No Arms, No Problem for Table Tennis Player

How do you play ping pong without hands to hold a paddle? This is how:



Video from ITTF Channel.

NBA Team Owner: Don't Bring Black People to Games

The owner of the Los Angeles Clippers tells his girlfriend not to bring black people to his team's games in a phone call caught on tape. Donald Sterling's Clippers have a roster comprised mostly of African American players, a black coach, and — as his unnamed possibly soon to be ex-girlfriend points out — she's half black herself.

TMZ acquired a recording of the call. This can't possibly cause any problems for Sterling, his team, or the NBA, can it?

I Will Not Watch the Sochi Olympics

Russia apparently hates gay people. This makes it more funny that the Russians paid money to host the winter Olympics, which includes a competition in which two men, in skin-tight suits, lie one on top of the other as they sled down the ice.

Oh, but they're just good friends.



The two-man luge is a real Olympic event. But Russia's homophobia did not turn me off of the Olympics by itself. If Billie Jean King and Elton John will go to Sochi, I can't feel too much guilt for watching its games on TV.

But add this: The Russian government hired a pest control company to kill stray dogs on Sochi streets ahead of the Olympics, many by poisoning. They are poisoned humanely, the exterminator's manager says.



I won't support that, or an Olympics that happens in such a barbaric place. 

I've heard people say that we should watch our athletes regardless of the politics. They don't need our support now. At the games, they live in a bubble. If I don't watch the U.S. women's hockey team on NBC, the players will never know.

Don't mistake unwillingness to watch for lack of support for the athletes. I want the U.S. to win gold in every event in which it competes honorably. They will still get their medals, and the endorsement gold that follows. I will happily buy the cereal on whose box their golden smiles appear. But if we just nod our heads and cheer and chant as injustice and cruelty surround the games, we make it possible for them to continue.

ARod: Don't Tell Me It Was Mistake

An arbiter basically sided with Major League Baseball and reduced Alex Rodriguez's drug suspension from 211 to a one full season of 162 games.

So far A-Rod's team still seems in denial, with vows to challenge the ruling. But, someday, it will happen. Just like other baseball cheats like Ryan Braun, maybe on Oprah's couch, Rodriguez will admit to "mistakes" and apologize.

Is he really sorry? Are any of them? You know the apology I'd like to hear? The honest one:

"I'm sorry I got caught, but that's it. Why did I take performance-enhancing drugs? Because they helped me become far better than I could ever have gotten otherwise, and because they helped me sign TWO contracts  worth more than $200 million. Yeah, my stats are tainted, but the numbers that matter are the dollars. They're still real, and I can still spend them. So, excuse me. I have to fly my private jet back to my South Beach mansion, where I will have to decide which of my 27 exotic cars I want to drive today, and which of the 26 exotic dancers I want to ride in it with me."

Arkansas Radio Reporter Fired for Florida Hat

This will seem like homerism, since I live in Florida and, in fact, own a Florida Gators hat. But this is ridiculous.

Hence the ridicule to follow.

An Arkansas radio station that bills itself "Hog Sports Radio" fired one of its reporters for wearing a Florida Gators cap to a news conference with Arkansas Razorbacks football coach Bobby Petrino.

Renee Gork is a University of Florida alumna. She says she grapped the Gators hat without thinking because it was raining outside. It wasn't a stunt, a protest, or an attempt to provoke Petrino.

No matter how rushed she was or how wet your hair might have gotten, this was extraordinarily poor judgment on Gork's part. First of all, any Florida-themed apparel gets buried at the bottom of the closet the second I move into my Arkansas abode. Second, wearing any university-logoed cap to a college football news conference, friend or foe, is entirely unprofessional.

However, her punishment should have ended with the embarrassment she must have felt when Petrino finished a reply to a question from Gork by saying, "and that will be the last question I answer with that hat on."

But fired? C'mon. This seems backwards even for Arkansas.

"This radio station is Hog Sports Radio," KAKS general manager Dan Storrs told The Associated Press. "We are very biased. We support the Razorbacks 100 percent."

And you take your support for a college football team far too seriously.

I get it. You make your living kissing up to the U of A. It doesn't help that cause if one of your employees wears an enemy's hat to cover a Razorbacks event. But there's loyalty and there's idiocy. This goes beyond even that. Storrs had turned what should have been a reprimand and a local chuckle into a national embarassment.

