And another thing...

Disgraceful, Part Deux

Excuse me. But once again I feel compelled to jimmy the cell door on my little sports box and step outside briefly.

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And what this man has to do is point out once again what an abomination my old school system has become.

Heard the latest from the debacle at Heritage High School?

EACS released its report Wednesday, and surprise, surprise, school officials are saying the black kids lied. The "investigation," apparently, centered not on finding who left the racist notes around, but leaning on the black kids who filed the complaint and, according to at least one young man, threatening them with jail if they didn't change their stories.

In other words: This was no "investigation." This was EACS trying once again to make bad news go away by discrediting the accusers. This was do-nothing administrators trying to exonerate themselves.

And I'm still supposed to believe they take racial incidents seriously?

Right. Tell me another one.

-- Ben Smith 

Sour grapes

Some things are as seasonal as strawberries. Like (to continue the fruit theme) sour grapes.

And so right on cue, one day after Bishop Luers won its seventh state football title, an e-mail popped up in my box, reeking of bile. Three paragraphs long, it was the usual tiresome screed about parochial schools and how they recruit all their players and how it's not fair because the public schools have to dance with who brung 'em, and blah, blah, blah.

"Who cares about high school football for the lower classes," the writer whined. "It no longer has any meaning. It's just a private school playoff and means nothing to the public schools anymore. A state championship in those divisions no longer has any meaning, just who can cheat the system most efficiently ... They have cheated and lied for so long they actually believe what they are shoveling."

To which all I can say is, it figures. Just when I have some faith that the general public has half a brain, some dim bulb comes in a quarter lower than that with this kind of drivel.

OK, one last time: I'm sure some parochial schools do "recruit." I'm sure some public schools do, too. In fact, I know for a fact they do. But if you're going to slam Luers in particular, you need to at least make a passing attempt at getting your facts straight.

A few points:

1. Ninety-five percent of the players on Luers' roster, probably more, came up through the south-side parochial feeder system. The same surnames have appeared on those rosters over and over again through the years, which suggests that Matt Lindsay isn't roaming far and wide to pull in stray talent. It is a family thing there. It always has been.

2. If Luers and schools like them are "cheating," specify how. If they're "lying," specify how. If you can't, then shut the hell up.

3. There's no secret to why Luers has had the success it has. Look where it plays, first of all. When you're playing in a big-school conference that's usually one of the state's best, you're facing much better competition on a weekly basis than most 2A schools ever face. And for a second reason, go back to No. 1: The feeder system. It's as good here as it is anywhere.

I don't expect any of this to do anything but go in one ear and out the other, of course. It's amazing to me how ingrained is the "parochial schools recruit all the best athletes and that's why they win" mythology. Even people I know to be intelligent buy into it.

In other words, I just wasted my breath and a whole lot of words. But it was worth it.

-- Ben Smith      

Helio wins again

Well, this is marvy. First open wheel racing loses Sam Hornish Jr. and Dario Franchitti to NASCAR, and now Helio Castroneves goes off to be Fred Astaire.

I mean, anything's possible now that the two-time Indianapolis 500 champ has showed the field his tailpipes on "Dancing With The Stars," largely because the country as a whole fell in love with the effervescent Helio Aura those of us who cover motorsports have long known about. Maybe people will finally realize that open wheel has its stars, too, and some of them are every bit as appealing as Dale Jr. or Jeff Gordon.

Personally, I could see this starting a trend. Jeff Gordon Dances with the Stars! Dan Wheldon does! Juan Pablo Montoya! Tony Stewart!

Well, OK. So maybe not Tony Stewart.

Can't see him out there in a sequined tux dancing the samba, frankly. The Electric Slide, maybe. With a cold Schlitz in one hand. That I'd like to see.

It would be almost as priceless as putting A.J. Foyt out there, if only for the post-dance interview.

INTERVIEWER: So how do you feel, A.J.?

A.J.: How do I FEEL? Hell, how do you think I feel? My partner danced like a tub o' s---! I think we need to take a round of wedge out of her shoes. Anybody got a hammer?

Lovely.

-- Ben Smith

   

A-hunting he will go

Forget the Mojave Desert, the Himalayas, the River of Doubt in the Amazon. I've got Bear Grylls' next wilderness survival challenge on "Man vs. Wild."

It's a little something I call "Hunting With Dick and Bob," aka "Dick" Cheney and "Bob" Knight.

Both men have accidentally winged hunting buddies with shotguns, and now Bob the mighty outdoorsman has struck again. In separate incidents last month, he bagged not one but two innocent bystanders with birdshot while hunting doves.

He plinked the first, Mary Ann Chumley, while she was sitting on the tailgate of her pickup and Knight was chasing a bird, apparently mindlessly. He sprayed the second, James Simpson, in the neck and back while Simpson was cleaning out his swimming pool the next day.

This is eight years after Knight accidentally put 16 pellets into a hunting buddy up in Wisconsin. I don't know about you, but I'd say the next time he decides to go hunting, he should do it with a water pistol. Clearly giving this guy a working firearm is like checking your gas tank with a Bic lighter. 

Cheney, Knight and guns. Ah, yes. Dress Bear in an Indiana sweatshirt and a Brits For Hillary button, and it's his most perilous undertaking yet.

-- Ben Smith

Hartack dismounts

I'm not trying to make this Obit Day on the Blob, but I couldn't let one more passing go uncommented on.

That would be Hall of Fame jockey Bill Hartack, who died Tuesday at the age of 74.

(Yeah, I know, it's horse racing. I know there are about five people reading this blog who know anything about it, and everyone else thinks My Friend Flicka won the Kentucky Derby last year. But come on, it's Bill Hartack -- and besides, this won't take a minute).

