Bellbrook graduation 2012
Fairfield Senior 2012 graduation
Kroger Aquatic Center opens
Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > December
December 2008
blog: Do the Flyers Miss Brian Roberts?
In the press conference after the Dayton Flyers had just outlasted George Mason, 66-62, Tuesday night at UD Arena, somebody asked UD coach Brian Gregory:
“Last year Brian Roberts was the guy you went to late. Who is your go-to man this year?… Marcus?’”
Although the Flyers are sailing along pretty well right now at 12-1 and have had only a few close games — Wofford, Auburn, Akron and now the Patriots — the question brought back some memories of one of the most prolific players ever to wear a UD uniform.
Roberts — now playing professionally in Israel — is fourth among all-time scorers at UD and tops when it comes to career three-point shooting.
Last year Roberts was the go-to guy. He hit the game-winning three against Miami, the clutch free throws at the end versus St. Bonaventure and had huge games in upsets of nationally-ranked Louisville (28 points) and Pittsburgh (31 points). But there were times, I believe, when Flyers coaches felt that while he was was a deadly shot, he sometimes didn’t show enough passion when they needed it most.
This year’s team isn’t lacking in fire and amperage — look at the way it plays its harassing, nothing-comes-easy-for-you defense. But the Flyers don’t have anyone who can shoot like Roberts, who made 44.1 percent of his treys while at UD. For the season these Flyers are shooting 28.8 percent from three-point range.
Johnson often shows signs of being the team’s most clutch player and Gregory acknowledged that because of that, he got some opportunities down the stretch, Tuesday night:
“We went to him some. Some ball-dribble drives stuff and he got some looks ….and missed.
“I guess. to be honest with you, I don’t know if we’ve got one (go-to guy). We have some go-to actions and our guys just kind of fill in. And you know what? I have a lot of confidence in Chris Wright at the end of the game and we called his number a couple of times.
“And the shot CJ (Chris Johnson) took was an option off the play previous where Chris Wright got his shot blocked.
“And you know? Right now, what we kind of do is go with the flow. Whichever guy is really playing well — maybe that’s the one we go with. I have a lot of faith in our guys and our guys have earned that faith right now.”
Tweetblog: Browns will be in better shape than Bengals
The Bengals finished with three straight victories and — by virtue of that tie with Philadelphia — ended up with a slightly better record at 4-11-1 than the 4-12 Browns, who lost their last six games and , were out-scored, 45-0, in the final two.
So which franchise will fare better in the future?
Even though they canned general manager Phil Savage on Sunday and coach Romeo Crennel this morning — even though their roster has too many overpaid players and the club will face salary cap issues because so many huge signing bonuses that have been handed out — I’ll go with the Browns.
And that’s even if they don’t end up with Bill Cowher, Bill Parcells or Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo as their next head coach.
Whether it’s in politics or sports, change often can be for the better. The Miami Dolphins scrapped everything after last year’s 1-15 nightmare and look at them now. They’re 11-5 and in the play-offs.
As for Cincinnati?
Once again nothing of significance will change and because of it a winning record in 2009 will be just as elusive as it has been the past 18 seasons — when just one Bengals team finished a winner.
Thanks to three meaningless victories in a row to close out this season — against, it should be noted, three teams they should have beaten — the Bengals power brokers can fool themselves into believing they are right on the cusp of NFL respectability.
They’ll point out they had a record 23 players on injured reserve , including quarterback Carson Palmer. They’ll note the emergence of young players and back-ups from rookie receiver Andre Caldwell to veteran running back Cedric Benson.
Certainly Caldwell and Benson and some others were great finds this year, but one thing — the main thing — was no different.
Team owner Mike Brown and his family — good people, but inadequate when it comes to managing a competitive NFL franchise — run the Bengals like a Mom and Pop corner grocery:
No GM, few scouts, no clue,.
And they certainly won’t change anything now that the season ended with a glimmer of hope. But that promise shimmers like an emerald mirage in the middle of a desert.
A young Cincinnati Enquirer reporter touched on that point in a legitimate question to Marvin Lewis a couple of weeks ago and the Bengals coach wrongly laced into him, saying the question was disrespectful of what he and his team were trying to do.
The only people being disrespected here are the Bengals faithful fans, the Hamilton County voters who paid for Paul Brown Stadium and the corporate donors who fork out something like $175,000 to rent a stadium suite.
They deserve more for their money.
Since Mike Brown took over the club in 1991, the Bengals have won just 101 games — 34 of them in December. Most of those wins meant nothing. By then, the play-offs were an impossibility.
And will next year be any different?
Several key players will be lost to free agency and there’s still the looming question of Carson Palmer’s arm. Will it ever be the same again? Will the offensive line — hampered both by key injuries and some over-matched starters — be able to protect him when he does return? Bengals quarterbacks were sacked 51 times this season — three times the number in 2007.
Under the Lerner family the past 10 years, the Browns haven’t — as just two winning seasons attest — been very successful either. But at least they will make an effort to change.
Owner Randy Lerner will spent a lot of money to dump Savage, Crennel and possibly offensive coordinator Rod Chudzinski. Savage has four years left on his contract, the other two have three and that could cost Lerner $30 million in all.
But he gave $12 million to Butch Davis when he left in 1994.
If nothing else, a guy coming into the Browns knows he will be paid well. Sure, name guys are going to want more than that and that’s the convincing Lerner will have to do.
Cowher is first on his wish list, but tops on several other teams’ as well. And the former Pittsburgh Steelers coach has said he was going to stay out of coaching another year.
I don’t necessarily believe that and I don’t think there’s any kind of handshake agreement with the Steelers not to coach the Browns. Whether he wants to come to Cleveland, though, is another story.
