Author Archives: Kent Sterling

Indiana Pacers – Why was Donnie Walsh surprised by Lance Stephenson signing with Charlotte?

by Kent Sterling

Donnie Walsh chose his words poorly as he described his reaction to Lance Stephenson signing with the Charlotte Hornets as “surprised.”

Choosing words correctly while being interviewed is very important, as NFL senior vice President Adolpho Birch discovered Monday in his debacle of an interview with Mike & Mike on ESPN Radio. Indiana Pacers consultant and former president Donnie Walsh spent some time on NBA Radio, and said he was “surprised” by Lance Stephenson signing with the Charlotte Hornets.

Not the right word for an executive to use in describing his thoughts on the defection of a key employee. The proper phrase would have been “prepared for.”

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What Walsh said was, “I was surprised at that to be quite honest. I was worried about Lance in that there are a lot of teams out there with big money and when you get into the free-agent period, usually teams will over extend themselves because they know to get a guy away from another team, it’s going to take probably more money than if you were in a straight negotiation with the player. So I was expecting some real high numbers, which we’d try to react to. And that didn’t happen.

“We gave him the top number we could’ve given him thinking, ‘This is the most money we can give you.’ And so we gave it to him. And when he didn’t take that, I was thinking he was probably going to get a big number. As it turned out, he got about the same as three years (with us), no two years really. It’s a two-year deal with an option on the part of the team for the third year. That surprised me. I kind of get his thinking, but I was surprised that he did that.”

People running businesses should do everything they can to strive for the best, but prepare for the worst. Preparation will always mitigate the negative effect of unexpected events and the responses they prompt. There is no way to anticipate with perfect exactitude the actions of an employee, but “surprise” is not a word that great leaders use to describe their reaction to any occurrence.

Stephenson might not have made the best choice for himself and his family by leaving a potential $26 million on the table, and the Pacers might disagree with Stephenson’s assessment of the two deals he was offered, but they should not have been “surprised” by anything Stephenson did.

An employer should ponder every possibility, and plan for every eventuality – not be surprised, especially by the actions of a wing nut whose actions are difficult to anticipate from minute to minute much less as he decides between gigantic financial deals.

It can be argued that the Pacers executed a reasonable Plan B by signing C.J. Miles and Rodney Stuckey, but Walsh made the Pacers appear silly and amateurish with his comments about being surprised.

Walsh was a very capable NBA executive for a long time, so maybe his lack of specificity with language can be excused. And who really knows to what extent he is part of the decision making process in the Pacers offices.

Dan Dakich spoke about this yesterday on his 12p-3p radio show on 1070 the Fan, and I continued the conversation on my show on CBS Sports 1430. Dan was harsher than I in his assessment of Walsh and the Pacers about the need to never be surprised. There is just no way to anticipate each potential outcome, and I leave open the possibility that Walsh and the Pacers were personally disappointed and surprised, but professionally prepared eager to implement every contingency.

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I would offer the challenge currently facing Indiana University athletic director Fred Glass as an example of a surprised but prepared manager. Curt Miller was doing a very nice job of building a solid women’s basketball program, but resigned suddenly last week. Glass was likely very surprised by the resignation of a valued employee and leader, but was also very likely prepared to accept the news and move forward in the process of hiring someone to continue the work Miller began.

Keeping a list of candidates to replace key employees is the first order of business for any executive because being prepared smooths the bumps turnover brings – especially unexpected and impossible to anticipate changes.

NFL’s Adolphus Birch swings weakly and misses with inane and sanctimonious explanation of Ray Rice suspension

by Kent Sterling

Adolpho Birch is a really smart guy, but even a smart guy can’t get away grammatically suburb justifications for bad management.

There is a queasy feeling people get when lawyers babble in circles when responding to tough questions they have no interest in honestly answering. That feeling came and never left during Mike & Mike’s interview yesterday with NFL senior vice president of labor policy Aldopho Birch as he danced clumsily around questions about the two-game suspension of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice.

