Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Relax, it’s a long season! The Indianapolis Colts losing openers is par for the course

by Kent Sterling

Tyron Taylor looked very good against the Colts yesterday, but that’s what happens for Colts opponents in openers.

During the Ryan Grigson/Chuck Pagano era, including yesterday’s loss in Buffalo, the Indianapolis Colts have gone 2-5 during the first two weeks of the season.

That’s the bad news.

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The good news is that after those first two weeks, the Colts are 31-10, have made the playoffs all three seasons and advance a step further every season.

More good news – the New England Patriots lost their opener last season by 13 on the road to an AFC East opponent. They went on to win the Super Bowl.

Moral of the story is not to sweat what happened yesterday, which was an embarrassment for a team with designs on earning a spot in Houston for Super Bowl L.

It would have been nice to see Andre Johnson play like a hall of famer, Darius Butler stick somebody, and a measure of discipline that might have prevented the three turnovers and five penalties that doomed their effort.

Losing to a team like the reasonably good Bills isn’t the end of the world, but other than Henry Anderson playing like a first rounder than a third rounder, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to point to that would motivate optimism.

The Colts are going to be okay, but that might be the problem – they are okay. How can a team with one elite player in the prime of his career on its roster be anything but okay?

If the Colts were Wham!, Luck would be George Michael and the rest of the roster is Andrew Ridgeley. If the Colts were U2, Luck is Bono, and the other 52 players are Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen. If the Colts were the Three Stooges, Luck is Curly and the rest are Moe, Larry, and Shemp.

That’s what happens when first round draft picks are wasted over several years. Running back Trent Richardson (acquired in exchange for the 2014 first rounder), 2013 first rounder – outside linebacker Bjoern Werner is still on the roster trying to make plays on special teams, and #29 overall pick this year – receiver Phillip Dorsett’s biggest contribution yesterday was to the Bills when he fumbled away a punt.

it’s still way too early to judge Dorsett, but I’ll take Griff Whalen fair catches over a fumble all day.

Watching this game – and re-watching for the especially masochistic – was not a rewarding experience for Colts fans, but as we have learned over the years, early season failure doesn’t portend a lost season.

Take a deep breath, relax, look forward to next Monday night when the Colts will try to reverse the misery they have authored through their first two weeks of the season since 2009 – the last time the Colts started 2-0. You remember the 2009 season, don’t you? The Colts started the season with 14 straight wins before making the logical but cowardly decision to tank the last two to prepare for the postseason.

But I digress.

The only opener the Colts have won since 2009 came against the woeful Oakland Raiders in 2013, so yesterday’s loss and the sour taste in the Colts mouths are just par for the course for Colts fans.

There is good news – week one is over. That’s the primary positive. The offensive line was okay. Henry Anderson with four tackles for loss (the Colts team leader for TFL during the entire 2014season was Werner with seven) looked like former Chicago Bear Dan Hampton. There was no commitment to run, which I like. When your best player is the quarterback, put the offense in his hands. And the New York Jets beat the Browns 31-10. What are the odds the Jets play two consecutive solid games?

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Colts fans are going to be hysterical this week, but should know better after watching opening day malaise for five of the last six years.

“Fire Grigson! Fire Pagano! Re-sign Josh Chapman!”

Relax, every NFL regular season is a book with 16 chapters. Every team since the 1972 Miami Dolphins has had at least one regrettable chapter. The Colts like to get their’s out of the way early.

Indianapolis Colts ready for NFL’s best team – the Super Bowl bound Buffalo Bills?

by Kent Sterling

Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano sure does like to lavish praise upon opponents.

It doesn’t do a coach any good to underestimate competition, but the way Pagano has been effusive in describing the thoroughly mediocre Buffalo Bills has been a great source of entertainment during his media availabilities all week.

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The respect Pagano shows seems genuine. He’s not greening us like Lou Holtz always did as the coach at Notre Dame with craziness like, “The University of Notre Dame might not be good enough to beat Navy this Saturday. They are just that good.”

Pagano’s awe for his opponent comes from the heart, not a sense of the absurd. That doesn’t make it any more accurate than Holtz’s flowery assessments.

