Knute Rockne, All-American

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On this day 78 years ago, one of the greatest coaches in college football history, the legendary Knute Rockne, died in a plane crash in eastern Kansas.

He was a native of Norway, and he was trained in chemistry, but he gave that up when he got an offer to coach football. Rockne was an innovator, and he is credited with popularizing the forward pass. In 13 years as the head coach at Notre Dame, Rockne compiled a record of 105–12–5, and he won six national titles.

More than half a century after Rockne's death, I was driving from Texas through Kansas on my way to visit an old friend who was living in Kansas City at the time. As I drove along the turnpike, I saw signs directing me to the Rockne crash site and, being a sports fan and a history buff, I decided to stop. I owned a dog in those days, and he needed to walk, anyway.

The stop on the turnpike turned out to be a disappointment. The sign there informed visitors that the actual crash site was a few miles away. I gathered from what I read that the land where the crash occurred was privately owned and this was as close as the general public could get.

Since that time, I have learned that there is a memorial on the actual site of the crash, but the owners of the land apparently resisted having the turnpike built any closer than it is. So, back in 1989, I thought there was no memorial to Rockne on the actual site of the crash. In reality, though, it does exist, but, apparently, it's not so easy to get to — at least, not for those traveling on the turnpike.

I wish I had known that 20 years ago. I might have taken a few minutes to exit the turnpike and drive to the actual site.

Nevertheless, I'm glad I stopped at that memorial on the turnpike. It's a memory I will always cherish.

My Picks for the 2009 Baseball Season

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My friends Tammy (left) and Randy (center) and I
attend a baseball game in St. Louis in 1987.
Pay no attention to the idiots behind us!

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At this time of the year, no matter where I am or what I'm doing, my thoughts take me back to the spring days when I was 9 or 10 or 11, baseball season was about to begin and my friends and I had begun collecting that year's edition of baseball cards.

I began collecting baseball cards the year Mickey Mantle retired, and I collected them for about three or four years. Then, I guess I sort of lost interest in baseball cards — but I never lost interest in baseball.

The first time I ever saw a major league game was on a trip through south Texas with my mother, my grandmother and my brother. My father was a college professor, and he was spending the summer enrolled in an advanced education course in Chicago, so the rest of the family went on a trip.

We stopped off in Houston and saw the space center, then we went to the old Astrodome and saw the Astros play the Big Red Machine from Cincinnati. They were having a promotion at the Astrodome that night, and every kid got an official Astros patch. My mother sewed those patches on the sleeves of T–shirts for my brother and me, and that shirt became my favorite.

The next year, my father didn't go to summer school, and we all went on a family vacation. I think I must have been about 10 or 11. We went to St. Louis and saw the Cardinals play the Cubs one night at Busch Stadium.

It was long before the cable TV era, and games weren't televised every night of the week the way they are today. I knew who the players were from my collection of baseball cards and from hearing the games on radio. In central Arkansas in those days, you could hear the Cardinals on the radio every day so they were practically the home team. And the minor league team in Little Rock was affiliated with the Cardinals.

Anyway, the Cubs hammered the Cardinals that night so we left early and were back in our motel room before the last pitch was thrown.

The next summer, we returned to St. Louis, this time to see the Cardinals play the Mets. Willie Mays, who was nearing the end of his career, had just been traded to the Mets. As I recall, he was introduced to the crowd but he didn't play in the game. They also introduced the Mets' manager that night, Yogi Berra. It was a pretty memorable night in many respects — the starting pitchers were Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson.

It turned out to be an unusually chilly night for mid–summer, though, so my family left the ballpark and went out to the motel's courtesy van to be warm, and we heard the remarkable conclusion on the radio — the game went 13 innings, and the Cardinals won it when Ted Sizemore hit an inside–the–park home run.

The folks who stayed to the end were treated to quite a show.

I've seen a few ballgames as an adult. The photo above was taken more than 20 years ago when I visited my best friend and his wife in the St. Louis area. For a few years, we made a habit of getting together for Cardinals–Dodgers games. And, when I've been living here in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, I've been to a few Rangers games, including a Boston–Texas game in 1989 in which the starting pitchers were Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan.

