Why I'm anti-Mizzou. In one half.

I get funny looks every where I go after telling folks I attended the University of Missouri, but Kansas Jayhawks garb fills my closet and bedclothes cocoon me in the frigid Spokane evenings.

Today's SEC matchup, and specifically the response to the televised championship, have given me further ammunition.

I don't hate Mizzou. I don't hate their fans. In fact, because of my time there, when they're playing an opponent I don't particularly care for (like Auburn), I tend to throw my weight behind them. But it's impossible to continue to support a fan base that can find any possible excuse to say they're disrespected, when the simple fact is they're disrespected because they've never stepped up on the biggest stage.

In the past, it's been the BCS. Or referees. Today, it was the media. In the Tigers' fan mind, they are the greatest, and any possible adversity is evidence of an unjust deity pulling strings in someone else's favor.

Exhibit A: A tweet that gained traction sometime around halftime Saturday:

Drinking game: take a shot every time the commentators say something anti-Mizzou. Die in approximately two minutes.
— Average MU Student (@AverageMizzou) December 7, 2013

I'll be the first to admit that Gary Danielson is a giant douche, and Verne Lundquist is a human dollop of sour cream. I've done it in the past, and I'll continue to do so.

What the "Average Missouri Fan" doesn't want to admit is that Auburn's running game is completely decimating the Missouri defense. Once again, Missouri fans refused to look themselves in the mirror, evaluate themselves and their weaknesses, and admit that maybe they're not the unblemished image of football perfection they think they are.

I don't mean to say every Missouri fan is like this. And I certainly don't mean to imply they're the only fan base that engages in this kind of "wahmbulance" chicanery that afflicts all entitled enthusiasts.

But it's certainly an epidemic I see particularly among those I grew up with and with whom I attended classes in Columbia. You can write me off as a jaded Jayhawker if you must. I'll admit, part of me is dying watching the Tigers on such a big stage the day Kansas basketball lost a heartbreaker in Colorado.

But ask yourselves - if another Missouri meltdown is on the way, whose fault is it?

The best of everything 2012

They've done it.

The New Yorker, in a maddening meta move bound to get your Inception-sense tingling, released a list of the greatest lists on Wednesday. Judging by its placement in Shouts & Murmurs, I'm going to give the magazine the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a wonderfully satirical look at our obsession with creating lists at the end of the year. And not an exercise in forcing my brain to do seven backflips in a row.

Exponentially confounding indices aside, it certainly has been a great year for — well, pretty much everything. I mean, we're still standing here after December 21, so we must've done something right, right? Even though I have several pop culture adventures yet to go on before the clock strikes midnight next Tuesday, I've compiled my favorite things of the past 361 days. Don't go looking under your chair though, Oprah fans. There's no copy of "The Dark Knight Rises" waiting for you.

Favorite news item:

Higgs Boson found

It wasn't the sexiest story of the year. I mean, what could be sexy about a bunch of scientists in a Swiss bunker pursuing the so-called "God particle" by shooting lasers at each other. Actually, that does sound really cool, when you stop to think about it...

What really made the story interesting and my favorite of the year, though, was the attempts by lay journalists to explain what a Higgs boson was. Some failed miserably — and hilariously.

It was also nice to see those billions of dollars actually produce something. Even if it only lasted as long as it takes that impulse of dread to shoot up your spine when you see the bill for the project and the number of countries now in crippling economic straits. But enough of that, this is a best of list!

Favorite read:

"Snow Fall" by the New York Times' John Branch

It's not a story. It's not an infographic. It's not a photo gallery, nor is it a video or a GIS-powered map.

It's all of those things.

The New York Times, as only it can, combines brilliant narrative storytelling with all the bells and whistles the semantic web has to offer, and plops it down for readers, viewers, clickers to enjoy. It's a fascinating piece that is not only interesting in its own right, but shows the direction journalism is likely to go on the semantic web in a way only the most prestigious name in worldwide journalism could pull off.

And audiences responded. More than 3.5 million people have viewed the package as of this writing.

Favorite game:

You Don't Know Jack (Facebook)

There were so many triple-A titles on consoles this year. Black Ops 2. Halo 4. Assassin's Creed 3. Mass Effect 3. New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

And they all got outclassed by a free-to-play, Flash-based game.

You Don't Know Jack has always been a pleasure of mine. I love when the worlds of high and pop culture collide to create a serendipitous mess that questions you whether an item is a piece of Japanese origami or a position in the Kama Sutra. Putting it on Facebook, with new episodes to play every day, was just like sprinkling addictive drugs on a Chicago deep-dish style pizza.

The addition of themed episodes and iPod/Pad functionality only means good things in the coming year.

