Dear Betrayed: Tough break. I’m reminded of a time back in high school when Girl A thought I’d said something negative about her to Girl B because Guy C, who liked Girl A, told her so, and since Guy C was one of my best friends, well, all hell broke loose. Wasn’t high school fun? And isn’t it horrifying when you realize you haven’t actually left the pettiness behind? Here is some advice: 1) Don’t blame the “witch” for her actions. Blaming her for doing you in would be like blaming a cactus for pricking you. 2) Keep it moving. You lost out on this job, and I feel for you. Scream and shout for a minute then regain your focus. 3) Understand that other people might randomly go to this woman or someone else in your past who doesn’t think you’re an A+. Develop a response now so you can be better prepared. 4) Ask colleagues to write recommendations on LinkedIn, so that the “witch” is revealed as an outlier. 5) It may not feel like it right now, but you’re better off. If the potential employer could be swayed by one review despite knowing you for years, he probably wasn’t someone you’d want to work for anyway. Good luck, B, and keep your head up. —Bob

Michael would not want any of this

I saw an interview with Larry Bird the other day. I hated Bird when he was playing (Go Lakers) but I certainly respect him now and he was one bad dude back in the day. But he repeated a line that I am sick of hearing from old basketball players, that “in their day,” everyone snarled at each other and there was no waving hello and being nice on the court like there is now.

I guess memory is the second thing to go, after hops. How can Bird or anyone who played in the 80s forget how Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas regularly kissed each other on the cheek before games? Magic, Isiah and Mark Aguirre were buddies who hung out all the time. Rose-colored glass-wearing players (and fans!) imagine everyone was the Bad Boys, shoving helpless opponents from behind into the second row, as Dennis Rodman did to Scottie Pippen. They think anytime anyone went for a layup they got clotheslined, as Kevin McHale did to Kurt Rambis. They think they were tough guys, since Robert Parish rained a flurry of punches on Bill Laimbeer and didn’t even get called for a foul.

Baloney. Go to Youtube and pull up some game footage. Until the 90s, no one, not even the Bad Boys, played what we would today call defense. And that was an era where you could push and shove away from the basket. You could. But no one did it. The lanes were wide open, which is why everyone scored over 100 points and shooting percentages were higher. How can you tell teams were not better shooters back then? Free throw and three-point shot percentages are not higher.

These old guys make all sorts of claims. Michael Jordan says Lebron James wouldn’t be as good “in his era.” I laugh. Michael better hope there’s no technology ever developed that would pluck LBJ from today and put him in 1988. Lebron has skills of a Michael/Magic combo in the body of Karl Malone. He would dominate the league more than both of those players. Michael would not know what hit him.

They think their era was so pure. They jumped on Lebron’s move to Miami, saying stars in their era would never join the enemy. Am I the only one who recalls free agent Moses Malone leaving Houston for Dr. J’s 76ers? Magic never recalls that he joined a team that already had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and…well, if you have Kareem it doesn’t really matter who else is there. Why would he go anywhere? Bird’s first year teammates included Tiny Archibald, Dave Cowens and Pistol Pete Maravich. What would he be complaining about? Still, as competitive as Bird and Magic were, do you think they would’ve quietly stayed put had they not won a title by their seventh years? Magic complained so much about his coach in 1981 that the guy got fired, and this was after already winning one title under the guy. Maybe after becoming friends during that 1984 Converse shoot, the superstars would’ve gone to play alongside each other. Charles Barkley, who joined a 76ers squad that had Julius Erving, Andrew Toney, Maurice Cheeks and Moses Malone, got out of town as soon as he could once those guys were gone.

Fans are just as bad. They say the Golden Age of Basketball ended in 1998, when Michael left the Bulls. No. It ended in 1991, after Magic retired, maybe earlier. Basketball was pretty awful to watch by then, thanks to the style the Pistons made popular and the Knicks took to repulsive extremes. I offer you these as proof: the 1993-94 season and the 1994-95 season. When you think of great basketball, you don’t think of those years. What was different? Michael was gone. One player made the NBA watchable. Without him, the league could no longer hide that it was putting out a flawed, inelegant product.

Basketball is better now. Players have better fundamentals than in the 50s and 60s, when the best point guards (I’m looking at you, Bob Cousy and Oscar Robertson) didn’t seem to be able to dribble with their left hands. It’s better than the late 60s and 70s, when the birth of the ABA watered down the league. And it’s certainly better than the Thug Life 90s. Basketball is like a former beauty queen who got strung out on cocaine then got clean. No, the league is not as radiant as in the 80s, but it’s overcome its Jordan addiction, survived the withdrawal, and is now producing a pretty solid product again. I credit the arrival of Lebron, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony. That draft, much like the 1984 one that brought us M.J., Barkley, Dream and others, infused such a high level of young talent into a league that already had bankable stars; this time it was Shaq, Kobe, Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan rather than Doc, Kareem, Magic and Bird. With the glut of new talent from one draft, the league could survive other years when only a handful of stars, with lesser appeal, came in. (I love Kevin Durant’s game, but for all his talent, he’s not as captivating as Lebron).

