Jim Tressel's Resignation

Yesterday, after I heard that Jim Tressel had resigned as the head football coach at Ohio State, I sent an e–mail to a friend of mine.

"Did you hear that Jim Tressel has resigned at Ohio State?" I asked.

"It had been building for some time after that stupid bowl decision," he replied. "Probably good for both the school and him. He'll get a job next year very easily at a top program."

I completely agree with his first sentence — and I agree with the second as well. I'm not so sure about the third. I'm kind of inclined to think this is it for Tressel — or that it may be a few years — possibly several years — before he returns to the sidelines.

It's hard for me to say, though. Tressel's decision really caught me by surprise — although, in hindsight, my friend's observation that this "had been building for some time" makes sense — and it may take me awhile to absorb it all.

Others don't seem as surprised.

Brett McMurphy of CBS Sports, for one, wants to know — What took so long?

"Any other coach would have been tossed aside months ago," he writes. "Tressel must have attended — and graduated cum laude from — the Richard M. Nixon School on how to handle a crisis situation. Yet another example: The coverup is worse than the crime."

That helps frame things for me. Tressel does remind me of Nixon in his determination never to admit to wrongdoing. Even his "defense" of his players' violations of NCAA rules against selling memorabilia — that these problems could be avoided if athletes were paid — smacks of the kind of arrogance I have come to expect from Ohio State coaches.

Which brings me to Mike Lopresti of USA Today, who put into words a thought that kept going through my mind.

For reasons I had not been able to pinpoint previously, Tressel's sudden departure reminded me of the demise of another legendary Ohio State football coach, Woody Hayes, who belted an opposing player following a turnover in a bowl game.

They were "[t]wo smart, determined, successful coaches [who] came to messy ends, each from [a] self–induced crisis."

Hayes was arrogant, too — in a different way, perhaps. But each in his own way believed that he and the Ohio State football program occupied a special zone. In that zone, Hayes was entitled to fetch a roundhouse to the chops of an opposing player on national TV, and Tressel was entitled to look the other way while his players ignored the rules by which all others must live.

("If the president does it," Nixon famously said, "that means it is not illegal.")

Nevertheless, Tressel was maybe the only thing sports fans in Ohio had going for them these days. Lebron James left Cleveland for Miami — where he will start playing for an NBA title tonight.

The Cleveland Indians are clinging to first in a pitiful American League Central, but they got hammered the day Tressel announced his resignation, and it is far from certain whether they will still be playing in October.

The Cincinnati Reds, thought by many to be a sure thing for the playoffs when the season began, are in a tailspin; they've lost seven of their last 10 games, and they are currently third in the National League Central.

And probably the less said about the Browns and the Bengals the better.

Tressel's status among suddenly embattled (and presumably embittered) Ohio sports fans may improve. After all, by the time he died, Hayes was remembered for his triumphs on the gridiron and not his indiscretion in the Gator Bowl.

And Nixon, too, was eulogized in glowing terms — nearly two decades after he resigned the presidency.

Time does have a way of healing all — or, at least, most — wounds.

Will Third Time Be the Charm for Big D?

---

---

It's been a long time since a professional sports championship came to Dallas.

Ironically, that championship was won in hockey.

This is a city that, for decades, was accustomed to being a legitimate factor in championship conversations. More than that, it is part of a state that has long been accustomed to being a factor in such discussions.

Usually, it has been in the context of football — but it has been nearly 15 years since the Cowboys played in a Super Bowl.

For that matter, Dallas as a city has been away from the national sports radar through most of the still nascent 21st century.

Sports supremacy has been tantalizingly close in recent months, though.

The Texas Rangers have been playing baseball around here for 40 years, and they brought a World Series to these parts for the first time last October. They didn't win it, but they brought it here, and they gave local fans a taste of what it is like to host the Fall Classic.

Most sports fans around here might not have noticed, however, if the Dallas Cowboys had lived up to their preseason hype. When the season began, local fans knew that the Super Bowl would be played in the Cowboys' new stadium, and many believed the Cowboys were practically a lock to become the first team from the host city to actually play in a Super Bowl.

But the Cowboys stumbled out of the gate and never came close to competing for a playoff spot. The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl as the NFC's representative.

Now, it is the Mavericks' turn — that's Dallas' NBA franchise — to try to do what the others could not.

They dispatched the Oklahoma City Thunder, four games to one, in the Western Conference finals, and they await the winner of the Chicago–Miami series.

No one knows how long the Mavericks will have to wait on that one.

Miami can finish off Chicago with a single win. Chicago needs three straight wins to turn back Miami.

If the series goes seven games, Dallas will have a week to prepare for its next foe. If the Miami–Chicago series is completed tonight or Saturday, the championship series will start on Monday.

Folks around here don't seem to care when the dance begins. All that matters is that the dance can't be held without them.

