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I didn’t read the News today. Oh, boy.

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I didn’t read the News today. Oh, boy.

Nor tomorrow and tomorrow.

What comes to mind is poetry, how absurd. Lines that were committed to memory for a college grade back when the written word had value, a B- as I recall.

Stop all the clocks, shut off the telephone…let the mourners come.

The best newspaper is dead and for no good reason save the spine to fight on, a battle lost to lessers and to a marketplace diverted by ease. The world today can be held in the palm of the hand, with all the news and sounds and motion a tap away.

These are familiar agonies that grip the newspaper industry across the land and may yet do in the survivor here, victory not a conclusion as much as an amnesty.

Sports is a small part of it all, the writing of it, the reporting of it, the celebrating of it, the censuring of it. The sports page is the proxy for harder reality, where the wars are only mock and success and failure matter only as long as it takes to turn off the scoreboard. Or turn the page.

The scores will stand, heroes will come and fools will go without this newspaper to note any of it.

It is impossible now not to think of endings, of those I witnessed and wrote, others who faced the finish, most with tears, even the hardest of men. I recall that little knuckle of a shortstop, Larry Bowa, weeping in a scruffy laundry room hastily set up for his departure from the Cubs.

They all cry at the summing up.

My most vivid memory is the last fight of Muhammad Ali, in Freeport, Bahamas, a shadow lurching and gasping in the ring, and then finally slumped in his makeshift dressing area, a cinderblock men’s room reeking of urine, facing the finish, a weeping young John Travolta at Ali’s knee.

Martina Navratilova, exiting Centre Court for the final time, stopped to pull up a piece of sod. Jack Nicklaus posing on the footbridge on the 18th hole at St. Andrews, was stubbornly dressed in a sweater vest in fashion when he was.

Joe Louis, the great Brown Bomber, became a prop to various promoters, and I cannot see old films of him in his prime without recalling the last time I saw him, poking around a post-press conference dining room looking for left over coffee in discarded cups still warm enough to drink.

Just this week I saw a picture of the last scrap of Shea Stadium, what looked like a walking ramp standing stark against the sky. An awful place, Shea, one of the most uncomfortable, inhospitable places I ever covered a game, football, baseball and even soccer.

And still the sadness came when thinking of all the memories made there. It is much too easy to walk into Invesco Field past the parking lot where Mile High used to sit. As if it was never there.

Beginnings are not as easy to know as endings nor do they stick as long. I saw it in Chris Evert, then 14 years old, knocking balls on a clay court in the town where I first worked for a newspaper.

Michael Jordan was it from the start and remained it until his final shot in Utah that won his sixth championship. The perfect finish, the most perfect ever, except Jordan could not leave it there.

I understand that. If this were a perfect column, the final and best of any I’ve ever written, I would still want to write another. And another.

If this newspaper had another day, another edition, it would want more. It most certainly deserves more.

Baseball, Biography, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Rodriguez is not giving back any of the money

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The money made him do it.
Money is the second oldest motive in the world, after all. Willie Sutton famously said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. The Menendez brothers. The Lindberg baby kidnapping. Bonnie and Clyde. Wall Street.

All about money.

We understand. People do awful things for money. Heroic things. Careless things.

Except, of course, Alex Rodriquez already had the money. More money than any baseball player ever. More money than Madonna, just to make a nice, neat circle.
Rodriguez already had the talent, too. That’s why he got the money. More talent than, well, certainly Madonna, and anyone else in baseball, including Mr. Clear and Mr. Cream himself, Barry Bonds.

How awful it would have been if A-Rod had been judged to be worth only, oh, $20 million, or even $15 million. What a shame. What a sham.

A man has to protect his over-inflated worth, or what’s a CEO bonus for?

Rodriguez is not giving back any of the money. Not for the years 2001 or 2002 or 2003, nor is he returning the MVP award he won in Texas. He is not refuting his distinction as the youngest player to ever do just about everything.

Sorry, Ernie Banks, you kind old gentleman. A-Rod is still the sluggingest shortstop of all time.

Rodriguez is not saying, please, don’t count any of the 156 homers hit during that time, nor please ignore any of the phony deeds that got him to the Yankees, to New York, where even Rodriquez’ money is more than anyone needs for doing nothing very vital.

Are you worth that much money, Alex? I will be as soon as I take this shot.

What’s in the shot? Dunno. This is a loosey-goosey time. Everyone’s doing it.
The President of the United States finds the news depressing. He said so at a press conference that somehow, after the economy and war and terrorism had been dealt with, just naturally got around to Rodriquez, A-Fraud as is his new alias.