Most of you never heard of Hartack, but in his own time and place he did a fair imitation of Michael Jordan. The record book says he won five Kentucky Derbys, three Preaknesses and one Belmont. He and Eddie Arcaro are the only jockeys to win five Derbys. In 1964 he won the Derby and Preakness but lost the Belmont on Northern Dancer, his closest shot at a Triple Crown.

Now he's gone off to the Great Dismount. Salut.

-- Ben Smith    

Random acts

There's no explaining what happened to Sean Taylor, and I'm not smart enough to try. All I'll say is that in a world where the word "tragedy" gets beaten senseless by 24/7 media nearly every day, this is one situation where the word truly applies.

Twenty-four years old, fatherhood, an All-Pro football career, and it's all gone thanks to one horrendously random act of violence. Now that's tragedy.

It's also something that happens every day in this country, many times over, and not just to people we think we know because they show up on our big-screen TVs every Sunday. And that's an even greater tragedy.

-- Ben Smith

Raise your glass

A moment of silence, if you will, for Dr. Robert Cade, who passed away today at the age of 80.

If the name doesn't ring a bell, his greatest invention no doubt does. Cade's the guy who came up with Gatorade when the Florida football team was gasping for air and sustenance down there in the soupy autumn heat of Gainesville in 1965.

Since then, coaches all over America have been getting doused with the stuff on freezing football fields, an experience for which they owe Cade either a debt of gratitude or a doctor's bill. There are many stories surrounding Gatorade's birth, but the best comes from researcher Dana Shires, who told the Associated Press the first batch of Gatorade wasn't exactly ambrosia.

"It sort of tasted like toiler bowl cleaner," Shires recalled.

Left unsaid was how Shires knew what toilet bowl cleaner tasted like. Or whether it somehow played a role in Gatorade's invention.

We can only hope not.

-- Ben Smith      

Ricky be done

Well, that didn't last long.

Ricky Williams' return to the NFL after 18 months of exile ended after six carries last night in Pittsburgh. Ricky Be Ricky suffered a torn chest muscle in the 3-0 loss after gaining 15 yards on six carries. He fumbled on his last carry and Steelers' linebacker Lawrence Timmons stepped on his shoulder blade while he was down, which apparently caused the injury.

So much for the lift the Dolphins were hoping he'd give the running game. And, oh, yeah, so much for the Dolphins again in general; they went to 0-11 with a 3-0 loss to the Steelers on a field that looked as if it were constructed entirely of kitchen sponges.

Which means the Fish have now proved they can lose on grass, turf or swamp. They're an all-terrain debacle.

-- Ben Smith 

Deserving

It's not true what they say. Sometimes nice guys do finish first.

And so comes the welcome news that Indiana University has re-upped Bill Lynch for four more years as its football coach. I can't think of a man more deserving of another crack at the big time.

Not only is Lynch one of the more decent guys breathing air -- in a profession given over to backbiting and badmouthing, you won't find anyone who has anything snarky to say about the guy -- but the job he did this season was little short of remarkable. Not only did Indiana go 7-5 and become a likely bowl team for the first time in 14 years, they did it beneath the considerable psychological shadow left by the death of Terry Hoeppner.

The passing of such a dynamic figure left a void that could have crumbled the Hoosiers under less adroit leadership. That it didn't was testament to the job Lynch did under incredibly adverse circumstances.

In other words: He earned what happened to him today. And then some.

-- Ben Smith      

This week in the League

And now our weekly bubble screen through the En Eff Ell -- as in, "What the Ell Is Gus Frerotte Doing Out There?":

* I think I finally found a worthy opponent for the Patriots, now that the annual Thanksgiving Food Coma has come and gone: Triptifan, the chemical in turkey that supposedly makes you sleepy. ‘Cause the Patriots' numbing perfection will do the same thing -- even on nights like Sunday, when they came shockingly close to getting beat by the immortal A.J. Feeley.

Triptifan vs. the Pats. Last one to tie anvils to my eyelids wins.

* You gotta love Gus Frerotte. If he's not head-butting concrete walls, he's doing something really dumb.

Like, say, fumbling the snap on fourth-and-goal at the 1-yard line with 27 seconds left against the Seahawks, preserving St. Louis' stirring come-from-ahead 24-19 loss. Coach Scott Linehan's big gamble -- letting Gus take the snap himself on fourth down instead of sending in, say, a gerbil to do it -- cost the Rams their third win of the season.

On the other hand, at 2-9, the draft prospects are starting to look pretty darn good.

* And here I thought families were supposed to get along during the holidays.

Not in the Manning family, apparently. With older brother Peyton looking on -- and presumably shooting invisible Older Brother Noogie Rays from his eyeballs -- Eli Manning threw four picks, three of which were returned for scores, as the Vikings moidolated (I know it's not a word, but it fits) the Giants 41-17.

To paraphrase Wally Cleaver: Geez, Eli, ya little goof.

* This week's Rex Grossman Update: 17 of 33, one touchdown, one interception. Threw a perfect touchdown pass to Bernard Berrian to force overtime in 37-34 win. Exuded calming sideline presence that inspired Devin Hester's two return touchdowns. Victimized by numerous drops from Greg "oven Mitts" Olsen and the rest of the worst receiving corps in football.

(This week's update submitted by Rex's mom).

*  This week's Marty Schottenheimer, Won't You Come Home Update: Chargers whip Ravens 32-14 to get the Norv Tumer Error over .500 and keep alive Norv's shot at another spectacular late-season collapse. LaDainian Tomlinson becomes 23rd player in NFL history to eclipse 10,000 yards rushing.

Norv's reaction: "LaDainian Tomlinson plays for US? Wow. He's really good."

All for now. Over to you, Dan Dierdorf.

-- Ben Smith