And my guess is that a line is going to start forming for tickets soon, if it hasn't already. They go on sale Saturday morning. The latest weather forecast calls for daily highs in the 90s, but I have no doubt that people will be camping out for the next couple of nights.

There is clearly a sense in this city that destiny is beckoning.

But the thing is, people around here always feel that way when the local team is playing for a title. They felt that way when the Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999 — even though most of the Stars' "fans" that year probably were more appropriately bandwagon jumpers.

They felt that way when the Rangers faced the San Francisco Giants in the World Series last year. (Much was made locally of the "long–suffering fans" who had waited 40 years for a world championship, but I recall little being said of the long–suffering Giants fans, who had been waiting almost 20 years longer for a world title.)

That probably isn't uniquely Texan. The fans of every team in every sport believe they are entitled to a championship — until, at some point, their teams are eliminated and they must face the truth that most fans must accept at some point.

The fans around here aren't ready to accept that truth. Nor is it necessary for them to do so.

Oh, sure, there are some naysayers. Some say the Mavericks won't be able to handle the Miami Heat, their most likely foe.

And that may be true.

But that doesn't really matter right now.

Who IS That Masked Man?

---

"It's insane to think that the fastest woman in the world has served time for lying about doping, or that the greatest home run hitter of all time will be sentenced on a similar charge in June and the most dominant pitcher of his era is about to go on trial for not telling Congress the truth. It's getting so hard to believe what we see is real anymore from our uber–humans."

Mike Wise
Washington Post
May 24, 2011

---

Greg Couch of The Sporting News wrote a thought–provoking piece the other day.

He suggested that cyclist Lance Armstrong's fall from grace over the now apparently credible doping allegations that he has blithely dismissed in the past will be greater than Barry Bonds' — primarily because Bonds, who has never been a fan favorite, didn't have far to fall while Armstrong, adored by millions, did.

Couch wrote on the assumption that the allegations against Armstrong are true — and perhaps they are.

Personally, I have never been an advocate of assumption. Sure, we all do it — to a degree — from time to time. We can't help it. We're human, and we form opinions based on the information we have. That information may be nothing more than speculation, but it is what it is and we reach conclusions based on it.

But I am a journalist, and I have found that journalists tend to be particularly sensitive to how words in their articles may be perceived.

(They can be incredibly casual about the language they use in their daily lives — and astonishingly naive about its ramifications — but most of the journalists I have known would bend over backwards before allowing anything that smacked of opinion to invade their work — unless, of course, they were writing an opinion column.)

As a journalism student and then as a practicing journalist, I was constantly told, by my instructors and my editors, to be as neutral as possible in the language I used.

This was especially important, I was told, when dealing with legal proceedings.

If someone was on trial, I was told, nothing I wrote should suggest, in any way, that he/she already had been found guilty. Until a verdict was handed down, the defendant was accused or alleged.

And even if that person was convicted, future articles should only say that he/she was a convicted murderer or a convicted arsonist or whatever. To simply say he/she was a murderer or an arsonist implied, however slightly, that the author of the article believed the correct verdict had been reached.

And juries, as everyone knew, could be wrong.

"Convicted," as I understood it, placed the onus on someone else. I didn't have to label him or her a murderer or an arsonist. A jury had already done that.

Now, make no mistake. I like Armstrong better than Bonds. Much better. And most sports fans I know would agree with that.

(Well, perhaps not the ones I know who live in San Francisco or Pittsburgh. But that is a really small subgroup of my friends.)

I am not — and never have been — a fan of cycling. Neither am I a huge baseball fan. I used to follow it closely when I was a boy. My interest has waned as an adult, but I still follow it.

But my feelings about Armstrong and Bonds transcend their sports. I like or dislike each based on the kind of person I think he is.

And Couch's column simply emphasizes an important distinction — in my mind, at least.

Bonds' conviction merely confirmed the kind of person I always believed him to be.

The allegations against Armstrong — and the journalist in me insists on pointing out, once again, that these are simply allegations, nothing has been proven — are troubling because they are at odds with the kind of person I believed Armstrong to be.

And that has made me think about sports heroes.

Bonds and Armstrong kind of represent the bad cop, good cop of sports, and most sports heroes seem to line up behind one or the other.

The bad guys in sports — the ones whose transgressions came as no real surprise to me — were guys like Pete Rose, Mike Tyson, Jose Canseco.

I probably wouldn't have made the cut for the Bonds jury. I would have had to admit that I never liked him, and I was suspicious of how quickly he bulked up. It wasn't much of a leap for me to believe the worst about him.

Armstrong is at the other extreme — the good guy, the selfless one, the cancer survivor trying to give back. The ones who whispered about him were jealous, we were told, or they were about to publish some tell–all book and were looking for publicity.

That, too, was easy to believe because Armstrong seemed like a genuinely good guy. But so did Roger Clemens — and (to me, anyway) Mark McGwire.

