Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Top Ten reasons the Indianapolis Colts are on the brink of a championship season

by Kent Sterling

Andrew Luck may have more reasons to smile than anyone else in the NFL during the 2015 season.

The Indianapolis Colts are in a position where a championship could be in their immediate future. Here are the top ten reasons the Colts are becoming the favorites to win Super Bowl L:

10 – Membership in AFC South – This division of leftovers has been the Colts to dominate since it was founded in 2002. Tennessee, Jacksonville, and Houston have taken turns being decent, but the Colts have won nine of 13 division crowns. Houston was 9-7 last year and Tennessee drafted Marcus Mariota, but the Colts are still the best of the worst division in the NFL.

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9 – Schedule matches AFC South with NFC South – The gods smiled on the Colts this season as the NFL South is the division the Colts will play in 2015. No team in the NFC South finished with a winning record in 2014, and none looks to have improved markedly through their offseason acquisitions. Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Carolina, and New Orleans might be better in 2015, but on paper there is no division the Colts would rather play (other than its own) than the NFC South.

8 – Andrew Luck is entering prime – It feels like Luck has been the quarterback for the Colts for longer than three years. It usually takes five years for a quarterback to reach his prime era of productivity, but Luck led the NFL in touchdowns last season, so I think he is ready to explode into his statistical prime a little early.

7 – Ryan Clady tore his ACL – As though enough hadn’t already gone well enough for the Colts, Denver left tackle Ryan Clady tore his ACL during OTAs, and that means 39 year-old quarterback Peyton Manning’s backside will be more vulnerable.

6 – Tom Brady suspended – There is no guarantee that the Patriots will be less successful minus Brady for the first four games of the 2015 season, but it’s damn unlikely they will be any better because Jimmy Garopolo will be under center. (This is contingent on NFL commissioner having the stones to uphold his own suspension of Brady.)

5 – Phillip Dorsett – This guy is fast – really fast. Dorsett is a game breaker, a potentially elite player as part of the offense and special teams. Is he Devin Hester? There has only been one Hester in the history of the NFL, but he’s lightning fast. The Colts had a decision – draft the best of the remaining mediocre defensive linemen, or bring in a player already in a position of strength who might be able to change games with his speed. They chose speed.

4 – Attracting AARP eligible free agents – Frank Gore and Andre Johnson will one day be enshrined as Pro Football Hall of Famers being the likeness of their previous teams, but that doesn’t mean the Colts can’t wring the last little bit of football out of them. Johnson gives the Colts a rangy veteran, and Gore a blue collar running back who is a pro’s pro. Both have a history of health and productivity that allows the Colts to count on them in ways impossible with Ahmad Bradshaw and Reggie Wayne – the players they are replacing.

3 – Consistent excellence from specialists – Kicker Adam Vinatieri, punter Pat McAfee, and long-snapper Matt Overton are as good as it gets in their disciplines. Other teams scour the countryside for this level of skill in their special teamers, but the Colts have been smart enough to hang on to what they have.

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2 – Return of Robert Mathis – Okay, this is a bit of a longshot. Thirty-four year olds rarely return from an Achilles tear at the same level they enjoyed prior to the injury, but if this fumble forcing machine can be 80% of what he was in 2013, the Colts are going to be able to put pressure on opposing quarterbacks in a way this will provide an immediate competitive advantage.

1 – Previously unmentioned weaponry – Coby Fleener, Dwayne Allen, Donte Moncrief, T.Y. Hilton, Vick Ballard, and Duron Carter will have opportunities to shine, and all are capable of big plays. The Colts might wind up assaulting NFL records for offensive firepower as long as most stay healthy. This is an amazing group of skill players.

Firing of Tom Thibodeau and Indy media members calls process of termination into question

by Kent Sterling

Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau wasn’t smiling yesterday, but he will again as he moves beyond the misery of rejection and toward another position of challenge.

Coaches and media members get fired with frighteningly similar frequency in today’s world, and this week I heard discussions about the methodology of both in private conversations.

Tom Thibodeau was canned as the head coach of the Chicago Bulls yesterday, and there was rampant criticism of the Bulls security staff following Thibs around as he gathered some personal belongings before finally leaving the facility.