Listening to Pagano, you would think that Tyrod Taylor has the arm of John Elway, the grit of Brett Favre, and the wheels of Michael Vick. Sorry, Sunday’s game will be Taylor’s first start, and the bust in Canton has yet to be cast.

The Bills defense is a legitimately disruptive group, but the 1985 Chicago Bears, they are not. The unit’s best player, the recently well paid in the extreme Marcel Dareus, is suspended for the opener and won’t play, and rookie cornerback Ronald Darby is going to be paired with a series of Colts receivers who have been salivating at that prospect since the schedule was released.

Can the Bills get to the quarterback? This group has posted 57 and 54 sacks during each of the past two seasons, and with Rex Ryan as their new coach, the dogs will be unleashed on Andrew Luck with extreme relish. So, you bet they can, and will.

But that doesn’t make the Bills the Packers of the 1960s, Steelers of the 1970s, 49ers of the 1980s, Cowboys of the 90s, and Patriots of the 00s all rolled into one group.

The Bills haven’t posted double-digit wins since the turn of the millennium, and with a starting quarterback who is 19-35 for 199 yards, no touchdowns, and two picks for his entire career, the Colts have a serious upper hand in the most important matchup – quarterback.

The Colts have plenty of question marks, and the deeper you dig without having seen much real action through the preseason, the tougher this game seems, but by keeping the analysis simple, the result is clear.

I know, you’re pacing the living room already, “Oh my God, the Colts offensive line has never played together, and what do we know about Jack Mewhort at right tackle? If the Bills find a way to isolate tight end Charles Clay on aging linebacker D’Qwell Jackson, they will pick apart the defense all afternoon. On the plays where 32 year-old running back Frank Gore rests, a rookie is going to have to diagnose complex schemes from the clever and aggressive mind of Ryan. It’s going to be a bloodbath!”

Stop being a hysteric. Despite the Colts starting a different set of offensive linemen damn near every week, they managed to win four out of five games played last season against top 10 defenses. The one loss, against the Denver Broncos in week one, was avenged in the divisional round of the playoffs.

Those games were won with an offensive line in flux, a fat running back who was allergic to holes, a starting wide receiver whose skills degraded from hall of fame to ordinary before our very sad eyes, and a suspended then injured defensive game wrecker gone for the season.

During the offseason, the Colts added Frank Gore and Andre Johnson to replace the fat and old guys, and welcome back Robert Mathis.

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The Bills have a top ten defense, and hopefully you are now aware that it will be exploited more often than it will cause mayhem-generated turnovers. This is what the Colts do – combat aggression with calm and reasoned execution and extreme athleticism.

The Colts defense is young but potentially better too, and it will baffle Taylor much more often than the Bills will torment Luck.

It’s not going to be simple, and it might be be pretty, but if the Indianapolis Colts are truly a team with valid Super Bowl dreams, they will find a way to beat a team who boasted Doug Flutie as its starting quarterback and Hall of Famer Bruce Smith as its sack master when it last played in the postseason (in 1999).

The line is Colts -2.5, and I take it. The over/under is 45. You’re on your own there. The weather looks good, but without seeing these offenses intact in a single regular season game, I have no confidence that my gut pick of under is likely to cash.

Blame for yesterday’s Cubs loss in St. Louis belongs not with bullpen, but right here with me

by Kent Sterling

Naming its wretched mascot after my late Dad likely didn't curry any favors with that specific lifelong (and beyond) Cubs fan upstairs, but it was my "five outs to go" jinx that doomed them yesterday.

Naming its wretched mascot Clark after my late Dad likely didn’t curry any favors with that specific lifelong (and beyond) Cubs fan upstairs, but it was my “five outs to go” jinx that doomed them yesterday.

The Chicago Cubs held a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the eighth inning yesterday in St. Louis – trying to hold on for a sweep that would have cut the Cardinals lead in the National League Central over the Cubs to five-and-a-half games when I decided to prove a point.

In the middle of my radio show yesterday (3p-6p weekdays on CBS Sports 1430 – Indianapolis), I announced that I was going to show exactly how whammies against the Cubs work.

