lions have had a shot at finishing the first turn undefeated.

Should you place any hard-earned dimes on the Honolulu Blue number?

I would—if those numbers are No. 9, No. 81,No. 90 and No. 4.

Those would be, respectively, QB Matthew Stafford, WR Calvin Johnson, DT Ndamukong Suh and kicker Jason Hanson.

The 1980 Lions had no one at those positions even remotely as good as the aforementioned quartet. And that’s no disrespect to Danielson, Freddie Scott, Dave Pureifory and Eddie Murray—the 1980 versions of that foursome.

The ’80 Lions were a 9-7 team that was probably exactly that—a 9-7 team.

The 2011 bunch is more talented, but so is the NFL.

The NFL has turned into something much different than what it was in 1980.

In 1980, you had haves and have-nots. The same teams, for the most part, made the playoffs every year. You had the Vikings and the Rams, the Cowboys and the Steelers, the Raiders,the Oilers and the Chargers. Pretty much every year.

Today, the teams peak and valley like the Dow Jones. Their year-to-year chart, if you plotted wins, would look like an EKG readout.

It’s not a favorite word in the league office, but it’s called parity.

Teams make the playoffs one year and fade into oblivion the next. Look at the Kansas City Chiefs. I dare you. The Chiefs made the playoffs last year at 10-6. This season, they’re 0-3 and barely competitive.

Look at the Buffalo Bills. With both eyes open, for a change. Last year the Bills didn’t win their first game until you could almost smell the Thanksgiving turkeys in the oven. In fact, it came against the Lions, last November 14. Fancy that.

This year, the Bills are another of the 3-0 teams entering the first turn. Last Sunday they rallied from 21 points down to beat the vaunted New England Patriots.

The football experts are also debating the true worth of the Bills, as they do with the Lions. Put good money on the Honolulu Blue number? I think I might, as long as you can keep Suh out of the recording studio.

Just hope he doesn’t put his mind to it. Who’s going to stop him?

Stafford and Company Will Restore Lions' Roar for Years to Come

2011-09-25T10:42:00.001-04:00

Sometime, 10 or 12 years from now, the face will be more chiseled and hewn. It’ll be the look of a man instead of a boy. The care-free smiling will be replaced by looks of introspection. The peach fuzz will be long gone—sandpaper in its place.

Matthew Stafford will find this out, first hand.

The mug of the NFL quarterback who’s been able to survive the league from college to his mid-to-upper-30s is the “after” following the “before.”

They’re handsome and unblemished when they enter the league. Then they leave looking like a tractor wheel drove over their face a few times.

Check out John Elway, 1983, and then compare it to Elway after winning his second Super Bowl in 1999. They could be son and father.

They all had the look.

Dan Marino bounded into Miami from Pitt with floppy, dark, curly hair. He had the looks of someone who should have been on the silver screen, not the gridiron.

Then came 17 years of beat downs from defensive linemen the size of Delaware, and Marino retired with a face that looked like it was morphing into corduroy. The hair wasn’t curly, it was matted.

No wonder defensive linemen love to kill the quarterback. Every one of those signal callers looks like the guy who always gets the girl.

The Lions’ Stafford and defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh are cordial because they wear the same colors on Sunday. But make them opposites and Suh would treat Stafford like any other quarterback—with the epitome of rude violence.

Stafford has his good looks and his curly hair and his peach fuzz. And a rocket of a right arm. It’s like going up against an armed and dangerous Doogie Howser.

Stafford is 23 years old and when you gaze at photos of him in 2021, you’ll smirk and remember what a young NFL quarterback looks like before the brutes rearrange him.

That’s OK. The numbers will be enough to more than make up for the loss of looks.

The Lions finally have themselves a quote franchise quarterback. When Stafford gets done, he will have obliterated every team passing record and maybe a couple league ones, too.

Stafford will have thrown hundreds of touchdown passes and for tens of thousands of yards and his No. 9 will go up in Ford Field somewhere. A bust of his likeness will be made ready for Canton, Ohio.

He’ll retire with the face of the wise old quarterback—the one who aged like he spent four years in the White House, not 15 years in the NFL.

The amount of damage that Matt Stafford could leave in his wake is staggering to consider. Especially if he has someone like Calvin Johnson to throw to for most of his years in the league.

This Stafford-to-Johnson connection is in its third year but it seems brand new. Stafford has missed so many games due to injury in his first two seasons that you wonder if Lions coach Jim Schwartz threw an ice-cream social at the beginning of training camp in August to reacquaint his star QB and receiver.

The connection has done its thing for two games in 2011 and already it should be causing defensive coordinators to curl into the fetal position.

It’s not just that Stafford and Johnson connect; it’s in how many ways they do so.

Is there a needle that needs threading? A howitzer that needs firing? A touch that needs to be floated?

You want a five-yard pitch and catch? A 12-yarder at the sidelines for a first down? A 25-yard strike down the middle? A two-yard fade route in the end zone?

And that’s just Johnson.

The Lions have a franchise quarterback but they also have people he can throw to. It takes two to tango in the passing game.

Let me switch gears for a moment, and take you back 30 years.

When Isiah Thomas joined the Pistons fresh out of Indiana University in 1981, he had a concern. And it was a valid one.

Isiah was used to winning, number one. He won an NCAA Championship with the Hoosiers in ’81 as a sophomore. He was surrounded by a talented bunch at the college level.

Then he was drafted by the Pistons—a team that won 16 and 21 games, respectively, in the two seasons prior to Isiah’s arrival.

So Isiah had a concern. He initially kept it private, revealing it only to those in his inner circle.

Isiah Thomas wondered, quite frankly, to whom on the Pistons he’d pass the ball. He wouldn’t exactly be playing with a bunch of future NBA Hall of Famers.

Stafford has no such concerns, playing for the Lions in 2011.

There’s Johnson, of course. Which is like a menu that starts with lobster tail.

But there’s also Nate Burleson—the John Taylor to Johnson’s Jerry Rice.

There’s talented, athletic rookie Titus Young, who comes from Boise State, where they do more passing than on a Florida expressway.

There’s the cache of tight ends—Tony Scheffler, Brandon Pettigrew and Will Heller, who are basically power forwards with hands of Velcro.

There’s a jitterbug of a running back, Jahvid Best, who can catch the football and motor up the field 10 yards before the defenders notice him running between their legs.

Still, it’s Calvin Johnson on whom Stafford will rely most. Which is smart. If I was a quarterback, I’d rely on a skyscraper with hands, too.

Stafford-to-Johnson has the potential to be the best tandem in Detroit since Fisher and Body.

And 10, 15 years from now, after Matthew Stafford has shut people up about a Bobby Layne Curse and has rewritten the Lions record book and has put No. 9 into moth balls forever, we’ll look at him and see, somewhere, that boyish, peach-fuzzed face of 2011.

And the smile—the one he displayed as the NFL Commissioner presented Stafford with the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Don’t snicker. The Lions pre-Stafford are the “before.” Lord knows what the kid will do as he authors the “after.”

Lions Coach Schwartz Has That Winning Look

2011-09-11T11:26:00.001-04:00

Jim Schwartz has been the head coach of the Detroit Lions for nearly three years and I don’t trust him.

He doesn’t have “the look.”

How can he be the coach of the Lions and not look like he just saw Humpty Dumpty fall down and bounce back up?

The Detroit Lions coaches of years past have always had “the look.” The one that speaks the ghoulish thousand words.

They’ve all had it, from Schmidt to Forzano to Clark to Rogers (who had the look from the moment he signed his contract) to Fontes to Ross to Mornhinweg to Mariucci to Marinelli.

It’s the look of exasperation combined with defeat and humiliation. Sometimes the look is expressed on the sideline, after watching another fumble or completed pass to the other team or a game-killing nine-minute drive by the opponent to eat up the rest of the fourth quarter.

Sometimes the look happens during training camp, when the coach realizes that his players don’t have that thing called talent.

Sometimes the look occurs during one of those post game press conferences, when all the geniuses holding tape recorders and microphones ask, “So what happened?”

The look has claimed some fine football coaches in Detroit, and some clowns.

Schwartz is different, and that’s why I don’t trust him.

When is he going to have the look? And if he isn’t, then I’m really suspicious of the guy.

Schwartz bounced into town in January 2009, just weeks after the Lions pratfall to a still unbelievable 0-16 record. The NFL is a league of parity and, at times, mediocrity is enough to get by.

To go 0-16 in the NFL is longer odds than beating the house at blackjack. But the Lions pulled it off. Someone could have won a mint.

So here comes Schwartz, fresh off a defensive coordinator’s gig in Tennessee, and he had that typical “just hired” look that all the Lions coaches had at one time or another: smiling, at ease, no crow’s feet. He looked like the Presidents of the United States do on Inaugural Ball night, before the job turns them into the gray-haired, wrinkled and crucified.

The cameras snapped and the tape recorders whirred and a beaming Schwartz posed with a football and a Lions helmet and all you could think of was, “That poor, poor man.”

Now, it must be pointed out that to follow 0-16 is like being a singer going on stage after a comedian who bombed; you’d have to be a pretty God-awful crooner to not get applause.

Schwartz’s Lions won three games that first year, in 2009. It was a decent enough honeymoon, especially considering that his starting quarterback, Matthew Stafford, missed some playing time due to injury.

Then came 2010 and Stafford goes down just before halftime with a severe shoulder injury on Opening Sunday—surely that would have been time for Schwartz to flash the look.

The Lions gamely soldiered on during that game in Chicago and had a potential game-winning TD pulled back from them by the officials, and all the Lions could do was look on like they were at a dinner table with a sleight of hand artist.

All this happened before the season was 60 minutes old.

Still, Schwartz never got the look.

After 12 games last year the Lions were 2-10 with Stafford having suited up for all of three contests, his shoulders ravaged with injury. Even the backup, Shaun Hill, went down with a bad wrist.

Schwartz kept his cool and his composure. He didn’t fly into a Bobby Ross-like rant. He didn’t talk of pounding the rock like Rod Marinelli. He didn’t wonder, like Darryl Rogers did, what it took to get fired around here.

Schwartz didn’t stand in front of the inquiring media minds and say, “See you at the graveyard,” like Monte Clark did in 1983. Schwartz didn’t take the wind instead of the football, like Marty Mornhinweg.

And he didn’t quit, like Ross did—and had done before and after coaching the Lions—in the middle of the season.

Schwartz stayed the course, working with a third-string quarterback, a second-string running back and a defense that was front heavy and back light.

Then something funny happened. The Lions beat the Packers for their third win of the season. They knocked Green Bay QB Aaron Rodgers senseless before halftime.

Then the Lions went down to Tampa and ended a road losing streak that dated to 2007, by booting the Bucs in overtime.

The day after Christmas, the Lions returned to Florida and stunned the Miami Dolphins with a fourth quarter comeback that included the once-light secondary making some big time plays—something we haven’t seen in these parts since Lyndon Johnson was president.

That was three straight wins, and the best part was that not only did Jim Schwartz not have the look, he didn’t have the other look, either—that of someone who thinks he’s accomplished something, when he really hasn’t.

Some of the Lions coaches of the past have had that look, too.

The Vikings came to town on the season’s final weekend and the Lions thumped them, for a season-ending four-game winning streak.

Never before did a 6-10 record look so good in the history of the NFL.

Through it all, Schwartz had a different kind of look.

It was the look of the in-control football coach—the rock steady, steely-eyed man who, when you look at him, you can’t tell if he’s winning or losing by 40 points.

Schwartz may not have always been the perkiest coach during his weekly press conferences. He may have become bristly when discussing injuries. He wasn’t Dale Carnegie.

But he wasn’t a snake oil salesman or a phony, and Lord knows we’ve seen those types on the Lions sidelines, wearing headsets.

The Lions four-game winning streak to cap the 2010 season, along with the anticipated health of Stafford and continued massaging of the roster by GM Marty Mayhew, have caused even the national football observers to look at the Lions as serious playoff contenders.

A look further at the hype reveals a common thread—the folks going ga-ga over the Lions do so because they all believe in the head coach.

“Smart” is the word that is most often repeated when describing Schwartz.

Jim Schwartz does know his football. He knows talent. And he knows what he’s doing as a head coach in the NFL.

Now THERE’S a look for you.

Like Karras Did, Suh Dominates In Trenches for Lions

2011-08-21T11:48:00.000-04:00

The greatest defensive tackle in Lions history had a nose for the quarterback. He had to, because he couldn’t see the passer.

Alex Karras, the Golden Greek (aka Tippy Toes), had the eyesight of Mr. Magoo but the olfactory nerves of a shark in blood-tinged waters

Karras was a wrestler at the University of Iowa, and he used that experience to break free of pass protectors through the use of agility and leverage.

Amazingly, it was Karras who initially feared for his own safety.

“I learned at a very young age,” Karras once told NFL Films, “that if I ever lined up to do battle…that I could get hurt!”

Karras joined the Lions in 1958 as a rookie from Iowa, when the Lions were defending league champs. Needless to say, no other rookie has joined the team under those circumstances since then.

He came into the NFL with Wayne Walker, the linebacker from Idaho. Together they were part of some very good defenses in Detroit, often when the offense was nowhere nearly as competent.

But that was the NFL, circa the mid-to-late 1950s through most of the 1960s: The league was filled with gritty, nasty defenders who rarely made a tackle below the jaw line. Helmets of the so-called “skill” players popped off like champagne corks on New Year’s Eve, in those days.

Occasionally, the player’s teammates would check to make sure the head wasn’t still inside.

This was the NFL of the day—the polar opposite of the upstart American Football League, whose game scores looked more like college basketball tilts than those of pro football.

The AFL had the Mad Bomber—Oakland QB Daryle Lamonica. The NFL had the Mad Stork—linebacker Ted Hendricks.

The Lions could play some defense, especially in the trenches, where Karras was joined in crime by partners Darris McCord, Sam Williams and Roger Brown. Behind them was middle linebacker Joe Schmidt, the pride of Pitt.

Then the Lions added Lem Barney to the secondary, which already included Dick LeBeau and Bruce Maher.

Too bad the offenses were often plodding units who needed a month of Sundays to score 50 points.

Karras was the ring leader, make no mistake. Alex adored the spotlight and the attention. He walked around training camp at Cranbrook wearing horn-rimmed glasses, plaid shorts and smoking a cigar.

“Alex was two different people,” longtime Chicago Bears center Mike Pyle told Ed Sabol’s folks at NFL Films. “On the field, he wanted to destroy anyone wearing the opposing uniform. But off the field, just a really nice guy.”

Karras played in the days when television was just starting to sink its claws into pro football. He once told me that the classic Thanksgiving Day game in 1962, when the Lions tore Green Bay quarterback Bart Starr limb from limb, was special to him because it was one of the first games Karras had played on national TV.

“You started to play the game for television in those days,” Karras told me.

Karras liked TV so much, he found a second career in it.

Some might argue against my opening sentence, refusing to believe that Karras was better than today’s Lions brute, Ndamukong Suh, even though Suh has played just one season in the NFL.

Sorry, but never can a man of one year’s experience be considered the best of anything.

However, I may be stupid, but I’m not foolish enough to tell that to Suh’s face.

Clearly, Suh has the potential to best Karras as the Lions best-ever defensive tackle. Granted, that might even happen this season. But it’s too soon to declare Suh the best—for now.

The Lions have themselves, in Suh, a weapon of mass destruction. Defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham ought to come to work handcuffed to a briefcase, inside of which holds the keys that are simultaneously inserted to turn Suh on.

The destructive powers of Suh, once unleashed, are irrevocable.

That is why the Lions should dismiss the fine that Suh received after his throwdown of Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton, which occurred early in last Friday’s exhibition opener.

The NFL nicked Suh for $20,000. But it’s not the money that has coach Jim Schwartz, GM Marty Mayhew and the Lions fan base worried.

It’s the reputation.

Suh, after just one season and one exhibition game, is smack in the middle of the NFL’s radar. He wears Honolulu Blue to us, but to the powers that be in the league offices, Suh wears a black hat. The fines started early last year, too—also in the preseason. And they never really stopped.

It’s troubling that Suh gets an inordinate amount of attention from the disciplinarians for his wont to cause mayhem. It’s not his fault that he has the strength to throw people around like rag dolls. Suh’s tackles just look worse than those of other, mortal men.

Helmets tend to fly off and arms and legs get splayed around, when Suh gets his mitts on a ball carrier.

But the Lions ought not to worry about the fines so much that they try to reel Suh in. He’s too good, too powerful, too dynamic to try to suppress.

Suh is the most dominating force the Lions have employed in years. Even Big Baby, Shaun Rogers, wasn’t this good in his heyday. Neither was Jerry Ball or Doug English or Al “Bubba” Baker.

Karras was, but Alex isn’t likely to hold his place as Best Ever Lions Defensive Tackle, for much longer.

The two of them—Alex Karras and Ndamukong Suh—have something else in common: both got themselves into hot water with the NFL; Karras for his gambling, Suh for his sadism.

“In pro football,” Karras told NFL Films, “you line up every Sunday to play the game of battle.”

Here’s Suh, speaking to the Free Press last week: “I'm not going to stop playing hard. Like I said before ... I owe it to my teammates, I owe it to the coaches, and I owe it to the fans first and foremost. That's the reason why they watch the game. It's one of the reasons football is football, cause it's physical contract, aggression that is made exciting.”

Karras and Suh—two defensive greats whose careers began over 50 years apart. Yet they sound like they could have been terrific teammates, in any era.

Nothing Good Happens for Lions if Stafford Can't Stay Upright

2011-08-14T13:03:00.000-04:00

The roster says that Matthew Stafford is a third-year NFL quarterback. Don’t believe everything that you read.

Stafford is the Paper Lion, with apologies to George Plimpton. The kid reared in Texas was drafted first overall in 2009 by the Lions out of the University of Georgia, and he’s still working on a complete season of 16 games.

He stands at 13 games played after two seasons—10 in 2009, three last year. The other 19 have been missed because of his knees or his shoulders.

If this was baseball, 13-for-32 would be a cool .406 batting average—very Ted Williams-ish.

But this is pro football, where 13-for-32 for a quarterback isn’t good, no matter how you slice it. It’s not good as a completion percentage, and it’s downright disdainful as a playing percentage.

Stafford is entering his third year as a pro, but we don’t know enough about him to make a clear, confident assessment of his quarterbacking abilities.

Everything about Stafford is talked about as if you’re looking at him through a dirty screen door.

“Gosh,” folks will say, “he looks like a good quarterback.” Then, they’ll just as quickly add, “But I really can’t tell.”

Well, he’d better be good, because for all the offensive weapons the Lions possess, they won’t mean a hill of beans if Stafford can’t stay upright for an entire season.

Speaking of hills, the Lions have one named Shaun, who will serve as Stafford’s backup. Even though Hill is a great guy and a gutsy player, the Lions hope he’s seen as often as Olivier’s understudy.

The Lions plunge into the 2011 season with more national and local buzz surrounding them than I can recall—and I’ve been following them since 1970. I think some of the old-timers whose recollection goes back much further would agree with me.

What do you call it when even Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, usually so wise, puts “Super Bowl” and “Detroit Lions” in the same sentence? And just three years after 0-16?

King went on record last week as hinting that the Lions, if things go right and this happens and that happens, could—maybe, might—find themselves in Super Bowl XLVI.

The Lions had the gall to win their last four games of the 2010 season, and as soon as they did, I knew they’d be the trendy pick of 2011.

Maybe the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears have something to worry about, maybe they don’t.

But all of the nicey-nicey talk about the Lions, all the excitement and buzz and high expectations, all of it floats around an assumption that has yet to transpire.

The Lions will be a contender, the optimists say, because their assumption is that Matthew Stafford will be under center and not under the surgeon’s knife.

That’s quite an assumption. That’s a leap of epic proportions. It involves suspending disbelief.

Here’s the conundrum: Believers in Stafford and the Lions would convince you that the young QB isn’t snake-bitten, that he isn’t injury-prone. Yet the only way they can be proven right is if Stafford makes it through a full season without setting foot in a hospital, unless it’s to visit sick kids.

This injury-prone thing is going to follow Stafford, like it or not. And it should. The pessimists have history on their side.

The pessimists and haters look at Stafford cross-eyed, like he’s a defendant on trial and the prosecution has bags and bags of evidence and witnesses lining up around the block to testify: “He’s the one, your honor!”

You really can’t blame the pessimists.

The play that separated Stafford’s shoulder for the second time last season, in a November tilt against the New York Jets, didn’t appear to be anything that doesn’t happen to NFL quarterbacks every week.

Of all his injuries, I believe the one against the Jets is what turned a lot of folks in the Lions fanbase against Stafford.

And until he gets through at least one full season without serious injury, the discussion about Stafford’s durability will continue to fester.

Might as well call the dudes from Guinness, because we’re about to set a world’s record for most people holding their breath every Sunday, from September to January.

Every time Stafford gets hit, every time he scrambles around in the pocket—hell, every time he jogs onto the field for player introductions—Lions fans will wring their hands and rock back and forth in their seats.

The sales of candles and rabbit’s feet will explode in Motown this football season.

The Lions are worthy of the buzz for reasons other than Stafford, I will grant you that.

There’s Ndamukong Suh, the wrecking ball defensive tackle, who might be, after just one season, the best in the business. Suh is the godfather of the D-line and sitting with him at the table are some very fearsome lieutenants.

There’s freakishly big Calvin Johnson, the receiver who gleefully gallops across the gridiron, making the football that he’s clutching look like a baking potato.

There’s more talent across the board than any Lions team we’ve been presented with in years.