Hope that clarity and reason would be forthcoming from Birch was poorly invested. The more reasonable expectation was the torrent of grammatically correct rhetoric that carried no meaning from a Roger Goodell lieutenant, and that was what listeners got. If the NFL wanted to share real insight and information about its motivation in giving Rice a pass, Goodell himself would have gotten in front of it.

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Other than as a textbook example as to why we should never listen to an attorney with nothing to gain by telling the truth, this was a ludicrous and wasteful exercise. Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic did nice work toeing the line between respectful inquiry and holding a powerful official culpable for his vapid blather, but none of us is any wiser for Birch’s litany of nonsensical lawyerly responses.

The most bizarre comment by Birch showed the abject disconnect between what is believed in the NFL’s offices and in the court of public opinion, “”But if it is a question about what the principle of the league is and what standards we stand by, that cannot be questioned. I think it is absolutely clear to all involved that the NFL does not condone domestic violence in any way and will not tolerate it in our league. I don’t know how you can reach a conclusion other than that although I certainly respect the opinion.”

Goodell has always been resolute in showing he takes very seriously the image of the NFL among fans, but in this case for some reason, he totally punted. Women comprise 35% of the viewers of the NFL product, and ESPN is as close a media partner with the NFL as exists in sports other than the league owned networks. The female demographic is correctly at risk, and ESPN has abandoned its cozy buddy role to advocate for a more serious response than half of the suspension NFL players receive for PED use.

Indianapolis Colts outside linebacker Robert Mathis was suspended for the first four games of the 2014 season because he used Clomid as a fertility aid to give his mom another grandchild before she succumbs to stage four cancer – or so he and his doctor have ardently claimed. Rice physically causes his then-girlfriend to lose consciousness, and gets a two-game rip. That disproportionate response by the NFL was the cause of Birch’s wobbly and contradictory performance.

When asked by Greenberg whether the NFL officials who meted out the punishment had been privy to additional video tape or information that led to the decision to suspend Rice for only two games, he responded, “Listen, I understand everybody’s desire to know the details of what was reviewed, who we talked to, etc…, but I think you have to understand that there is a certain level of privacy that should be accorded both to the process and to those persons involved, and, uh, I think that it is important for us to respect that in this case.”

That is among the weaker answers to a good question I have ever heard. That is a Nathan Thurm (a Martin Short character who never directly answers a question) response that paints the NFL as an organization that believes the truth to be even more harmful to the shield than the current level of public skepticism about Rice’s behavior.

A little later, Birch took to speaking from both sides of his mouth by first saying that a comparison between the Rice punishment and the Ben Roethlisberger penalty for his role in the sexual abuse inflicted upon a girl in a Georgia bar would be inappropriate, and then claimed the NFL was bound by precedent with NFL cases and cases with other leagues to determine what was appropriate. Which is it?

Throughout the interview, Birch obfuscated, contradicted, and behaved as someone who didn’t believe a single word that he offered Mike & Mike listeners. It was bizarre, unpleasant, and resulted in thousands of listeners hoping that Birch would just hang up rather than continuing to dig himself deeper and deeper and deeper.

There is a danger in believing you are the smartest guy in the room because while it might be true, at some point even the brows of the stupid furrow in the face of complete illogic flawlessly presented.

“If you can’t explain it to a six-year old, you don’t understand it yourself,” is an oft used quote from Albert Einstein, who was always the smartest guy in every room he walked into. The table below was not explained to the satisfaction of Mike & Mike, and they are roughly 50.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway – Brickyard 400 is a withering event, and for good reason

by Kent Sterling

Jeff Gordon kisses the bricks in front of a two-thirds empty Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Yesterday’s Brickyard 400 (I’m choosing to remove all sponsorship mentions because I would like to leave some room for content in this 800 word post) was attended by approximately 85,000 (an estimation by Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star), roughly one-third of the permanent seating capacity, and that is a failure shared by NASCAR and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It seems impossible that in the two decade history of the event, which once was the hottest ticket in town, there has been such a stark degradation in interest in the biggest race series in America. People still watch on TV, but the people who are enthusiastic about attending continues to drop each year.

