STARTING FIVE

Horowitz with the co-hosts of the show he co-created…

1. At Horowitz End

What really happened between Jamie Horowitz and the Today show that allowed them to fire him just 10 weeks into his gig, while he was still in the “listening tour” phase of his stewardship of NBC’s morning show (he was technically due to start on Dec. 1)?

I don’t know for sure, but I’ve come across Jamie in various ways over the years –he was offered a reporter position at SI when I was there and turned it down to become an Olympics researcher for NBC Sports (a more interesting gig).

Allow me to don my Rona Barrett Wig for a moment and remind all of this small item of trivia. Jamie and Kevin Wildes, both in their late thirties, teamed up to create and foist such shows as SportsNation and First Take upon us (on a more enlightened planet, they’d be imprisoned, as opposed to promoted, for this). They also were the executive producers behind the launch of Olbermann. They are, as this story suggests, close friends.

Kevin Wildes is married to Libby Geist…whose brother is Bill Geist…who is an anchor-in-waiting on Today.

And now you know –doffs Rona Barrett wig, dons Paul Harvey wig–the rest of the story.

I like Jamie well enough –he’ll never win a Modesty Contest (but then, either would I)–but he’s smart and has obviously done well. I point out the familial connection just as a way of noting that he didn’t walk into Today blind. I imagine he knew the layout and wanted to make some changes. Page Six suggests he wanted to replace Savannah Guthrie with Hoda Kotb which, on the face of that alone, if it’s true, is grounds for termination.

Another report, however, suggests that both Natalie Morales and Willie Geist had been told they were fired -assumedly, a Horowitz-baked idea. If so…AWKWARD. Especially since before Today, Horowitz last worked with Wildes on Olbermann.

According to The Big Lead and others, Lauer heard about personnel changes Horowitz wanted to make and then went over his head to Turness. As a former producer of Heads Up Poker, Horowitz must realize that Lauer re-raised him and went all in. And won.

No one is paying the author of this site (Wildes, when interviewing me for a job, referred to MH as “a wonderful resume”) seven figures to fix Today, but to me it’s fairly simple. Stop trying to be like the sophomoric clowns at Good Morning, America, and remember what got you there. Matt Lauer may be cranky, but he’s the best in the business. Surround him with fewer sycophants and let him do his magic until he hangs up his blazer. Keep Al, because Matt and Al work well off each other. Find a female –if one is not already there–who can hang with them (I’ve been telling you for years, Peacock: It’s Paula Faris) and then just get out of the way (or beg Katie Couric to return).

CBS This Morning has figured out a winning formula by going in the extremely opposite direction of GMA. Although PLEASE, CBS, stop insulting the audience who are smart enough to tune into you by referring to your news as “Real” news. We get it. That’s why we’re there. The Calculus prof doesn’t refer to calculus as “real math with numbers AND letters.”

Meanwhile, whither Josh Elliott (an old comrade from SI)? He’s just too damn handsome and smart to be getting back-up reps in practice, but you can bet that Messrs. Costas and Lauer are less than thrilled by his presence and neither are quite ready to retire to the 19th hole. Josh, like Jamie, is an ESPN alum and I imagine there are a few at 30 Rock that wonder if he’s the right person for the job, especially if an actual cataclysmic news story takes place.

If it’s not too late, NBC, you should not free Willy,

The funny thing to me is that, looking to the future, NBC has had its guy for some time now: Horowitz’s friend’s brother-in-law, Willie Geist. He’s likable, intelligent and doesn’t look as if he cares too much what his Q Rating is. If I were Deborah Turness, the woman who sacked Horowitz, I’d stop worrying about the ratings so much and start worrying more about producing an authentic show that she can be proud of. She’s doing it all backwards.

Or I’d just ask myself, What would Jack Donaghy do?

p.s. Curiously, there’s nothing in Deadspin about Horowitz’s firing. Here’s a dirty little secret about Deadspin: it plays favorites. If you look closely, you’ll see stories they otherwise would naturally pursue but have chosen not to. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but I’m sure Horowitz’s firing is far less newsworthy than a golden retriever’s agility test. 

2. Love at First Bite

Oh, Don Lemon. No, you di’unt!

Remote Patrol

North Carolina at Duke

ESPN 7:30 p.m.

