Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Indy’s Morning Sports List – Top 6 great reasons to play high school football

Another reason to play football is the opportunity to learn from a great coach – like New Pal’s Kyle Ralph.

The reasons not to play high school football are widely discussed, and most have to do with the long-term brain health of participants. CTE is a fact of life for many of those who receive repeated blows to the noodle, and the results are horrifying for those who suffer from it and their families.

That’s the disclaimer to let you know that there is a risk – a potential cost – for the good stuff that comes along with playing a virtually perfect collaborative game like football.

Semi-state high school state tournament games will be played in Indiana this weekend, which means another 50% of the players still competing will survive to play in the state championship games to be contested at Lucas Oil Stadium next Friday and Saturday. The other half will put away their pads and helmets. Many seniors will play the final games of their lives. Continue reading →

Indy’s Morning Sports List – 7 reasons why I write and talk about sports every day

Talking and writing about sports is a bizarre way to earn a living, but they provide a strange set of wonderful validations – not necessarily from listeners and readers – but from the feeling of accomplishment in finishing a day where fun was had and unique information was shared.

I host a daily three-hour radio show on CBS Sports 1430 in Indianapolis and write daily on this website. Until a couple of years ago, I managed very talented men and women who did the same. Both have their thrilling moments, but hosting and writing is more challenging on a minute to minute basis.

Before telling you what this vocation of preparing and delivering unique content in media is about, let me share what it isn’t – at least not for me. Because we like to keep score as a society, ratings and page views in media can be a focus of some who work in digital content, radio/TV, and social media. Over the years, I have come to completely ignore them. Clicks, ratings, followers? I don’t care. It’s not what gets me up in the morning. I grade myself by how well I find the truth and then tell it.

Of course, I would love to have millions of people consume what I produce, but I can’t control that. All I can do is the best I can every day, and work as hard as I can to make what I do valuable.

People think that I talk and write occasionally about Kentucky Basketball and often about Tom Crean and Indiana because I am trying to amass ratings and page views. Nope. I learned a long time ago that popularity is a focus best left to high schoolers.

Some days it works, and others, well, I could have done much better. Sometimes, I get a little snarky, and entertain myself in that way. Moments like that I regret. Sometimes, especially when I haven’t yet developed a clear vision of what is happening with a team, coach, or player I circle the truth until I find it. I need to improve there.

Here are the 7 things I love best about writing and talking about sports:

1 – Sports are all about why. It’s fun to watch games to try to find the reasons one team is successful while the other fails. Is it the coach’s strategy, cultural initiatives, execution of the team, weakness or strength of a player, or some other arcane and hard to notice factor? Continue reading →

Indy Morning Sports List – Top seven myths of college hoops that should be rejected

Whatever you believe about Kentucky coach John Calipari, you cannot be a college basketball fan and not enjoy watching Tyler Ulis play defense.

The college basketball season started with a vengeance yesterday, and fans got a great look at big time programs paying against each other instead of preparing for conference games by tuning up Lipscomb, Austin Peay, and directional state universities. It was great. Loved every minute.

While we love college hoops, pointing out some common misconceptions seems a reasonable investment of time and energy.

Here are the top seven myths of college basketball that deserve to be debunked:

The Big 12 is a part of the Power Five. In truth, they are closer to the middle tier of conferences than in joining the Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC, and ACC in both football and basketball. Sure, Oklahoma is representing the Big 12 very nicely in both major sports, and Kansas is always highly ranked and wins the conference in hoops every season, but two Final Fours in the last decade reveals their elite-minus status. Continue reading →

Indy Morning Sports List – the top 10 things I love about the new Pacers

Pacers coach Frank Vogel has at least 10 reasons to flash that goofy smile as the Pacers have improved more quickly than expected.

Ten games into the season, the Pacers are 6-4. Projected over the entire season, that equates to 48-49 wins.

The Pacers play the Chicago Bulls on the road tonight in what will be an early referendum on their progress in reconfiguring their roster and offensive concepts. Continue reading →

Indy Morning Sports List – Top Five reasons for pessimism about Indiana Basketball

Yogi Ferrell returns for his fourth season at Indiana – whether they can meet expectations this year depends in part on Yogi’s defense.

Tonight, the journey begins for the Indiana Hoosiers. A deep and talented backcourt coupled with a refurbished group of bigs have fans in Bloomington excited about basketball again this year – just like last year and the year before that. Continue reading →

Indy Morning Sports List – Top 9 things wrong with sports radio

Sports radio hosts do their jobs differently, but many of us make the same mistakes.

Things that are wrong with sports radio are also wrong with the rest of media, so this headline is way too specific.

People in media sadly aren’t the sharpest tacks in the drawer, so we tend to not see life as a collaborative and fun exploit filled with adventure and productive endeavors.

