Starting Five

1. Ola, Brazil!

The United States officially qualifies for the 2014 World Cup with a “Dos a cero” (2-0) defeat of Mexico in Columbus (and a subsequent 2-2 draw between Honduras and Panama). The Yanks have now defeated Tricolores by that identical score in this identical city in 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2013. All World Cup qualifiers.

Mexico, for its part, blamed its masseur for being unable to stop a header by Eddie Johnson in the 48th minute and another goal by Landon Donovan in the 78th minute. Mexico’s keeper’s name, by the way, is Jesus Corona, which was actually Anthony Wiener’s back-up choice for his sexting alias.

If you want to win friends and garner newfound approbation amongst your “football” friends, here are the nicknames for national teams globally.

2. “C-A-…Gimme a Minute…May I Phone Terry Bradshaw?” * 

In the wake of Sports Illustrated’s first installment of its five-part series, “The Dirty Game”, co-authored by Thayer Evans and George Dohrmann, Evans’ former FoxSports.com colleague Jason Whitlock appears as a guest on a radio show and launches an ad hominem attack on him. No, better, Whitlock launches a Will Leitch-on-Darren Rovell-style “This guy, and I don’t mean this personally, is the worst human who ever lived” attack on Evans, noting that “…He’s simpleminded. He’s a hack that can’t write. This isn’t personal, I promise. I have no reason to dislike Thayer Evans personally, and I don’t. But I’ve read enough of his work this guy isn’t qualified for this job…”

The former-and-now-once-again ESPN columnist also alleged that Evans is unable to spell “fat”, um, I mean “cat.” (See, that was a cheap shot).

Whitlock went so far as to say “there’s no way I’ll read this”, which is an intelligent thing for a journalist (who earns high six figures) to say when assessing the work of a fellow journalist. It seems that if you are going to attack Evans’ credibility in a public forum –and I stood next to Thayer at a pre-Fiesta Bowl press conference in 2011 when former Oklahoma State wide receiver  Justin Blackmon literally refused to shake his hand or acknowledge him — then you’d better be prepared to provide at least one or two examples of his unprofessional or unethical journalistic behavior. If you cannot, or are unwilling to, maybe you keep your thoughts to yourself. Otherwise, you may sound like a blowhard.

(Whitlock wisely chose not to attack Dohrmann. Dude’s won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, after all.)

Of course, maybe Whitlock showed his hand before he even got to discussing Thayer.

 “I’m tired of people pointing out how corrupt participants are in a system that has been proven to be corrupt,” Whitlock told “The Sports Animal”. “The NCAA amateur system is corrupt, so we should not be surprised that there is corruption among the participants. I would like to see more of the focus on the NCAA…”

Whether or not you agree with Whitlock, does that mean you simply place your head in the sand when a report such as this one surfaces?

Curiously enough, Doug Gottlieb penned an interesting and introspective contrarian piece yesterday that, coming from a former scholar-athlete, opened a few eyes yesterday. It was aimed at the Johnny Football Drama, but it may as well have landed in Stillwater, too.

* Bully for you if you caught the Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson reference in the hed.

3. Passing Questions From Saturday Night

First, I hate to be the guy to spoil a Fat Guy Touchdown, but why wasn’t Fresno State penalized for having an ineligible receiver downfield on Austin Wentworth’s hook-and-lateral TD versus Cal Poly (Oh, and why do you run this play versus Cal Poly?)? Wentworth lined up at offensive tackle and there was a split end on his side of the field –you line that guy up at flanker, one yard behind the line of scrimmage, and this is not an issue –rendering him ineligible. I guess you can make the argument that he ran parallel to the line of scrimmage before the ball was thrown, but if you look at the video, that’s highly disputable. I’d say he was downfield by more than one yard when the football was thrown. Your thoughts?