But Matthew Stafford has to stay healthy. He just has to.

Let me take you back to 1979.

The Lions’ quarterback was the competent Gary Danielson, who didn’t have as much talent in his entire body as Stafford has in his left bicep. But Gary was good enough for the Lions and their rebuilding process. In 1978, against the Minnesota Vikings in the Silverdome, Danielson threw five TD passes—still a shared franchise record.

But in the final exhibition game of ’79 in Baltimore, Danielson wrecked his knee. He was lost for the season. The Lions didn’t have a capable backup, like they do today.

In an instant, the Lions went from being led by Danielson to relying on a rookie named Jeff Komlo. A 2-14 season ensued.

But all was not lost—that awful season enabled the Lions to draft running back Billy Sims in 1980. Sims was the Lions’ best player until a game in 1984, when he suffered a career-ending knee injury. Again the Lions went rebuilding.

The Lions have been rebuilding ever since. They’re the Bob Vila of the NFL.

The slapstick might be near an end. The Lions might have found the superstar quarterback they’ve been lacking for over half a century.

I think. Though, I can’t tell for sure.

Is Tiger Woods Still Relevant?

2011-07-24T10:08:00.001-04:00

No one wins a golf tournament so much as they don’t lose it. It’s 72 holes of survival of the fittest, and he who makes the fewest mistakes comes out on top on Sunday afternoon.

It’s a sport with no teammates and only one person who understands you—the caddie. You spend four days trying to avoid about 17 miles worth of land mines and it can all blow up on you in the final few feet—or even inches.

Does the collar get any tighter than it does for the professional golfer on the tourney’s last day, when he starts the morning with a four stroke lead and looks behind him and sees a gang charging after him, making birdies and sinking 25-foot putts, all while looking cool and collected?

It can be the loneliest place on Earth—being the leader of a major golf tournament in its waning hours. The pressure has gotten some of the game’s greats, and a whole lot of its goods.

The pro golfer can’t duck into the showers and hide out after the 72^nd hole and then sneak out the back door of the locker room, avoiding reporters. He can’t point to an error by his third baseman or an errant pass by his point guard or a strange play called by his coach as a contributing factor to his loss.

Golf tournaments aren’t won, as a rule. They’re just not lost.

No one can snatch a tournament in come-from-behind fashion without a conspiracy involving the leader. The followers can make all the birdies and eagles that they want, but they’re useless unless the leader is three-putting or slicing a drive into the woods or hitting a fat fairway wood into a bunker on the approach.

The caveat here is that none of this was true when Tiger Woods was on top of the golfing world.

Tiger won tournaments. He didn’t not lose them.

Woods was the exception to the aforementioned corollaries. He was the exception, no matter if you wanted to throw Hogan, Nicklaus, Jones and Nelson into the mix. Woods was better than them all. He played in a league of one.

Golf was a game that Tiger Woods owned, more than Muhammad Ali owned boxing and more than Pete Sampras ever owned tennis. Tiger didn’t come from ahead to lose, and when he came from behind to win, the leader never had a prayer.

Woods became one of the world’s best known athletes, traveling the globe in his red shirt and black pants and all those magic wands in his bag. He had a smile that could light Broadway during a blackout.

Woods was the prodigy golfer—swinging clubs that were taller than he, when he was still diapered. Other kids had a playground; Woods had a driving range.

Golf was forewarned. In the years leading up to Tiger joining the PGA tour, the stories of his prowess on the links were told the same way wide-eyed bank patrons of the 1930s talked about Dillinger’s jobs.

Golf was forewarned. Tiger Woods didn’t sneak up on the PGA. His presence was announced beforehand, like a tornado—and no one can do anything about those, either, except weather them.

Woods won tournament after tournament—with more than a few majors sprinkled in—and when he wasn’t winning he was often scaring the bejeebers out of the guy who did win. From 1997-2009, Woods was the tour’s no. 1 money winner nine times out of 13.

Almost $100 million Woods has won, slapping that tiny, dimpled ball around like no one else.

Woods owned golf. He won as a teenager and he won as a young man and he won as a veteran and he won off the course, with endorsements and a gorgeous wife and a beautiful family.

There’s irony—and maybe a cruel joke—somewhere in the fact that the demise of Tiger Woods began on a Thanksgiving weekend.

It was November 2009 when the story broke of Woods being involved in a bizarre car wreck near his home. It wasn’t long before the facts began to ooze out: Woods had been a naughty boy, cheating on his gorgeous wife, former model Elin Nordegren.

Then out of the woodwork came women who also claimed to have had sexual relations with Woods.

Divorce soon followed and golf was put on the back burner while Woods sought help for his destructive, deviant behavior.

The road back for Tiger Woods has been pocked with injury and poor play. He’s an also ran now; just one of the guys to fill the field. He hasn’t won a tournament in two years, not really coming close, in fact.

He lost his wife and his family and his endorsements. He lost his edge on the golf course and his aura. No one fears Woods now; it’s as if the PGA tour has been freed from his bondage.

The majors are being won by first-timers and Cinderella stories. Woods has abdicated his throne and a bunch of paupers are getting the chance to sit in it.

The latest news about Woods came earlier this week, and like all news about him since November 2009, it wasn’t uplifting.

Woods announced that longtime caddie Steve Williams, Tiger’s best friend on the golf course since 1999, was being canned.

“I want to express my deepest gratitude to Stevie for all his help, but I think it’s time for a change,” Woods said, not explaining why a change was needed.

Speculation is that the relationship between Woods and Williams chilled like champagne on New Year’s Eve after Tiger and Nordegren split.

Williams joins swing coach Hank Haney as ex-Woods employees turned scapegoats for their boss’s poor play.

Since caddies get paid based on the success of the golfers for whom they work, the past two years have been lean times for Williams, who nonetheless stuck by Woods.

All it got Williams was kicked to the curb.

In an interview with Television New Zealand following his firing, Williams said, “Obviously, working through a scandal, he’s had a new coach, a swing change, the last 18 months has been very difficult and I’ve stuck by him through thick and thin. I’ve been incredibly loyal — and then to have this happen, basically you could say I’ve wasted two years of my life, the last two years.”

Williams will probably be better off in the long run, because it’s becoming apparent that Tiger Woods simply isn’t relevant anymore. He’s a broken man with Achilles and knee injuries who fights himself on the course something fierce, and loses.

It’s not overly dramatic to suggest that Woods, at age 35, is in the sunset of his golf career.

And, as usual with the pro golfer, he has no one to blame but himself.

Osgood's HOF Worthiness to be One of Hockey's Greatest Debates

2011-07-20T13:34:00.004-04:00

The sure-fire Hall of Fame goalie was beginning to show his age. At 43, the Red Wings' netminder was battling the puck something awful, and the puck was winning. Too often the vulcanized rubber disc was finding its way over the goal line and tickling the twine.

It was another playoff season in Detroit, aka "Hockeytown", that self-named moniker smacking with arrogance. The Red Wings were six years removed from their last Stanley Cup and in between were many post-season disappointments.

The 2003 first-round sweep at the hands of the Anaheim Mighty (then) Ducks. The 2004 second round upset levied on them by the Calgary Flames. The 2006 first round shocker suffered against the Edmonton Oilers. The heartbreaking 2007 Western Conference Finals loss to the just plain Ducks.

Now it was 2008 and after four games of the first round series with the inferior Nashville Predators, Red Wings coach Mike Babcock made, in my book, one of the gutsiest moves authored by any coach in this city. Ever.

"The puck is going in the net," Babcock complained to the media after the Predators beat the Red Wings twice in Nashville to square the series at 2-2.

The puck went into the Red Wings' net in the first two games in Detroit, too, but Babcock's bunch was able to overcome that with its high-powered offense. Not so much in Nashville.

So, just like that, Babcock pressed the "eject" button and Dominik Hasek was vaulted out of the Red Wings cage and in went Chris Osgood for Game 5 in Detroit.

I'm still amazed by Babcock's moxie in making that move, because I'm convinced that he's one of few NHL coaches who would have pulled the trigger---maybe the only one at that time.

My belief was supported later in the playoffs, when Colorado coach Joel Quenneville failed to show the same guts and left bedraggled goalie Jose Theodore as his starter when a goalie change could have given the Avalanche a much-needed boost.

Osgood was magnificent in Game 5, despite surrendering a goal late in the third period that tied the game. The Red Wings won early in overtime to take a 3-2 series lead. It gave me chills when Osgood was announced as the game's no. 1 star and he skated out and raised his goalie paddle while the Joe Louis Arena crowd chanted "OZZ-IE!! OZZ-IE!!"

The Red Wings won the series one game later and eventually captured their fourth Stanley Cup in 11 years, thanks in no small part to Osgood's goaltending.

Babcock went with his gut in switching from the Hall of Famer Hasek to the hardened veteran Osgood and the reward was the greatest.

That moment is dripping with irony, because indefinitely we will debate whether Chris Osgood belongs in the Hall of Fame, despite his clutch work in 2008 in relief of a no-brainer HOFer in Hasek.

Who should or shouldn't be in any sport's HOF makes for the best arguments and liveliest debates. It's great bar talk, a wonderful complement to a cold one and some pretzels.

Osgood retired yesterday at age 38, unable to assure the Red Wings that his troublesome sports hernia injury and suspect groin won't go "pop" sometime next season.

Osgood leaves the playing ranks with 401 wins and 50 shutouts, and two Cups as a starter, a third as a backup. And one game away from a third and fourth, respectively, in those categories.

He leaves with 15 playoff shutouts and a 2.16 GAA and .916 save pct. in the post-season.

For comparison's sake, the great Martin Brodeur---another sure-fire Hall of Famer---has 23 career playoff shutouts, a 2.01 GAA, a .919 save pct, and three Stanley Cups.

Not all that different, is it?

But the HOF debate, when it comes to Chris Osgood, isn't just about numbers. If it was, then there would be little debate at all.

Fellow Bleacher Report Red Wings featured columnist Matt Hutter, on the sports podcast I co-host, "The Knee Jerks," addressed the Osgood/HOF talk earlier this year.

Osgood, Hutter fears, doesn't have that "wow" factor that other HOF goalies have.

Guys like Patrick Roy, or Brodeur, or Hasek.

Matt's right.

Osgood achieved his 401 wins and his 50 shutouts as quietly as one man can get them. The 400 wins were upon us before we knew it, or could squawk too much about them.

Osgood got his 400 wins and now he's retired, just like that. We're starting the debate flat-footed.

Osgood will be one of the most interesting players in recent years to discuss, post-retirement. His worthiness of HOF status can be expertly argued, both ways. Depending on the talking points of the plaintiff, you can walk away certain that he is or isn't a Hall of Fame goalie.

Maybe Chris Osgood is the Jim Thome of hockey.

Thome, the left-handed hitting slugger, is closing in on 600 home runs. In past years, such a milestone would earn the achiever a punched ticket into Cooperstown, no questions asked.

No more.

There are those---and I'm one of them---who aren't convinced that Thome is a Hall of Famer, despite the 600 dingers. Again, Thome supporters could wonder why there's even a question.

The Osgood topic is made even more volatile because Osgood himself has gone on record expressing his intense desire to be in the Hall of Fame. This isn't some guy who is taking a "que sera, sera" attitude about his worthiness. Osgood wants to be in the Hall---badly.

There's a three-year waiting period after retirement before a player is eligible for election into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

Osgood is on the clock. That's great news for the beer and bar industries.

The Writing Is On the Wall, But Will Osgood Read It?

2011-07-06T15:41:00.003-04:00

If Red Wings GM Kenny Holland were afforded the luxury of managing his roster strictly by heart and by emotion, there's no question that Chris Osgood would be the team's backup goaltender for 2011-12 until proven otherwise.

If the black-and-white characteristics of business weren't involved, Osgood would be welcomed to training camp in Traverse City in September, his no. 30 jersey hanging in his locker stall, freshly laundered and ready to go.

If Holland didn't have to operate with the inconvenience of a bottom line or the harsh realities of the toll that age takes on players, especially goalies, the GM's focus would be on acquiring another skater---forward or defenseman---and the likes of Joey MacDonald and Thomas McCollum would have to wait yet another year to get a crack at the no. 2 job behind Jimmy Howard.

But that is a fantasy land.

One thing you can say about old Red Wings---with apologies to General Douglas MacArthur---they don't die, they just fade away, albeit at times very, very slowly.

The old Red Wings don't make things easy for Holland. Their modus operandi hasn't been to voluntarily raise their hands and ask to be lopped off the roster in order to make room for the kids.

Rather, their tack has been to stick around until they're asked to leave.

You saw it with Chris Chelios, who was closer to 50 than he was 40 when the Red Wings finally cut ties with the defenseman in 2009. You saw it with Kirk Maltby, just last summer, who didn't exactly go kicking and screaming out of uniform, but Holland almost had to hit Kirk over the head to get him to retire.

Those are just two recent examples, and they keep coming.

No doubt that Kris Draper, 40, will have to be forced to read the writing on the proverbial wall, indicating that his role of defensive whiz and penalty killer with wheels has been assumed by Darren Helm.

So it will be with Osgood, 38, who is likely to be among the last to acknowledge that his days as Howard's backup are over with.

Osgood is coming off two less-than-stellar seasons that have been pocked with injury, most recently to the groin---a goalie's worst enemy.

Osgood is another who isn't making things easy for Holland. Ozzie hasn't offered to be jettisoned, nor will he make such an overture. At least, it's doubtful that he will.

But Osgood's reticence hasn't stopped Holland from carrying on with his duties as GM. The Red Wings have some money to spend on a new/old goalie. They told Osgood (and Draper) that a new contract wouldn't be offered until after July 1, the date that free agents can begin to be signed. That is, if a contract would be offered at all.

Last winter, as he was recuperating from his groin injury---an injury he never did return from---Osgood sat in with Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond during a telecast from Florida.

Osgood was asked if he felt like he had some hockey left in the tank.

Unsurprisingly, Ozzie said yes, he had.

"I'm not ready to join the Red Wings Old-Timers yet," Osgood cracked.

But he also spoke of life post-playing, and how he'd like to somehow assist the current and future Red Wings goalies, whether as an official coach or a training camp instructor.

The preference, of course, was to keep playing.

The Red Wings are unique in that I don't recall seeing, in my 41 years of following Detroit sports, so many longtime players stick with a franchise for so long, who were productive almost until the very end.

We're talking, in the cases of Draper and Osgood, ties to the 1997 Stanley Cup champs, for goodness sakes.

I remember Osgood as a 21-year-old, tearfully facing the media after his ill-timed giveaway to San Jose's Jamie Baker cost the Red Wings a goal and the series to the Sharks in a stunning seven-game upset.

I recall thinking at the time that it wouldn't be a surprise if we never heard of Chris Osgood again after that horrific blunder. That mistake was the kind that can ruin a kid's career.

Ozzie could have been a footnote---the answer to a garish trivia question.

Instead, he ended up as a three-time Cup winner in Detroit---two as the team's starting goalie in the playoffs, once as its savior after replacing the great Dominik Hasek midway through the first round in 2008. And Osgood damn near won another Cup a year later.

I've gone on record saying that the Red Wings ought to raise Osgood's no. 30 to the rafters---a discussion that I won't venture into now. Neither that nor the one about his belonging in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Both debates have been done to death.

Reports say that Holland's search for Howard's new backup might end with one-time Red Wing Ty Conklin, 35 years old.

Those same reports indicate that where the search is unlikely to drift is to Osgood, 38 and with a questionable groin.

Chris Osgood isn't likely going to make becoming an ex-Red Wing easy for Ken Holland.

But the old Winged Wheelers never do, do they?

Mr. Hockey’s Genes As Penetrating As His Elbows When it Came to Mark Howe

2011-07-03T17:03:00.000-04:00

Mark Howe and Jesus Christ have a lot in common; they’re both sons of gods who did pretty well in carrying on the family tradition.

On April 14, 1955, Gordie Howe skated off the ice at Detroit’s Olympia Stadium as a Stanley Cup champion for the fourth time with the Red Wings. One month and 14 days later, Gordie and Colleen Howe welcomed their second son, Mark, into the world.

Forty years and some change later, Mark Howe and his Red Wings teammates engaged in a futile Stanley Cup Finals series against the New Jersey Devils, won by New Jersey in four games. Unlike his dad, Mark Howe skated off the ice for the final time as a player, Cup-less for his career.

1955, the year in which the Howes added to their family, remained the last time the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. Mark Howe retired shortly after the Cup Finals in 1995.

How can Mark Howe be a Hall of Fame hockey player, when he wasn’t even the best player in his own family?

Easy—when your dad is Mr. Hockey. Easy to be forgiven for coming up short when you’re part of such a lineage.

Murray Howe, the way I figure it, was the only Howe boy who had any sense. Murray became a doctor. Mark and oldest son Marty put on skates against all odds. There’s a reason Rembrandt’s kid never picked up a paint brush.

You’ve seen this played out before. Sports legend’s son gives the game a go and finds that greatness isn’t hereditary. Pete Rose, Jr., anyone?

There would have been no shame at all if Mark Howe would have dedicated his young life to 5:30 a.m. practices and blisters on his feet and blackened eyes and teeth extracted by those mad dentists on the other team with hockey sticks, and then found that he couldn’t continue the family business, after all.

No shame whatsoever.

But a funny thing happened as Gordie’s kids persevered in the game of ice hockey: They turned out to be pretty damn good at it. The blood they spilled on the ice had enough of Gordie in it to make Mark and Marty standout players in their own right.

Mark, especially, with apologies to Marty, who was no slouch.

As dad finished his Red Wings career during the 1970-71 season, Mark was playing—at age 15—for the Detroit Jr. Red Wings and leading them to the US Junior Championship as a sometimes forward, sometimes defenseman. This was no case of preferential treatment due to legacy; Mark Howe was by far the Jr. Red Wings’ best player.

A year later, Mark was playing for Team USA in the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, and, at the tender age of 16, he and his teammates won a silver medal, making Mark the youngest hockey player to ever win an Olympic medal.

Gordie was retired at this point, stuck in a dead-end job with the Red Wings as a pretend vice president, getting what he famously called the “mushroom treatment.”

“Every once in awhile they opened my office door and dumped manure on me,” Gordie said in a version that is decidedly censored for this column.

Mark Howe kept playing hockey, and kept getting better. His was a shining star that was bright even in the enormous shadow cast by his dad.

In fact, Mark Howe was so good that Gordie came out of retirement to play with both Mark and Marty when the two boys were young pros with the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association.

It was in the summer of 1973 when Gordie asked a stunned Bill Dineen, his old teammate and coach of the Aeros, if he’d like to have a third Howe on the roster.

The WHA wasn’t the NHL, though it had many former NHL players scattered throughout the league. The WHA was NHL Lite, a saccharin version. But Mark Howe was so brilliant as a WHA player, even among competition inferior to the NHL, that NHL teams stumbled over themselves to acquire his rights.

It never mattered, because the dying WHA merged four of its remaining teams with the NHL in 1979—and one of those teams was the Hartford Whalers, where the Howes were now playing, still a trio of father and two sons.

In 1979-80, Mark Howe proved what grizzled hockey observers long suspected: He could, indeed, play in the NHL—and play at a high level. Mark scored 24 goals and registered 80 points in the established league, while Gordie had one more go around in the NHL as a 52-year-old. The Whalers even made the playoffs.

Gordie retired for good in 1980 and Mark was the new hockey playing man in the family. Marty was still around, but his career paled when compared to what his kid brother was doing.

Marty’s last game in the NHL was in 1985 with the Whalers. Mark was just getting started, really.

Having been traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in 1982, Mark Howe became a three-time Norris Trophy finalist as the league’s best defenseman (1983, 1986, 1987), while helping to lead the Flyers to the Cup Finals in 1985 and 1987—losing to the Edmonton Oilers on both occasions.

Injuries to his back and knees derailed Mark’s career after 1987, and by 1992, he was a 37-year-old hanging on in the chase for the hockey player’s white whale—the Stanley Cup.

It was in the summer of 1992 when the Flyers bought out Mark’s contract so he could be a free agent and sign with a team with a chance at the Cup. That team just happened to be the Detroit Red Wings.

This was a script with Hollywood’s fingerprints all over it. Local kid, son of a legend, returns home to join his father as Stanley Cup champion.

But the New Jersey Devils were cast in the role of villain in 1995, and Mark never did win his Stanley Cup—as a player.

Today, Mark Howe has four Cup rings—all achieved while working in the Red Wings scouting department, where he is now Director of Pro Scouting for the team.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Mark is part of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Class of 2011, a final testament to his outstanding 22-year career as a professional hockey player.

Mr. Hockey, Jr., and Howe!

James, Once Again, Shrinks From the Spotlight in NBA Finals

2011-06-13T00:22:00.003-04:00

Nearly a year after we had The Decision, we need to have The Incision.

How else are we going to find out if LeBron James has heart? Or guts? Or brains?

Those things certainly didn't materialize on the hardwood of the NBA Finals, where Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks stormed into Miami and took, right from under James's nose, that which LeBron has long desired but clearly has no idea how to attain---an NBA championship.

This was supposed to be the coronation of a King, but we found out that James is instead an emperor with no clothes.

James fled Cleveland last summer, turning his back on his hometown, conspiring with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to form a trio of stars that LeBron saw as a fast track to a ring. His 2007 Cavaliers were outclassed in the Finals by the San Antonio Spurs, and subsequent Cavs teams fell short of the Larry O'Brien Trophy, a round or two shy of the Finals, largely because of James's confounding disappearing acts in the most crucial of times.