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Cubs fans will always remember the stupefyingly insipid Thom Brennaman announcing during the eighth inning of Game Six of the 2003 NLCS that the Cubs were just five outs away from their first trip to the World Series since 1945. What immediately followed was the play that turned Steve Bartman into a pariah – unless you are a Marlins fan – and ended the Cubs dreams moving forward to the World Series.

Yesterday, I said something eerily similar, “The Cubs are five outs away from a sweep in St. Louis!”

I told the audience exactly what I was doing in invoking that dreadful phrase. The Cubs would find a way in that moment to lose the game.

The next pitch was driven by Matt Carpenter for a single, knocking in a run that cut the Cubs lead to one. Stephen Piscotty then plated two more with a double. Trevor Rosenthal closed the door on the Cubs in the ninth, and the jinx was complete.

I know that logic dictates that some idiot blathering into a microphone in Indiana has no effect at all upon the location of a Pedro Strop pitch in St. Louis or Matt Carpenter’s ability to hit it, but as soon as five outs to go is announced during a Cubs game – that game swings terminally in the Cubs disfavor.

That’s not the kind of science you read in textbooks. Sir Isaac Newton never wrote about jinxes against the Cubs, but that is only because he died almost exactly 150 years to the day the Cubs began play in the National League in 1876.

If Newton had seen the black cat prance past Ron Santo at Shea Stadium in 1969, Leon Durham pull a Bill Buckner to blow Game Five of the 1984 NLCS two years before Buckner did it for the Red Sox in Game Six of the 1986 World Series, or Bartman interfere with the foul pop up that certainly would have been the second out in the eighth inning of that fateful Game Six, he would have written three laws of e-motion.

He wasn’t there when Billy Siannis sprung that Curse of the Billy Goat on the Cubs, and he wasn’t around 46 years ago today (September 10th) when the Cubs lost to the Phillies in Philadelphia to fall out of first place during that magnificent but ultimately miserable summer.

To be a Cubs fan, you must believe in ghosts, voodoo, and jinxes. Yesterday, for all who listened, I proved that the five outs to go jinx exists. The dubious will insist it was simply bad luck – a confluence of two entirely unrelated events that had no effect on one another – but Cubs fans know better.

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We have witnessed unrivaled misery for 114 years that can only be explained through the occult, and for my role in yesterday’s loss, I apologize. Never since 2003 have I ever uttered the phrase, “Five outs to go,” and I have held Brennaman and Bartman equally responsible for how Game Six of the ’03 NLCS unspooled into another hideous chapter in the unlikely history on the world’s most cursed sports franchise.

Math suggests the odds will swing in favor of the Cubs someday, but fans know math has nothing to do with the Cubs woes which stretch far beyond the founding of America’s other three major sports leagues. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway was built soon after the invention of the automobile. That hallowed track was constructed a year after the Cubs won their last World Series. Eventually, the Cubs have to win, right?

Not if anyone utters that fateful phrase – “five outs to go.” Someone says that aloud – doom ensues.

Don’t believe me? Give it a shot. As for me, a Cubs loss is never going to be my fault again.

Patriots cheating won’t cost Roger Goodell his job as long as cash keeps flowing to owners

by Kent Sterling

Roger Goodell will be commissioner for as long as revenues keep flowing to his 32 bosses.

Yes, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell knew all about the New England Patriots cheating in Spygate, and directed the effort to destroy evidence for the good of the NFL.

Talking heads in sports media are saying that as a result, he will be replaced by NFL owners at their first opportunity.

Crazy talk.

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NFL owners respect one metric – money. Goodell has demonstrated an ability to help the owners maximize revenue, and cash will be enough to allow him to keep his job as long because like the old Randy Newman song extolled, “It’s Money that Matters”.

It would be nice to see the NFL – or any other business – reward and punish those who operate outside the what is right, decent, or at least legal, but that almost never happens. Doing the right thing, operating with honor, and ensuring fairness are ideals reserved for children.

In the adult world, it’s all about cash, and there are few adults who embody greed with the egomaniacal zeal shown by the 32 men who own NFL franchises.

