It's spring training time. Hope springs eternal in the hearts of many fans – unless they live in Detroit or Tampa. Ignoring the focus on who may have been using “performance enhancing substances” and who may not have, everyone looks back on the off-season as a time when preparation for the upcoming season puts everyone in the place they want to be. People who needed to lose weight to get faster lost weight; people who wanted to add weight to get stronger added weight; pitchers adjusted their mechanics; batters honed their swings. Not only can you read about all this stuff, you will almost have to because it will be the space filling material of newspapers and ESPN and FOX Sports for the next month. But out in Los Angeles, there is one small indication that the Dodger faithful may not be completely happy or serene.

On the Dodgers' team website, fans were asked to indicate who should bat clean-up behind Shawn Green. Four choices were offered – Adrian Beltré, Juan Encarnation, Robin Ventura, and Somebody Else. The winner was “Somebody Else” and we have no idea what position he might play. Imagine if the person putting the question up for voting had typed in “Anybody Else” – the younger and less talented brother of Somebody Else. Remember Dodger fans; you might get what you asked for; José Canseco was at a Dodger tryout in the last couple of days…

Oh, by the way, just how uplifting a morale boost must this be to Beltré, Encarnation and Ventura? They haven't taken the field in a spring training game yet and already the fans are “restless”.

After the tumultuous off-season in Boston, the Red Sox have assembled in Florida and they ought to look at this year as a window of opportunity that might just close with a thud. There are six players on the team who are in their “contract year”. Normally, that means one should expect solid and focused performance from these six players and that is very positive. On the other hand, it also means that next year's team could look very different from this year's team. Oh, and it's not like the six players are utility players like Joe Flabeetz and Sam Glotz. The Sox players who will be free agents next winter are Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek and Scott Williamson.

Mets' manager, Art Howe, already announced his starting pitcher for opening day against the Atlanta Braves. He will start Tom Glavine who did not exactly do very well against his former teammates last year. In fact, Glavine was 0-4 against the Braves last year with an ERA of 10.35. Someone asked Howe about that and Howe's response showed that the tension there could be in mid-season form already:

“That's history. We have a new club. They have a new club. And last year was the first time he faced his old club.”

Not to parse that answer too finely, but Howe has informed us that last year is in the past, both teams made changes over the winter and Glavine never pitched against the Braves when he was a member of the Braves. Slow down there big fella, I need to catch my breath as I try to put all those pieces together in my cognitive space…

Dr. Myles Brand is on record as saying that collegiate sports is not a business and that it properly belongs in the context of the major university mission – education. A noble thought, but one that shows that Dr. Brand might be clueless enough to think that having waffles for breakfast constitutes eating a square meal. Let me offer two new examples to show Dr. Brand that college sport – particularly college football – is a business and not an educational tool.

Lou Saban signed a new contract with LSU after winning the BCS championship last year. He had been courted by NFL teams and reportedly turned down an offer from the Chicago Bears. Now it is reported that Saban will earn in excess of $2M per year at LSU and has some incentive clauses in his contract. It is reported that he can earn up to $50K extra per year if LSU ranks high in the percentage of athletes who graduate from LSU on time. Another incentive clause reportedly would allow him to earn and extra $350K per year based on which Bowl Game LSU appears in.

Memo to Dr. Brand:

1. Explain how this “incentive structure” portrays college football as anything other than a business. Remember, in raising children or in management situations, you get the behavior that you reward.

2. Don't worry. Wisdom eventually comes to all of us. Someday, it might be your turn…

The other example of football as a business comes from the BCS goofs themselves who have decided to add a fifth Bowl Game to their rotation. That will raise the payout of some existing bowl game – if it is elevated to that exalted status – or it will create an entirely new pot of money to be handed out if a new game is added to the mix. The bottom line is more money to go into the coffers of the schools that play big time college football. In business, this is called “growing the brand”. This is not a great leap forward on the educational/pedagogical front. The initial press releases about the new BCS game tried to make it sound as if this was being done to give the so-called “mid-majors” a way to be part of the cash torrent of the BCS. I'm not buying that for a minute. To create and maintain the cash torrent, the Fifth BCS Bowl will have to generate TV ratings and a steady diet of mid-major schools on New Year's Day will doom that Fifth Game to bottom feeder status in terms of ratings and ad revenues. Last year, Miami (Ohio) and Bowling Green and Northern Illinois and Boise State were interesting stories but they will not draw audiences sufficient to give them a reliable invitation to the feast. Bottom line, the added game makes the BCS bigger but not necessarily better.

Finally, the deservedly maligned Veterans' Stadium will be imploded later this month. So what might replace it as the most reviled stadium in the country? Scott Ostler's description of the 49ers home field in the San Francisco Chronicle might make it the leader in the clubhouse:

“The 49ers take a continual financial and aesthetic pounding by playing their games in the Parthenon West, where the pillars would collapse if they weren't held together by congealed seagull dung.”

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

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