The Birds, or as it was originally known, “That’s So Raven”

I’m on record as saying that ACC football north of the town of Clemson, S.C., officially bores me. However, you’ll want to (maybe) watch this to see if the Tar Heels can upset the Blue Devils, which would open the door for Georgia Tech to face Florida State in the ACC title game, which would be a far better game. Or, you could just tune in to TCM and watch Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

STARTING FIVE

Biblical…

1. Snowvember

Buffalo Billizard? The lake effect snow coming off Lake Ontario (checks map of Great Lakes…chuckles once again at “Huron”...) dropped as much as SIX feet of snow on some parts of Buffalo on Tuesday, which can only mean that God does not want to watch the Jets at Bills on Sunday.

2. Wonder Woman

Ace attorney and ketchup (and Pop Tart) enthusiast…

Tougher than the rest (again)

…Amelia Boone won the World’s Toughest Mudder outside Las Vegas this weekend, which translates to how far one is able to transport themselves over and through and in between and under obstacles over a 24-hour period. Boone, a GFOB, has now won the WTM twice.

Only five or so weeks ago the Chicago-based barrister was undergoing arthroscopic surgery for a problem meniscus, and only three weeks ago she tweeted that she was having a fun Friday night “aqua jogging” as the extent of her exercise. And then she wins the WTM again. A collective Wayne-and-Garth “We’re not worthy!” in salute to yet another boon for Amelia.

3. Dan Jenkins’ (FAKE) Obituary

i.e. “A Poor Lie”

The beloved golf scribe will be interred in Amen Corner…

Former Sports Illustrated senior writer Dan Jenkins, one of the most gifted writers that the magazine’s pages ever showcased (perhaps THE most gifted) has passed at the age of 84. Jenkins, who had attended 45 consecutive British Opens before illness caused him to miss last July’s, was eighty-FOOOOORE! He will be missed by most everyone…with a possible notable exception.

4. Minute By Minute

Lili Von Shtupp dedicates her signature tune (“I”m Tired”) to the Cavs’ big 3

So, LeBron has a point. Three of the NBA’s Top 5 leaders in Minutes Played are The King (39.1), Kyrie Irving (38.4) and Kevin Love (37.0). You can imagine LeBron wanting to shake David Blatt and scream, “You’re not in Tel Aviv any more!”

5. Love Me Nots…

…invade NYC!

Our favorite courtroom judge-in-real-life/Rocker grrrrl!-by-night, Nicole Laurenne, and her band, Love Me Nots, are invading the East Coast this week (they’re from Phoenix; picked a great week to experience a different climate). We braved 25-degree weather and the L train to Williamsburg to catch them at the Grand Victory last night.

If you are in Long Branch tonight, Philly Thursday night, or New York City Friday night (or Dover, N.H., on Saturday night), I highly recommend seeing ’em. They’re kind of like Pretenders-meet-The White Stripes with a smattering of early B-52’s and a pinch of Grace Slick.

Here they are performing “End of the Line.”

Oh, and if you happened to be in the ultra-swanky UES Carlyle Hotel on Monday night and wondered who was that girl who hijacked the piano, it was Nicole.

p.s. And a Happy Birthday to the band’s kickass lead guitarist (and Nicole’s husband) Michael Johnny Walker.

Remote Patrol

Spurs at Cavs

ESPN 7 p.m.

James (not pictured here) is 2nd in the NBA in scoring at 27.1 ppg

Our Susie B. Special, as the aformentioned small “b” big three take on the Championship Three of Duncan, Ginobili and Parker. The defending NBA champs have only been the third-best team in Texas thus far, but they’re still ahead of Los Cavs at the moment. I’m just waiting to see which/how many Hall of Famers Pop chooses not to play tonight.

STARTING FIVE

“Orrange who?” “Orrange you glad I buried this trey?”

1. Amber Orrange Alert

Amber Orrange, Cardinal. That’s a colorful name, no? Last night the Stanford senior found herself ridiculously wide open with less than two seconds remaining in regulation and Stanford down three. Her teammate, double-teamed, found her, and Orrange buried the trey to force overtime.

Stanford had trailed by 10 late in the second half. In OT the Cardinal trailed by 5 but recovered to win, 88-86. Too many defensive lapses by the Huskies, who just never could put the Cardinal away, though they had plenty of chances.

So what? So, Stanford ends UConn’s 47-game winning streak. A few years back on this same Maples Pavilion court, the Cardinal ended the Huskies’ record 90-game win streak. Tree-mendous.

2. Buckle Up…for Shark Jumping

Greg Louganis never stuck a landing as well as this van will…

Listen, I’m willing to believe that brain-eating zombies have infiltrated Georgia (and I’m not even talking about the show) or that Carol and Daryl never worked at an inn in Vermont run by Bob Newhart, but when you put those two characters in full Thelma & Louise mode in a van that is precipitously hanging over an overpass, and then send them over with nary a scrape, well, can I please return to Arthur Fonzarelli on water skis?

