Enberg, Packer The Pins To Our MSU/ISU Balloon

Shame on Dick Enberg. He's a Michigan born-and-reared kid. He ought to know better than to rain on our parade in this state.

And here I thought that the 1979 Michigan State-Indiana State NCAA Final -- aka Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird -- was some good television.

But now here's Enberg, trying to spoil the fun just as MSU is set to take on Kansas in a regional semifinal tonight.

"It's almost sacrosanct to refer to it as one of the great games of all time," Enberg, who called the game for NBC and who now works for CBS, told USA Today.

Well, nuts.

Enberg didn't stop there. Not only should we stop holding the game in such high regard, he said, and not only wasn't it one of the greatest finals ever, it was downright...bad.

"But had Magic and Bird been NBA busts, I don't think we'd look back on it as a great game. It was not a great final. As I left, I had the same feeling as after Super Bowl blowouts -- that it wasn't very exciting."

Hmph.

Enberg's sour puss was joined with that of broadcast partner Billy Packer, who echoed the downer words of CMU grad Enberg.

"It was one of the poorer finals games I ever broadcast," Packer said. "What Bird-Magic eventually became made that game, not the other way around."

Well, now that last statement of Packer's, I can swallow.

I won't quarrel that Magic and Bird's NBA careers certainly added to the image of the '79 Final, when MSU met the Indiana State Sycamores. The Spartans had breezed -- as much as a team can "breeze" thru an NCAA tourney -- thru the brackets, and waiting for them were Bird and his flock, who were 33-0.

But take it from me, who's old enough to still recall the game (I was 15): the game wasn't a dud.

Maybe I'm looking at it through too much of a local prism, but I seem to remember that, although the Spartans led most of the way, it was never a blowout, and Bird did his best to make sure it would never be such.

I'm perplexed and a little disappointed to hear such wet blanket words from Enberg and Packer, because it's not like Magic and Bird weren't already superstars -- at the college level. NBC, I'm sure, enjoyed terrific ratings that night -- the only time Magic and Bird met in college.

In other words, these guys weren't chopped liver who became NBA Hall of Famers. They were already damn good, and that's why the MSU-ISU game was looked forward to with so much anticipation.

Maybe Enberg and Packer expected TOO much.

But we fans expected a lot, too, and I simply don't remember being disappointed. MSU won, 75-64, but it wasn't until the final minutes that you could, as a Spartan fan, relax. As long as Bird lurked, no lead felt truly safe.

I've wondered for years if the outcome would have been different had the three-point shot been made available to Bird in 1979.

I don't know what Enberg and Packer were hoping for, but to broadcast a college game with two high-profile studs like Magic and Bird in it, squaring off...well, unless the game was a complete dog, you'd think you'd have a little more respect for its memory than what they told USA Today.

Yes, the game has grown in legend in 30 years. And yes, much of that -- if not all of it -- is because of what the two players did in the NBA. But doesn't every good-to-great game's stock grow over time?

If we're going to start telling tales out of school, then I'll throw one back into Enberg's face, who was about my 1979 age when it happened: the 1958 NFL Championship between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. You know, the "Greatest game of all time"?

Not so much, really. Had it not been the first (and only) overtime game in NFL Championship/Super Bowl history, I don't know that it would be known as the greatest game.

Oh, it was close -- no doubt about that. But there were turnovers and dropped passes and it lacked a big game from any of the very talented skill players that both teams employed at the time.

So there. Two can play at this game.

Don't get me wrong; I love Dick Enberg. He's been a rock in the business. I still get chills thinking about his game show, "Sports Challenge", which aired in the mid-1970s to early-1980s. And his voice was the one calling all the plays on my Talking Football game. For those who don't know, Talking Football was played with two people. You selected an offensive play, which was a tiny recorded disc, and dropped it into the disc player. Your opponent spun the disc to match up with the defense he was calling. Then you plunged the disc down, and the player described the play.

My favorite was, "A LEAPING interception....he's going to go...all the way!! TOUCHDOWN!"

So Dick Enberg is OK in my book. Not so much Billy Packer, but there you go. But my man Enberg's memory might be the one that's not so good.

It's OK to keep lauding MSU-ISU from 1979. You have my permission.

UDM, Once Fearless, Ducks Even Oakland U. Nowadays

There was a time when the University of Detroit (before they added the Mercy part to their name) wasn't a-scared of anybody, when it came to basketball opponents.

Powerhouse DePaul? Bring it on! Marquette, on the road? When does the bus leave? Michigan? Just name the time and the place!