But all is forgotten and forgiven once you win. After you win the title, everything prior to that is conveniently filed under "learning experience." Sometimes you can even manage to be portrayed as having lived a hardscrabble NBA life, culminating in that previously elusive championship, thanks to the requisite blood, sweat and tears.

LeBron James's days of fooling even the foolish are over. He is fraudulent---a paper lion, if you will. He's a player with shoulders that narrow and a heart that shrinks in the most important games of his life. He quit on the Cavs last year, "took his talents to South Beach"---and won't those soon become some of the most notorious, inglorious words ever spoken by a pro athlete?---and tried to take cuts in line.

How much more moronic does Scottie Pippen look this morning?

Pippen caused a stir recently when he suggested that James might be better than even Michael Jordan---Scottie's old teammate, six-time NBA champion, and three-time Finals MVP.

What else, Scottie? Saccarin is better than sugar? "Caddyshack II" was a better gift to motion pictures than its predecessor?

The Heat showed flashes of greatness in these playoffs, and James played OK for stretches of time. But Jordan's jockstrap dwarfs LeBron's hands.

James's supporters believed he would eventually take over one of the Finals games, loading the Heat onto his back and almost single-handedly beating the Mavs. You know, like how Michael Jordan did in big games.

Those folks are still waiting.

"It's now or never," James Tweeted after the Heat lost Game 5 in Dallas.

Well, "now" just left town. All that's left is the booby prize of bad Karma.

Shed no tears for the phony superstar who didn't even have the decency to shake hands with his vanquishers following the 105-95 loss in Game 6 Sunday night. Cry not for James and his failed mission. Don't you dare try to aggrandize his quest by attaching to it even a shred of valor.

James wanted this. He wanted the biggest stage, once again, on which to showcase his skills. He wanted to validate his place in the annals of NBA history.

Well, he got it, and when the heat---pun intended---got ramped up, LeBron shriveled like newspaper tossed into a fire.

Where WAS he, anyway? He missed a good series. As soon as you find his fourth quarter production, let us know.

The Mavericks, on the other hand, played like the more desperate, more driven team that was truly on a mission, and they were. For five years, Nowitzki and Jason Terry have relived those awful memories of the 2006 Finals, when the Mavs darted to a 2-0 series lead and had Wade's Heat on the ropes in Game 3, before Miami stormed back to snatch the championship.

That was Dwyane Wade's team then, and it still is, today.

That's what makes this Finals loss by the Heat all the more hilarious in its irony.

James made a mockery of his free agent choice last July with the whole made-for-TV thing as he slowly eviscerated the Cavaliers and their fans. But you want to know the punch line?

James left Cleveland for Miami and he did so to be a caddy for Wade. Don't buy if someone tries to sell you that James's decision was proof of his team-first mentality---that he doesn't need to be "the guy."

It's not that James doesn't need to be the guy---he doesn't want to be. Which is just as well, because he's incapable.

The Heat are still Dwyane Wade's team, but wait, there's more.

It's Wade's team and yet LeBron James will get all the flak for this series loss, as he should.

So let's get this straight. James leaves Cleveland, where he was "the guy," goes to Miami so he doesn't have to be--so he can win a championship---and is still expected to be some semblance of "the guy," but he's derelict in that duty and gets all the blame normally assigned to "the guy."

Some Decision, LeBron.

James has lost on more fronts in this whole escapade than Custer did on his last stand.

James was a cockroach in the Finals---scurrying away as soon as the lights got turned on.

Yet he still had a shot at redemption, despite the Game 5 loss in Dallas. LeBron had, potentially, two chances to rescue his legacy. Two chances to be something that he's never really been: a clutch player who could kill, with one stone, the two birds of doubt and derision by lifting the Heat past the Mavericks in seven games.

James's critics would have had a sweat sock stuffed into their mouths. No longer would they have been able to say, "LeBron can't win the big ones."

Today, they not only can still say it, it's going to shouted from the rooftops---splashed all over the Internet and burning up the phone lines of all the sports talk radio stations across the country. This isn't going to blow over in a few days.

Despite our fascination and fanaticism about sports, we still have a hard time remembering the names of the teams who finish as the first runners-up in any championship round. It's not that we can't---just that it sometimes takes some brain-racking.

Not so this time.

The Miami Heat won't soon live this one down, folks. Maybe not ever. History, me thinks, will be in a cranky mood when it passes judgment on the 2010-11 Miami Heat---the team LeBron James couldn't wait to join. The team that so easily seduced him, but that he also disappointed by leaving---during the NBA Finals.

Until he wins a championship---and there's no guarantee that he ever will---LeBron James should go down as one of the most laughable "superstars" that pro sports has ever seen. He should go down as a less-than-brilliant, heartless, gutless player who managed to fool his public even while hiding in plain sight.

But LeBron didn't just fool them---he failed them.

His name doesn't belong in the same sentence as Michael Jordan's, unless it's to create a grocery list of reasons why it doesn't.

Here's to you, Cleveland Cavaliers fans. You had to wait almost a year for this. God bless you.

Like Davidson in '74, Gores Has Work Cut Out For Him

2011-06-05T11:26:00.001-04:00

Bill Davidson was a graduate of that old school you keep hearing about. Whatever it was, that’s where Davidson learned about business.

It was a school that said loyalty meant something, and a contract was worth not just the paper it was written on but the forest that produced the trees that made that paper.

It was a school that mandated that you represent your company with the utmost dignity and respect, and that no one individual was greater than the whole.

Davidson brought these credos to the NBA when he bought the Detroit Pistons from Fred Zollner in 1974.

Zollner, for his part, had brought the NBA itself to Detroit, bringing with him his Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons and staking out his big top inside Olympia Stadium, which would be his basketball team’s home whenever the tradition-rich Red Wings weren’t in town.

The Pistons immediately became Detroit’s redheaded stepchild of pro sports.

Zollner’s team failed to draw at Olympia, and then the Pistons moved into brand-new Cobo Arena in 1961 and they failed to draw there, too. Pro basketball wasn’t moving the sports fan in Detroit, not like it did in hoops-rich towns like New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

Zollner’s franchise was Goofus to the other Detroit teams’ Gallant. It seemed to exist only to serve as a cautionary tale. It was perpetually the “before” in one of those before and after success stories.

The Pistons went through coaches like a Broadway cattle call audition. They made trades that were outshined by the contestants on “Let’s Make a Deal.”

The Pistons couldn’t do anything right. They drafted funny.

By the mid-1960s, it was touch and go as to whether Zollner would pick up his tent and move to another burg.

Then the Pistons got lucky, even when they thought they hadn’t, and drafted a skinny guard from Syracuse named David Bing, when the guy they really wanted, forward Cazzie Russell from Michigan, went to the New York Knicks. This was 1966.

The Pistons lost a coin toss for Cazzie, and so settled with Bing, who only happened to become the man who would save pro basketball in Detroit.

Still, by 1974, Zollner had become a recluse owner, jetting to Detroit from his home in Florida maybe twice a year to see what his basketball players did to earn the paychecks that bore his signature.

Zollner’s was an unsuccessful franchise, though it had two big stars: Bing and center Bob Lanier.

Bill Davidson, Zollner’s neighbor in Florida, had wanted into the pro sports ownership business in the worst way. You know the rest of the joke.

Davidson had bid on Tampa’s World Football League franchise in 1974, but the price was too high. So he turned his attention to his neighbor’s pro basketball team.

The Pistons hadn’t made a dime of profit in the 17 years they’d been in Detroit. Even a 52-win season in ’73-74 failed to spin the turnstiles with much speed or frequency. They were the Edsel of Detroit sports.

Davidson forked over a grand total of $6 million to buy the Pistons from his neighbor Fred Zollner.

The team Davidson purchased was still mostly dysfunctional and by far the fourth favorite in a city with four choices for pro sports.

Fast forward to Thursday afternoon at the Palace, the House That Bill Davidson Built.

On the dais sat a tanned, handsome, 46-year-old man—only five years younger than Davidson was when he bought the Pistons in 1974.

Tom Gores spoke to the media on his first day as Pistons owner. Gores, the day before, had finalized a transaction of mega proportions. In the package came the Palace Sports and Entertainment Group and a dysfunctional basketball team that is by far the fourth favorite in a city with four choices.

The parallels between the state of the Pistons now and their state when Davidson bought them 37 years ago are uncanny.

The Pistons were off the radar in ’74, and they pretty much are now, too. The TV cameras don’t lie. Games televised from the Palace the past couple of seasons were conspicuous by the absence of fans in the stands. The camera shots looked like an NBA game in the closing seconds of a blowout. Only, it was like that for entire games.

In fact, you could make a case that the Pistons of ’74 were in better shape than the ragtag bunch of today, because at least the former had two bona fide superstars in Bing and Lanier.

The Pistons, 2011 vintage, have no one remotely close to being a star, let alone a superstar.

But Gores is plunging into the NBA waters anyway, a Flint kid made good—and how many of those are there? Flint has been kicked, crapped on and stripped of its economy for the better part of 20 years now.

Yet here’s Gores, a Flint guy, with hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at the Pistons and the entertainment conglomerate of which they are part.

The price tag that Gores paid for the entity that Bill Davidson paid $6 million for in 1974 is thought to be in the $320 million range.

Oh, and Davidson managed to turn a profit a time or two—along with winning three league championships.

The Pistons team that Gores has inexplicably bought is filled with unlikable, petulant players who have defiled the team’s motto of “Going to Work.”

It’s a bunch that has won a grand total of 57 games over the past two seasons, not coming close to the playoffs in either year. Attendance is way down, befitting the overall interest in the team throughout metro Detroit.

It is, in effect, 1974 all over again when it comes to pro basketball.

From this embarrassment of non-riches, Tom Gores plans on making money and winning another championship and leading a resurgence of NBA basketball in a town that could, right now, pretty much take it or leave it.

Just like what Bill Davidson hoped to do 37 years ago.

Oh, and there’s a lockout looming in less than a month.

Gores is either about to show off his mad skills as an astute businessman, or he’s a damn fool.

But a guy from Flint who’s just managed to come up with $320 million couldn’t be a fool, could he?

Downfall of Tressel Good, But Solves Nothing

2011-06-01T13:31:00.003-04:00

Ding, dong the warlock is dead.

One down, how many to go?

The demise of Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel is a blow struck---a blow struck for honesty, decency, ethics, and playing the straight and narrow. That much is true.

But if you think now that Tressel is gone---having resigned in shame from OSU---we have eradicated cheating in college sports, well, I just hope you're not that naive.

Tressel wasn't the only cheater, and he won't be the last to be caught. You're also naive if you think that the other cheaters are now scared straight. As nice of a thought as that is, it's just not realistic.

College sports are just pro sports without the players salaries. And without the integrity, steroids be damned.

Tressel had himself an amazing 10-year run in Columbus, and now we suspect that at least part of that success was due to his being able to play the system like Perlman with the violin.

Now we see quarterback Terrelle Pryor driving around in cars that would make a multi-millionaire pro athlete blush.

Who knows how many ineligible athletes the Buckeyes played with over Tressel's decade of Big Ten dominance? Who knows how many were on the take? This isn't over with, by a long shot---the discovery of grisly stories of largesse and hubris flowing from Columbus.

It may turn out that Tressel was operating a football factory in the Third World sense---full of corruption and disregard of labor laws. Only, this was no sweat shop. OSU's football players were taken care of, it seems.

Combining Tressel's decade at OSU with the revelation of what happened with Pryor and other players last year begs the question, "Do you HAVE to cheat to win big in college sports?"

It's tempting to say, yes, you do.

It's also tempting---and I've been one of these to say so---to strongly suggest that athletes get compensated while making their institutions lots of money. Those opposed say that it's not just athletes who make the dough---the best and brightest students do, too, via research grants and other forms of money that are bestowed based on academics.

And those eggheads don't make a dime, either.

And what about the free room and board and training facilities and medical care the college athlete receives? Isn't that "compensation," too?

Well, yes, it is.

But it's not enough. My opinion.

Let's please be real. Let's stop pretending that college athletes---of the money programs like football and basketball---are just some kids passing through town for a few years who should be thankful for the opportunity, while the institutions rake in piles of cash using their likeness on TV, in magazine ads and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the athletes risk injury, just as the pros do, and work every bit as hard at their craft as the eggheads do at theirs, if not more so---physically, at least.

The athletes should be paid, plain and simple. And with a compensation system comes a wonderful opportunity to establish new rules and regulations that are easier to monitor and harder to look the other way from.

Don't buy the argument that paying athletes is "throwing money" at a problem that money can't solve. Don't buy the notion that with salaries comes more greed and corruption.

Do NFL teams have to cheat to get personnel? NO---because they have an equitable compensation system.

As far as how MUCH to pay college athletes, that's part of the regulations that would arise with the advent of such a system.

Sure, there'd still be some cheating initially, as less-than-ethical schools decide to test the system. But if the NCAA does it right, and tweaks it as necessary, they should be able to create a good enough filter to catch the scum.

I know that the mere thought of paying college athletes draws the ire of many and strikes at the core of what lots of people believe college athletics to be.

But tell me, how is that idealistic, doesn't-really-exist-anymore model of college athletics working out for you nowadays?

Jim Tressel is just a symptom. Getting rid of him has solved nothing, other than making the Big Ten winnable again in football for 10 other schools.

Memorial Day 2011: These Five Sports Things Aren't Coming Back

2011-05-29T09:59:00.002-04:00

It’s Memorial Day weekend—a time to reflect on those who’ve served our country and to honor their memories of lives lost on the field of battle.

And to grill sausage, of course.

Really, I don’t take this holiday lightly, especially these days, with our boys all over the globe, it seems, trying to restore peace and spread democracy and freedom—and risking their lives on a daily basis in the process.

Nor am I one of those who compare sports to war, which I’ve always felt cheapens what our soldiers have done and continue to do. Nothing that happens on a gridiron or on the ice or on a court even remotely compares to war in the literal sense.

But this can also be a time to be reflective about sports.

There are so many random memories I have about things and people and just plain stuff about sports—all that will never return to our great games.

So without further ado, in honor of Memorial Day, here are five things about sports that I miss, and why.

Helmet-less hockey players. When I first started following hockey, the sport was full of bare heads. Those wearing helmets were the ones who stood out like teeth in a player’s mouth. Then the NHL, in 1979, suddenly recognized that skating recklessly on the ice on a surface that was surrounded by hard wooden boards, without a helmet, was at the very least foolish and at worst insane.

So the league instituted a rule that said that any player who entered the league from 1979 on would have to don a helmet. Those who signed contracts prior to ’79 would be grandfathered in and thus would have the option of wearing buckets or not.

So as the years went on, the helmet-less players dwindled, like an endangered species. Gradually, it was the bare head that was the exception.

The last Red Wing to play sans helmet was Brad Marsh, in the early-1990s. The last player, overall, to do so was Craig MacTavish.

I forget how much I pine for the bare head until someone in today’s game inadvertently loses their helmet during a shift. Suddenly there’s a head of hair on the ice!

It doesn’t last long—maybe 15, 20 seconds, tops, but my eyes become glued to the helmet-less player. I could care less about what’s happening on the ice. For those precious seconds it’s 1973 again, when the helmet was for wimps—or Europeans.

Exterior chest protectors for umpires. This one kind of slipped past me, until I woke up one day and realized that the likes of Nestor Chylak weren’t umpiring anymore.

The American League umps continued to use the exterior chest protectors behind home plate after their National League colleagues went to the sleeker version that fit inside their shirt or jacket, like bulletproof vests.

The exterior chest protector, to me, screams umpire.

They hung around the umpire’s shoulders—those big black padded shields. They’d dangle there, until it was time for the pitcher to make his delivery, at which point the ump crouched and shoved the chest protector into position, as it cupped his chin and covered him from head to waist.

Not sure why I miss that, but I do.

Twenty-four second clocks on the floor. Whenever I happen upon old NBA footage, say circa 1972 and earlier, the first thing I do is to look for the 24-second clocks.

Back then, they weren’t located on top of the backboard—which makes perfect sense, by the way.

No, in those days, the shot clocks were placed on the floor, angled, usually in one of the corners—which made imperfect sense.

I don’t know what it is, but to me there’s a certain cozy simplicity to those old NBA and ABA films that feature shot clocks on the floor.

Again, having the clocks perched up top makes all the sense in the world. But shot clocks on the floor make me think of Afros and shorts with belts and smoke-filled arenas and players with names like Erwin Mueller and Hawthorne Wingo.

Good stuff.

Quarterbacks with one face bar on their helmets. I believe Joe Theismann might be the last of this ilk.

I like the idea of a singular face bar on a football helmet, anyway—and they were mainly worn by place kickers and punters, naturally.

But every so often you’d see a wide receiver wear such a skimpily-equipped helmet, or better yet, a quarterback.

Joe Kapp, anyone?

Billy Kilmer did the one bar thing, too, along with several others. You gotta love a quarterback who’s willing to pull that off, because the one bar helmet may as well have been the no bar helmet, for all the protection that single bar—which was usually somewhere near the chin—provided.

Today the QBs wear facemasks that used to be reserved for linemen—cage-like apparatuses that were worn by players named Otis Sistrunk and Vern den Herder.

Here’s to Theismann, the last of his breed, who wore the Horst Muhlmann-style, one-bar headgear.

Straight on kickers. Back in the days of the 40-man pro football roster, teams didn’t necessarily opt for the luxury of carrying a player whose only purpose was to lay his foot into the pigskin, be it a place kicker or a punter.

Did you know that Lem Barney, the Lions’ Hall of Fame cornerback, also moonlighted as the team’s punter in his first three years in the league?

Barney was no exception. Kickers and punters were also everything from tight ends to quarterbacks to linebackers to linemen.

And the kickers used their toes to thwack the football, not the sides of their insteps. After all, Hall of Fame kicker Lou Groza's nickname was "The Toe," not "The Instep."

Ahh, the straight on kicker!

Mark Moseley was the last one, and his final year in the NFL was in 1986.

The straight on kicker wasn’t conspicuous by his puny size, like today’s sidewinders, or “soccer style” kickers. The straight on kicker was big and beefy and his jersey was dirty, too—because he was a real football player, not strictly a specialist.

He wore numbers like 76 and 55 and few things, to me, say old school football like a straight on kicker with his squared off shoe, readying himself, arms gently swinging by his side, as he glances at the goalposts—which were on the goal line, by the way and shaped like an H.

Then the moment—when he steps into the kick and swings his leg gloriously like an American football kicking leg should be swung, like a pendulum, not a tennis racket.

Yeah, I miss that.

And many other things, too, but this is a column, not a book.

I hope these memories are ones you share, too. If you’re over 45, the chances are good.

Happy grilling.

For Red Wings and Sharks, Game 7 No Longer a Figment of Imaginaiton

2011-05-11T12:55:00.004-04:00

It's now the thinkable.

The Red Wings are Secretariat in 1973, the '51 Giants, the '78 Yankees. They're the '68-69 New York Jets, the 2004 Red Sox.

The tortoise has nothing on them, in that great race against the hare.

Check the calendar for a month of Sundays. Charlie Brown might get that kick off, after all, out of Lucy's hold.

This isn't happening, but yet it is. Even Disney's Mighty Ducks never pulled something like this off.

The Red Wings are going to play a Game 7, which was a fantasy a week ago. Remember a week ago? A gut-wrenching overtime loss in Game 3? Devin Setoguchi with a hat trick, including a penalty in overtime and the game-winner shortly after he fled the box?

A 3-0 series lead for the San Jose Sharks. The Red Wings looked as dead as Osama bin Laden.

But we never saw bin Laden's corpse for 100% proof, and the Sharks haven't been able to produce a body, either, despite having three chances to do so.

The NHL has been around for over 80 years, and the Red Wings are only the eighth team to force a Game 7 after falling behind, 3-0. Only three have come all the way back to win the series.

Funny thing is, it's happened three times in the past two years---where a team down 0-3 has won three straight games. The Red Wings aren't even the first team to do it this spring.

But make no mistake, this is big doings.

It's tempting to look at Game 7 and say, "Well, they came back this far. They have nothing to be ashamed about."

That works until they drop the puck in San Jose Thursday night. Then you'll say, "Come on---they can't come this far and lose it at the end!"

Just ask Chicago Blackhawks fans what that feels like.

But indeed, the Red Wings have shown mettle and heart that fits right in with the team celebrating 20 straight years of playoff appearances.

Think back to all those playoffs since 1991. We thought we'd seen it all---the heartbreak, the disappointment, the triumph. We've been thrilled and we've been chilled.

The epic Game 5 win in San Jose and the even more epic Game 6 win in Detroit has sealed it: we hadn't seen it all.

How can you say that we had, when this is going on?

Frankly, most of us thought this would be a seven-game series. We just didn't fathom it would happen in this manner.

Those fickle hockey playoff bounces, which were all going the Sharks' way in the first three games, are now going the Red Wings' way. An inch here, and inch there. That's what this series has come down to.

Danny Cleary inexplicably whiffed on a breakaway last night, clanging the puck off the goalpost after deking Antti Niemi out of his you-know-what. Henrik Zetterberg had a wide open net and a one-inch stick shaft thwarted him. Tomas Holmstrom looked like he had one buried but he went head-over-heels, literally, and the puck somehow stayed out of the net.

This all happened with the Red Wings tilting the ice so badly, you half expected Jimmy Howard to come sliding down into the Sharks zone, too.

Yet it was 0-0, and a few minutes into the third period it was 1-0---San Jose!