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It seems heartless to escort a guy, who until moments before was a well-respected employee, through a building in which he enjoyed unfettered access. Hell, it is heartless, but it’s also sadly common.

The two desired outcomes for the company telling an employee he or she is no longer welcome is that there is no lawsuit nor ugly incident on the way out of the building. With Thibodeau, who is scheduled to be paid $9-million over the next two years, neither was likely, and he certainly wasn’t likely to cop a couple of staplers on the way out, so the security convoy was more likely a self-indulgent expression of superiority by an executive who Thibs offended at some point – or a mandate by human resources so all protocols are followed to the letter for all terminations.

As for the media firings, those are a different issue. I can tell you from experience that the human resources department dictates policy to the managerial team, and that the department head can have very little say over the process or the verbiage used during the dismissal. Blaming the manager for the process or its execution is wrong.

That said, treating the moment a person a fired as a purely a legal proceeding fraught with potential liability is heartless, gutless, and miserable. It’s unfortunate that lawyers get between two people at a moment like that, but the manager can’t be rightfully held accountable for that construct. It’s not the manager who sits in the corporate meetings to decide how a person is told to vacate the premises. It’s the faceless bureaucrats with fancy degrees and zero contact with those whose life path is inexorably changed by the moment of dismissal who craft termination policies.

Moms and dads lose their ability to contribute to a college education for a child whose life is also forever changed. Houses are lost. Full stomachs go empty. A certain future becomes unpredictable from day to day.

Getting fired is a miserable experience – even under the best of circumstances – and if hating the manager makes it a little easier, go ahead. But for every person fired, there are probably a half dozen employees that same manager has pounded a table and raised his voice to defend. Maybe it’s happened for the same person who was finally fired because there was no other choice.

I’m not saying there aren’t heartless bastards out there who fire people without thinking twice about the consequences for the displaced employees and their families, but unless you have been in a meeting to gauge the heart of the person running the department, judging might not be the most righteous play.

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The best response when fired is to continue working at what you love – whatever that is. Rancor is energy wasted. Move forward. Understand your anger is an emotion that must be welcomed as part of the process and then discarded in favor of a more productive and positive focus. In the right hands, mind, and heart, being fired can be a release toward a better life and career.

Answer adversity with an open heart and mind. Forgive your tormenter because managers are only doing the best they can so they can keep their jobs. If you feel shame, remember that in 100 years, no one will be alive to remember who the hell you were, much less that you were fired one day in 2015 by another person who goes unremembered too.

Chicago Cubs disposal of commemorative bricks reveals soullessness and duplicity

by Kent Sterling

When this picture of commemorative bricks showed up in a downstate newspaper, Cubs fans felt cheated and disrespected – and rightly so – by a callous and foolish business wing of the franchise.

Can the business wing of the Chicago Cubs do anything right?

When Cubs fans bought inscribed bricks that would “forever” surround Wrigley Field with messages of love and memories, they believed the bricks would be there for generations.

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They lasted less than 10 years, and the communication from the team to those who purchased the bricks has been filled with duplicitous rantings from a team whose business office has been – at the minimum – disrespectful to fans.

Bricks that for many represent a memorial marker for a loved one, were dumped in a landfill 100 miles south of Wrigley, rather than being moved from one area to another as was indicated in a comminication from the Cubs to accommodate the renovation of the 101-year old ballpark required their removal.

The bricks are popping up all over Pontiac, Illinois, the town where the landfill is located.

The Cubs told buyers of the bricks earlier in the year, including my Mother, that they would be moved to a new location, implying they would be taken from a previous location and then placed somewhere else on the plaza near the park.

The Chicago Tribune, the owners of the team when the program was launched, also reported that a replica brick was provided to those who bought them. If that’s true, my Mom is still waiting for her’s with my late Dad’s name on it.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time the business office of the Cubs has shown a pathetic level of indifference to the feelings of those affected by progress. In 2013, the Cubs tossed into a Wrigley Field dumpster a giant card signed by fans expressing their love for Hall of Fame third baseman and longtime broadcaster Ron Santo, and last year an uneaten cake celebrating the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field was thrown in the trash.

