Author Archives: Kent Sterling

KentSterling.com – What We Do; How We Do It; and What Makes It Different

by Kent Sterling

KentSterling.com tells the truth through the eyes of Kent Sterling, which makes it inherently unique. That’s pretty simple. That’s the brand, and everything posted here reinforces it. The drive to tell the truth isn’t a marketing position, but the only thing I believe to be worth my time and effort.

Writing is not easy, and if not to tell the truth, why write it? My version of the truth might not be the same as your version, but I am resolute in trying to find the truth and tell it often.

As challenging as communicating my thoughts well enough that you understand them exactly as they exist in my head, finding the truth is the hard part, and it takes time and effort.

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I go to practices, games, and listen to coaches afterward as they explain who their teams are. Does it take a weekly drive down to Bloomington for the Kevin Wilson postmortem to know that the Hoosiers are having some trouble on the defensive side of the ball? Not unless you are blind, deaf, and stupid, but sitting in the front row listening to Wilson accept responsibility for the failings of his team and the decisions to come designed fix the many problems is key in assessing his ability to continue to lead Indiana’s football program.

Do I have to go to a Pacers practice to know that they are a damn good team at 9-1? No, but seeing how hard they work both during and after practice helps inform a unique perspective. Do I need to stand next to Frank Vogel as he describes his team to hear his words? No, but why do I want to trust the other media to report what they believe is important?

Talking to Brandon Miller at Butler or Tom Crean at Indiana isn’t necessary to see the challenges those two basketball programs face this season, but it sure helps in understanding how their approach might succeed or fail.

Regular media critiques are a part of the content we generate for two reasons – the first is because someone needs to hold the media accountable for their effort and perspective, and second, because it was my business for a long time. I was the program director at 1070 the Fan in Indianapolis and 101ESPN in St. Louis for several years.

Prior to that, I was the assistant program director for WIBC – a news/talk station in Indianapolis before becoming program director for a brief time while I was also programming 1070 the Fan.

At all three of those outlets as well as the first two stations where I worked (WMAQ and WGN in Chicago), the truth was everything.

I write about those things that make me feel good about others, and when someone makes me angry, I enjoy exposing his or her idiocy. Someone needs to tell the truth about the morons who make the lives of others more difficult, or feather their own nest at the expense of the easily exploited.

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Bureaucratic chumps piss me off, and I enjoy writing about them too. Liars are especially galling because they assume we are too dumb to know deceit when we hear it. Conversely, I love writing about people who do it the right way and tell the truth. Examples of the three groups – former Carmel Clay Schools superintendent Jeff Swenson (bureaucratic chump), Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts (liar), and Indiana Pacers power forward David West (teller of the truth).

You won’t always agree, and that is fine with me. I’m not one of those blowhards who equates disagreement with an attack on my intellect. You should always feel safe leaving a contrary comment. If you are one of those psychotics who enjoys flaming commenters or me for that matter, that’s fine too. Just make it entertaining.

The website has my name on it for a reason – because it is me. My beliefs are represented here. You find fault with them? Good. Tell me about it. I like a conversation, and I like learning. I’m not above learning from people who come here to share their thoughts.

There are occasional typos and grammatical errors. I loathe them, and proofread everything, but I screw up more often than I would like.

One other thing, I don’t give a damn how many people visit this site. I’m not involved in the game of statistical excellence. I was in radio long enough to know that audience follows great content, so I concentrate my energies there. Trying to game the system to gain page views is not my game. Kentucky fans accuse me of trolling. Not here. Not ever. I write about John Calipari because he is the poster boy for all that is wrong with the construct of college basketball. He is paid too much for providing too little to young men who deserve more and better.

Did Calipari invent the rules? Is he the only coach who exploits the rules? Is Calipari 100% bad? The answers to all three questions are no, but as long as players are exploited, I’m going to write about the guy who does it most often to his greatest advantage.

Kentsterling.com is all about pursuing the truth and fun in sports. If you enjoy it, that pleases me. If you don’t, that won’t keep me from working at it. Not everyone will like the site, just like there are people who don’t like me.

Telling the truth isn’t always popular, but as much as I could have benefitted over the years by changing my beliefs or keeping my opinions to myself, I’m just not capable of it.