And that makes me wonder about some of the other guys who have been heroic figures in sports in the last 10–15 years.

Lebron James has already (in my opinion) proven himself to be a narcissist. Likewise, Kobe Bryant.

The ones who have raised eyebrows were the ones who were thought to be the all–American types — guys like Tiger Woods, who apparently cheated on his wife (many times), and Brett Favre, who didn't do anything illegal, just wore everybody down until even he could no longer rationalize returning to football.

Sports fans have to wonder who they can believe anymore.

The Promised Land?

---

---

Here in Dallas, Texas, there is a sense of inevitability settling in after last night's astonishing come–from–behind triumph over Oklahoma City in the NBA Western Conference finals.

The Christian Science Monitor called it "one of the most jaw–dropping comebacks in NBA history."

That may be true. I've seen some pretty amazing comebacks in my life, but nothing to compare with what happened about 200 miles north of here last night.

I'm not an NBA fan, but I will admit that I have been watching more lately. However, I had given the game up for lost. I left my TV on and went about some other things in my apartment. I could monitor the game, but, having conceded defeat, I didn't feel I needed to sit and watch it.

I changed my mind a few minutes later.

Down by 15 points with about five minutes to play, the Mavericks doggedly chipped away at the upstarts from OKC, forced the game into overtime and, as Eddie Sefko writes in the Dallas Morning News, never trailed in overtime (after never leading during regulation).

When the Mavericks returned to Dallas early this morning, a couple hundred people were on hand to meet them.

Today the giddiness and disbelief from last night seems to be morphing into supreme confidence, even cockiness. Sure, I heard one man say, there have been teams that have come back from a 3–1 deficit but not many.

Not many, but some. To pull that one off, it seems to me that a team has to be loaded with playoff veterans with the discipline and the concentration to remain focused on the task at hand.

I have my doubts that Oklahoma City can do that.

But as my friend who used to cover horse racing during our mutual Arkansas Gazette days like to say, there is no such thing as a sure thing.

It could happen. It isn't likely, but it could happen.

However, I will assume that the Mavericks — who would have to lose at home not once but twice for the Thunder to leapfrog them into the NBA Finals — will face either Miami or Chicago for the NBA title.

That would mean that the Dallas area will have hosted

• the World Series


• the Super Bowl and


• the NBA Finals

within a single calendar year.

As far as I know, that would be a first.

Mind you, I'm not talking about cities that had teams that participated in three major professional sports championships within a calendar year.

(I think New York came close to that when the Jets played in the Super Bowl in January 1969, the Mets played in the World Series that autumn and the Knicks played in the NBA Finals in the spring of 1970. Technically, that exceeded a calendar year, but New York did win all three.)

The site of the Super Bowl is decided years ahead of time. It has been played annually for 45 years, and, while it is not the NFL's explicit policy to prohibit cities without NFL teams from hosting Super Bowls, no city without an NFL franchise has ever hosted one.

And no host city's team has ever played in one.

For awhile, folks around here figured the Cowboys would be the team to change that. It didn't happen. Instead, two of the Cowboys' old postseason rivals met in the Super Bowl in February.

But it was played here in Dallas. In October, the Texas Rangers brought the World Series here for the first time — and now it appears the NBA Finals will be played here, too.

I think that's a first.

Animal Kingdom Comes Up Short

---

---

As it does most years, the Preakness ended dreams of a Triple Crown for the Kentucky Derby winner yesterday.

But, unlike most of those years, this year's Derby winner — Animal Kingdom — almost pulled it off.

It didn't look that way at first. Animal Kingdom started the race way back in the pack, actually leading only one other horse as they made the first turn.

But then, as the Preakness progressed, it began to resemble the Kentucky Derby, in which Animal Kingdom made his move on the outside and overtook the rest of the field.

The same thing nearly happened yesterday.

Animal Kingdom shifted into the next gear and began passing horses on the outside — and was making what would have been a comeback of legend if he had been able to pull it off.

Shackleford, though, held off the hard–charging Animal Kingdom in a thrilling — and, for some lucky folks, a profitable — Preakness finish.

Does Animal Kingdom's loss mean there is little reason to watch the Belmont Stakes in three weeks? Hardly, according to Mark Breech of Sports Illustrated.

If Animal Kingdom had pulled off an historic reversal and won the Preakness, he might have been the one horse racing has been waiting for. And Breech thinks he should be the favorite to win the Belmont.

If Animal Kingdom does win the Belmont, he will have achieved something that has been almost as rare as Triple Crown winners. He will have won the first and third jewels of the Triple Crown (with a near–miss in the second).

Thunder Gulch, in 1995, was the last horse to win the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont. There have been seven horses since then who have won the first two jewels but have fallen short in the third, the longest and most grueling of the three races.

And two horses have won the second and third jewels but not the first.