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The question of why people have stopped going in droves has been asked of me a dozen times this month, and the answers have changed a bit every time I was asked. Here are the best reasons for the wide swath of empty sections at the World’s Most Famous Race Course:

In 2008, there were three seemingly unrelated events that caused a collapse in ticket sales –

a historically bad economic downturn
a tire issue that required competition yellows every 11 laps
an already soft market for a dull race on a single groove track that discourages passing because of physics

People had already begun evaluating whether continuing to buy tickets was worthwhile because the races more closely resembled single file parades, but when NASCAR couldn’t get itself together enough to find a tire compound that allowed cars to run more than 11 laps at a time before shredding, the decision to reprioritize expenses to avoid the Brickyard was made simple.

Combine that with the paralytic fear that accompanied a severe economic downturn, and people became very conscious of what they did with the disposable wealth that allowed them to spend $85 to watch a parade of famous drivers turn 160 laps.

Boring + disrespect + need for cash = cratering of attendance.

Add to that the recent decision of the drivers to avoid promoting the sport locally, and you have the kind of trouble from which businesses cannot extract themselves.

NASCAR continues to operate without the grassroots marketing that initially was so engaging. Richard Petty, Bobby and Donnie Allison, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, and Dale Earnhardt took NASCAR from the backwoods to the front page seemed like ordinary guys who loved driving fast.

Today’s NASCAR drivers appear to be too-slick corporate shills rather than skilled maniacs who risked it all for the chance to win. There are outlier throwbacks like Tony Stewart, who seems to enjoy driving midgets on Tuesdays just as much as Sprint Cup cars on the weekends, but the sad reality is that drivers are indifferent to reaching out to fans through appearances or by making themselves available to the local media.

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There is yet another challenge – keeping track of the race while at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway without a radio stuck in your ear is damn near impossible. I watched on TV yesterday after witnessing 14 of the 20 previous Brickyards in person, and without having the pit strategies explained to me by ESPN commentators, I would have been completely lost.

Trying to figure out what the hell is up with 43 different cars by their positions on the cool new scoring tower would have been impossible. Not knowing what’s going on provides a lack of context – which then prompts indifference.

One of the wonders of racing has always been its simplicity. The car in front at the end of a specific number of miles wins the race. Easy! But not halfway through a race when the #24 car is 18th because he pitted out of sequence while I was in the can. On TV, it’s explained. In person, it’s “Hey, what the hell happened to Gordon?”

The result is attendance that roughly equals one-third of capacity at a venue that used to ready itself for a full house.

NASCAR’s challenge in Indianapolis is even more daunting than when it launched the Brickyard 400 because selling fans a second time is much more difficult than engaging them the first. People likely to buy have already made the decision to spend elsewhere, and getting them to change their minds is tough – really tough.

Refusing to renew requires buyers to admit they made an error in judgment when they made the initial decision to purchase tickets. To get that group of fans to return calls for them to admit that they made a second mistake, and that is nearly impossible.

So the Brickyard will likely continue to see attendance wilt, and that is bad news for everyone involved. The question is not whether the fans will return, but where bottom lies.

Outrageously light two-game suspension is a disservice to Ray Rice

by Kent Sterling

If TMZ hadn’t obtained and released this video, it’s possible that Ray Rice would have received no punishment from the NFL.

People are baffled and pissed off at the two-game suspension levied by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell as punishment of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s battery of his then-girlfriend/now-wife, and that anger has given a fresh run on a story that Rice and his bride would love to see die.

Rice hit his girlfriend while in the elevator of a casino, and then pulled her unconscious into the hallway. That is what the video obtained by TMZ shows, and there has been no complaint that disagrees with that interpretation of events.

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You can’t be a little bit guilty of hitting a woman. There are no shades of gray in domestic violence. There is no justification for hitting a woman – period. And there should be no two-game rip for anyone who puts his hands on a woman, regardless of the situation.

By issuing a two-game suspension, Goodell has told society that circumstances exist where hitting a woman is less wrong, and that message is a revolting under-reaction that provides cover for those who raise their hands against a woman in anger – or supposed self-defense.