Second, my buddy Dean asked a valid question about Devin Gardner’s pick-six in the end zone by Notre Dame’s Stephon Tuitt. Did the referees ever toss a flag for intentional grounding? My reply was that there was no reason to do so, since someone (Tuitt) caught the football. Dean’s answer was, What if the replay booth had determined that the pass by Gardner, who was not outside the tackles and who clearly threw the ball to avoid a safety, had NOT been caught by Tuitt? Would it have been an incompletion? Or would it have been a safety? If the refs did not throw a flag –and the only ref seen in the video clearly does not — they cannot penalize Gardner post facto, can they? Again, your thoughts, please…

And, yes, future generations will read that No. 98 threw a pass that was intercepted by No. 7 and simply assume that it was a typo.

4. “Cheap Grace”

Good morning. Yes, it is the 12th anniversary of 9/11. It is also the day after President Obama delivered a national address attempting to foster support in Congress for a strike against Syria (a punitive strike? a surgical strike? Oh, a targeted strike) in response to its chemical weapons attack on its own people.

Anyway, I thought I’d turn you on to this compelling conversation (brought to my attention by a Twitter follower) between Phil Donahue and retired U.S. colonel Andrew Bacevich. A graduate of West Point and a Vietnam veteran, Bacevich served in the U.S. Army for 23 years…and had a son die while serving in Iraq. If you bother to click the link, PLEASE either stay to the end or fast forward to the 29:00 mark, where Bacevich introduces the term “cheap grace.”

The idea is that sporting events –and other aspects of American life, but certainly sports more so– provide a venue for contrived means in which to say that we support our troops without us ever doing anything more than cheering on the idea. There’s no actual sacrifice involved, just a feel-good moment that happens to coincide with us spending money to attend a sporting event. Exploitation plus manipulation equals self-delusion.

It’s why a Pat Tillman Tunnel beneath the stands at Sun Devil Stadium makes me pause. Particularly when Arizona State coach Todd Graham — who never met, never knew Tillman — says that Pat Tillman did things “the Sun Devil way.” This is a football program that less than a decade ago had one former player murder another. Was that the Sun Devil way, too? Of course not.

There’s a fine line between paying tribute to someone and appropriating his ideals as your own, and using said appropriation to promote yourself. If Todd Graham has been profoundly moved by the life of Pat Tillman –he has reportedly immersed himself in Tillman biographies, etc. –that is fantastic. But wrapping yourself in Tillman’s glory is a little like wrapping yourself in the flag: you have to earn it before you do so, don’t you?

Again, your thoughts?

5. Clint Bowyer: From Spinout to Spin City

Last Saturday night in prime time you would find Notre Dame-Michigan on ESPN and a NASCAR race from Richmond on ABC. And so it’s even worse that auto racing embarrassed itself on such a national stage.

Late in the Federated Auto Parts 400, driver Clint Bowyer appeared to intentionally spin out. That’s what the ESPN analysts thought. That’s what the in-car video appears to show.

By spinning out and causing a caution flag to appear –here are the Chase Cup consequences and nitty gritty — Bowyer would be able to manipulate the outcome of the race and, because this was the final “regular season” race of the NASCAR season, eliminate Jeff Gordon from making the postseason (i.e., the Chase Cup).

Moments after the accident, two of ESPN’s top NASCAR analystsat the track came right out and said that in their opinions, Boywer intentionally spun out. And these weren’t two jokers. These were NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace and legendary crew chief Ray Evernham.

Yesterday Bowyer visited Bristol and was interviewed twice. This might have had a little to do with the fact that ESPN will televise the upcoming 10 races of the Chase Cup (sort of NASCAR’s playoffs) beginning this weekend and it wanted to address the issue of the sport’s integrity In Bowyer’s first interview, with former driver Ricky Craven, Bowyer was asked whether the fact that he phoned Ryan Newman –who was prevented from winning the race due to the spinout and hence did not qualify for the Chase Cup — to apologize was an admission of guilt.

“Let’s not dig too much into this,” Bowyer replied.

Bowyer later sat with Sage Steele (one of three current or former female Steeles in the ESPN talent cadre) and was asked once more if he had intentionally spun out.

“No,” Bowyer said.

Nobody who knows racing believes Bowyer, though. And Bowyer would be just the foot soldier in this skulduggery if indeed that’s what happened. The real villain is Michael Waltrip, who heads up Waltrip Racing, for whom Bowyer drives. Talk about a dirty game.