So Belichick continues as the coach of the Patriots, Ernie Adams remains the Patriots “director of football research”, and 31 NFL owners are certain the Patriots continue to exploit or ignore the rules to their advantage. And Goodell will continue to protect the NFL from the ramifications of fans worst fears being confirmed – that the Patriots cheating is tolerated because the alternative is worse.

Not only has cheating occurred through the decade and a half Belichick has run the Patriots, it likely continues today – because ferreting out small advantages regardless of legality is what has made Belichick successful throughout his unprecedented run in New England.

That’s why Adams has a job. For those who’ve read yesterday’s exhaustively researched and reported ESPN Outside the Lines post by Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham, no introduction to Adams is necessary. He is, for lack of a better phrase, Belichick’s director of black ops.

In casino parlance, Adams is a card counter. He finds gray areas in the rules that allow for the accumulation of data that can be used to increase the chance for success on a play-by-play basis.

The NFL under Goodell appears clumsy in dealing with the Patriots, even as recently as yesterday’s odd interview on ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike with Goodell.

Thought the interview, Goodell seemed less than forthcoming and honest, and there’s a good reason for that. If he told the truth, faith in the NFL as a bastion of fair play would vanish.

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One area where Goodell could improve is in his performance during press conferences and in interviews like yesterday’s with Mike & Mike. His combination of unease and arrogance is off-putting at best, and at worst a confirmation that the NFL shield hides an ugly truth about competitive balance in favor of amoral operations like the Patriots.

The truth is that Goodell and the rest of the NFL have known Belichick cheats for as long as it has occurred, and that the only danger is in fans realizing it and reacting by seeing the NFL as a shell game where occasional deviation from fair play is tolerated because stopping it has no positive effect on revenue.

Ignoring the Patriots cheating and correcting the Patriots cheating bring the same result, and ignoring it doesn’t cost anything. That is Goodell’s job, and one thing we can all agree with about Goodell is that he knows how to make the most money while spending the least.

For that reason, Goodell isn’t going anywhere. The NFL is going to have to make a show of taking all this seriously – as they have tried to in the past – but the only failure that might cost Goodell his job is in not doing whatever is necessary to continue to stuff owners’ pockets with millions and millions of dollars.

Colts cuts reward youthful exuberance; team ready for Buffalo

by Kent Sterling

While the Colts can only go as far as Andrew Luck takes them, the play of nose tackle David Parry and the defense will be just as important.

Doesn’t do much good to focus on getting in shape for a season you won’t play.

Some members of the Colts seemed to feel their roster spots were guaranteed, and making plays in the preseason was beneath them. Others hustled, hit, and earned a job at the expense of those who were dumped.

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Defensive lineman Montori Hughes and Josh Chapman are gone. Henry Anderson and David Parry took their positions. Running back Tyler Varga and safety Winston Guy made the team through their desire and ability to make plays.

Somehow, Bjoern Werner remains on the roster. Not that he doesn’t try, but the results of his first two seasons plus one very mediocre preseason suggest that his roster spot might be better invested in someone else.

Regardless, the Colts are ready to attack the season, not because of the decisions made at the bottom of the roster, but because of the bounty of weapons at the top.

The Colts are assumed to have won the AFC South before the season even starts because Andrew Luck is their quarterback. Add Frank Gore, Andre Johnson, T.Y. Hilton, Coby Fleener, Dwayne Allen, Donte Moncrief, and Phillip Dorsett, and the feeling is the only team that can stop the Colts might be the Colts.

All the defense needs to do is stop the opposing offense one more time than their counterparts stop the Colts, and math would suggest the Colts will win every game.

There are plenty of questions about the Colts – can the offensive line stop basic fronts from getting to Luck? What schemes will help the Colts hide D’Qwell Jackson’s inability to cover tight ends or backs? Is rookie Josh Robinson ready to be the Colts change of pace back? Can Parry make plays in the middle of the Colts defensive line? Is Robert Mathis the 2013 wrecking machine version of himself, or an old and broken former great?

We are five days from the Buffalo Bills helping the Colts answer those questions.