This slap on the wrist will roll the story forward for many news cycles, and if the 45% of NFL fans who are women get angry enough, there could be a chorus of boos and the potential for picket lines outside stadiums where the Ravens play extending well into the Fall.

While Justin Blackmon and Josh Gordon will likely sit out the entire 2014 season because of repeated pot related offenses, and LaVon Brazill of the Indianapolis Colts was released following another dirty test for marijuana use, Rice will sit for two games.

Such is the state of justice in the NFL. A couple of tokes from a joint months removed from playing football gets a guy with a past the boot, but hitting a woman gets Rice a two-game break because it’s his first foray into that behavior.

That logic will keep Rice in the news this week, next week, and beyond. Justice has a way of finding those who violate it, and if Goodell had come with a half-season suspension, maybe people interpret it as a serious disincentive and move forward.

There are indiscretions that can be forgiven. Victimless crimes are sometimes explained to our satisfaction. We can move past a hungry guy stealing a loaf of bread and pound of salami. A college student getting loaded and then passing out on the front porch of a neighbor’s house is part of living near a university. It’s trespassing, but instead of calling the cops, you throw a blanket on the dumbass and help him or her through the night. Rolling through a stop sign is less dangerous than following the letter of the law.

But you don’t hit a woman. Ever. A woman calls you a name? Walk away. A woman shoves you? Walk away. A woman punches you? Walk away, and find a cop. A woman hits you while you are in an elevator? Ride the storm out, walk away, and find a cop. What you don’t do is hit her back ever.

Rice is now THE face of domestic violence in America, and the more people talk about this, the more engrained that image will become in the minds of NFL fans.

If this blows over, and Goodell and the NFL are allowed to move forward without an additional answer to this situation, shame on all of us. To this point, they have walked in lock step with the justice system that allowed Rice to enter a diversion program – by completing a domestic violence counseling protocol, he will avoid jail.

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We expect more from a league that seems to have no trouble asserting its own standard of punishment for the use of a drug that is perfectly legal is several states.

And it may come to pass that the biggest victim in this absurd instance of men in authority looking the other way in Rice, and that he winds up paying a stiffer price because of it.

Indianapolis Colts – Finally, football is back, and an NFL title might the Colts to claim

by Kent Sterling

Luck and health are the keys to winning in the NFL, and the Colts have a whole lot of one of those.

After the games to open the season against the Denver Broncos and Philadelphia Eagle, the schedule softens, and the Indianapolis Colts should be able to claim another AFC South crown without anything resembling a challenge.

That presupposes a reasonable level of health – meaning quarterback Andrew Luck remains ambulatory. He is the linchpin of the Colts success as is the case for most teams and their quarterbacks. Teams with good quarterbacks go to the playoffs. Teams with bad quarterbacks (Henne, Weeden, Ponder) draft in the top 10. And teams with mediocre signal callers (Cutler, Romo, Bradford) tend to overpay as they he ascends into the upper echelon.

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The regular season in the NFL is dominated by quarterbacks, and the Colts are very fortunate to be approaching an almost unprecedented run of greatness under center. There was one season without Peyton Manning where the train came off the rails, but that was well worth it as it brought Andrew Luck to Indianapolis to pick up the baton dropped when Manning had a series of neck surgeries.

Coming off back-to-back 11-5 seasons, the Colts stand poised to take another step toward hoisting a second Vince Lombardi Trophy in less than a decade.

Health will be the key, and not just Luck’s. There is depth at running back, if necks and knees can withstand the torture of a full season of jarring contact. Vick Ballard, so promising as a rookie, suffered a torn ligament in his knee in 2013, and Ahmad Bradshaw recovered from foot injuries to play briefly before his season ended in San Francisco due to a neck injury.

If Ballard and Bradshaw are healthy enough to give Trent Richardson some help in the backfield, offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton’s power running game should be well manned.