And the President is especially depressed about the message sent to the kids out there.
Don’t do this, kids. Don’t do it if you want to make $27 million a year, hang out with celebrities, challenge the greatest records in the greatest game, be considered the best there ever was.

Deny everything until you can’t and when you no longer can, be ready to say you are sorry, really sorry. Sorry for being foolish, sorry for being naïve, sorry for being part of a loosey-goosey time in baseball, sorry for…well, you know. All of it.

Don’t accuse the reporter who got the story of stalking you because that just seems petty, but do make sure to confess to a friendly baseball eminence, someone who will treat you with deference and never make you say out loud the actual word, “steroids.”

You may come away leaving the impression that you had done nothing more serious than put cinnamon on your sunflower seeds.

There are many good lessons here for kids. No reason to be depressed about that.

Spread the blame around. Give a share to Tom Hicks, the Texas owner who paid him all that money, and to Seattle, too, I suppose, for not being a grand enough stage for a 25-year-old with great hand-eye-coordination. And his agent Scott Boras for concocting the contract in the first place.
Blame everyone before Rodriguez.

If there was “enormous pressure” to perform on a last place team, why should Rodriquez feel any less pressure playing for just as much money in the House that Ruth Built? Maybe, as his postseason failures grow, what Yankee fans resent is that he does not think enough of them to do what he did for Texas.

In the five years since Rodriquez confesses he did what others did, what he felt necessary to justify the wealth he accepted, he has been a terrific player, if not Derek Jeter in the New York heart. In the same way that Bonds was great before the pharmaceutical deceit that will define him forever, so does Rodriguez repel sympathy. Maybe more so.

Rodriguez was the anti-Bonds—and I suppose that title now falls to Ken Griffey, Jr.—the natural specimen of power and skill, unpolluted by either chemistry or conceit, and surely that perception made it difficult for Rodriquez to confess before now.

It’s that image thing again. In Texas he had to be better to justify the money. In New York he had to lie to protect the original lie. Lie. Lie. Lie.

The so-called Steroid Generation of Baseball is defined by lies, finger-wagging, stone-walling, Congress defying lies, and now that Rodriguez has told some of the truth he seems more forgivable than Bonds. Or Roger Clemens. Or Miguel Tejada.

Bonds may go to jail for lying. That’s the difference between lying to a grand jury and lying to Katie Couric.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Changes and Broncos

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Encouragement is where you find it, and in the case of the top-lopped Broncos so far it is that no one wants out.

No one wants to play for a contender, as in Kansas City, an insult from inside by both Larry Johnson and Tony Gonzalez. No one wants a different defense, as Julius Peppers in Carolina, is just generally unhappy as Anquan Boldin in Arizona, or is still thinking it over, as LaDanian Tomlinson in San Diego.

Coaching changes inevitably cause this sort of thing, and old sores seem always to need fresh picking.

It would appear that the Broncos are willing to buy into whatever it is that fresh coach Josh McDaniels will have on offer, most importantly, the quarterback.

Clearly, at this point, McDaniels needs a happy Jay Cutler, more so than Cutler needs a new coach. And the Broncos generally must accept the notion that all of this upheaveal was necessary.

Cutler has come around to that conclusion, no longer as bitter a view as that of Jake Plummer, who is now in the duck blind and able to shoot without being shot at.

This attitude change must be taken as wisdom from Cutler, and a sign of maturity as well. It is not wise to stick your tongue out at the new boss.

When last Mike Shanahan spoke to his team there could not have been much satisfaction with a season so ragged at the end. The Broncos had to assume that many changes would be coming, just not the one that did.

Rather than the usual good-byes by this time—Mike Shanahan would have shown half the defense the door by now and started replacing them with others, not necessarily betters—the Broncos remain, and much can be said for it, employed. To still have a job is to still have hope.

Not that it will last long. Except for Champ Bailey, Elvis Dumervil and D.J. Williams, the defense could be put in a sack and dropped off a bridge. No, that’s cruel. Cut a hole in the sack.

Who replaces them? An ideal list of free agents would start with any or all of the Baltimore linebackers, including Ray Lewis, linebacker Mike Peterson of Jacksonville or James Farrior of the Steelers, the aforementioned Peppers, Albert Haynesworth, safety Brian Dawkins of the Eagles, not to overlook running back Darren Sproles of the Chargers or the once-upon-a-Bronco, Bertrand Berry

All are just names now and if one of them is more worthwhile to the Broncos than the rest, it is Haynesworth, the Tennessee defensive tackle. It must be assumed that some of these will end up in Denver.