Animal Kingdom, writes Breech, "should love the immensity of the Triple Crown's third track. ... Animal Kingdom has been the fastest horse at the end of both of the first two races in this series. Having more room to run can only be to his benefit."

False Prophets and the Preakness

---

---

If you're one of the apparently few who believe that the "rapture" will occur at 6 p.m. local time today, I suggest that you tune in this afternoon for the Preakness in Baltimore — unless 6 p.m. has come and gone where you are.

By that time, you will already know if the rapture has occurred as predicted. The folks who have been telling us that the rapture would occur on this day have been saying that it will happen when it is 6 p.m. locally.

But if you live on the West Coast or in the Rocky Mountain time zone — or, like me, you live in the Central time zone — you might want to tune in.

Because the Preakness is supposed to be run when it is 6 p.m. in Baltimore — which is in the Eastern time zone.

Consequently, if there really is anything to this rapture stuff, you should see

• jockeys disappearing from horses and/or


• spectators disappearing from the stands.

That ought to make the Preakness pretty interesting.

Oh, wait a minute. Those party poopers at the Christian Science Monitor are reporting that 6 p.m. has come and gone in some parts of the world — and no rapture. (And, writes the International Business Times, Harold Camping, the minister who prophesied today's rapture and bought billboards and distributed pamphlets across the country telling people about it, has been exposed as a false prophet, which will doom his ministry.)

Guess you can eliminate that as an entertainment factor.

Well, the Preakness should still be interesting. We'll find out today — as we always do on the third Saturday in May — whether there will still be a chance for a horse to win this year's Triple Crown three weeks from now in the Belmont.

It's been more than 30 years since a horse won the Triple Crown, and many of the folks in the thoroughbred racing industry don't want to talk about it — kind of like superstitious ball players (or bowlers, for that matter) who don't want to talk about a perfect game while the game is still being played.

Barry Irwin, who heads the group that owns Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom, appears to be one of those.

"I don't even want to hear about it, to tell you the truth," he told Ed Fountaine of the New York Post. "Let's just see what happens in this next race."

Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated thinks Animal Kingdom can prevail. He says the horse should be well rested and prepared to handle what he sees as a relatively weak Preakness field.

Layden's colleague, Gene Menez, agrees that Animal Kingdom is the horse to beat today although he warns readers that they should not be surprised "if [15–1 shot] Midnight Interlude shocks the Preakness at a price."

Not so fast, my friend, writes Brad Telias of The Sporting News. While the Preakness is just about the same distance as the Kentucky Derby, there are significant differences between being a relatively anonymous longshot and a much–heralded favorite.

Such pressure seems unlikely to affect a horse, but it could influence the performance of a jockey — and even the slightest change in the way a jockey rides or sits in the saddle can, in turn, influence what a horse does.

And, while it has been relatively rare in the last three decades for a horse to win the first two jewels of the Triple Crown, neither is really adequate preparation for the Belmont, which has (justifiably) been dubbed the "Test of Champions." It's longer than either of the first two races.

Thus, even if Animal Kingdom does win today, history strongly suggests that the hype that is sure to surround him from now until June 11 will prove to be overblown — and his meager race record to date will be proven to be inadequate preparation.

I don't know who will win today's race.

But I do have a couple of predictions — and I am reasonably confident they will be correct.

By 6:30 Baltimore time this evening, we will know whether the Triple Crown is still a possibility. And we'll know if there was anything to that rapture business.

My guess is that there will be a lot of false prophets revealed by sundown today.

Will Animal Kingdom Rule the Preakness?

---

---

You really don't have to be blessed with any special insights to predict that the winner of the Kentucky Derby will not win the second jewel in horse racing's Triple Crown.

Since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978, roughly one–third of the horses that won the Kentucky Derby went on to win the Preakness two weeks later. In the last six years, only Big Brown (in 2008) has accomplished it.

Last year's Derby winner, Super Saver, lost the Preakness, fading at the end when Lookin at Lucky seemed to come from nowhere to seize control.

Up to that point, Super Saver had been among the leaders, but, after Lookin at Lucky made his move, Super Saver was like a balloon that lost all of its air and deflated, finishing out of the money.

That's the thing that casual observers of horse racing don't really understand. A horse race isn't just a horse race. Distance matters. So does surface — and experience.

The surface will be the same as Animal Kingdom encountered two weeks ago, and the distance will be almost what it was — but the great intangible for him is the fact that his racing history is not extensive enough for anyone to know what to expect.

With a record that could be written on a cocktail napkin, Animal Kingdom is one big question mark — and that is the sort of thing that, back in the day, would have made all of my old railbird friends uneasy, to say the least.

Being the defending Kentucky Derby winner, the odds on Animal Kingdom won't reflect the absence of experience going into the Preakness on Saturday — the way they did two weeks ago — but they should.

Today, with the Preakness only days away, observers are wondering if Animal Kingdom, a 20–1 shot when he won the Derby, can keep alive for a while longer the dream that a horse will win the Triple Crown this year.