Luck will have plenty of weapons to keep defenses honest if future hall of famed Reggie Wayne and dynamic tight end Dwayne Allen return to form, and Hakeem Nicks is certainly an upgrade over the brick-handed Darrius Heyward-Bey. DHB represented a reasonable risk taken by the Colts brass, but feeling good about an Al Davis drafted castoff is done only after reading the fine print. If football players could be evaluated through a CarFax type service, being drafted by the Raiders would be comparable to discovering a vehicle was recovered from a flood.

The defense is a big question mark. Who will join LaRon Landry at safety is a big question mark, and how the Colts will manage to mount a pass rush without sack master Robert Mathis for the first four weeks of the season is another area of serious concern. Throughout his career, Mathis has been able to change a game completely with one of his patented strip sacks. Without Mathis to enforce a single play stop, the defense is going to have to be consistently solid and fundamentally sound.

Will the additions of free agents (DT) Arthur Jones and (ILB) D’Quell Jackson be enough to stiffen the Colts run defense that was ranked 26th in the NFL in 2013? Can the Colts again lead the NFL in fewest giveaways? Those are the biggest non-health related questions that await answers in 2014.

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From the first walk-though this morning through the final preseason game against at Cincinnati five weeks from tonight, the focuses will be limiting giveaways, enhancing health, forcing takeaways, and winning the field position battle.

There are no secrets in what makes a football team successful. The Colts, like the other 31 teams vying for a trip next February to Glendale, Arizona, will try to create opportunities to score while limiting those of its opponents. Because they play in the woeful AFC South and have a once a generation talent under center, the Colts have a leg up on everyone.

We’ll see whether the rest of the pieces of the equation for a championship run can fall into place beginning today in Anderson.

Tony Dungy’s comments about Michael Sam are an indictment of the media, not Sam’s sexual preference

by Kent Sterling

The media can be an oily serpent that cruises for targets – a well-known person who says something damning in a moment of weakness, dunderheadedness, or honesty.

When talking to the media, steering clear of subjects where nuance is needed to understand a point being made is wise because for every ten reporters working for print, TV, radio, and digital spaces like to think they are pillars of virtue, there is one who lurks in the shadows waiting for a gotcha moment that allows them to make their bones and increase the value of their brand.

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That’s what Tony Dungy was talking about when he made the mistake of stepping on the third rail of sports journalism by deviating from the welcoming cliches so many have employed when answering questions about Michael Sam, and whether he would be welcome on a team.

Dungy would want to avoid the distraction, he said. That didn’t mean the locker room stuff so many have oddly anticipated with the inclusion of a gay player on a team of brothers as they repair for battle and recover from it. He was talking about the endless barrage of questions the likes of which he answered, and this afternoon he clarified his comments, “I do, however, believe that the media attention that comes with it will be a distraction. Unfortunately we are all seeing this play out now, and I feel badly that my remarks played a role in the distraction.”

So if the media wants an answer for why people like Dungy would take what they describe as the cowardly road on non-inclusion, they need only look at themselves in the mirror.

Despite Bob Bowlsby’s yammering, NCAA is right to avoid enforcing soon to be obsolete rules

by Kent Sterling

Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby had a lot to say about the NCAA yesterday. Maybe he should act instead of yammering.

Allowing bureaucrats unfettered access to a microphone is always an adventure, and Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby took advantage with a rambling diatribe that accused the NCAA enforcement staff of being inert in the battle against cheating.

“Enforcement is broken,” Bowlsby said. “The infractions committee hasn’t had a hearing in almost a year, and I think it’s not an understatement to say cheating pays presently. If you seek to conspire to certainly bend the rules, you can do it successfully and probably not get caught in most occasions.”

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Bowlsby’s comments were directed at the NCAA as thought the compliance office in Indianapolis has the capability to effectively police the nefarious elements that ensure recruiting success at many outposts. Recruits have been paid since the first pigskin was inflated, and without the ability to compel honest testimony, the NCAA has to rely upon the good nature of scofflaws to confess their crimes when all agree many rules are ridiculous and need to be changed.

One area not governed by NCAA rules is compensation for coaches, administrators, and Bowlsby himself who earns $1.8 million per year as the head of a conference whose only purpose is to govern athletic endeavors of unpaid and unrepresented labor.