Because we in radio are verbal troglodytes with the attention span of a caffeinated fruit fly, our behavior tends to bend toward the sophomoric and shiny. Continue reading →

Indy’s Morning Sports List – Top 10 pieces of Colts news worse than Andrew Luck’s injury

by Kent Sterling

Get hit enough and bad things happen, but the news could have been worse!

Andrew Luck suffered a lacerated kidney and partially torn abdominal muscle Sunday in a season saving win against the Broncos, and is likely out for a window of at least four games, and possibly the entire regular season. That’s the worst kind of news possible for a team that seemed to find itself against the NFL’s best defense.

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Well, maybe not the absolute worst news. There are things that could happen to the Colts franchise that would trump Luck’s lacerated kidney, but most are impossible to imagine becoming a reality.

Here are the top 10 pieces of news that would be worse for the Colts than what they learned yesterday about Luck:

1 – The NFL enacts a rule that a team making an accusation of cheating will be assessed the penalty that could have been assessed to the cheater if evidence doesn’t corroborate allegation.

2 – Trent Richardson has lost 25 pounds by adopting a gluten free diet and has been clocked running a 4.32 40-yard dash.

3 – Back-up quarterback Matt Hasselbeck decides he’s had enough of football – that it’s time to put away childish things. He open a chain of Chipotle restaurants in New England where the chicken is well done.

4 – Realignment sends the Colts to the AFC East and the Miami Dolphins to the AFC South. The Colts go from default favorites to perennial runners-up, and the Dolphins, Texans, Titans, and Jaguars all tie for first (and last) in their first season together in the AFC South with identical 4-12 records.

5 – Luck suddenly realizes that he has been fortunate to only lacerate his kidney as a result of the constant peril he is in behind that offensive line and decides to pull a reverse Brad Stevens career arc by accepting a position in the marketing department at Eli Lilly.

6 – Nuts and bolts from the retractable roof at Lucas Oil Stadium fall on fans every time it’s activated. What? Really? Never mind.

7 – Radio play-by-play voice of the Colts Bob Lamey starts a regimen of medication that takes him to his happy place no matter what happens to the Colts on the field. Radio ratings falter as Colts fans’ curiosity over Lamey’s emotional state plummets.

8 – Colts AFC South rivals Tennessee, Houston, and Jacksonville finally stop dredging bottom of the barrel for coaching candidates and hire Mike Holmgren, Jon Gruden, and Bill Cowher to lead their franchises.

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9 – Fellow Stanford alums Coby Fleener, Griff Whalen, and David Parry decide that football isn’t worth their time minus injured teammates Luck and Henry Anderson, and sit out the rest of the season as a display of Cardinal solidarity.

10 – Chuck Pagano reverses course, deciding that iron no longer sharpens iron. He starts whittling in team meetings and media availabilities to show that iron really sharpens and shapes wood, develops a Ron Swanson-esque obsession with woodworking, and quits football to open a handmade furniture store in Cicero.

Mizzou students get it right, but will that change hateful culture?

by Kent Sterling

Protesters at the University of Missouri brought down the president and chancellor, but hate and stupidity are a tougher foe.

Since human beings stood upright, we have hated each other for confoundingly silly reasons – religion, nationality, color of hair, jealousy over intellect and wealth, and many more.

For a few minutes less than the history of our species, people who were hated expressed their dislike for being hated.

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Every generation feels like they are the lynchpins in finally winning the battle against hate, and leading our society into an era of enlightenment as though they have embraced a level of wisdom heretofore unseen from humans.

The latest smart people are students on the campus of the University of Missouri who finally became fed up with the relentless racism for which that state is very well known. A protest, hunger strike, and boycott from football activities by Gary Pinkel’s Tigers led to the ouster of the university president, who was admittedly slow to act when students expressed racism in a variety of rancid ways.

Students are celebrating as though the war has been won, but sadly, evidence is lacking – again – that a single mind has been changed.

In the 1960s, cities burned because of race riots, and still there was hate. Peaceful marches were met with fire hoses and beatings. Still there was hate. In the 1990s, riots exploded after the acquittal of those who beat Rodney King. Still there was hate. Hell, it wasn’t until 150 years ago that people in the southern states of America were prohibited from owning African Americans.

Enlightenment comes much harder than hatred to human beings.

I love what the students at Mizzou did because it reflects a hope born of ignorance that changing the wiring of humanity can happen. That violence either in protest or in trying to quell the protesters was never used shows small-step evolution toward reason.

Because I have seen generations of Americans do the same thing, and read about many more stretching back to the dawn of man, I know the result will be a reversion to the mean, and that’s a tragedy.

The impulse to argue with those permanently burdened by an impulse to respond with anger to virtually everything is strong. There is nobility in banging your forehead against that wall of loathing, and maybe one day in another millennium it will come down.

