MC GUESTING ON BBC WORLD SERVICE TONIGHT

I'll be a guest on the World Service's News Hour tonight, discussing Michael Vick's return to the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles following his serving two years in prison for running a dog-fighting ring....

JOHN TOLOS: MY INDEPENDENT OBITUARY

At the risk of being thought when Freddie Blassie would have called a 'pencil-neck geek', let me mention that my obituary of John Tolos, 'The Golden Greek' is in today's Independent. It provides a sequel to the one of Blassie I did for the Indy six years ago; you can find that one here. That's Tolos in the photo on the right, working over Classy Freddie in a cage.

As I said in the obit, their Monsel powder angle was one of the most copied in wrestling; wrestlers were soon being blinded in dozens of innovative ways, most famously when Michael 'BS' Hayes of the Fabulous Freebirds threw 'Freebird cream' into the eyes of the Junkyard Dog. This set up a 'dog-collar' match, wrestlers chained together so JYD could wrestle without his sight, before 30,000 fans in New Orleans' Superdome. There was also an infamous angle in Texas' World Class promotion; Gino Hernandez blinded the British-born 'Gentleman' Chris Adams, but died of a cocaine overdose before they could have the revenge match. They opened their next TV show saying 'this week we've have two terrible tragedies, Chris Adams is blind and Gino Hernandez is dead.'

This seems to be quite a week for nostalgia; I recall Blassie, Tolos, Argentina Apollo, Irish Don McClarity, Gorilla Monsoon and the rest wrestling on TV in the golden age when I was, oh, 11 through about 14. It was the WWWF, and I remember for some reason the ring announcer often welcoming us to 'the Capitol Arena in the nation's wrestling capital, Washington DC', which always made me feel Washington was good for something.

MY DOC BLANCHARD OBIT IN THE INDEPENDENT AND AT IRRESISTIBLE TARGETS

My obit of Doc Blanchard is in today's Independent: you can link to it and read about what wasn't included in the printed version at my Irresistible Targets site, here. Although I'd conceived of two separate yet equal blogs when I'd started, I've now decided to devote most of my energy to IT, so this site is probably going to lie dormant for a while. If you haven't been looking regularly at IT, please do.....

MIKE ON RADIO FIVE: HOLD THE MAYO, EXTRA MURRAY

I'll be appearing on Radio Five's Simon Mayo programme tomorrow (Wed, 8 April) at about 3:15pm to talk about American sports in this country. Colin Murray will be sitting in for Simon, so expect some of the fun and games of the old Channel Five NFL all-nighters (though not much!). The BBC website should feature the show for a week after broadcast...

NYUK NYUK NYUK

I've written briefly, because words fail me, about the impending remake of the Three Stooges, over at Irresistible Targets. The picture to the right, minus the fringe, is actually the same one that's the screen saver on my computer.

WALES VS IRELAND, ALMOST WINNER TAKE ALL

Today Ireland play at Wales, and if they win they will be crowded Six Nations champions with an undefeated Grand Slam season. If they lose, they will find themselves in a tie with Wales, and, in a perfect world, the Welsh would win the title on the strength of the head-to-head victory (not quite perfect, of course, since the home field advantage is so huge in rugby, especially in Cardiff, you know Welsh choirs and all that).

But in international rugby, to the winner the spoils do not necessarily go. The Welsh will have to beat Ireland by 13 points or more, because in the case of ties, the winner is determined by 'points difference' in all five matches. So in reality the Six Nations will be decided by who was able to run up the score against Italy by the most points.

Remember 2001? Due to hoof and mouth in Ireland (among the cows, not the rugby players), the Irish finished their campaign in the fall, and in their final match faced English, who had juggernauted through the other four nations in the spring. An Irish win in Dublin would have left the teams level with 4-1 records, but Ireland had beaten Italy 41-22 away, while the English had enjoyed embarrassing Italy 80-23 at Twickers. They'd beaten Scotland by almost as much, and with a 143 point differential were forcing Ireland to beat them by more than they'd beaten Italy in order to be champions. In the end, Irealdn duly won, 20-14, but there was no suspense in the match, as there would have been had anything been as stake.

The Six Nations is often decided on PD: France over Ireland in both 2006 and 2007, although luckily they beat the Irish head to head both years. Or I should say fortunately they'd amassed a better point differential. Wouldn't be better if titles were decided on the field, and not by some guy in a blazer working a pocket calculator?

