Starting Five

1. Kansas City Chief linebacker Javon Belcher murders his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, who is also the the mother of his daughter, then kills himself. All in a 20-minute time span. The espn.com headline on Saturday read, and for far too long, “K.C. Player Commits Suicide.”

2. Sports Illustrated names LeBron James Most Visible Athlete Who Can Sell Newsstand Issues Sportsman of the Year. Good job, good effort, SI. LeBron led not one but two heavily stacked teams  (Miami Heat, Team USA) to championships in 2012 and who would not want to read that inspiring story? Good dude, consummate professional, but uninspiring choice. And frankly, we’re pissed that SI did not reveal its choice to Jim Gray.

               In a pre-taped piece for CNN (which means, they actually had time to edit it), James spoke about his Olympic teammates on the USA’s gold-medal winning squad and said, “I mean, this is a sorority we have.” While appearing on CNN at 9:52 a.m. (CNN and SI are besties, because they are both owned by Time Warner) SI managing editor Chris Stone referenced Miami Heat GM and serial-hair goop aficionado Pat Riley as calling King James “BOAT” for “Best Of All Time”. Frankly, at this stage of his career, this is a preposterous thing to say (and the aforementioned “his” may refer to Stone, Riley, or James). Michael Jordan. Wilt Chamberlain. Bill Russell. Begin there.

Then move on to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Maybe Oscar Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. LeBron is simply a physical marvel who creates contact and draws offensive fouls. He is an outstanding defender and open court player but he may not even be the second-best shooter on his own team.

3. News from Newscorp: The Daily, the iPad app news publication from Fox, announces that it is folding. Which is odd, because while you can fold a newspaper, you really cannot fold an iPad. Yes, we toiled at The Daily from before its February, 2011, inception until the final day of July. It was a terrific idea conceptually, but in a marketplace where consumers can get similar products for free, and worse, are increasingly accustomed to being able to do so, it had an uphill climb akin to the one we profiled in one of our final pieces.  Jesse Angelo, the managing editor of The Daily, will now fail upward become the publisher of the New York Post. Because it pays to attend Harvard (and, not kidding, even kindergarten) with Rupert Murdoch’s son and be the best man at that son’s wedding.

 

 

4. Georgia comes within about eight yards of defeating Alabama in a classic SEC Championship Game, within eight yards of earning a berth in the BCS National Championship Game. Instead, the Bulldogs exercise Les Miles-ian clock management but without the same serendipitous results and lose. From NCG to out of the BCS bowl series, even though the Bulldogs were ranked No. 3 entering the contest. You can thank the Delanyization of college football for yet another myopic format decision. We did like Mike Rosenberg’s gamer column for SI.com, by the way. Michael, have you made an appointment yet as to when you would like to swing by South Bend for some helmet polishing?

5. “Dustin Hoffman, Robert Plant and David Letterman walk into a room…” Tootsie, Dave and Led Zeppelin were honored at the Kennedy Center Awards last night and we cannot wait until this hits the airwaves. For us, and we’ve written this before, Letterman is the single-biggest career influence in our lives (it’s his fault). Late at night in college dorms across the nation, some students smoke weed or drink beer or hang out with chicks –some even do homework — but for us, in the mid-1980s, we caught Letterman on NBC when he was in his absolute irreverent prime. He completely changed the game. Allow me to go Bill Hubbell on you and give my opinion of MY Top 5 favorite (not synonymous with “best”) Led Zep tunes and Dustin Hoffman roles.

LED ZEPPELIN

1. Over the Hills and Far Away

2. Whole Lotta Love

3. Stairway To Heaven

4. Ten Years Gone

5. Kashmir

True story: A high school classmate, who was in many of my same classes but was never a close friend, was obsessed with Led Zeppelin. This kid was also heavily into working on our school newspaper, The Roundup, and would work Led Zeppelin song titles into many of the The Roundup’s headlines. I recall a football story, for instance, that was titled “No Quarter…In the First Quarter.” Why do I share this with you? Because years later this classmate resurfaced when he became the founding editor of a magazine that gained, well, a little bit of traction here in the States. My classmate’s name is Keith Blanchard and the magazine that he helped create is called Maxim. And now you know… the rest of the story. I’m Paul Harvey. Good day.

 DUSTIN HOFFMAN

 1. The Graduate

2. Rain Man

3. Tootsie

4. Marathon Man

5. Midnight Cowboy

 Reserves

Kirk Herbstreit refers to Northern Illinois’ inclusion in the Bowl Championship Series as “an absolute joke” on ESPN. Cross off DeKalb, Ill., as another city in which the Herbstreit family may not set down roots.

In truth, the joke is that the BCS clings to conference champions as automatic qualifiers. You’re Jim Delany, see, and you’ve decided that the best way to induce fans to trek to Indianapolis in early December to see the Legends vs. Leaders smackdown is to make the prize an automatic berth in a BCS bowl. Because how else are you going to sell out Lucas Oil Stadium and negotiate a killer TV rights deal with ESPN?

