Starting Five

1. Ed T. Rush (the “T” stands for “Technical”) must go.

The Pac-12 Director of Officiating joked about giving referees $5,000 or a trip to Cancun if they gave Arizona coach Sean Miller a technical foul (which in fact they did, infamously) or “ran him” during the Pac-12 tourney in Las Vegas, according to this excellent piece of reporting by Jeff Goodman of CBSSports.com

This should be the lead story in sports this morning. Judges don’t joke, “Well, you LOOK guilty” and airline pilots don’t joke, “Hey, I think the right wing just fell off.” Likewise, referees don’t joke about being partial, and certainly directors of officiating do not.

Rush T’ing up Atlanta Hawk coach Richie Guerin back in 1970. I think Richie’s upset.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott must fire Rush — immediately.

Background: Rush, a Philadelphia native, became an NBA official in 1966 at age 24. In the past 30 years an inordinately high number of refs have hailed from the Philadelphia area — three from Cardinal O’Hara High School alone — and some of them have been the league’s more notorious refs. Joey Crawford, who tried to bait Tim Duncan (that incorrigible delinquent) into a fight and Tim Donaghy are just two. Those two, like Rush, became NBA refs before their 32nd birthday. Highly unusual.

When, in 2007 I wrote a story marking the connection between Donaghy and the preponderance of Philly area refs, and noted that Rush was also from the City of Brotherly Love, Mark Cuban wrote me an email that read simply, “You are so close.” Last night Cuban, who was once fined $500,000 for saying that “Ed Rush is the most powerful man in the NBA”, reacted to Goodman’s piece by tweeting, “Not surprised. It will get worse.”

This should, and likely will be, a much bigger story by week’s end. Once more referees feel courageous enough to speak.

2. It was Tom Boswell who wrote, “Time begins on Opening Day.” It was Tom Bosley who said — as Mr. C. — , “Marion!” (“Are you getting frisky, Howard?”). Anyway, happy days are here again now that baseball has returned. Notes and trivia from Opening Day:

Chicago Cubs pitcher Jeff Samardzija became the first man we know of to start and win an Opening Day game (eight shutout innings and nine K’s versus the Pirates in Pittsburgh) who is also a former first-team All-American in college football. Worth noting that the Shark’s coming-out party as a college gridder also occurred in Pittsburgh, in the stadium right next door to PNC Park. Samardzija had three catches, one for a TD, in Notre Dame’s 42-21 pummeling of Pitt. Until that opener of his junior season Samardzija had been a forgotten man on the Irish bench…

Samardzija briefly held the school record for career receptions

With yesterday’s win, Shark is now 22-22 in the majors.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim struck out 17 times and still won, 3-1, at Cincy. It’s the most strikeouts a winning team has had on Opening Day in the Live Ball era…Has anyone at Citi Field handed Mets rookie pitcher Scott Rice a copy of erstwhile Met pitcher R.A. Dickey’s memoir, “Wherever I Wind Up”? Rice, 31, spent 14 years in the minors and played for 18 different teams before finally making his Major League debut yesterday during the Met’s 11-2 (sports verb alert!) drubbing of the Padres. The (sports term alert!) southpaw threw a 1-2-3 inning, whiffing two… The Mets scored 11 runs but cleanup hitter Ike Davis went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts…Jose Iglesias of the Red Sox became the first player in 14 seasons to have three infield hits on Opening Day; I’m not amazed by Iglesias’ three hits, I’m amazed that someone actually would be able to access that stat… The Yankees used the Star Wars theme during pre-game player production. The film is 37 years old, or the mean age of the Yankees. Seriously: Mariano Rivera (43), Andy Pettitte (41), Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki (39), Hiroki Kuroda (38), Alex Rodriguez (37), and Travis Hafner and Lyle Overbay (36). All Yankee games will air in past-their-primetime this season… On the other end of the scale, Bryce Harper became the youngest player in MLB history to bash two home runs on Opening Day. That was all the scoring Stephen Strasburg needed in the Nats’ 2-0 win… Clay Kershaw of the Dodgers became the first pitcher since Bob Lemon in 1953 to throw a shutout and hit a home run in the season opener (and Kershaw’s HR came in the 8th of a 0-0 game) while the Red Sox’ Jackie Bradley, Jr., (the Martin Short joke quota has already been surpassed) became the first player ever to record three walks and an RBI in his MLB debut.