But this brick purge is the greatest insult to fans like my Mom, who bought a “permanent” remembrance for a family member or friend whose love for the Cubs helped define them. To think of those bricks, literal touchstones, being heartlessly churned by a backhoe, crushed, and tossed in a dump truck destined for a landfill in downstate Illinois stirs strong emotions. It is a personal insult that cannot be undone.

That the Cubs didn’t anticipate the strong response from the distressed owners that has answered their unfeeling and expedient march through memories toward profits speaks volumes about the leadership of that wing of the ball club.

Baseball is about poetry, not spreadsheets.

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It’s a warm summer afternoon walking hand-in-hand with an excited father through a tunnel, up steps, and into the seating area of a ball park so impossibly immersed in deep aqua blue skies and green grass, vines, and the scoreboard that it defines beauty in the minds of every generation of Cubs fan.

It’s Santo clicking his heels, a smiling Ernie Banks flipping his wrists to hit 512 home runs, vapor coming off an Andre Dawson throw to third to retire a runner bold enough to test his great arm, the grace and constancy of Ryne Sandberg at second base, Gabby Hartnett’s “Homer in the Gloamin'”, Dave Kingman running in from the clubhouse down the left field line to hit a pinch home run, and the dance a Greg Maddux cutter did on it’s way around a hitter’s bat before finding Joe Girardi’s mitt.

It’s about the unique memories of afternoons spent with long gone but fondly remembered loved ones. The 12,000 bricks now in Pontiac gift shops and still in the landfill represent those memories, and the Cubs showed exactly how little they value them by treating the bricks like hunks of hardened clay that stood in the way of progress instead of who they represent in the minds of fans.

A businessman like Tom Ricketts can buy the Cubs, but not a fan’s love for the team or those treasured memories represented by names carved into a brick. He can employ a heartless doofus like Crane Kenney, who has overseen countless acts of indifference, stupidity, and deceit during his unending tenure running the business end of the franchise, but he can’t corrupt that endless blue sky, green grass, and joy of seeing my Dad catch a foul ball.

That’s mine. It’s not for sale. There will be other owners of the Cubs, but I had only one Dad.

Parents of college recruits and athletes need to continue to love and support their kids

by Kent Sterling

College coaches might care about your son or daughter, but they only turn this shade of red because they hate losing.

College coaches are paid to win. That’s where their priorities begin and end. Just win, baby!

Yes, coaches are also held accountable for metrics like graduation rates, NCAA compliance, and Academic Progress Rate, but the primary responsibility is to recruit, train, and motivate athletes to win. Minus winning, jobs are lost, and when a coach gets fired for losing, it’s damn tough to get hired again.

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Those who skirt NCAA rules, treat athletes shabbily, fail to instill systems that lead to athletes earning degrees – they can all get work. Lose, and you are out.

That is why parents need to be constantly vigilant in overseeing the progress made by their children as they enter college, become immersed in that culture, and move forward toward adulthood.

Coaches are nothing like surrogate parents. “Oh, we’ll make sure (insert athlete’s name here) goes to class and takes care of that side of the college experience. Your son (or daughter) is going to get a great degree that will propel them to a level of success impossible to reach otherwise,” the coach will tell you during the recruiting process.

Then the letter of intent is signed, and the kid becomes the property of the school, program, and coach, and if you think the coach is somehow more interested in the well-being of the athletes than his or her ability to continue to remain employed, you are living in a dream world.

There is a ton of good that can come from participating in collegiate athletics. There is very little free time, which is fantastic. Athletes are required to attend study tables and have access to tutors – also a big deal. They are exposed to a level of adversity that is duplicated in the business world, so they ease into that realm very easily. At many schools, dietitians make sure the athletes eat correctly.

Socially, athletes have a coterie of friends with whom they train, study, and travel often. They are required to attend classes the summer prior to their freshman year, so by the time the other incoming freshmen show up, they are very comfortable on campus.

That only scratches the surface of the positives, but parents need to be aware that in many programs the motivational tactics of coaches can severely test the boundary that separates inducement and abuse. Parents need to communicate regularly with athletes to make sure those lines are not crossed.