 

And you are a fairly influential voice in all things BCS, so this is what happens with other AQ conference qualifiers as well. (and, to be fair, the SEC began this whole conference championship game travesty back in 1992, but at least their contest almost always delivers in terms of drama and quality).

Hence, in a sport where the totality of the journey is supposed to trump (until 2014, at least) all other considerations, the last Saturday of the season plays a disproportionately large role. I don’t know where Nebraka’s collective heads where at on Saturday night, but save for one magical Taylor “Swift” Martinez scramble (vintage Roger Staubach, by the way), the Huskers failed to appear. By a score of 70-31, or what the kids call an “epic fail.”

Hence, a 7-5 Wisconsin team that has underachieved all season will now be rewarded with a Rose Bowl berth.

And what if Georgia Tech had beaten Florida State?

 

The BCS gets  1 vs 2 right– most of the time — but why must the other four major bowls be compromised by conference commissioners’ concerns? If a mid-major team is truly special (and NIU, while 12-1, may fall short in that category), then sure it deserves a berth (See Boise State in its first Fiesta Bowl). This season, however, the next eight schools after Alabama and Notre Dame, or at least the schools I’d like to have seen play in the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange would have been:

1. Stanford

2. Oregon

3. Kansas State

4. Florida

5. Georgia

6. Oklahoma

7. LSU

8. Texas A&M

Did the Big Ten have a (bowl-eligible) team that finished with two or fewer losses? No? Too bad. Did the Big East or ACC have anyone who garnered a memorable win versus a highly-ranked opponent outside its conference this season? No? Too bad. You can argue for Florida State over any of the last three teams on this list, but the Seminoles certainly did not distinguish themselves more than this trio.

Bowl lineup?

Rose: Stanford vs. Florida

Fiesta: Kansas State vs. LSU

Sugar: Oregon vs. Texas A&M

Orange: Oklahoma vs. Georgia

Is there anyone reading this who would rather watch the current bowl lineup (Rose: Stanford-Wisconsin; Fiesta: Kansas State-Oregon; Sugar: Florida-Louisville; Orange: Florida State-Northern Illinois) over mine? Isn’t the idea to put fans in seats, to generate eyeballs focused on television sets? Why is this so difficult?

 *****

A near-daily struggle at MH is the dilemma between being candid and not burning bridges. Today, we are choosing the former. I will leave it to you to decide if this is sour grapes or just a guy trying to assess a situation that might have been handled better.

Our topic: The Daily.

I worked at The Daily for 20 months and I will always believe in the product, if not its ability to compete in a world in which Twitter and 24-hour news exists, all of which can be had for free. This morning I happened across a story about the venture’s demise and the news that manging editor Jesse Angelo would now become publisher of the New York Post, as I noted above. Rupert Murdoch, the grand poobah of News Corp and a man I admire sheerly for his ambition and tenacity, used a phrase “under the digital leadership of Jesse…”

Which brings us to pretzels. I love pretzels. Bavarian pretzels with plenty of salt. And I often had pretzels on my desk, which was oddly situated right on the main drag of The Daily (as was Dan Wolken’s; the two of us were bumped into more in our seats than we ever were traversing Times Square). At the ends of the rows of desks, so that we were basically in the one hallway.

Now, I was always happy to share my pretzels when someone passed by and asked. Jesse was one such person who occasionally required that 7 p.m. salt lick and would ask me, politely, if he could have a few. This happened, at most, half a dozen times during my tenure.

But here’s the funny thing. Through 20 months of employment at The Daily… having written more stories for The Daily than all but a handful of our writers — and being, I believe, the only writer who had pieces run in our Sports, News, Entertainment and even Op-Ed sections, as well as being the only writer who appeared on a network TV show on our behalf (Today, weekend edition), those few times were the only moments Jesse ever addressed me. And never by name. I’m not even sure if he knows my name now.

Why do I write all of this? Because in my current place of employment — not journalism — working for a man who has more employees and whose day/night is far more crazed/hectic/stressful than any editor’s, and whose business is WILDLY successful, I’ve learned this very important lesson: You cannot ask your employees to care any more about your product than the care you show toward them.

And, for what it’s worth, I personally wrote Mr. Angelo a note along these lines a month or two ago. I hope that he becomes a better leader. After all, that’s what people in positions of leadership should be obliged to do. And I’ll always be happy to share my pretzels with him. Although I would hope he adresses me by name.

But it would have been nice if he had done that then. Or if he had solicited not just my, but many talented writers’ and editors’ opinions, while he had the privilege of running The Daily. And not just the opinions of the small cabal whom he already knew when he landed the job. I don’t know if The Daily would have met a better fate, but I do know that the people who worked there would have pursued the challenge of maintining its heartbeat with far greater passion.