Most laymen and administrators understand that athletes should be compensated for the wealth their toil creates, and penalizing a school or coach for doing what will be well within the rules in a year or two is a complete waste of time, and would serve no purpose other than to reaffirm the assumed and pervasive hypocrisy in college sports.

Amateurism is wonderful for major universities, (members of the Big Five – the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC), not because it is virtuous, but because it provides a mostly cost-free workforce. The only compensation athletes currently receive is the pass-through expense of tuition and the necessary bounty to keep them alive and able to produce in competition.

The problem with cheating in profitable college athletics has nothing to do with what is right and wrong, but with a rule book that was created by people interested more in maintaining control over massive piles of cash than justice. Of course, there are those who will bend and contort the rules as their primary point of differentiation in trying to build a champion because their methodology in coaching isn’t strong enough to earn comparative success.

Rules don’t decide value, the market does, and without a rule book that acknowledges that simply axiom of life that has been immutable since man first walked upright, the rules will be meaningless.

Sadly, it’s taking a series of lawsuits to assert that dynamic to what has become a very successful minor league system for both the NFL and NBA. Stadia and arenas are filled with fans wearing the jersey of their heroes, and the schools get to pocket all the proceeds. Not a fair deal, but very sweet for the schools and coaches until the NCAA finally runs out of appeals – assuming the judge comes back in favor of Ed O’Bannon and a jury favors Jeffrey Kessler in their separate but important litigation.

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While college athletics continues to evolve quickly, it makes no sense for the NCAA to preserve and defend an archaic construct that will almost certainly crumble, leaving a shiny new paradigm that destroys the cartel currently suppressing free market compensation for full-time athletes. and reduces the current rule book’s best use to kindling.

If Bowlsby wants to penalize those who bend, break, and mutilate the current NCAA rules, he should feel empowered to start with the members of his own conference. Nothing prohibits him – or his minions – from visiting campuses, interviewing participants, and issuing penalties. Instead of carping about the NCAA’s inaction, maybe Bowlsby should do some heavy lifting himself rather than apparently presiding over the slow death of the league that employs him.

Rory McIlroy loses Caroline Wozniacki, wins Open; Rory’s dad cashes bet on son, wins $171,000

by Kent Sterling

Sure, they were beautiful, rich, and happy, but there is more to life for potential greats than each other.

Rory McIlroy became the seventh golfer in the 154 year history of the Open Championship that is played in Great Britain (when did we decide to stop calling this thing the British Open?) to lead from start to finish, his dad get wealthy from a bet made a decade ago, and he proved my theorem about loved ones as a distraction.

That’s a big weekend.

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The $341 bet was that McIlroy would win the British Open before he turned 26, and the odds were 500-1. That netted Pops McIlroy $171,000. There was a group of friends who made the same bet for lesser cash, and they pushed the take for Team McIlroy to over $300K.

I would never bet on my son. The parental nerves of watching a son or daughter compete are far too frayed already. Adding a cash risk to the equation would substantially reduce my joy in witnessing a kid do everything he can to compete. That would make me crazy – the kind of wild-eyed psycho that we see too often at youth sports events. Ryan would be repulsed, and likely fold under the pressure caused by the misguided investment and resulting psychopathy.

Maybe McIlroy doesn’t give a damn one way of another what his dad does, but my behavior with $171K on the line would have been horrifying. Glad I know my limits – both financially and emotionally.

One theory I have been resolute in advancing to every young man or woman of promise I can find is that love can wait until after 30. Focusing on professional advancement, regardless of the field, is key to achievement. Life is like a 401K in that the earlier the investment, the greater the reward.

Happiness and procreation are important priorities, but they can wait until a career path has been well-established.

McIlroy’s engagement to tennis star Caroline Wozniacki was a focus drainer of the highest order for both. How many mornings did the couple decide to lay in bed and watch a movie rather than perfect their respective craft? How many times did their minds wander toward the other when dedicated and conscious work was needed to create the difference needed to beat opponents?