Another of those playoff goals---where the puck has a mind of its own and slithers through pads and past sticks and slides ever-so-slowly over the goal line, like a curling rock coming to rest.

Well, you might have thought, at least they forced a Game 6.

But the Red Wings, as they did in the third period of Game 5, showed why their players have beating hearts of multiple Stanley Cup champions.

Damn the torpedoes, the Red Wings seemed to say. Full speed ahead!

A Zetterberg tip in with under 10 minutes to play knotted the game. Then, just a couple minutes later, Val Filppula glided into the Sharks zone, unbothered, and rammed home a pass from Pavel Datsyuk, who is only the best player in the world right now.

The Red Wings know the way to San Jose.

For the final 16 minutes of the third period, the Red Wings played maniacal hockey; lose-and-go-home kind of hockey. No one felt like going home, apparently. The golf course doesn't beckon quite yet.

The flukey Sharks goal didn't deflate the Wings; in fact, it almost seemed to tick them off.

In retrospect, the Sharks didn't have a chance, though it didn't look like that at the time.

And what would a steely win over the Sharks be in this series without a late Justin Abdelkader penalty?

"Oops, I did it again" shouldn't be the name of a Britney Spears CD, it ought to be Abby's mantra in this series.

Abdelkader, the abrasive kid from MSU, has the timing of a telemarketer.

Once again the Red Wings had to kill off an Abby penalty, this one a blatant hold on Dan Boyle with about six minutes left. In Game 5, it was a blatant elbow with about five minutes to play. There have been others in this series that have put the Red Wings behind the 8-ball.

Bottom line: there WILL be a Game 7. The Sharks have to play the unthinkable, which now may be the unmanageable.

For Red Wings fans, it is the unbelievable.

Game on!

Captain Nick Keeps Us Guessing re: Retirement

2011-05-09T17:12:00.000-04:00

I wonder how many of the 20,000-plus throng at Joe Louis Arena on Friday night were aware that they may have just missed an historic moment. Or rather, dodged a bullet.

The Red Wings won, 4-3, thanks to some late heroics by that bottomless pit of energy, Darren Helm. This keeps playoff hockey alive in Detroit, as the San Jose Sharks missed out on their chance to sweep the Red Wings into the Detroit River and out of the post-season.

But as the mostly red-clad crowd whooped and hollered, both after Helm’s goal with 1:27 left in the third period and after the final horn sounded, how many realized that they did not just see Nicklas Lidstrom play his final game?

The fans may have been just that 1:27 and some overtime hockey away from Lidstrom skating off the ice for the final time, had the Red Wings lost.

You’d like to say that Nick Lidstrom is not allowed to retire, just as Monday is not allowed to come after Friday, and a red light is not allowed to come after green without amber in between.

You’d like to point to Lidstrom, who’s 40, and argue that he can’t call it quits because as efficiently as he’s played during his career, his 40 is a 40 in number only and Nick has the body of a 30-year-old, tops. His is the only birth certificate that could be categorized as fiction.

You’d like to say that a guy can’t hang up his skates after a season in which he was nominated for the Norris Trophy, yet again, as the league’s best defenseman. Somewhere there surely must be a by-law against that.

You’d like to scoff and say, “How can a guy quit when he has 44% of his team’s goals in this series with the Sharks?” Yes, Lidstrom has four of the Red Wings’ nine markers in this tussle with San Jose.

The thought of Red Wings hockey without Nick Lidstrom is, at the same time, sad and downright terrifying.

But Nick is 40 and we’re at the point now where every summer, the question gets bandied about. Will Nick retire, or will he come back? Will he abscond to Sweden and leave us on our knees, sobbing and crying out, “NIIIIICK!!!”

Or, will he report to Traverse City in September, like he has since 1990, pull on the sweater with the big “C” on the right breast and declare himself ready for another “kick at the can,” which is hockey talk for trying to win the Stanley Cup?

This isn’t like when the previous captain, Steve Yzerman, retired in 2006.

Yzerman, at age 41, had a body that had been ravaged by injury, mostly below the waist and above the ankles. The stories of the pain he put himself through were both legendary and gruesome. And who can forget when he was felled by a shot puck in the eye against Calgary in the 2004 playoffs?

We could see Yzerman’s retirement coming like the next train at the People Mover station. The word “imminent” comes to mind.

But Nick Lidstrom hasn’t suffered the kind of injuries that Yzerman endured. In fact, Lidstrom has hardly suffered any injury, period.

Save for a few more whiskers, Lidstrom looks pretty much the same as he did in 1990, when he was a rookie. Lord knows he pretty much looks the same on the ice, too.

Check that: he’s immensely better than he was in 1990.

So Lidstrom’s retirement doesn’t have that same feeling of inevitability, because the guy still looks damn good. His body hasn’t been wearing down, like Yzerman’s did.

Yet here we are, possibly—again—on the verge of seeing Lidstrom play his last game as a Red Wing. His team trails the Sharks, 3-1 in the Western Conference Semi-Finals and Nick’s career is either hanging on by a thread or it’s in no danger whatsoever of being finished.

No in between.

Lidstrom, as usual, isn’t tipping his hand about whether he’s returning next season or not. Some might wink and say that he’s got a face for poker. But can you imagine Nick at a poker table? He couldn’t keep a smirk off his face if he was holding a pair of twos, let alone a royal flush.

Lidstrom is too nice, too down-to-earth, to fool anyone at poker. So it’s not a poker face he’s giving us; I truly believe he hasn’t made up his mind yet. Simple as that.

This has been going on for years now. First, the consideration was whether Nick wanted his kids to attend school in the States or in his homeland, Sweden.

Now it’s simply, does Nick want to play again?

Lidstrom has said that there are two main factors to his continuing to play: 1) that the Red Wings are legitimate Stanley Cup contenders; and 2) he still enjoys playing.

Whether the Red Wings survive the Sharks series or not, the answer to No.1 would appear to be, YES, they are. Here’s Lidstrom himself, quoted in the Free Press on Friday.

“Looking at the lineup we have, looking at the depth we have and the core group that are in their prime right now, I have no doubt they’re going to be a successful team.”

I say that’s a YES to No. 1, though leave it to Lidstrom to send mixed signals; first he says “we,” then he says “they.” Oh, Nick.

As for No. 2—whether he still enjoys playing—I don’t see where he’s not enjoying playing. He had one of his best offensive seasons, he’s got that Norris nomination, and he speaks glowingly of the talent level on the team. Doesn’t sound like someone with a sour puss to me.

If you held a gun to my head and forced me into a prediction, I’d say that Lidstrom comes back next season, at age 41. But it’s not for sure, and that’s what could drive people batty if they dwell on it too long.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that the Red Wings’ current streak of making the playoffs for 20 years in a row began when Lidstrom’s career in Detroit began? Hell, not even Gordie Howe had such a streak, though Yzerman came close—Stevie made the playoffs in 20 of his 22 seasons.

The Red Wings won on Friday night in dramatic fashion, the Hockeytown denizens boogied in the aisles, and everyone is waiting to see what happens in Game 5 in San Jose on Sunday.

And Nick Lidstrom’s splendid career hangs on by a thread.

Or not.

Lions Get it Right with Drafting of DT Fairley

2011-05-01T18:47:00.001-04:00

It’s one of the most indelible images in Detroit Lions history.

You’ve likely seen the photograph, in black and white. An angry, vengeful-minded group of Lions holding a defensive meeting on the Tiger Stadium turf, with Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr being used as the table.

Some of the greatest defenders in Lions history are in the photograph.

Joe Schmidt. Darris McCord. Alex Karras. Roger Brown. Sam Williams. Only Starr’s helmet and a portion of his jersey are visible.

The photo was snapped on Thanksgiving Day, 1962. The Lions were in a foul mood on a fowl day, still grumpy over losing a game to the Packers earlier in the season on a muddy field in Green Bay.

The ’62 Lions were one of the best teams the NFL ever saw that didn’t qualify for the post-season. They finished 11-3. Trouble was, the Packers were 13-1. There were no wild cards back then; you either won your division or you didn’t.

The Lions coughed up the game to the Packers in October, which would eventually cost them the West Division title, and they, to a man, vowed that the Pack would pay on Thanksgiving Day.

Did they ever.

All afternoon the Lions defensive front spent a considerable amount of time in the Packers backfield. Starr was sacked 11 times, his normally impenetrable offensive line reduced to mush.

It was the defining moment for a Lions front four that, in the early-1960s, was as good as any. Ever.

Time was when the defensive front for the Lions was traditionally a strength. Even when the offense was plodding, the Lions defense, anchored by the big uglies in the trenches and flanked by cornerbacks Lem Barney and Dick LeBeau, was no picnic for the opposition.

There was a drought in that area until the early-1980s.

They called themselves the “Silver Rush.” They were Doug English and Al “Bubba” Baker and Dave Pureifory and Bill Gay. They were veterans acquired from other teams like Curley Culp and Mike Fanning and Joe Ehrmann. And they caused sleepless nights for offensive coordinators.

What’s happening now with the Lions is warming the cockles of my heart.

Right now, for the first time in close to 30 years, the Lions are creating a defensive line corps that is nasty. And for once, when it comes to the boys in Honolulu Blue and Silver, I mean that in a good way.

The first-round draft pick of 2011, one Nick Fairley from Auburn, is a defensive tackle. A very GOOD defensive tackle—perhaps the best available off the board. That he fell to the Lions at pick No. 13 was both fortuitous and unexpected—and with the Lions, we’ve gotten plenty of the latter but not so much of the former.

Fairley, playing alongside Ndamukong Suh in the middle of the Lions defensive front, with ends Kyle Vanden Bosch and Cliff Avril—and with veteran tackle Corey Williams being shuttled in throughout the game—means one glorious thing.

The Lions aren’t going to be anyone’s punching bag anymore.

No more should there be back-breaking, clock-chewing drives against the Lions late in games when the football is needed back into their possession. The depth the Lions have up front is ridiculous.

I can hear you now: Where’s the “shutdown cornerback?” Where’s the linebacker? Where’s the offensive lineman?

A front four that can potentially pressure the quarterback like the Lions have can make me a decent cornerback, and I run a 7.5 40-yard dash, downhill, and have the cover ability of white paint over a black wall.

Besides, there’s the later rounds on Saturday, and free agency—and trades. Lions GM Martin Mayhew likes trades. He’s already made plenty of his colleagues look silly as he’s fleeced them.

The Lions drafted to a strength, and that’s just wonderful. Mayhew and coach Jim Schwartz are big on winning the majority of the battles that take place a yard or two on either side of the line of scrimmage, which occur some 120 times per game.

The drafting of Fairley falls right in line with the team’s philosophy. Defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham is going to be a kid in a candy shop with his unit of d-linemen, rotating them in and out, keeping them fresh for the later stages of football games.

Oh, and those maddening double teams of Suh, which occurred on just about every play last year? Gone! Fairley is an excellent pass rusher in his own right, for a guy who plays between the guards. You gonna leave him to double team Suh? Go ahead—I dare ya.

Fairley was introduced to the Detroit media on Friday, another big man wearing a suit that most of us would use as a tent.

The subject of quarterbacks was brought up. The questioner referenced Suh’s comment last year at this time that he doesn’t like quarterbacks.

Fairley shrugged his granite shoulders and said, matter-of-factly, “I don’t like ‘em either.”

It should be noted that Karras, perhaps the greatest defensive tackle not enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was notorious for his dislike of the game’s signal-callers, too.

Suh is a wonderful young man with a bright smile and who has a chance to be the NFL’s next Michael Strahan—a defensive lineman with a personality as large as his frame and who will appear on your television set more often as a celebrated pitchman and league ambassador.

Fairley might not be a Suh type off the field. My first impression of him is that he is more withdrawn, more subdued. Less gregarious. But he shares a distaste for quarterbacks. Even his college teammate, Cam Newton, didn’t escape Fairley’s wrath on Friday.

“I don’t like him, either,” Fairley said of Newton, drafted first overall by Carolina. “Not anymore.”

The Lions’ first two, first-round draft picks in the Martin Mayhew era have been relative no-brainers. There wasn’t a lot of thought process needed to point to Matthew Stafford (2009) and Suh (2010) and say, “I’ll take HIM.”

This year was different. The Lions drafted 13^th overall, not first or second. This first-round pick took some thought, took some soul-searching. It took some self-assessment of where Mayhew and Schwartz want to take their football team.

They chose the front four. They chose to make the rich, richer.

Nicely played, gentlemen.

Wings Expected Modano in Uniform, Not Suit, During Playoffs

2011-04-17T20:15:00.001-04:00

It’s easy to spot the scratched hockey player at the arena. He’s the one in the loose-fitting suit, with hair that looks like it’s still damp from the shower. The face has clearly avoided the razor. There’s no necktie. He walks down the corridors looking like he jumped off the cover of GQ magazine. The only thing worse than being a scratched hockey player, especially in the playoffs, is being a healthy scratched hockey player. The healthy scratches can’t blame mysterious upper or lower body injuries for their absence. There’s not a cotton-picking thing wrong with them, physically. And yet, the feet are in wing tipped shoes, not skates. There isn’t a helmet in sight. The hands are gloveless. The healthy scratch isn’t in the lineup because, frankly, the coach found 20 other guys he’d rather have available that night. You can be kind and call the scratched player a victim of “the numbers game,” but that’s just a nice way of saying he’s 21^st out of 20 for that evening. Healthy scratches aren’t Hall of Famers, as a rule. They’re guys who have been benchwarmers throughout the season, or have been back and forth from the minor leagues ad infinitum, shuttled more than businessmen commuters at O’Hare Airport. But then you look at Mike Modano and it’s OK to do a double-take, or even a spit take, if you like your humor more slapstick than subtle. Mike Modano: sure-fire Hall of Famer, a veteran of the NHL playoff wars since the George H.W. Bush administration, a healthy scratch—for a playoff game? This is like hiring Michael Caine for your movie and making him an extra. But there Modano was, healthy as a horse but sitting in the press box on Wednesday night, dressed in a suit and not a uniform as the Red Wings were battling the Phoenix Coyotes on the ice surface three stories below. Modano is 40, sure, but this is his time of the year. Coming into this season, Modano had suited up for 174 post-season games, popping in 58 goals and amassing 145 points. He hadn’t been to the playoffs since 2008 when the Red Wings signed him last summer, but that wasn’t his fault—he played for the Dallas Stars, who have recently become allergic to the playoffs. Suddenly, last summer. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Modano had turned 40 and was considering hanging up the skates, the Stars electing not to offer him another contract. He was born in Livonia and grew up in Westland, and the Red Wings are always looking for veteran depth. Maybe they could coerce the center man to give it another whirl. So the Red Wings took a moderate risk and inked Modano after a brief courtship. He showed up to the press conference at Joe Louis Arena to announce the signing tanned, looking fresh, and still with those boyish good looks he had when he entered the NHL as an 18-year-old in 1989. I wrote that Modano was defying the proper look for a 40-year-old hockey player. His face wasn’t stapled on, for one. Modano looked good, felt good, and when he perused the Red Wings roster, he had high hopes that Detroit would be a fitting place to end his career with his second Stanley Cup (he won it in 1999 with the Stars). For the Red Wings’ part, they saw in Modano a veteran playmaker and puck handler who could also win some face-offs—and maybe net 15-20 goals, too. His signing meant some eager kids would have to wait their turn, but in Detroit, it’s always about winning now; there’s as much patience in Hockeytown as there is in a two-year-old in a car. Both sides were thrilled. It was a marriage of convenience, but also with some endearment. Modano got off to a slow start, although he did score a goal on opening night. After that, he struggled to get acclimated to his new teammates, and probably to wearing red after 21 years of wearing green and black. It was starting to come together in November, but then came a nasty wrist injury late in the month, when a skate in Columbus gashed him. The injury set Modano back three months; he returned in late-February, any momentum and chemistry that had been built flushed down the toilet. It was like going back to the drawing board. But time wasn’t on Modano’s side; it never is for the 40-year-old athlete. The season was furiously marching to the finish line, and Modano was the guy chasing the bus, clutching his briefcase and holding his hat on his head, yelling for the driver to stop. The production after the injury was about the same as that of before the injury: it dripped out, like an IV. Modano got into 40 games in the regular season, scoring four goals. No one had to tell him that his was a disappointing signing. Then, in a flash, it seemed, the playoffs arrived, and when coach Mike Babcock and his staff sat down to fill out the lineup card for Game One, it was with great consternation that they left Modano’s name off it. Mike Modano, healthy scratch. For a playoff game. Not what anyone had in mind when the Red Wings brought the veteran, home-grown kid back to Detroit. Modano has gone on record as saying that this is likely his last chance at the Stanley Cup, because retirement is beckoning him. “I can’t stay on the ice as long,” he told the media a few days ago. “I think my body is telling me that I’m near the end.” Modano says that he abides by the coach’s decision to not play him, and he vows to be ready at a moment’s notice. What else would you expect him to say? Here’s the cruel irony: Modano came to Detroit to help the Red Wings win a Stanley Cup. Yet the more often his team wins in the playoffs, the less likely Modano is to crack the lineup, barring injury to a teammate. “This is probably my last chance,” he said of chasing hockey’s Holy Grail. How’s this? Modano might not even see the ice again this post-season. The mentality during hockey playoffs is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—i.e. lineups. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Mike Modano, Hall of Famer, was supposed to be in uniform for the playoffs, not in a suit. One of the reasons the Red Wings signed him was for this time of the year, specifically. I feel bad for the guy, don’t you?

NHL Playoffs: Pain Don't Hurt This Time of Year

2011-04-09T19:02:00.002-04:00

The ankle inside Bob Baun’s skating boot was broken. It is the hockey player’s creed to never be helped from the ice unless amputation is on tap, but that’s what happened to Baun on April 23, 1964 at Detroit’s Olympia Stadium—he was the wounded warrior and his Toronto Maple Leaf teammates were his platoon members carrying him off the battlefield. This was Game 6 of the 1964 Stanley Cup Finals. The Red Wings led the Leafs, 3 games to 2, and were poised to win the Cup on their home ice. As Baun, one of the Maple Leafs’ best defensemen, was being removed from action, it looked like the hockey gods were smiling down on the Red Wings. But this is hockey, and it was the Stanley Cup Finals, and Bob Baun’s ankle was broken, not missing, so Baun did what the hockey player does, as much as his body is willing—he returned to the game, his boot taped to his ankle like a tourniquet. The game went into overtime, with every rush up the ice by the Red Wings being potentially the one that could lead to the Cup-winning goal. The old red barn on Grand River and McGraw shook every time the vulcanized rubber disc would be flipped into the Toronto zone. Overtime hockey is heart-stopping, gut-churning stuff. Never has a term been so aptly coined as “sudden death.” If the winning goal comes from the visitors, the air is sucked out of the arena like crumbs into a vacuum cleaner. Baun, skating on his wobbly, broken ankle, stopped the puck just inside the Red Wings’ blue line and slapped a shot toward the Detroit net. It was hardly a rocket, but the puck had eyes and it found the twine behind goalie Terry Sawchuk. The Maple Leafs celebrated like mad on the Olympia ice, the Detroit crowd dazed and silent. Baun could barely stand as his teammates mobbed him. The series was tied, a decisive Game 7 necessary. The Maple Leafs won Game 7 in Toronto, 4-0, and snatched the Stanley Cup from under the Red Wings’ noses—thanks largely to the one-legged Bob Baun. The Red Wings’ Brent Gilchrist wasn’t one-legged in 1998; he was no-groined. It was another example of the playoff hockey player gone mad. Gilchrist was 31 years old, in his 10th NHL season, and his first with the Red Wings as the 1998 playoffs dawned. Late in the season an old groin injury flared up inside Gilchrist, which didn’t hurt him unless he moved or breathed. Other than that, he was fine. The pain was excruciating. To a hockey player, a bad groin injury is like a sore throat for a giraffe, to borrow an old, weary joke. And Gilchrist had a bad one, alright. With every stride he took on skates, the groin screamed at him to stop. But these were the playoffs. Gilchrist had himself injected, in his groin, before every playoff game he played in that year with needles as long as Pinocchio’s nose in a game of liar’s poker. Even his fellow hockey warriors didn’t care to look when Gilchrist went into the trainer’s room for his pre-game treatment. Sometimes the shots would wear off and Gilchrist would have them done again between periods. He played in 15 of the Red Wings’ 22 playoff games in 1998, his groin on fire. His injury was so severe that Gilchrist only played in five games the following season. But the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 1998, so the pain was worth it to Brent Gilchrist, who’d never won the Cup before. Steve Yzerman, on the other hand, was already a two-time Stanley Cup winner when he went into the 2002 playoffs on one good leg. Yzerman hurt his knee during the 2001-02 season, missing 30 games. When the playoffs arrived, Yzerman was in great pain but as is usual with the playoff hockey player, Yzerman played the “mind over matter” game and, at age 37, Stevie Y was taking regular shifts on a knee that qualified for Federal disaster relief. Yzerman even spent some time during the playoffs in a special hyperbaric oxygen chamber. But that was nothing compared to what he put himself through before games, like Brent Gilchrist four years earlier. Again, there were long needles involved and teammates looking the other way. These were the playoffs, after all. The Red Wings won another Stanley Cup, their captain by the end of the playoff run needing to prop himself from the ice with his hands because his knee wasn’t able to do it by itself. And, like Gilchrist, Yzerman’s injury had after effects. Following the 2001-02 season, Yzerman underwent a knee realignment surgery, which meant that he played during the playoffs with a knee that was misaligned, which—I don’t know about you—sounds as delightful as chomping on a candy apple with misaligned teeth. The surgery was called an osteotomy, and doctors told us that it was commonly performed—on senior citizens! Here’s a description of a knee osteotomy, courtesy Wikipedia: Knee osteotomy is commonly used to realign arthritic damage on one side of the knee. The goal is to shift the patient’s body weight off the damaged area to the other side of the knee, where the cartilage is still healthy. Surgeons remove a wedge of the tibia from underneath the unhealthy side of the knee, which allows the tibia and femur to bend away from the damaged cartilage. And Yzerman led the Red Wings to the 2002 Stanley Cup on a knee that needed the above work, forthwith. Now it’s 2011, and already there is a walking wounded among the Red Wings before the playoffs even get started—leading scorer Henrik Zetterberg, who suffered a “lower body injury” in Carolina this week. Judging by the way Zetterberg left the ice, the lower body injury looks like something to do with his legs. Zetterberg’s status, according to the propagandists within the Red Wings’ medical staff, is the unsatisfying “day-to-day.” No doubt, maybe even as we speak, Hank Zetterberg is undergoing some sort of treatment, somewhere on his “lower body,” that is designed to deaden his pain and brainwash him into thinking that it’s not all that bad—until the playoffs end and they tell him that his lower body will have to be realigned. Hey, after Bob Baun scored on a broken ankle and Brent Gilchrist had himself shot up with knitting needles and Steve Yzerman led his teammates to a Stanley Cup on a misaligned knee, it’s the least Zetterberg can do, me thinks. These are the playoffs, for chrissakes.