For him. As if people don't already think of Arkansans as intolerant rubes, this just reinforces it. Unbelievable.

I Thought I Was Done With Soccer Too

But I forgot something.

I'm not an expert but it appears from the little bit of the World Cup I've watched that soccer is a sport in which the players are not allowed to use their hands and the referees are not allowed to use their eyes.

You don't have to be an expert to see the numerous blunders referees have made in the second largest sporting event in the world after the Olympics. Replays show them quite clearly.

That became a problem in the game between Argentina and Mexico. Replays of Argentina's first goal clearly showed that the player who scored it was offsides. The goal should have been disallowed. It wasn't just clear to TV viewers at home. Monitors at the stadium showed it to fans and the two teams.

Mexico was not happy. Their angry confrontation with the referee at halftime threatened to blow up into a brawl between the two teams.

Soccer's worldwide governing body is an outfit called FIFA. I'm sure one of the Fs stands for football. The other must stand for an F-word that teams feel after another bad call has victimized them.

FIFA doesn't seem to mind the botched call. What's one more?

Anyway, to FIFA, the problem in the Mexico-Argentina case was not the goal but the replay! ESPN quoted FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot as saying that replaying the incident was "a clear mistake."

One that won't be repeated, he promised. Problem solved!

Yes, because it is the replay's fault that the refs punted the call. But if they don't show replays of a bogus goal, isn't that like announcing to the crowd that it was a bogus goal?

Nevermind that. And don't try to fix the injustice. Try to fix people seeing it. What is so outrageous to us seems much more prevalent in the rest of the world. It seems to be an accepted part of the sport, judging by FIFA's actions.

It's something Americans' sense of fair play would never tolerate. A sport so rife with corruption, organized or not, will never catch on here.

That and it's soccer.

World Cup Soccer: USA Loses, ESPN Mourns

I watch soccer like I watch figure skating -- once every four years whether I need to or not. Any more frequent viewing will come only at the invitation of a pretty girl who promises much kissing afterward.

It would have been fun watching the USA advance. Now it will be fun to watch ESPN try to jam soccer down Americans' throats with the likes of Ghana vs. Slovakia. Good luck with that!

It said a lot about the state of soccer in the U.S. that play-by-play announcing for the most significant match in this country's history was called by an Englishman. How many college (American) football games does ESPN and ABC broadcast each autumn weekend and not one of those guys could handle calling a soccer game?

ESPN/ABC color analyst John Harkes sounds just like tennis commentator Mary Carillo. Voice, delivery, phrasing, everything. It took me a while to realize she wasn't in the booth and that she's in London covering Wimbledon.

Floyd Landis Falls on Sword, Tries to Stab Armstrong

The answers from Floyd Landis raised the same question about Lance Armstrong:
How could anyone so dominate a sport so dominated by drug abuse if he weren't cheating too?

You've heard, seen or read the story by now. If not, here you go.

Floyd Landis, winner of the 2006 Tour de France, who lost his title after a positive drug test, finally admitted that his consistently vociferous denials of drug use were all lies. He doped throughout his career, he confessed.

In falling on his sword, Landis was not content to kill his own reputation. He claimed that Armstrong helped him cheat, even storing "clean" blood in Armstrong's refrigerator.

Armstrong was as dogged by drug use accusations as fellow cyclists en route to seven consecutive Tour de France titles. And he has been as vocal in his denials as Landis once was. A denial he had to trot out again, with added attacks on his former teammate's credibility, after Landis' announcement.

Unlike Landis — and so may other big-name cyclists felled by drug tests, if not killed by drugs themselves — Armstrong has been able to maintain innocence by repeating, almost mantra-like, "I have never failed a drug test."

Perhaps it is for that he deserves the greatest congratulations.

It is clear that the question is no longer whether Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs, the question is only whether he was a superior doper among equal competitors or a superior competitor among equal dopers.

Tiger Woods Talks

And in 13 minutes doesn't say anything. I hope this didn't surprise you if you watched Tiger Woods read his prepared statement this morning at PGA headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Tiger is notorious for his articulately expressed nonsense in interviews. Stay safe. Avoid controversy or even anything interesting. Can you remember anything Tiger has ever said?