I guess there is something about the arrival of baseball season that brings out the kid in a person — the kid who used to collect baseball cards in the summer or who sometimes would rather listen to a game on a radio than watch on a TV. It brings back all kinds of memories for me.

A lot of things have changed — some good, some bad.

I think they ought to play more day games — one of my fondest memories is from the autumn of my fifth–grade year. They still played all the World Series games during the day in those days, and the principal arranged for a TV to be brought into the cafeteria and all the boys who were interested in the series could be excused from afternoon class to watch the games. And they ought to play more doubleheaders — too many of today's fans don't know what it means when somebody says, "Let's play two."

But it's still baseball. And if they could just get rid of the influence of steroids, I could handle the other changes.

In another week, the major league season will begin. I don't claim to be an expert, but here are my humble predictions for the 2009 season:

• In the National League East, I think the defending champion Philadelphia Phillies will win their division with a 90–72 record.


• In the National League Central, I think the St. Louis Cardinals will bounce back from last season's fourth–place finish and win the division with a 95–67 record.


• In the National League West, I predict the Los Angeles Dodgers will repeat as division winners with a record of 87–75.


• I predict the wild–card team will be the New York Mets with a record of 89–73.

And in the American League, my predictions are:

• East: I think it's going to be tempting for people to pick the Tampa Bay Rays, but they may find the glare of the media spotlight a bit blinding. So I'm going to pick a team that has had plenty of experience dealing with postseason success in recent years, the Boston Red Sox. I predict the Red Sox, who excelled in both pitching and hitting last season, will win the division with a 96–66 record.


• Central: I think the Minnesota Twins will win the division outright this season (in case you've forgotten, they lost a one–game playoff to the Chicago White Sox last year). The Twins might have to fend off Chicago or Cleveland, but I think they'll win the division with a record of 87–75.


• West: The Los Angeles Angels finished 21 games ahead of their nearest competition last season, and they were the only team to win 100 games, but they lost in the first round to the Red Sox. I don't think they'll win 100 this year, but they'll come close — 98–64.


• Wild card: New York Yankees with a 89–73 record.

In the N.L. playoffs, I predict the Cardinals will beat the Mets in four games, and the Dodgers will beat the Phillies in five. In the championship series, St. Louis defeats Los Angeles, four games to three.

In the A.L. playoffs, I predict that the Angels will shut out the Yankees, 3–0, and Boston will outlast Minnesota, 3–2. The Red Sox will prevail over the Angels in six games.

Which sets up a Boston-St. Louis World Series. I'll pick Boston in six games.

And that's about all I have to say, except for this — if you have a kid, take him or her to a ballgame.

What the Newspaper Crisis Means for Sports Coverage

I am both a sports fan and a trained journalist. I worked in the business as a reporter and a copy editor for more than 10 years. I spent much of that time working on sports desks for the old Arkansas Gazette and the still breathing Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle.

If you've been following the news in recent months, you've no doubt heard of the problems many daily newspapers are facing these days. If they were patients in a hospital, the condition for most of them would be critical.

The Rocky Mountain News already has shut down completely, and more appear likely to follow. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has stopped publishing a daily paper and is now an online-only publication, perhaps foreshadowing a trend.

Still others have reduced their staffs and cut the pay of those who remain on the payroll or they've cut the number of days they publish or both — anything to tighten the belt without entirely cutting off (pardon the pun) circulation.

And when a newspaper goes out of business or cuts the number of days it publishes or even cuts its staff, sports fans suffer.

Jim Caple writes about this for ESPN.

He talks about the human toll, also, acknowledging that "the only difference between these employees and the millions of others thrown out of work in the past year is that the newspaper pink slips strike much closer to home for me."

But he makes a good point when he and others ask, "Who will report the news?"

"That's the key," writes Caple. "I'm not comparing newspapers to blogs. I'm comparing the information fans receive from newspapers plus the blogs and Web sites to the information they would receive strictly from the Internet without any newspapers."

And what does Caple say would be sacrificed?

• Game stories with analysis and quotes.


• Statistics.


• News.