PARENTHOOD: TRAVIS ON THE BACK NINE, BRISTOL PLAYING SINGLES

The sad tale of Travis Henry, who since high school has fathered nine children by nine different women, and despite getting $6.5 million from his last NFL contract is effectively bankrupt, is in today's NYTimes, here. Henry says each relationship was 'cool' until the babies came and then the women 'came after' him. He also says he never had more than three cars at once, and spent only $250,000 on jewellery, which passes for austerity in today's NFL. In fairness, however, unlike certain other running backs, he has never tried to dodge the financial repsonsibility; he just can't meet the bills. He and his fiancee are postponing wedding plans until this can be sorted out, and neither, according to the Times, wants children. Shouldn't that be MORE children?

Meanwhile, there's a different approach to the news that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston's 'engagement' is off, apparently after Bristol refused to let Levi take their daughter to his family's house, calling them 'white trash'. Levi's mother, remember, was busted, though not until after the election, for selling oxycontin, aka hillbilly heroin. No wonder Rush Limbaugh loved them so much. In reality, young Levi (pictured right with Bristol and their marriage counselor) always looked like he wanted to be there about as much as Travis Henry might have. Now, according to the Palins' press release, Bristol is 'devastated'. But according to Levi's sister, Mercede (where in Alaska do they get these names?) it's a different story. As Tom Paxton sang: How do I know? I read it in the Daily News! Here.

AND HERE'S TO YOU MRS. MYERSON: Julie Battles Light Literary Incontinence

My modest observations on the British media 'controversy' over Julie Myerson's using her son's drug problems, and her banishing him from the family home, as a device in her new book, have been posted over at Irresistible Targets, here.

GOING COAST TO COAST AGAIN...

The first installment of 2009's Coast To Coast column is up now at nfluk.com, you can find it here. Each Friday I'll be looking at one or two NFL teams, assessing their needs pre-draft, and their prospects after it. I started with Detroit, an easy target coming off their 0-16 bizarro-perfect season, with an even easier target in ex-coach Rod Marinelli. There are a couple of typos in the finished product, and a riff on their signing Drew Henson (ex Berlin Thunder) just to confuse me has disappeared, and you were spared my favourite picture of my favourite space-eater, Grady Jackson, so I'll share it with you here. You may recall the NFL tried to ban Grady last season for using a diruetic, presumably to mask his steroid use. As it happened, the banned drug was included, but not listed in the contents, of an over-the-counter diruetic, which the NFL knew, but didn't tell anyone. Grady's lawyer, very smartly, filed suit against the maker of the supplement, a suit the NFL doesn't want to be in the middle of. When you stop giggling, consider why Grady would be using a diruetic in the first place? It's not like he had to make weight. Maybe he gets a bonus if he's under 365? Anyway, unless the NFL starts testing for BBQ, Grady should be OK for the 2009 season.

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE REDUX: WHICH TEAM WON?

So it turns out there really was a ringer in the Corpus Christi team, but it wasn't 26 year old PhD student Gail Trimble, it was the science wonk Sam Kay, the recipent of Trimble's most dismissive stare when he got one wrong, is actually not enrolled at Oxford at all, but working for Price Waterhouse Coopers, where presumably he is already learning how to cook the books and stretch the rules as an accountant.

Kay was a student when CCO's first two matches were taped, then graduated and took his job. So each time in the remaining shows, when he said he was 'reading' or 'studying' he must have meant he was doing that on his own time at home.

Reports in the Sunday papers indicated that the UC rules were clear, that contestants had to be students for the full-run of the programme, but Kay was quoted as saying that since he had been a student when he started he didn't think he'd done anything wrong. It is a little odd that no one at Oxford noticed he wasn't around town, though, isn't it.

Reminds me of Boris Rankov, who was still rowing for Dan Topolski's Oxford crews even though he was palpably a teacher, not a student.

Although reports on Sunday all screeched that the Manchester University were demanding a rematch, in reality, they conceded gracefully, if not educatedly. Manchester captain Matthew Yeo said he and his teammates were 'firmly of the opinion that the best team won'.

That's BETTER team, Matthew. There were only two of you. Maybe it's time to go back to college, if you're not really there.

UP ALL NIGHT WITH THE GRAN TORINO

I'll be on BBC Radio Five's Up All Night tonight, around 0230 ayem, talking about Clint Eastwood and Gran Torino with host Dotun Adebayo...you can read my review of the film here.

Update: You can link to the programme last night here. The film segment begins about 1:35 into the show (that's one hour 35 minutes) and runs until the 3 hour mark. That was 0230 ayem until 0400 this morning! Enjoy...

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE FIXED? YOUR STARTER FOR AN EASY TEN...