Another assumption is that by rushing to the head of the line first, the Broncos got the best of the bunch of new coaches. Of the 11 changes in the NFL, two were pre-chosen—in Indianapolis and Seattle—and Tom Cable in Oakland and Mike Singletary in San Francisco were merely kept on.

Eric Mangini shifted shirts from the Jets to the Browns, the Chiefs just picked Todd Haley, leaving McDaniels among a half dozen who have not head coached before, no reason to be pessimistic there.

It is discouraging to assume that McDaniels’ chief credential is that he will mind his owner and not, for a while at least, act like he is the franchise.

One might wonder if a late casualty like Jon Gruden would not be a more useful choice all around, but that assumes that McDaniels is not the next Gruden.

Ideally, what will happen is that Cutler, still too young to have grown stale, will respond to the new challenge and the new crew, when it would be natural for him to resent the changes. Cutler is where Ben Roethlisberger was when Bill Cowher left the Steelers.

And it isn’t as if McDaniels is not thoroughly schooled in offense, as was the case with Cowher’s replacement, Mike Tomlin. Cutler is replacing one expert offensive mind with another, except the new one is more likely to seem a partner than a critic.

More enthusiastic is Brandon Marshall, less vital but nonetheless essential. The Super Bowl is evidence of what a Larry Fitzgerald or a Santonio Holmes can mean, and those moments yet await Marshall.

Just as Cutler can imagine himself to be Tom Brady so can Marshall see the success that came to a settled Randy Moss in New England with McDaniels’ offense.

With, then, the two most notable Broncos on board, McDaniels is free to sort out the rest, and much sorting is needed.

Linebackers. Defensive linemen. Safeties. Running back. Not necessarily in that order. But in some order.

Baseball, Crime, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

The mugbook is running out of pages for athletes

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The mugbook is running out of pages for athletes who are less than they seemed, when great physical achievements are diminished by human weakness. The fault is theirs, of course, but ours, too, and maybe the cereal maker who puts them on the side of the box.

We perpetually wish that the breakfast of champions is not what it often turns out to be.

Those eight gold medals were carefully arranged for the photo of Michael Phelps. Nice picture. As we were reminded by Donald Rumsfeld, it is not the action but the pictures that matter.

And now the other one, the one where it looks like Phelps is swallowing a telescope, rather a device for inhaling marijuana, will not last as long, but it is more recent.

Barry Bonds faces trial soon and Michael Vick is about to be sprung, proving only that the door swings both ways. The brother, yes, the younger brother of Mark McGwire shops the story that McGwire himself won’t tell, about all of it. Roger Clemens? The muck hardens.
So why do we keep this up, those of us who still have the means to do it, glorifying strength and speed and hand-eye coordination? Caution always come later, and as in the case of the Steroid Decade in baseball, without enthusiasm.

We have let Kobe Bryant back in from his brief exile, a prize for being the best player in basketball, just as Michael Jordan was passed without real scrutiny into his gambling associations.
So, too, will this pass with Phelps, a young hero much over-prized and guilty of little more than having similar appetites of the young. There is no designated punishment for being a disappointment.
The list of Olympic champions is rife with vacated victories, some still fresh from Beijing, those who tested positive for performance enhancers, which, by the way, Phelps has not. There must be examples of swimming after pot but more likely nachos after pot.
It is not that Phelps’ indiscretion is a small corner of the very big picture, it is simply that he is not as represented, and that will be something his marketing folks will have to sort out.

As for Bonds, what has seemed endless almost to the point of piling on is about to reach a resolution. Bonds will be officially condemned or officially forgiven, though in the minds of the world there will always remain only the first one.

Bonds cannot get off any more than Tiger Woods can make us forget how brave and foolish competition can make a man. If Woods never plays golf again or can’t play it as Woods again, there will always be that Sunday in San Diego.
The moments that last, that seem pure and clean, are too few to lose, and so we guard them and scrapbook them and are all the more disappointed when they are soiled. We just never seem to learn to separate the feat from the character, or lack of it.

Bonds must now face an accounting, evidence being notes and recordings and whatever was gleaned from the raid of Bonds’ mother-in-law’s house, all to prove that Bonds lied, not exactly the central concern of the sport that passively allowed him to become the greatest home run hitter of all time.
What baseball wants, and what we want, too, what all sports want, is the promise of innocence, never more represented than in the sleek, shaved body of Phelps, in a sport that washes its heroes as it glorifies them, a sport watched once every four years, and only when a Phelps or a Mark Spitz is doing it.

I have passed through the home town of Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes, not the hell hole he described, Belle Glade, Florida. Just another collection of souls and strip malls, supporting agriculture, but no Walmart as he said.