Now, before you protest that the internet can give you all these things, read what Caple has to say. There definitely will be things that will be lost when local coverage disappears. And, as Caple observes, there is no revenue model in existence that online-only organizations can follow to pay someone to travel with teams and spend the kind of time around the players and coaches and organization that is necessary to learn about things like clubhouse issues or injuries or coaching changes. Is such a thing possible in the future? Absolutely. But it doesn't exist right now.

Baseball — a sport that will be played daily from the beginning of April to the end of September — will be the first to experience the change, and it is the focus of Caple's article. Clearly, as Caple writes, it is expensive to pay the salary of a writer along with his travel, lodging and meal expenses for 81 games a year.

But, even though football and basketball teams play fewer games, this change will affect fans of all sports.

Do you follow football? Or basketball? If you're a college sports fan, where will you get reliable news about your favorite school if the newspaper that covers it goes out of business? Some schools have athletic reputations and will always get attention from whatever media exist, but what if your school, be it large or small, isn't an Oklahoma or a Notre Dame or a North Carolina?

The same is true of professional sports. It's true that every professional sports team has a presence on the internet, but do you really believe the information you will find there is free of bias? Who will honestly report about coaching changes and player acquisitions?

For a few years, I worked with undergraduate journalism students. The internet was really just emerging in my last year of teaching, and one of my students asked me what now seems, in hindsight, to be a prescient question. The student asked me what would become of newspapers in the digital age. I replied that I believed the internet and newspapers would find a way to coexist.

In an odd way, I still believe that. But I think it may take the deaths of many of the traditional newspapers to bring about the re–birth of the medium.

It may take that for people to realize what they've lost.

Hall of Famer George Kell Dies

Baseball Hall of Fame third baseman George Kell died today at the age of 86.

Many of today's baseball fans may never have heard of Kell, but he is primarily remembered for outlasting the great Ted Williams for the 1949 batting crown. It was one of the closest batting title races ever. Kell hit .34291, Williams hit .34276.

Williams led Kell most of the season, but Kell overtook him on the final day, going 2 for 3 while Williams was hitless in two at-bats. Kell lost the batting title to Williams' teammate, Billy Goodman, the following year.

In 15 major league seasons, Kell hit better than .300 in nine of them.

Following his retirement, Kell was a broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers (the team for which he played from 1947-1952) every year but one from 1959 to 1996.

About five years ago, Kell was injured in a car accident, but was able to walk with the assistance of a cane. No cause of death has been confirmed, but, considering his age and health, it seems likely to be natural causes. He passed away in his sleep.

I'll admit the thing I find most intriguing about Kell is the place where he died — Swifton, Arkansas, in Jackson County. It's the place where he was born in 1922.

I grew up in Arkansas, but, until today, I had never heard of Swifton before. Apparently, there is a good reason for that. The northeast Arkansas community had only 871 residents when the 2000 Census was taken. Wikipedia differentiates between the cities and towns in Jackson County — and Swifton is listed as one of the four "cities" in the county.

To give you an idea of how small Jackson County is, none of the other three "cities" had a population that exceeded 3,000 when the Census was taken — but, compared to Swifton, they must be perceived as veritable metropolises.

Kell apparently loved Swifton. He lived there throughout his broadcasting career, maintaining an apartment in Little Rock to make it easier for him to catch flights to cities where the Tigers were playing.

Anyway, Swifton is less one resident tonight. And baseball has lost another hero.

The Final Days of Texas Stadium

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Texas Stadium will soon be a memory after 37 years.

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It won't be long before a local landmark here in Dallas–Fort Worth — Texas Stadium — is bulldozed to the ground.

We're moving in that direction. The statue of Tom Landry that has been greeting people as they arrive at the stadium for nearly 10 years was removed a couple of days ago. It will be put in storage until it is time to put it back up in front of the new stadium in Arlington.

Texas Stadium is perhaps one of the three most recognizable structures in this city, with the other two being the Texas School Book Depository (now the home of the Sixth Floor Museum) and the Southfork Ranch, which was the home of TV's Ewing family.