Parcells, as ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported Sunday, can leave his Dolphins front office job if owner Wayne Huizenga sells the team and, from what I know from folks in Miami, that seems likely to happen next month in a deal already in the works with developer Stephen Ross.
As for a general manager, the Browns first choice seems to be New England executive president Scott Pioli.
But if that should be the case, Parcells wouldn’t be interested in Cleveland. He’s said all along that he’s not going to work alongside Pioli, who is his son-in-law.
He believes family and business don’t always mix.
Too bad the Bengals don’t see it the same way.
Tweetblog: A Treasure Lost, Then Found
I got a Christmas card the other day from “The Fight Doctor” Ferdie Pacheco and his wife Luisita. Ferdie — the cornerman and personal physician of Muhammad Ali and later a television boxing analyst for several networks — is a true Renaissance man.
A painter, screenwriter and author, he informed me his latest book on the Fifth Street Gym is coming out this spring. He said I have a chapter in it and now I can’t wait to see it.
In my sports career, there has not been a place more magical to me than the Fifth Street Gym. The fabled Miami Beach fight club — razed 15 years ago — was the domain of the the Dundee brothers, Angelo and Chris, and the fighters they trained and promoted, most notably Ali, going back to the days when he was Cassius Clay.
During most of the nearly two decades I lived in Miami, I’d scale the two flights of worn stairs to that funky, fistic world several times a week. I loved not only watching the training sessions and talking to the fighters, but sitting in one of the old, taped-up theater seats near the ring and listening to the stories of some of the aging fight crowd, guys like Sell-Out Moe Fleischer and Jerry White.
A Jersey City lightweight of the 1930s who once ran the Magic City Gym, Jerry had endless stories of some of its ringside rogues, guys like card shark Sam the Mumbler, Raincoat Rabinowitz, Evil Eye Finkel, Big Bill Ivan the Great White Hope of 1914 and Tip Toe Tannenbaum, the house dick at one of the downtown hotels.
Over the years Jerry and I became great friends and it was at the Fifth Street Gym where he gave me what has become — thanks, in part, to the circumstances that followed — the best Christmas gift I have ever gotten.
Christmas Eve one year, Jerry handed me a brown paper bag that contained a present wrapped a bit clumsily in bright, colorful paper.
“This is for you,” he said proudly. “Merry Christmas.”
It was the “The Fireside Book of Boxing.” The jacket was slightly torn and the pages were well-thumbed, but the wobbly handwriting inside the front cover was new and it brought tears to my eyes:
“To My Friend Tom…Wishing You The Best…Jerry White.”
I started to leaf through the book and ended up spending three hours reading tales from Ernest Hemingway, Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner, Jimmy Cannon and Grantland Rice.
From that day on, the book was like a bible to me. Every time I picked it up, it provided me quick passage — be it by prose, poem or photograph — from my everyday world to that wondrous land of Dempsey, Marciano and Jack Johnson.
And that’s why I decided to take the book with me that day several years later when I was headed from my Coral Gables home to Atlantic City to cover Michael Spinks’ 1987 fight with Gerry Cooney.
When the cab showed up to take me to the airport, I was running behind as usual. Finally — with just enough time to make the flight — I came bustling out with the book under my arm, a suitcase in one hand and a bulky briefcase in the other.
I dropped one bag down, set my treasured Fireside Book on the roof of the cab and then wrestled both bags into the guy’s trunk.
When the cabbie — a middle aged Cuban guy who knew little English — dropped me off at Miami international Airport some 15 minutes later, I reached on the seat for my book and suddenly realized it was not there. I’d forgotten to take it off the roof.
Instantly, I was heartsick. I jumped out of the cab, looked at the roof — nothing. I’d lost my prized possession somewhere along busy LeJeune Road.
The cabbie had watched my frantic search and said as I left: “I take look for you.”
At the time he said it, I paid little heed and had even less hope. The book most certainly was gone for good. Besides, I figured his promise was empty When you’re dealing with strangers in the city, you don’t often find Samaritans.
Little did I know, when the guy had shut off his meter, he had turned on his heart. And sure enough, a week later when I returned to my Majorca Avenue home, I found the book, wrapped in plastic, propped against the door of my porch.
The cover was battered and a black tire mark was ground into two back pages, but otherwise it was pretty much undamaged.
I read from it again today, but as I again tried to remember just what the cabbie looked like, I could not. I never did get a good look at him and over the years his foggy image has become something like my own personal Ghost of Christmas Past.
As for the book, before I lost it, it only contained the best offerings of men like Red Smith and Budd Schulberg , not to mention my old pal Jerry White.
Now it represents the best effort of one more man and it has become one of my greatest treasures.
Tweetblog: One of My Greatest Treasures
I got a Christmas card the other day from “The Fight Doctor” Ferdie Pacheco and his wife Luisita. Ferdie — the cornerman and personal physician of Muhammad Ali and later a television boxing analyst for several networks — is a true Renaissance man.
A painter, screenwriter and author, he informed me his latest book on the Fifth Street Gym is coming out this spring. He said I have a chapter in it and now I can’t wait to see it.
In my sports career, there has not been a place more magical to me than the Fifth Street Gym. The fabled Miami Beach fight club — razed 15 years ago — was the domain of the the Dundee brothers, Angelo and Chris, and the fighters they trained and promoted, most notably Ali, going back to the days when he was Cassius Clay.
During most of the nearly two decades I lived in Miami, I’d scale the two flights of worn stairs to that funky, fistic world several times a week. I loved not only watching the training sessions and talking to the fighters, but sitting in one of the old, taped-up theater seats near the ring and listening to the stories of some of the aging fight crowd, guys like Sell-Out Moe Fleischer and Jerry White.