That's why I thought it was so funny that every major TV network would broadcast his monologue live. OK, so I also thought it was funny that networks would broadcast any reading aloud from a piece of paper by a guy who hits a little white ball for a living.

Tiger apologized. He praised his notably absent wife. He said he had been in rehab. Rehab for what, he didn't say. And he played the religion card, though instead of Jesus, it was Buddha he found, in homage to his Thai mother, for whom he also famously wears some shade of red in every final round of golf he plays.

He played every note written for his orchestrated appearance, pausing dramatically, if obviously, more than once before looking directly into the camera to say how sorry he was. It looked like he had directions written on his script. Whatever he's been doing since since his Thanksgiving incident that began as a minor car accident and turned into a career crash, it hasn't been taking acting lessons.

This event was theater, all right. Bad community theater. Unless the role was that of a guy saying what he thought he should say to save his bacon.

He did look sincerely, sincerely sorry — that he got caught. We still don't know a whole lot about Tiger, which may be good because what little we do know is almost disturbingly creepy, but we know enough to see that image and appearance matters almost as much to him as winning major championships.

That's why Woods mentioned his "friends at Accenture," the company that was the first to drop its endorsement deal with him, as he took time to explain the timing of his public statement. Fellow PGA pro Ernie Els was among those who criticized Tiger for selfishly upstaging this week's PGA event, sponsored by Accenture, by staging his show while the tournament was happening.

Woods was well-aware of this and other things that have been reported. That was evident in the things he addressed in his speech. By the way, one of the biggest lies pro athletes repeat is that the don't read or listen to stories about them. Baloney! Woods seems especially sensitive to it judging by the lengths he goes to shield himself from answering questions.

And, lately, the plentiful supply of writers wanting to give him advice.

"Tiger Woods is the first person in history to run his car into a hydrant and set himself on fire," Rick Reilly wrote in a column for ESPN.com as he became the 2,187,243rd person to throw his cents into the Tiger well.

Reilly then listed the things Tiger needs to do to get back into fans' and — more important — sponsors' good graces. Do an interview with Oprah. Take a break from golf. Stop throwing clubs and swearing on the golf course. Sign some autographs for fans. And the self-serving call for transparency: "Let us into your life a little. Do the 'A week on the road with Tiger' story. Give a home interview once in a while."

Conspicuously absent from Reilly's suggestions was the one most obvious to me: He needs to stop having sex with women who aren't his wife.

That would be my start. Tiger gave at least lip service to the idea, promising that the behavior that caused this tawdry mess would never happen again.

Tiger Woods does not need to hit the talk show circuit or sit for an in-depth interview for Sports Illustrated or 60 Minutes. He doesn't owe me an explanation or an apology for anything. I didn't watch today looking for one. He didn't take money from me. He probably broke the law when trying to drive while zonked on Ambien, but if the police didn't pursue it, my problem is with the police, not with Woods.

I watched for the entertainment value. Just how phony was he going to look? Now that the facade has been torn away, he's not going to be able to control his image the way he once did — hugely successfully. But it was fun to watch him try.

Much less successfully.

And I'm sure the TMZs and National Enquirers of the world are going to heed his call to leave his wife and kids alone. Good luck with that! Add that to all the other things he should have considered when he treated his marriage as nothing more than another photo-op designed to burnish his public persona.

The only outright lie I think he told today was the one in which he held his wife Elin blameless in the car crash. If not the fury of the 6-iron wielding woman scorned, what made him jump in his SUV for a getaway while sacked out on sleeping pills?

He said that he was not going to provide such details to the public about his private matter. He didn't even say when — or definitively if — he was returning to the pro tour this year, which surprised me. Golf is the only thing real about this guy. Plus, this fiasco begins to fade as soon as Woods wins another major championship.

The only thing Tiger Woods wanted to say was that he was sorry and it didn't even look like he really meant that.

USF Hires Holtz

I interviewed Skip Holtz when he was at the University of Connecticut and I worked at WFSB-TV in Hartford in the mid-1990s.

UConn started 5-0 in 1995 and I went to the campus in Storrs to do a story. He had the same kind of wit his famous father, Lou, has but without the lisp. That weekend, Holtz' team lost. I went out the next week and interviewed him again. UConn lost again.