Favorite sports moment:

Kansas City fans boo Robinson Cano in 2012 Home Run Derby

WAAAAAH!

Here's why Kansas City fans booing Cano was awesome and not classless, as many East Coast-based sportswriters would have you believe:

1. Kansas City fans showed that, even in the midst of another losing season, they still cared about the game of baseball enough to make asses out of themselves on national TV.

2. A Yankee player was subjected to harsh criticism. You know, something they all experience daily from the New York media. Except it was Midwest-flavored.

3. Cano proceeded to go oh-fer after the rousing round of jeering.

Say what you will about the supposed importance of "tact" and "class" in a competition where the goal is to hit a ball over a fence, and that previous champions who were cheered breathlessly were actually steroid-popping cheaters. Watching Cano get what was coming to him was the highlight of an otherwise ho-hum All Star weekend.

Favorite movie: 

Moonrise Kingdom

I know, I know. It's really difficult for me to conceive a world where I don't put The Dark Knight Rises or The Avengers at the top of the list. And, likely, 2012 will be remembered as one of the peak years for the comic book renaissance that has been in full gear for the better part of a decade.

But Wes Anderson outclassed every other title released in 2012, with perhaps his most precocious and accessible film to date, populated with a brilliantly familiar ensemble cast, a fairy-tale like visual style, and another hauntingly beautiful soundtrack. Well done, Mr. Anderson. Well done.

Favorite album:

Fun. "Some Nights"

This was perhaps my toughest choice. I really wanted to give it to Mumford's spirited release "Babel," which follows up "Sigh No More" fearlessly with a bevy of tracks that are just as memorable. Ben Folds Five also released a wonderful comeback album, "The Sound of the Life and the Mind," that made it sound like 1998 in my car all over again.

But Fun hit a level of enthusiasm, catchiness, and lyrical genius that just doesn't let go for the entirety of the album. While the tremendously popular "We Are Young" made my mind dizzy by mid-March with its inundation of every popular radio station and PA system in my general vicinity, the quality of the rest of the album more than makes up for being subjected to replay hell.

Favorite show:

"Boardwalk Empire"

While I didn't love the finale, it's clear Boardwalk Empire, after the death of one of its major characters in Season 2, rebounded with a series-defining season over the past three months. Showrunner Terence Winter took Nucky Thompson to places it seemed inconceivable he'd go three years ago when the show premiered. There was an epic weight lent to the events onscreen, and the decision to crucially break with reality in certain instances left the impression the show could pivot in a heartbeat to unexpected and horrifying territory.

2012 also saw the appropriate end of House, a breathtaking freshman effort for The Newsroom, a lackluster calendar year for How I Met Your Mother, the autumn absence of Psych and a slew of...hmm...reality shows. So, let's not overstep the significance of my favoritism toward Boardwalk.

Oilcan J's Bowl Predictions 2012-2013

As a mild-mannered undergraduate, I began a tradition of making bowl season picks on games I knew absolutely nothing about. Which, I contend, is a practice engaged in every year by sports pundits who do the same. So enjoy another installment of an irregular tradition your family is sure not to care about around the table this holiday season.

Like Aunt Mildred's prune casserole, the bowl predictions return for an irregular holiday season. I'll confess to watching roughly three hours of uninebriated college football this season, which means I saw 2 hours and 58 minutes more of the sport in a cogent state of mind than Lou Holtz. I also missed the prestigious Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. My apologies to all tubors involved.

For now, sit back, knock back some egg nog and enjoy another unqualified clod telling you what to think about sports. Because I know you don't have nearly enough of that in your life.

Picks (winners in bold)