There is a scene in Joyce Carol Oates' novel THEM where a young girl, a mathematical genius, performs her idiot-savant skills while her parents feed her sweets as encouragement. I was reminded of it last night, watching the final of University Challenge, as Gail Trimble of Corpus Christi Oxford swayed back and forth, smashing the buzzer in front of her as she rallied her team to victory. Which led me to a thought I'd had before watching the programme: why were all the questions down the stretch about literary topics, Trimble's specialty? Is University Challenge fixed? I've watched matches where questions seemed aimed at one team's specialties before, or which capitalised on a lack of knowledge in certain areas by another team. I used to think Bamber Gascoigne would slow down when the university he preferred was in the lead, and speed up when they were behind. Paxman is notoriously fickle in which answers he will accept and which he will not. Not that UI is infallible. When dealing with general matters I'm familar with, including sports (the Rose Bowl is not the college championship game, the Connecticut River does not empty into Long Island Sound at New Haven, etc) the programme has been wrong an amazing number of times, and their pronunciation of anything non-English is often eccentric at best. But stacking the deck to ensure one college, or indeed, one person who's attracted a huge amount of media attention, wins just would not be, uh, cricket would it. Or at least it would not have been before we found out cricket matches are fixed too. Trimble appears to have divided the nation. She certainly divided the Observer on Sunday, who devoted a full page to her but couldn't decide if it was unusual that a woman should have brains, or that a woman as attractive as Trimble should have brains, or if a woman as unattractive as Trimble better have brains, or if she were attractive/unattractive because she did have brains/couldn't think at all just answer questions on cue. This was all in the same 'analysis'. Are smart women still that much of a problem? If a male student had dominated his team (and believe me, some did) would he have attracted any attention? As I said, Trimble struck me as the kind of person who performs, and exudes the sort of smugness on each right answer that has characterised teachers pets and swots since school time began. It was instructive to watch her face early in the match, frozen into disbelief when she was wrong, and even moreso to catch the look she gave the poor schmuck on her far right, recruited for the science questions, when he got one wrong. Meanwhile, immediately on her right, the American girl was having a nervous breakdown with every answer. It was theatre of the academic absurd at its finest. And, Trimble is a ringer: a PHD student, because UC, like the Boat Race or the Varsity Match, allows anyone studying at the college to participate. This never happened in America, where it was undergrads only. Brits never believe me when I tell them that UC was a direct copy of the GE College Bowl, a show I used to watch when I was young and exactly the kind of know-it-all who stills shouts the answers before these kids today can get the answers wrong. By the time I got to college however, my academic reflexes had been dulled by, uh, college, and I wasnt even aware that Wesleyan fielded a UC team in 1969 until I saw them on TV. They lost by the narrowest of margins, 5 points, to Goucher College, but had been denied points for an answer that was correct, but no one told the host so. When they were brought back, against Davidson, the questions were so obviously slanted in Davidson's favour, Wesleyan was comprehensively humiliated. The college hasn't been the same since. Gail Trimble, the Fred Housego of her generation, is unlikely to meet the same fate, though she is likely to find that an ability to recall all sorts of hoitsy toitsy facts isn't much use unless she can get into Millionaire or the US version of Jeopardy, where my college friends Steve Berman and Seth Davis have both been champs and argue incessantly over who is superior (I should note that I beat Berms at his Jeopardy board game soon after arriving in LA and being made to watch tapes of each of his appearances--I told you I could identify with Gail Trimble).

SEPARATED AT BIRTH BY THE FICKLE FINGER OF FATE

Have you ever noticed that the more funny former Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly (pictured right with Joe Namath) tries to get for ESPN ('my kids read Bill Simmons') the more he starts to look like Laugh In host and Vegas comedian Dick Martin (pictured left with a showgirl). Are they perhaps related? You bet your espy!

MC--LOCAL HERO?

Football Outsiders has posted their annual poll results, and for the third year in a row I've been one of the contenders in the category of 'local NFL writer who deserves a national profile', based on my work for nfluk.com. Without disputing the definitions of 'local' and 'national'--since in football terms, Britain is decidedly local--it's great to appear in the company of writers like Mike Reiss, last year's winner, whose work is always admirable, and to know that some of the stuff I write is being read and appreciated. Thus the internet makes neighbours of us all. Football Outsiders is an excellent website (well, I would say that, wouldn't I?) whether or not you find their statistical analysis compelling. And apparently there was some ballot-stuffing from Seattle; though not from the UK!
Perhaps that had something to do with it being a good day for Carlsons: Seattle's rookie tight end John 'no relation' Carlson was voted the NFL's most underrated offensive player.