That’s Jackie ROGERS, Jr., and he won’t be patrolling the Green Monster this season.

3. USC names Andy Enfield its new basketball coach, giving the Trojans an unbeatable one-two punch of coaches’ wives (Layla Kiffin and Amanda Enfield). Let’s note that Enfield was an NCAA-record 92.5% FT shooter at Johns Hopkins, but UCLA’s new coach, Steve Alford, was an 89.8% FT shooter, a two-time consensus All-American, an NCAA champion, AND he weathered a season of John Feinstein following the Hoosiers. To me, that’s more impressive.

Their first date ended at a Taco Bell. Now he’ll get to introduce her to Del Taco.

4. Over at The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart notes, with a certain degree of alarm, that Egyptian “television presenter” Bassem Yousef, whose show pokes fun at the president, has been arrested for insulting the president. Yousef’ specific crimes were making fun of President Mohammed Morsi’s funny hats and his mangling of the English language. As Stewart noted, referring to the years 2001-2009, “I made my living doing that for eight years.” Attempting to assuage Morsi’s fears that a comic’s quips could in any way destabilize his power, Stewart said, “Silencing a comedian doesn’t qualify you to be president of Egypt. Just…president of NBC.”

Watch the video, which meets the shows high standards for wit and insight. Even the title of the segment, “Viva Hate”, is a good pun on Morsi/Morrissey.

5. “Introducing a monocle…for dogs.” They’re right, this was an outstanding April Fool’s joke.

Reserves

UConn advances to the Final Four with a 30-point win versus Kentucky. The Huskies have won their four NCAA tourney games by an average of 37 points so, yeah, I think Geno has them focused after that Big East title game loss to Notre Dame. The Huskies advance to a record-sixth consecutive Final Four.

Trail Blazer rookie Damian Lillard returns to the state that was home to him during college (Weber? No, Utah) and buries three three-pointers to bring his season total to 169. That’s an NBA rookie record. Yes, he’s your Rookie of the Year.

Hong Kong International Airport has a movie theater. I’ve never understood why every major airport doesn’t have at least one movie screen. Sure, most travelers have tablets now, but wouldn’t you still pay to sit inside a theater to help kill a five-hour layover? “Now playing, a double feature: ‘Flight’ and ‘The Terminal’.” (by the way, Changi Airport in Singapore has a pool).

Remote Patrol

UEFA Champions League Quarterfinals

Bayern at Juventus

Paris Saint-Germain at Barcelona

Fox Soccer and FoxSportsNet 2:30 p.m.

Three of these legendary sides (Bayern, Juve and Barca) are former Champions League champions. Barcelona possesses the world’s best player (Lionel Messi) while Bayern has the sport’s best name: midfielder Bastian SCHWEINSTEIGER!”

I said, “The first round at Hofbrauhaus is on me!”

xxxx

Starting Five

1. “LOUIE, LOUIE, LOUIE, LOUIEEEE….VILLE”

Within a span of a couple of hours on Easter Sunday night, both the Cardinals men’s and women’s basketball teams created tremors in their resepective NCAA tourneys. First, the No. 1 seeded men found themeselves tied at 42-42 with  No. 2 seed Duke at the 16-minute mark only to outscore them 43-21 the rest of the way. They advance to their second consecutive Final Four.

It was that type of night for Griner

The No. 5 seeded-women pulled off the biggest shocker of either tournament, dethroning No. 1 Baylor, the defending national champion, 82-81. The Bears had won 74 of their previous 75 games and beaten their first two opponents in the tourney by 42 and 38 points, respectively. How did the Cardinals do it? By shooting an outrageous 64% from beyond the arc (16 of 25) and going all African fire ant on Baylor’s 6-8 physical marvel, Brittney Griner, whenever she stepped into the post.