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Sadly, the relationship of coach and athlete is much more like that of a department head and employee than mentor and student. Managers are held accountable for the bottom line, and lose their jobs if goals are not met. That’s how college sports works too.

Parents should feel very good about the opportunity made available to teens by participating in college sports, but also understand that the promises of a coach during the recruiting process are designed to close the deal, not reflect the reality of the upcoming experience.

I remember watching Bob Knight with his arm around Damon Bailey long after a game at Assembly Hall when Bailey was still playing for Bedford North Lawrence High School. He looked like such a kind and doting father.

Thirty minutes prior to that touching moment, Knight let fly a string of obscenities so foul to Todd Jadlow – one of his players – that I am too embarrassed to repeat them. He did it in front of a famous teen dying of AIDS, parents, and even U.S. Senator Richard Lugar. It was appalling, and if I had been Jadlow’s Dad, I would have gone over the bench to hold Knight accountable for his ill-tempered and demeaning rant.

Remember that regardless of the sales pitch, your child is being recruited to help an athletic program win, and that the coach making the promises will not fill a role that resembles a parent for your child. A parent loves his or her child. A coach is paid by a university to elevate the prestige of a school by winning.

Don’t allow a coach’s word to foster a belief that those lines will ever be blurred.

Many coaches care, but not like a parent. Stay involved to make sure the best interest of your child is represented. Accept that the coach worries about winning and losing above all else. Loving is your job.

Indiana University Athletics – What the hell is going on down there with drug and alcohol abuse?

by Kent Sterling

IU football player Isaac Griffith was arrested over the weekend for DUI.

Devin Davis – gone for pot possession. Hanner Mosquera-Perea – gone for whatever the hell he was doing when Davis got popped. Isaac Griffith – arrested for DUI just over a year after he nearly drowned while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico after drinking.

Davis and Mosquera-Perea are now former basketball players, and Griffith is still a wide receiver for the football team. All appear to have a problem with intoxicants.

It’s one thing to run afoul of the law once as a college student. It happens to almost everyone. It happened to me. For each of the guys above, consequences have come, been ignored, and come again.

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The arrest for Davis came just six months after he suffered a brain injury as a result of falling off the hood of an SUV driven by teammate Emmitt Holt. College hijynx gone awry – again. If you don’t alter your behavior after fracturing your skull, there isn’t much a coach can do to get your attention.

Mosquera-Perea was cited for a DUI in February, 2014, and suspended two games. Whatever his role in the latest Davis incident, it was enough for Tom Crean to decide he had exhausted all options, and the time had come to part ways.

Griffith may or may not be welcomed back to the IU football team, but one thing is for sure – like Davis, if a near death experience isn’t enough to get him to embrace change, coach Kevin Wilson’s foot in his ass is unlikely to matter too much.

It’s likely that the percentage of kids at IU dealing with these issues isn’t a lot higher or lower than those at other schools. Some schools have party reputations, but anyplace where 18-22 year olds gather by the thousands is likely to feature behavior that tests chemical boundaries.

My Mom worked in addiction for a long time, and she always says anyone can get one DUI, with two a problem is likely, and after three there is no doubt.

For athletes, who should be well aware of consequences (both physically and in discipline from coaches) for bad choices, the learning curve should be sharper.

For once, this isn’t about the response to wayward players by coaches, but about the decisions students are routinely making that defy reason. Success is about making daily choices that enhance the odds of a positive outcome. Make enough good ones, and winning in life is virtually guaranteed. Make enough bad ones, and living under a bridge becomes a possibility.

There are 615 athletes playing one of 24 sports at Indiana, and in 2011 there were approximately 3,400 arrests at IU related to students violating drug and alcohol laws. That’s roughly 9% of students, so 50 athletes can be expected to be arrested each year if they are cuffed at the same rate. Drilling deeper, one basketball player and seven football players should be arrested if they violate laws at the same rate as the IUB gen pop.

Because of the arrests/citations of Davis, Mosquera-Perea, Yogi Ferrell, Stanford Robinson, Emmitt Holt, and the suspensions of Robinson and Troy Williams, it seems like IU has completely run amok. That’s because we pay closer attention to basketball than a field hockey player or political science major living in Wilkie or Teter.