THE FRUSTRATIONS OF RUGBY: WALES BEATS ENGLAND

I am usually, after more than three decades in Britain, an ABE supporter. That is, Anyone But England. There are exceptions to the rule: certain football matches, say, against Italy, any matches against Australia, and rugby against New Zealand or Wales. The common denominator in all those situations is that the games mean entirely too much to the other side, who are generally willing to sink to any depths of sportsmanship to win, and whose supporters adopt terminal myopia in pursuit of those wins.

So watching yesterday's rugby match in Cardiff I felt a slight sympathy for the English (and great sympathy for Martin Johnson). For the Welsh, getting one back against the English is important, and I have great sympathy for that, but rugby is just about all they have left, just about the only way they have to do that. Thus England's rugby players have to bear the brunt of despair over centuries of wanton domination and exploitation.

When I was in college we played in the Little Three, of which Wesleyan was definitely the littlest. So we would play Amherst and Williams, and have our series wrapped up, before encountering nearby Trinity in our final game of the season. We had played our two big games, and then we would meet up with a squad, and their fans, fired up beyond belief for what was their chance to salvage their season, if not, it seemed, their lives. This, on a small scale, is what England face on a massive level when they go to Cardiff.

Having said all that, England make it hard to support them. For the better part of the three decades I've watched them, they've played plodding, brusing, straight ahead rugby--even when they had the ability or potential to be far more expansive, and so it was yesterday. Watching the ball never get beyond Andy Goode, watching it being kicked constantly back to the Welsh, who when they were willing to run with it did some damage, reminded me of Ireland's near-implosion against France the week before, for the same reasons. Possession is crucial to rugby, and although territory is as well, it seems they are still contemplating the lessons American football learned in the 1940s, when they stopped punting the ball away on third down inside their own territory. Of course reaching touch when you kick for it would also help.

But with the prissy Jonathan Kaplan referring, many of the things I find most frustrating about rugby came to the fore. Having denied Wales a quick-restart try in the first half by turning his back, he then reduced England to 14 men for the second time in the match by penalising Goode for (it has to be said, blatantly) denying the Welsh the ball for a quick-restart after a penalty near the English goal. Two things bother me about this. First is, in a sport that is so dominated by the referee, the idea that he can blow the whistle to award a penalty, but a player can simply pick the ball up and restart, even though the situation causing the penalty (for example, offsides) may not be resolved, is bizarre in the extreme.

Second, forcing a team to play short-handed is a severe punishment, which seems to be reserved for when the referee himself feels his will is being thwarted. Twice in the match Kapland awarded the Welsh an easy three points PLUS ten minutes playing with an extra man for
technical offenses (Mike Tindall seemed to be withholding the ball from play with his face) BECAUSE he knew Johnson had admitted he wanted to slow the game down. In either case, three points was just punishment; if he really thought the Welsh would score from a quick-tap give them a penalty try and listen to the uproar then. The justification is that Kaplan had already lectured the England players: the problem is any sport which demands that referees lecture the players in mid-match needs to rethink its defination of 'free-flowing action'. People are always accusing American football of having too much stop-start, and I agree, but those same people don't seem to mind when a rugby match stops for two minutes while Jonathan Kaplan plays Mr. Chips.

In fact, if Americans prefer their referees to resemble lawyers (if not judges) the English sports demand they be schoolmasters.

But when Lee Byrne cynically took out Delon Armitage's legs while he was in midair fielding a high kick, a blatant attempt to seriously injure him, Kaplan merely blew his whistle for a free kick. The message in rugby is clear: referees are to be protected, not players.

Like most Southern Hemisphere refs, Kaplan dislikes the very idea of scrummaging, and refused to let anyone dominate, usually forcing three or four tries to get each scrum working. His idea of a straight line doesn't transfer to the northern hemisphere; he didn't bother checking on whether put ins were straight: the scrum halves appeared to be playing rugby league. Lineouts weren't much better: Kaplan penalised England for a particularly diagonal throw, but left the Welsh alone, especially in the first half.

Although Kaplan was the dominant figure in the match, he didn't hand the Welsh the victory. The English threw away their opportunities through indiscipline (not just the penalties, but the sloppy kicking) and their reluctance to run the ball. But the spectacle itself, which was involving, was never compelling, and the result left my predomiantly ABE status intact.

IN MEMORIAM: GLENN 'JEEP' DAVIS

My obituary of Glenn 'Jeep' Davis, the two-time Olympic 400m hurdles champion, winner of a third gold in the 4X400 relay in Rome, and short-time NFL receiver with the Lions, is in today's Independent, and you can find it here. Writing it reminded me of the days when the nation's top amateur athlete was indeed a star, on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and yet still could pursue a career as a high-school mechanical drawing and drivers-ed teacher and coach.