S.D. County Credit Union Poinsettia

 BYU vs. San Diego State 

Beef 'O' Brady's St. Petersburg

Ball State vs. UCF

R+L Carriers New Orleans

East Carolina vs. Louisiana-Lafayette

MAACO Las Vegas

Washington vs. Boise State

Sheraton Hawaii

 Fresno State vs. SMU

Little Caesars Pizza

Western Kentucky vs. Central Michigan

Military Bowl Presented By Northrop Grumman

San Jose State vs. Bowling Green

Belk

Cincinnati vs. Duke 

Bridgepoint Education Holiday

Baylor vs. UCLA

AdvoCare V100 Independence

Ohio vs. Louisiana-Monroe

Russell Athletic

Rutgers vs. Virginia Tech

Meineke Car Care of Texas

 Minnesota vs. Texas Tech

Bell Helicopter Armed Forces

 Rice vs. Air Force

New Era Pinstripe

West Virginia vs. Syracuse 

Kraft Fight Hunger

 Navy vs. Arizona State

Valero Alamo

 Texas vs. Oregon State

Buffalo Wild Wings

 TCU vs. Michigan State

Franklin American Mortgage Music City

 NC State vs. Vanderbilt

Hyundai Sun

USC vs. Georgia Tech

AutoZone Liberty

 Iowa State vs. Tulsa

Chick-fil-A

LSU vs. Clemson

TaxSlayer.com Gator

Mississippi State vs. Northwestern

Heart of Dallas

 Purdue vs. Oklahoma State

Outback

 South Carolina vs. Michigan

Capital One

Georgia vs. Nebraska

Rose Bowl Game presented by Vizio

Wisconsin vs. Stanford

Discover Orange

 Northern Illinois vs. Florida State

Allstate Sugar

 Louisville vs. Florida

Tostitos Fiesta

Oregon vs. Kansas State

AT&T Cotton

Texas A&M vs. Oklahoma

BBVA Compass

Pittsburgh vs. Ole Miss 

GoDaddy.com

Kent State vs. Arkansas State

Discover BCS National Championship

Notre Dame vs. Alabama 

Sticky Floors and Salty Popcorn-"The Fighter" Review

The Fighter does several things a great sports movie needs to do. It introduces us to a down-on-his-luck journeyman with one last legitimate shot at glory. Mark Wahlberg deftly steps into the shoes of Mickey Ward, a welterweight who has been used one too many times as a "stepping stone" (read: fighter pulverized by others en route to their own title shots) by his overbearing family. Ward's mother and manager, Alice (Academy Award-Winning Supporting Actress Melissa Leo) has a little trouble releasing the umbilical cord, and proves completely inept at getting her younger son into a fight that will allow him to rise in the ranks of his weight class (can someone please draw me a diagram that explains who is the champion of the world in boxing in a weight class anymore? It's like trying to figure out what "spending cut triggers" mean). Meanwhile, Mickey has to deal with his older brother Dicky (played with heart-rending pathos by Skeleto-ahem-Christian Bale), a crack-addicted former fighter himself whose unwillingness to let go of the past (he "knocked down" Sugar Ray Leonard in the late 70s) is only surpassed by his inability to be counted on when Micky needs him.

Add to this bubbling cauldron of familial dysfunction the presence of local law enforcement as Mickey's new trainer after Dicky lets him down for the final time and goes to jail, and a love interest (Amy Adams) with her own thoughts on how Micky can reach the top, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster. Which is precisely what happens about an hour into the movie. Then, a metaphoric cake delivered to his old crack buddies by Dicky himself and one porch-top confession of guilt later, and everyone is back behind Micky again as he fights for the unlikeliest of titles against a far superior foreign fighter.

Is all this sounding familiar? That's because it is. The crack addiction angle with Dicky is perhaps the most interesting and emotionally-realistic part of the film, and undoubtedly as the credits roll the audience gets the sense that Dicky's sobriety is a much more significant accomplishment than David O. Russel's titular hero. It's unsurprising, as a result, that Mark Wahlberg didn't get the dap most that he deserved for portraying Mickey. The movie never really seems to be about him exclusively, even when that last triumphant punch is inevitably thrown. This is no fault of Wahlberg's-the character quite simply goes through most of the movie without a spine. When he finally does develop the backbone to stand up to his brother and mother, it is the actions of others that allow a peaceful resolution and all of his loved ones standing in the corner behind him. "The Fighter" is less a testament to the resiliency of an unsung warrior (even though the obligatory training montage in the middle of the film wants to force you to think otherwise), but more about the wily-nily Cinderalla story that emerges as a result of forces beyond Mickey's control.

The Fighter is an excellent sports movie. It is also a stylish and endearing journey down a well-beaten path, with lots of pretty performances to look at. This "based on a true story" feature somehow still winds up playing out like a Disney miracle (with a larger portion of drug use and language than another Mickey would find acceptable), and less a true character exploration of the titular hero. We should expect more from Oscar-nominated motion pictures.

Verdict: 3.0/5 stars

Why Roger Clemens Mistrial is Good for the American Sports Fan

As a preface to this argument, I'd like to mention I've spent the past week at the Institute for Humane Studies' summer seminar on Liberty & Society. While there, I learned a great deal of economic and political theory that has been burrowing its way into my brain and worldview over the past several days. This essay is an attempt to synthesize some of those concepts with a familiar topic. Feel free to punch holes anywhere you see fit.