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The sad truth for those exercising poor judgment in Bloomington is that there are others at IU making good choices. Those are the people you will likely be working for in 20 years. It doesn’t always work that way, but a little diligence and restraint goes a long way to building a quality life.

If you have made poor choices that have come with severe consequences more than once, get some help from a professional.

College Basketball – Freshmen ineligibility was always idiotic – as a proposal of “discussion piece”

by Kent Sterling

Jim Delany either has lost his grip on reality, or he has a hell of a sense of humor.

Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany was either being very silly or very funny as he proposed the re-enactment of freshmen ineligibility for men’s basketball and football players.

College basketball and football at the major conference level aren’t simply minor league developmental portals for the NBA and NFL; they are revenue generators and marketing arms of the universities they represent.

A “year of readiness” as Delany called it last April does not fit as a component of those realities, so not only was it never going to be seriously considered, any discussion the concept of freshmen ineligibility in those two sports would be flawed and wasted because it would deny the real purpose of those sports.

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You want to reform college basketball and football, start by rolling back the outrageous pay scale for the coaches and administrators. Tell CBS and ESPN to keep their cash. Eliminate athletic scholarships. Turn sports at the collegiate level into an intramural level exploit designed to enhance the educational experience, not market the university and raise money via endowments and donations.

Yeah, none of that has a chance to happen either. The inertia driving the financial expansion of college basketball and football is way to strong to fight at any level, but certainly not with yipping and yapping about a “year of readiness”.

Freshman ineligibility is to the corrupt ideals of college basketball and football as car size is to traffic. Worse is that we have now spent a year discussing how the hell the concept of freshmen ineligibility makes any sense, as though somehow we are intellectual inferiors to Delany. We erroneously believe that because Delany is a smart guy, our inability to understand how freshmen ineligibility might launch a logical discussion of college sports in born of our own ignorance.

That’s the cruel canard of academics. Delany’s supposed intellectual superiorities turn us batty as we try to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. “Delany must mean…,” is how every conversation about the construct of college athletics has started for the past 13 months.

Sadly, all that effort was wasted because it never made any sense at all. Either Delany thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is, we think he’s a lot smarter than he is, both, or he was just jacking with us to amuse himself. If it’s the latter, he is the king – the chief potentate – the grand poobah of practical jokers, and I need to get to know him better. He and I would get along great.

To release a 12-page paper that launched an idiotic and pointless debate that ignores the critical errors inherent with the current state of big money college athletics is a helluva good joke.

It’s not quite as good a joke as Delany’s silly “Leaders” and “Legends” divisions of Big Ten football that was finally abandoned when Rutgers and Maryland joined the conference last year, but is still very funny.

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It doesn’t help kids or their universities take more seriously the academic missions upon which the schools missions were formed, but given the sheer volume of cash at stake, nothing would.

All the consternation and posturing administrators can muster isn’t going to change the direction of college sports toward a more even balance between academics and athletics. When networks champ at the bit to air young men taking a geology exam, maybe there is a chance, but that is not likely to happen any time soon.

Indianapolis 500 must save itself by ending blackout and allowing locals to watch live

by Kent Sterling

If you have never seen the start of the Indianapolis 500 live, you have missed the most thrilling moment in our culture.

For people under the age of 40 – if an event is not on live TV, it doesn’t exist.

That’s a lot of people for whom the Indianapolis 500 is a vaporous idea that exists only in the imagination because it’s the victim of a self-imposed local live TV blackout.

Live TV is the gateway drug to live gate, and without it, the average fan at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the the Sunday before Memorial Day will continue to age by one year each and every Indy 500 until current fans are all dead.

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No one in American sports – no single event – exercises a local blackout. NFL teams, until the local blackout rule was recently scrubbed, would actually buy and distribute their own tickets to ensure every game aired locally. That’s how important live TV is as a marketing arm of an NFL franchise.

Attendance for Chicago Blackhawks games declined each season (minus a small bumps in 2001-2002 and 2005-2006) from 1994-1995 through 2006-2007 (the final season under the ownership of “Dollar Bill” Wirtz, who was the last owner in American team sports to exercise a local blackout for all home games).