After three straight 11-5 seasons and trips one step further every postseason under GM Ryan Grigson and coach Chuck Pagano, expectations are that the Colts will find their way to that final step.

Even if the joint media availability yesterday with Grigson and Pagano was a disingenuous effort to quell rumors about a serious rift between the two, executives don’t need to like each other to succeed. They just need to pull on the same end of the rope.

Looking up and down the roster, it’s not easy to see the Colts in the Super Bowl until you find #12. The biggest question facing the Colts is whether mediocrity on the defensive side of the ball can be overcome by a potentially great quarterback and dynamic weapons at his disposal?

Much like the Colts of the previous 15 years, the Colts will go as far as their quarterback takes them. But if memory serves, the Colts could only go so far with Manning unless the defense had a game wrecker like Booger McFarland, Corey Simon, or others.

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The list of NFL teams that has tried and failed to win a championship by stacking the offensive deck is long and bleak, while championship teams with great players across the defense is long and illustrious.

In five months, we will know whether the Colts have been successful in building an offense so mindbogglingly explosive it can win despite defensive mediocrity.

The ride starts Sunday in Buffalo. It should be a very entertaining trip.

Indianapolis Colts – Don’t envy Chuck Pagano these next 24 hours as pink slips fly at Colts Complex

by Kent Sterling

Tyler Varga is hoping he doesn’t get a call today to come to Chuck Pagano’s office. Given his Yale education, he’s going to be okay either way, but he would really like to be a Colt.

Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano is going to tell 22 football players today or tomorrow that their lifetime of work to become a professional football player was wasted.

Some will cry, some will yell, some will quietly accept reality. All will feel a measure of failure and misery.

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At the end of the day, Pagano will be exhausted. Firing people is draining. Even when it’s expected by the victim, being the cause of hope being dimmed for those who have been praying for weeks they make be retained is beyond horrific.

Pagano knows that each of those 22 cuts he’ll make before tomorrow’s 4:00 p.m. ET deadline will be followed by phone calls to wives, girlfriends, moms and dads to share the bad news. Each newly unemployed guy will feel like a failure, and the phone call will be terrible as he hears their hopes die. For some, the feeling of being a failure will never go away.

That emptiness begins as soon as they walk into Pagano’s office, and then will be confirmed with his expression even before he says the words, “We’ve decided to let you go.”

Some of these players had no chance to make the team from the jump, but they love football, and that love drives a convenient and necessary blindness to their own critical flaws. It will drive many to try to continue their careers in the arena league or CFL, followed by Augusts spent in NFL training camps where few dreams are granted for fringe players, but many die.

To have to extinguish the light from the eyes of 22 players in such a short period of time is the definition of a terrible day for a coach or boss. That Pagano gets to bring some of the cut players back on the practice squad will be a nice consolation when those conversations take place, but for today, it’s only heartache on both sides of the desk.

As someone who has both fired others and been fired, I can tell you that those bosses say, “This is probably harder for me than it is for you,” are idiots. It’s not. Being fired is far worse. Don’t get me wrong, firing people is among the worst responsibilities of a manager, but it beats getting canned.

The Colts are fortunate to have a leader like Pagano, who is seemingly empathetic and decent, pull those many triggers. Being fired by a decent human being softens the blow a little bit. Having someone communicate the bad news in a way that allows the former employees to retain some dignity is the least the company or team can provide.

As you hear the news about the cuts, remember that each of these former Colts have families who are as emotionally – and sometimes financially – invested as the players themselves. Many will never put on pads again. It’s a sad day for them.

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That’s why we went to the meaningless game last night. Men like Winston Guy, Kitt O’Brien, Tyler Varga, and Quan Bray were trying like hell to show coaches around the NFL something that might make them stand out. Some did, and some didn’t. While the game lacked traditional football drama, the players fighting for a job made the game interesting.

For the Colts, there is good news and bad news with the cuts. The 53-man roster was damn near entirely set before training camp ever started, and while their might be a surprise or two, the guys on the outside have been aware that cut day would bring a call to step into Pagano’s office.

Many of the Colts who played last night went into this opportunity with their eyes wide open, and understood that the work was as much an audition for the other 31 NFL teams as much as for the Colts.