We’re asked to believe that a white van does a perfect 360 front flip and that the two characters–strong as they may be–walk away only with scratches? C’mon. In fact, as this terrific story illustrates–with actual video evidence– the van landed upside down, which would have made C&D zombie gorp.

On the other hand, Walking Dead has now beaten Al Michaels (Seated Dead) and Cris Collinsworth three weeks in a row now in the 18-49 age group. So maybe next week we’ll have a Butch & Sundance-style leap off a cliff…

3. The Return of the Holderness Family

This video left little margarine for error

We like the Holderness family of North Carolina. Handsome dad Penn, beautiful mom Kim, matching daughter and son. They’re like the family Mad Men pitches were built around. Anyway, last year they went viral with “Christmas Jammies,” so why are any of us surprised that they’ve returned for a Thanksgiving song that parodies the biggest pop hit (sorry, Taylor) of the past two months?

And how could we leave you without adding “Baby Got Class?”

4. Fuh Grizzle

Courtney Lee’s alley oop with 0.04 left is being disputed.

It’s not that bizarre to see a basketball team based in Memphis open the season 10-1. It’s just odd to see one do so that is not coached by John Calipari or Josh Pastner. The Grizzlies moved to a league-best 10-1 by trouncing one of the other top teams in this nascent season, Houston, 119-93. This is what happens when you keep a solid nucleus (Marc Gasol, Z-Bo and Mike Conley) around for a few years and none of them are named Carmelo.

Of course, Memphis could wind up going back to 9-2 if Sacramento’s appeal of their win last week is upheld. But if I’m Sacramento, I squandered a 27-point lead. It should never even have come to that.

In last night’s win, seven Grizzlies scored in double figures but none had 20. As a coach, I want that every night. Much healthier or a team than Kobe’ing.

5. Roger Goodell’s Double Jeopardy

Granny will not be playing for the remainder of the season, either

So Roger Goodell suspends former NFL MVP Adrian Peterson for the remainder of the season without pay (Do you hear that, Peter King? WithOUT pay) telling him that he has shown “no remorse” for the switch-beating of his son.

I’m no huge fan of RG (RG IV?), but here’s why in a Twitterverse he cannot win. If he does exactly what he did, the tweeps accuse him of a double standard as it reverts back to Ray Rice. But if Goodell does anything less, then the tweeps remind all how comically inept and insensitive the NFL is on domestic violence.

Remote Patrol

Casablanca

TCM 8 p.m.

Our favorite college football coach? Larry Fedora

Some classic films are like eating vegetables (Citizen Kane, anyone?). But not Casablanca. The gang at Rick’s Cafe are as entertaining, witty and sardonic as any you’ll find. The dialogue is fantastic, the plot is tense and tight, and the characters unforgettable. With the exception of one flashback, the entire story takes place over the course of two (or is it one?) nights. This is pure ultimate nachos. And when you remember that this film was released at the advent of World War II, it’s even more bold. Great love story, great thriller. You must remember this…

STARTING FIVE

1. Horrible Losses, 2

Not sure the last time Notre Dame was a 17-point home favorite and lost…

Within a span of eight days the Irish trailed by 31 and wound up surrendering 55, the most points allowed since the Miami debacle in 1985, and then projectile-vomited away an 11-point (should’ve been 12-point) fourth-quarter lead at home to a 3-6 Northwestern team. I’m not sure if the Irish miss Joe Schmidt’s play more than they miss Joe Schmidt’s brain, but they sure as heck miss Joe Schmidt.

(Forgive my saltiness, people; just emerged from a 90-minute subway ride that ordinarily takes 20 minutes; I’m in homicidal mode at the moment).

Since 2007 the Fighting Irish are 16-15 in games in November and 1-4 in overtime games, all of which took place in South Bend. They’d be 0-5 in those OT contests if refers had spotted both Bennett Jackson and Chris Brown wearing the identical number, 2, during Pitt’s field goal attempt in 2012.

What can Brown do for you?

The horrible losses include but are not limited to…the first loss to Navy in 43 years (though the Middies did have the better team), a 2008 quadruple OT loss to a 5-2 Pitt team in which the Irish allowed the tying TD with 2:22 left…a 2008 loss to a 2-8 Syracuse team in which the Irish blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead…and a 2009 OT loss to a 4-5 UConn team in which the Irish allowed the tying field goal with 1:10 to play.