Red Wings Need the "Real" Henrik Zetterberg Come Playoff Time

2011-04-03T12:29:00.000-04:00

A quick glance at the numbers ought to tell you a little bit about the superstar hockey player. The superstar player should have numbers that cause eyes to pop, spit takes to be made.

They all had such numbers.

Orr, LaFleur, Gretzky, Lemieux, Yzerman.

At any point in any given season, the stat lines on those players were in the stratosphere, compared to their mere mortal colleagues. They were “you gotta be kidding me” numbers.

And by the end of the campaign, it was an easy task to discern the greats from the very goods. The greats had goal totals in the 40s and 50s—sometimes more. The point totals were well into triple digits.

There were the superstar players and then there was everyone else.

Henrik Zetterberg, I’m convinced, must be sandbagging it. He’s a hockey hustler. Paul Newman on skates. We’ll call him Njurunda Fats.

Njurunda is the town in Sweden where “Z” was born, 30 years ago and some change.

Zetterberg is in the prime of his career, but you wouldn’t know it. He must be pacing himself.

Zetterberg has more talent in his left pinky than a majority of the players in the NHL possess in their entire bodies. When he’s at his finest, Hank Zetterberg is a tornado on skates. He can be as untouchable as Elliott Ness, as deft as Baryshnikov, as productive as a worker ant.

When the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 2008, Zetterberg was the best player on a team full of stars. He pumped in 43 goals, added 49 assists, and started in the All-Star Game. Z began the season by scoring a point in his first 16 games, a new Red Wings record.

In the playoffs, Z cranked it up another notch, which the superstars do when you think they couldn’t possibly. In 22 games, Zetterberg blistered the opposition for 27 points. He scored the Cup-winning goal in Game 6 of the Finals. His penalty killing during a Pittsburgh Penguins 5-on-3 in the Finals is stuff of legend.

The Red Wings won the Cup, and Z won the Conn Smythe Award for being the MVP of the playoffs.

And this was after seasons in which he scored 39 and 33 goals. Zetterberg was on pace to be the greatest Red Wing in the post-Yzerman Era.

He had the eye-popping numbers and an eye-popping life. The summer after winning the Cup, Z got engaged to Emma Andersson, a Swedish model and TV host.

Iggy Pop used to sing, “I wish life could be...Swedish magazines.”

Hank Zetterberg lived that life.

Zetterberg is a huge talent—maybe among the top five most skilled, blessed-by-God players the Red Wings have ever employed.

So why do I look at him nowadays and scratch my head?

Zetterberg followed up his magnificent 2007-08 season with 32 goals in ’08-09—not bad—and then dipped to 23 goals last season (not good).

Currently, with six games left to play, Zetterberg has 24 goals and 53 assists. Those are good numbers. But they’re not as good as what Hank Zetterberg is capable of producing.

Zetterberg has so much skill, so much strength, so much hockey IQ, that he should routinely be scoring 40 goals a season and threatening 100 points, especially playing on a team as peppered with talent as the Red Wings.

The past couple of seasons, Zetterberg has done this thing where he disappears for stretches of time, and I’m talking games, not minutes. The final horn would sound and you’d have to double-check with the official scoresheet to confirm that Zetterberg suited up that night. Sometimes, this happened several games in a row.

This was a travesty. It was like attending a performance of the Rat Pack and wondering how you missed Sinatra’s number.

But then Zetterberg reappears from his time MIA, and once again he becomes a man among little tykes on the ice. He takes possession of the puck and keeps it for a week. Without the puck, Zetterberg doesn’t act as if there’s a force field preventing him from entering his own zone, like so many of the goal scorers do in the NHL.

Such is Zetterberg’s greatness that he’s maybe the team’s best defensive forward, perhaps 1A to Pavel Datsyuk’s 1.

Ahh, Datsyuk—Z’s frequent linemate.

Coach Mike Babcock doesn’t know what to do with those two half the time. When the mood strikes him, Babcock puts them together, creating a pairing so lethal that the third player on the line is like the Fifth Beatle.

Other times, Babcock breaks them up, figuring that each is so good that he can create a second lethal line, like splitting an amoeba.

Zetterberg and Datsyuk are two different players, though.

Where Datsyuk is a magician with the puck, relying on sleight of hand rather than brute strength to keep possession, Zetterberg is more bull in the china shop. If they were an NFL backfield, Datsyuk would be the tailback, Zetterberg the fullback. And each would rush for over 1,000 yards.

When Datsyuk went down with an injury earlier in the season, Zetterberg put the Red Wings on his back—at first. Then he faded away again, mysteriously.

The true superstars don’t fade away, they don’t vanish, they don’t have you scurrying to the scoresheet to verify presence. Hank Zetterberg has all the talent in the world. He ought to be a true superstar in a league that he owns if he plays up to his potential.

Check that—he should be playing in his own league.

Yet he’s not doing that right now, and he hasn’t for at least two seasons. He is, without question, a very good player most of the time. But he has the ability and skill to be great all of the time.

The playoffs are almost here and if the Red Wings are going to go as far as the folks around town think they can, they need the superstar Zetterberg to be there, night after night. Not the very good Zetterberg, sometimes.

Or maybe he is hustling us, and the Red Wings, with Zetterberg leading the way, will run the table.

That would be Swede.

Pippen Needs to Get Over "Bad Boy" Pistons

2011-03-30T12:38:00.004-04:00

It's been about 20 years since the Pistons did their infamous walk-out on the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals, and still Scottie Pippen can't get over it, or the "Bad Boy" Pistons themselves.

Pippen's Bulls won the next three NBA championships, starting in 1991, and eventually six of the next eight from '91 to '98. You'd think all that hardware would help mend Scottie's wounds.

Apparently not.

Pippen is still whining about the Pistons, some two decades after some of their starters walked off the floor before time ran out in Game 4 of the Bulls' sweep.

Pippen recently told the Chicago Sun-Times:

''The Pistons were a nasty team. You always had to expect them to play dirty because, remember, they were the Bad Boys of Motown. They'd go out of their way to be mean and try to hurt you.

"And because we had better athletes, coach Chuck Daly just let them play the way they had to play to win. Bill Laimbeer was no real athlete. The same for Rick Mahorn and Joe Dumars and James Edwards. We were faster, quicker, more competitive and smarter."

The only thing Pippen got right in the above comments was the one about Bill Laimbeer not being much of an athlete. No one in Detroit, though, propped Laimbeer up as athletic. He was, however, one of the best rebounders in the history of the league because of his positioning, technique and, yes Scottie, his basketball IQ.

And do I see Joe Dumars's name in there as being "no real athlete"? That's a lot of Bull.

And let's clear up, once and for all, this misconception of the Pistons being thugs who deliberately tried to hurt you. I think there's a line between aggressive, hard-nosed basketball and thuggery. I seriously doubt that the Pistons played the game with the idea of deliberately hurting opposing players.

If anything, blame the Celtics for the Pistons' style of play.

The Bulls needed four post-seasons before finally beating the Pistons in a playoff series, and the Pistons needed three (1985, '87 and '88) to unseat the Celtics for supremacy in the East. And it was during those rugged playoff series that the Pistons learned the same hard-nosed, physical brand of play that has been misconstrued by the Bulls and other NBA observers as being sadistic.

You think the Celtics of Bird, Parish and McHale were more finesse than physical?

Please.

Did the Pistons turn it up a notch in the physicality department? You betcha. But they needed to, in order to finally topple the Celtics.

The Bulls of Pippen and Michael Jordan---that was probably the first time any writer put Pippen's name before MJ's, by the way---were indeed less physical. But it also took them one more try to dispatch the Pistons than it took the Pistons to eliminate the Celtics.

The Bulls' defeat of the Pistons in the 1991 ECF was less about the Bulls' supremacy than it was about the Pistons' fatigue. The Pistons had played into late-May or June since 1987. They came off another brutal series with the Celtics in the '91 East semis, and the Pistons simply hit the wall. They had nothing left.

I find it amusing but also annoying that Pippen and others still whine about the Pistons, even after 20 years and after all those Bulls championships. It's too bad that all that success, and time, hasn't enabled Scottie Pippen to soften a little and be more philosophical than psychotic about those "good old days" of Pistons-Bulls basketball.

Get over it, Scottie. The Pistons are still in your head, and it's pretty pathetic.

Otto's Tale Reminds Us: Not ALL NFL Players Are "Millionaires"

2011-03-13T11:18:00.001-04:00

In his finest hour, Jim Otto moved mountains. Actually, he moved defensive linemen, but they were mountainous men, and Otto used leverage, strength and sheer will to clear them out of the way.

Otto, the Hall of Fame center for pro football’s ne’er-do-well Oakland Raiders from 1960-74, played football at knee level. His world on the gridiron was mostly lived 24 inches off the ground.

Otto touched the football on every play, but in the same way that a bell is involved in every boxing match. Nothing happened on the football field until Jim Otto said so. No one was to flinch until Otto made his snap to the quarterback.

He wore the unusual number of 00, to represent the first and last letters of his last name. Where others in the trenches had helmets adorned with criss-crossed cages in front of their faces, Otto eschewed all that protection in favor of the simple, two-bar face mask that was worn by wide receivers and running backs.

For 60, 70 snaps every Sunday afternoon, Otto gave his heart and soul to Da Raiders, hiking footballs to everyone from Tom Flores to Daryle Lamonica to Kenny Stabler to Father Time himself, George Blanda.

He won league championships, and he won over his teammates. Jim Otto was the stabilizing force on so many great Oakland Raiders offensive lines.

You couldn’t fit a beach towel on the area of turf that Otto worked on as he fended off a bull rush by Merlin Olsen or plowed enough daylight for a Raiders running back to squirt past him for a gain of four yards. Otto’s office was a patch of grass for an offense that loved to traverse acres of it at a time.

He gave the Raiders everything he had, then he retired and owned some Burger King restaurants for a time, making some actual money.

After Otto quit playing football, everyone moved on in Raider Nation. The fans cheered a new center, a guy named Dave Dalby—who was pretty damn good in his own right.

Otto was done with pro football, but pro football wasn’t done with Jim Otto.

Otto played the most brutal of games in the most ferocious of ways, and he paid dearly for it.

As today’s pro football forces battle it out in boardrooms instead of in stadiums, trying to hammer out an agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) so that there won’t be a labor stoppage, I can’t help but think of Otto and others like him who literally sacrificed their bodies’ well-being in the name of beating the other guy on Sunday.

Specifically, I recall a documentary I once saw years ago, with Otto as its tragic hero.

Maybe it was on “60 Minutes” or some such program. Regardless, the cameras and narrator told the story of Otto, now retired, and what the man had to put himself through—just to get out of bed in the morning.

His knees ravaged, his joints creaking, the pain relentless, Otto was shown how he wakes up every day.

It was a slow, rudimentary, agonizing process.

As the cameras rolled, we saw Otto do his level best to swing his unbent legs across the mattress, his feet’s eventual destination being the bedroom floor. We saw him wince, stop and grimace as what would take most people seconds encompassed several minutes of Otto’s existence.

This was just him getting out of bed. You could barely watch him put on a pair of pants. Having a life was a whole other deal.

In the feature, we saw Otto pay a visit to his doctor. We saw, up close, his gnarled kneecaps and crooked joints. We saw a man in enormous pain, on a daily basis.

In his finest hour, Jim Otto was a human wall for his quarterbacks and running backs. He was the offensive line’s rock, its most reliable man. He put in his rugged time and on most days, you didn’t notice him. You didn’t say his name.

That meant he played great—again.

But when I saw Otto in the TV special, it wasn’t his finest hour. He was a sack of old, used bones. The wall had crumbled.

Otto has undergone some 28 knee surgeries—nine as a player. He’s had multiple joint replacements. He also fought off three life-threatening bouts of infections due to his artificial joints.

In August 2007, they cut Otto’s right leg off because it was ravaged with infection.

I don’t have the numbers, but I’d be willing to put down a sawbuck or two that says that Jim Otto didn’t make, in his entire football career, half the dough that some of today’s centers make in one season—who are half his talent.

I bring up Otto so that when you hear of the NFL wanting to go to an 18-game regular season and you hear the players balk at such a notion, don’t be so quick to label them as petulant, rich crybabies.

In fact, don’t be so quick to narrow your eyes at the players in general and call them “millionaires” and ask that they keep their mouths shut.

Otto was considered a star, as validated by his bronze bust in Canton, Ohio. He played all those years. And he was by far, the exception to the rule.

The typical NFL player is employed for an average of 3.5 years. This means he’s done with his primary source of income by age 26 or 27—at best. Most of them are nameless, faceless guys filling out a jersey until they’re replaced by someone younger, healthier and who can stand upright for more than five minutes at a time.

Not every player makes the really big bucks. A salary of $400,000 might seem like a lot of dough to you. But do you really think that a man making 400 grand and whose career is done by age 27 is set for life?

NFL players are masochists. There’s no other way to describe it. What they put themselves through—the jolting collisions, the muscle strains, the concussions, joints that look like God put them together in the dark—so that we can enjoy the spectacle of the sport in between trips to the refrigerator, is mind-boggling.

I don’t know what side you’re on in this owners vs. players dispute. I understand that neither side is exactly a great source of sympathy. But if you look deeper, you should find that only one side is truly making as much cash as it can while it’s still physically capable of making it.

Jim Otto gave his leg—literally—to the game of professional football. He played 15 seasons, or about four times the average. Yet he made his real money by owning restaurants.

Think about that the next time you choose to lump the haves with the have-nots when it comes to pro football players.

Poof!! Red Wings' Hudler Has Reappeared

2011-03-02T10:35:00.003-05:00

When the Red Wings brought forward Jiri Hudler back after a one-year exile to Russia, it was assumed that the diminutive Czech would simply pick back up from where he left off and start pumping goals into enemy nets.

It was assumed that Hudler would be a key "acquisition" (the Red Wings never really lost his rights) and his offense injected into an already formidable lineup would make the Wings, once again, Stanley Cup contenders in the most serious of ways.

It was assumed that Hudler might even be better than before he left, coming back to North America with an even greater appreciation for how good he had it in the NHL.

For the better part of half of this season, the assumptions were wrong.

You know what can happen when you assume.

Hudler was the magician who reached up his sleeve and pulled out nothing but lint. He was a ying without a yang. The emperor had no clothes.

Goal scorers, and Hudler is certainly one, don't know what to do with themselves when the pucks don't find the net. The hockey scorer is the baseball slugger. And Hudler, for about 50 games, was popping up pitches that he normally swats into the seats.

Then sports' vicious cycle kicked in: the harder he tried, the worse Hudler became.

He was benched. He was passed from line to line, like a stale bag of chips. Nothing worked.

Was some of it bad "puck luck," as the hockey people like to say? Perhaps, but Hudler was not only not scoring goals, he didn't seem to have all that many good chances to score, either.

The trade deadline has come and gone, and the Red Wings predictably passed, having little money to spend and not wanting to carve into their NHL roster.

Besides, observers said, the team was getting healthy. Mike Modano just returned Saturday after a three-month absence. Brad Stuart, Danny Cleary, Tomas Holmstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Val Filppula have all been re-inserted into the lineup after recovering from injuries.

But the Red Wings have made another "acquisition" at the deadline.

Jiri Hudler is warming up.

The puck is starting to go in off Hudler's stick once again. When he's not scoring, he's on the ice when his teammates do, and often his name is in the parentheses on the scoresheet as one of the assisting players.

Hudler was, for all intents and purposes, absent for 50 games. He was hiding in plain sight on the ice, skating his 45 seconds every shift and posting goose egg after goose egg.

Fortunately, the Red Wings have been so good this season that Hudler's vanishing act was more of a nuisance than a crisis. It almost became, "Well, if he scores, great. If not, well, look at our record!"

Yet it's clear that as good as they've been, the Red Wings are much better with a Jiri Hudler who is contributing offensively.

Goal scorers in hockey rarely stop scoring altogether. Rather, they pause for extended periods, at worst. Then they're back on a tear before you can blink.

Hudler stopped altogether. He was Miguel Cabrera swinging at whiffle balls.

Bit that bad stretch seems to be behind Hudler, and at just the right time, to boot.

The Wings will take it.

The Worm's Turn: Rodman's Number Retirement As Improbable As It Gets

2011-02-27T11:21:00.000-05:00

Somewhere, there’s a broken mold of Dennis Rodman.

Never again will we see someone of his ilk, and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Rodman tended to do that, you know. He tended to spawn confusion—in emotion, to his opponents, to his teammates, to his fans and to his coaches. He was a bemusing fellow.

But this much is true—since Rodman retired from the National Basketball Association in 2000, I haven’t seen anyone close to who he was on the basketball court. Certainly not off it, as well.

Again, not sure if that’s good or bad.

Rodman played basketball with the grace of a baby eating strained carrots. He was a freak, seemingly playing the game on his own personal pair of pogo sticks, springing from the floor to grab rebounds as if everyone else was nailed down.

The program stubbornly listed him as 6’8”, but that was when he was at rest, which wasn’t often. When he was in motion, Rodman became 7’8”, or taller, depending on how high he needed to leap to snare a wayward basketball.

Watching Dennis Rodman from the start of his NBA career, with the Pistons in 1986, and following it through to his retirement, was like watching a Fellini film—it got weirder the longer it went on.

He arrived in Detroit as a 25-year-old, drafted out of a college called Southeastern Oklahoma State University, and to this day for all I know, the Pistons made the school up.

Somehow Pistons GM Jack McCloskey found Rodman, most likely by looking toward the gym’s ceiling. I’m still impressed that Jack found the school, let alone its gym.

What McCloskey didn’t know when he first laid his eyes upon the leaping, rebounding Rodman was that the kid—who really wasn’t a kid anymore according to his birth certificate—already had a life better prepped for the Jerry Springer Show than the NBA.

Where shall we begin?

Rodman’s dad left his mom when Dennis was three years old. The old man would go on to father 27 kids with four different women. You heard me.

The Rodman household in Oak Cliff—a rough and tough section of Dallas that would become infamous for being the neighborhood of Lee Harvey Oswald—was all female at that point, other than Dennis, who lived there with his mom and two sisters.

You want more?

Rodman became so withdrawn in the all-female house, so awkward and unconfident around girls in school, that in his mid-teens, he actually believed he might be homosexual. His first sexual experience was with a prostitute.

As for basketball?

Rodman tried it, but kept getting cut from teams—both in middle school and high school. He was a 5’6” freshman who couldn’t hit a layup. He tried out for football and they didn’t want him, either.

He worked as a janitor at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport after high school, but after another growth spurt he gave hoops another shot.

Keep in mind he played little to no high school basketball.

Turns out Rodman could play the game, after all, mainly because he had a fetish for rebounding. He played a semester for some place called Cooke County College in Gainesville, Texas, averaging over 17 points and 13 rebounds per game.

From there it was on to SE Oklahoma State, an NAIA school—which was not exactly the career path of choice if one hoped to crack the NBA.

Jack McCloskey couldn’t have known this history when he first watched Rodman sky for rebounds as an NAIA All-American.

The Pistons are going to do something on Apr. 1 that, had you put money down on it in 1986, you’d be breaking the bank right about now.

On that date, Dennis Rodman’s No. 10 Pistons jersey will be raised into the rafters, which is appropriate because that’s often where you could have found Rodman himself, in his salad days as the league’s most ferocious rebounder.

Rodman will then join the likes of Dave Bing, Bob Lanier, Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer and Vinnie Johnson, all of whom have their jersey numbers hanging over the Palace floor.

But Rodman was the most unlikely—to have an NBA career, period.

I remember Rodman’s arrival in Detroit.

He had big ears, gangly arms and his shorts were too short. And too tight. He ran up and down the court like a distance runner—arms pumping with loping strides. He had no offensive game that was apparent. He couldn’t shoot free throws.

Based on first blush alone, I might have cut him on the spot.

If Rodman’s book had been judged by its cover only, he’d have never made it as a pro basketball player, because he didn’t look like any pro basketball player you’d ever seen before.

