Not happening !!

Tinkle, tinkle baseball star…

The University of Richmond's assistant basketball coach, Mike Wilson, was fired for some résumé inaccuracies, which led to incorrect material being included in the Auburn media guide last year. Evidently he claimed to have coached a high school team in the late 70s and early 80s but did not; evidently he claimed one alma mater that did not belong to him; evidently he had the incorrect year of birth listed in the media guide last year. This résumé business is getting out of hand. He lied about his age. So does that mean that NCAA institutions would have blackballed Jack Benny? Someone needs to step back and ask about the kinds of inaccuracies that exist here and which ones matter and which ones don't.

Remember I said that Mike Tyson would fight again and again and again? Well in a "heavyweight title fight", Vladmir Klitschko retained his WBO title by defeating Ray Mercer. Yes, that Ray Mercer. No, Ray Mercer did not also fight Jack Dempsey but he is almost old enough to have. Now Vlad the Impaler wants to fight Lennox Lewis and he wants to challenge him to a chess match before they fight. How many people will pay $54.95 (what the Tyson/Lewis fight cost) to watch Vlad and Lennox play chess on Wednesday and then fight on Friday night? Not enough to matter. But people would fork over tens of millions of dollars to watch Tyson fight a pro rassler. And this is why Tyson has paydays in front of him. Watch for a Tyson/Klitschko match to gain some currency… Winner gets Lewis…

Soccer's passion seems to know no bounds. The South Korean team was the biggest surprise of the World Cup tournament making it all the way to the Final Four. Never had South Korea been anywhere near that lofty level on the world stage of sport – including the speed skater that was disqualified and placed behind Apollo Anton Ohno. A Dutch ex-pat named Guus Hiddink coached the South Korean team. He is now so revered in South Korea that travel agencies are offering package deals for Koreans to go to Holland to visit his birthplace and a city where he once played soccer briefly. Realize, that requires the Korean tourists to cross about 7 time zones! The first package tour has already returned and there were 28 travelers in the group. Imagine what would happen in the US if someone put together a package tour to the birthplace of Bruce Arena and a city where he played junior soccer. My guess is that they would be the target of a satirical article in The Onion and that they would get just enough people to sign on for the tour that they could hold their pre-boarding briefings in a phone booth.

It seems that the Minnesota Vikings will add Carl Eller to their "Ring of Honor" at one of the home games this season. One might be tempted to ask what the hell took them so long to figure out that he belonged there?

In news about another former Viking, it seems that Dennis Green will be a studio host for a pre-game TV show in San Diego. The working title of the show is Charger Game Plan. Last we saw/heard from Dennis Green, he assured that we would always find him on the high road. So now we know that the high road goes from Minneapolis to San Diego. The jury is still out on where the low road goes. Somehow, I think it has to involve a passing by wherever Richie Kotite is residing at any given moment.

The University of California football program was caught cheating by the NCAA and sanctions were imposed. There will be no bowl games for Cal this year and nine scholarships have been stripped from the program. Most schools would be upset and even angry with this; the Cal campus ought to be outraged beyond description. They have been punished and penalized and the team was 1-10 last year. If you cheat, you ought to at least win games that you will forfeit at a later date. Banning a 1-10 team from bowl games is like telling a high school kid that he absolutely may not invite Roseanne Barr to his Senior Prom. Worse yet, it is like telling him he may take Anna Kournikova to his Senior Prom on the condition that she win a tournament before the date of the prom.

I talked about the NBA Draft yesterday. Given all the emphasis on projecting players into what they will be several years from now and all the importance given to "upside" and "potential", it occurs to me that the NBA is paying homage to a hip-hop group named Boyz II Men because for lots of high draft picks, that is precisely the projection they are trying to make. Just a cultural note here, I asked #2 son for the correct spelling of this group but in my note to him I called them a "rap band". I got back from him the correct spelling and a long exposition on the fact that they are a hip-hop band and not a rap band. That is why they are so identified here. I don't know hip-hop from the bunny hop.

The USOC is touring the country to visit cities hoping to bid for the 2012 Olympics. In Washington last week, they found the local situation "had no shortfalls". Then they visited New York and opined that NY "had all the right ingredients". Basically, this is a tour where the USOC will have to find diplomatically proper things to say about all the cities in the bidding so that they can throw full support behind the one city in the US that makes the final bid to the IOC. That will of course be the city best situated to host the Olympics and not the one that greased the palms of the USOC most generously. Remember, those days are gone…

Finally, let me close with an observation from Blackie Sherrod in his column from 23 June:

"From NY colmyst, Jimmy Breslin, covering the Catholic bishops' meeting in Big D: 'The church's problem with sex is almost as big as the NBA's.' "