To be fair to Brian Kelly, the above were all Charlie Weis losses. In Kelly’s tenure the Irish were 13-4 in November before Saturday, with all four losses coming on the road and two of them to solid Stanford teams. Only last year’s loss at Pitt was somewhat grating, and that was the game in which Stephon Tuitt was ejected early.

Saturday’s loss to the Wildcats, in which the Irish committed four turnovers, two of them within 7 yards of the goal line…in which they basically gave away a four-point swing on extra points…on which Matthias Farley made a great INT in the end zone that most DBs would’ve turned into a pick-six, but in which the Irish came out of with no points, in which Notre Dame let a 3-6 team Lazarus itself out of an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit, was haunted by the Ghost of Charlie.

The most inexplicable defeat of the Brian Kelly era, and also the most unforgivable.

Meanwhile, is it too soon to get started on those “An Oral History of Northwestern’s 2014 Win at Notre Dame” pieces?

2. Melvin and Todd

Bo Pelinin was the only Husker able to stop Melvin on Saturday.

Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon rushes for an FBS-record 408 yards in just three quarters against a Nebraska team that entered the game having allowed just two 100-yard rushing games (111 to Michigan State’s Jeremy Langford and 128 to Northwestern’s Justin Jackson) this season. I like that Gordon had the time to set a new record, versus a legit D, and still partake in “Jump Around.” He is now a legitimate contender, if not frontrunner, for the Heisman…

…meanwhile in Athens, erstwhile Heisman/Grange favorite Todd Gurley tears his ACL in his first game back since his signature suspension. The Dawgs crushed the Fighting Malzahns, but tough moment for the Gurley Man, whose college career is likely over. Coming not even a week after Marcus Lattimore retired at age 23, it makes us all wonder yet again how come the NFL blocks players –particularly running backs–from entering the league earlier.

You know MH loves the Gurley Man. Hate to see this…

Finally, I think the only way to beat Florida State is to either 1) let them get an early lead or 2) mind-control them into believing the second half is the first. The Seminoles rebounded from a 16-0 deficit at Miami to win. They’ve trailed on the road in ACC games this season by 16 (Canes), 17 (NC State) and 21 (Louisville) in the first half, and of course have won all three. They’re the really smart kid who starts studying on the morning of the test and still does better than you do (except they also commit felonies while doing so). We hate that kid.

Also, yes, Duke, you beat Georgia Tech, but the entire world outside of Durham and Tallahassee wants to see Paul Johnson’s team take on the Noles for the ACC title. So, please, Duke, lose one of your remaining two games.

The Medium Happy 8: Florida State, Alabama, Oregon, Miss. St., Ohio State, TCU, Baylor, Ole Miss.

3. NEAL RUN

Bigfoot, maybe; Equatorial Kundu, definitely not.

Last night’s The Newsroom was an Ethics lesson, as Maggie chose to do right, Neal chose to do what he believed was right (What is the greater good?), Reese argued that it’s okay to be a douchebag if you’re on the side of the angels, and Don and Sloan outright lied to one another (who knew they’d have such terrific chemistry?).

There was some A-plus banter between Will, Neal and Rebecca, and the “Get me a Dr. Pepper, please,” line, though you saw it coming, was worth a chuckle. I wanted Will to go into a rant and yell, “You don’t tell me what to do, Sampat, my movie opened No. 1 at the box office this weekend!”

Also, I love that Kat Dennings goes from 2 Broke Girls to 2 Annoying, Bratty, Billionaire Twins.

4. The Jonas Brother

New New England running back Jonas Gray goes for 199 yards and 4 TDs as the Pats take out the Colts. I’m still trying to get my head around Jonas and Sergio Brown getting multiple mentions by Al Michaels on a prime-time NFL game…am told that the last time an NFL RB went from no career rushing TDs to four in one game was in 1921 when Herb Henderson of the Evansville Crimson Giants did so (and you too are now searching for their throwback jersey).

Also, as Scott Van Pelt tweeted, it was fun to watch Rob Gronkowski go “full meathead.”

5. “I Can’t Believe the News Today…”

U2 lead singer Bono falls off his bicycle (he needed one more than a fish does?) in Central Park, where the streets do have names (West Drive and East Drive), and had to undergo arm surgery. So one way or another (wait, wrong band) it was a Sunday, Bloody Sunday and he’ll just have to walk on. This probably happened in the southern section of the park, since I imagine the Angel of Harlem would’ve protected him above 96th Street.