During that bleak 13 season decline, average attendance for the Blackhawks fell from 20,832 to 12,727. Wirtz died of cancer before the 2007-2008 season and one of the first orders of business for the Wirtz Family was to unleash the marketing hounds of live TV. As soon as young Hawks fans saw how cool the games were in person, attendance exploded.

In the first year home games were televised with the best National Anthem in sports, live gate popped from 12,727 to 16,814. The second year, it bumped to an NHL best 22,247. It didn’t hurt that the Hawks improved, but without live TV, no one would have known what they were missing.

Wirtz felt allowing people to watch on TV for free instead of pay to come to the United Center was bad business. Who and what does that remind you of? He was as wrong as the powers at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in engaging in the 1960s thinking that giving away milk means no one is going to want to buy cows.

In truth, giving people milk enhances the demand for milk – and thus cows.

As a more similar corollary, how about the Kentucky Derby, another iconic single-day sporting event that has long defined the community in which it is held. It’s on local TV in Louisville, and extensions and decks are added to Churchill Downs almost every year. The infield is filled, and the Derby has never been bigger.

If people don’t attend the Derby, they have neighborhood parties where kids and families watch together.

So what the hell is stopping someone at a conference table at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from standing, pounding the table, and screaming, “What the hell is the matter with you people?! What is this, 1958? This crazy anachronistic blackout is killing us!!!” Is it any wonder why I’m not invited to many meetings?

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The start of the Indianapolis 500 is the most thrilling thing I have ever seen. Forget most incredible sporting event – it’s the craziest most unique moment our culture is created. Thirty-three cars painted bright cherry red, kelly green, dandelion yellow, and ocean blue screaming three-wide into turn one at 225 miles per hour is so insane, it’s difficult to process.

Add the miles long grandstand that borders the front straight that holds nearly 200,000 people, the fly over, the singing, the parade, the pageantry, and it’s a human tragedy that more people in central Indiana aren’t even aware of what this thing looks like because they aren’t interested in watching the beginning of a race on TV four hours after it ended.

The long and slow fade of the Indy 500 both nationally and locally is a mind-numbing disappointment. The answer to what needs to happen to engage a national audience is a little more complicated, but the first step to get local people – especially those under 40 – to embrace the magnificent phenomenon as a must-see bucket list event every year is to let them get a taste of it in their homes.

Release those hounds!

There is no better role model for radio hosts than David Letterman

by Kent Sterling

David Letterman never appeared bored while hosting, and that is his greatest lesson for radio hosts.

Tonight, Indianapolis native David Letterman will host his final show before settling easily into a well-earned retirement, but his legacy will linger in the behavior of radio hosts everywhere.

Dave (it seems odd to call him “Letterman”; he’s just “Dave”) did it right, and he did it the best.

He wasn’t the first to employ many of the tactics he used to amuse himself and others, but he was the most consistent and the best.

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For 35 years, including the strange and wonderful daytime show he hosted on NBC in 1980, Dave was absolutely himself. He’s as easily bored as a fifth grader in math class, and passed his time find ways to engage his wit and curiosity.

Doing something – doing anything – is far superior to sitting like Perd Hapley from “Parks and Recreation” or the real life Joe Franklin, whose pedantic and monotonous late night talk show on WOR-TV in New York celebrated tedium. Dave has never taken his need to be engaged and entertained for granted, and it was our good fortune to go along for the ride.

His shows evolved from the insane and chaotic daytime show to the slightly more controlled Late Night era to the last 22 years on CBS that became less edgy, but still featured the wit and raw honesty which will always distinguish Dave from the others who have tried and failed – or those who succeeded as a late night companion.

The list of ways talk radio hosts can improve by emulating Dave could stretch into a book, but let’s keep it short so you don’t get bored:

Doing Something always beats saying something – Strange for a talk show to embrace doing, but Dave did things that kept the show unpredictable. It seems odd now, but watching his joy at dropping stuff like watermelons and TVs from a tower just to watch them explode, or crush stuff with a steamroller was always a great treat and offered a change of rhythm. Having the video of the show rotate 360 degrees during the hour of the show might have been a bit over the edge, but better to make a mistake by commission than to do nothing.