I did not see a single dope seller on any corner, though I may not have passed the right corners, including the one on which Holmes himself confessed to selling drugs. Had it been the reverse, MVP first, drug dealing second, we would be as unforgiving as we are with Phelps.
Timing does matter, then, and the fall is always down, never up.
When Red Smith, then in his 70’s, was asked why he kept writing sports, he answered, “In case I meet another Joe DiMaggio.”

We must keep looking.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

This one was all thumb screws and root canals

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TAMPA, Fl — Nevertheless, the Steelers of Pittsburgh will keep this Super Bowl trophy. They can put it with the other five, and tell lies later about how this one was a cinch.

It was not. This one was all thumb screws and root canals, shock and awesome, slap and smack, a duel in the cool tropical night.

“This is for you Pittsburgh!” shouted game MVP Santonio Holmes, raising the Lombardi Trophy over his head as if it were the first one instead of the sixth, as if the town had never seen the others.

This may be the least of all the Super Bowl winning Steeler teams, though the trophy is exactly the same size as all the rest.

They passed the shiny symbol around, from owner to coach to players, toted to the ceremony for some undeclared reason by Joe Namath, the trophy a hard earned souvenir, harder than the Steelers thought. Winners get to leave fingerprints.

Losers—in this case the Cardinals are not losers as much as companions in as gutsy, gut-wrenching, a melodrama as any since…well, since last year when the wrong team won with a helmet catch—are left with highlights.

And the Cardinals had highlights, the highest and lightest a catch and run of 64 yards by Roy Fitzgerald that would have, should have stunned the Steelers into an admission that fate or chance was wearing a Cardinal on its hat.

“The Steelers are a 60 minute team,” said their coach, Mike Tomlin.

This one was won with a classic, almost cliché catch, the kind that is staged in movies or dramatized in sports books, impossible and indelible, the football equivalent of the buzzer beater or the walk off homer. It had everything but slow motion, and it even had that later as it was studied for validity and, probably, for artistry.

“Great players step up in big-time games to make plays,” said Holmes. “I knew that was my play. Ben stuck with me, put it up where it was supposed to be and I made the play.”

Whether Holmes is a great player, certainly he had the greatest game of his life and one of the greatest of any receiver in a Super Bowl, for effectiveness and drama, not that the same wouldn’t have been said of Fitzgerald had Holmes not made The Catch.

Unlike the stadium witnesses, who may have chewed their fingernails down, Holmes had just enough left on his hands to stretch, hold the football, “come down on his toes”, as the referee finally and officially confirmed, and lock down a victory nearly blown from 13 points in front.

And, just like that, David Tyree’s helmet catch for the Giants against the Pats last year was bumped from the top of Great Super Bowl Moments.

“We embrace those moments,” said Tomlin. “We are built for those moments.”

The game did not match the boasts nor beat the spread, and the Steelers’ special torment for the Cardinals was to allow them to think they belonged.

“Nobody expected us to be here,” said Cardinal quarterback Kurt Warner, as if he needed to remind anyone of that. “We exceeded expectations and came close to being world champions only to lose it.”

Fewer penalties and just anyone, Warner having the best chance, tripping up Steeler linebacker James Harrison on the last play of the first half as he was galumphing a record 100 yards with an interception for the longest play in Super Bowl history, and the Cardinals would have had the whip in their hands.

This was a memorable Super Bowl because the Cardinals flirted with the improbable, and the Steelers—except for the plays by Harrison and Holmes—were not good enough to do anything about it.

Arizona could allow itself to believe in destiny even with a half minute to play, until the last five seconds, until Arizona quarterback Warner lost the football, breaking the heart of a perfectly nice place like Arizona.

The Steelers were not going to be lucked out of their birthright, and they weren’t going to be passed or punched or tackled out of it either.

“We back up talk with action,” said Tomlin.

“Backyard ball,” said Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, describing his cobbling together the final, winning drive, and at the same time coining a T-shirt slogan if ever there was one.

“It’s never going to be pretty or perfect,” said Tomlin. “There are no style points out there. But this is a team with great resolve.”

Winners can, and will, say all these things, of course, as Arizona would have said and even more loudly, because the Cardinals would have been the most astonishing winners ever of the Super Bowl, at least since the Jets beat the Colts in the third one.

Maybe that was why Namath was here, to represent audacity and surprise, and it was all there for the Cardinals.

So close. So long.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

The NFL encourages this annual folly

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TAMPA, Fl — It matters not who wins Media Day, even to the media, but of all the Super Bowl hoo-haw only two of the days really matter, this one and Sunday.

In a close call, Arizona wins this one, complete with voting paddles, as on “Dancing With the Stars.”