I did not grow up in Dallas, but my grandparents lived here and we came here for holidays and summer vacations. Texas Stadium opened in October 1971, when I was 11 years old, and I remember that my grandmother got tickets for my father, my brother and me to go to a Cowboys game in that inaugural season. I don't remember who the Cowboys played — it might have been the Cardinals.

Over the years, I went to several events in Texas Stadium.

Among them:

• In 1979, while my family was visiting my grandmother for the Christmas holidays, an old friend of the family called and told me that her husband's company had provided several seats for them in their private box for that afternoon's playoff game.
  
  The friend had decided not to attend, but her son and daughter, who were about my age, would be going and they wanted to know if I would go with them. I agreed to go and had a blast that afternoon, eating roast beef sandwiches and drinking Bloody Marys.
  
  The Cowboys lost that game to the Rams, and it turned out to be Roger Staubach's final professional football game.


• Three years later, as a young reporter for a newspaper in Arkansas, I got press credentials that would permit me to observe a crucial college football game from the Texas Stadium press box.
  
  The game was between SMU and Arkansas. It ended in a 17-17 tie, and SMU represented the Southwest Conference in the Cotton Bowl in January.


• In the spring of 1988, my brother and I attended a Pink Floyd concert at Texas Stadium. I found that the acoustics weren't particularly good — it seemed like that hole in the roof sucked a lot of the sound out and it was hard to tell what the performers were singing.
  
  Consequently, it wasn't the best performance I ever saw, but I will always remember walking in to the stadium and passing by cars and vans in the parking lot with their somewhat perplexing "Roger Who?" messages on the windows.
  
  For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, "Roger Who?" was a reference to longtime band member Roger Waters and his legal squabbles with the rest of the band at the time.


• In 1989, I went to Texas Stadium for what I believe was the last time. Anyway, I can't recall going back to Texas Stadium again.
  
  On Christmas Eve, my father and I went to see the Cowboys (who were completing a miserable 1-15 season) play the Green Bay Packers in the season finale. The Packers still had a shot at the playoffs. It should be obvious from the record that the Cowboys did not.
  
  I guess the thing that was noteworthy about that day was that a severe cold front had moved through the Metroplex and the pipes at the stadium froze. Some of them may have burst.
  
  My father and I wore several layers of clothes and sat huddled in our seats, which seemed to be located in a section that drew every cold gust of wind that found its way into the stadium.
  
  I didn't care, though. I've been a Packer fan since Vince Lombardi was roaming the sidelines, and it was the first (and so far, only) opportunity I've ever had to watch the Packers play in person.
  
  But it did bother me that the concession stands ran out of hot chocolate long before the game was over!
  
  And, about midway through the third quarter, my father and I decided it was simply too cold to stay for the rest of the game so we left.

Last month, the Dallas Morning News posted a video that combined some noteworthy clips from radio broadcasts of Cowboy games at Texas Stadium with photos of the stadium as it appears today.

I include that here to remind you of the stadium's memorable history — and to prepare you for this fall. Even though everyone knows the Cowboys will be calling a new stadium "home" this fall, it is still apt to be something of a shock when it comes to pass.

Fair? What's Fair?

I'm not much of a college basketball fan. Actually, I'm not much of a basketball fan, period.

So I feel that gives me a license to snicker at the outrage of people who are frantically filling out their NCAA Tournament brackets this week, hoping to win their office pools and complaining about the injustice of the selections.

Hey, the one good thing about the college basketball tournament — as I see it — is that the team that wins the national title really wins it. It isn't some mythical designation, as it is in football.

(Truth be told, I've always been much more of a football fan. Sometimes I wonder if that is because I've always been short — by basketball standards. No one would ever confuse me for — as one of Woody Allen's girlfriends put it in "Annie Hall" — a "pituitary case trying to stuff a ball through a hoop.")

The teams that are clearly the best in the country always get to compete in the NCAA Tournament, even if they stumble in the opening round of their conference tournaments. There was never a chance that North Carolina or Kansas would wind up playing with the also-rans in the NIT, simply because they didn't play for their conference championships.

And some marginal teams always get the chance to compete in the national tournament because they, inexplicably, got hot at the right time and won their conference tournaments, even though their performances during the regular season weren't particularly memorable.