Rodman was no more than a curious, second-round draft pick when he first started getting playing time in 1986 for the Pistons. He was the guy who looked funny—the guy who couldn’t throw the ball into the Detroit River, even if he was standing on the deck of the Bob-Lo Boat.

But he could rebound, as we all began to see in relatively short order. He was like a specialist on the court, a jack of one trade. He gained a nickname—The Worm—which I found ironic because worms live underground and Rodman made his living soaring above it.

It was uncanny, the way Rodman would rise above the other nine players on the court, and either grab the basketball after its carom, or tip it to a teammate for a fresh 24 seconds of shot clock.

But rebounding alone won’t keep you in the NBA, so Rodman focused on playing defense, which would.

All he did was become the best defender in the NBA, a two-time winner of the Defensive Player of the Year award.

When he first won the award, in 1990, Rodman wept openly at the press conference announcing his honor.

“I wanted this...so bad,” he said through tears, sobbing.

I think what might give some people pause in light of the news of Rodman’s number being retired by the Pistons is that, after he left the team, he became a sideshow.

The hair became dyed, the tattoos became more prevalent, the behavior became more bizarre. He made a movie or two. He even “married” himself in a display that made normal people squirm.

Rodman won two championships with the Pistons, and three more with the Chicago Bulls. He captured seven straight rebounding titles (1992-98). He made the first team of the All-NBA Defensive squad seven times.

Not bad for a kid who couldn’t make his high school team and who played at an NAIA school, and who lived a tumultuous life as a child.

Rodman wasn’t drafted by the Pistons. He was rescued.

Congratulations, Worm. You done paid them back with interest.

To Rebuild Correctly, Dumars Can't Bring Back Tayshaun Prince

2011-02-23T11:35:00.003-05:00

In retrospect, the Detroit Pistons' knack for reaching the Eastern Conference Finals was probably the worst thing that has happened to them in the Joe Dumars Era.

Not that it wasn't a terrific feat. Anytime you're reaching the Final Four you've had a good year, and to do it six times in a row, as the Pistons did (2003-08), is nothing less than impressive.

But that sword has two edges.

First, the Pistons only parlayed two of those Final Fours into NBA Finals appearances (2004 and '05). In the other conference finals, the Pistons were only moderately competitive.

They were swept in 2003 by New Jersey, blasted out in six games by Miami in 2006, in six by Cleveland in 2007 (punctuated by the Pistons' inability/unwillingness to stop LeBron James in the lane in Game 5), and in six by Boston in 2008.

President/GM Joe Dumars had, as it turns out, some Fool's Gold on his hands.

The Pistons were good enough to survive two playoff series in the traditionally weak Eastern Conference in those four years when they were eliminated, but when it came time to play the elite---or in the case of Cleveland, the up-and-coming---in the Final Four, the Pistons wilted under the pressure.

Dumars was teased into thinking he had a title contender in Detroit, when in fact he had nothing of the sort.

That kind of thinking, in concert with poor draft choices, questionable contracts and odd coaching hires, have put the Pistons where they are today: among the dregs of a still-poor Eastern Conference.

Now it comes out that Dumars not only doesn't plan on dealing forward Tayshaun Prince by tomorrow's trade deadline, the GM wants to explore re-signing Prince, who will turn 31 on Monday.

This is a disturbing thought that Dumars has rattling around in his addled brain.

Dumars has been slow on the take in massaging the Pistons' roster, even when they were going to Final Fours. The great executives in sports don't rest on their laurels, and aren't afraid to upset the apple cart.

After LeBron James torched them in the 2007 ECF, the Pistons were ripe for change. That made two straight years of being bounced out in the Final Four, and that was the moment Dumars should have seized.

It was evident that the Pistons' surprise championship of 2004, achieved without the quote-unquote superstar player that most champions have, was an aberration. And it should have occurred to Dumars, who isn't a dumb-dumb, that his team simply wasn't good enough to make it past the conference finals.

The summer of 2007 was when Dumars should have been aggressive in changing the dynamics of the Pistons roster.

The Pistons' appearance in the 2008 ECF wasn't much to shout about, either. The Celtics took them to the woodshed in the Pistons' own building in the pivotal Game 3, after the Celts were stunned in Boston in Game 2. After tying the series in Game 4, the Pistons went down meekly---and in Rasheed Wallace's case, shamefully---in the next two games.

Dumars sacrificed coach Flip Saunders after that, and hired the neophyte Mike Curry to coach. Then Dumars saddled Curry with the high maintenance Allen Iverson and left his coach to deal with the tempestuous Rip Hamilton, whose little world was upset when AI joined the team.

From 2004 to 2009, the Pistons didn't make any bold moves, personnel-wise---with the exception of bringing in Iverson, which was just plain wrong---and they are now paying the price.

The free agent signings of Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon in the summer of 2009 were suspect when they occurred, and they are no less so today.

Now Dumars is talking about signing Prince to an extension?

The window of real opportunity for tangible, successful change has closed. Now all that's left for the Pistons is a blow up and a total rebuild. All connections to the "good old days" of the mid-2000s must be done away with.

It's not an easy thing to keep a franchise winning, year-after-year, for a decade. The Pistons almost did that, posting winning seasons from 2001-08. But it can be even harder---and gutsier---to tweak personnel when the wins are outnumbering the losses.

Joe Dumars isn't a bad GM. But he's not one of the best, either. It's one thing to take a loser and take it upward when there's nowhere to go but up. It's an entirely other to keep the team in contention when there's a target on its back---especially when there's virtually no help from the draft.

Provided he's asked to stay by new owner Tom Gores, Dumars must do what he's done before, thanks to his own lollygagging: rebuild a Pistons team that is a conference bottom feeder.

Bringing Tayshaun Prince back flies directly into the face of that task.

As Playoffs Approach, Time to Worry About Red Wings Goaltending (Again)

2011-02-20T22:09:00.002-05:00

The most recent men who’ve tended goal for the Detroit Red Wings and led them to the Stanley Cup don’t have much in common except for being stark raving mad.

I’ve always felt that way about hockey goalies.

Terry Sawchuk was the maddest of them all (he played mostly without a mask), and the most tormented.

It reminds me of the great comedians throughout history—the men and women who’ve made us laugh so hard but who themselves were among the saddest of folks.

Sawchuk, the legendary netminder and Hall of Famer of the 1950s and ‘60s, was the best goalie the NHL has ever seen, but if they gave out awards for self-fulfillment, old Terry would have come away empty-handed.

Sawchuk rarely smiled, and when he did, it was brief and forced. He was almost a goaltending savant who didn’t really like what he did, but he did it because he had to.

His teammates on the Red Wings tried to get close to him, tried to engage him, tried to get him to lighten up. But Terry always seemed so sad, which in turn saddened them. How much more enjoyable the Red Wings' Stanley Cups of the 1950s would have been, had Sawchuk only been able to relax.

Sawchuk was dead by age 40, after a tragic bout of rough-housing with New York Rangers teammate and roommate Ron Stewart over some unpaid apartment bills.

Sawchuk’s brief life, in my opinion, was among the saddest in all of sports.

It was 42 years after Sawchuk and the Red Wings raised the Cup when the team finally did it again in 1997, behind the clutch goaltending of veteran Mike Vernon.

Vernon was a Cup winner once already, leading the Calgary Flames over the tradition-rich Montreal Canadiens in 1989.

In 1996, you could have driven Vernon off the Ambassador Bridge and no Red Wings fan would have trolled for his remains.

After a brilliant 62-13-7 regular season in 1995-96, Vernon and Chris Osgood’s shaky play against the Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Finals helped drum the Red Wings out in six games.

The Cup-less stretch reached 41 years, and counting.

But one year later, as the confetti flew inside Joe Louis Arena and the Red Wings skated around the ice with hockey’s silver chalice in tow, Mike Vernon was back in the city’s good graces.

Some fan had made a sign out of poster board and pressed it against the glass.

It read, “Vernie: I’m sorry!”

In a postgame interview on the ice, Vernon was asked about the sign.

He chuckled sheepishly and said, “What can I say? Apology accepted, I guess!”

A year after that, with Vernon banished to the San Jose Sharks, it was Chris Osgood’s turn to be the madman in goal who’d lead the Wings to another Stanley Cup.

It was a playoff run with more twists and turns than a corkscrew, and with surprise endings to games that would have made O. Henry proud.

Osgood caused almost as much anguish as he provided joy, making things more interesting than they should have been, usually due to his penchant for failing to stop shots fired from beyond the blue line.

Three times Osgood surrendered goals that came off shots originating in Timbuktu. All three times, the shots either tied the game late or won it.

But Ozzie persevered, and as the champagne flowed in the Red Wings dressing room in Washington following the Cup clincher, Osgood’s mother found him and hugged her drenched son.

“You did it, Chris! You did it, baby!” she cried.

In 2002, the Red Wings goalie was another savant, the 36-year-old Dominik Hasek, the human Slinky.

Hasek was an amazing netminder but a baffling person. You could say that he marched to the beat of a different drummer, except that it was a drummer no one could hear but him.

The Red Wings of 2001-02 were teeming with future Hall of Famers, and Hasek tended goal in the playoffs with a pure brilliance befitting the team’s roster of greatness.

As the final horn sounded on the season, the Red Wings had captured another Stanley Cup, with another goalie.

Six years later, Osgood did it again, rescuing the Wings when the 43-year-old Hasek faltered in the first round. Another Cup won.

And in 2011?

It’s getting closer to playoff time, which means it’s time to trot out the usual blather about the Red Wings goaltending situation heading into the postseason.

The doubters are out, once again.

Other than Sawchuk, who was born to win Stanley Cups, the Cup-winning goalies for the Red Wings all beat back the doubters.

Vernon, despite a resume that had “Stanley Cup Champion” on it, had to win back the fans after the disappointment of 1996.

Osgood alternately made friends and enemies in Detroit in 1998, sometimes shift by shift.

In 2002, Hasek had to overcome an 0-2 hole in the first round against Vancouver, when the fans were about to declare him a fraud in pads.

And Osgood was a 35-year-old backup when he replaced Hasek after four games of the first round in 2008. You could cut the doubt with a knife.

Currently, Jimmy Howard’s ability to lead the Red Wings to the promised land is being seriously questioned, and not just by the hockey denizens around town.

A couple weeks ago, the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports, ESPN, splashed on its website that the Red Wings were in big trouble and delusional if they expected the second-year goalie Howard to make like Sawchuk, Vernon, Osgood and Hasek.

The talking heads pointed to the numbers, which place Howard toward the bottom of the league in things like save percentage.

Apparently ESPN.com, allegedly so wise, has forgotten that the NHL has two distinct seasons: the regular one in the fall and winter, and the other one in the spring.

Like it or not, Howard will be the target of the springtime doubters, for as long as he shall live—in the playoffs.

It’s understandable, really.

Howard won a playoff series and lost one last year, his rookie campaign. In real plain terms, he hasn’t won diddlysquat for the Red Wings.

So naturally, people are going to say that he can’t. Until he does.

Because this is Detroit, and these are the Red Wings, a premier hockey team that has been typecast as one that has to win championships in spite of its goaltending, not because of it.

History doesn’t really bear that out, but why let facts ruin a good myth?

Mysterious Babcock Knows Just What to Do

2011-02-16T10:05:00.003-05:00

Of all the coaches in all of the four major sports, you'd have better luck putting a sawbuck down on "00" on the roulette wheel than be able to accurately guess what a hockey coach is thinking.

The other coaches don't hide their feelings or thoughts so well.

You know what's running through the mind of the football coach.

In fact, they make it easy for you to guess.

Clutching those laminated sheets of plays, color coded for every possible situation, it doesn't take a soothsayer to surmise what the football coach is thinking on third down and six.

The basketball coach is easy to profile, because he's a raving lunatic, stomping his wing tip shoes on the floor, his face looking like he just drank sour milk.

His thoughts are easy to guess, and can be summed up in three letters, courtesy of the text messaging age.

WTF?

The baseball manager sits in his dugout, chews sunflower seeds, and you don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to figure him out, either.

Should I hit and run? Is it time to pull my pitcher out of the game? How come we can't move the runner from second to third with nobody out?

Good luck mentally undressing the hockey coach.

I've been watching the sport for 41 years and I still don't really know what those guys are thinking behind the bench.

They all have the same looks on their faces, like they're trying to remember whether they turned the iron off at home.

They look up at the scoreboard a lot, which is funny, because you don't need a calculator to keep track of a hockey score, like you do in basketball.

Either that, or they're the most obsessed clock watchers you'll ever meet, like they're afraid they're going to be late for a plane.

Scotty Bowman, Hall of Famer, never changed his expression once in the nine years I watched him coach the Red Wings. If you had to rely on Scotty's face to tell whether the Red Wings were winning or losing, you were in trouble.

He would have made a hell of a poker player.

Mike Babcock, coaching today's Red Wings, doesn't change much either, facially. His look is more of confusion mixed with a mild headache. He looks up at the scoreboard a lot, too.

But don't you dare think that Babcock doesn't know what to say, or when to say it.

Babcock's brilliance as the best coach in the NHL was on full display this past week.

His team, so rich in talent and rarely in need of their coach's size ten boot delivered to their pants, was in the throes of a two-week stretch of un-Red Wing-like play.

Turnovers. Bad special teams. The startling inability to win at home consistently. Suspect goaltending, even more suspect play in the defensive zone.

Very un-Red Wing-like.

Babcock, after last Wednesday's 4-1 shellacking at home at the hands of the Nashville Predators---the Preds' second win over the Red Wings in five days---had seen enough.

After that game, Babcock used the word "unacceptable" a lot in describing his team's play. He questioned his players' work ethic. He not only had no problem with the fans' booing the Red Wings off the ice, he wanted to join in, during the post-game meeting with the press.

Babcock then did something he's rarely needed to do since arriving in Detroit in 2005: he delivered his size ten shoe square between the players' back pockets.

Babcock skated the Red Wings hard Thursday during practice, gathered them together Friday morning in Boston for a talking to, then waited to see how they'd respond that night against the high-flying Bruins.

The Red Wings, themselves disgusted with their subpar play, stepped onto the ice at the TD Garden and destroyed the Bruins in front of their home fans, 6-1.

Less than 48 hours later, in Detroit, engaging in one of those rare and glorious home-and-home series with an Original Six team, the Red Wings took care of the Bruins again, 4-2.

Those two games should be Exhibits A and B if you ever needed to make a case before the judge as to why Mike Babcock is peerless as an NHL coach.

The Red Wings are filled with veteran leadership, but even the vets need an old-fashioned butt kicking from time to time.

Babcock keeps this method in a glass case at Joe Louis Arena, labeled, "Break in case of emergency."

It worked, perfectly.

Don't be surprised if the Red Wings continue their roll, especially with Brad Stuart and Mike Modano close to returning to an already deep lineup.

We may not be able to figure out what Mike Babcock is thinking on a nightly basis.

What shouldn't be a mystery, is why he's such a damn good coach.

Ed Sabol's NFL Took On a Life Of Its Own

2011-02-13T08:53:00.002-05:00

Before Ed Sabol started documenting it, pro football was canned as newsreel footage, shown in two minute increments in the movie houses across America.

It was filmed in black and white, always from the same high angle with the camera perched at the 50 yard line.

The images were sterile, the music usually a cheesy version of some college fight song.

There was nothing about pro football on film in the 1940s and ‘50s that was compelling. You’d find more drama looking at a fish tank.

Then along came a 46-year-old Jew from New Jersey with a 16 millimeter camera, owner of a small company called Blair Motion Pictures—named after Blair Academy, the school he attended.

Ed Sabol and his camera landed a whopper of a contract in 1962: filming every play of the ’62 NFL Championship Game at Yankee Stadium in New York, pitting the Green Bay Packers against the New York Giants.

In 1964, Blair Motion Pictures became NFL Films.

And just like that, the NFL became more than a league—it was mise-en-scène, played out in slow-motion with close-ups and reaction shots. And in living color—the blood was red.

Sabol bought more equipment once he started cashing the checks from the league, so that every game every Sunday could be documented.

One of his first cameramen was his son, 22-year-old Steve.

Sabol’s NFL Films brought the league to life. His company began producing mini-documentaries and team highlight films.

But as enthralling as the images of Sabol’s NFL were on celluloid, they doubled in their drama when Sabol brought in a former Philadelphia newsman named John Facenda to voice the pictures in his trademark stentorian baritone.

The two men met in a tavern.

It was Lana Turner being discovered at that malt shop, sort of.

So Facenda is at this tavern called the RDA Club, near Philadelphia, and some NFL Films footage is being shown on the TV. I’m not making this up.

Facenda gets interested in the slow-motion images adorning the TV screen, being drawn to them like a bug to a porch light.

Here’s Facenda, telling the story.

“I started to rhapsodize about how beautiful it was. Ed Sabol, the man who founded NFL Films, happened to be at the bar. He came up to me and asked, 'If I give you a script, could you repeat what you just did?' I said I would try.”

That was in 1965. Facenda was hired on the spot, and would remain the voice of NFL Films until his death in 1984.

Sabol had his images. He had his voice. All he needed was the music.

Running beneath every great film is a gripping soundtrack.

What’s a thriller without the music building to a crescendo, warning the heroine to LOOK OUT!!—if she could only hear the strings and horns of doom?

Sabol knew that his NFL was richly documented, but signature music would be the pièce de resistance.

Enter Sam Spence.

Spence was a former music instructor at USC who Sabol brought into the fold in 1966 to score some NFL Films documentaries and shorts.

The combination of Spence’s music cues with Facenda’s “Voice of God,” as it had been nicknamed, was the best thing to hit film since emulsion.

The tunes Spence composed aren’t known by name, but they have given football fans goose bumps for over 40 years.

They do have titles, of course.

“West Side Rumble.”

“Ramblin’ Man from Gramblin’.”

“Salute to Courage.”

Head over to YouTube, type the above in the search box, and it’s impossible not to visualize Joe Namath throwing a perfect spiral to Don Maynard, or Dick Butkus slamming an unsuspecting runner three yards behind the line of scrimmage.

The NFL before and after Ed Sabol got his mitts on it is like a caterpillar before and after pupal transformation.

That 22-year-old cameraman son, Steve, gradually took over his father’s business and became synonymous, facially, with NFL Films.

We marveled at the images, listened delightfully to Facenda’s voice and Spence’s scores, but the films needed to be introduced once they began being shown on television.

Steve Sabol became the face of NFL Films, the last piece of the puzzle.

The younger Sabol, with his handsome face and in his Philadelphian dialect, became the Rod Serling of sports films. He was there to usher us in and out of each segment, teasing us with what we were about to see.

Ed Sabol is still around, thank goodness. He’s 94 years old.

I say thank goodness because only last week did the powers that be deem him worthy of induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

You heard me—it took them nearly 50 years after he fed his first footage into his 16 mm camera to put Ed Sabol into the Hall of Fame.

This is more overdue than a cure for the common cold.

Ed Sabol doesn’t just belong in the Hall of Fame, he should have his own wing. This is like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame realizing it hadn’t yet inducted the electric guitar.

But at least he’s in. At least Ed Sabol—God willing—will be live and in person when it comes time to call his name in Canton this summer.

They flirted with doing this posthumously, and that would have been a disgrace.

Ed Sabol, and his son Steve—who should probably go in, too, someday—rescued the league from black-and-white conformity and whisked it into a world of color and drama.

The Sabols breathed life into the National Football League with their expert photography, gripping music, and the “Voice of God” telling the stories.

Steve Sabol once put everything his dad started into perspective.

"The only other human endeavor more thoroughly captured on 16-mm film than the National Football League is World War II,” Ed’s kid said.

Those Hall of Fame voters have bad clock management. They damn near let the time run out on Ed Sabol, who was powerless to stop it.

I wonder if he’ll walk up to the podium in slow motion.

Pistons Need Another "Black Hole" Scorer

2011-02-09T09:01:00.000-05:00

They used to call it, both in jest and with some annoyance, "The Black Hole."

The Pistons were the team, and they sometimes ran a funny kind of offense.

The basketball would get dumped into the low post---an area that today's Pistons are totally unfamiliar with---and then it was like someone pressed pause on a DVD player.

Three, four seconds would go by while the recipient of the ball decided what to do with it.

Passing the ball to Adrian Dantley was akin to tossing it into a black hole. Hence the nickname.

The reference was made also because once the ball went to Dantley, no one else was getting it back, except for the other team.

Dantley was 6'5", a Lilliputian among the giants who played in "the paint," basketball for "I can see the basket without binoculars."

The Pistons got Dantley from the Utah Jazz in the summer of 1986 in pretty much a 1-for-1 swap for Kelly Tripucka, though there were supporting players involved in the trade.

Dantley was a scorer, through and through. Defense was a dirty word to A.D. He was as one-dimensional as a toenail clipper.

But oh, how he could score---and in different ways.

Sometimes Dantley would be given the ball on the wing, some 18-20 feet from the basket. Point guard Isiah Thomas and the rest of the Pistons would gather in another area code on the floor, partisan observers, waiting for Dantley to make his move.

Dantley would look at the basket, look at his defender, look at the basket again. The ball was held to the side of his body and away from the defender, like a child with a cookie playing keepaway with his mother.

As the shot clock drained, Dantley would pump fake a shot, sometimes twice. Then, it was time.

The choices were: set shot (not a jumper), or drive to the hoop.

That was it. One or the other. Notice that "pass" wasn't on the short list.

But it worked a lot. Dantley could hit that 18-footer. If he didn't shoot, he drove, and he had the uncanny ability to either lay the ball into the basket or get fouled. And Dantley was a superb free throw shooter.

