Given the level of self-absorption exhibited by many young athletes today and their glaring lack of comprehension of those aspects of the world that are not focused on them, I wonder if today being Veterans' Day makes them wonder if they missed out on celebrating Rookies' Day? Don't tell me it couldn't happen.

I have to begin today with a piece of errata. Thanks to several alert readers from yesterday, I was not paying attention when I wrote the rant and certainly did not proofread it for content sufficiently because I said that Miami had lost to Pitt on Saturday. In fact, Pitt beat Va Tech and Miami lost to Tennessee. One e-mail response came from a self-described “dispossessed son of Western Pennsylvania now dwelling in the Commonwealth of Virginia” who is very hopeful that Pitt will lay yet another loss on Miami when they meet in a few weeks. He described Miami as “the biggest collection of arrogant egotists in college football.” Perchance we might have someone who has not yet recognized himself as a “curmudgeon in training”?

Here are two notes I took while watching TV this weekend:

The Ravens were called for defensive holding on a PAT – not a two-point conversion, a kick. How? Why?

ESPN televised a world-championship Scrabble tournament. Why? Look, I like Scrabble; I play Scrabble; I'm pretty good at Scrabble. But if there were ever something that is not a “made-for-TV-activity”, it would be a game of Scrabble. Next they'll be trying to televise the card game, War.

In the Rams' victory Sunday nite over the Ravens, the stats are very unusual. The Rams managed 133 yards of total offense for the game. They had two passes intercepted and lost two fumbles. Normally that means they would get their clock cleaned and score 6 points. They scored 33 points and won. Of course the fact that the Ravens threw 3 INTs and lost 4 fumbles made all of that possible.

Rick Carlisle has just come up with an idea that qualifies him for the “Let Them Eat Cake Award” for 2003. He has noticed that scoring and shooting percentages in the NBA continue to decline and his suggested method for curing that is to make the rim bigger. Said Carlisle, “There's a problem with scoring in this league and everyone knows it, but no solution has been heard. I certainly haven't heard anything else as a potential remedy.” Please recall my proposed solution from a year ago, which would put a premium on scoring and would therefore alter the way teams are constructed and the way that coaches conduct the games:

Any loss where the losing team scores less than 75 points counts as 1.5 losses in the standings. If they score less than 70 points it counts as 2 losses.

Any win where the team scores less than 80 points counts as only 0.5 wins. If they score less than 75 points it counts as only 0.25 wins.

My solution is radical; I'll give you that. But Carlisle's suggestion begs the more important question. Why is shooting so bad? Maybe the coaching and teaching isn't sufficiently excellent? Nah. That can't be it.

A week ago, Bonzi Wells flipped off a fan at a home game for getting on another Blazers' player. There were about 3,000 empty seats in the Rose Garden for that game – something that was unimaginable for about the last 25 years. Then two nights later the Blazers played to a crowd of 14,600, which means over 5,000 seats were empty. That is the smallest attendance for a Blazers game in the history of that venue. Maybe Blazer fans are demonstrating that they want to see some players on the team that they can root for and who can be liked and admired?

Earlier I alluded to self-absorbed young athletes. You could argue that one such person is Maurice Clarett. It was reported in a Columbus newspaper that Clarett is failing two courses this semester (one in African-American studies and one in phys ed no less). Isn't it amazing how he managed to pass everything and stay eligible while he was also spending hours and hours playing football and practicing football and working out with the football team and so on? But now that he is not a football player – and he is a litigant against the university – he is failing his courses. Consider:

1. Is it possible that star football players get special treatment with regard to academics at The Ohio State University? Isn't that one of the issues that kicked the snowball over the cliff in L'affaire de Monsieur Maurice?

2. If he flunks and drags down his GPA and is not declared eligible for the NFL Draft next spring, he may not play for OSU next year because is academically ineligible. Unbelievable. Remember, this is a kid who graduated high school with a 3.5 GPA [cough, cough].

3. If he withdraws from the classes, he becomes a part-time student and therefore would have to sit out some number of games next year before being eligible to play even if he gets straight A's in other courses.

4. Most interestingly, this story is based on a “memo” from the AD to someone else which found its way to the Columbus Dispatch? I wonder if ADs always write memos about every player that is having academic difficulties. I wonder why only this memo managed to find its way into the public eye…

Speaking of Ohio State, they are now 3rd in the BCS standings. They do play a difficult schedule and they only have one loss. However, eight of their games are at home this year. I'll be waiting to see how many years it will be until they play 8 road games in a year.

Scott Ostler was less than kind to the Oakland Raiders after the team lost to the Jets in OT last weekend. If you would like to see a team and an organization skewered and then barbecued, I commend his column from yesterday to you.

The media has begun “piling on” Joe Paterno with regard to his current viability as a coach. People have begun to wonder just how long Penn State owes it to JoePa to stay on and what it might take for the university to make him move on. It is so self-righteous. So let me put this to the sportswriters of America in terms that they will understand and relate to – but not be comfortable with:

Shirley Povich was revered figure as a sportswriter for the Washington Post for about 70 years. For at least the last 10 of those years – and some would say 20 of them – Shirley had “lost a couple of feet off his fastball” so to speak. But he had been an icon in his field for 50 years. So why didn't the Washington Post fire his sorry washed-up ass? If you want to understand the situation in State College, ponder Shirley Povich's final decade of writing columns for the Washington Post.

Finally, the new University of Vermont assistant men's lacrosse coach is Joe Proud. If the university ever finds the need to fire him for some reason, they should do it in the late summer so that they can issue a press release with the title “Proud Goeth Before The Fall.” [Apologies to Proverbs 16:18].

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

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