A Jersey City lightweight of the 1930s who once ran the Magic City Gym, Jerry had endless stories of some of its ringside rogues, guys like card shark Sam the Mumbler, Raincoat Rabinowitz, Evil Eye Finkel, Big Bill Ivan the Great White Hope of 1914 and Tip Toe Tannenbaum, the house dick at one of the downtown hotels.
Over the years Jerry and I became great friends and it was at the Fifth Street Gym where he gave me what has become — thanks, in part, to the circumstances that followed — the best Christmas gift I have ever gotten.
Christmas Eve one year, Jerry handed me a brown paper bag that contained a present wrapped a bit clumsily in bright, colorful paper.
“This is for you,” he said proudly. “Merry Christmas.”
It was the “The Fireside Book of Boxing.” The jacket was slightly torn and the pages were well-thumbed, but the wobbly handwriting inside the front cover was new and it brought tears to my eyes:
“To My Friend Tom…Wishing You The Best…Jerry White.”
I started to leaf through the book and ended up spending three hours reading tales from Ernest Hemingway, Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner, Jimmy Cannon and Grantland Rice.
From that day on, the book was like a bible to me. Every time I picked it up, it provided me quick passage — be it by prose, poem or photograph — from my everyday world to that wondrous land of Dempsey, Marciano and Jack Johnson.
And that’s why I decided to take the book with me that day several years later when I was headed from my Coral Gables home to Atlantic City to cover Michael Spinks’ 1987 fight with Gerry Cooney.
When the cab showed up to take me to the airport, I was running behind as usual. Finally — with just enough time to make the flight — I came bustling out with the book under my arm, a suitcase in one hand and a bulky briefcase in the other.
I dropped one bag down, set my treasured Fireside Book on the roof of the cab and then wrestled both bags into the guy’s trunk.
When the cabbie — a middle aged Cuban guy who knew little English — dropped me off at Miami international Airport some 15 minutes later, I reached on the seat for my book and suddenly realized it was not there. I’d forgotten to take it off the roof.
Instantly, I was heartsick. I jumped out of the cab, looked at the roof — nothing. I’d lost my prized possession somewhere along busy LeJeune Road.
The cabbie had watched my frantic search and said as I left: “I take look for you.”
At the time he said it, I paid little heed and had even less hope. The book most certainly was gone for good. Besides, I figured his promise was empty When you’re dealing with strangers in the city, you don’t often find Samaritans.
Little did I know, when the guy had shut off his meter, he had turned on his heart. And sure enough, a week later when I returned to my Majorca Avenue home, I found the book, wrapped in plastic, propped against the door of my porch.
The cover was battered and a black tire mark was ground into two back pages, but otherwise it was pretty much undamaged.
I read from it again today, but as I again tried to remember just what the cabbie looked like, I could not. I never did get a good look at him and over the years his foggy image has become something like my own personal Ghost of Christmas Past.
As for the book, before I lost it, it only contained the best offerings of men like Red Smith and Budd Schulberg , not to mention my old pal Jerry White.
Now it represents the best effort of one more man and it has become one of my greatest treasures.
TweetBeauty in the eye of the beholder
Santa is such a magical figure for many folks, but when it comes to embracing the big-screen version of the man and the myth, everyone has a little different interpretation.
It’s the old saw about beauty being in the eye of the beholder.
You might like like your old boy in the red suit drinking milk and munching cookies or you might find a breath of fresh holiday air in stale-smelling Santa who boozes it up, spews profanity and screws everything in sight.
I’ll go with the latter.
Here’s a short list of my all-time, red-suited film favorites — Seven Santas Who Sleigh Me.
7— Jack Skellington — “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) — A coffin-like sleigh pulled by skeletal reindeer and a glowing-nosed ghost dog. A Santa who delivers shrunken heads, Christmas tree-eating snakes and other creepy presents to children around the world. A wild tale co-written by Tim Burton, it’s the story of “Halloween Town” resident Jack Skellington turning himself into Santa Claus and briefly taking over the duties before eventually making things right.
6— Dan Aykroyd — “Trading Places” (1983) — In a nature versus nurture experiment, Aykroyd plays a successful commodities broker who switches places with Eddie Murphy. After being framed for robbery and drug possession, his life disintegrates and comes to a wild climax at the annual Christmas party, where he shows up in a ragged Santa suit packing heat and raging about life’s cruel fate.
5 — Tim Allen — “The Santa Clause” (1994) — Most of all it’s a story of redemption. After accidently killing Kris Kringle, Scott Calvin — played by Allen — unwillingly has to take over as Santa. Eventually he embraces the job and there are scenes with his son that are especially warm and touching.
4 — Jeff Gillen — “A Christmas Story” (1983) — Little Ralphie Parker, thwarted by mom and dad in his quest for a Red Ryder Air Rifle, goes to every kid’s last resort, Santa Claus himself. But when he plops down in the lap of the disgruntled department store Santa, he freezes up and is quickly dispatched down a Christmas slide with the promise of a football. In the classic scene, Ralphie claws his way back up the slippery slope to beg for his gun. That’s when Santa repeats the famous line — “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” — and literally gives him a good-bye boot to the face.
3 — Ed Asner — “Elf” (2003) — From Lou Grant to this movie featuring Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf, Asner has always been a master at playing a crusty old man with a heart of gold. In this tale he’s raises a human child as one of his not-so-little helpers and as he prepares the innocent Ferrell for his trip from the North Pole back to New York City to discover his roots, he gives him some sound big-city advice, stuff like “a sign that says Peep Show doesn’t mean that they’re letting you look at the new toys before Christmas,” and “if you see gum on the street, leave it there. It isn’t free candy.”
2 — Edmund Gwenn — “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) — Gwenn is the ONLY Santa ever to win an Academy Award and he deserved it. I love this movie. As he works to make little Natalie Wood’s dream come true — and at the same time prove in court he really is Kris Kringle — he shows he is a Santa Claus who loves not only children, but all humanity.