But basketball better be careful. Lebron and his co-horts are in their 10th seasons. They are getting long in the tooth. Shaq and Iverson are gone; Kobe and Tim and Kevin Garnett are almost done. If younger players like Chris Paul, Derrick Rose and KD can’t keep the appeal going, the NBA is headed for another post-Jordan-like drought when Lebron waves goodbye.

© 2013 The Peoples News

Hail to the Victors Valiant! Hail to the Conquering Heroes!

I don’t get to sing that enough. I love my alma mater. I bleed maize and blue. But when it comes to football and basketball, my school always lets me down. Two championships in the nearly 40 years I’ve been watching them doesn’t salve my wounds. Thank god for 1989 and 1997. Otherwise, I would be an alum of the biggest loser program among the elite athletic universities.

My U of M sports watching history goes back to 1976, but I know all about our glorious, very long ago past. I have to go back to the 1940s to find a point when we were regular gridiron champs, and trust that I would give anything to have the dominance of the 1901 team. (11-0, and surrendered no points).

But since 1976—and honestly, thank goodness I was too little to witness 1970-1974, when the football team was 50-0 going into its final game, but never won the final game—my team has invariably let me down. The basketball team has been a fiasco since the mid-90s. This year’s squad, so talented, so hyped, has lost the three times I’ve watched them, and then got crushed in a game I didn’t watch, against stupid Michigan State, no less.

Another school would’ve pulled out some of those games. In 1976, my first brush with Michigan sports, the basketball team lost in the title game to undefeated Indiana. I was devastated, as only a little kid can be devastated. But my feelings would’ve been hurt even more had I known this was going to set a pattern. The 1976-77 squad was ranked No.1 for a minute, but did nothing.

Throughout the 1980s, Michigan fielded some of the most talented hoop teams in the country. The ’85 and ’86 teams in particular were quite strong. I don’t expect an NCAA title every year, but both of those squads got dumped by underdogs in the second round of the tournament. The ’87 and ’88 squads fared no better. But bless you Glen Rice for your magical jump shot and Rumeal Robinson for your cool at the free throw line, and winning it all in 1989.

Two years later, the Fab Five arrived at Michigan. As freshmen, they got crushed by Duke in the finals, which would have been tolerable except that Duke whipped the Fabs every single time they played. That was so frustrating. Their sophomore year, the Fab Five reached No. 1 in the rankings. But they didn’t win the Big Ten title, and then Chris Webber called time out in the title game when Michigan had no more time outs, and that was the end of the Fab Five. The program went on probation a few years later and that was it until this overhyped year.

The football team has been an even greater source of frustration. Bo Schembechler is the greatest coach who never won a national title. Here’s a reality: after 1974, Bo coached another 15 seasons. But he never even came close to winning a title. He never again entered the final game of the season with a chance to win it all. Not that it mattered, as Bo only won four bowl games, following the 1980, 1981, 1985 and 1988 seasons. Every year, his teams disappointed.

Bo’s teams found horrid ways to lose. The 1976 squad was No.1 most of the season, led the nation in scoring, and beat Ohio State 22-0 in Columbus. But that victory came after losing on the road 16-14 to Purdue. Then they flopped in the Rose Bowl anyway.

That was a warmup for 1977. Michigan again beat Ohio State, but that came weeks after losing at Minnesota 16-0. To NOTHING. The exceedingly mediocre Golden Gophers shut us out. Unbelievable. And then Warren Moon led Washington to a Rose Bowl triumph over us. This was when my maize-n-blue heart began breaking.

The 1980 team won the Rose Bowl, the first bowl game of Bo’s career, leading to great expectations for 1981. The team opened the season at No.1, but before I could settle into the hype, they lost the opening game to Wisconsin 21-14.

Four years passed before Michigan was relevant in the national championship picture. The underdog 1985 squad rose to No.2 in the rankings just as they took on No.1 Iowa on the road. Naturally, my Wolverines lost on a last second field goal. That was a cakewalk compared to the 1986 letdown. The undefeated team lost again to Minnesota—this time at HOME—forever burning the name Rickey Foggie into my psyche. Just to throw salt into my wounds, they laid a huge egg in the Rose Bowl against Arizona State.