That silliness was under the direction of Warren Sapp, the once and no longer defensive lump who always nattered at least as well as he played. He had persuaded two Cardinals of his own ilk, 330-pound defensive tackles Alan Branch and Gabe Watson, to show their dance steps with a spangled beauty.

To music barely audible over the din of the day, the stars danced as stars do. Branch bit his lip and concentrated on his feet. Watson whirled and tried not to hurt his tiny partner.

At the end the paddles declared that Branch had won narrowly over Watson, though the pair of them were about as agile as a couple of front loaders. Handed his prize, a mirrored ball on a mirrored pedestal, Branch raised it over his head and bellowed—“Yessss!”—as if it were the Lombardi Trophy itself.
Sapp put his hands over is ears, slunk away, rolling his eyes back in his head. “Whoa. This is too nutty even for me,” Sapp said, leaving the poor young woman to fend for herself.
Not nutty at all, actually This is relatively mild for Media Day, no costumed brides looking for grooms, for example, as was one asking Pats quarterback Tom Brady for his hand. No costumed gorillas or bottles of Gatorade with feet.
The nonsense was down a bit, which had to disappoint the girl reporter from Austria.

“I ask you a question,” she said, not asked. And I nodded. “Vere ist Kort Vorner?”
I pointed in the direction of the Arizona quarterback, assuming that anyone named Kurt would be a big hit back in Salzburg. She did not say thanks.

The NFL encourages this annual folly, or at least does not discourage it, especially now with its own network to service. To find wisdom is futile, but one has to try.
“Right here is the epicenter of the NFL,” said Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt, surprising for throwing the word “epicenter” into any football discussion and, at the same time, diminishing the occasion since the grandest game of the greatest sport of the greatest nation surely makes this the epicenter of the world.

Fred Dryer of the then Los Angeles Rams parlayed one Super Bowl experience into a career. Dryer gave the answer to my favorite Media Day question. Is the Super Bowl bigger than death? “No,” Dryer said, “but it comes in a bigger box.”

And now I have to give some consideration to this response to the question of what this all means.

“People are going through hard times,” said the Steelers Hines Ward, he not being one of them. “But in Pittsburgh if you’ve lost a job or your house you’ve still got the Steelers and you don’t worry about that, the light bill, the rent, stuff like that. When the Steelers play you’re hugging each other without regrets at the bar.”

Now, that’s the epicenter of something. Inflated self-importance for certain.

One shudders to think should the Steelers somehow lose to the upstarts from Arizona, what those bar hugs might turn into.

“There’s an old saying in football,” said Betrand Berry, now a Cardinal once a Bronco. “If you bite when young, you’ll bite when old.”
This is just the kind of gibberish that flows easily from the mouths of football players who are given podiums and microphones for a while. Philosophers, like dancing stars, are not born but made.
“You have to pass failure on the way to success,” said Cardinal punter Ben Graham, the notion sounding more profound because it came with an Australian accent. Austria and Australia in the same day. What a sport.
The NFL itself has operated all season under the slogan, “Believe in Now,” which was, I believe, the same position taken by bankers and brokers.

“I’ll carry this team on my back if I have to,” said Steeler Santonio Holmes.

The Chicago Bears were probably the best example of collective look-at-me-ism at a Super Bowl, but the thing has always had its share of outrageous individuals. The very first one had Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, who was, for his cheek, hammered by Green Bay. Still, The Hammer got the movie contract and his fame subsists.
Todd Christiansen of the Raiders showed up for Media Day with copies of his poetry, which he passed out as press releases. Dexter Manley tried a similar thing by pre-answering questions with a printout, the first public indication that he was functionally illiterate.

This is the one day of the football season when the anxious gives way to the excessive.

“When I retire, I’ll write a book,” said Arizona linebacker Chike Okeafor.

We all say that.

Golf, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Tiger Woods XIV

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Working just from memory, this must be at least the fourth edition of Tiger Woods, the consistent theme being that in each he has been terrific. The young Tiger, the revamped Tiger, the Tiger Slam Tiger, the married Tiger, the post funeral Tiger, the new father Tiger, the limping Tiger. So many Tigers.

A pride of Tigers, or is that lions? Well, there have always been enough to go around.

All these Tigers ought to come with Roman numerals the way Super Bowls do, so that it may not be exactly clear which is which and which is when but the pretension assures significance. In fact, we should catalog his major victories the same way, so that Jack Nicklaus’ 18 would be just everyday.

Once Woods gets to his final total, say XXIV or something, we would know how much more it weighs.
This one—let’s call it Tiger IV—is certainly the most unsure of them all, even if Woods himself proved that golf can be played on one leg.