That was a long, long time ago.

U-D is now UDM. They added an "M", but lost their nerve.

Why, UDM won't even play Oakland University, some 30 miles or so north.

It's not the travel, of course -- it's the quality of the Golden Grizzlies.

UDM is ducking OU. Has been for years.

Oakland coach Greg Kampe was chatting with some Internet fans the other day, and portions of the chat were printed by the Free Press.

Who, Kampe was asked, is Oakland's biggest rival?

"It should be the University of Detroit-Mercy," Kampe said. "But they won't play us. So it's Oral Roberts."

Oral Roberts plays in Oakland's league, in case you were wondering. Which is more than you can say about UDM.

UDM doesn't play in many people's league anymore. They're officially a member of the Horizon League, with schools like Cleveland State (who just won the league tournament) and Butler and Wisconsins of Green Bay and Milwaukee. It's not a bad little league, actually; Cleveland State and Butler have caused other teams fits in basketball over the years.

So did U-D/UDM, once upon a time.

U-D had Dave DeBusschere and Spencer Haywood in the 1960s, and Terry Tyler and John Long and Terry Duerod in the 1970s. And it was no picnic playing the Titans -- especially in that glorified high school gymnasium called Calihan Hall.

The Titans still play in old, decrepit Calihan, and their team hasn't caused any trouble for too long. The 2008-09 season that the Titans just completed was another cautionary tale of a campaign: 7-23 overall; 2-17 in league play.

No wonder they're ducking Oakland U.

Dickie Vitale and Dave "Smokey" Gaines and even Don Sicko must be horrified at the notion that UDM won't play Oakland -- not because OU is small potatoes, but because the Titans might very likely get their tails handed to them if they dared play Greg Kampe's kids.

Kampe has Oakland on a great upward path. They win a lot up there, and for a school of its size, OU puts a very competitive team on the floor, year after year.

UDM sits right smack in the very city that produces some of the finest high school players in the entire Midwest, yet they wallow. Have been, with few interludes of success, since the mid-1980s.

Now they won't even hop on a bus for 45 minutes to play Oakland, nor will they host them, thus robbing OU of its biggest rival, according to Coach Kampe.

I remember watching the '76-'77 Titans march into the old Mecca in Milwaukee and take on Marquette -- who would be eventual NCAA champions in coach Al McGuire's farewell season. Both teams were independents at the time, and the game had been scheduled at the behest of Vitale, who wanted his team to play as many top-notch programs as possible.

U-D won, in a game televised back home to Detroit, and Dickie V. did a jig at center court as he was being interviewed after the game. No joke -- he danced, he was so happy.

That was back when U-D/UDM feared no team in no arena.

Now Greg Kampe can't get the Titans on the court, nowhere, no how.

Times sure have changed -- even for a team whose home gym hasn't since the 1960s.

UDM, ducking Oakland University? The shame of it all.

Magic, Bird Took NCAA Tourney To New Heights

Where I get my haircut, there’s sports memorabilia strewn all over the walls, from top to bottom. It’s enough to ask for some extra clipping time as the chair spins you around, so you can get as much as you can of the photos within your line of vision (and in the mirror).

What’s striking is a display directly in front of the chairs, which is a series of framed, enlarged front pages from the Detroit Free Press, heralding championships from our teams in recent years gone by.

“NOT BAD, BOYS!”

“STANLEYTOWN”

“HAIL TO THE VICTORS”

The headlines are, what they used to call in the journalism business, in Armageddon type. Bold, black letters, several inches in height. And with an accompanying photo that extends to the bottom of the page. It put things like a Red Wings Stanley Cup on the same order as President Kennedy being assassinated. That’s progress for you.

But over on the right, devoid of color, is a front page from a sports section – not a Front Page. It’s from March, 1979. And the headline is far from Armageddon-like. In fact, if you weren’t looking for it, it might not be the first thing you read on the page.

“Spartans No. 1 in the Land.”

That’s it. Oh – and with a modest, black-and-white photo of Greg Kelser and an Indiana State player, battling for a rebound.

That’s how we read of Michigan State’s victory over ISU in the ’79 final. “Spartans No. 1 in the Land.” Today, a regular season game gets almost the whole darn front sports page. That 1979 sports page had enough room for some Tigers spring training news and a couple other stories.

So it’s ironic, to me, that the framed headline with the least fanfare at my barber’s just happened to be documenting the one event that, by itself, had more impact on its sport than the other five or six combined.