OR, Isiah or some other bit player would lob the ball to Dantley, planted just outside the key in the low post.

Again the other Pistons beat it, some to fetch a drink of water.

Meanwhile, Dantley, his back to his defender and the hoop, evaluated his options.

A turnaround jumper from 8-12 feet?

A spin move and a drive to the basket in the paint?

A spin move and a drive to the basket on the base line?

Once again, "pass" not an option.

The Pistons adjusted to Dantley pretty well at first. Where Tripucka had been an up-and-down the court guy who relied mainly on jump shots, Adrian Dantley lumbered, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Often 10 seconds of the shot clock was gone by the time Dantley reported for duty on offense.

The Pistons went to the Eastern Conference Finals in Dantley's first year with the team. Had he not infamously butted heads with Vinnie Johnson diving (!) for a loose ball in Game 7 against the Celtics, knocking both Johnson and himself unconscious, the Pistons might have made four straight trips to the NBA Finals instead of three.

In Dantley's second year, the Pistons lost to the Lakers in a heartbreaking Game 7 defeat in the Finals.

Midway through Year 3, the marriage between Dantley and the Pistons became strained.

Thomas, Bill Laimbeer and others grew tired of the offense coming to a grinding halt just because Dantley was given the basketball.

Dantley, in turn, became paranoid and felt everyone was out to get him. It was hardly the first time in his long NBA career that he had become a distraction for his teammates and coach.

GM Jack McCloskey told me last year that, in early 1989, he tried to encourage Dantley to talk to coach Chuck Daly.

Dantley wanted no part of a meeting with Daly.

So McCloskey traded Dantley in February, to the Dallas Mavericks for Mark Aguirre, straight up. I maintain it was the gutsiest trade in Detroit sports history---because of its timing, mainly.

There was tremendous pressure on the Pistons to finally win an NBA title. After the near misses of 1987 and 1988, and with their sparkling record of 1988-89, nothing less than a championship was deemed acceptable.

Yet McCloskey made the trade anyway, dealing for another player for a reputation of petulance---Mark Aguirre.

The trade could have torpedoed the Pistons' chances for the brass ring, but McCloskey made it. Few GMs, if any, would have pulled the trigger. They would have kept Dantley in Detroit, in the hopes that things could be patched up come playoff time.

The Pistons won the next two championships.

The Pistons of 2004 had Rasheed Wallace, the combustible power forward/center who could score from just about anywhere, though the three-point shot was his dagger of choice.

But Wallace could also post his man up, near the spot where Dantley had his office. Wallace scored many a point with turnaround, fadeaway jumpers after he got the ball in that area.

The Pistons won the title in 2004 and came close to winning it again a year later.

My impression of today's Pistons, after watching them give the San Antonio Spurs a good effort but losing Tuesday night, 100-89, is that they play offense as if there's a force field surrounding the key.

They have no player who can post up. They don't seem to even have any plays designed to score from in the paint.

No one flashes across the key. No one looks for the ball down low.

The Pistons take jump shot after jump shot. Statistics show that you're going to miss at least 55% of those shots in any given game. On average.

The missed jump shot killed the Pistons last night, as they struggled to stay close to the 43-8 Spurs. The game situation cried, at times, for the Pistons to lob the ball inside and let someone do their thing.

The ball stayed on the perimeter, where the Pistons live and (mostly) die.

The rookie Greg Monroe might be that down low guy someday, as he works on his game. But Monroe might be better suited to be a big man with big range, making him that much tougher for other big men to defend.

The lack of inside scoring is killing the Pistons.

Where is today's Adrian Dantley?

Rodgers Likely a Super Bowl Repeat Offender

2011-02-07T11:10:00.000-05:00

The young quarterback had just finished one of the greatest seasons of all-time for a passer. It might have been the best ever. He was just in his second year and already he was tearing up the NFL.

Yet he was no regular season wonder. He loaded his team onto his golden right arm and marched them right into the Super Bowl, against the squad that would come to be known as The Team of the '80s.

The Miami Dolphins lost Super Bowl XIX, but their brash young quarterback didn't fret all too much.

"I figured we'd be back---again and again," Dan Marino said.

After the third or fourth year of NOT being back, Marino started to rethink that assertion.

Marino never did get back, despite a 17-year career.

Brett Favre was in his fifth season as the Green Bay Packers' starting QB when he went to the first of two straight Super Bowls (he went 1-1).

Favre never got back, either---and he played for 13 years after that.

As wonderfully gifted as Aaron Rodgers is, as on top of the football world as he is this morning, and as young as he is, he plays in the National Football League, where the smart money often turns dumb in a hurry, and unexpectedly.

You'd like to think that the rest of the NFL ought to look out, that Rodgers will be set loose on the opposition. You might believe that he is the new Bradshaw, or Montana, or Brady---making several pilgrimages to the Super Bowl.

Or he might be another Marino, or Favre---sparkling passers, terrific leaders who found a return trip to the Big Game to be mighty elusive.

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade today. This isn't me portending doom and gloom.

But we'll see how Rodgers fares. We'll see if he's ready to join Brady, his contemporary in the AFC, and become the preeminent quarterback of the NFC.

Care to wager on whether we'll see a Rodgers-Brady matchup one Super Sunday in the near future?

Rodgers was brilliant yet again yesterday, as he's been all season, and as he was throughout the post-season. His numbers would have been even more gaudy were it not for all the dropped passes.

Still, he threw for over 300 yards, tossed three TD passes, and turned three Pittsburgh Steelers turnovers into 21 points.

Rodgers is elite now. He's the poor man's Steve Young, in that he has, in one fell swoop, escaped the shadow of a legend and won a championship. Two gorillas removed with one stone.

Young never got back to a Super Bowl, either, after beating San Diego in 1995.

It would seem that Aaron Rodgers' football world is his oyster. He's still young, he's on top of his game, and he has equally as young teammates who are key contributors.

There doesn't appear to be any serious contender for his status as the best QB in the conference, other than maybe Drew Brees.

Brady is still the best quarterback in the league, because he was just named its MVP---unanimously.

Rodgers seems to be on the verge of greatness that would eclipse even that of Bart Starr and Favre, his two Green Bay co-superstars.

But the NFL doesn't play that game, all the time. It doesn't anoint so easily.

Rodgers should get back to the Big Game, maybe as early as next season. Regardless, he ought to be back, more than once.

He should.

We'll see.

Brett WHO?; Rodgers Running With the Torch in Green Bay

2011-02-06T10:49:00.000-05:00

For three years, Aaron Rodgers did what all quarterbacks for the Green Bay Packers do who wear No. 12: he stood on the sidelines and backed up a legend, knowing full well that none of the fans wanted to see him enter the game, unless his team was ahead by five touchdowns.

The original No. 12 was Zeke Bratkowski, and the only way you’ll find him on NFL Films is if you catch him standing next to coach Vince Lombardi.

Bratkowski backed up Bart Starr for six seasons, which was not unlike being Shakespeare’s ghostwriter.

Rodgers is today’s No. 12 for the Packers, and for three seasons he wore a baseball cap, not a football helmet. For ahead of Rodgers was Brett Favre, who started his first NFL game in September 1992 and didn’t stop starting until a month ago.

Rodgers caught Favre at the end of his Packers career, which meant there were yearly questions every summer about whether or not the latter would retire.

Favre played in 2005 and he played in 2006 and in 2007 and Rodgers was the only Packer who didn’t have to tip the team’s laundry guy.

But Rodgers was a first-round draft pick, the 24th player selected, a 6’2”, 220-lb. specimen from Cal, and he was drafted for a reason.

One day, Packers management knew, Brett Favre wouldn’t be around anymore, and so there needed to be a capable young guy to take over the quarterbacking business.

I wonder if even the higher-ups in Green Bay knew what they’d be unleashing on the rest of the league when they drafted Aaron Rodgers.

The Packers finally lost Favre, but not to retirement—to the New York Jets in 2008.

That’s when someone cleared his throat, tapped Rodgers on the shoulder, and said, “Coach McCarthy will see you now.”

Rodgers would finally get a chance to wear a helmet.

But this wasn’t just any quarterback Rodgers was replacing. He’d be following Favre, the only signal caller in franchise history who you could even place in the same sentence as Starr, let alone dare a comparison.

Favre led the Packers for 16 seasons without missing a start. Then, just like that, he was gone.

Enter Rodgers, which at the time was like saying, “Introducing New Coke!”

Everyone felt sorry for the kid.

You want to be the guy to follow Brett Favre?

It was like performing on stage after they announced that Elvis had left the building.

Normally, a sports legend is followed by a guy or two (or more) who are place-setters—transitional players who are merely there until the team finds the next superstar at that position.

After Starr retired in 1971, the Packers didn’t have a decent quarterback until Don Majkowski lit it up in 1989. And it was Majkowski’s injury, ironically, that paved the way for Favre in 1992.

So it wasn’t expected that Favre would leave and the Packers wouldn’t miss a beat, despite Rodgers’ status as a first-round draft choice.

What Rodgers has been able to do in three seasons as the Packers’ starting quarterback is nothing short of amazing.

A legend left town, and the denizens don’t miss him.

This isn’t to say that Brett Favre is forgotten in Green Bay—far from it. But Rodgers has performed so brilliantly, he’s been able to let the Packers fans down gently in the wake of Favre’s departure.

Let’s wind the clocks back to the summer of 1999—when Barry Sanders abruptly retired from the Lions.

The team was left scrambling for a capable running back, and wound up with Greg Hill, which is someone you end up with when you have to scramble.

Now imagine if the Lions had an understudy waiting in the wings, and that running back stepped in and played so well, the sting of Sanders’ retirement would have been deadened as if the whole town was shot up with Novocaine.

That’s what Rodgers has done in Green Bay. He’s done the improbable: he’s made the transition from the Favre Era virtually seamless.

It’s almost unprecedented, I tell you.

If not for Steve Young taking over for Joe Montana in San Francisco, it WOULD be unprecedented—where a legendary quarterback has been followed the very next year with someone as good as Rodgers has been for the Packers.

And that’s not even a fair comparison, because Young was no unproven, unknown entity; he’d been a capable NFL quarterback for a number of years before landing with the 49ers.

So here comes Rodgers, and in his first season as the Packers starter, he throws for over 4,000 yards, has 28 touchdown passes and just 13 interceptions. His quarterback rating, that convoluted statistic that they came up with at NASA, was a healthy 93.8.

And he was just getting warmed up.

In 2009, Rodgers threw for 4,434 yards with a TD-to-interception ratio of an unworldly 30-to-7. The QB rating rose to 103.2.

This season, Rodgers missed the 4,000 yard mark by 78 because he missed a game due to the effects of a concussion. Still, he tossed 28 touchdown passes, threw just 11 interceptions, and had a QB rating of 101.2. The performance earned him the FedEx Air NFL Player of the Year Award.

In three seasons as The Man Who Replaced Brett Favre, Rodgers has thrown for 12,394 yards, 86 TDs, and just 31 interceptions.

There is only one thing now that excludes Rodgers from Starr and Favre in terms of Packers quarterback greatness.

On Sunday, Rodgers will get the opportunity to be the third Packers QB to win a Super Bowl. If he does so, the duet of Starr and Favre becomes a legitimate trio.

What I’m about to suggest would have been so unthinkable in 2008, you’d have me fitted for a straitjacket.

The way Aaron Rodgers is going (he might be the best player in the entire NFL), maybe Brett Favre’s 17 years in Green Bay merely formulated the longest opening act in football history.

Elvis left the building, and the Beatles took the stage.

Richard Hamilton Saga Embarrassing for Pistons, NBA

2011-01-30T10:55:00.000-05:00

The Pistons, as I write this, have 35 games left in this wretched season of theirs.

Will Richard (Rip) Hamilton play in any of them?

What’s happening at the Palace is becoming a league-wide embarrassment.

Other NBA players are beginning to chime in on the Saga of Rip—and in the basketball court of public opinion, Hamilton is coming out smelling like a rose.

Hamilton is the soon-to-be 33-year-old shooting guard extraordinaire, the beanpole whirling dervish who, once upon a time, formed half of a Pistons guard duo with Chauncey Billups that had been compared to the days of yore, when Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars manned the backcourt with aplomb.

Hamilton, when times were good—and it’s not all that long ago—was one of the smiling Pistons, one of a lunch bucket starting five who represented the city of Detroit the way its denizens adore it to be represented.

“Goin’ to Work” was the marketing department’s slogan in the mid-2000s, when a championship was a legitimate goal every autumn.

The Pistons won the 2004 championship and almost the 2005 version with their eclectic blend of talent, but with a twist.

The Pistons possessed no superstars, no surefire Hall of Famers. The starters were very good, make no mistake. But there was no one guy who reigned supreme. They weren’t Michael Jordan and Four Others.

On any given night, Hamilton was no better than Billups, who was no better than Rasheed Wallace, who was no better than Tayshaun Prince, who was no better than Ben Wallace.

There was no Isiah to rescue them in the game’s waning minutes.

They won collectively—and lost that way, too.

In those days, Hamilton was happy to be one of the Fab Five. His signature catch phrase, “Yes SIRRR!” was oft-repeated by the fans—at the water cooler, in their living rooms, at parties.

Hamilton smiled a lot in those days.

What he wasn’t, because he didn’t need to be, was a leader.

I think that’s one of the reasons why he smiled a lot.

Hamilton, I’ve written many times, enjoyed his cake while eating it too when the Pistons were winning and going to the Eastern Conference Finals every spring.

He could blend in, win, and not have to lead.

Which was fine, because that’s what the romance of those Pistons teams was: One for all and all for one. They were the NBA’s Five Musketeers.

When the nucleus of the team began to fracture, i.e. when the Wallaces were gone and Billups was traded, Hamilton looked around and saw something which obviously frightened him.

He saw a basketball team in woeful need of a captain, and what’s worse, he was the logical choice for such a designation.

The horror!

Hamilton signed a fat contract extension after Billups was dealt in November 2008. It wasn’t one of President Dumars’ brightest moves.

Hamilton, since signing that extension, has shown not one inclination to be the leader that the young Pistons so desperately need.

It’s been Tracy McGrady, a gimpy newcomer picked off the scrap heap last August, who’s proven to be the one coach John Kuester looks to for leadership and basketball advice.

This is because these days, Hamilton shows up for work, puts on his tank top and shorts, zips up his warm-ups, and takes his place at the end of the Pistons’ bench, where he’s been buried for about 10 games now, and counting.

The court of public opinion has shifted as this benching has developed.

Kuester, no angel in this affair whatsoever, tried to sell folks on the notion that Hamilton’s sudden disappearance was because of a “shortening of the bench.” Trite coach speak.

But the benching happened precisely when a rumored trade involving Hamilton moving to the New Jersey Nets was bandied about. Some coincidence.

Kuester, I’m convinced, kept Hamilton shackled to the bench in anticipation of the trade, so his guard wouldn’t suffer an untimely injury that would torpedo the deal.

But the trade was called off, and Kuester didn’t know what to do next.

The benching is dragging on, and it’s the white elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about—no one who matters with the Pistons, that is.

Kuester has done what I thought at one point was nearly impossible: he’s made Rip Hamilton into a sympathetic figure.

Former backcourt mate Billups was in town this week, and he chimed in.

Billups used words like “disrespectful” and “wrong” in describing what’s happening to his friend.

Billups mentioned Hamilton’s jersey one day being hung from the Palace rafters.

I think that ship has sailed, but I get where Chauncey is coming from.

Other NBA players have spoken out in favor of Hamilton.

Denver coach George Karl, a league veteran and so wise about these kinds of things, spoke favorably of both Hamilton and Kuester, but wished someone would initiate some communication. Karl’s words seemed to button hole Kuester more than Hamilton.

This is where Hamilton has been coming out looking like a victim.

Kuester, last weekend, told reporters that he’s “reached out” to Hamilton.

Call me crazy, but I took that to mean that the coach made a personal overture to Hamilton.

You know, something like, “Hey, Rip—wanna talk?”

But no.

A couple days later, word got out—from Hamilton himself—that Kuester’s idea of “reaching out” is a rather curious definition of the phrase.

Kuester, Hamilton told the media, sent for a team official, and had that person approach Hamilton, who refused the awkward overture.

Game after game, Hamilton sits, his number never being called. Later in the week, he developed a stomach flu.

Talk amongst yourselves.

I have been a critic of Hamilton, but what is happening now is wrong.

This is no way for an NBA head coach to treat a player of Hamilton’s stature.

John Kuester is ducking Hamilton, and he’s painted himself into a corner in the process.

How much longer can Kuester continue to not play Hamilton, who’s making over $11 million a year?

And when will we hear from President Dumars, who must have been airlifted to an undisclosed location during this mess?

This has gone on long enough. It’s beneath everyone involved to engage in this kind of nonsense.

Dumars must broker a meeting between coach and player. Nothing good can happen until such a meeting occurs. After that, we’ll see.

Rip Hamilton has been wrong a lot in the past two-plus seasons.

But what’s being done to him now is no more right.

Yzerman Winning Again, and It's No Surprise

2011-01-23T09:06:00.001-05:00

It’s a different type of competitiveness now.

These days, Steve Yzerman doesn’t go into the corners, he goes into an office. He doesn’t try to win face-offs, he tries to win players. He doesn’t wear a sweater and skates, he wears a dress shirt and wingtip shoes.

You can dress him however you like, put him wherever you want, but you can’t take the will to win out of him.

There’s quite a story going on in the NHL, not that you’d know it, because it’s happening to a team closer to Cuba than Canada.

Yzerman is Vice President and General Manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a hockey team that really does play in the NHL—I looked it up.

Yzerman took the Tampa job because he wanted to run an NHL team in the worst way. Mission accomplished; the Lightning has been an NHL team in the worst way in recent years.

At the time of his hiring last May, the Lightning hadn’t had a winning season since 2007. As recently as 2008-09, the Lightning were 24-40-18, a nice way of saying they won 24 and lost 58.

But Yzerman didn’t care. He wasn’t going to realize his dream of running an NHL organization inDetroit—where everyone is entrenched and there’s a waiting list.

He retired as a player in July 2006 and immediately started his internship in the Red Wings’ front office. You could do worse than to learn from the hockey minds in the bowels of Joe Louis Arena.

Kenny Holland. Jimmy Devellano. Jim Nill. Mark Howe. And, for a time, Scotty Bowman.

You don’t think Stevie Y learned a thing or two?

It wasn’t going to happen in Detroit for Yzerman, so after four years of apprenticeship, The Captain got restless. He wanted to be The General Manager.

The Tampa Bay Lightning wanted to be respected. They wanted to be more than a nice little team who played in Florida and who would visit your team’s city, lose, and politely leave.

The Lightning looked at Yzerman, a hockey icon, saw his situation in Detroit, and got some ideas. New owner Jeff Vinik, who had bought the team in March 2010, set his sights on Yzerman and no one else, according to reports.

When the news broke of the Lightning’s interest in Yzerman, I wrote that he ought to take the job, no matter how repulsive it was. The job, I wrote, was beneath Yzerman, to work for the Lightning, who weren’t even in the NHL until 1992.

But he absolutely needed to take it I argued, if he wanted to realize his GM dream forthwith.

The Lightning not only made Yzerman the GM, they tagged him with the title of Vice President, too. He reports only to owner Vinik, who put complete faith and trust into Yzerman’s ability to rebuild his organization.

Seems Yzerman has indeed learned some things, wiling away his time in the Red Wings’ front office.

The Lightning are among the best teams in hockey right now and Yzerman has played no small part in the resurgence.

First, he hired a new coach, 38-year-old Guy Boucher. Yzerman couldn’t care less that most hockey people outside of Boucher’s next of kin would say, “Guy WHO?”

“Guy Boucher is one of the finest young hockey coaches in the game today,” Yzerman said in announcing his first hire as VP/GM.

Boucher’s résumé was as a minor league coach who had his finest season in 2009-10 with the AHL’sHamilton Bulldogs, winning 52 games and garnering 115 points.

Then, as his first choice, Yzerman drafted winger Brett Connolly, surprising the people labeled with that hackneyed term, “expert.”

Connolly was coming off an injury and it was a curve ball that Yzerman threw, because the supposed conventional choices were top-rated defensemen Cam Fowler and Brandon Gormley—who both slipped in the first round—making them available to the Lightning at sixth.

Connolly is 18 years-old and if his recovery from his hip flexor injury proceeds as Yzerman expects, The General Manager will have pulled a fast one.

Yzerman was 18 once, only he was in the NHL at that age, drafted third overall by the Red Wings in 1983. Three years later, he was the team’s captain.

You know the rest.

Yzerman made some other roster moves, tweaks and such, in preparation for his first season as VP/GM.

Then they dropped the puck on opening night, and the Lightning has been striking ever since.

After 10 games, the Lightning were 7-2-1, followed by a little lull, then a five-game winning streak that made them 13-7-2.

Restless again in his Armani suit, Yzerman looked at the goaltending situation and found it to be unacceptable.

So he traded for veteran Dwayne Roloson, and when I say "veteran," I’m trying to be polite. Roloson is 41 years old.

But the new/old goalie is playing OK for Yzerman’s team, going 5-3 with a save percentage of .910.

The young coach Boucher is doing better than OK with his equally-as-young team, squeezing every ounce of hockey-playing skill from it.

The Lightning, going into Saturday, were sitting at 29-15-5, second best in the Eastern Conference. They won just 34 games all of last season.

Yzerman is winning again—big surprise.

No team with which Yzerman has been associated has had a losing season since 1991.