Boy, the justice system just can't catch a break this month, can it? First, we let a clearly-guilty murderer off the hook for the death of her infant daughter, and just a few weeks later federal prosecutors gloriously blunder the perjury case of Roger Clemens. We're talking Mike McDermott after 48 hours on a poker run-levels of incompetency. Howard Bryant, of ESPN.com, reports an attorney familiar with the workings of the federal court and judge who presided over the case called the mistake of producing disallowed evidence "a colossal" and "total screw-up." Like Barry Bonds, Clemens' numbers post-40 defy description. A record of 61-33, ERA totals routinely hovering around 3.00 (including a mind-numbing 1.87 in 2005 with Houston), and a K/BB ratio (around 3.00 as well) that makes Luke Hochevar (1.50 this year) look like a straight-out-of-penal-league Rich Vaughn. If anybody could be proved to be juicing, it had to be Clemens, right?

So thought the government. The Congressional hearing on steroids in baseball in 2005 was ostensibly conducted (as Rep. Henry Waxman suggested) to address the public health concern of America's children using steroids. By publicizing the proceedings and subpoenaing the biggest names in the sport, the committee and the media instead sensationalized the issue to construct a kind of kangaroo court against baseball, with several big-name players being brought before the committee and ducking questions by invoking their Constitutional rights (or, in the case of Rafael Palmeiro, offering themselves as sacrifices to the Ironic gods). George Mitchell's 2007 report to Congress was requested by baseball commissioner Bud Selig after the release of Game of Shadows, an investigative look at steroid use in baseball in the late 90s and early 2000s, was published in 2006 by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. In effect, Selig "passed the buck" on his obligation to keep baseball clean to the federal government, allowing political agents to use the platform to further their interests (and attain fame) and spend taxpayer dollars in the defense of what became a kind of public good in the aftermath of the scandal.

The government's involvement, as requested by Selig, was based on several assumptions. The first is the aforementioned link between steroid use by professionals and among the nation's children. The reasoning, of course, was that America's youth baseball players would need to begin using human growth hormone to keep up with their peers early on. This approach assumes a public smear campaign of baseball's venerated stars would be more effective in limiting steroid use than policies of individual athletic associations and schools. The government, in this instance, becomes the whistle-blower. I do not argue that perhaps a whistle-blower was necessary in the issue of drug use among the nation's young athletes. What I am arguing is that perhaps the federal government was not the most effective agent in doing so. Certainly, this appears to be the case in the bungling of the federal perjury cases against Bonds and Clemens, which have resulted in merely one minor conviction against Bonds despite the exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money spent in trying the cases.

Second, the government's involvement as a protectionist agency indicates that the American people wanted baseball to be clean. Such an argument is based on the moral presumption that our athletes and athletic contests should somehow uphold the values we would like to see reflected in society: honesty, integrity and fairness. In actuality, sports are a product served to a consumer base that generally acts with little (if any) of these ideals in mind. Tavi Sojo's Bleacher Report study "The Effects of the Steroid Era on the 2008 Baseball Season" comes to the conclusion that the fans simply didn't care about truth and fairness, as long as balls were flying out of the park. In 2003, the BALCO controversy broke and so began the now 8-year period of steroid skepticism that lingers in almost all media coverage of baseball (just ask Jose Bautista). Yet, fan attendance from 2004-2007 continued a climb to unprecedented levels. However, policies instituted by the findings of the Mitchell Report drove home runs down and pitching and defensive statistical categories up in 2008, according to Sojo's numbers research. As a result of these developments, average attendance dropped for the first time in five years. That trend has continued through 2010, though of course it's important to remember that the recent economic downturn has probably also impacted attendance figures. Having said that, it doesn't appear as though "making the game clean" has had any significant impact on the number of people coming out to the park each night, and potentially drove away fans looking to see the long ball more often.

This, of course, gets at the heart of the third and most important assumption from an economics standpoint that led to government intervention in rules-making in Major League Baseball: that fans simply do not act rationally, and that in their love of offense they were driving players to harm themselves through the use of banned substances. The government, in this scenario, had to step in to protect the players from themselves and the voracious demands of power from growing numbers of baseball enthusiasts. I will refer to this presumption as "The WWE Effect." Quite simply, the fear follows the line that, if players continued to respond to the desires of fans who want to see 600-foot home runs, they were going to wind up looking like Triple H or Mr. Perfect instead of, say, this. In effect, government intervention becomes a safeguard against an arms race or, say, housing bubble in which the human cost would be seen in debilitating physical handicaps for players later in life who used PEDs during their playing days. Government, it could be argued, would speed up the process of demonstrating the dangers of these drugs by dragging the names of the players using through the mud and encouraging fans that they were "harming the game" to save themselves from physical issues later in life.

Warning: "Aviator" reference- "Way of the future..."?

