The Detroit Shock are the champions of the WNBA. Their coach is Bill Lambier. Last year, Lambier took over the team when they were something like 0-11 and were being blown off the court routinely. Last year, the Shock lost 23 games for the season and had the worst record in the league. One season later, they are champions. Now that is what you call a “turnaround”.

The Steelers list LB, Jerry Porter, as questionable for this week's game; in NFL parlance, that means he has a 50/50 shot at playing. It was only a bit over two weeks ago when Porter was shot in the butt outside a nightclub in Colorado. As surprising as that recovery is, I read something else about this incident that was unusual. Porter was shot in Colorado after the Colorado/Colorado State game. He was taken to a hospital there for treatment but the surgery to remove the bullet was not done for a couple of days and was done back in Pittsburgh. Now maybe it's just me, but that has to be one tough dude keeping that thing in his butt/thigh for several days and traveling across two time zones to get it removed. Imagine sitting on an airplane for a flight from Denver to Pittsburgh with a bullet in your butt. Even if the team sent a private jet for him, this cannot be luxurious travel.

Last night when I saw that the Phillies had beaten the Marlins by a 14-0 score, I expected the Philly papers to do something with their headlines about the Phillies scoring two TDs when the Eagles have yet to score that much in two games. The headline writers didn't go that way but they did stay with that theme. The online version of the Philadelphia Daily News had the headline:

East Coast Offense

Mike Lupica in the NY Daily News said that the Eagles' first two games in Lincoln Financial Field have turned it into the Lincoln Memorial. Not a bad line at all. I prefer to think that the problem is that the Eagles' coaching personnel upstairs are sitting in the John Wilkes booth.

Chris Webber went to court to hear his sentence yesterday. Webber pleaded guilty to lying to a grand jury. Instead, the judge deferred his sentencing until 2005. She did not delay sentencing until a week from Tuesday; she delayed it for two years. This is the same judge who agreed to a delay of the trial date so that it would not interfere with the NBA season/playoffs for Webber and that delay caused the entire matter to be rendered moot when the prosecution star witness died. [Ed Martin's death was from natural causes; this is not a made-for-TV movie.] The Constitutional provision for a speedy trial is supposed to be tied into the concept that justice delayed is justice denied. Well, this judge has shown that in reverse. She delayed the trial and neutralized the people's case by that ruling. Now that she has a guilty plea in front of her – and has for three months or so – she delays the sentencing for another two years while she ponders the issues in the case. Once again, justice is delayed. I wonder if every person who comes before her for sentencing gets the same two-year “parole” while the judge weighs all the issues?

It looks as if Chris Webber got the timeout he wanted this time around.

US women soccer players still hold out hope that corporate sponsorships can be found in the next several weeks to resurrect the WUSA. They need something on the order of $16-20M so there is no point in thinking about a garage sale or two. A women's soccer team in Teutschenthall, Germany has a most unusual sponsor. On their jerseys it says:

“X-Carree: Always Worth A Visit”

X-Carree is a licensed brothel in Germany. Now imagine for just microsecond the outrage that would be created here in the US if one of the legal brothels in Nevada wanted to be a corporate sponsor of any women's sport or sports team. The ESPN program, Outside the Lines would have material and people to emote about that material for months.

Speaking about the WUSA and people whose only visible talent is emoting, how come Martha Burke hasn't stepped up to use the power and prestige of her organization to save this league from oblivion? There are lots of rich women in the US who should be pressured to step up and support this league, no? Or maybe Ms. Burke doesn't want to call out women in influential positions lest they put a chokehold on the funds that might go to her organization? Maybe, the TV ratings for the WUSA are too low and Martha figures that when she gets on TV, no one will see her? But it certainly does seem to me that the failure of a women's pro league is a more important “women's issue” than who is a member of a snooty golf club.

The revenue differences between men's and women's sports are also shown in the following information reported by Charlie Walters in the St Paul Pioneer-Press. The University of Minnesota athletic budget for this academic year projects the following in revenues:

Football $5.765M
Basketball (men) $4.776M
Hockey (men) $4.370M
Basketball (women) $0.769M
Wrestling $0.200M
All others $0.313M

The Montreal Alouettes have a mascot named Blitz; it is a bird. The mascot drew a 15-yard penalty last week when it “pecked” a referee on the cheek as it was celebrating a TD by the Alouettes. The head coach said that he wanted the mascot fired but the team said the mascot would be retained and told to stay on the sidelines. I don't know about you, but there seems to be something strange about the “pecking order” here. The coach, Don Matthews, is closing in on 200 wins in the CFL so he is not some doofus who was made coach of the team because he happened to be waiting for a bus one day while the training facility went up around him. The team has a 9-2 record this year so they are not stinking out the joint. I wonder if the mascot is related to the team owner in some direct or indirect way…

Here is another tidbit from my continued NASCAR studying. There is a driver in the NASCAR Busch Series named Brian Vickers and he is 19 years old at the moment. He is qualified to race a car around a track at speeds approaching 200 mph separated from other vehicles doing the same thing by a few feet – or even inches – but he is not yet eligible to drink any Busch beer. Scary thought!

Remember last year when the University of Arizona football team came to the brink of mutiny against coach John Mackovic and there had to be mediation sessions and communication exchanges and all that process oriented stuff that supposedly solves problems? Guess what. One problem is that the team – and maybe its coaching staff too – stink. The Wildcats are 0-2 this year and have lost by a combined score of 105-23. My guess is that they have more than a failure of communications going on there and it will take some kind of miraculous turnaround by the team for Mackovic to keep his job there.

Finally, Campbell College in Buies Creek, NC has the nickname The Camels. Now here are some natural rivals for them to schedule:

Winston-Salem State
Kent State
Christopher Newport University
Marlboro College
Maryville University (in Chesterfield, Missouri)

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

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