In 1989, the team decided to rid me of my national title hopes early on. Though we were ranked No.2, we lost at home to No.1 Notre Dame in the season opener. Still, we’d risen to No.3 by the end of the season, and promptly yet fittingly lost the Rose Bowl in Bo’s last game.

I thought Bo’s departure might change our fortunes. No such luck. In 1990, we’re No.1 but lost by 1 to stupid Michigan State after the stupid Spartans tripped Desmond Howard in the end zone but nothing was called, and by 1 to Iowa. Two total points ruined our season. While 1991 saw unquestionably the greatest moment in the history of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry, the season was bookended by beat downs from Florida State and Washington.

In 1992, we went undefeated, but with three ties.

1997 was a magical year. Charles Woodson won the Heisman Trophy, we won it all and were national champs. Three years later, we had the makings of another magical year, when the dull, disappointing Tom Brady was finally gone and lefty gunslinger Drew Henson took over as QB. But Drew was hurt to open the season and soon-to-be reviled John Navarre turned in one of the worst quarterbacking performances ever in a lost to UCLA. Drew came back in the middle of the next game and rallied us to victory. The team should’ve been so much better. They lost two games with Drew as the starter, but the offense scored 31 and 51 points in them.

At the end of the 2003 season, we were ranked No.4. Unfortunately, we still had to play a bowl game. The Rose Bowl. Against USC. It wasn’t even close.

After that, the wheels fell off the program until 2006. We were No.2 and Ohio State was No.1. We lost to them by three points in Columbus, but the killer came a little more than a month later, when USC (of course) destroyed us in the Rose Bowl. That was the most devastating loss I’ve sat through, because I knew how rare it was for great Michigan football teams to come around.

Michigan football has won some big games. The basketball team did win a bunch of Big Ten titles before the roof fell in. Michigan football dominated the SEC pre-Rich Rodriguez, regularly beating Arkansas, Alabama, Florida and the rest of them in bowl games. And from that 22-0 victory in 1976 until 2000, our football team owned Ohio State. You will also never convince me that had Yankees owner and Ohio native George Steinbrenner not dangled a million-dollar baseball contract in front of Drew Henson before the 2001 season, the dominance would’ve continued for at least another year.

So I do feel good about one thing: No matter how bad Michigan has been at closing out seasons with victories since 1976, our two titles combined in basketball and football are twice as many as Ohio State has in the same time span. So suck it, Buckeyes.

Go Blue!

• The son of a friend lost his godbrother in the shooting. The little boy, Ben Wheeler, was 6. I’ve heard people blame media coverage, the proliferation of guns, mental illness and a lack of Jesus for the shooting. I don’t blame any of them. Almost no mentally ill people go on rampages like this. Almost no people who own guns go on rampages like this. Almost no people who don’t have Jesus in their lives go on rampages like this. Almost no people who seek media coverage go on rampages like this. I blame the murderer. I hope his name is soon forgotten. My wish, like yours, I’m sure, is that the first person he aimed his weapon at had been himself.
• Gotta hand it to the New York Times. Their piece on what first-graders are like made the tragedy even more tragic. Take a read.
• President Obama made two powerful, emotional speeches. And now it seems, controlling gun violence means something to him. Now…that…the…campaign…is…over.
• Can anything be done to stop such violence? I’m not a fatalist, but I recognize that violence has always been a part of human existence. One thing that’s nice is we are so far removed from the next election cycle that the Republicans and Democrats might actually follow through with some type of legislation that does something. What, I have no idea. But I do like these suggestions from writer Anil Dash, whose first instruction is Stop. Don’t race to the bottom of the screen to leave a comment repeating the same statements you’ve made after every such shooting in your life. Exactly.
• I wasn’t surprised how quickly the gun control argument began after the shooting. There are already lots of gun laws in place. The murderer ignored them. But the other side says if guns are illegal, then only criminals will have them. Good, I say: then the cops will know exactly who to shoot.
• Nerds like me are a little sad about December 21. For decades, I’ve read the Mayans predicted the world would end on this date. For decades, I’ve anticipated what will happen. But now, grown-up me knows exactly what will happen that night: One minute after 11:59 p.m., December 22 will arrive.
• A joy of living in New York is when the Giants lose and the fans and media debate anew whether Eli Manning is an elite quarterback. He’s not. He’s not an all-time great and no amount of Super Bowl wins will change that. But saying Eli is not in the ranks of Joe Montana or John Elway or, hell, Otto Graham, is not an insult. He’s a good quarterback who can do enough much of the time to lead his team to victory. If this makes Giants fans feel any better, Eli is better than Matthew Stafford.

–Bob Meadows

© 2012 The Peoples News