It won’t take the sting completely away, but knowing the end is nigh and to have the news delivered by a good guy like Pagano will make it a little better, but still it will suck all the way around.

Both the NFL and Brady are guilty – the NFL is just a little more guilty

by Kent Sterling

That the NFL is guilty of exercising industrial justice does not equate to innocence for Tom Brady despite his irrational fans’ insistence to the contrary.

It’s not easy to be viewed as more arrogant than Bill Belichick, Bob Kraft, and Tom Brady. Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL have done that, but it doesn’t make Brady innocent.

I’ve read the Richard Berman decision that vacated Brady’s four-game suspension, and not once are the words exonerate, innocent, or vindicate used.

They were everywhere last night in Foxboro as Patriots fans celebrated what they incorrectly perceive to be the end of Deflategate.

Berman never once implied that Brady was not guilty of the behavior that caused the issuance of the suspension by Goodell. Writing that Goodell overreached in applying his own brand of “industrial justice” to Brady’s likely participation in the scheme to deflate footballs to gain an advantage does not equate to a finding of innocence.

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The Patriots and Brady are a lot of things, but innocent is not among them. They tirelessly strive to utilize every possible competitive advantage both inside and outside the rule book, and every once in awhile the NFL catches them.

No one begrudges the Patriots desire to win – and only a few get their panties in a wad when they cross a line in doing so. It’s the arrogance, the haughtiness, that makes owner Bob Kraft, Belichick, and their minions, including Perfect Tom, such a loathsome bunch of cretins.

For lack of a better word, Belichick is Nixonian, and the Patriots are like Nixon’s revoltingly corrupt White House staff, for whom the ends always justified the means.

Winning is the result of a plan well executed and a culture well implemented, not evidence of righteousness nor a justification for cheating. “We win because we are right, and we are right because we win” is the nauseating logic the Patriots and their blindly loyal sycophantic fans have embraced since Belichick’s arrival.

And Berman’s ruling is not the last word in Deflategate, so fans in New England might want to dial back their glee. The NFL has appealed, and while their clunky legal misbehavior is no source of pride for the league or its fans, there is still a chance justice could be done.

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Justice finds a way most of the time. It finds a route to assessing a tariff from those who are presented trophies for elevating the importance of winning to a plateau where sociopathology becomes ingrained at all levels of an organization.

“Brady goes unpunished (for now), and so Brady must be innocent” is a perversion of the transitive property. The guilty walk among us every day. That doesn’t make us dirty, nor them clean. It just reflects a flawed system of ferreting out the truth, and the system the NFL currently uses is exceptionally distorted.

That’s what Berman ruled yesterday – that the NFL’s lack of fairness trumps that of Brady and the Patriots. That’s not an easy standard to attain, but it sure doesn’t make the Patriots or Brady innocent.

Wife of Redskins GM steps squarely on social media third rail – tweets accusation of sex for information to ESPN reporter

by Kent Sterling

Redskins GM Scot McClaughan and wife Jessica have likely had some tense conversations about social media this week.

Twitter is a great barometer for character.

There is nothing to feat about social media unless you have some serious darkness in your heart, or a faulty filter either through personality quirk or a propensity for entertaining yourself after a couple of cocktails.

Scot McCloughan is the new general manager of the Washington Redskins, and his wife Jessica took to Twitter August 30th to question the journalistic methodology and information acquisition strategies of ESPN reporter Dianna Russini, “@diannaESPN Please tell us how many BJ’S you had to give to get this story. And did they laugh at you before or after?”

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The Redskins PR department responded to the story by claiming this was a fake account, but a little rudimentary checking by blacksportsonline.com showed it was indeed Jessica’s account, which has since been deactivated.

You don’t need a journalism degree to hop on Twitter to spread half-truths, no-truths, and mean-spirited invective, and that’s a good thing most of the time. Social media removes the middle man and exposes the character of the author to everyone paying attention.

We need to know who we are dealing with, and Twitter draws a straight line between what should have remained private thoughts and those who pay attention to their feeds.