But was the government campaign even necessary? Before charges were even brought against Barry Bonds, his appearance in Game of Shadows led to massive protests against his campaign to break the all-time home run record. When Bonds did eventually break the home run record, it was under a cloud of suspicion that dwarfed the achievement compared to the euphoria that ensued when Hank Aaron topped Ruth's record. Perhaps as many people attended the Bond's home run game as Aaron's, and certainly the amount of money Bonds made in his playing career towers over Aaron's career earnings. But baseball has a traditional element to its marketplace that could have just as easily attained the same (or better) outcomes preventing youth usage of steroids as government involvement. Fans may act irrationally with their money, returning to a sport as a method of release after, say, a protracted strike (or lockout) that resembles, to them, an argument between millionaires and billionaires. But the dependency of sport on the fan encourages minor rule changes, better television deals and increased levels of comfort at modern stadiums. The sports we watch today are better covered, more competitive, and provide higher levels of entertainment than the sports of fifty years ago. The same will be true in another fifty years, as long as government gets out of the way. Perhaps the most recent governmental blunder in the handling of the Roger Clemens' perjury case will make fans realize we don't need the federal government to install order in the games we are passionate about-we can do it ourselves.

New Is Always Better...?

So says Barney Stinson. And the American people in 2008. But like all versions of democratic consensus, this mantra doesn't come without qualifications. Last night, I attended "Throwback Tuesday" as my first adventure to Kauffman Stadium of 2011, and watched the Royals drop their American League-worst 42nd game to the Arizona Diamondbacks, 7-2. The experience was as jarring as you would expect a retrospective housed in a newly renovated (for $250 million taxpayer dollars) stadium to be. The t-shirts handed out at the turnstiles featured the 60s-inspired Mr. Royal steam-pressed across the back (or, if-like me-you see a too uncanny resemblance to a human egg in Mr. Royal, a strange and abstract link to the Reagan Youth abstinence movement of the early 80s); a 1980s cover band played in the bar in left field (was a little Talking Heads too much to ask for, really?); concession prices ($2 small soft drinks and hot dogs) hearkened back to the early 90s (though, of course, beer still required a donation of a large portion of one's liver-an ironic bit of autonomous self-destruction in-and-of-itself); and the $7 outfield seats were, I suppose, a throwback to the mid-2000s, because Hy-Vee seats were still $5 well into my high school days.

Maybe I'm nitpicking a clear promotional move intended to get fans out on a Tuesday night for an interleague match-up against a team that is younger than Justin Bieber (the ploy worked, sort of-attendance was less than 50% of capacity, but much higher than the usual 12,000 the team manages to scrape together on average for weeknight home games). But last night indicated, to me, a team without a sense of its own historical identity. Picking and choosing what elements of the past the team wanted to play up to attract fans indicates, to me, a puzzling disconnect with the surprisingly strong historical roots of this franchise. Instead of the organist playing the tunes of the summer of '85 and beyond, I got some sort of attempt at Kings of Leon played over classic videoboard games like the baseball race around the fountains and the "What's the Call?" game that I remember vividly from my youth (when Frosty Malts cost less than a semester at Brown)
.

Do you guys remember this? Yeah, neither do I. And I still didn't see any of it last night.
(Image by Allan Chow.)

All of the trappings of the new K, and of the new marketing strategy employed by the executives, seems to be geared toward one purpose-updating the baseball environment to take attention away from the product on the field. The Royals were one of the most successful franchises in baseball from their inception in 1969 to their World Series title in 1985. The city and the fans still remember this. Every year, when the Royals start well, an intoxicating level of excitement grips this town and its media. Yet, there always remains a sense of "when is this all going to go wrong"? It's kind of like hedging your bets on the latest Adam Sandler movie-you know it's going to ruin your evening, and somehow Steve Buscemi is going to be involved, but you're not quite sure when it's going to hit you. Last night's Steve Buscemi was Wily Mo Pena, whose name indicates he should be attempting to drop an anvil on the Road Runner instead of hitting a 400 foot blast that all but negates a stellar night at the plate from Alex Gordon.

There was nothing wrong with spending a gorgeous, mild Tuesday summer evening in Kansas City taking in a ball game. But new didn't mean better to me last night. Perhaps, for Kansas City fans, the message should be, "New is always mind-numbingly sensational." To use an anachronism (which seems especially poignant for this entry), the horses pulling the carriage won't make a lick of difference if that carriage is still a pumpkin. The fans deserve more than squash on the field. A lot of Royals (Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler) have bright futures ahead of them. Let's hope new starts to actually mean better, and the Royals can finally focus and merge their old, historical identities and that of this new team. I don't think I could stand a disco club in right-center next year.

What does catching a football behind one's head have to do with morality?