History will show that Baylor went 74-2 in the final two seasons of Griner’s career (and that of Odyssey Sims, who had 29 points in the defeat). Both losses came this season, to the Cardinal of Stanford and the Cardinals of L’ville.

Thus endeth the career of Griner, who finishes 111 points shy of breaking Southwest Missouri State’s Jackie Stiles’ NCAA career-scoring record. Had the Bears gone all the way to the championship game –three more contests –that prize would have been in reach.

Jackie Stiles: 3,393 points

Brittney Griner: 3,282 points

2. WHO. WHAT. HOW. WHEN. WHY. AND WARE.

Of course, the indelible moment of yesterday’s contest occurred when Louisville’s Kevin Ware broke his lower right leg in two places, a gruesome sports moment that belongs in the Joe Theismann/Marcus Lattimore/Randy Livingston/Lindsay Vonn pantheon of the Hall of Pain. Ware broke his leg while landing awkwardly after leaping to block a jump shot by Duke’s Tyler Thornton. Ware never touched anyone else. The break released a torrent of tweets, of course, and was itself a spark in terms of how the media handles, well, everything:

1) SB Nation tweeted: “We’ve made an executive decision not to gif that Kevin Ware injury.” (If you want to know how far –although in what direction, I might ask?– sports journalism has traveled in the past 15 years, just reread that sentence to someone from 1998. It’s a foreign language). Dan Wetzel replied on Twitter — well, I cannot tell you exactly what Dan tweeted, because he has since deleted his Tweet (OWN YOUR ERRORS!!!), but it was something akin to, “Do they want a cookie?”

No, it’s not pretty.

2) Pete Thamel of Sports Illustrated won friends in the Commonwealth and elsewhere when, only minutes after Ware suffered the horrific injury, he tweeted out a link to a story he had written for the New York Times that revolved around Ware’s recruitment.

3) CBS, which on Thursday demonstrated how sensitive it is to whatever Twitter’s prevailing mood happens to be (hello, Mr. Barkley), chose not to re-air even one replay of Ware’s injury at halftime, even though it was certainly the most eventful moment of the first half, if not the tournament.

4) SI’s “Extra Mustard” column had an entire story about Kevin Ware-related tweets without ever mentioning Thamel’s. The piece had 39 tweets — two by Thamel himself — and yet not THAT tweet. That’s like a synopsis of the Old Testament that never mentions Abraham.

5) Finally, immediately after the injury occurred, while most of us viewers were still unaware of what had happened, CBS showed an overhead shot of three Louisville players (none of them Ware) sprawled in the free throw lane as if they had all just been mowed down by a hit-and-run vehicle (go to the :23 mark). I wondered if two of them had collided. It took a few seconds to realize that the trio were reacting to the injury they had just witnessed. That aerial view, whether or not the CBS producer who cut to it intended it or not, was one of the most provocative and poignant shots I have ever seen.

My Thoughts: They dovetail pretty much with those of Clay Travis, who had his up first last night. Let’s tackle Thamel first. I honestly don’t think Pete was attempting to be self-promotional — he works for SI now, for one, and this is a story from his tenure at the New York Times — as much as he is guilty of being tone-deaf. Yes, Jason Whitlock, nobody died, but it was still an awful moment for Ware. That Pete found a link to his old story and then tweeted it out at the speed of, well, Peyton Siva, is a huge, huge tell about where his priorities rest. I really just think he was trying to provide more information. But that tweet revealed far more about Pete than it did about Kevin Ware…

…AS for CBS, they blew it. Nobody needs to see the torture porn that SportsCenter is oft-guilty of committing when it comes to epic moments no matter who is the victim (How many times did they air Jadeveon Clowney’s ht in the first days of January?). But at halftime CBS took the supposed high road by not even showing the replay of the injury once. This was huge news and CBS is choosing not to show it? Why? So as not to unleash a Twitter backlash and then Charles Barkley will have to come on later and remind us, yet again, to get ourselves a life (because watching basketball for a living and opining on it apparently means that you have a life)? CBS should have had Greg Gumbel inform viewers that they were going to show this, once, that the footage was graphic in nature and so that we should not watch if we did not want to toss our Honeybaked hams, and then air it. And react to it. CBS abrogated its responsibility here.