1 — Billy Bob Thornton — “Bad Santa” (2003) — First off, this isn’t Miracle on 34th Street. It’s pure Coen Brothers with Thornton worthy of a Jingle Bell Oscar himself. He’s a con man Santa, who smokes, drinks, swears and has sex from every angle with gals of every size. He (supposedly) hates kids and only puts on the red and white uniform each year in order to rob department store safes on Christmas Eve. And then comes the catcher, his endearing relationship with a wonderfully open-hearted, overweight kid.
It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen and while it might not be for everybody it sure is for me. I could — and do — watch it every year.
Tweetblog: No love loss between Wolverines Hall and Edwards
CLEVELAND — Forget maize and blue brotherhood.
Leon Hall feels no kinship with Braylon Edwards.
The two might have Michigan Wolverine teammates, but there seems to be no love loss between Hall, the Cincinnati Bengals second-year cornerback, and Edwards, the Cleveland Browns receiver in his fourth NFL year.
…At least not on Hall’s part.
“I don’t talk to him that much,” Hall said after he led the Bengals to a 14-0 victory over the Browns, Sunday, at Cleveland Stadium. “We played together at Michigan a couple of years, but we’re just not that close. He is what he is. When we see each other we say, ‘What’s up?’ but that’s it. Today on the field, we didn’t talk at all. It was pretty much straight business.”
Thanks to Hall, bad business for Edwards.
Hall tied a Cincinnati Bengals record Sunday, intercepting three Ken Dorsey passes intended for Edwards. He returned the first one 50 yards for a touchdown.
“My job was to shadow Braylon Edwards the whole game,” Hall said. “I knew with the trouble they were having on offense — with their quarterbacks and tight ends down, they were going to try to get the ball to (Edwards) — and I was going to try to stop it.”
Ironically, the last time he was in Cleveland Stadium, Hall was embarrassed by Edwards and the Browns. It was his rookie season and he was picked on by a Cleveland offense that compiled 554 yards in a 51-45 victory.
Browns receivers Joe Jurevicius and Edwards both caught touchdowns on Hall, who also missed a tackle on another score.
“That game was the exact opposite of this,” Hall said in the Bengals dressing room Sunday. “I gave up a touchdown on a dumb move, a botched coverage. I missed a run coverage. It was an all around bad game on my part.
“I’m never a guy who likes to think about the past too much, but last year’s game definitely crossed my mind this past week. I had had a horrible day and I needed to redeem myself.”
So did he feel like he had?
He started to laugh:
“What is it, a 45-minute flight back home? Last year it felt like three days. It was horrible. This time it will be a little better. There will be a lot more joking around on the plane.”
Back in Cleveland, Braylon Edwards — upstaged by his old teammate — won’t be laughing.
Tweetblog: Holyfield — “What is this guy, nuts?”
Let’s hope life doesn’t imitate art.
In the Sylvester Stallone film “Rocky IV,” a popular and aging former heavyweight champ from America — Apollo Creed — gets into the ring with a Russian giant, is pummeled…and dies.
Tonight, another fistic sequel plays out in Zurich, Switzerland. Evander Holyfield — now 46 and once the popular heavyweight champ of the world — gets into the ring with 7-foot, 310-pound Russian champ Nikolai Valuev.
Now Valuev — who has a seven-inch read advantage, is 10 inches taller, has a 49-1 record and owns the WBA title belt — is no Capt. Ivan Drago. He’s a stumblebum compared to that cinematic fighting machine.
But then the fading Holyfield is but a shadow of his old self. He’s long past his prime and his skills have eroded.
So much for those glory days when he took the crown from George Foreman, went through that classic trilogy with Riddick Bowe and twice tamed Mike Tyson.
Holyfield has won just six fights in the past seven years. He’s lost his last four title bouts including his last ring encounter, a thrashing by Sultan Ibragimov in Moscow.
“A disaster for boxing” — that’s what Bernd Boente, manager for heavyweight kings Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, calls this fight.
“A freak show,” said Frank Maloney, the former promoter of soon-to-be Hall of Famer Lennox Lewis.
Not that Holyfield is the lone carnival act on the heavyweight scene these days. The vacant edifice of Hasim Rahman was battered by Vitali Klitschko last weekend. On the same card, the corpulent reincarnation of the 41-year-old Bowe managed to plod his way to an eight-round decision against sparring partner Gene Pulcall.
As for Holyfield, The Real Deal is now The Reeling Deal.
He says he’s fighting to unify the titles, but I think a big reason he’s back in the ring is to keep from going belly up and landing right alongside the now-bloated Tyson, who is flat broke.
For all the non-stop gospel music that always accompanies his training session, for his close associations with laying-of-the-hands characters like Bennie Hinn — for his always sculpted body and his special nutritionist-guided diet — Holyfield’s life is a mess.
He’s said to have little of the $250 million he earned in the ring still left.
He’s been married three times, has 11 kids in and out of wedlock and his child support payments are said to be over $500,000 a year. Last summer he failed to make three straight $3,000 monthly support payments to one of the mothers and found himself in legal hot water.
Foreclosure papers were recently drawn up on the 109-room, 17-bathroom, three-kitchen mansion he owns on 235 acres south of Atlanta.
Mortgage payments are said to be $600,000 a year and it costs another $1 million a year to maintain the place. His gardener gets $100,000 a year.
What is this guy, nuts?
He’s said to be getting somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000 for tonight’s fight. That’s a far cry from the $35 million he got in his rematch with Tyson, who had chomped off part of his ear in their first meeting.
Yet, compared to that, they’re calling this fight the “freak show.”