Bird ended up the one being down and out after the final buzzer in '79; but the tables would turn -- and turn, and turn

Michigan State beat Indiana State, yes, for the 1979 college basketball championship. They were, indeed, No. 1 in the land. But there was much more to it – oh, so much more.

It was the last college game for Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, for starters. Magic, of MSU, and Bird of ISU only faced each other once in college, and it was for all the marbles in 1979. Then both would enter the NBA and carry their rivalry into the pro game – forever changing the face of the league. Magic’s Los Angeles Lakers and Bird’s Boston Celtics tended to pass the NBA trophy back and forth in the 1980s – often playing each other in the Finals. But more than that, the NBA before Magic and Bird was still primarily a bush league – showing its Finals series at times on late-night tape-delay, if you can imagine such a thing. It was a league of under-publicized, under-appreciated stars, played in hoops Meccas like Buffalo and Kansas City and Baltimore and Cincinnati. The New Yorks and Philadelphias and Los Angeleses – and even Bostons – weren’t enough to sustain prolonged interest across the country.

The NBA was, to put it in more easily understood terms, kind of like how the NHL is today, with the latter’s pipsqueak TV contract and ill-advised expansion.

Magic and Bird changed all that. They joined Julius Erving, who was working wonders in Philly, and gave Dr. J help, forming a trio that ushered in pizzazz, trash talk, and – how about this – INTEREST. From 1980, when the rookie Magic’s Lakers won the title, to 1988, either the Lakers, Celtics, or 76ers won the whole shebang. The league thrived like never before.

Bird and Magic's rivalry lasted throughout the 1980s

But let’s go back to school.

That ’79 NCAA title game did some terrific stuff for the college game, too. Bird’s ISU team was undefeated when it played Michigan State. Magic, as a freshman, had led MSU into the tourney the year before, but couldn’t get past the Sweet 16. Now, as a wily sophomore, Magic went up against the “hick from French Lick (Ind.)”, Bird and his team from tiny Indiana State. It was a match made for TV heaven, and for a tournament that, like the NBA, needed a jolt. Interest waned in the years after UCLA dominated the tournament. No school was taking the baton with any regularity or competence. It’s one reason why news of MSU’s victory was barely heralded, even in the supposed hometown papers.

MSU-ISU was really Magic vs. Bird, and normally it might be considered off-putting to classify a team sport that way. Yet the nation thirsted for such a depiction. Ratings for the game soared. The NCAA tournament suddenly became must-see TV. Even the two stars’ promotion to the NBA didn’t stop the momentum that their epic battle in March 1979 had started.

You think I aggrandize too much? In a country where the common folks forecast the tournament with such fervor that we’ve spawned a new word, this “bracketology”? Where news of a presidential candidate’s (Barack Obama’s) tourney picks jostle for top billing with REAL news headlines?

You can thank Magic and Bird for a lot of that, too. Honest.

What they did was bring the spotlight back onto college basketball. Their pro careers simply added to that aura, because that proved them to be no flashes-in-the-pan; no “college-only” stars who flickered out when they began to get paid for their services. It said that, yes, great college players can not only be pro superstars, but also basketball ambassadors. Everyone wanted to know when the next Magic and Bird was going to arrive on campus. They practically demanded it, once those dudes turned pro.

Even if the Free Press didn’t know it at the time, nor accorded the NCAA Final the hype that it deserved, back in 1979.

Missing Out On The Madness, Once Again

Slap me across the face and send me to the woodshed. Stitch a scarlet letter "O" on my shirt, for outcast. If you're asking about my brackets, look elsewhere. I don't know a Winthrop from a Davidson. For as far as sports knowledge and being informative go, the NCAA basketball tournament is my Krypton.

It's been this way for a long time. I haven't gotten caught up in March Madness, really, since Michigan State captured the whole enchilada in 2000. It doesn't disgust me; I don't have anything against it. I just don't get into it.

If you've read me for any length of time -- both thanks and apologies are in order if you have -- you'll know that I'm a pro snob. Always have been. College sports don't wrap me in their tentacles of excitement and pageantry. Something's the matter with me, I know. There's a lot, I'm sure, to like about the college games, but they just don't hold my interest for very long.

I actually considered filling out a bracket the other day, just for fun. But then I remembered that I always -- always -- pick Duke to win the whole thing, so what's the use? Every time I was in one of those office pools, I'd pick Duke. I even picked them when they played my alma mater, Eastern Michigan, in 1996. EMU beat them.

So my brief burst of tourney energy fizzled, and I never did take the 15 minutes to make my wholly uninformed predictions.