But as long as people fly planes into buildings to express a belief, shout racial epithets from pickup trucks at students in Columbia, Missouri, or hire only those who best resemble themselves, we will be a poor reflection of our potential as forces for love and goodness.

When some of us show we know better, all can bask in their light. Hopefully the rest take a moment to learn from them, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

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Universities are places where learning happens, and the Mizzou students who can rightfully claim victory over administrators who refused to see what has always existed as wrong and repellent are going to learn an unpleasant lesson the next time a pickup truck full of morons shout the n-word at a black student.

People are dumb, and many of them hate because they too lazy not to.

Indy Morning Sports List – Nine reasons why fans should embrace Tom Crean as #IUBB’s hoops coach

by Kent Sterling

I even found a picture for this post that is flattering for Tom Crean.

My propensity for saying “I like Tom Crean” before listing a myriad of reasons for replacing him as the head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers basketball team is well known.

The 2015-2016 season hasn’t even started, but I cannot talk about Indiana Basketball on my radio show without screeching about the entrenched mediocrity of the program both on the court and off .

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This list of arguments for retaining Crean as coach is as much a hopeful chat with myself as it is a list for like-minded Indiana basketball fans who are disconnected from their passion of watching the Hoosiers because of their disdain for Crean.

So here are the top nine reasons to feel good about Tom Crean as the coach of the Hoosiers:

1 – Spending $7,500,000 (the amount of Crean’s buyout until July 1, 2016, when it drops to $4M) to fire a guy seems like a dumb way to spend an enormous amount of cash. Paying him $3.16M to finish in the middle of the Big Ten race and suspend or fire kids who relentlessly break team rules isn’t a great investment either, but it beats the alternative.

2 – Virtually all Indiana basketball players earn their degrees, many in three years. The program’s Academic Progress Rate has been 1,000 during the majority of Crean’s years in Bloomington. While winning at a high level would be nice, a program that treat student-athletes as students as well as athletes makes the relationship between a coach who makes a ridiculous salary and a player who gets an education for his trouble a little more equitable.

3 – Who’s to say the replacement would be better? By all accounts, Brad Stevens is thrilled to be the coach of the Boston Celtics. No recruiting, a true offseason, and not being held accountable for the behavior of adolescents in his charge leaves only coaching basketball, which is a nice change of pace for Stevens. With Stevens likely out of the picture, who’s out there that would be clearly better than Crean? Archie Miller of Dayton? Ben Jacobson of Northern Iowa? Zach Spiker of Army? Firing a guy is a two-step process, and the second step (replacing him) is the most important.

4 – It seems Crean has adjusted his recruiting a little bit to account for the potential for irresponsible behavior. The 2012 class was a disaster on many fronts, but the wayward behavior of many of its members put Crean in a potentially devastating position. While Crean bears the responsibility for the idiocy of young people who were offered scholarships after displaying idiotic behavior, adjusting his metrics for evaluation during the recruiting process deserves some credit.

5 – Consequences are following dumbass behavior. When Crean gave Hanner Mosquera Perea a two-game slap on the wrist for an OWI earned at 3:40 a.m. a day and a half prior to a game against Purdue, it was correctly seen as a free pass that would prompt more irresponsibility. Now that Emmitt Holt, Mosquera Perea, and Devin Davis have learned the hard way the folly in representing Indiana University with less than respect, others will begin to understand that hooping as a Hoosier is a privilege, not a birthright.

6 – Thomas Bryant is going to be a better version of Noah Vonleh. Vonleh was an obvious one-and-done kid whose primary focus was on making himself attractive to those who might draft him. The result was a talented player without the kind of fifth gear reserved for those who play for their teammates. Bryant is said to be concerned with both team and personal success, and that is a reason for optimism.

7 – Is one more year going to hurt anything? This will be year eight of Crean’s IU hoops reclamation project. If IU is a middle tier Big Ten team again, it might behoove athletic director Fred Glass to wait yet another year to finally move beyond the big ticket years of the buyout to where the cost would be a simple million. Indiana doesn’t have a bevy of talent that will return to Bloomington for 2017-2018, so what’s the hurry? The rebuild post-Crean will be nearly as arduous as that driven by Crean, and the right guy must be available for that job.

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8 – Most of the tics are gone. When Crean arrived in Bloomington, he employed a wide array of strange mannerisms that communicated a combination of insecurity, arrogance, and weirdness that immediately – and in some cases irrevocably – turned off a portion of the fanbase. Crean still never sits, but the odd swigging, hair adjustments, and maniacal clapping have either faded or disappeared. Well, maybe the clapping is still there, and some of the other theatrics have been replaced by Crean occasionally getting in a defensive stance, but the level of sideline bizarreness has gone from a torrent to drizzle.