I kind of liked the way Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe put it earlier this week. There really does seem to be something for everyone — or nearly everyone — in the NCAA Tournament.

But, while everyone seems to accept — and even anticipate — the upsets that inevitably occur, that doesn't keep them from complaining about them when they happen — and, sometimes, even before they happen.

It's kind of like that old saying about the weather. You know the one I'm talking about. Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it. We all know that the atmospheric conditions in the spring will spawn tornadoes. Likewise, we know that the atmospheric conditions from late spring until late fall are likely to produce hurricanes. That doesn't stop people from complaining when they occur.

OK, that's an extreme example. People seldom die at basketball games.

But my point is that people know these things will happen. The similarity is that no one knows where lightning will strike in the NCAA Tournament — just as no one knows where the next Hurricane Katrina will strike. The consequences are different, but the element of the unknown is the same.

Perhaps there is a certain advantage with a hurricane that people do not have with a tornado. There is usually some advance warning — a few days, at least — that a hurricane is on the way. Computer models can try to predict the path a hurricane will follow, but hurricanes are still subject to the laws of nature, and certain unexpected variables often come into play.

Upsets in the NCAA Tournament seem to be more like tornadoes. They happen without much warning — and, when they are over, the survivors are left shaking their heads and wondering what happened.

Speaking of computer models, many people seem to place the same faith in computer models when making their NCAA picks as they do in predicting the behavior of hurricanes.

The computer age really does make many things possible that were not possible even a few short years ago. But computers are just one of the tools that people can use. They can't replace human observation or human logic. They may be able to enhance them, but they can't replace them.

Matthew Futterman touches on this in the Wall Street Journal. "At first glance, it's nearly impossible not to pick Kansas over North Dakota State in the first round," he writes. "Yet, when sports forecaster AccuScore ran 10,000 computer simulations of the game between the Jayhawks (25-7) and the Bison (26-6), Kansas lost 22.6% of the time."

Does that make you more inclined to pick North Dakota State to prevail over Kansas? I would be surprised if it did. Logic still says Kansas will win that game.

Some sports writers do try to prepare their readers for the upsets to come, even if they can't pinpoint them in advance.

For example, Tom Knott of the Washington Times wrote this week that the absence of star power means there will be upsets in the tournament.

Adam Himmelsbach looks for upset trends in the New York Times by talking with coaches who pulled off such improbable victories in previous tournaments. But, as far as I can see, he never defined the formula that can absolutely propel an underdog to the next round.

Jerry Spar wrote in the Boston Herald that the regular season and the conference tournaments suggest there should be many upsets. "Off we go," he wrote, "into the great wide open."

Nevertheless, Spar gave his recipe for playing it safe in the tournament, suggesting that people who insist on filling out their NCAA brackets should pick North Carolina and Louisville for the national championship game.

And that's the thing to keep in mind, whether you're filling out the bracket and trying to devise the scenario that will win the money in your office pool or you're simply a casual observer.

Cinderella rarely wins it all.

Thoughts About the NFL Draft

All across America today, sports fans are filling out brackets in their offices' NCAA Tournament pools.

I usually watch a few of the games, but, unless my alma mater (the University of Arkansas) is participating, my interest level tends to be lukewarm at best. This year, I thought the Razorbacks were on their way to the NCAA tourney when they ended 2008 and started 2009 with victories over Oklahoma and Texas. But they proceeded to lose most of their Southeastern Conference games and went one-and-done in the SEC tourney.

So my attention is being drawn to the NFL draft in 5½ weeks.

I've been wondering, for example, what affect — if any — the tragic death of Detroit defensive end Corey Smith a few weeks ago might have on the Lions' No. 1 pick. Smith, as you may know, was a free agent when he was lost at sea.

It does not appear, however, that most of the people who have the responsibility for studying the available talent and assessing what each team is looking for believe that the Lions are shopping for defensive ends — although it can be argued that, if a team went 0-16, as the Lions did last season, it is in the market for just about everything.

But the smart money seems to be on the Lions emphasizing offense.