On Wednesday, a national group advocating against gay marriage released a video featuring former New York Giant wide receiver David Tyree (you may remember him) arguing against the current legislation before the New York State Assembly that would legalize matrimonial unions between gay couples. In the video, Tyree reportedly opposes gay marriage on both spiritual and secular grounds, arguing that such a practice is an affront to God and that gay couples cannot "teach something that [they] don't have," insinuating that children of gay married couples will suffer a life in which their gender identity is forever confused.

Let's leave the rhetoric for a second here, because quite honestly, these are statements we've heard a thousand times before (apparently, if you give the gay community a cookie, the depraved scoundrels in our country will want a glass of milk). The more important issue raised by Tyree's recorded statement has to do with the way both sides of the debate have allowed the controversy to play out before the American people. These are two sides talking at--rather than with--each other, to the detriment of the gay community's purpose. Gay marriage has become, in this country, nothing more than a P.R. battle between two sides who believe themselves to be morally justified. The gay community carries the burden of illustrating why marriage between their members should be morally justified, based on the history of the argument in the United States and its conservative form of Christianity that has dominated the vote well through the 20th Century (and, some would argue, the 21st, with George W. Bush's large evangelical voting bloc). Instead, movements like the NOH8 campaign, among others, have turned the issue into a "whose celebrities are better" competition with their opponents, rather than substantive debate. This allows the opposition to, in turn, respond in a superficial manner, so that the story here becomes what rhetoric a Super Bowl hero is using in a video, rather than the implications of the legislation before the New York State Assembly.

Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X weren't national celebrities before they spoke out against racial injustice. If the gay community wants to work toward public awareness and support for what I believe to be a moral cause, they need to attack their opposition in a moral and substantive way, rather than get Whoopi Goldberg to shake a finger at the camera. The time is ripe for such a movement, too, as the media blazes with tales of members of the straight community co-opting the persona of the gay community superficially for personal gain. Strong central leadership should take action to illustrate that the moral positions of the gay community cannot so easily be counterfeited, and that the current legislation would extend moral rights to homosexuals that have been unjustly denied them for so long. Another Ellen Degeneres PSA alone isn't going to do that.

A Goober Does Sociology

This morning, I happened across a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times written by Sheryl Gray Stolberg that attempts to explain why political sex scandals occur almost exclusively to male office-holders. The simplest answers--that men outnumber women in Congress by a margin of greater than 4:1 and that positions of political, economic and social power long-held by men may increase a need for a "quick-fix" self-esteem boost enabled by meaningless intimacy--are addressed in Stolberg's piece but ultimately cast aside in favor of a type of moralistic argument that illustrates, in conjunction with several recent high-profile scandals running wild in the media, the necessity of a public myth that our pop culture heroes still possess the possibility of being motivated completely by altruistic means.

Stolberg quotes Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, who states, "The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody." To selectively quote Walsh here may do a disservice to the research conducted by the Center. Certainly, in reality, there are men and women present in the current Congress who have to defy this simple dichotomous explanation of the motivations of the sexes in politics. Yet, Walsh's statement illustrates vividly the optimistic American belief that our politicians can be altruistic servants of the common good, as originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers. In those days, the Presidency wasn't a position one aspired toward, it was a grave responsibility that was assumed as a kind of selfless public service. Washington didn't step down in 1796 to go on an extended tour of lucrative speaking engagements, and in some ways the statement made by Walsh and the outcry against Jonathan Edwards' current campaign finance scandal (leaving the despicable nature of his personal infidelity out of the equation) indicate a revulsion to the current career-minded politician and a nostalgic desire to return to the days when servitude and integrity were placed before advancement.

A few weeks ago, I posted a review of David Foster Wallace's long essay "Up, Simba" to this blog in which the author grappled with this very issue much more adeptly than I could hope to. Arguably, the sex scandals of the past few weeks have only intensified Wallace's observations about the salesman mystique of the modern American politician, and Walsh's piece published this morning throws a gender-specific slant on the kind of nostalgic hope present in the American public that politics can still be self-less and not ironically self-aware.

It occurred to me, as I was reading Walsh's article, that politics are not the only arena in which we (both the public and those in positions of fame) cling to perhaps outmoded archetypes. The current scandal at Ohio State, already covered on this blog and to the point of nausea in the sports media, contains all the elements of similar scandals occurring in the political arena. Jim Tressel cultivated a public personality of selflessness and virtue, while accepting a salary bloated to levels of Solomon-like excess and turning a blind eye to the ethical violations of his athletes. The current year-long backlash against LeBron James (of which, I admit, I am a passionate participant) is fueled by some kind of ancient code of honor that honestly should never have lasted past the free agency era in any sport. Collectively, as a society, we are aware of these virtuous archetypes and use them as helpful narratives to keep us from becoming, as this past week's episode of South Park so poignantly reminded us, "cynical assholes."