9 – Because rooting for a person to lose his job is just wrong. I know we have a sense of what Indiana Basketball is – or should be – but is it humane to campaign for any man to be fired regardless of what you perceive to be an ill fit, or results that don’t pass your specific requirements for excellence? That’s the right of any fan, I suppose, but if you are powerless to affect the change you crave, why not focus on something else and enjoying watching basketball again.

Indy’s Morning Sports List – Top 10 reasons to be very optimistic about the Colts second half

by Kent Sterling

Frank Gore is on pace to be the first Colts in almost a decade to rush for 1,000 yards in a season.

The Indianapolis Colts are 4-5, swapped offensive coordinators six days ago, and have teetered on the brink of unspooling throughout the first half of the season. There have been memorable lapses throughout the season as the Colts have won a single game outside of the putrid AFC South.

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That doesn’t mean there isn’t good news, and in our never-ending pursuit of remaining positive, here are the top 10 positive takeaways from the first nine weeks of this mostly unsatisfying season:

1 – Frank Gore is playing like a man five years younger. He was especially proud of yesterday’s performance. “Do I look old?” he asked me five times as we talked following the game. I told him he doesn’t look 33. “I’m 32!” he barked. Truth is he doesn’t look anything like a 32-year-old running back while on a pace to become the Colts first 1,000 yard rusher since 2007.

2 – Mike Adams has five picks through nine games, and while his ankle injury might be serious, until I hear that he is going to miss significant time, I’ll continue to count him as a unique asset for this team. His interception yesterday was one of the plays that gave the Colts a chance to win. Adams has a nose for the ball, and is a consistent presence on a defense in need of consistency.

3 – Matt Hasselbeck can still play. Another old man on this roster was pressed into action as Andrew Luck’s ribs and shoulder healed. Granted, the Colts played lowly opponents in the Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans in his two games, but the 40-year-old was the steady hand the Colts needed as he completed 48-of-76 passes for 495 yards, three TDs, and no picks. His passer rating of 95 is 20 points higher than the QB he is paid to back-up.

4 – Colts lead the AFC South. It’s seems like division domination is a birthright for the Colts franchise. Losing the South is almost unthinkable, and despite the turmoil surrounding the team, they nurse a 1/2 game lead over the Texans heading into the bye week with one game left against each of their AFC South rivals. Sweep those, as has become the Colts habit, and anyone catching them is a virtual impossibility.

5 – Donte Moncrief has emerged as a #2 (if not #1A) receiver just in time to counter Andre Johnson’s recession into irrelevance. His five TDs lead the team, and while Moncrief is as explosive as T.Y. Hilton, he uses his big strong hands to win 50/50 balls more often than not.

6 – Owner Jim Irsay was as lucid in his comments to the media yesterday as he has been in my memory. When Irsay is thinking clearly, he is a sensible and effective leader who knows that his team’s organizational flowchart should include an owner who hires someone to run his team, the guy who runs things, and a coach that coaches. Yesterday, Irsay seemed like that guy.

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7 – Response to Pep Hamilton being replaced by Rob Cghudzinski was positive. Scoring 27 points against the NFL’s best defense is no easy feat, and given the total emotional meltdown of the Broncos late in the game, there are plenty of reasons to feel good about the seven remaining games of the regular season. That Colts didn’t just win the game, they BEAT the Broncos defense by regularly converting third downs in the second half.

8 – Griff Whalen is starting to look like a slot receiver that can be counted on to deliver big third down catches. He is the prototypical small receiver who dazzles with nothing, but rarely drops the ball or makes a negative play. Every quarterback needs a security blanket, and Whalen keeps Andrew Luck warm on third down.

9 – Adam Vinatieri is rolling. After blowing his first two field goal attempts of the Season, the 42-year-old Vinatieri has drilled his last 11. In those games featuring a made field goal by Vinatieri, the Colts are 3-1, and the loss was in OT against the undefeated Panthers after Vinatieri made a kick to give the Colts a lead.

10 – The next seven games are against Atlanta, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Houston, Miami, and Tennessee. Their combined records are 24-34. The two teams among those with winning records – Atlanta (6-3) and Pittsburgh (5-4) are flawed and headed in the wrong direction. The Colts appear unlikely to run the table to post its fourth straight 11-5 regular season record, but this cupcake schedule should allow the Colts to avoid the ignominy of winning its division despite a posting losing record.

Sure, it would have been as easy – maybe easier – to assemble a list of reasons for Colts flavored pessimism, and that might be a fine idea for a list later in the week. The Colts win yesterday showed some poise that had been lacking in finding a way to kill the last six-minutes of a three-point game without giving Manning a chance to author yet another comeback in Lucas Oil Stadium. That was good enough to inspire a guy with a hideous pile of blond hair on top of his head because of the Colts malfeasance to feel good about the prospects of this team turning the corner.