Reserves

A 51 year-old Canadian male, Lawrence Warriner, won the Brooklyn Marathon yesterday. Warriner ran a 2:43.

****

Ava Gardner: Never got a Maxim cover.

I caught Showboat on TCM last night. It was one of the first great musicals, Ava Gardner is one of the most beautiful women ever to appear onscreen (she married Sinatra the year this film was made, 1951; also, see if you notice any resemblance to Jessica Biel), and you really cannot top “Ol’ Man River.” , sung here by William Warfield. The reprise, at film’s end, is more accessible.

Artie Shaw: Yes, that’s a clarinet in his hands and he is happy to see Ava and Lana

By the way, Gardner had previously been married to both Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw. The latter was a bandleader who also married Lana Turner. You marry Ava Gardner and Lana Turner, you’ve got to have some incredible game.

Remote Patrol

No. 1 UConn at No. 6 Stanford

ESPN2 9 p.m.

I’d put the 6-8 Lutz in the post. She knows blocks.

Breanna Stewart is the best women’s player in college hoops, the closest thing to Diana Taurasi since D left Storrs. The Cardinal counters with senior guard Amber Orrange, who was also secretly dropped over North Vietnam in the late Sixties. I wonder why Tara Van Der Veer has yet to convince 6-8 Cardinal volleyball player Merete Lutz to join her squad.

STARTING FIVE

Today’s edition is being typed on an air-gapped computer for your protection.

1. A Humble and Polite Request to QUIT YOUR BITCHING!

For years a good number of people who follow and claim to be obsessed with college football spent half of every autumn bitching about the BCS while throwing out irrelevant arguments such as the corruption of bowl committees (as if they ever had a thing to do with choosing the two teams that played for the national championship). Anyway, your author was of the idea that he did not want to see any new wrinkle that would compromise the college season from Labor Day through Thanksgiving and that he feared a four-team playoff was the equivalent to unbuttoning the top button on the blouse (or jeans) that would lead us to an 8- or (heavens!) 16-team playoff.

Well, guess what? We have a four-team playoff this year and I’m man enough to admit that I love it. And while I hope it remains at four, I think the significant lesson we can all learn in this Twitterverse, Hashtag, FOX News world is that it’s okay to concede that you have changed your mind, and that it does not mean all of your views are worthless or that you’re dumb enough to DVR Parenthood or anything like that.

I like the four-team playoff because, contrary to what I first worried about, it appears to enhance Sept-Nov. (what simpletons would refer to as “the regular season”) and it does nothing to douse the fuel of hypothetical cross-cultural arguments about who is better than whom when there is no actual empirical way to answer that. There is even more chaos now with very, very, very little lost in terms of how elite a team must be to contend for the championship.

I like it. There.

Of course, you cannot please everyone. So now Mike Mayock wants to see 16 teams. And there are others who want to see conference champions win automatic berths –because some people will never be happy until college football is every bit as boring and sterile as the NFL. No, people! What makes this fun is knowing that if you live in Tuscaloosa, you are competing against the people in Eugene or Norman. Even if you don’t play them.

Now, like I said, some people are never satisfied. You give then Notre Dame at Florida State and Arizona at Oregon and Arizona State at USC and Alabama at Ole Miss and TCU at Baylor and TCU at West Virginia and Auburn at Ole Miss and (have I made my point yet?) and they tweet you, “I also want games in December that are worth watching” while someone else tweets you, “I objected to those who thought playoff would solve everything. It doesn’t. It just brings new problems.”

To the first tweet, I am reminded of the Louis C.K. riff  (4:55) about God looking at people who arrive at heaven with great expectations and saying, “That place you just left? Earth? It was pretty damn great. You people are never satisfied and honestly, you’re not worth My effort.” I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist of it.

You want December games worth watching? Maybe go put up a Christmas tree. Or go out and get some exercise. Or take a moment to think how lucky you are that THIS is what you are bitching about. I don’t mean to get all Sinead O’Connor on your ass –yes, every argument should be viewed within its own prism, not in the realm of “but look at all the starvation…” — but maybe to get “December games worth watching” we’d be giving up Sept., Oct. and Nov. games worth watching because there would no be as much at stake.

As to the second tweet, “solving everything” will never happen in sports. Nor should it. I’m reminded of the 2011 NFL season, when the 9-7 New York Giants made the playoffs but the 9-7 Tennessee Titans did not (the Giants won the Super Bowl). Or the 2010 NFL season, when the 10-6 Green Bay Packers made the playoffs but the 10-6 Giants did not (the Packers won the Super Bowl).