We need these symbols of unquestioned virtue in all aspects of our culture, whether true or false, to keep us from believing that our society is in an apparent moral and spiritual decline. And, certainly, there are instances in which the narratives prove true. At the same time, we should not allow a comforting story to obscure the truth about ourselves and what the world around us has become because we are afraid to admit the consequences brought about by social media, frenzied election cycles, or the unrelenting pursuit of wealth in a global capitalist economy.

THE Ohio State Blackeyes

As news of Jim Tressel's resignation broke this morning, I believe I was somewhere around Paducah, Kentucky fleeing the cicada-infested Middle Tennessee Valley for the friendly confines of Kansas City for the summer. Luckily, I picked up a feed of ESPN Radio and the Colin Cowherd morning program somewhere in between three guys trying to sell me Drano in Spanish and an angry and misguided evangelical pastor explaining the inherent sin present in miniature golf on the AM radio dial in rural Kentucky. Cowherd conducted several thought-provoking interviews this morning (as he is, I'll admit, wont to do) in response to the resignation, and the positions of three men in particular ran the gamut of the subsequent public response I have gleaned from perusing the sports blogosphere.

As expected, Kirk Herbstreit came quickly in defense of both the program and Tressel. Arguing that Tressel's actions (or, rather, inaction) was inspired be a conscious effort on his part to "protect his student-athletes," Herbstreit further went on to say that both the coach and the team would be able to land on their feet, and Ohio State would still have a successful year with a QB who is likely to take a shelling from the local media for driving out an extremely popular head coach and an interim head coach who has zero experience in the position at any level, and certainly not as head coach of one of the premier programs throughout Division I college football. In other words, Herbstreit gave the predictable interview of a hopeless, partisan fan--the same illustration of either a subconscious or poorly hidden favoritism that often bleeds into his work for Gameday throughout the college football season on ESPN. I will grant Herbstreit, however, the honor being the least senile of the two-man broadcasting team of himself and Brent Musberger for Saturday Night Football. But that's a lot like bragging about being more sane than the guy who has shoes made of pennies on the street corner and still believes in the tooth fairy.

Robert Smith (not "Close to Me" or the guy who killed Mecha-Streisand, the former stand-out running back for the Minnesota Vikings in the early 90s and current college football analyst for ESPN) went to the other end of the spectrum, painting Tressel as a lone disingenuously pernicious influence on the sanctity of college football that needed to be dealt with in this manner. To his credit, Smith admitted that the kinds of infractions that allegedly occurred at Ohio State are probably occurring simultaneously at institutions throughout the country. However, Smith argued that Tressel's blatant disregard for protocol showed favoritism to his starters, rather than a genuine attempt to protect all of his student-athletes from the disciplinary hand of the NCAA, and that his lie of omission exceeded by degree numerous other recent and historic violations of NCAA rules.

To his credit, Colin voiced his own opinion as somewhere in between the unquestioning reverence of Herbstreit and the jilted antagonism of Smith, both Ohio State alums. As the old saying goes, this is likely where most of the truth lies. More will inevitably come to light as the investigative piece on Ohio State athletics is published in Sports Illustrated in the coming weeks and the NCAA intensifies its probe into the program (ESPN is already reporting the NCAA will launch a separate investigation into potential individual violations by Terrelle Pryor). As just another in a series of high-profile blackeyes for college football in recent years, however, Tressel's resignation and the subsequent sanctions on the Ohio State program simply illustrate a sign of the times in college athletics, and illustrate (just as South Park so brilliantly did last week) the lack of easy answers in the designation between amateur and professional as determined by the NCAA.

LeBron and America: The Saga Continues

Though the results of ESPN's recent phone poll don't definitively state that LeBron James has gone from hero to pariah in the sports world, they do indicate what casual fans have noticed all year--there's really no substance behind the Miami Heat. There's no compelling drama in favor of this team, only an intense desire to see them fail. James hasn't helped his own cause very much, prompting Jason Whitlock to summarize the view of several prominent NBA personalities and sportswriters in his exclamation that LeBron "looks, feels, and sounds like a lost cause today."

Of course, this is precisely what David Stern and the NBA want. Following the decisive Game 5 of the Bulls/Heat series on Friday, Nielsen reported the Eastern Conference Finals match-up (aired on TNT) was the most watched playoff series in the history of cable television. In a display of mind-numbingly prolonged obliviousness, James indicated after the Game 5 win that he believes "the hate" will go away after the Heat win their championship and move on.