Still, that guilty left knee has been repaired four times now and this last one sounds like something earned on a football field, not on a mown fairway. Torn ACL. Those two words are as scary as any to an athlete. Double stress facture. A single would have been enough.

To have had all that and still have played 91 holes at Torrey Pines at last summer’s U.S. Open begs both admiration and dismay. Nothing Woods does ever again will surpass that. How odd to know at 33, with presumably more greatness still ahead, no greater reward awaits.
One must assume, then, having set so high a mark, that Woods is ready to resume what he left, that he is not just bored or misguided or anything less than what he always was.

The risk is not ours but his, and it is easy to imagine impatience disturbing him long before it does us. And if even if Woods is less, or is just rusty, any inspection is secondary to appreciation for his being back.
The return of a single athlete to his sport has never been as pregnant as this one, not Ben Hogan coming back from his car accident, not John McEnroe returning from adulthood nor Joe DiMaggo back from the war, not Muhammad Ali from political exile.
I do not remember any of them receiving, to quote the PGA tour site, “comprehensive on-line hole-by-hole video, audio, scoring and editorial coverage.” Douglas McArthur didn’t get that on his return to the Philippines.

The time that Woods has been gone has its own identity, the Tour Without Tiger, even though it was only eight months and that every tournament won by anyone else still counts.
When Phil Mickelson won at Riviera last week, coinciding with Woods’ announcement of his return, the significance of Mickelson’s victory was widely portrayed as the last one without Woods.

Look at it this way. You’re doing well at a singles mixer, and then suddenly George Clooney shows up.
It is possible to believe that somehow Woods is just what we all need, a symbol of resilience, an envoy of expectations, a courier of hope. Well, sure, that would be nice, and nicer if your 401K cared.

How helpful it would be to the general economy if there were a Woods to ride to the rescue, ( and while he is at it maybe salvage a discarded newspaper). So it was thought that Barak Obama was such a one and so it has turned out not to be so.

But all Woods has to do is restore golf to its place on the sports shelf, where it has been lately missing. Never a game of the masses in any case, golf faints easily from small concerns. While golf has continued after a Palmer or a Nicklaus, and so it will after Woods, it has done so quietly enough to hear a tee drop.
Strangely, Woods plays so few actual tournaments that his absence affects a small number of real locations. Yet does his shadow fall so far and linger so late that places he ignores leave a light in the window (not counting our late, lamented gathering at Castle Pines.)
Not in just these times but at any time, it is not easy to adopt as your proxy anyone who is playing a game for $8 million of someone else’s money.

That’s kind of how we got to where we are.

Football, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Giants spoil the perfect matchup

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The New England Immortals v. the New Jersey Scarecrows.

Or some such.

Well, there have been worse Super Bowls going in, I suppose, not that it mattered who the Patriots got to confirm their greatness against.

Only coronation is left, the anointing of the New England Patriots as the greatest team in the history of football and of Tom Brady as the greatest quarterback, mere trifles what with only those improbable New York Giants in the way.

The least the Patriots should have had to do was to beat the better Manning, and yet they get Eli the Lesser. They could have had Cowboys, if just for the quarterback girlfriend matchup, or best of all and what ended in overtime in subzero Green Bay, the last patrol of Brett Favre.

But, no, the Giants survived on the road again, under the weather again, ruining a perfectly good narrative and allowing the world to wallow in Patriot glory for the next two weeks, as if there are enough superlatives to last that long.
Again and again is proved the old reflection of F. Scott Fitzgerald that there are no second acts in American lives.
That’s what we might have gotten with Favre, if his own and old nemesis, the refusal to believe that he can not throw a football through the eye of a needle, had not gotten him in overtime.

Against the Broncos, we recall, he threw a touchdown pass in overtime. Against the Giants, a careless interception.

Where we are now in the acts of Brett Favre’s life is surely somewhere beyond two, or even three, while Tom Brady is still in a very long first act, greater than Favre already, with the same dignity and appeal at the end yet to be managed.
And of all the possible finishes for a season kissing up to history, when someone had to take the last licks from New England, none could have been more intriguing that Favre and Brady at the end.
Not to take the clunky, ugly, freezer football of Sunday in both Green Bay and New England as an indication of anything other than survival of the thermally fitted, the NFL is the one sport that inevitably comes in from the cold, this time in suburban Arizona for Super Bowl XLII.

Things would have turned out as they did in the tropics or indoors, the Patriots outlasting an injured San Diego team and the Giants riding some kind of serendipitous joy wagon, clearly the least likely Super Bowl finalist since the Chris Chandler Flacons, whipping the Packers in their own ice box.