That is the question. It's as clear as it can be. Can he do it?

The answer is not as clear. Not yet.

Yes, says a National Thoroughbred Racing Association poll. (I could be wrong, but I get the sense that the respondents are towing the company line, trying to build some enthusiasm momentum for the possibility of a Triple Crown.)

It's possible, writes Andrew Beyer of the Washington Post. " It would be natural to suspect that Animal Kingdom's victory might be another Kentucky Derby aberration," he says, "[y]et an examination of the race indicates that his performance was legitimate."

No, writes Ray Kerrison of the New York Post. He spoke to a horse racing expert who told him that, for at least two reasons, he can't see Animal Kingdom winning the Preakness.

We will get some answers on Saturday.

When the Bucks Didn't Stop

---

---

With the exception of the folks who live there, most people don't seem to be paying much attention to the 40th anniversary of Milwaukee's only NBA championship.

But it's worth thinking about as the NBA careens toward what would have been thought to be an unlikely championship series when the season began — no matter what the pairing may eventually turn out to be.

Later today, the Dallas Mavericks, who have had all week to savor a four–game sweep of the two–time defending champion Lakers in the second round, will learn whether they will face Oklahoma City (formerly the Seattle SuperSonics) or Memphis (originally a 1995 expansion team) in the Western finals.

Those three franchises have precisely one title between them — and, if Memphis defeats Oklahoma City today, it will be certain that the representative of the Lakers' conference will be seeking its first league championship.

The same can't be said of the championship series in the East that is slated to begin tonight after the Oklahoma City–Memphis game concludes. Both of the teams in that series — Miami and Chicago — have won NBA titles. Miami beat Dallas five years ago, and, as for Chicago, well, surely you remember the Bulls' dominance of the 1990s.

(I don't really have to recite the story of Michael Jordan for you, do I?)

I'm not a devoted follower of the NBA. In fact, I seldom get interested in professional basketball until things get to this stage. So I could be all wrong about this. But my guess is that the winner of the East is going to be the favorite heading into the championship series, no matter who wins the West.

To mildly misquote a phrase from Bob Dylan, though, I would not feel so overwhelmed. There might be some good karma for the winner of the West — especially if it turns out to be Dallas.

Forty years ago this spring, the Milwaukee Bucks (who had only been in existence for three years) won their first and only NBA title.

Many things were different then. The NBA, like all professional sports leagues, was much smaller; so, too, was its playoff field.

Kareem Abdul–Jabbar was on that Milwaukee team. But, although practically no one ever mentions it anymore, that wasn't his name at the time.

In the 1970–1971 season, he had not yet converted to Islam — and he was still known by the name he played under at UCLA — Lew Alcindor. He was definitely a dominant player, just as he had been in college, and he won Rookie of the Year the season before when he led the Bucks to a 29–win turnaround (the most impressive in league history to that point) and nearly took them to the NBA Finals.

The Bucks won it all the following season, but I always felt they did so not because of Alcindor but because they acquired Oscar Robertson — and took some of the pressure off Alcindor.

I was in elementary school that spring. There were few hockey or basketball teams in my part of the country in those days. Baseball (particularly the St. Louis Cardinals) usually grabbed everyone's attention until the football teams began their conditioning drills for the fall.

That spring, though, all eyes in my little town were on the NBA and Lew Alcindor. My memory of that time is that he drew most of the attention — and that was as it should be, I suppose. He did win the MVP award for the championship series.

But what so many people forget is how Robertson — long before the three–point shot — piled up more than 20 points in the first half of Game 4 and staked Milwaukee to a lead over Baltimore that it never relinquished.

Afterward, the Milwaukee coach said Robertson had been "unbelievable" on that day, and he had been.

---

---

No one could have matched Willis Reed's gutsy performance in Game 7 of the previous year's final series — but Robertson came close, clearly finishing off the Bullets that day.

The game, as I remember, was all but over by halftime. The second half was a mere formality.

Remember what I said about that karma stuff and the Dallas Mavericks? Well, I was thinking about the fact that, 40 years ago, the Bucks had to beat the Lakers to get to the NBA Finals.

Dallas has already topped the '71 Bucks with its victory over L.A. The Mavericks swept the Lakers in four games; the Bucks went 4–1 against the Lakers (but they did have to face Wilt Chamberlain).

In those days, the Lakers hadn't won an NBA title since long before they left Minneapolis in the early 1960s. They were considered competitive but hardly formidable, always a bridesmaid but never a bride.

They certainly didn't carry the aura of a two–time defending champion.

Perhaps their victory over the Lakers will propel the Mavs to their first NBA title — just as it did for the Bucks 40 years ago.

And Now For The Really Hard Part ...

---

---

Did you watch the Kentucky Derby yesterday?

Animal Kingdom was the surprise winner.