The fun is going on without me, and I'm like someone walking past a raucous party going on in a bar. I hear the noise and the hoopla, the rumble growing louder the closer I come to the establishment, and it might be enough for me to stop and peer inside. Then I take a look, grinning at the folks having their jollies -- happy for them but because it doesn't look like my cup of tea, I move on. Maybe I then go into a quiet bookstore and browse.

I'm so boring, I know.

So have fun with your March Madness. Have heart palpitations when schools like Belmont (see, I'm a LITTLE informed) almost beat my perennial choice Duke. Thrill at the upsets, near upsets, and outstanding individual performances. Keep track of your brackets and good luck to you; I hope you win the whole stinking pot.

It'll all go on without me, as usual. I know I'm the one missing out. Feel sorry for me.

One question, though: how come it's called March Madness, if the winner is crowned in April?

Just wondering.

Sharp's Premature Burial Of MSU Returns Us Back To Normal: 180 Degrees Apart

I must have been terribly busy this weekend. I'm clearly uninformed, so for that I apologize. I'm usually more on top of things in the sports world -- so how in the world did I miss the news that Michigan State had been eliminated from the NCAA tournament before it even started? I'm embarrassed to come before you as your faithful blogger with this admission.

Unless I'm mistaken -- which I hope I am.

The Free Press's Drew Sharp didn't take long to wander 180 degrees away from me again -- his usual proximity from me. Drew and I were briefly (sorta) together last week, bemoaning the Red Wings' lack of action at the trading deadline. But now we're at our more customary positions -- one that I share with a bunch of other readers and writers in being opposite of Mr. Sharp.

Sharp, in this morning's Freep, is almost done pouring dirt over the Spartans' casket, without the bother of checking for a pulse. He writes that the Spartans, I guess because they didn't win the Big Ten title, might as well pack their equipment bags, wish the seniors well and look ahead to 2008-09. For there is nothing left to play for this month -- the month of Madness.

To wit:

"But all the Spartans' flirtation with Mexican cuisine did Sunday was exacerbate the collective heartburn of a season that currently ranks as a stunning underachievement.

Their offensive output showed what these Spartans could be, but it doesn't change what they are right now -- a big disappointment nationally.

They scored 103 points against Indiana, but there remain almost as many questions as to why the Spartans' personality deviates so radically between games."

A stunning underachievement? A big disappointment nationally? It's a Top 25 program that lost some tough road games, yet took care of business at home, going undefeated. And there aren't any road games, per se, in the tournament. Everyone, in theory, is in the same boat in that regard.

Oh that's right -- the Spartans have been eliminated from the post-season.

Sharp has the scoop; MSU is going to be on the sidelines, without hope. For you cannot win the Final Four if you're not even invited in the door.

Ahh, but upon reading further, we have coach Tom Izzo to set everyone straight.

"I think a few of our guys had their dreams shattered when we had an opportunity to win the league and didn't," he said. "But it's really a mark of some special guys to get back up. It's March. March is a great time around Michigan State, and we're going to try to make it a special month if we keep playing well."

Whew! The Spartans are still alive after all!

Winning league titles are nice. Winning a tough road game along the way would be even nicer. Finishing in the Top Ten would have been awesome. None of that happened. But that hardly means the Spartans are underachieving disappointments. Now, if they get bumped out of the tourney in the first round (which they've done), that's another story. And just because the Spartans have shown a maddening occasion to let something special slip through their grasp, it's foolish to dismiss their March chances.

Or has Sharp forgotten about Villanova in 1985, or North Carolina State in 1983?

College basketball is like the NHL that way. It's not how you finish ... the regular season, but how you do in the school of bracketology.

Besides, how can ending the season by beating a fellow Top 25 school by nearly 30 points -- albeit at home -- be disappointing? Tournament champs have gone into the post-season with much less momentum, that's for sure.

Knight Produced Winners Off The Court, So All Is Forgiven

I don't know if I ever stopped to think of how I thought Bobby Knight would quit coaching, but I must say, the way he did so doesn't surprise me in the least.

No farewell tours. No big announcement at center court at Texas Tech. No "win one for Bobby" mentality in any post-season tourneys.

Just ... done.

Knight's announcement Monday, that he's done with Texas Tech, and probably done with coaching, just like that, was stunning when I first saw the blurb on the bottom of the ESPN News screen. But then I took a step back after it soaked in and realized that that was probably the way it was going to be all along. Whenever Knight felt like it was time, he'd quit -- regardless of when it was.

Why do it now? Why walk out in February, the push to March Madness only beginning?