Indiana Basketball – Playing on TV and in Front of 17,000+ Every Game Opens Kids Up to Critique

by Kent Sterling

I still feel uneasy about something I wrote about an Indiana basketball player, but I’ll get over it.

Not sure if I’m the only person in the media who wrestles with this, but I really don’t like to be critical of people who play collegiate athletics.

They are amateurs, students, and barely out of high school. That should keep their behavior from being dissected under a high intensity microscope. Life in college is tough enough without a bunch of people deciding who you are for you.

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Yesterday, after Indiana beat Stony Creek 90-74, I thought it would be a good time to look at how the team has progressed, and asked and answered five questions that I felt would determine how the Hoosiers would fare the rest of the season.

One of those questions addressed a specific player in a way I have never employed before because of my distaste for being critical of kids playing for free, and it made me wince as I wrote it. I’m still conflicted.

I tend to write as I would like my own son to be written about. My son played basketball, and I used to see his name on message boards from time to time – sometimes positively, and other times not so much.

The tonnage of what the posters didn’t know was so enormous that it couldn’t be quantified. They pretended to know things that weren’t true, and made the experience of reading the posts very frustrating. Finally, I bailed on the message boards entirely, and haven’t been back since. I used to post links from this site on there, but haven’t done that in years either because I don’t want to be associated with several of those posters.

Criticism without knowledge is the hallmark of the stooges who have multiple thousands of message board posts to their discredit, but at some point the responsibility for the decision to play basketball at a place like Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Syracuse, or Kansas, where the lights shine a lot brighter belongs to the players and their families.

There is going to be praise and criticism – both founded and unfounded – that will drive the player and those close to him completely nuts if they listen to it.

My responsibility is to write here and say on the radio what I see. If I’m wrong, people have every opportunity to correct the message. The mandate should be to always be fair and never personal. If a kid walks on and off the court like he would rather be somewhere else, there is a great way to correct that assumption – find a way to love the game, or stop playing.

It would be dishonest to not write or talk about it, and whatever else people think of me or other people who are paid to voice their opinions, whether we are being honest can never be questioned or all is lost. Being wrong is an occasional embarrassment. Being dishonest is unforgivable.

Criticizing adults is easy. With coaches, managers, athletic directors, and others who have been around long enough to have developed coping mechanisms for dealing with criticism, bringing a hammer down is an easy call. I have no problem exposing Cubs owner Tom Ricketts as a grade A weasel, but to question the body language of a sophomore in college is different, and it causes me grief.

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It’s not like I haven’t done my time watching the player closely – in high school, summer ball, and at IU – and his behavior has never changed from what I described last night.

There is only one reason for me to spend time writing and talking about sports, and that is to share whatever my version of the truth is. As readers or listeners, a desire to be informed or entertained by that version of the truth is the only reason to consume it.

So I tell that truth, whether it pains me or the person about which it’s told. That’s the job. Hopefully, I have the grace and discipline to make certain it’s always fair and never personal.

If a player or coach doesn’t want to deal with it, there are plenty of places where he can play in the dark.

Click here to read the post that made me uneasy

Indiana Basketball – Hoosiers Beat Stony Brook 90-74 – Four Games In, What Five Questions That Needs Answers?

by Kent Sterling

Yogi Ferrell is playing like the leader and assassin Indiana fans were right to expect this season in Bloomington.

After beating their first four opponents by an average score of 93-69, fans have learned a little bit about the 2013-2014 Indiana Hoosiers.

The highly touted freshman class has performed as advertised, and the sophomores have also responded to the challenge of replacing the 70+% of the offense that moved on through graduation or transfer.

Fans have also seen some inconsistency and defensive lapses from this very young Indiana squad.

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Noah Vonleh has exceeded expectations by posting double doubles in the first four games of the season – the first Hoosier to do that since D.J. White in 2007. Yogi Ferrell has shown that extra work in the gym firing up threes pays off by shooting 40% from beyond the arc and averaging a team leading 18 points per game.

There has been bad too. In the three blowout wins – all 90+ point efforts, Indiana has posted single digit assist totals. The important thing in offense is that the ball goes in the bucket. How you choose to put it in is about style. If Indiana scores 105 points against Samson with only nine assists, why should fans care? Well, beating people off the dribble isn’t going to be possible against good defensive teams and putbacks will be more difficult.