Be authentic – Dave is Dave. I can’t think of a single moment in 35 years that I thought Dave was acting or indulging in performance as anyone other than purely who he is. That’s evolved over the years, but David Letterman is not a persona. He’s who he is. Always honest, even when it seemed slightly cruel while being incredibly funny. The flaws made Dave real.

Nothing wrong with speaking your mind outside the precise routine of the show – Dave has occasionally spoken his mind about world issues beyond monologue material in a way that Johnny Carson never did, and there is nothing wrong with that. The risk is that viewers/listeners might be turned off, but the good that can come of it is that others are engaged positively.

Bored is bad – If a host is bored, consumers are going to be bored. Dave rarely allowed himself to dwell in the squalor of performance boredom. Making the needles bounce isn’t the job – it’s to keep yourself engaged and trust that because of that effort, others will be engaged.

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Dave is purely Dave – funny, honest, raw, loyal, and generous – all the traits we want in a friend, and that is what a talk radio host is – a companion to keep us company at times when none is available. He is the best of what being a Hoosier is, but with a Groucho Marx quick and occasionally mean wit that keeps us just uncomfortable enough to feel like we might miss something if we don’t watch.

Dave is the latest in the continuum of Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson to call it quits. Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon are the next generation, and there will be more.

But for talk radio hosts, Dave has shown the way.

New England Patriots and Robert Kraft need to man up and accept their punishment

by Kent Sterling

Patriots owner Robert Kraft is showing the Patriots guilt by negotiating for a reduction in penalty. If innocent, demand exoneration.

Reports on ESPN.com suggest that the NFL and New England Patriots are involved in back channel discussions to resolve issues with Deflategate penalties. If Roger Goodell has any authority at all over the NFL, the solution is easy for the Patriots – take your medicine or pack a lunch.

Either the NFL means business when it comes down on scofflaw franchises, or it doesn’t. If squawking by a team can always result in a reduction in penalties, no franchise will ever show the commissioner’s office any respect.

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If there is not a meaningful consequence for cheating, all 32 teams trying to win a championship are going to take the negligible risk to build every advantage possible. That’s the way professional sports franchises are wired. Winning is everything. Losing is a ticket to unemployment or a career in the media.

Without serious disincentives, the lines between legal and illegal get blurred, and renegade operations thrive. If the NFL wants to tiptoe toward professional wrestling where drama is scripted, allowing cheating to go unchecked is a good first step.

NFL owners begin their spring meetings today, and behind closed doors there will be discussions regarding the penalties against the Patriots assessed by the NFL. Two draft picks, a $1-million fine, and a four-game suspension of quarterback Tom Brady (already appealed by Brady) were decried by Patriots owner Robert Kraft after he earlier said he would accept the findings of the Wells Reports and the penalties that might accompany them.

His fellow owners will either see the penalties as a well-earned punishment, or a scud that can easily be lobbed at them if they step across a gray and blurry line.

Funny what happens in the minds of billionaire owners when presented with bad news – platitudes turn into indictments, and friendships like that previous enjoyed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Kraft become adversarial.

The only people who believe that Brady and the Patriots don’t engage in activity inside and outside the rules to gain a competitive advantage are Patriots fans blinded by their own allegiance. Their insistence on attacking fans of other teams because of what they perceive as envy is a bizarre deflection that reveals their disproportionate and troubling self-importance.

Admitting they lowered the pressure of the balls prior to the AFC Championship Game – as well as other games dating back to the 2007 season when NFL teams were allowed to prepare offensive balls to their own specifications – would show a conscience, rare in pro sports or business. Goodell refusing to undercut Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, would show uncommon balls.

An admission through a reduction in penalty that the league overreacted to a pile of circumstantial evidence would be vindication for a franchise that has shown a pattern of wanton misbehavior. It would exonerate an owner whose nauseating mentions of trust for employees reek either of an childlike and goofy trust or disingenuous claptrap.

Only the most moronic billionaire trusts his employees – or wife for that matter.