Well, I say "surprise" — but, in fact, everyone was saying this was the most wide–open Derby in a long time. I saw a comment from one trainer prior to the race who said that nearly all of the 19 horses had at least a shot at winning the race. Only one or two could be considered legitimate upsets, he said.

I don't know if he considered Animal Kingdom to be one of them, but it is true that it has been, as Alicia Wincze Hughes writes for the Lexington Herald–Leader, an "unpredictable" time for 3–year–olds.

Consequently, she just might be right when she says the 20–1 shot was the "perfect specimen" to seize the moment in the Kentucky Derby.

I didn't hear much about Animal Kingdom before the race. Most of the attention was on the other horses. That was to be expected, I guess. He didn't have a very impressive resume.

But I expect to hear a lot about Animal Kingdom in the next two weeks. His days of relative anonymity are over.

For those who follow horse racing to any extent, this may be the most intriguing time of the year. The legendary Triple Crown is out there to be won, and the Preakness is the next jewel.

The Triple Crown hangs in the horizon like something of a mirage, as it always does for the Kentucky Derby winner. The picture becomes a bit clearer if the Derby winner also wins in Baltimore two weeks later — but that is no guarantee of eventual success in the Belmont in June as many of the jockeys who rode Kentucky Derby winners in the last 33 years could tell you.

This is the hard part for Animal Kingdom. The weight of horse racing history hangs heavier with each passing year.

Since Affirmed claimed the 1978 Triple Crown, about two–thirds of the Kentucky Derby winners have come up short in the Preakness. In those years, horse racing's Triple Crown hype has been short lived.

And, even when they have won the second jewel of the Triple Crown, even when they have looked like foregone conclusions in the Belmont, it hasn't worked out that way.

Now it is Animal Kingdom's turn. Can he do what so many others have failed to do? This is the longest drought between Triple Crown winners, but the truth is that it has always been an elusive achievement. Between 1919 and 1978, only 11 horses won the Triple Crown.

Mark Beech of Sports Illustrated seems to think it is possible this year. Yes, he agrees, Animal Kingdom was an unknown quantity before yesterday's race — but don't underestimate him.

He's been improving in every start, Beech writes, and he is "modestly bred, with the pedigree of a turf runner, which in plain English means he should be able to run all day long."

Time will tell.

Some Pre-Derby Thoughts

---

The Kentucky Derby inspired the late Dan Fogelberg
to compose "Run For The Roses" 30 years ago.

---

In about six hours, the 137th Kentucky Derby will be run at Churchill Downs.

The Derby has been called "The Greatest Two Minutes in Sports" and "The Fastest Two Minutes in Sports."

But some years — especially, it seems, this year — deciding which one to support — or, more to the point for many, which one is worthy of a wager — is much more time consuming.

I've been scouring the internet this morning, and I haven't found a consensus yet.

Earlier in the week, there seemed to be a modest consensus building that Uncle Mo was a potential winner. But he was scratched yesterday.

But even when Uncle Mo was scratched, that did not eliminate the early favorite. That was Dialed In — and Alex Brown of the New York Times says he looks good to go today.

"[I]f he is your pick," writes Brown, "then he certainly looks ready to run a great race."

Jennie Rees writes, in the Louisville (Ky.) Courier–Journal that it is more difficult to predict the outcome of this year's race than ever.

In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Johnny Love writes that he prefers "multiple bets" when you have a field as large as the one that is typical of the Derby — and this year's Derby (assuming there are no more scratches) has 19 entrants.

Love likes deep closer Nehro — but, if the track is sloppy, he prefers pacesetter Soldat. (Incidentally, the latest weather forecast I have seen calls for a 50% chance of rain and temperatures in the upper 60s.)

He says he likes Dialed In. "Just don't like him as [the] favorite."

Pia Catton writes in the Wall Street Journal that "[s]ince there's no easy, clear favorite, this is the sort of year that those of us who consider ourselves once–a–year railbirds need to do some actual research. If you're not careful, this can become a life–warping vortex of hours vaporized on the Internet."

It's an "impossibly tough decision," says the headline in the Journal, but, confides Catton, "I love the gutsiness of Mucho Macho Man."

Catton openly concedes a preference to see Archarcharch win. Archarcharch showed a "burst of speed" in the Arkansas Derby, but "[m]aybe he can't sustain it for the 10 furlongs," Catton frets. "Maybe he'll get boxed in."

Gene Menez of Sports Illustrated doesn't hesitate to say that Archarcharch is one of the best bets in today's Derby field.

But Menez also advises would–be gamblers to "Pick a name out of a hat. Close your eyes and point. Or better yet, go by colors, numbers and names. Any method of handicapping ... is just about as good as any other."

They've all got their drawbacks.

Brad Telias of The Sporting News says today's race became "an even more wide–open affair" with Uncle Mo's withdrawal.

Uncle Mo's departure, in other words, did not muddy up this field, regardless of whether it rains today or not. It was already muddy.