Here are the questions Indiana needs to answer to enjoy a successful follow-up to a Big Ten Championship season:

Just what defines success for the Hoosiers this season?

If Indiana is an elite program again, every season should begin with the goal of winning a championship, but Indiana is not elite again – yet. The Hoosiers have made it to the Sweet Sixteen the last two seasons, and that beats the hell out of the results of the three previous seasons, but elite teams hang banners. Indiana has not given the five NCAA banners a little brother since the last was hung in 1987.

That allows a recalibration that accounts for the team’s youth. A realistic number of wins is 20. Indiana wins more than that, great, the season is a success. Less, the Hoosiers swung and missed.

Will Jeremy Hollowell become a consistent positive force on either end?

Hollowell has always appeared to be a laconic and disinterested basketball player. In high school and through the summers, Hollowell looked like he was waiting for a parent to pick him up to take him to the dentist while he was on the court. That’s not necessarily bad. Derrick McKey looked like that, and he was one of the best defenders in the NBA during a long career. But with McKey, there was never any question among those who knew the game that he was a great asset. With Hollowell, that’s not clear yet.

He has the body and measureables, but so far this season, he’s 11-28 from the field, and has yet to turn the ball over less than twice in any of the four games Indiana has played. Like all Hoosiers not named after a lovable cartoon bear, Hollowell is not a big assist guy.

The question with Hollowell is whether fans can believe their eyes when they see some of the worst body language on a Hoosier since Richard Mandeville, or whether his fire burns far enough beneath the surface that it’s completely hidden from view.

Can Will Sheehey accept that Yogi Ferrell is the leader of this team?

Just as with an NFL franchise, things run more smoothly when the point guard is the leader. Ferrell has always be the leader of the teams for whom he played. He is steady and driven.

Sheehey can be uneven and occasionally allows his emotions to get the better of him. If Sheehey tries to migrate into a role where he creates offense for himself, the result could be an unraveling of the team first methodology that is best for basketball success. Sheehey is a talented complimentary player.

If he is happy with that, he can be an outstanding piece of the puzzle for the Hoosiers.

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How quickly can Troy Williams and Luke Fischer develop into excellent defenders?

If you project the best versions of Ferrell, Williams, Sheehey, Fischer, and Vonleh into the starting lineup, that group can compete for a Big Ten title. Ferrell and Vonleh are pretty damn close to that level of player. Fischer needs to be able to raise his left arm over his head, and Williams needs to limit turnovers and negative defensive plays. He’s a ball hawk averaging two steals per game, but jumping into the passing lane unsuccessfully is going to give teams like Michigan State, Michigan, and Ohio State a huge advantage.

Williams has all the potential in the world, and Fischer proved himself as a winner during back-to-back undefeated seasons in Wisconsin as a high school junior and senior.

Can Indiana play against a quality zone and score?

Because of the rule changes in college basketball, teams are going to be more likely to use a zone, and against the zones of LIU-Brooklyn, Indiana had trouble functioning as they scored a season low 73 points – the only time they scored less than 90. For my taste, Indiana runs a complicated offense against a 2-3, but Tom Crean is a smart guy, and if the key to creating open looks against a zone was as simple as getting the ball into the middle, that is what he would tell the Hoosiers to do.

The loss to Syracuse still stings, and if you listen very carefully at sports bars across Indiana, you can still hear the echoes of fans yelling, “Get the ball to Zeller in the middle!”

Whatever offense Indiana uses to make teams pay for running a zone, it needs to be successful because they are likely to see a lot of it.

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Scott Boras Blasts Chicago Cubs – Only He Could Be Wrong in Blasting the Cubs

by Kent Sterling

When looking for circumspect views on the mismanagement of baseball franchises, the resolutely myopic Scott Boras is a terrible place to start.

Here is what super-selfish super agent Scott Boras said to the media about the Chicago Cubs at the annual baseball general managers meeting that I found super annoying.

“You’re (the Cubs) developing the infrastructure, but fans don’t come to see seats, grass, cement. They come to see players. They’ve done a great job in the draft and development and they’ve got a really good core of young players coming, but it is just not what’s expected when you have a (family) buy a major-market club.”