You can buy it on pay per view tonight for $24.95, but in my book you’d then be as nuts as Holyfield is.
It’d be cheaper just to go to the video store and rent Rocky IV.
Tweetblog: Seven Santas Who Sleigh Me
Santa is such a magical figure for many folks, but when it comes to embracing the big-screen version of the man and the myth, everyone has a little different interpretation.
It’s the old saw about beauty being in the eye of the beholder.
You might like like your old boy in the red suit drinking milk and munching cookies or you might find a breath of fresh holiday air in stale-smelling Santa who boozes it up, spews profanity and screws everything in sight.
I’ll go with the latter.
Here’s a short list of my all-time, red-suited film favorites — Seven Santas Who Sleigh Me.
7— Jack Skellington — “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) — A coffin-like sleigh pulled by skeletal reindeer and a glowing-nosed ghost dog. A Santa who delivers shrunken heads, Christmas tree-eating snakes and other creepy presents to children around the world. A wild tale co-written by Tim Burton, it’s the story of “Halloween Town” resident Jack Skellington turning himself into Santa Claus and briefly taking over the duties before eventually making things right.
6— Dan Aykroyd — “Trading Places” (1983) — In a nature versus nurture experiment, Aykroyd plays a successful commodities broker who switches places with Eddie Murphy. After being framed for robbery and drug possession, his life disintegrates and comes to a wild climax at the annual Christmas party, where he shows up in a ragged Santa suit packing heat and raging about life’s cruel fate.
5 — Tim Allen — “The Santa Clause” (1994) — Most of all it’s a story of redemption. After accidently killing Kris Kringle, Scott Calvin — played by Allen — unwillingly has to take over as Santa. Eventually he embraces the job and there are scenes with his son that are especially warm and touching.
4 — Jeff Gillen — “A Christmas Story” (1983) — Little Ralphie Parker, thwarted by mom and dad in his quest for a Red Ryder Air Rifle, goes to every kid’s last resort, Santa Claus himself. But when he plops down in the lap of the disgruntled department store Santa, he freezes up and is quickly dispatched down a Christmas slide with the promise of a football. In the classic scene, Ralphie claws his way back up the slippery slope to beg for his gun. That’s when Santa repeats the famous line — “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” — and literally gives him a good-bye boot to the face.
3 — Ed Asner — “Elf” (2003) — From Lou Grant to this movie featuring Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf, Asner has always been a master at playing a crusty old man with a heart of gold. In this tale he’s raises a human child as one of his not-so-little helpers and as he prepares the innocent Ferrell for his trip from the North Pole back to New York City to discover his roots, he gives him some sound big-city advice, stuff like “a sign that says Peep Show doesn’t mean that they’re letting you look at the new toys before Christmas,” and “if you see gum on the street, leave it there. It isn’t free candy.”
2 — Edmund Gwenn — “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) — Gwenn is the ONLY Santa ever to win an Academy Award and he deserved it. I love this movie. As he works to make little Natalie Wood’s dream come true — and at the same time prove in court he really is Kris Kringle — he shows he is a Santa Claus who loves not only children, but all humanity.
1 — Billy Bob Thornton — “Bad Santa” (2003) — First off, this isn’t Miracle on 34th Street. It’s pure Coen Brothers with Thornton worthy of a Jingle Bell Oscar himself. He’s a con man Santa, who smokes, drinks, swears and has sex from every angle with gals of every size. He (supposedly) hates kids and only puts on the red and white uniform each year in order to rob department store safes on Christmas Eve. And then comes the catcher, his endearing relationship with a wonderfully open-hearted, overweight kid.
It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen and while it might not be for everybody it sure is for me. I could — and do — watch it every year.
Tweetblog: A Bengal Worth a Parade
CINCINNATI — Too often we hear of the self-absorbed Cincinnati Bengals players who think only of themselves and find a way to ruin their chances and diminish their entire careers.
Quite unexpectedly, I met the flip side of that at Sunday’s Bengals-Washington Redskins game at Paul Brown Stadium.
I’m talking about Cincinnati linebacker Corey Mays.
Although he went undrafted out of Notre Dame and has been cut twice by the pros in his three-year NFL career — both times by the New England Patriots — he has managed to carve out a bit of a niche with the Bengals as a back-up linebacker and special teams player.
That doesn’t get a guy much notice and I had only talked to him once — and that just in passing — since he joined the team part way through last season.
But there he was Sunday, the star of the Bengals 20-13 victory over Washington.
With Just over six minutes left in the third quarter, the Redskins — who trailed, 17-10 — were just inches away from tying the game. On second and goal from inside the one yard line, they handed the ball to 280-pound fullback Mike Sellers, who tried to roll over Mays into the end zone. One game official signaled a touchdown, but the Bengals challenged and upon review, the call was reversed. Mays had stopped him short.
On third down, Washington again gave the ball to the Sellers and he tried diving over the pile, only to be met in midair by Mays and fellow linebacker Brandon Johnson.
Still churning, Sellers then made a second surge. But just before the massive fullback crossed the goal line, Mays knocked the ball out of his hands and recovered it in the end zone for a touchback.
“That’s off the Richter Scale just how huge that play was,” Bengals running back Cedric Benson said of Mays’ effort.
After the game — and for the first time this season — Mays found himself surrounded by media. Not only did he try to deflect the praise to his teammates, but he wanted people to know that the Bengals — no matter that they had come into the game with a dismal 1-11-1 record — were trying to make something positive happen in their last three games.
I asked him if, in some ways, that didn’t mirror his own career. “Life’s always gonna give you challenges and I learned long ago, the only way to deal with them is to keep fighting,” he said
And he doesn’t just give lip service to that concept, He tries to pass it on to others.