McCloughan is clearly troubled by something in Russini’s behavior, and tweeted a nasty accusation that could easily draw a libel lawsuit if untrue. She is now dealing with the consequences of her own dark and very public ponderings.

An nonsensical apology has been released by the Redskins in Jessica’s name, “I deeply apologize for the disparaging remarks about an ESPN reporter on my personal Twitter account. The comment was unfounded and inappropriate, and I have the utmost respect for both the reporter and ESPN. I regret that my actions have brought undeserved negative attention to the Redskins organization and its leadership. My comments in no way reflect the opinions or attitudes of the organization and I regret that my behavior has in any way negatively impacted the team and its loyal fan base.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the same woman who tweeted about an oral sex for stories swap being perpetrated by Russini does not feel “utmost respect” for anything she does, but why quibble about an awkward attempt to put the toothpaste back in the tube?

The point is that we need Twitter to allow us an accurate window into the character of those we might otherwise respect, or perhaps to learn of the grace in those we might otherwise loathe.

Social media can be a third rail that destroys a career, or a wonderful tool of enlightenment and positive branding. The results depend upon the intent and execution being just a little more gracious and genteel than McCloughan displayed.

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The moral of the story is tweeting angry, drunk, or otherwise from a place of emotional disturbance is a terrible idea. Just as radio hosts can’t indulge in blathering on and on as though they are truly alone in a room, emotions should not be laid raw in social media posts – unless the results aren’t a concern, which is always our hope because these stories are routinely hilarious.

The best advice in the use of social media is to present yourself not as you truly are, but as you would like to be perceived. Thank God people like McCloughan ignore that advice and lay naked their pungent meanness for all to see.

It just makes life – and social media – more interesting.

Indiana Basketball – Hanner Mosquera-Perea was in the car with Holt and Bryant! Is this a sitcom?

by Kent Sterling

If I’m an Indiana basketball player, I’m steering clear of this guy. As easy as he is to recognize, he must be that hard for former teammates to avoid.

“On this week’s episode of Ain’t no Party like a Hoosier Party, the boys welcome an old friend back to the show for a night of revelry that begins with laughter, but ends with another hilarious headache for Coach Crean!”

That’s the promo for what should be a reality based sitcom that couldn’t be odder if it came from the imagination of writers – the really clever ones, not those who churn dreck like Two Broke Girls.

No joke – Hanner Mosquera Perea was in the car with Emmitt Holt and Thomas Bryant the early morning they were cited for illegal possession of alcohol, a charge that resulted in Holt being dismissed from the team in the same way Mosquera Perea was a few months ago.

He can throw kids off the team, but Tom Crean can’t post sentries on State Roads 37 and 46 to keep out former transgressors.

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If this was a sitcom, it would be funny, but it isn’t a sitcom, and now because Mosquera Perea rallied the troops for another Bloomington party, yet another kid is packing his bags for an outpost that is decidedly not Indiana-esque.

Mosquera Perea and former Hoosier Peter Jurkin have both accepted offers to continue their education and basketball careers at East Tennessee State. Where Holt will wind up is anyone’s guess – maybe ETSU like his buddy.

Meanwhile, Crean looks at least a little bit sympathetic for the first time in this unraveling debacle as his options for disciplining a former player are decidedly limited. Maybe he could threaten Mosquera Perea with bodily harm, “Hanner, I hear word you are back in Bloomington again, and you’re gonna have a tough time playing basketball with two cracked kneecaps!” That isn’t Crean’s style – nor should it be anyone’s – as much as he might want to go gangland on the young disruptor.

Let’s not forget about Juwan Morgan, another freshman who was in the car as citations were issued to fellow freshman Thomas Bryant and Holt, according to an excise police spokesman. Maybe he went along for the ride because he was bored. Maybe he was ready to drink a copious amount of vodka too. It’s not up to fans to guess as to his motive, so he is the barely credited and forgettable guest star without any lines in this farce.

Mosquera Perea needs to understand with great clarity that he has a new address, and that his visits to Bloomington need to cease post haste. His status as a recurring character on this show needs to end. The character of Hanner Mosquera Perea needs to be relegated to the dustbin of reruns, never to return.