…I’m even more disturbed by those in sports media who are saluting SBNation, USA Today, and CBS for not re-airing either the gif or clip of Ware’s injury. I’m quite certain that those of you who share my sentiments feel every bit as bad about Ware’s catastrophic injury as those people do. But we recognize that news is news.

…Finally, if you’ve ever stood on a raised basketball court inside a football stadium (as last night’s court, at Lucas Oil Stadium, was), you quickly get an appreciation for an altered frame of refrence. The closest analogy I can make is being on a trampoline and, when you leap, being keenly aware of how close you are to leaping off the edge. I have no idea if that altered frame of reference has anything to do with why Ware landed as awkwardly as he did. Perhaps not. I know that other players have suffered gruesome leg injuries when that was not a factor. I guess we’ll never know. But I don’t discount the possibility.

3. Happy Anniversary to Bobby Petrino and Jessica Dorrell, and to the motorcycle ride that shook up the SEC West. As Coach Petrino can now tell you, curves are a dangerous thing to navigate.

Easy, riders.

4. The man whom sports fans saw on-air more often than any other talking head last month? It’s not complicated. It was the AT&T pitch man, whose name is unknown to most. Until now. He’s Beck Bennett, 28, an alumnus of both New Trier High School (located in the John Hughesian North Shore suburb of Wilmette, Ill.) and the University of Southern California. Here’s Beck and a pal from his comedy troupe, Theatre of Life, pulling a Mystery Science Theater 3000 at the Strand at Venice Beach.

“I’m watching this.”

5. It’s Opening Day of baseball season (pipe down, Astro fans) and it’s April Fool’s Day, and so I’d direct you to a link of Jason Gay’s classic 2007 piece for GQ, “The Boy of Summer”, if I could find it anywhere on-line. Very sorry that I cannot. If any of you do, please send it along and I will link it. Simply outstanding, and it fooled some huge names in the sports media biz.

RESERVES

She cannot get into her dream school, perhaps, but Suzy Lee Weiss did get published in the Wall Street Journal. So she has that going for her, which is nice.

Game of Thrones meets Game of Throws. Winter is here! Spring is here! The third season of Game of Thrones premieres just an hour or so after the first pitch of the 2013 baseball season. Lots of gruesome deaths and all, but notice that every Lannister and Stark child still lives.

Kaleesi, stop dragon my heart around

REMOTE PATROL

Opening Day

ESPN 1 p.m. to midnight

Last Friday: Pray. Bawl. Today, Monday: Play ball! Let the true start of spring –and summer! –begin.

We get it.

Wichita State is the first No. 9 seed to advance to the Final Four. And their nickname is “Shockers”, and so it seems incumbent upon too many headline writers at too many major outlets, both print and internet (newphemism alert: “printernet“), to use “Shocker!” in their heds. As if what this team has done over the past 10 days or so is akin to Adele setting fire to the rain.

(On the other hand, using “March of the Penguins” to describe the NHL franchise’s 15-game win streak is dead solid perfect. It may be obvious, but that is only because nothing could possibly work better)

But nothing’s shocking in college basketball any longer. John Wooden and the UCLA Bruin dynasty is dead. Instagram? In college hoops we live in the age of Instateam, in which Kentucky can start four freshman and win the national title one year, then start nearly as many the following year and be bounced in the first round of the NIT. The monoliths — Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Indiana, Duke and the Bruins — are still capable of cutting down the nets, but they are just as capable, and have demonstrated it, of being bounced in the first or second round.

Is Jane really done with Sergio? He treats her like a ragdoll.

A program is only as good as either its incoming freshman class or the chemistry of its upperclassmen. Louisville was the smart pick to cut down the nets on April 8 before the tourney began (the even smarter pick was to pull a Seth Davis and pick two different schools for your two different employers, but I digress), and yet not a single one of the three All-American squads named so far has a Cardinal on its first team. The Cards, however, have a veterang group that plays well together and advanced to the Final Four a year ago.