When he was at Notre Dame — where he majored in psychology and sociology — he started an organization called Positive Concepts, which was designed to help underprivileged children.
One of his goals for the program was to help provide teens in both his hometown of Chicago and in South Bend with positive role models.
“I grew up in Chicago and I saw a lot of poverty and a lot of kids without opportunity,” he said. “I saw kids with a lot of talent, but they didn’t have a great base or good role models to push them.”
While he’s now working on turning his organization into a non-profit entity, he already has a plan.
“My mother (Karen January) just got her doctorate in education and together we’re trying to start an alternative high school in Chicago.” he said.
“I know a lot of people helped me along the way and now I’m blessed because of it. I feel God put me in a position now where I can do something for other people and I must do that.”
As Mays was explaining his dream, Johnson dressed a few feet away and began to needle good-naturedly: “They’ve even got you talking about your momma? Man, you are me hero. Yep, this is Corey Mays’ day and tomorrow we’re having a parade.”
To me, Corey Mays seems like one Bengal who just might be worth a parade.
Tweetblog: Sam Bradford will win the Heisman
I’m one of the Heisman voters and I think I know how quite a few of the other 922 voters cast their ballots.
Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford — he of the 48 touchdown passes — will win the Heisman. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow — last year’s winner and just as deserving this year — will be second and Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, who did more with less around him, will finish third.
The final Heisman poll by the Orlando Sentinel agrees with me, but the Scripps Howard Heisman poll — which has picked 17 of the past 20 winners — has Colt McCoy winning, Bradford second and Tebow third.
Ballots from the voting sportswriters and past Heisman winners are due today by 5 p.m. The winner will be officially announced Saturday night in New York.
Bradford would be the fifth Heisman winner from Oklahoma.
If you are interested, here’s a list of the past winners:
2007 Tim Tebow Florida (Quarterback)
2006 Troy Smith Ohio State (Quarterback)
2005 Reggie Bush USC (Running Back)
2004 Matt Leinart USC (Quarterback)
2003 Jason White Oklahoma (Quarterback)
2002 Carson Palmer Southern California (Quarterback)
2001 Eric Crouch Nebraska (Quarterback)
2000 Chris Weinke Florida State (Quarterback)
1999 Ron Dayne Wisconsin (Running Back)
1998 Ricky Williams Texas (Running Back)
1997 Charles Woodson Michigan (Cornerback)
1996 Danny Wuerffel Florida (Quarterback)
1995 Eddie George Ohio State (Running Back)
1994 Rashaan Salaam Colorado (Running Back)
1993 Charlie Ward Florida State (Quarterback)
1992 Gino Torretta Miami (Quarterback)
1991 Desmond Howard Michigan (Wide Receiver)
1990 Ty Detmer Brigham Young (Quarterback)
1989 Andre Ware Houston (Quarterback)
1988 Barry Sanders Oklahoma State (Running Back)
1987 Tim Brown Notre Dame (Wide Receiver)
1986 Vinny Testaverde Miami (Quarterback)
1985 Bo Jackson Auburn (Running Back)
1984 Doug Flutie Boston College (Quarterback)
1983 Mike Rozier Nebraska (Running Back)
1982 Herschel Walker Georgia (Running Back)
1981 Marcus Allen Southern California (Running Back)
1980 George Rogers South Carolina (Running Back)
1979 Charles White Southern California (Running Back)
1978 Billy Sims Oklahoma (Running Back)
1977 Earl Campbell Texas (Running Back)
1976 Tony Dorsett Pittsburgh (Running Back)
1975 Archie Griffin Ohio State (Running Back)
1974 Archie Griffin Ohio State (Running Back)
1973 John Cappelletti Penn State (Running Back)
1972 Johnny Rodgers Nebraska (Wide Receiver)
1971 Pat Sullivan Auburn (Quarterback)
1970 Jim Plunkett Stanford (Quarterback)
1969 Steve Owens Oklahoma (Running Back)
1968 O.J. Simpson Southern California (Running Back)
1967 Gary Beban UCLA (Quarterback)
1966 Steve Spurrier Florida (Quarterback)
1965 Mike Garrett Southern California (Running Back)
1964 John Huarte Notre Dame (Quarterback)
1963 Roger Staubach Navy (Quarterback)
1962 Terry Baker Oregon State (Quarterback)
1961 Ernie Davis Syracuse (Running Back)
1960 Joe Bellino Navy (Running Back)
1959 Billy Cannon LSU (Running Back)
1958 Peter Dawkins Army (Running Back)
1957 John David Crow Texas A&M (Running Back)
1956 Paul Hornung Notre Dame (Quarterback)
1955 Howard Cassady Ohio State (Running Back)
1954 Alan Ameche Wisconsin (Fullback)
1953 John Lattner Notre Dame (Running Back)
1952 Billy Vessels Oklahoma (Running Back)
1951 Dick Kazmaier Princeton (Running Back)
1950 Vic Janowicz Ohio State (Running Back)
1949 Leon Hart Notre Dame (End)
1948 Doak Walker Southern Methodist (Running Back)
1947 John Lujack Notre Dame (Quarterback)
1946 Glenn Davis Army (Running Back)
1945 Felix Blanchard Army (Fullback)
1944 Les Horvath Ohio State (Quarterback/Running Back)
1943 Angelo Bertelli Notre Dame (Quarterback)
1942 Frank Sinkwich Georgia (Running Back)
1941 Bruce Smith Minnesota (Running Back)
1940 Tom Harmon Michigan (Running Back)
1939 Nile Kinnick Iowa (Running Back)
1938 Davey O’Brien Texas Christian (Quarterback)
1937 Clint Frank Yale (Running Back)
1936 Larry Kelley Yale (End)
1935 Jay Berwanger Chicago (Running Back)
Tweetblog: WSU’s Brown needs to “shoot his way out of It”
FAIRBORN — No one around the Wright State hoops program feels the loss of Vaughn Duggins any more than Todd Brown.