• Scott Wright of Draft Countdown likes QB Matthew Stafford of Georgia. "There are no sure things in the NFL Draft, especially when it comes to quarterbacks," Wright observes, "but Matthew Stafford is potentially the type of player you can build a team around and he has everything you look for physically along with top intangibles to boot."
  
  He concedes, however, that "[s]ome will make the case that it's senseless to draft a quarterback if you can't protect him," but he points out that the same argument was made last year by Atlanta fans about Matt Ryan — and Ryan had the 11th highest QB rating in the NFL in 2008.
  
  Wright goes on to point out that "[t]he Lions still have two more premium picks (#20 and #33) to beef up their offensive line and worst-case there is absolutely nothing wrong with letting the 21-year-old Stafford sit on the bench and learn for a year while they improve the supporting cast around him."


• Matt Thomas writes for Sports Central that "The easy pick here at No. 1 is quarterback, where there is value for the position and a real need to get a 'face–of–the–franchise' sort of player." His pick is also Stafford.


• Robert Ferringo writes for Doc's Sports Service that he, too, sees Stafford as the No. 1 pick, but he has some reservations. "I just think that they have too many needs," he says. "What is a rookie quarterback going to offer them?"


• James Alder writes, for About.com:Football that he sees offense as the most pressing need, but he favors offensive tackle Eugene Monroe of Virginia. "I would advocate taking a potential franchise quarterback in this position, but without major improvements on the Lions' offensive line, that could be a big mistake," he says.
  
  Monroe, Alder contends, will provide more bang for the buck. "Monroe is the best pass protector in the draft, and will be a fixture at left tackle for the next decade for whomever drafts him."


• At My Sports Rumors, Paul Raymond has climbed aboard the Stafford bandwagon. He says he doesn't agree with the pick, but asks, "[W]hat else are the Lions going to do?" Detroit needs a "complete makeover" and he concludes that picking a quarterback is a "mistake," but after their winless campaign, the Lions need to "make a statement and attempt to get some fans interested."


• Nevertheless, NFL Mock Draft Aces says Wake Forest linebacker Aaron Curry may be the Lions' No. 1 pick. Still, NFL Mock Draft Aces says the Lions' top needs are at QB, offensive line, middle linebacker, defensive line and defensive back and concedes that Stafford and Baylor offensive tackle Jason Smith probably have the edge over Curry.

I gather, from what I've been reading, that the Lions are not likely to look for a replacement for Smith in the draft.

And, while most people seem to think a quarterback — probably Stafford — will be the Lions' first choice, the implied opinion is that Detroit feels it can get by with the defensive ends it has on hand — or perhaps trade for one.

Arkansas' Loss This Year Comes as No Surprise

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Well, at least it was merciful.

My alma mater, the University of Arkansas, got to play the University of Florida in the opening round of the Southeastern Conference tournament last night. And the outcome, considering the way the conference schedule has gone for the Razorbacks this season, was predictable. Florida prevailed, 73-58.

The Razorbacks started the season 12-1, with victories over the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas.

But then the SEC season began, and Arkansas went 2-14. The Razorbacks lost several close games and could easily have finished the season with a conference record of 6-10, possibly 7-9, maybe even at 8-8. Nothing spectacular, but a solid showing in the always competitive SEC.

So the Hogs came into last night's game with a 14-15 record. Florida, on the other hand, was 22-9.

It's still possible that Arkansas will make it to the NIT. When I was growing up, the NIT was where the runners-up played because the NCAA field was only 16 teams. But four times that number of schools get to participate today, and the NIT has become kind of a consolation tournament for teams that weren't good enough to make it to the national tournament.

The Hogs did lose 15 conference games, including last night's loss. But the NIT doesn't care about that as much as it wants to invite schools that can guarantee a lot of fans will attend, especially in these recessionary times, and Razorback fans are nothing if not dedicated. They will buy tickets to see the Hogs play, particularly if the Hogs are paired with an appealing opponent (offhand, I would suggest a game with former Southwest Conference rival Texas A&M, which went down to defeat in the opening round of the Big 12 tournament).

It would have been nice to see the Hogs qualify for the NCAA Tournament, especially this year. It was 15 years ago that Nolan Richardson and the Razorbacks won the national title. I wasn't even living in the state by then — in fact, by the time the Hogs won the 1994 tournament, I had been away from Arkansas for almost six years.