And yet no one ever seems to have a problem with these obvious flaws in the NFL’s system –not to mention the manner in which UConn men’s hoops has won two national titles in the past four years– because we are a nation of sports fans addicted to the “P” word: playoffs. As long as there’s a playoff, and as long as we include as many teams as logistically possible, people see this as more objective, and to hell with all the games that came before.

Which has never made an ounce of sense to me. So someone’s going to get all bent out of shape because there’s a chance that an 11-1 Baylor team will make the Football Final Four ahead of say, 10-2 Alabama (or 11-1 Mississippi State). But no one gets upset if the 9-7 Titans are omitted from the playoffs because the prevailing sense is, “Well, with that record, they obviously were not good enough to win the Super Bowl,” a belief that might have merit if not for the fact that in that very year another team with an identical record WON THE SUPER BOWL!!!

Okay, I’m at that point now where I’m like Kramer holding up his arm at Jerry and he’s fed up to here…

2. Are You SHAW You Want To Stick With This Story?

So ESPN broadcast a prime-time game between Cal and USC last night, and coincidentally a story penned by Bill Plaschke, who writes for the Los Angeles Times but probably pockets almost as much money annually from ESPN as an Around The Horn bloviator, appears in which USC safety-captain-heroic-tale-fabricator Josh Shaw breaks his silence and explains what really happened.

Oooooo-kay.

Oh, and nothing to see here concerning Mr. Plaschke’s connection to ESPN and the timing of this story. Please move on.

Read and judge the story for yourself. It’s closer to the truth in that there are no drowning nephews involved and there is a girlfriend and a leap from an apartment building. But it does not come across as Mr. Plaschke doing a very good job of being justifiably skeptical of a man who already has demonstrated, vividly, that he is capable of lying to your face.

As Andy Staples of SI tweeted, “The story Josh Shaw says is the real one is just about as bizarre as the fake one.”

3. Welcome Back, Taibbi

Alayne Fleischmann. No, her brother is not a doctor in Alaska. #JokesThatWorkedBetterIn1990

I don’t care how it happened and I don’t care why it happened (although I assume it went something like this: Rolling Stone: “How does it feel…to be on your own…a complete unknown…no direction home…like a…” Matt Taibbi: “Rolling Stone?”) I just know that my favorite pissed-off journo, Matt Taibbi, is back writing for Rolling Stone and exposing Wall Street vampire squids. #FridayNightReads

4. Legalized Gambling? You Bet!

You may Gamble, too, Oscar…

Someone besides Cousin Sal (and most sports fans) is espousing the legalization of sports gambling. And that person is NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who argued in favor of it in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. Sports gambling is like weed: everyone’s doing it anyway, so why not regulate it and let American businesses reap the profits.

What I would have loved is if Silver had written, “While I am in favor of legalizing wagering on NBA games, I do believe that Sixers games should be taken off the board for the time being.”

5. Ford Focus

So I’m pretty lucky to work with some people who are (a lot) smarter than I am. Now, do they have to seat these people right next to me so that each day is a reaffirmation in abject humiliation?

And yet, I love it when Alex Nazaryan pretends to be amused or intrigued by a thought of mine, as if he isn’t Will Hunting looking at Stellen Skarsgard and asking, “Do you realize how easy this is for me?!?” (Alex, our resident polymath, did one story on Kevin Love last year and it was as good as any sports piece I’ve read all year).

Anyway, here is Alex’s profile of his favorite author not-named-Philip Roth, Richard Ford (who, incidentally, once wrote a classic work of modern American tragic fiction titled The Sportswriter).

Reserves

Newly appointed TPD chief Louis Renault

The Tallahassee Police are at it again. Thanks to the New York Times for being the booth review of every moment of their corruption. As i tweeted, sometimes I wonder if FSU’s players and the TPD are doing all of this just so that their “30 for 30” will be as good as “The U.”

****

What’s worse: Blowing a 27-point lead to lose the game or losing it like this? Kind of fun to watch the 2-man game Courtney Lee and Marc Gasol played to get Lee open.

Where in the World

Yesterday: Shiprock, New Mexico

Remote Patrol

Five Easy Pieces

TCM 10 p.m.

And make that gluten-free…

I realize I go a little heavy on TCM in this space, but unless there’s a marvelous sports event airing, I’d much rather watch some classic cinema. This 1970 film has Jack Nicholson and the most famous scene in the history of diner-server contretemps.