Anyone who ever played pick-up hoops as a kid — I mean, lived to play pick-up hoops (Crestview Park, Middletown, N.J., representin’!) — understands that five guys who know each other well can defeat five more talented guys who do not. And that is why Louisville is so dangerous. Basketball, and this is only a happy coincidence but it fits, has all the letters inside of it to spell the word “ballet.” And that’s what well-played basketball is: A synchronicity of motion between five players who understand their individual roles in relation to that of the four others.

Iit’s also why, in case you were wondering, the Los Angeles Lakers are a .500 team this season even though they start three probable Hall of Famers.

Carl Hall

Yes, Perry Farrell, nothing’s shocking in college hoops these days. So why do too many people at ESPN and other outlets continue the Cinderella narrative? It’s trite and it’s inaccurate. Wichita State starts two seniors, a junior, a sophomore and a freshman. They’ve taken down two teams that have a first-team All-American this season (Creighton with Doug McDermott and Gonzaga with Kelly Olynyk). They’re 30-8. They’ve led every one of their four NCAA tournament games by at least 13 points and have held 20 points in both games this weekend.

Nothing’s shocking about Wichita State having advanced to the Final Four. What’s shocking is that anyone who covers college hoops — or pens headlines — is still pushing that pill on us.

NFL guru and cinemaphile Chris Corbellini went to see “Spring Breakers” and filed this review. (I’m continually awed by and grateful to people who volunteer their time and talent to contribute to this site. Anyone else who wants to do so, just contact our home offices via comment.)

SPRING BREAKERS

Conduct a nationwide poll of overprotective fathers asking for nightmare characteristics of a potential boyfriend for their teenage daughters, have a court artist sketch a composite, then mix in 20 percent more alligator and 10 percent more Jesse Pinkman and you’ve got James Franco in the new movie “Spring Breakers.” He enters the film like a reptile with bling around his fangs in Act 2 and at that point you just have to roll with it. From there, what you’ve got coming is “Cheerleader Scarface.”

Franco’s non-Italian army

A confession: For the first time in my movie-watching life I entered the theater curious about who would be sitting next to me, guessing chatty teenage girls together, and balding, paunchy men in their 40s and 50s sitting alone. That’s exactly what I got. The opening montage of female flesh and funnels on the beach – with the lens so tight on the action it feels like the cameraman is a discarded flip-flop – made both demographics erupt into hysterical laughter.  Soon enough former Disney actresses smoke enough wacky tobacky in college to make their agents tear up, a well-orchestrated (and directed) robbery happens, more hedonism followed in every crevasse imaginable and absolutely nothing was learned. This is Spring Break, you’re told, and dialogue and clothing is optional. But director Harmony Korine wasn’t finished. Franco shows up to raise the stakes, bailing this filly foursome out of jail after a bust in a local hotel.

I suppose this is the spot I should talk about the lead actresses – Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens and Korine’s wife, Rachel. I’ve never seen one frame of those House of the Mouse motion pictures or television programs they’ve built their reputations on, so I only have a vague sense of the image they are gleefully torpedoing here. The director divvies up the juicy lines and lines of cocaine fairly evenly during Spring Break week, and also plops the group into what must have been real-life, improvisational situations (a roof-wrecking party in a hotel room, a neighborhood pool hall) and not one of them drops the ball completely. Not knowing anything about the girls beyond still images in US Weekly, I thought Gomez has the most potential for a long acting career. Her character Faith is a student at a bible college, the angel on one shoulder, and the one Franco’s “Alien” character zeroes in on like the big, bad wolf. She also looked 11 years old to me and the sweetness has not quite left her eyes, and I was relieved to see Faith flee to safety.

Innocent or cruel, I think women make better voice-over artists than men in movies, and Korine does a fine homage to Sissy Spacek’s small-town-girl VO work in Terrence Malik’s “Badlands” by having his actresses talk about happiness and connecting with others as footage of debauchery and violence plays out. The spine of the second half of “Spring Breakers” is Alien surmising these girls are down with a life of crime to snap out of the monotony of their lives, and exploiting that. There are scowling rivals to gun down. Stacks of cash to be made. Spring Break. “Money. And big-old booty. The American Dream,” in Alien’s words. At least that’s what I noticed. The film is a crystal bowl that slipped off the table, and it’s up to you to pick up the shard you see first.