There is no doubt the Ricketts Family is doing Cubs fans no favors in attracting the level of talent needed to compete for the National League Central crown, but Boras is crazy to say that Cubs fans “don’t come to see seats, grass, cement.” Actually, he’s technically right because what Cubs fans come to see is ivy, an iconic scoreboard, and the ghosts of their ancestors who sat in the same seats all the way back to 1914 (assuming they were fans of the Federal League team that used Wrigley Field for the two seasons it operated).

What Boras wants is for his clients to be paid more, and when big market teams like the Cubs and Mets are peeling back expenses, it’s not good for his bottom line which is generated by a percentage of his players take.

The Cubs are an embarrassment to baseball because they are trying to rebuild the farm system, admittedly bereft of talent after woeful mismanagement by every general manager that came after Dallas Green, at the expense of being competitive at the major league level. Jim Hendry’s attempt to save his job by trading every young talent of value for mediocre veterans depleted all youth, and led to the ruinous past three years for the big league club.

Tom Ricketts, team president Theo Epstein, and GM Jed Hoyer are selling fans a bill of goods that Javier Baez, Albert Almora, Jorge Soler, and Kris Bryant are a murderers row coming to a north side ballpark near you, but nobody can say that with certainty. Who is going to pitch is a post for another day.

Boras is right that the Cubs are doing everything possible to avoid paying big market salaries to ballplayers by accumulating mediocre talent at all positions, but his myopic motivation for his comments makes listening to him as foolish as lending an ear to Smilin’ Tom.

Boras wants money. Cubs fans want wins. Ricketts wants profits. I’ll leave it to you which of those three will be pleased with the results of 2014.

Rick Venturi Talks Colts Football, Erik Walden Head Butt, and Rebuilding the Indiana Football Program

by Kent Sterling

When I have a question about football, I ask Rick Venturi, who . I had a lot of questions this morning on “Ahead of the Curve” on 1070 the Fan.

The Colts seem incapable of playing good football in the first half, but somehow continue to win because the brief periods of excellence are overwhelming enough to vanquish less talented opponents.

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It would stand to reason that good teams like the Seahawks, 49ers, and Broncos would make the inconsistent Colts pay for their intermittency, but the Colts won games against them too. Trying to figure out whether this will mean a short postseason is frankly beyond my pay grade, so I asked a one of the best respected guys in a very competitive business.

One of the things I assume but don’t know from the inside is that rebuilding college football programs can have success offensively before they are able to build their defense. Prior to today’s train wreck in Madison, Indiana’s offense was far ahead of their defense, and in my passionate defense of the methodology and brick by brick erection of the Hoosiers team by third-year coach Kevin Wilson, I asserted that the capability of the defense will always lag behind offense. Unsure of myself, I posed that question to Coach Venturi, who made three stops as a Big Ten head coach or defensive coach.

Finally, we got a question via Twitter that asked what Venturi thought of the Erik Walden head butt in Thursday night’s Colts win in Nashville. Walden rip the helmet off a Titans offensive lineman, and win he protested, Walden cracked him in the forehead while still wearing his helmet. Is there a place for that kind of unabashed aggression that resulted in the third consecutive play that yielded the Tennessee offense yardage via a personal foul call.

The segments with the Coach always run long because there is always one more question to ask, and there is no one better at making sense out of the inner workings of professional or college football.

As always, Venturi’s answers enlightened.

Indiana Pacers – David West Provides Insights on Undefeated Start and Progress of Lance Stephenson

by Kent Sterling

Indiana Pacers power forward David West is a thoughtful guy. He thinks before he speaks, and answers questions without using cliches. I love interviewing him because the quality of the questions drives the quality of the answers.

You do not walk up to West, shove a micrpone in his face, and say, “Tell me about practice.” First, it’s not a question at all, and second it’s not the kind of solicitation that is worth West’s time.

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When he responds, West looks you in the eye and answers as though you are having a genuine conversation. That behavior demands respect and a level of effort in wording questions that is rarely exhibited by the media – a collection of overworked people trying to get their sound efficiently and move to the next assignment.

When West signed his extension, Pacers President Larry Bird was effusive of West in a way that I had never heard from him before. Bird is another guy who answers questions honestly, and Bird had not been the guy saying those nice thing, it would have been hard for me to believe that any single player was as essential to a team’s success as the man Bird described.

The Pacers will take their 9-0 record into the United Center to play the Chicago Bulls, and West will play a big role in how the Pacers compete and whether they head to New York to play the Knicks next week as the first Pacers team to start their season with 10 consecutive victories. Not only is West providing points, rebounds, and solid defense when he’s on the court, he shows the younger Pacers how to behave off of it.