With the team leader out of the line-up until January after undergoing surgery last week to repair his broken right ring finger, it was hoped Brown — last season’s second-leading scorer — would be able to shoulder some of the extra offensive burden.
But right now he’d staggering under that weight. Actually, the junior guard has been out of sorts much of the Raiders’ 1-6 season.
He went 1 for 9 from the floor against Central Michigan, 0 for 5 against Miami, 1 for 5 against Sam Houston and 1 for 7 against Green Bay.
Tuesday night, he was 0 for 8 from the field in the Raiders’ 50-35 victory over Toledo at the Nutter Center.
This is the same guy who shot 40.5 percent from the field last season and 42.3 percent from three-point range. He had 26 points against Belmont and 21 against Chattanooga and was the MVP of the Dr. Pepper Classic last year. He hit the winning thee pointer against Miami, had 24 against Green Bay, 23 against Marshall and 20 against Coastal Carolina.
The year before — his freshman season at WSU — he hit 22 against Cleveland State, 21 against Green Bay and at season’s end was chosen to the Horizon League’s All-Newcomer Team.
At Canton McKinley High he shot 50 percent from the field as a senior, 47 percent from three point range.
This season he’s shooting 21.4 percent from the floor. And you can see it eating at him during the games.
When he came out of Tuesday’s contest with 4:47 left in the first half, he was handed a green towel which he soon tossed away in disgust. He then took a seat on the bench and pulled the T-shirt he wears beneath his jersey up over his face for a few moments.
“We talk to him, tell him to keep his head up, but you don’t want to be his conscious, you don’t want to tell him when to shoot and when not to,” said senior guard Will Graham. “We just know we’ve got to set good screens for him so his tough shots can become a little easier for him in the game.”
WSU coach Brad Brownell talked about Brown after the game, as well:
“He’s going through a hard time right now and I feel for him because he’s getting some good looks. He just needs to see the ball go in a couple of times….He needs to shoot his way out of it.”
So why isn’t that happening? Is there something wrong with his mechanics?
“He’s not doing anything drastically different,” Brownell said. “He does have a long shot, By that, I mean it has some extra motion in it and because of that, sometimes, it can he hard to have the same rhythm all the time. He knows that and that’s why in practice he has to go at game speed all the time or it doesn’t work.”
Another thing that might be coming into play here is Brown’s new role. In high school he was the third or fourth go-to guy on a loaded team. Here at Wright State, there was DaShaun Wood carrying the load his freshman year and last season — even as he averaged a second-best 12.7 p.p.g.. to Duggins team-leading 13.8 — there was the senior leadership of Scottie Wilson (9.8 points 7.2 rebounds) and Jordan Pleiman (8.1 points 6.1 rebounds).
“That could very well be part of it,” Brownell said. “He’s been the 3, 4 or 5 guy not the No. 1 guy in the past. But this year — especially with Vaughn out — it’s become an added challenge for all the guys.
And Graham thinks Brown is up for that challenge:
“Pretty soon he’ll find his jumper and he’ll be just fine.”
And when that happens, Wright State will get better, as well.
Tweetblog: Coach — “I don’t think Ohio State would beat Boise State.”
It looks as if Ohio State will land in the Fiesta Bowl — probably matched against Texas — and unbeaten Boise State will be snubbed when it comes to BCS invites.
The Bucks are a favorite of Bowl organizers because they bring along such a horde of fans who dump a ton of money in the towns they visit. And because folks either love or hate the Buckeye, OSU also is good for TV ratings.
Their 2006 Fiesta Bowl match-up with Notre Dame drew a 12.9 rating. The year before Utah and Pitt drew a 7.4. Last year’s Fiesta Bowl matching West Virginia and Oklahoma drew a 7.7.
Of course, with the Bucks embarrassing flops in the past two national title games, there are plenty of folks who think OSU football is over-rated. And if Boise State gets by-passed in favor of twice-beaten Ohio State, the Buck bashers will be out in force,.
Already Fresno State coach Pat Hill has thrown a dart.
“(Boise State) can play with anybody,” he told the Fresno Bee. “I don’t think Ohio State would beat Boise State.”
Tweetblog: I Missed This One
I picked Oscar De La Hoya to knock out Manny Pacquiao in seven or eight rounds Saturday night in their welterweight fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
I got the round right, but surely not the fighter.
Pacquiao dominated De La Hoya from the opening bell, using his speed to the body and then the head to totally overwhelm him. He finally won by TKO when the battered Golden Boy — his left eye closed — didn’t answer the bell for the ninth round.
De La Hoya — who ended up a 2-to-1 favorite by fight time — had the height advantage. reach advantage and the edge in weight. This was the 35-year-old’s first fight at 147 pounds since 2001. His last seven fights had been at 150 — or more — pounds.
Just nine years ago, Pacquiao was fighting at 112 pounds and he’d never fought at more than 135. But he’s considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the game and Saturday night he showed it.
I thought De La Hoya’s punch would be too much for the smaller Filipino, but he never was able to land that big left hook. Pacquiao kept him off balance all night.
I should have seen this one coming, While the charismatic De La Hoya knows how to make a buck — his fights have made more than $300 million — he manages to underwhelm in most of his big fights.
He’s especially had trouble with speed fighters. Floyd Mayweather Jr. beat him, as did Shane Mosley — twice. And Pernell Whitaker gave him fits before De La Hoya was handed a controversial decision.
Although De La Hoya’s been on the center stage a long time — I watched him win gold at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 — these days he seems to tense up in his biggest fights and that causes him to tire in the latter rounds.