This was going to be Favre’s Super Bowl, not necessarily in victory but in tribute, the clear, dominating story line until Brady and the Patriots confirm the first 19-0 season.

We were ready to admire a career of courage and distinction and presence, and then when it came to a final defeat, a warm round of applause for the perfect warrior.

When all that history is made by New England, when the greatest single season standard in sports is set, there will be only a sense of conclusion rather than great achievement, a begrudging acceptance that Bill Belichick is every bit as great a coach as his more likeable predecessors.

Yet, the sentiment that would so naturally have flowed to Favre does not drift automatically to Brady, and certainly it will not be wasted on Manning either.

This will be a Super Bowl not of uncertainty nor disbelief but of filling in the blanks, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s as the Patriots confirm the obvious.

What risk there is for New England is that, though they are already the only team to go 18-0, if they do not go 19-0 they will be immortal frauds, the greatest case of false advertising since the free lunch.
Not often does the Super Bowl match quarterbacks who are in the discussion of greatest ever, and that was what was lost when the Giants refused to do the right thing.
Favre against Brady would have been the best matchup since Elway against Joe Montana, at least the equal of Bart Starr and Len Dawson who were in the very first one or when Roger Staubach met Terry Bradshaw.

In fact, Favre lost to Elway when the sympathies were the opposite, Elway then as the well used Favre and Favre as the in-his-prime Brady.

The usual Super Bowl quarterback intrigue is wrung out of a Brad Johnson against a Rich Gannon or a Trent Dilfer against a Kerry Collins.
Brady has matched his Super Bowls against Kurt Warner, Jake Delhomme and Donovan McNabb, and for his most significant one he deserved better than the little brother of the other Manning.

Favre won his Super Bowl over Drew Bledsoe, the predecessor of Brady, and how moving that might have been if Favre could have bookended a career over man and boy.

We sigh for what might have been.

Quotes, Rocky Mountain News

Year of little good, lots of bad, ugly

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Before we get too far into the new year, we must ask ourselves what have we learned from the last one. Wisdom is worth writing down.
A true football fan is one who can make a fifth last four quarters.
A high heel is either a woman’s shoe or a Los Angeles Laker.
Expensive wine will still stain the carpet.
What this country needs is an old fashioned gas war, you know, where they slashed prices at the pump instead of each other at the source.
People will believe anything that is whispered.
If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, why isn’t there a Rand McNally cook book?
Jose Canseco is baseball’s Nostradamus.
Would portable murals be called Murbles?
As soon as you get on easy street, someone starts repaving it.
A major league city is one where it costs more to park the car than to rent it.
The Boston Red Sox were more lovable as losers.
Women who wear too much make up should.
I never take candy from a strange child.
With medical costs the way they are, how can anybody be ill at ease?
Why is the IRS the only one who knows when you are well off?
Any marriage that begins with a proposal on the stadium scoreboard will last only as long as the quarterback does.
Did you ever think that maybe a humming bird just does not know the words?
Credit cards and boomerangs were invented by the same guy.
Unemployment isn’t working.
If you think nobody cares if you are alive, miss a couple of car payments.
It’s always off season at nudist camps.
The three happiest words in the English language are not “I love you,” but “I’ll play these.”
My favorite get well card is a fourth ace.
Zucchini tastes like it sounds.
Coffee always smells better than it tastes.
The bravest man in history was the first one to eat an oyster.
The New England Patriots still are not as perfect as raspberry jam.
Repairmen must all keep their watches on Greenwich Mean Time.

If today’s pop music were food it would be a spinach casserole.
Being over the hill is better than being under it.
Any salary cap in sports ought to really be called salary sombrero.
A rare book is one that is returned.
The economy must be better. I can’t afford steak again.
Boxing may not be dead, but it is coughing up blood.
Modern man is defined by drinking decaffeinated coffee with non-fat milk and artificial sweetener from a recycled paper cup.
Global warming should be given a chance.
Reality TV ought to require testing, both drug and IQ.
Playing hockey outdoors in the snow only makes the puck more invisible.
If at first you don’t succeed, use the short form.
Cats are smarter than dogs but that is no reason to like them.
Horses are dumber than dogs but easier to give a bath.
After I collect my garbage, separate paper from glass, assign each to its proper container, bundle it and tie it and carry it to the curb, it looks so nice I want to keep it.
Airplane seats were never made for sitting.
Traveling requires removing your jacket, your shoes, your laptop and your dignity.
You really, really have to want to go to Shreveport.
Cell phones are more annoying than second hand smoke.
A basketball player without a tattoo is as hard to find as a Frenchman with a breath mint.
The Bronco season was like a teenagers hair cut; you knew it was going to be bad but you had no idea it would look like that.
Self-service means it’s your fault.
The best way to get someone to return your call is to get into the shower.
Car trouble is when the engine won’t start and the payments won’t stop.
Fast food is faster fat.
The year ahead has to be better.