At practice the following week, I thought I was joking when I told the school's PR guy for sports (the official title is Sports Information Director) that maybe I had cursed the team. But there was no humor in his voice when he told me that if the team lost again, "don't come back."

Then again, that could have simply been his usual demeanor. The lack of warmth I felt in New England was not limited to the weather.

Speaking of chill...

One thing the University of South Florida gets in Skip Holtz that it never had in Jim Leavitt is someone who understands that being a head football coach at a major college program involves a lot more than coaching football.

Leavitt never grasped the public relations aspects of the job. He antagonized the local media — at least the TV stations — from the outset with a big-time attitude even as the team operated out of trailers and had yet to play a game.

USF invited local media to cover the first fall practice of the team's inaugural season in 1997. I worked at WFLA-TV at the time. Apparently no one in the sports information department informed Leavitt. After the stretching and warmup drills, Leavitt came over to the assembled cameras and asked if we had gotten everything — his way of dismissing us.

True enough, most major college practices are closed to the media. However at the time USF was not a major college program and we had been told that we would be able to shoot practice.

An unfortunate PR guy had to feel our wrath. "We might have to endure this in Tallahassee or Gainesville," I told him. "But not here. If this is how it's going to be, we won't come out."

And we didn't. We gave cursory coverage of games and showed up for the free lunch, I mean, weekly news conference, but we never gave the program the kind of attention we would have had we been welcomed.

And that's all on Leavitt. Even after USF had joined the Big East and made a run up the national rankings, his team was rarely fodder for local sports talk radio the way Florida, Florida State and Miami were.

Nobody cared. People did not develop the kind of passions about USF that they did about the other major programs. Part of that is a function of time and tradition. But much more of that is Jim Leavitt's alienation of people who could have helped him build interest in the program.

It may be fitting that USF football became a top talk-about story for the first time when the story was Leavitt's firing.

Now Leavitt is left with trying to extract a severance check from USF. He claims he did nothing to deserve his dismissal. The grabbing and slapping of walk-on running back Joel Miller never happened, he maintains, even in the face of the University's investigation which revealed otherwise and Miller's own admission that he originally denied the mistreatment to protect his coach.

I have heard suggestions that Leavitt needs to come clean about what happened. It's too late. Leavitt has cast his die. God-Kings do not bow to anyone. There is nothing to apologize for, he says through his lawyer.

It was this kind of coverup as much as the crime that cost Leavitt his job. Had he acknowledged his mistake soon after it happened, it might never have become public, let alone topple him from his throne.

Instead he stonewalled. The man who is reported to have proclaimed himself "the most powerful man in the building" failed to see that there were other buildings and that the most powerful man in the building that counted was not even a man. It was Judy Genshaft, USF's president.

Leavitt has already lost one job. His continued insistence of innocence will cost him a chance to redeem himself elsewhere. But I don't see him changing course now. And I can't see him getting another head coaching job at a major college program. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Apparently It's True

I was dreaming that the Tampa Bay Rays made it to the World Series. Now there are fantasies and there are fantasies. This one seemed as remote as the one featuring me and Giselle Bundschen. (It actually featured a couple other supermodels and at least one Hollywood actress too but I'll spare you the details.)

For most of their existence, the Rays had been a collection of misfits and has-beens who had been given official uniforms and games against real Major League teams. They had lost at least 90 games every season since they came into the league in 1998.

Now, all of a sudden, I wake up and hear on the radio that the Rays have beaten the Boston Red Sox in game 7 of the best-of-seven American League Championship Series. How they got that far in the first place, I still don't know, but you know how cloudy dreams can be.

The radio announcer explained that a rookie pitcher named David Price, who pitched his first major league game less than a month ago, struck out Red Sox outfielder J.D. Drew with the bases loaded to get out of the 8th inning then came back in the 9th to finish the save.

I take a shower, dress, get in the car and start driving to work. On the radio they're still talking about the Rays meeting the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. When I get to the TV station where I'm working, almost the entire morning show is devoted to the Rays victory and the ensuing celebration.

In a soundbite the Rays' manager, Joe Maddon, called starting pitcher Matt Garza "a stallion," apparently for the way he screwed Boston hitters. After allowing a home run in the first inning, Garza gave up only one more hit in his seven innings of work.