Now he’s taking the slapstick Tampa Bay Lightning and making them the new Beasts of the East.

Veteran hockey observer Scotty Morrison had this to say about Yzerman’s decision to sign the 41-year-old goalie Roloson to compete with incumbents Dan Ellis and Mike Smith, both into whom Yzerman had put faith:

"There are some guys who would refuse to admit that things weren't working as anticipated and might ride it out longer and wait too long. Whether it's admitting a mistake or admitting he needed an improvement, (Yzerman) went out and did it, so good for him."

Steve Yzerman, some might say, has nothing left to prove in hockey. He’s won three Stanley Cups, played for 22 seasons and overcome injuries that would make a medical examiner wince.

But competitors never stop competing. Yzerman has wanted this very badly for many years. He’s wanted to be a hockey architect, ever since he saw how the best did it in Detroit.

Yzerman is turning the Tampa (freaking) Bay Lightning into winners in his first year on the job.

Surprised?

Pistons' "Convenient" Marriage with McGrady Should Be Extended

2011-01-19T16:12:00.001-05:00

Tracy McGrady has no world championship rings. He doesn't have any conference championship rings. He doesn't even have any first round champion rings.

He doesn't have any anecdotes about what it was like to go up against Kobe Bryant or Allen Iverson or LeBron James when the whole enchilada was on the line. He can't gather the kids around the campfire and tell them how the spotlight shines so much brighter when the court has "NBA Finals" painted on it.

But McGrady, the 31-year-old, sometimes gimpy point guard for the Pistons, can tell the youngens what it's like to stare the end of your career in the face, and to seriously ponder a life without basketball.

He can tell them what it feels like when most of the teams in the league looked the other way when his name was mentioned following the microfracture surgery on his knee.

McGrady is the one-time NBA superstar who became the Ernie Banks of his time and his sport---the poster child for bad timing, forever playing on teams, even good ones, that couldn't survive past the first round of the playoffs.

So he owns no rings, like Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, and Ben Wallace do. Heck, even his coach, the rumpled John Kuester, possesses a World Championship ring from his days as Larry Brown's assistant with the Pistons in 2004.

But McGrady has that whole career-was-nearly-over thing that none of the aforementioned players can relate to.

If the Pistons part ways with Hamilton, as they appear on the verge of doing, and if they let Tayshaun Prince vanish into free agency, as has been widely speculated, then the team suddenly becomes woefully deficient in NBA playing experience.

Don't forget that Wallace is likely to retire after next season, the last on his contract.

All this means that the Pistons would do well to hang on to McGrady beyond the expiration of his one-year contract, signed last August.

All bona fide NBA teams---and coaches---need players around like McGrady, who entered the league as an 18-year-old in 1997 with Toronto, and who now has nearly 18,000 points accumulated over 855 games, a 20.8 per game average for 14 years.

In fact, McGrady is hitting on nearly 48 percent of his shots this season for the Pistons, and he hasn't been this deadeye at shooting the basketball ever in his illustrious career. His career shooting percentage is 43.6.

Granted, the man they call T-Mac hasn't been hoisting nearly as many shots at the basket as he has in years past, but 48 percent is still 48 percent, albeit in a relatively small sampling---for him.

McGrady, in the past couple of weeks, has assumed the role of starting point guard and has basically been showing younger players Rodney Stuckey and Will Bynum how it's done. McGrady is distributing the ball the way a quality point guard should. And he's hitting shots when called upon.

All that, and he's providing sorely needed leadership for a team that has had a vacuum in that area ever since Chauncey Billups was traded.

Kuester has been outspoken and effusive in his praise for how McGrady has mentored the Pistons' younger players, while at the same time showing an exemplary attitude in a season where "exemplary" has been an infrequently used adjective, to say the least.

McGrady might be a Hall of Famer when all is said and done, except not all has been said, and it doesn't look like all has been done---not even close.

The Pistons signed McGrady last August and it was the quintessential marriage of convenience. McGrady needed the Pistons so he could show the NBA that he still had game, and the Pistons needed another NBA veteran with a name---a player who wasn't too far removed from his oohs and aahs days.

The Pistons didn't need another swingman---in fact, they needed one like a hole in the head. And it wasn't like NBA teams were knocking McGrady's door down for his services. But the Pistons figured they could get McGrady on the cheap (which they did), and maybe he could still score a little and provide a veteran presence.

Check, and check.

I wrote, soon after the McGrady signing, that both sides were using each other, but that it was all good because sometimes that's what happens in business.

It probably still is true, but I have an inkling that the Pistons might be using McGrady more than he's using them, which is a good thing.

If the Pistons can manage it---no easy feat with the team up for sale---I'd be thrilled if they sat Tracy McGrady down and discussed a two or three-year contract extension.

The Pistons want to make their rebuilding process as quick and as painless as possible. The latter isn't so easy, but if they want to work on the former, then they're going to need guys like McGrady, who've been through the NBA wars.

T-Mac may not be a world champion, may have never set foot in the second round of the playoffs---not once in 14 seasons. But he HAS played in close to 900 games in the league, with and against terrific players, and in all sorts of circumstances. The one he's experiencing now, with the Pistons, just might take the cake.

It's not a bad idea to keep dudes like this on your roster, if you can manage it.

Bertuzzi Won’t Ever Shake Steve Moore, But That Isn’t Stopping Him on the Ice

2011-01-16T12:06:00.001-05:00

There are some who follow the National Hockey League who will never get over Todd Bertuzzi. To those folks, he’s not a hockey player, he’s an incident.

Bertuzzi, to the ones with long memories and an inability to forgive, shouldn’t even be playing in the NHL. He should be out doing community service, or anything else that doesn’t earn him a paycheck with Gary Bettman’s signature on it.

For the rest of his NHL career, like it or not, Todd Bertuzzi will be fused to a player named Steve Moore, the same way Lee Harvey Oswald is fused to John F. Kennedy.

Prior to Steve Moore—he himself also an incident first, a person second—Bertuzzi was one of the league’s bad guys. He wore the black hat, appearing in NHL cities as a wrecking ball of a hockey player who all but pitched a tent in front of opposing goalies.

Bertuzzi could score, and he could bully. He was the kid bigger than the others who’d take your lunch money, in broad daylight. Opposing players disliked him because they couldn’t stop him. Opposing fans disliked him because their team couldn’t stop him.

Bertuzzi pumped in goals from within three feet of the net better than anyone in the NHL. He was as immovable from the crease as someone nicknamed “Tiny” from the buffet line.

The numbers were impressive. Coming into his own in the late-1990s with the Vancouver Canucks, Bertuzzi scored 25 goals in the 1999-2000 season, with 126 penalty minutes. In 2001-02 those numbers skyrocketed to 46 goals and 144 penalty minutes.

Bertuzzi was a 6’3”, 235 pound net crasher who scored seemingly at will. He was hockey’s Shaquille O’Neal.

When the Canucks played the Red Wings in the first round of the 2002 playoffs, Bertuzzi and Wings defenseman Chris Chelios had a well-publicized grudge match nightly. The smaller Chelios stood his ice, refusing to be intimidated by the NHL’s preeminent power forward.

The battles between Bertuzzi and Chelios made for great theater, in a series won by the Red Wings in six games after losing the first two in Detroit.

Then along came Steve Moore, and the answer to the following question was a shocking and resounding YES.

Can Todd Bertuzzi be despised even worse than he already is?

On March 8, 2004, Bertuzzi was on the ice against the Colorado Avalanche. He was out there to meter out justice on Moore, an Avs forward, in Gordie Howe fashion. That is, long after the initial transgression.

Moore, two Canucks-Avs meetings earlier, had badly injured Vancouver captain and leading scorer Markus Naslund with a vicious check to the head. No penalty was called, and Canucks players vowed revenge.

It was Howe who invented the delayed reaction in hockey.

When Hall of Famer Stan Mikita was a young NHL player, the Chicago Blackhawks center caught Gordie good from behind. When Mikita skated back to the bench, expecting congratulations from his teammates, he was instead greeted with a warning.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” a Blackhawk player who should know, told Mikita.

This was in the days of Original Six hockey—with 14 games against the other five teams per season.

Several Detroit-Chicago games went by, and Howe didn’t so much as sniff Mikita. The young center thought his teammates’ words were just a bunch of hooey.

Mikita thought he had gotten away with a blindside hit on Gordie Howe.

What a foolish player Stan Mikita was in his youth.

Finally, Mikita’s comeuppance occurred, months after his hit on Howe. After making a pass, Mikita was waking up on the trainer’s table.

“Who was it?” Mikita wanted to know.

“Number nine,” was the answer.

Gordie had an elephant’s memory and his interest rate was higher than a loan shark’s.

But back to Bertuzzi and Moore.

Bertuzzi, his team trailing the Avs, 8-2 in the third period, lagged behind Moore through the neutral zone. Then, in an instant, it happened.

Bertuzzi jumped Moore, punching him in the back of the head and landing his massive body on Moore as the latter collapsed to the ice.

It all happened so fast, but when Bertuzzi got up, Moore didn’t.

Moore’s injuries from the Bertuzzi sneak attack read like those of an unlucky race car driver: three fractured vertebrae in his neck, a grade three concussion, vertebral ligament damage, stretching of the brachial plexus nerves, and facial cuts.

Todd Bertuzzi, in a thirst for revenge, ended Moore’s career, and started a legal firestorm.

First, Bertuzzi was charged with assault, and a hockey player charged with assault is like a squirrel charged with jaywalking.

Then the lawsuits started flying, which are still going on today. Commissioner Bettman is still trying to get Bertuzzi and Moore to settle out of court.

In March, 2008, Bertuzzi even sued his Vancouver coach at the time, Marc Crawford, by insisting that he was just acting on Crawford’s directive to hurt Moore.

Crawford, for his part, says the opposite; that he had ordered Bertuzzi to get off the ice before even touching Moore.

After Steve Moore, Bertuzzi was persona non grata in the eyes of many NHL observers, despite Bertuzzi’s tearful apology two days after the incident.

The league suspended Bertuzzi indefinitely after his attack on Moore. Then came the lockout that canceled the entire 2004-05 season, and Bertuzzi got shoved to the back pages.

In August, 2005, the league announced that it was taking Bertuzzi back, much to the consternation of many who follow hockey.

Bertuzzi lost about half a million dollars in salary from his suspension, plus endorsements.

Moore was 25 years old when his hockey career was ended by Bertuzzi’s momentary indiscretion.

Today, Bertuzzi is about to turn 36, is playing great two-way hockey for the Red Wings, and has been called an exemplary teammate and one who has bought into coach Mike Babcock’s call for more defensive-minded play.

He isn’t the player he once was. He doesn’t score 30 goals or more anymore, doesn’t steal anyone’s lunch money. Last year, playing in all 82 games for the Red Wings, Bertuzzi mustered just 80 penalty minutes, a little more than half of what he used to record, when he was terrorizing the league.

No, he isn’t the player he once was. He is, in many ways, better.

Even if you think he doesn’t belong.

Hard to Get More "Michigan Man" Than Brady Hoke

2011-01-12T15:10:00.000-05:00

They might as well have held the press conference introducing new University of Michigan head football coach Brady Hoke in the Wolverines' locker room.

Watching Hoke, the "Michigan Man" that supporters of the program have been clamoring for, address the media today didn't seem quite right without a chalkboard behind him and a whistle around his thick neck.

The room should have been filled with the smell of sweat and Ben Gay, not ink and cologne.

The captive audience should have been made up of 19-to-21 year-olds, not pear-shaped reporters twice that age.

The first thing you notice about Hoke, fresh from San Diego State, if you didn't already know him, is that his motor has two settings: turbo and warp drive.

Hoke was introduced by athletic director Dave Brandon, and the new coach didn't step up to the podium, he annexed it. He all but jammed a flag with a maize block "M" into the dais. Then he started speaking.

Only, he didn't speak so much as he bellowed. Within minutes, I was looking around for the exit to the tunnel leading to the football field---and I was sitting in my office.

I wonder if these Michigan football-playing kids have any idea what they're about to get themselves into.

Hoke, for the duration of his presser, owned the room. He was Bob Knight at March Madness, Dennis Green after playing the Bears. There was even some Dickie Vs about him---Dicks Vitale and Vermeil.

Hoke pointed fingers. He slammed the podium. He made up words if he had to.

"This is MICHIGAN!" he said at one point, and for that moment I saw a guy named Bo with a blue baseball cap with a maize "M" on it.

Brady Hoke looks like a tough football coach. He sure sounds like a tough football coach. And he already has more hatred for "that school in Ohio"---Hoke's words---than his predecessor could muster up in three years.

Hoke coached Michigan's defensive line for eight seasons in a stint that ended in 2002, and listening to him, the subsequent eight years were spent just so he could find himself right back in Ann Arbor, this time as the Big Cheese.

Well, he certainly is big. Nothing about Brady Hoke is small---not his girth, not his passion, not his voice, not his enthusiasm. And certainly not his love for Michigan.

"I would have walked here," he said almost from the get go, referring to his rather conventional method of getting to Ann Arbor: by flying.

Hoke was like a fighter pilot, picking off questions from left to right, and in almost the same rat-a-tat way as the Red Baron.

Hoke, to those who think Michigan is on its way down, especially if they're "Michigan people": "Shame on them."

Hoke, on the rivalry games: "You want to win 'em."

Hoke, on the game against Ohio State: "It's the most important game on the schedule" (and repeated for emphasis).

Hoke, on his program: "Everyone will be fanatical in their love for Michigan."

Hoke gave the most boisterous, motivational press conference of any new coach that I've ever seen around these parts.

Now we're about to see if he can actually coach.

Hunch? He'll be fine. And so will Michigan.

Frankly, Michigan hasn't had a coach with Hoke's personality since Bo Schembechler, and Hoke might even one-up Bo when it comes to being bombastic. At least Bo came up for air, as I recall.

Hoke only stopped talking long enough to take requisite swigs of bottled water.

Gotta keep yourself hydrated when you get out there, boys!

Sorry. Hoke just has that effect on guys, I guess.

For anyone who fantasized about Jim Harbaugh or Les Miles standing up there today, take heart. Michigan didn't do too shabby. At least, not on first blush.

A word now about Harbaugh, the former U-M quarterback who the fan base coveted, but who took the job with the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL instead.

Harbaugh is 47. You really think he'd have looked at Michigan as a destination job? You think he was coming here to coach for the next 20 years, until he earned a gold watch?

After a couple years, tops, Harbaugh's name would start to be mentioned on an annual basis, in connection with just about every NFL vacancy du jour. He'd have been another Nick Saban.

Just ask the folks in East Lansing's basketball nation how annoying it can be when your coach is always rumored to be on the move.

U-M fans would have fallen in love with Harbaugh, then would have been forced to watch helplessly every winter as his name would be connected with every NFL city from Jacksonville to Houston, from Cincinnati to Denver. Every. Single. Year.

Always there'd be the dreaded feeling that Jimmy Harbaugh would flee to the NFL. Is that what Michigan fans really wanted?

No offense to Brady Hoke, but I dont' see the NFL banging down his door, ever. But that's not a put-down.

Hoke is a college coach, pure and simple. He's as collegiate as they come, and he'll stay that way. More important, he's as Michigan as they come.

Being the head coach at Michigan has long been Hoke's dream. His former boss, Lloyd Carr, started asking Hoke in 1998: What do you want to ultimately do in college football?

Why, be the head coach at Michigan, Lloyd, Hoke would answer.

"This is where I want to be," Hoke said today. "I don't want to go anywhere else."

Just about every reporter who introduced him or herself at today's presser before asking their questions gave Hoke the same greeting.

"Welcome back."

Hoke is back, no question. Back to his one true college football love. Back to the girl who knocked his socks off for eight years---the one who he never truly got over after he left in 2002.

The Michigan football fan base got what they wanted. They got a Michigan Man.

Let the healing begin.

With Rodriguez Gone, Time Now for Michigan Football to Heal

2011-01-05T15:08:00.001-05:00

On December 17, 2007, Rich Rodriguez stood in front of the gathering of media on the campus of the University of Michigan and made gallows humor about himself.

The question was, to paraphrase, "What's it like, knowing that you're the third choice for this job?"

It was widely known that Michigan, making a mess of its search for a new football coach to replace the retiring Lloyd Carr, had botched things with fanbase favorite Les Miles, and had been rejected by Rutgers coach Greg Schiano.

That left U-M with Rodriguez, who was in the midst of a messy divorce from West Virginia.

Rodriguez smiled sheepishly at the podium and said, "Well, I wasn't my wife's first choice, either," and the room broke out in guffaws.

It was pretty much the last time folks could laugh so easily with Rodriguez at Michigan. Laugh at him? Sure. But not laugh with him.

Rodriguez is gone, fired by Michigan after three years that Athletic Director Dave Brandon correctly called "full of turmoil."

"I don't think Rich Rodriguez has had a good night's sleep in the three years that he's been here," Brandon said today in announcing Rodriguez's getting the ziggy.

Brandon's words ring true, but with some explanation.

No football coach has ever gotten a good night's sleep---not while he's been employed, anyway. The life of a football coach at the major college or pro level means putting in 12-18 hour days, sleeping on a sofa in the office. Sometimes they wake up to find the film projector still running.

But what Brandon meant was that Rodriguez, ever since arriving in Ann Arbor, had been dealing with, again in Brandon's words, "One thing after another."

This was a mercy kill. Brandon shot the horse. After letting his coach twist in the wind, Brandon finally put him out of his misery.

It's time now to heal the Michigan football program.

Brandon couldn't keep Rodriguez, not after the way the season, Rich's third, ended with three straight blowout losses, including a New Year's Day Massacre to Mississippi State, of all schools.

Not after a 15-22 overall record, including an amazingly bad 1-11 vs. ranked teams, and---this is the real wince-inducer---an unsightly 0-6 against Michigan State and Ohio State.

Not after scandal and players bolting and a defense that was the worst in the 131-year history of Michigan football.

Not after seeing the fans and alumni becoming polarized---those in Rodriguez's camp, and those who wanted him gone. Never in recent memory had a football coach at Michigan incited such a love-hate reaction amongst the faithful.

Let the healing begin.

This is, already, Brandon's defining moment as AD---and he's been on the job less than a year.

But Brandon has a chance for a freebie here. Rodriguez wasn't his man, so it made it easier for Brandon to can him. The freebie part to this is that, unless he hires Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum, Brandon can buy himself some time by picking anyone whose name isn't Rich Rodriguez.

So the AD already can't lose.

After the loss to Mississippi State, any remaining fence sitters certainly had to be shoved onto the side of "fire RichRod." Though there are still some steadfast, stubborn Rodriguez supporters, the overwhelming sentiment was to run him out of town.

So Brandon will bring in a new coach, and that man will be welcomed much more graciously that Rodriguez ever was.

It's not always what you know, or how much you've won. It's who you're following.

Rodriguez followed Carr, who had continued the Bo Schembechler lineage which began nearly 40 years prior.

The new coach will be following Rodriguez.

See the difference?

I once asked the late Mark "Doc" Andrews, formerly of Dick Purtan's radio team and a damn good sports announcer in his own right, if he was interested in throwing his hat into the ring, in the wake of the news of Ernie Harwell's firing by Bo Schembechler in 1991.

Would Doc want to be considered to be the Tigers' new radio voice?

"I won't follow Ernie," Doc told me. "But I'll follow the guy who follows Ernie!"

Good point.

Remember how Harwell's successors, Rick Rizzs and Bob Rathbun, were treated in Detroit?

Brandon needed to heal Michigan's program, and the first step in that healing process was to fire Rodriguez, the deserved lightning Rod (pun intended). With Rodriguez gone, Brandon can bring Wolverine Nation together again.

In a perfect world, the next Michigan coach will stay for 10 years or more, returning stability to the program, and placing it back where it belongs---as a Top 10 program annually.

Michigan's been lucky in that regard. They hired Bo, an unknown from Miami of Ohio, and that turned out really well.

Bo stayed as coach for 21 years (1969-89), and by that time there was no shortage of solid candidates to succeed him, from within.

The university went with longtime assistant Gary Moeller, who had strayed briefly for a failed fling as Illinois coach before returning to Michigan. Moeller worked out well, too---until his infamous drunken incident at the Excalibur restaurant in Southfield.

But that was OK, because Michigan again had a capable replacement at the ready in Lloyd Carr, who himself had almost become head coach at Wisconsin a few years earlier.

Carr stayed for 13 years (1995-2007).

Yet Michigan blew it when Lloyd retired, by offending top candidate Les Miles, LSU's coach and a former Michigan player and assistant, by suggesting to Miles that he interview for the job, like he was just another candidate.

Miles told Michigan to take a hike---pun not intended this time.

Ironically, Michigan has another chance at Miles. With the news that fan favorite Jim Harbaugh doesn't see himself as Michigan's coach, Miles may again be in play. Bill Martin, the AD who botched things with Miles in 2007, is gone.

Miles could be had, if Brandon plays it correctly.

It's my opinion that Les Miles, despite his quirkiness and occasional unorthodox strategies, would excite the alumni most and sell more luxury suites than Brady Hoke of San Diego State would, the other most-mentioned candidate.

We'll see.

Regardless, Brandon must play healer now. He has to bring as many people as possible back under the tent. The AD is a smart guy. He has the tools, and the resources (he hinted that money would be no object in hiring a new coach) to put smiles back on the faces of Michigan football fans and alumni.

Firing Rodriguez was the tourniquet that U-M's football program needed. Brandon's choice as RichRod's successor is the surgery.