Saturday night he didn’t seem ready from the opening bell. As the fight wore on, he just seemed old. The TKO loss was only the second time he’s been stopped in his 16-year pro career.
After the fight, he walked to the middle of the ring to congratulate Pacquiao.
According to ringside reporters, Pacquiao told him. “You’re still my idol.”
“No,” De La Hoya said. “You’re my idol.”
The Golden Boy had retired a while back, then sought out the Pacquiao bout. Recently, he said he would continue boxing no matter what Saturday’s outcome would be.
But this was so one sided, he should reconsider.
He should retire and continue running his promotional company.
Maybe he can sign Pacquiao.
Tweetblog: Bobby Martin’s Skateboard Stumbles
Before I bring up Bobby Martin’s recent stumbles, let me make a point.
No Miami Valley prep athlete — not Keith Byars, Curtis Enis, Chris Wright, Tamika Williams, no one — ever had the kind of international fanfare and universal acclaim that he did.
The former Colonel White football player and homecoming king — who was born with no legs, but possesses an over-abundance of grit and survival skill — won an ESPY in 2006 as the nation’s Best Male Athlete with a Disability.
First — and often — chronicled in the Dayton Daily News, he soon was featured by newspapers and TV crews everywhere. The Boston Globe, New York Daily News, USA Today, a London paper and many more came to Dayton to interview him. So did TV crews from Canada to Korea. ESPN and CNN ran features on him. Sports Illustrated ran a two-page picture of him.
Boise State brought him out to Idaho to honor him. The Cleveland Browns had him give a pep talk in their dressing room and the famed Jim Brown became his sidekick. He was on the game-day sidelines of the Cincinnati Bengals, the Green Bay Packers and the Oakland Raiders.
This week, Bobby was getting noticed again, but unfortunately — and once again — for some wrong reasons. The 21-year-old was in the Dayton Municipal courtroom of Judge Dan Gehres, on a domestic assault charge.
He allegedly hopped off that skateboard he uses to get around and used it to clobber the mother of their 18-month-old child.
The woman, though, didn’t show up for the proceedings, so Bobby skated — quite literally — out of court. The charges were dropped.
This is not his first brush with the law. There have been some juvenile scrapes, but those who know him — including me for the past eight years or so — hoped his high school accomplishments would keep him pointed on the positive path. And they often have.
But after Bobby finished at Colonel White, Ernie Green, the successful Dayton businessman and former Cleveland Browns All-Pro fullback — agreed to pay his way through Central State University.
The deal feel through quickly when Bobby quit showing up for classes.
Bobby Martin was embraced by everybody because he always seemed to find a way to turn negatives into positives. Now he’s sometimes doing just the opposite.
I hope that changes.
Tweetblog: Chris Wright Rubs Off
This is my 20th season covering the Dayton Flyers and about my 50th following them as a kid growing up, a UD student in the late 1960s and early ’70s and then a Florida sportswriter checking out their box scores from afar.
Chris Wright is certainly one of the better players I’ve ever seen wear a Flyers uniform and by the time he’s done at UD, he may well be in the same class as Roosevelt Chapman, Donnie May, Donald Smith, Johnny Davis and Jim Paxson Jr.
Off the court, he already is one of the best guys ever as far as friendliness, engaging conversation and flat-out charisma. And here’s what happens to a team when your star —one of your leaders — is like that.
It rubs off.
And it makes it a lot more difficult for a bad actor, a malcontent to flourish on the team.
I know its still the early stages of the season, but this Flyers bunch appears to have some of the best team chemistry I’ve seen from a UD ball club. The players get along. They feed off each other.
I think some of that has to do with Wright.
Take for instance Tuesday night after the game. I didn’t have long to come up with a story, so I was trying to do something real quick — and a bit off the basketball mark — on Charles Little and his ballet class.
I first talked to Little about it in the hallway outside the Flyers dressing room and the 6-foot-6 senior — another good guy on this team — seemed a bit self conscious about it and didn’t expound a whole lot. But he did say that Wright was taking a tap dancing dancing class, as well.
Inside the dressing room, I headed straight to Wright, who hadn’t had the best of nights. He played just 13 minutes and fouled out with eight points and three rebounds, his lowest game totals of the season.
And yet when I asked him about tap dancing, he didn’t flinch. He got into talking about his class and said when he’s out there tapping away, he thinks of Dancing With the Stars, and famed hoofer Gregory Hines and he says to himself, “If Warren Sapp can dance, I can dance.”
He said on a tap dace scale of 1 top 10 he saw himself as a 6.
Then he told a funny story about getting started in his tap class:
“I remember walking in the tap dancing store and saying, ‘Can I get the biggest tap shoes you got?’
“They said, ‘You got to be kidding.’ They didn’t know I was a taking tap. I told ‘em, ‘I’m not joking.’ And a little girl who was there — she was six — she asked her momma, ‘Is he a tap dancer, Mommy?’
“Her mom said, ‘Yeah, he’s a tap dancer.’
“I had to tell her, ‘No no, I actually play for the University of Dayton basketball team. I’m just doing this for my class and I really enjoy it — I think it helps me to be in a different environment, a different setting — but, truthfully, I’m more of a basketball player.’”
Little sits maybe 20 feet away from Wright in the Flyers dressing room and he watched from afar as the tapper expounded on his dance class.
“What’d he say?” Little asked as I walked past.
“Man, his quotes stuffed yours, ” I teased.
That’s when Little pirouetted away from self consciousness and soared in his own right. Explaining why he didn’t take tap, as well, he smiled:
“Chris wears a size 14 shoe, but I wear a 17. They don’t make tap dancing shoes in my size.”
For my purposes, Little really scored — he gave me the walk-off line for my column in today’s paper — but I think Wright deserves the assist on it.
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