More important for the current Hoosiers is the reality that trouble follows some guys, and it sure seems like Mosquera Perea is one of them. Avoiding those guys can be the most important lesson learned in college, and while it would be idiotic and inappropriate for Crean to threaten Mosquera Perea should he pay another social call on his former teammates, a team leader or two might want to have that kind of conversation with him themselves. The responsibility for dissuading idiocy doesn’t belong to Crean alone.

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Leaders not only know how to avoid trouble themselves, they can help others avoid it too. Sometimes that means strongly discouraging the threat.

Is any player strong enough to tell Mosquera Perea that his new home is in Johnson City, Tennessee, and not Bloomington? Nice cliff hanger!

Maybe we’ll find out next week.

Colts win in St. Louis, but real losers are Rams fans who feel abandoned

by Kent Sterling

This is what the crowd looked like – not an hour before the game – but during the first half as interest was at its peak.

NFL fans in St. Louis have no team.

For the past decade, the Rams have been terrible, but even a historic level of poor play can’t get a franchise de-listed.

No, St. Louis fans have turned their backs on the Rams because owner Stan Kroenke is in the midst of very publicly trying to move the team to Los Angeles.

Saturday night, the Rams hosted the Indianapolis Colts in what many believe is the only fan-friendly preseason game in front of a friends and family crowd at the Edward Jones Dome – many of whom made the drive from Indy to watch the Colts.

The announced ticket distribution was 37,000, but nowhere near that made it into one of the building.

I didn’t know it had gotten that bad. After leaving St. Louis in 2013, I knew there was a disconnect between the owner and the city, but I thought the misery would have ended one way or another by now.

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The relentless losing combined with the relentless rumors of the Rams relocating to Los Angeles have driven an already weak fanbase away from a team that 15 years ago turned America’s best baseball town into a pro football hotbed.

Fans and media say the same thing – that Rams owner Stan Kroenke is a carpet bagger who has abandoned the city. They say, regardless of whether a team remains in St. Louis, it won’t be owned by Kroenke. And if it is, they won’t support it.

Maybe the Rams move and are replaced by another team. Maybe the name “Rams” is attached to an expansion franchise in LA and the current players and front office sticks in St. Louis under another name. Maybe an existing team relocates to a new stadium built north of the current home.

Only two things are certain – fans are done with Kroenke and anything with his taint on it, and the Jones Dome will be replaced if another NFL tenant can be found.

The interim for the Rams will be an exercise in futility. With a nearly empty stadium on a night where fan interest should be at a fever pitch (Lucas Oil Stadium was full and loud for the Colts preseason home opener), a product that has brought nothing but disappointment for a decade, and an owner intent on moving, this promises to be a gloomy divorce between a team and city that seemed so happy when Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, and Torry Holt brought the Greatest Show on Turf to an adoring city.

I only spent two years in St. Louis, but I travelled with the Rams to road games, got to know a lot of people in the front office, and hate to see them inside the eye of this stormy malaise. It’s not their fault, and no amount of hard hard can repair the fracture caused by their billionaire boss.

For the media in St. Louis, this is a nightmare. Indifference is the enemy of ratings and page views, and you would have to search long and hard to find a better example of indifference in a fan base than what was on display Saturday night. The biggest cheer of the night might have come when a fan guessed under which helmet a football was hidden during a video shell game timeout filler (it was #2 for those scoring at home).

It was awful. It was sad. And even as someone who not long ago attended these games as part of his job, it was shocking.

St. Louis fans deserve better, but so do the Rams, despite Kroenke the carpet bagger doing everything but hiring movers and driving the trucks himself from Earth City (where the Rams facilities are located) to Los Angeles.

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It seems financing for a new stadium in St. Louis is likely to be in place to break ground in time for an opening in 2019, but in a city filled with bridges across America’s longest river, the ties that used to bind this city and its current NFL team has been blown to hell.

This purgatory will end soon enough, but it’s going to be miserable at the minimum for everyone involved.

There will be no winners – other than Kroenke whose team’s value is likely to go from the bottom of the NFL barrel to among the very top.