Yet, even from a distance, it was an exciting time to be an Arkansas alum.

It must have been even more exciting to live in Arkansas at that time. I got to see several games where I was living, but folks in Arkansas must have gotten to see almost every game in that championship run. That's a memory to cherish — and probably one that was more meaningful to more Arkansans than the election of the first president from Arkansas had been almost two years earlier.

Nothing personal as far as Bill Clinton is concerned, but that's just the way it is in Arkansas. Damn near everyone loves the Razorbacks, regardless of personal politics.

I don't know which school will win the national title this year. But, whether it's one of those schools that seems to be playing for the national title every year, like North Carolina or Duke or Kentucky or UCLA, or a school that has never won it before, I hope that school, its student body and all of its fans understand how special the experience is.

When your team is at the peak of the mountain, it's nearly impossible to imagine not being able to scale those heights again. But it really is hard to repeat.

In April 1994, I believed the Razorbacks would be back — and, as it turned out, they did return to the national title game the following year. But they lost the championship game — and they haven't made it back to the Final Four since.

Enjoy the ride while you can. It's never guaranteed that you'll be back.

Owens Lands in Buffalo

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Well, we didn't have to wait long to find out who was willing to pay for Terrell Owens' services as a wide receiver.

The Buffalo Bills signed him today, making Owens' tenure on the unemployment line one of the shortest — if not the shortest — of the current recession. The Bills gave him a one-year, $6.5 million contract. Not bad for a 35-year-old wide receiver.

I must admit, I wasn't sure what to think when I heard the news. I had lunch today with an old friend, and we talked about Owens, who had just signed with the Bills within the hour. I observed that Owens loves atmospheres where he can get a lot of media attention, like San Francisco, Philadelphia and Dallas — and there just isn't much media in Buffalo.

Of course, the media will follow Owens to Buffalo and, as long as he and the Bills are winning, the media will stay on the story. But if Buffalo reverts to form and starts losing games in bunches, the media will leave Buffalo rapidly. Who wants to hang around upstate New York with winter starting to move in to cover a football team that isn't going to the playoffs — again?

Clark Judge of CBS Sports thinks Owens and the Bills are a bad match. "Owens joined a team that makes less sense for him than he does for it," Judge writes, "and we're left with one inescapable conclusion: There just wasn't a market for the guy."

Ross Tucker of Sports Illustrated thinks the one-year deal makes sense. Owens typically behaves himself in the first year with any team, and coach Dick Jauron faces "likely his last year in Buffalo" unless he can produce a winner.

Nevertheless, Tucker wonders, "how is T.O.'s flash gonna play in blue-collar Buffalo? I mean, picturing T.O. in Buffalo is kind of like imagining the Queen of England at a monster truck show. Just doesn't seem to fit."

Clearly, Peter King writes for Sports Illustrated, the Bills think Owens is worth the risk.

And he agrees that Owens' history is an argument that favors the one-year deal. "One year is smart," he writes. "More than that, history tells us, is stupid."

Time will tell if the Bills are smart or stupid.

And, while we're waiting for the answer to that one, remember what Forrest Gump said.

"Stupid is as stupid does."

Split Decision on Terrell Owens

Considering his track record as "clubhouse cancer," the media reaction to the Dallas Cowboys' decision to cut Terrell Owens this week has been surprisingly mixed.

Initially, the Dallas media seemed to agree that cutting Owens was the best, if not the only, thing to do.

Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Jean-Jacques Taylor said releasing Owens "had to be done."

Jennifer Floyd Engel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said the Cowboys are "far less radioactive" without Owens. His departure, she said, "makes them a team. Period."

And Jim Reeves of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram agreed with his colleague.

"Owens sows controversy like a Kansas farmer sows wheat," Reeves wrote. "He has made three stops in the NFL ... and departed each one in a cloud of unhappiness and internal backbiting."

Even so, it wasn't long before speculation began on where Owens will wind up.