David West is impossible to ignore, and what he says carries great weight.

Today’s Early Edition of Ahead of the Curve (8a-10a on 1070 the Fan) Might Just Be the Best Effort of All-Time

by Kent Sterling

My God, could there be a more compelling guest list in sports radio? Indiana Pacers forward David West, Coach Rick Venturi, and IU guard Austin Etherington will share their insights with Fox 59 Sports Director Chris Hagan and me.

West is an incredibly thoughtful guy, who actually listens and resounds to questions without ever using one of the typical cliches. I love interviewing him. There is never any attitude. He’s a pro on the court, and with the media he is astoundingly candid. He’ll join the show at 8:15a to talk about the 9-0 start that may become 10-0 tonight in Chicago.

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I try not to bug Rick Venturi too often to appear on the show. He’s a busy guy, and the last thing I want to do is impose, but the Colts are incredibly compelling this season. There are a lot of teams that play well one week and then poorly the next, but the Colts play terrible football and championship level football in the same game almost every week. It’s maddening for fans, but compelling as hell to watch. I need to talk to Rick about what the hell is going on with this team. He’ll be with us at 9:15a.

Austin Etherington is a really good guy, and is someone I root for. He competes like hell, plays bigger than he is, and is coming back from a catastrophic knee injury. Every player who commits to a school hope that the narrative he has buzzing in his head the day he signs his letter of intent comes to pass. None of us gets to choose our path, and it’s the adversity that sometimes provides us with the most rewarding experience. We’ll talk to Austin about that at 8:45a.

The show is early because of the Noon start for the Indiana Hoosiers as they play in Madison against the Wisconsin Badgers. Indiana go into this game as 26 1/2 point favorites, so at least Vegas doesn’t see the Hoosiers as a threat to pull the upset. Win or lose, Indiana continues to take steps forward, and we’ll talk about why fans who are getting antsy about the Kevin Wilson era should relax.

Tom Crean’s Hoosier hoops squad scored at will against Samson last night, but will the team’s obvious athleticism be enough to carry against Big Ten competition. We’ll talk about that tomorrow too.

Ahead of the Curve is really a four-hour show poured into a two-hour slot. This show is radio’s version of a two-for-one night at your favorite bar. For people who don’t have four hours to listen to the radio, we give you all you need in just two on 1070 the Fan (1070 AM and 107.5 FM) in central Indiana, and on 1070thefan.com everywhere else.

Expanded Replay in Major League Baseball Wrongheaded and Silly

by Kent Sterling

Baseball’s first dip into the murky waters of replay reviews of home runs utilized TVs I wouldn’t have in my home. We’ll see what technology they use this time.

Getting the call right 100% of the time rather than 99% of the time is not worth the trouble – or more importantly, the time.

Imagine the director of a “Death of a Salesman” stage production being able to stop the performance in the middle of the second act to correct a blown line by Brian Dennehy. Imagine a tour manager of AC/DC stopping “Highway to Hell” two minutes in because Angus Young didn’t bend a string perfectly during his solo. A comedy club owner doesn’t stop a set by Jim Gaffigan because he stammers through one of 75 jokes.

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Getting the calls during a baseball game precisely right is important for the players and management of a team, and completely beside the point for the fans who buy tickets and watch less and less often on television.

The game is already so mind numbingly slow that it’s virtually impossible to sit through an entire game in from of the TV. Instead of focusing energy on slowing the game further, owners should mandate that once a hitter enters the batter’s box, he must stay there ready to hit throughout his plate appearance.

But because baseball franchise owners have their heads so far up their backsides they can’t see the ivy on Wrigley Field’s ivy covered outfield walls, they unanimously approved funding yesterday for an expansion of replay that will include a number to be determined of manager challenges every game that will be reviewed by a group of umpires in a New York studio.

We can assume this will be a hybrid of the NFL and NHL protocols. The manager will throw a red flag, or run screaming on to the field to stop play and request a replay. The officials in the magic video booth with watch the play in question again and again to determine whether the call was correct, and then communicate with the result to the umpires.