Moving on in sports requires contrition. Look at the major scandals that have occurred over the past several years in the sporting world. First, steroids in baseball. The contrite, honest Andy Pettite enjoyed a decent and dignified retirement during this past offseason. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure the blustery and agitated Roger Clemens continues to get the cold shoulder in service at Denny's. Tiger Woods took a long time to come clean about his infidelity, and still hasn't completely owned up in words to the pain he put his wife and children through as a result of his philandering. Currently, he's enjoying a (to put it mildly) tenserelationship with the public and the media and struggling through the lowest point in his athletic career.

I am not suggesting that James' betrayal (and, let's face it, that's really what it was) last summer comes anywhere close to the rule-breaking or moral bankruptcy of these other athletes. But the American public, while it forgives, does not forgive unconditionally. A championship this year might help heal some of the ill-will toward James (and render Jason Segel's familiar joke in the trailer for the upcoming film "Bad Teacher" a little less effective), but it's not going away overnight. This attitude is just another example in a long list of immature behavior from the self-anointed "King."

A Sticky Floors and Salty Popcorn Special Feature-Top 10 Greatest Sports Movie Villains of All-Time

Here's a list I composed a few years back and posted over on the ESPN.com blog pages. This is very important work I'm doing, people!

10. Alejandro "Butch" Heddo
Film: Rookie of the Year

You only see him once or twice during the film. But as he's grinding the wood on the grip of his bat, shouting "This one's for mommy! MOMMY!" I got chills. Honestly. He also saved John Candy from having the dubious honor of "fattest guy in the film." Take a look at the tape. It's there.

9. David Simms
Film: Tin Cup

He took Roy's car after schtoinking his ex-girlfriend! Of course, in the end Costner gets the girl and Crockett lays up like the pansey he is. This is in fact the Merriam-Webster definition of justice.

8. Mark (Annie's brother)
Film: Field of Dreams

Again, someone's trying to convince Kevin Costner he's not worth anything. And again Costner proves him wrong. Not only is Mark a smartass realty broker, he also interrupted James Earl Jones' beautiful speech about the history of baseball. And he almost killed Ray's daughter! What a jerk.

7. Ernie McCracken
Film: Kingpin

Played to perfection by the incomparable Bill Murray. Not only did he cause Roy to lose his hand, he then mocked him for it years later. "I didn't want to lose to a guy with no hand, you know?!" Bonus points for a terrific comb-over job.

6. Baxter Cain
Film: BASEketball

Am I the only one who's amused that the great Robert Vaughn's 100th film was Trey Parker and Matt Stone's often overlooked genius sports comedy that includes no fewer than five completely homoerotic sequences? "You're excited, feel these nipples!" Anyway, hopefully inclusion on this list will help make up for the loss of the priceless autographed Ty Cobb baseball bat.

5. Rachel Phelps
Films: Major League, Major League 2

Anytime a former Las Vegas showgirl takes over the team and tries to sell it to another town with Bob Uecker in the booth, you're top 5 material. Did anyone else think Rene Russo was hotter in these movies than Margaret Whitton? Just me? Okay then, moving on...

4. Ivan Drago
Film: Rocky IV

Killing Appollo Creed in the first five minutes wasn't even his biggest offense. He's a Commie for God's sake! Inexcusable pre-1989. And he inspired that terrible and often-mocked montage towards the end of the film. DRAGO!!!! Oh, and by the way Sly, that's a really fantastic speech you made at the end of this film. What I could understand of it. We-es CAN change!

3. Judge Smails
Film: Caddyshack



"It's easy to grin, when your ship comes in, and you've got the stock market beat. But the man worthwhile, is the one who can smile, when his pants are too tight in the seat."

Gets some points for having a smoking hot niece and for pulling off that incredible hat, but come on? Treating Spaulding like he did just for being an asthmatic screw-up and his incessant racism put him in the top 3 (Colored boy?!). Now, how 'bout a Fresca?

2. Shooter McGavin
Film: Happy Gilmore

"Nuh-uh. I called it first."

The tour pro whose right arm is just a little longer than his left and a proclivity for end-rhyme threatened to burn Happy's grandma's house down and then relieve himself on the remains. He also wasn't aware Grizzly Adams had a beard. I think that puts him near the top of our list, no?

1. Jack Parkman
Film: Major League 2

"Obviously Taylor's thinking...I dunno WHAT the hell he's thinkin'!"

It's really no contest. With a name like Jack Parkman, how can you NOT name him number one? The fact that he played for the Indians for most of the season until it was apparent they were terrible and THEN jumped ship to Chicago is reason enough to hate the guy, but to suggest that Rick Vaughn's new pitch should be called "The Masturbator"? In the words of Harry Doyle, "he's still a dick."

Honorable Mention: Hercules ("Sandlot"), Warden Hazen ("The Longest Yard"), White Goodman ("Dodgeball"-would have made the list if this character wasn't an exact replica of Tony Perkis from "Heavyweights")