Plenty. And the resulting mediocrity was entirely predictable. Each remained good enough to make a nice living, but neither played at a championship level. The relationship ended and excellence returned. Not only did McIlroy win The Open Championship yesterday, but Wozniacki won the Istanbul Open (yes, apparently tennis is played in Turkey).

I’m not suggesting that McIlroy prey upon Perkins waitresses like another well known golfer did to indulge his out of whack carnal compulsions, but being engaged is a hell of a lot different than enjoying the company of another as a diversion from professional responsibilities.

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Healthy relationships are a wonderful part of life – the portion of life that is reserved for spare time. The incessant conversations and decision making required to organize a wedding and the subsequent life change are maddening distractions that cannot be indulged if someone is expected to execute a professional plan.

McIlroy minus Wozniacki and Wozniacki minus McIrloy are equally magical mathematic equations that yielded the same result yesterday – victory.

Kent Sterling Show on CBS Sports 1430 – Four weeks in, it’s still more fun than I ever imagined

by Kent Sterling

Not sure there is anything more fun than hosting a show that has been put together with hard work and great care.

There are a lot of people in radio who resent the grind of the job, and feel preyed upon because they need to deliver relevance to an audience with specific expectations for a show. Whatever else I may be, I will never be one of those people.

I have been a weekday radio host for all of four weeks, but everyday is still more challenging and thus enjoyable than I ever thought it might be.

As with every other job, effective preparation is the key to comfort, and comfort is the key to creativity and performance. I’m so far from perfect that I can’t see excellence yet, but I’m having a great time holding myself to the same standard that I employed with talent I managed.

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The effect of managing for several years on my own performance has been interesting – at least to me. Where I would be very patient with talent, wanting only to see steady and incremental improvement from week to week, I am far more demanding on myself.

A bad day is intolerable to me. Last Tuesday was the first show of the 20 we have done where I felt like the audience didn’t get what we promise every day, and I was steamed. The result was more focused work, and a commitment to having more fun.

Corrections like that are routine, and disappointments less frequent as a result – or so I hope.

Segments where nothing happens send listeners station hopping, but they are worse for talent. They make you feel hollow and empty. Without expressing joy, dissatisfaction, anger, or love – or allowing an interesting guest the platform to inform or share a unique perspective – my spirit would drain behind a microphone.

There is no amount of money that would make it worthwhile for my to sit in a studio and bore myself. Boredom is what has prompted my professional failures in the past (a couple of firings in Chicago taught me the need to be vigilant in selecting jobs that provide unique daily tests), and there is no excuse for it in talk radio. If the host isn’t interested, there is no chance listeners will be, and just as was the case for me in all years and phases of school, I refuse to be bored.

From kindergarten through sixth grade, I had one teacher who taught another year after hosting me in their classes. If ADD or ADHD had been an acronym for kids whose psyches demand constant challenge or entertainment, I would have been the poster boy and I still am. My apologies to Mrs. Courtney, Mrs, Stuart, Mrs. Zimmer, Mrs. Georgevich, Mr. Zoerner, and Mr. Hammond for driving you into retirement or other professions.

Whether or not listeners will find their way to CBS Sports 1430 in Indianapolis from 3p-6p to have their brains fed or distracted every day or not, time will tell. But I can guarantee that at no point during any of the 12 segments of each show will I find the show tedious. If I bore myself, my head will explode.

It’s not being wacky and unpredictable that captures my own attention, but the preparation of a show that I will find interesting to host. I want to interview people about issues that interest me. I want to share perspectives and seek the truth in a way that is compelling. I want to express joy and outrage about those issues that deserve either.

For four weeks that has been the marching order I have given both myself and producer Nick Bosak, who has been a wonderful partner in this daily marathon of preparation and performance.

What we do each day is put together the absolute best we have to offer and then turn the microphone on and bring every bit of energy the show we have assembled deserves. It will never be perfect, but if it is relevant (sportstalk shows should be about sports), authentic (for all my flaws, being myself has been one of the biggest – although it can be a very good thing in radio), fun (that’s all I have ever demanded of life), and innovative (the toughest of the four traits of great radio to master), then we can leave the station after the show with a sense of pride.