Whatever you scoop up, at the very least it’s well-made. There is luminous cinematography involved (a darkened college lecture and the tracking shot of the robbery spring to mind). The editing is edgy and non-linear without being distracting – making you feel like you’re piecing together events from a hard day’s night the morning after. The performers were willing to go all-in for the director – willing to dress up in pink ski masks armed with heavy artillery while dancing around a crooning Franco. Yeah, it’s that kind of loony tunes and I won’t recommend it very highly, but not a frame of it is boring.

There’s an old line about how most people work, others are lucky enough to have a career, and a precious few find their calling. Korine impressed me with his debut screenplay “Kids” back in the 1990s, and it’s obvious indie filmmaking is his calling. Perhaps after another not-quite-mainstream hit a whale like Marvel Studios will allow him to make, say, an Iron Man 4. He has the requisite skill to stage it, but I doubt Korine directing something of that scale will come to pass. He’d have Tony Stark smoking out of a Cabbage Patch Kid bong.

One last note for NFL fans: I thought the judge in the courtroom scene looked familiar and after an IMDB search discovered the role was played by John McClain, a longtime pro football writer for the Houston Chronicle. Seemingly random casting – a sports journalist from Texas flown in to shoot one scene in Florida – but it worked. I felt that way about long stretches of “Spring Breakers.”

1. If you find yourself on a blind date, never lead with a Holocaust joke. In fact, it’s best not to lead with a joke at all (Question: “How many Vietnam veterans does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Answer: “YOU WEREN’T THERE, MAN!”) until your date has a better appreciation of who you are and your sense of humor. And that, dear reader, is where Doug Gottlieb went wrong last night.

It wasn’t that Gottlieb’s joke was partiuclarly offensive. To refresh, it was just after 7 p.m. and CBS’ NCAA studio show, with host Greg Gumbel and analysts Greg Anthony, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley –all of whom are black — as well as Gottlieb, who is Jewish white, appeared onscreen. Gumbel introduced Gottlieb second, after Anthony, and his very first remarks were, “I’m just here to bring diversity to this set, give kind of the white man’s perspective.”

Watch as both Gumbel and Smith look behind themselves as if to say, “Where did that come from?” Anthony stares intently at the desk and mumbles, “Okay.” Barkley chuckles.

You can’t spell “Gottlieb” without G-L-I-B. Anthony’s reacting as if Doug just swiped his credit card (oh, too soon?)

It was not THAT offensive. Not at all. It’s just that Gottlieb is not only the token white guy, he’s the token never-played-in-the-NBA guy. He’s the guy on that set with the least big network experience. It’s kind of like being the weakest member of the gang at a rumble and calling out the other gang. Know your place.

Also, Gottlieb noted just before the joke that this was a time of “the cream rising to the crop.” So, he was already distracted by the joke he was about to unleash.

A few moments later, as Kenny Smith attempted to pull a Denzel Washington and safely land this upside-down aircraft (he is “The Jet”, after all) before it completely crashed and burned, Gottlieb interrupted to ask why everyone was so uptight. Smith handled this expertly: “You jumped right in,” said Smith, then waited a beat. “I’m free, I might add.”

Finally, let’s note that the entire show began with a thinly disguised ad-parading-as-an-inspirational intro for the film “42”, which is being released by Warner Bros., a sister company of CBS. The film, of course, traces the route of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier back when baseball was America’s No. 1 sport. I don’t know if Gottlieb was attempting to leapfrog on that moment or not, but either way it just made his quip more ironic and awkward.

2. Syracuse topples No. 1 seed Indiana with its 2-3 zone. When Jim Boeheim has long, athletic defenders like these and they’re really motivated, the Orange look unbeatable. The Hoosiers commited a season-high 18 turnovers, Cody Zeller texted his agent midway through the second half to inform him that he’d be remaining in Bloomington one more year (!), and Tom Crean did an awful job of preparing his team. Next time, Hoosiers, let Norman Dale lead you to the Sweet 16.