Like almost all replays, fans at home and in the stadium will discern the correct call long before justice is meted out on the field. Thousands in the stadium and at home will shriek, “What the hell are they looking at?! I can see it from here!” Frustration will build, and the replay official will probably be right more than he is wrong, although that’s hardly a foregone conclusion.

As a result, an already too slow game will be slower, and the joy of watching men play ball will be corrupted by a completely unnecessary and irrelevant technological advance.

Fans can look forward to the gamesmanship of managers delaying the action until a replay can be viewed by a member of the staff to determine whether a challenge is warranted. Fourth inning mound visits to a pitcher who is rolling will be regular occurrences as the replay is displayed on the Jumbotron. Sounds like a great time to get another beer or go to the bathroom, as though baseball games aren’t filled with those already.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched in 2018, and it will be able to peer into the smallest nooks and crannies of the universe to determine whether life exists elsewhere.. The Hubble Telescope has been responsible for many of the most vivid and revealing images from space for two decades. If you lined up the Webb and the Hubble Telescopes end to end, you would still not be able to see the cosmic importance of a call being corrected in a Wednesday afternoon game between the Kansas City Royal and Milwaukee Brewers.

There are those who believe that getting it right trumps all, and that replay ensures that results of games are not impacted by the imperfection of an umpire. They watch baseball with an eye trained on the least important aspect of the game. Sports are played in front of paying fans (either through a ticket purchase or their exposure to commercial messages) and it is meant to be a leisure activity – an escape.

The tedium of replay is ridiculous in all other sports, but the action in those games is almost nonstop. The action is baseball is consistently non-go. Slowing it down further to correct bang-bang calls is an overreaction to a problem that doesn’t even deserve a diagnosis, much less a cure.

Eyeballs attached to four well-trained brains should be enough to get calls right as often as needed. The more baseball affects changes that make the game better for players and managers at the expense of the fans, the further the national pastime will fade from our consciousness.

Baseball is swinging and missing again – unanimously. If the owners want to improve umpiring, the place to start is by firing Angel Hernandez.

A Tale of Two Halves Goes the Indianapolis Colts Way – 30-27 Win Moves Colts to 7-3

by Kent Sterling

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of discipline, it was the age of foolish penalties, it was the epoch of passiveness, it was the epoch of aggression, it was the game of Light, it was the game of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had the AFC South crown before us, we had a potential collapse before us, we were all going direct to the Super Bowl, we were all going direct to the NFL Draft–in short, the first half was so far like the Sunday against the Rams, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Okay, I’m not Charles Dickens, but this was a Tale of Two Halves.

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The Indianapolis Colts were thoroughly outplayed and outclassed in the first half, but got hot early in the second half, and the Tennessee Titans wilted under the weight and speed of the onslaught.

The Colts didn’t just make Titans running back Chris Johnson like like the 2009 version of himself in the first half, they made Ryan Fitzpatrick look like John Elway, or for Colts fans of a more youthful vintage, how about Kellen Clemens. In the second half, both looked like who they are.

It was Donald Brown and Andrew Luck who took over in the second half after being all but inert during the first.

Not only were the Colts bad during the first half, they were unusually undisciplined. The team that averaged a hair over three penalties per game coming into tonight’s game, picked up personal fouls on three successive plays in the second quarter. It was after those penalties that the Colts found their mojo.

The Titans drive stalled, and a Rob Bironas field goal made the score 17-3. The Colts responded with a drive that ended the half with a field goal to make the score 17-6, and then the march back fully blossomed. Dominating the ball for all but five plays of the third quarter, the Colts put up 17 unanswered, and led 23-17 when the quarter ended.

What a strange game professional football is, and what a bizarre team the Colts are. Mediocre, bad, and terrible are followed by excellent, suburb, and magical. There is no doubt Reggie Wayne, Vick Ballard, Ahmad Bradshaw, and Dwayne Allen, but I wonder whether the results of any of the games they have played would have been any different.

Whether the Colts win or lose seems to be preordained before the opening kickoff, and then it’s just a matter of how. It’s like seeing the parts that are used to make a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series laying on the garage floor, knowing that eventually they will be assembled into a beautiful car.

Not sure from where the magic comes. Is it luck? Is it coach Chuck Pagano? Is it defensive coordinator Greg Manusky? Maybe it’s the collective will of the defense. I can’t tell. There is no doubt that Luck has a strong presence, otherworldly escapablity, and a penchant for improvisation.