Can’t wait until Monday at 3p to enjoy the very best three hours of my day.

Time for tiptoeing toward glacial progress is over; NCAA needs radical relaunch to benefit for-profit athletes

by Kent Sterling

With the college football playoff and SEC Network, even more money will flow into athletic departments, but none will trickle down to the players.

College football and men’s basketball players who toil for programs belonging to the Big Five conferences (SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and ACC) are being exploited to the tune of billions, and many are being forced into sham classes and majors that serve as worthless compensation for the money their athletic prowess generates.

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While there are outlier programs and exceptional athletes who find a way through that mire to provide or earn a meaningful education, it’s ridiculous to disagree that the major college football and men’s basketball model is focused upon creating wealth rather than well-rounded men.

Almost everyone agrees on several things:

Athletes deserve a piece of the pie, whether it is in a full cost of admission or the control and monetization of their own image.
Schools are rewarded based upon their academic progress rate – a standard that can be easily gamed.
Coaches are paid exceptionally well to win, not mentor.
For 98% of Division One athletes, the system works reasonably well and the NCAA provides a useful oversight structure.
Many athletes are woefully lacking in the academic background needed to succeed in the classroom, but are admitted because of their use to the cash cow programs.
The 65 schools that generate massive wealth through their athletic departments – members of the Big Five conferences – operate at a vastly different level than those NCAA members who do not.
NCAA President Mark Emmert must be embarrassed by many of the things he is forced to say because of the position he holds. He’s a smart guy – way too smart to believe that anyone believes many of the statements he made during recent testimony in Washington and Oakland.

It has gotten to the point where barely informed people are looking at the construct of collegiate athletics and say, “Well that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Of course, they are right. Very little of what goes on in college athletics makes sense.

Mary Willingham was an academic advisor at UNC-Chapel Hill for more than a decade, and was recently forced to leave her position because she has been an outspoken advocate for the athletes she was trusted to lead from ignorance to enlightenment. She didn’t cow-tow to the money machine of Tarheel athletics.

Former Tarheel basketball star Rashad McCants is being bludgeoned by those blindly loyal to the university who don’t want the insanely profitable apple cart upset by something as insignificant as the truth. He took the sham classes that Willingham told us about, and even showed his transcripts after outing himself as a sham student who earned a spot on the Dean’s List for a semester during which he never attended a class or submitted any of his own work.

We know about North Carolina because of the courage shown by both Willingham and McCants, but this thievery of athletic gifts gained through the sham of amateurism is rampant.

The NCAA released a partial look at a plan still to be vetted, voted on, and implemented that will allow the members of the five major conference to act with a measure of autonomy, but the smaller schools may find that to be a threat to their existence as the first volley toward an entirely separate division of schools that will force their athletic relevance to recede, and that should be the correct read.

The time has come for the 65 money pumps to form their own class – either under the NCAA umbrella, or separate from it – that will finally recognize itself for what those programs have become, virtual minor leagues.

There should be a place where student-athletes can enjoy athletics as part of an education, and there should be a place where those who hope to play professionally can earn and work at their craft while availing themselves of a class load that is reasonable given their time commitment and intellectual abilities and preparedness.

What is certain is the status quo cannot remain in place – not as the money continues to pour in, coaches are paid many millions, and the workforce is preyed upon as an unpaid subclass that embodies the “neo-plantation mentality” the inventor of the modern NCAA described in his autobiography.

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Whether the NCAA will muster the strength to call a spade a spade and institute the changes needed quickly enough to mitigate the changes being proposed in congress and those that may be caused by the results of lawsuits is the question. Change is coming because “the arc of the universe is long, but bends toward justice” as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said.

All that is unresolved is who will courageously stand up and create fairness where little previously existed. Willingham, McCants, Ed O’Bannon, Sonny Vaccaro, and Jay Bilas have stood up. When will everyone involved in the hypocrisy of amateurism tear back the curtain of deceit and tell the truth?