Block-a-Zeller Center? Stay in school, Cody. Stay in school.

By the way, thanks to The Big Lead for this video of the Crean-Boeheim postgame handshake. Is this the part where the NCAA and conference commissioners remind us that coaches are molders of young men?

3. The fortnight in billionaire hedge-fund trader Steve Cohen. Last week, agrees to pay $600 million fine to SEC to make insider-trader allegations disappear (if you haven’t been paying attention lately, Lady Justice’s new slogan is “What’s in YOUR wallet?”). Tuesday: purchases a Picasso painting for $155 million. Purchases a $60 million home in East Hampton without even seeing it in person first. Mr. Cohen’s shopping spree should be all the proof you need that a reliable penis-enhancement surgical procedure remains a decade or two away.

“More is better” — It’s not complicated

As this story argues, both HSBC and now Mr. Cohen have figured out a way to avoid prosecution/incarceration. Make the US government a financial offer it can’t refuse. America: Where freedom is now for sale.

4. A Forbes survey proclaims Austin, Tex., as the second-fastest growing city in the United States. And, who knows, the Lone Star State’s capital might be No. 1 if all those Longhorn basketball players were not fleeing. Yesterday Sheldon McLellan, who led Texas in scoring most of the season, announced that he would transfer. Backup guard Jaylen Bond announced he would transfer earlier this month while sophomore poing guard Myck Kabongo, who led the ‘horns in scoring but sat out 23 games due to an NCAA suspension, likely will turn pro.

Austin powers up the rankings of fastest-growing cities

5. In this piece on the Today show travails, Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times gets it exactly right: Ann Curry should never have been promoted to No. 1 anchor in the first place, Matt Lauer is very good at his job but he won’t recover soon from how Curry was excised from the show, and Savannah Guthrie is good enough and pretty enough but she just fails to stand out.

Earlier today Lauer tried to have some fun with the controversy by tweeting, “@savannahguthrie Me storming out of the office after your middle finger salute”. Maybe he was just trying to offer the white man’s perspective to this controversy.

Meanwhile, CNN just announced a morning news team of Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan (me neither). Right now, if I had a network, Anderson Cooper would be the face of my morning show. And I’d actually ask Julia Boorstin of CNBC to be the co-host. Either her or Kate Upton.

Reserves

Two friends in the business, Jerry Palm and Doug Tammaro, were responsible for the best laugh Twitter has provided me in quite some time last night. Tweeting during the second half of last night’s Indiana-Syracuse contest, Palm, a CBSSports.com guru and Purdue alum, tweeted, “When was the last time Syracuse got a shit off?” Tammaro, a Sports Info Director at Arizona State, instantly fired back, “Damn, where is autocorrect when you need it?”

I’d show you Jerry’s tweet, but he has since deleted it. I’ve got to admit, my friends disappoint me. It was a Twitter misfire (like yours, Josh Elliott), but you NEED TO OWN IT. Your jobs are to inform people. When you erase the news you make, how do you hold others any more accountable for doing the same? It’s a little thing, but never erase the record. The record is what it is.

Richard Deitsch is correct. This is a solid read.

If you want to make money in the next two weeks, bet against the Phoenix Suns. Every night. And bet on the Sacramento Kings.

REMOTE PATROL

Sweet 16 Hoopage

CBS  and TBS, 7 p.m.

Watch as Doug Gottlieb opens with a Crucifixion joke! Michigan-Duke is the game I’m most looking forward to (The Fab Five vs. Hurley/Laettner contest from 1992 will be referenced) (UPDATE: My bad: As you know, Duke faces Michigan State while Kansas plays Michigan), but we’ll all be watching to see how close FGCU can make it against the Gators. Will Amanda Marcum get more screen time than Julie Boeheim did last night? And if their husbands’ teams meet later in the tourney, can someone arrange a walk-off?

Dunk City may be the fastest-growing metropolis in America

XXX