SAY IT AINT SO, AROID

I've done another piece on baseball and steroids for the bbc's website, based on the latest revelations about Alex Rodriguez, though I didn't go into the full story of StrayRod, Cynthia, and Madonna, nor his relationship with his teammates as detailed in Joe Torre's recent memoir, as deeply as I would have liked. You can find it here. This one will run and run. It is interesting how ARod's reputation, even before the steroids, would be as a great accumulator of numbers, but a disappointment, if not liability in the clutch. I wonder if Madonna thought the same thing. For my earlier take on the adventures of the Rod family, see here.

The most interesting part of the story, however, was the allegation that ARod may have been warned about a 'random' test in September 2004 by an official of the players association. Although none of the sources are named, if true, it would put the long-term opposition of the union to testing of its members into a whole new light. Not that they would have been the only ones in baseball turning a blind eye. As I wrote on the same website when the Mitchell report was released, here, even when I worked for baseball, in the early 90s, it was pretty easy to see that there were guys on the juice.

NO NUDES IS GOOD NUDES: FAREWELL, LINGERIE BOWL

The funniest, I mean saddest, news of Super Bowl week in Tampa was the shocker that Lingerie Bowl VI had to be cancelled, due to a dispute with the game's site, a Florida, uh, nudist colony.
If I were Peter King I would definitely write 'only in America', except I'm not sure the XL SI pundit ever used the phrase ironically.

The game was supposed to take place at the Caliente nudiest resort in Land O Lakes, Florida...no relation to the sticks of Land O Lakes butter we grew up with, and which Marlon Brando could probably have thought of at least some uses for.

I say 'nudist resort', but being this is America, where stewardesses are flight attendants and the blind are sight impared, Caliente is actually billed as a 'luxury clothing-optional resort'. Even so, what was the problem? According to Caliente spokes-nudist and former nude model Angye (yes, with a 'y') Fox (pictured left, and known to her friends as, of course, 'Foxy') 'we ran into conflicts with the Lingerie Football League wanting more areas of our resort restricted to clothing- required than we could accommodate.'

RESTRICTED TO CLOTHING-REQUIRED? What is this, the NFL? Yes folks, only in America could an event which parades women in little clothing (apart from football pads) playing a violent game for the benefit of ogling viewers of all sexes, be offended by a little nudity.

Here's Lingerie Football League spokesman Stephon McMillen 'The league will not place our fans, players, staff nor partners in a less-than-comfortable environment that would ultimately jeopardize the mainstream perception and reputation of the brand that so many have worked diligently over these past five years to build.'

Let me stop laughing. Does anyone in the mainstream actually perceive of the LFL (pronounced 'laffle') as anything but a soft-core sleazy exploitation device? And its reputation? McMillen sounds suspiciously like a maiden aunt, or a Catholic schoolgirl on a first date. What will the boys at high school think?

Somehow, the Super Bowl managed to survive without LB VI. Hopefully, people are already flocking to Caliente Luxury Clothing-Optional resort. Few of them would be the loyal followers of the LFF. They just switched over to Bud Bowl at half-time, and sent out for another pizza. Angye must be disppointed.

COCKUP: HOW TO RATE KICKERS

A few years ago, I was looking for an efficient way of measuring place-kickers, and came up with a formula. Last year, when I wrote a piece evaluating the 2008 NFL kicking season, I named it: Carlson's Original Calibration for Kickers, Un-scientific Program, or COCKUP. Then I refined it, by measuring Cockup per kicking attempt, which became COCKUPPA. Unscientific as it is, it actually works pretty well, and basically threw up Jason Hanson as the NFL's most valuable kicker last year, with Rob Bironas the best in the AFC. Hanson actually registered by far the highest Cockuppa score of anyone since I started this. Of course you have to tweak it, and consider ability on kickoffs, as well as the dreaded 'clutch' situations, but I'm pretty satisfied with it. You can find the CHFF piece here.

SITTING IN MY MEDIA CENTER: NEW HOPE FOR AMERICA

My distinct thanks to Raheem, a security guard at the Tampa Convention Center, which is the Super Bowl media center. When Raheem saw from my credential that I was 'from' the BBC he got all excited, saying 'I get all my news from the BBC!'. We talked for a while and he reminded me, in the mood delineated in my previous post, that there is still some fertile fields in which the seeds of hope can be sown in my native land. Fitzgerald may have said there are no second acts in American lives, but he was wrong about that (Gatsby notwithstanding) and there have been lots of them for America itself.