And that, says Tim Layden in Sports Illustrated, is bad news for everyone.

"What's good is greatness," Layden writes. "When there is greatness, that opens the door to both historic achievement and earth–shaking upsets. Wide open means mediocre and everybody here knows it, even if nobody contesting the race is saying it."

I suppose that makes it clear what the real challenge is.

It isn't winning today's Derby — although doing so will be an important achievement.

The challenge will be whether the winner of today's race can rise above expectations, above the level of mediocre to the rarified air of contender for the first Triple Crown in 33 years.

The Say Hey Kid Turns 80

---

---

When I was a kid, there was a raging debate among baseball fans.

Who would be the first to surpass Babe Ruth on the all–time home run list, Hank Aaron or Willie Mays?

My money was always on Willie, and he got a considerable jump on the somewhat plodding but steady Aaron early in their careers.

I always felt Mays was more charismatic, and I guess I gravitated to him because of that in those days ... but Aaron caught up with him and passed him on the home run list. I don't remember which one made it to 600 homers first, but Aaron went on to exceed Ruth's career total (which Mays never did) and become the all–time home run champion for the next three decades.

Even so, Mays left his mark — many of them — on major league baseball:

• Nearly four decades after he retired, only three men have hit more home runs in their careers than Mays — and only one played his entire career after Mays left the scene.


• And none of those guys ever hit four home runs in a game — which Mays did 50 years ago last weekend in a game against Aaron's Milwaukee Braves.


• Only half a dozen players have scored more runs than Mays. His closest competition among active players is Alex Rodriguez, who needs to score more than 250 times to equal Mays.


• Rodriguez may well outscore Mays before his career is over. If he does, it seems to be a cinch that he will pass Mays on the all–time RBI list. He trails Mays by fewer than 50 in that category — and, if he does pass him, he will be in the all–time Top 10.


• Mays led the National League in batting average once and finished as the runnerup three times.


• Only 10 players have more career base hits than Mays — and his most serious competition among active players, Derek Jeter, needs more than 300 hits to pass him.


• He was the first major league baseball player to hit 30 home runs before the All–Star break — an achievement that became much more commonplace during the steroids era.

Anyway, as hard as it is to believe, Mays is 80 years old today.

I guess it shouldn't be so hard to believe. And it isn't, really. I mean, I know when he retired, and I know when he was born.

It's just hard to accept that so much time has gone by since he graced the baseball fields of America.

Monarchos' Run for the Roses

---

---

I remember, when I was a young boy, watching Secretariat's remarkable Kentucky Derby victory in 1973.

Actually, all of Secretariat's races were remarkable that spring and early summer, and I guess it would be hard to single out any one of his triumphs en route to the Triple Crown. They were all special.

Secretariat truly did some amazing things in 1973. On the afternoon that he won the Belmont Stakes (the third and final jewel in the Triple Crown), he won by an incredible 31 lengths. That was a record, but, to be fair, it was accomplished against only a handful of horses, and none was close to being Secretariat's equal.

He went from last to first on the first turn of the Preakness Stakes (the second jewel of the Triple Crown) and wound up winning by 2½ lengths.

But 38 years ago at Churchill Downs, running in what has long been called the "Fastest Two Minutes in Sports," Secretariat did something no other horse had ever done before. He finished it in less than two minutes (1:59 2/5, to be exact) — and he ran each quarter–mile faster than the one he had just completed.

---

---

(Here's some little–known trivia for you. Secretariat wasn't the only horse to run the Derby in under two minutes that afternoon. Runnerup Sham was 2/5 of a second behind.)

I never saw a horse like Secretariat — before or since. There may have been one that was almost as good — but that was before my time.

And I never thought I would see that performance in the Derby duplicated. But 10 years ago today, I saw another horse break the two–minute barrier at Churchill Downs.

His name was Monarchos, and he was ridden by Jorge F. Chavez. I can't say I remember what the final odds were in the 2001 Kentucky Derby (I've never paid close attention to the odds in a horse race unless I had a wager on it), but I gather that Monarchos was something of a longshot. He paid $23.00, $11.80 and $8.80. The place horse, Invisible Ink, must have been an even longer shot. He paid $46.60 and $21.20.

That made for some really astonishing payoffs in the exotic wagers that were available.

Exotic wagers often post some eye–popping payoffs, even when the odds on the horses are relatively low, but those payoffs in 2001 were really unusual. A $2 exacta ticket with those two horses on it paid $1,229. A $2 trifecta ticket with those two horses and the show horse, Congaree, paid $12,238.40. And a $1 superfecta ticket, with those three plus the fourth–place finisher, Thunder Blitz, paid $62,986.90.

May 5, 2001, was a great day to bet on longshots.

Last I heard, Monarchos was recovering from colic surgery.

And the outlook is good — for Monarchos, that is.