Well, why not?

Knight's son and heir apparent at TT, Patrick Knight, suspects that his father is tired and ready to give up the coaching lifestyle, at age 67. And he's tired and ready now, so why be fraudulent thru the end of the season? The younger Knight said Bobby spoke at length with his wife about quitting on Sunday, then walked into the president's office at TT Monday afternoon and dropped his bombshell.

Done.

So with Knight cut out of our consciousness like a severed power cord, quickly and painlessly, where does that leave his legacy?

I likely have no deeper perspective than any of the other 500 folks you've probably already read and heard talk about Knight and his career. I never met him. But you've read this far, why not indulge me for another paragraph or two?

I classify Knight in the same category as Vince Lombardi, Woody Hayes, Scotty Bowman, and Billy Martin -- coaches that were often times not particularly well-liked by their players, but who won. Guys who only wanted the respect of their charges -- not to be on their Christmas card list. So when someone of this ilk calls it quits, you're going to need a protractor to itemize the recollections -- because they're going to be 360 degrees apart.

Though it might be slightly different when it comes to a college coach like Knight. Most of his former players will laud him. It's going to be the writers, TV people, and fans who are going to be on one extreme or the other.




































Was Knight a baboon? A horse's ass? A jerk? At times maybe even a misogynist? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Did he disgrace his profession at times? Yes. These are all accusations that even the Knight defenders must admit to as being true. So these charges aren't up for debate. It's how you place these in context of his career that you're going to get the 360 degrees thing.

I, frankly, have no problem with Bob Knight. He can throw chairs, act the fool with officials, yank on a player's jersey, drop "F" bombs during a post-game presser, and tell his critics to kiss his ass. All good -- as long as you can look back on what he did with college kids and say, "Yeah -- no thugs present."

As long as Knight didn't crank out chair throwers, fools, abusers, or potty-mouthed players while at Army, Indiana, and Texas Tech, then all is forgiven, in my book. If the young men who were absorbed into "real life" after college were, for the most part, fine and upstanding citizens, then all I can offer to the kooky behavior is a shrug and a dismissive wave. He must have been doing something right, to separate the Knight we saw in public from the mentor and teacher his players and associates saw in private.

They came up with things like "Do as I say and not as I do" for people like Bob Knight. And it seems to have worked.

Oh yeah -- there's also the matter of 902 victories and three NCAA championships, though the last of the latter was 21 years ago. All that winning is why Knight is relevant to begin with.

It's not that "all is OK as long as you win." No -- it's that all is OK as long as you mold and groom winners for life after basketball.

Then there's this -- another thing that the Knight lovers and haters can agree to: college basketball just got a whole lot more boring.

Rutgers Women Like Rubber And Imus Like Glue

The best thing about what happens when loudmouthed boobs like Don Imus stick their boots into their pie holes is that they end up the ones looking far worse than the folks they were trying to disparage.

Imus, who said some nasty things about the Rutgers University womens basketball team, calling them a "bunch of nappy-headed hos" last week, apologized Friday. And he was contrite again this morning, and seeing him talk on MSNBC during the simulcast of his radio show, he seemed sincere.

But it's Imus, and not the Rutgers female basketballers, who looks bad here.

I've always been under the belief that name-calling shouldn't, really, bother the one(s) being called the names, because if you know you're not what they're calling you, then who cares?

Do the Rutgers women believe they're "nappy-headed hos"? Of course not. Was it wrong for Imus to call them that? Of course. But the Rutgers ladies shouldn't let it bother them too much, because it's presumed that they have higher self-esteem than that. Should they really care what someone like Imus thinks of them? Or should they be more concerned with how they think of themselves?

It's always this way, and it should be: the name-caller's credibility and image shrinks when he or she engages in that sort of behavior. And the one(s) being slandered usually come off as sympathetic, pristine figures.

But there's usually more behind these things than just the name-calling itself. Typically the outrageous comments either thinly veil deeper-seated beliefs, or at the very least, the issuer simply doesn't know how to engage in self-censorship. Either way, it's more often than not more than just a random, egregious remark made off the cuff. In Imus's instance, it would appear that he has some sort of resentment toward black athletes, especially female ones. Why else would he say such a thing on national radio/TV?

Regardless, here's hoping that the Rutgers womens hoopsters don't take any of Imus's dreck to heart. They should let his words roll off their hard-working backs.

And let the "I-Man" take all the well-deserved heat.

"Those girls didn't deserve what I said," Imus said this morning.

No. But he deserves all the fallout.