Basketball, Rocky Mountain News

No, Michael

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Bernie Lincicome
Rocky Mountain News
10-31-01

NEW YORK — Who was that unmasked man? Michael Jordan? No, way. No, sir.

Please tell me that was, oh, Danny Glover pretending to be Michael Jordan. Or Billy Bob Thornton having a wicked Halloween laugh. Or the Maytag repairman killing time.

That thick-necked, heavy legged, wide backed, play trailing, jump shooting, game dawdling, stationary, inflexible traffic cone wearing No. 23 was not Michael Jordan. What’s that on his shirt? Wizards? Figures. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

This was Ali in the Bahamas, Mays mystified by fly balls, Unitas running out the clock.

“I feel good about myself and I feel good about my game tonight,” said Jordan.

We had to look. Now we do not have to look any more. We have seen what Jordan is, just another player, without magic, without expectation. We look away and wish it were not so.

We do not want to see seven of 21 for 19 points, playing more minutes than any other Wizard. We do not want to see him with the ball in his hands, with a chance to win, and not win.

“The shot was kind of rushed,” Jordan said. “I didn’t have a real good look. It could have been a great situation.”

We still applauded Sinatra when his voice was a murmur and he couldn’t remember the words, but we had his records at home. We tried not to notice Elvis’ pot belly. We will take what Jordan has left and always weigh it against what was.

We have Jordan, too, I guess, on tape, in memory, where he belongs. We’ll always have Utah, the last shot, the perfect ending.

And the shot that started it all in Cleveland, Jordan’s tears on the first trophy in LA and the carcasses of Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley and Clyde Drexler and Karl Malone and Gary Payton and the all the rest who had the misfortune of occupying Michael’s time.

We do not need, as Doug Collins was trying to explain, Paul Pierce and Antwon Walker challenging the old legend, stealing with their youth what time has taken from Jordan.

“Guys will measure themselves against Michael,” Collins said. “He’ll be under pressure every night. Everyone will be coming at him.”

This night it was Laetrell Sprewell, if half-heartedly, looking more like Michael than Michael, allowing Michael to look like the muffin man.

Some 30 seconds to play, Jordan’s team down to the Knicks by three. Jordan has the basketball. Jordan loses the basketball. He loses the ball, his third turnover of the game.

The Wizards get the ball back. Sixteen seconds to play. Providence has a sense of humor. Jordan will get another chance to win the game. He used to need only the one. Jordan has the ball. Jordan shoots the three. The ball dares to clank off the rim. The ball did not used to do that.

“When he threw that trip up,” said Knicks coach Jeff van Gundy, “I thought it was in.”

Knicks win. Jordan has chipped the first chunk out of his statue.

I did not expect His Airness to come back as his acrobatic, gravity defying, breath stealing self, but I also did not expect him to come back as Will Perdue. Jordan is going to have to change his logo, from all soaring, long arms and spread legs to someone leaning on his elbow.

“Six assists, four steals, five rebounds, he makes a few more shots and we say, wow, what a game,” said Collins.

No, we do not say that. We say not bad for an old man, or not bad for a rookie, or not bad for Nick Van Exel. We do not now need to stretch the standard that Jordan invented.

This was not the third coming. This was the Antiques Road Show. What am I bid for this floor lamp? I skipped the World Series to see Michael Jordan return to us as a potted plant.

This was like Picasso coloring inside the lines, Pavarotti in biofocals reading the words, Baryshnikov in sequins moon walking. This was Sir Edmund Hillary going back up Everest on an ATV.

“I was trying to get my teammates involved,” said Jordan, and it sounded more like an alibi than a tactic.

I have seen more air under a garden gnome than under Jordan. I’ve seen better defense from a head waiter. And they move faster, too.

“Teams are not playing us,” said Collins. “They’re playing to beat Michael.”

It is very much in fashion, especially here where the nose if not the eyes reminds us of a world changed forever, to wish to turn back the clock. We can not turn it back to Sept. 10 and we can not turn it back to 1997.

Nor can Jordan. He can only indulge whatever impulse has brought him back. He can only do what he can do and it is not longer what it was he did. He will have his moments, he will have nights like Tuesday night.

“If he plays well,” said Collins, “he’ll be the old Michael. If he doesn’t, he’ll just be old Michael. That’s just the way it is.”

Today’s vote is old.