Driving back home, I turn on ESPN Radio and they're talking about Sunday's NFL games. Whew. They wouldn't be talking about football if the Tampa Bay Rays had advanced to the World Series, would they? Then the SportsCenter update comes on and the announcer says that the Phillies were flying to Florida to prepare for game one of the World Series happening Wednesday night in St. Petersburg.

I can't believe this. It might actually be happening. Figures the dream about baseball would come true instead of the ones with the supermodels.

Just Tennis

NBC calls the final weekend of its coverage of Wimbledon "Breakfast at Wimbledon." Rain delays stretched the men's final almost to dinner time. The fact that the match went five dramatic sets before Rafael Nadal unseated the five-time defending champion Roger Federer helped too.

I watched most of it, though the weather breaks did not always correspond to my breaks for a nap and a trip to the gym.

During one of the stoppages, NBC replayed the women's doubles final yesterday won by Venus and Serena Williams. That match happened a few hours after Venus defeated Serena for the singles title. The two of them won a combined $2.5 million for their labors on the lawns at the All England Club.

It reminded me of watching yesterday's Williams vs. Williams match, which marked the seventh time the sisters had met in the finals of a Grand Slam tournament. Although the Williamses have combined to win 15 Grand Slam events, NBC commentator Mary Carillo criticized them for their lack of singular devotion to their sport. Steffi Graf, she pointed out, won 22 Slams by herself. Venus and Serena could have become "the Tiger Woods of tennis," she said, if only they didn't spend so much time on their interests outside of tennis.

"This is where they belong," Carillo said.

Why?

Really. Why? What difference does it make whether they total 15 major championships or 50? So what if they'd be known as the greatest tennis players ever? It's still just tennis. Whether Tiger Woods surpasses Jack Nicklaus as the greatest golfer ever, it's still just golf. Seems the Williams sisters have a wisdom about life that even the brightest observers of the game lack. If their greatest achievements on Earth happen on a tennis court, what a shame that will be.

As it is, they have won enough events to become icons of the game, won enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives and won enough attention to have a bully pulpit for any cause they want to champion. What more do they need?

This has less to do with their needs than those of people who invest too much of themselves watching them.

I realized this when I watched Justine Henin quit during the final of the 2006 Australian Open because of stomach pain. Afterward, reporters practically begged her to explain how she could give up in any circumstance short of death. "Doesn't it mean enough to you?" they asked. Implied in their voices was that it meant that much to them.

The Combine

A site I frequent called b-roll.net allows people to upload and store videos on its site. The video quality is high so I thought I'd try uploading one of my projects.

I found a program that will encode AVI files into Flash video (FLV) files. Flash video, I keep reading, is becoming the standard for video on the web. Now if I can just get it to work on my site. The story I uploaded looks terrific on b-roll.net. Click here to see for yourself. It's one I did several years ago after I got my first camera. Let's see if it will work embedded here on my blog:

High School Football

First thing: I figured out why all the videos were automatically playing once they loaded. Even better, I figured out how to make it stop. It annoyed me too.

Friday night I went to a high school football game a few miles away from me. Armwood vs. Plant. It's the first football game I've shot with my not-so-new-anymore camera. I shot it in standard definition since the high school show for which I do stories is in standard def. I didn't have a story assignment going into this one but one of the schools is a perennial state powerhouse and the other was a defending state champion. The video could prove useful later but a couple of shots will make me regret not shooting in HD to use as future stock footage. You'll see what I mean. Lesson learned.

As always, click the play button (you might have to do it twice) then be patient.

VCU 79 Duke 77

This is why I don't fill out NCAA tournament bracket sheets, not even for entertainment purposes only. I never would have picked VCU to beat Duke last night. I tuned in with about 2:30 left in the game and saw that VCU had a chance at the upset. Cool! I despise Duke! What if they went home crying after the first round!

But if I had a bracket sheet to worry about, I could not have enjoyed that delicious possibility. It would have put me in the awkward and horrible position of wishing Duke would win.

Whose entertainment purpose would that serve? Not mine.

I remember in tenth grade giving a dollar to some kid running a pool for NFL games. The following Sunday I spent the miserable whole day rooting for teams I hated and I vowed I'd never to do it again.

So you have your fun with your office pool. I wish you luck. Me? I'm going to celebrate with my new best friends from VCU.