While Jason Cole wrote, for Yahoo! Sports, that the Cowboys' offense will be better without Owens, Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman wrote that releasing the "gifted if occasionally troubled wideout" won't cure what ails the Cowboys.

It was, Bohls wrote, a "colossally stupid move."

Steve Rosenbloom writes, for the Chicago Tribune, that the Bears should pursue Owens. Newsday's Bob Glauber suggests that the Giants should enter the bidding war. Others have suggested that the Vikings, Dolphins, Patriots, Chiefs, Raiders — even the Super Bowl champion Steelers — might enter the fray as well.

Owens' agent, Drew Rosenhaus, didn't indicate which team was the front-runner for Owens' services, but he said, in a text message today, that he expects to have a deal in place by late next week.

I have to wonder if Owens is all that valuable now. He is in his mid-30s, which is getting a little old for a wide receiver in the NFL.

But it seems that, as long as he wants to play, there will be someone who is willing to pay.

So I feel confident in saying this — we haven't heard the last from Terrell Owens.

Survivor Fills in Blanks on Colleagues' Fates

Nick Schuyler, who was apparently the lone survivor of the tragedy at sea that seems to have taken the lives of two NFL players and a third man, has been filling in the details on the last hours of his comrades' lives.

It's a harrowing tale. A few hours after the boat capsized Saturday evening, the pro football players apparently gave up, took off their life jackets and permitted themselves to be washed out to sea.

Sometime Monday morning, the third man reportedly thought he saw a light in the distance and decided to take off his life jacket and swim to it.

Schuyler's story may or may not be accurate. As a cousin of one of the NFL players said, "We're not 100% sure where his head was at. He'd been through a lot."

It is possible that the men may yet be found. But it has now been four days, and it would truly be miraculous if they managed to survive in the chilly waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Even so, the Coast Guard has suspended the search, and the three men now appear to be presumed dead.

Hope Dwindles in Search for NFL Players

The Coast Guard apparently has told the father of one of the two NFL players still missing at sea that hope for his rescue is dwindling because so much time has passed and the chilly waters are likely to have caused hypothermia.

But the sister of one of the players says that is not the message the rest of the family has been given. Maybe that is the truth. Maybe the families have been told something else to prevent them from panicking. And maybe the woman is simply putting on a brave face in public.

But, realistically, it is hard to imagine three men, separated from their boat many miles out at sea, could still be alive, even if they were wearing life jackets.

One of those life jackets apparently has been found, but no one — alive or dead — was wearing it.

Concerns about hypothermia stem from the fact that temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have been in the mid- to upper 60s. Hypothermia can set in after 18 hours in water registering 64 degrees.

But, as CNNSI.com reports, "Working in the men's favor are their size and physical condition." Both of the NFL players are more than 6 feet tall and weigh more than 200 pounds. Their companion is a former college football player and a current physical trainer.

Even so, at this point, it's been more than 70 hours since the boat was reported overdue. How many of those hours may have been spent in the water, no one will know until the as–yet lone survivor is able to pinpoint more precisely the time when the boat capsized. What he has said, reportedly, is that the boat flipped when the anchor was being pulled up Saturday evening.

The man was found clinging to the boat about 35 miles from Clearwater yesterday.

Missing at Sea

Two NFL players — Detroit's Corey Smith, now a free agent, and Oakland's Marquis Cooper — have been missing off Florida's Gulf Coast since Saturday night. They were accompanied on their fishing trip by two former University of South Florida football players.

The men were supposed to return from their trip on Saturday night but failed to do so. Conditions were choppy on Sunday but not so bad, from the reports I've read, on Saturday.

No distress signal was received, and reports I've read indicate that Smith and Cooper were experienced fishermen. The possibility has been suggested that the boat developed engine trouble and the occupants may have decided to ride out the storm where they were.

Their boat has been described as "unsinkable." Of course, so was the Titanic.

My understanding is that the search will resume this morning.

At this point, all most of us can do is wait — and hope for the best.

Like Cooper's wife, who told the CNN affiliate in Tampa yesterday that "[i]t feels like my greatest fear coming true — it doesn't feel real."

But she also said of her husband, a deep sea fishing enthusiast who owns the vessel, "I have a lot of faith in him out there."