Not necessarily for anyone who hopes to see that two–minute barrier broken again at Churchill Downs on Saturday — although stranger things have happened.

The Death of Our 'Enry

---

---

Henry Cooper has died at the age of 76.

Most people may not remember Cooper, a former boxer from England. There probably isn't much reason to remember him, I suppose, but nearly 48 years ago, he fought Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) and did something that few men did during Ali's career.

Cooper knocked him down.

It wasn't the kind of knockdown you probably imagine when you hear that. The men weren't in the middle of the ring when it happened, and Ali didn't go down like a bag of wet cement; rather, they were near the ropes, and Ali's arm got snagged in them, keeping him from falling to the canvas, where his head might well have struck the boards concealed beneath.

If that had happened, it is easy to imagine that Ali might have been knocked out — and Cooper (known affectionately as "Our 'Enry" in the United Kingdom) might have won. The history of heavyweight boxing would have been changed forever.

Ali's next fight was against the heavyweight champ, Sonny Liston. But it might have been Cooper instead.

Ali was spared that because his arm got caught in the rope and held him up as the fourth round came to an end. He was woozy, though, and his trainer, Angelo Dundee, used smelling salts to revive him.

The use of smelling salts was in violation of existing rules, but it wasn't the only questionable tactic Dundee used on that occasion. He also made a tear in one of Ali's gloves and told the referee that new gloves were needed, which further delayed resumption of the bout.

By the time the fighters returned to the ring, Ali had shaken off the fog and was able to concentrate on open cuts on Cooper's face. Before long, blood was streaming down his face like perspiration. Cooper was leading on the judges' scorecards, but the referee nevertheless had to stop the fight and award the decision to Ali.

I've only seen that fight on film — and I never saw it until I was an adult — but I remember seeing pictures of Cooper's blood–streaked face in boxing magazines when I was a child. I found the image very disturbing.

I found it even more disturbing later in life when I saw Dundee being interviewed about the fight, and he readily admitted to both offenses. He seemed proud of what he had done — and I suppose he was. He had kept a young boxing prospect on his path of destiny.

However, Cooper did have a lasting impact on the sport. Spare gloves were required at ringside, but he couldn't make the use of smelling salts illegal. It was illegal already. It just wasn't rigidly enforced on that evening in 1963.

The NFL Draft

The 2011 NFL Draft is in the books now, and I have mixed emotions.

Back in February, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.

I feel it is necessary to remind you of that because it really seems to me that everything that has happened since that day — or, more accurately, since the imposition of the lockout in March — has felt like the NFL was just going through the motions.

I felt that way when the NFL's 2011 preseason and regular season schedules were announced.

And I felt that way when the draft was conducted over the past three days.

OK, I get that these are the things that are part of the NFL's routine business. College athletes are drafted into the NFL every year, and schedules are announced every year.

And everyone speculates on what kind of impact each will have on the ultimate outcome of the season.

Still, I just can't shake the thought that 2011 will not be a business–as–usual kind of year for pro football.

Nevertheless, if the unexpected does happen and the NFL plays the 2011 schedule, I can't help wondering what kind of difference the draftees will make.

Other folks are wondering the same thing today:

• Nate Davis of USA Today has a general list of the winners and losers in the draft.
  
  And the first one wasn't even a draftee this year. It was veteran quarterback Carson Palmer — not the TCU quarterback who was chosen as his heir apparent.


• As Davis observed, seven quarterbacks were taken in the first round, tying a record. You'd think, on the basis of that alone, that the teams with pressing QB issues addressed them, wouldn't you?
  
  And yet, as Gregg Rosenthal writes for NBC Sports, eight teams still have significant quarterback issues to resolve.
  
  The position, Rosenthal concludes, remains "a seller's market."


• At NFL.com, Vic Carucci lists five players he thinks will have immediate impacts on their teams' fortunes.


• And Pete Prisco of CBS Sports says Tampa Bay, Houston and the New York Giants had "A" grade drafts.

But Prisco also points out that "[g]rading a draft the day it's completed is a challenge. It's all just speculative."

Indeed it is. Some athletes have risen to the occasion and made the transition from the college level to the pro level, and some have been so exceptional at it that they have been enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame when their playing days were over.

But some athletes fall short of expectations — and that is why most of the sports writers I have known would rather not revisit what they wrote about a given draft a few years after the fact.

They know that much of their speculation already has been proven, by the passage of time, to be wrong.

A good example is the #1 pick in this year's draft, Cam Newton of Auburn.

Like Reggie Bush a few years ago, Newton won the Heisman Trophy. And anyone who saw him play this year knows he possesses many gifts that should make him a valuable commodity in the NFL.

But you never know.

Newton could be sidetracked, like Bush, by a collegiate scandal. Or he just might not live up to the hype.

In pro football, you measure the difference between the great and the near great in inches.

And it's still possible that we may measure the distance between the most recent Super Bowl and the next regular season in years, not months.