Kraft trusted Aaron Hernandez, who has been convicted of murder. Yesterday, he was quoted on mmqb.com, “I’ve known Tommy (Brady) 16 years, almost half his life. He’s a man, and he’s always been honest with me, and I trust him. I believed what he told me. He has never lied to me, and I have found no hard or conclusive evidence to the contrary.”

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Good grief. I don’t know whether to loathe Kraft for advancing that putrid inanity, or pity him because he actually believes it.

If the NFL ever wants a team against whom it levies a tariff to accept it with grace, all back-channel conversation will immediately cease, and Goodell will stand firm against a man he once foolishly saw as a friend.

The integrity of the NFL as a member organization comprised of 32 owners who treat it with respect and deference is at stake.

Kraft runs an organization that does what it takes to collect Lombardi Trophies. Goodall should be a strong enough leader to ensure that the Patriots know they can be held accountable.

Indy 500 – Pole Day chaos shouldn’t ruin enjoyment of Greatest Spectacle in Racing

by Kent Sterling

Scott Dixon of Target Chip Ganassi Racing won the pole yesterday for the Indy 500, but the event itself brings the magic to May in Indianapolis.

Hey, IndyCar had to do something! Three cars in four days flipped over during practice, and a wonderful combination of luck and great engineering allowed all three drivers to walk away unscathed. How long could that be expected to continue?

Somebody was going to get hurt or killed, and until somebody figures out why Chevys flip over when pointed in the wrong direction, the prudent move was to change the rules for qualifying.

That resulted in tedium for fans, frustration for race teams – especially those with Honda chassis that had yet to flip – and another black eye for a series that is having serious trouble drawing interest and eyeballs to races that feature some of the best racing in the world.

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We could spend the rest of this space carping about a lack of testing for the new chassis that led to yesterday’s misery, or we can invest our time and effort getting excited for this Sunday’s race. I would rather talk about the Indianapolis 500 – the start of which is the coolest moment in sports.

Sure, it’s true that nationally the Indianapolis 500 is completely irrelevant, except for hardcore nostalgia freaks, but that’s not the fault of the drivers and teams who keep it going through the sheer force of their love and will.

The beginning of the race is an incredible moment made possible through speed, talent, and trust as 11 rows of three cars hurtle into the first turn at 200+ miles per hour.

Speeds for yesterday’s Pole Day were expected to approach 235 miles per hour, and might have crept quite close to Arie Luyendyk’s lap record that has stood for nearly 20 years. The speeds accomplished with the race setup mandated after Ed Carpenter’s wreck in yesterday’s practice were more than 10 mph under Luyendyk’s 236.986 four lap average.

With qualifying over, the business at hand is the world’s biggest single day sporting event. Three-hundred thousand race fans will crowd into the grandstands and infield at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a race whose national luster is gone, but whose magic still remains to the bravery of its drivers, diligence of team members, sacrifice of those who came before, and devotion of hard core fans.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is hallowed ground, built by those who weren’t lucky enough to walk away when cars flipped. Despite national sports pundits to whom I’ve spoken being unable to name a single driver who will run Sunday, the event is still a strange and magnificent way to usher in the summer.

Sure, many of the traditions are head scratchers. A British fellow who is now the official historian of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosting a radio show where he is asked to recount the story of obscure driver Jigger Sirois, who never qualified for the Indy 500 virtually every time he hosts “The Talk of Gasoline Alley”

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Jim Nabors has retired from the only employment he has enjoyed in a generation as the singer of “(Back Home Again in) Indiana”. People over 50 remember Nabors from his signature character Gomer Pyle, but anyone younger wondered who the hell that nice old man was who sang before the race. Ditto for Florence Henderson. Ruth Buzzi’s annual appearance in the 500 Festival Parade is equally quirky but perfect.

I’ll be at the Indy 500 as always this Sunday. As a transplanted Hoosier, the Indy 500 was a tough quarry at first, but with each year the things that seemingly make so little sense, start to feel like home. On paper, it’s crazy. In person, it’s perfect.

Next year will bring the 100th running of this slice of Americana, and I wouldn’t miss it regardless of Pole Day weirdness or Carb Day debauchery.

Weird works at Indy.