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Luck followed up a poor first half by completing 9-11 passes for 66 yards and a touchdown in the third quarter. He ran for another TD on a neat little unplanned – I assume – scramble.

Donald Brown wrapped up a drive of almost five minutes up three with an 11-yard touchdown run to move the score to 30-20. The Colts finished with 137 rushing, and the resurgent Brown accounted for 80 of them on 14 carries. How many times do the Colts have to draft, trade, or sign over the top of Brown before they realize that he’s a pretty special back?

A late Titans touchdown did nothing but alter the cosmetics of the final score. The Colts move to 7-3 and the Titans are 4-6. The tale of two halves belongs to the Colts.

Governor Mike Pence at Pacers Practice; a Reminder of Past Fun Had at Emmis

by Kent Sterling

It's been 13 years since we worked together, but Mike Pence still looks exactly like Mike Pence, and he still think like him too.

It’s been 13 years since we worked together, but Mike Pence still looks exactly like Mike Pence, and he still thinks like him too.

There was a time before Mike Pence was Indiana’s governor, a time before he was a congressman, a time when he was a talk radio host on Network Indiana and WIBC in Indianapolis. And he was one of the hosts with whom I had the most fun working with.

When I had a meeting with Mike to talk about his show, his attention was devoted to whatever insight was shared. He was a very dedicated pupil, and was a fine host. Whatever guidance was offered, he adapted to it. So it was very important to advise him well.

Conversely, Greg Garrison accepted no guidance at all. Meet for two hours, and the next show was exactly like all those that preceded it. Most of the time, that was okay because changing Greg is as pointless as trying to re-teach Reggie Miller to shoot a basketball because his form isn’t pretty enough.

Mike was friendly, spirited, and dedicated to giving listeners what they came for each and every segment. He was a polite conservative who treated all callers with respect while passionately sharing his views. There was no screaming, no anger, and no grudges held toward those with a differing perspective.

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I was proud of Mike when he ran for congress because the decision represented a tremendous risk. Leaving the show to campaign required that we find a replacement, which meant that backtracking into radio would at least be temporarily impossible. Losing was not a likelihood as the radio show was heard throughout the district in which he ran, and a daily three-hour informercial for his views was impossible to compete with.

Before Mike went to Washington, I was concerned that he might fall prey to the siren song of the lobbyists, and that he might abandon his principles for the convenience of the ends justify the means outlook that is so pervasive inside the beltway. My worry was unfounded as Mike was always exactly who he was whether on the floor of the House of Representatives or in the media.

I am relatively apolitical, having had my interest exhausted through hundreds of contentious family dinners that pitted the ultra conservative anti-government views of my Dad’s side of the family against the Irish-Catholic left leaning Kennedy-esque beliefs of my Mom’s Family. The arguments were outrageous, occasionally angry, and always hilarious. Watching was fun, but I never had any interest in participating.

Most of these epic battles were a point/counterpoint about the evils of those with whom my Dad or Grandmother disagreed. Dad would attack Roosevelt for being a socialist. My Grandmother would defend him. My Dad would do an incredibly insulting imitation of Eleanor Roosevelt. My Grandmother would attack Nixon for Watergate and his sweaty upper lip. My Dad would launch into a scathing rebuke of John F. Kennedy’s libido and mismanagement of the Bay of Pigs. There was yelling, and both seemed to harbor no lasting ill-will toward the other.

During the final argument I recall – the granddaddy of them all – my Dad had squirreled away a prop, so that when my Grandmother defended Kennedy, Dad ripped Jackie Kennedy Onassis for her second marriage that was motivated by wealth. My Grandmother became furious at Dad’s insinuation of amorality. Dad ran to the bedroom and returned with a magazine that featured a nude picture of Jackie on a beach. If not for the strength of her skull, my Grandmother’s head would have exploded. Angry comic Lewis Black has never been this irate.

What I demand of elected officials is that their ambition is in representing their beliefs in an unvarnished and transparent way. Those whose beliefs are contrived to win votes are vermin, regardless of the side of the aisle on which they sit.

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Whether or not I agreed with Mike, I always believed he did what he believed. That’s all I require, and he continues to be true to himself.

If you agree with Mike’s views, you don’t need to consider anything else, but if it matters to those who disagree, Mike is always exactly who he is. And it was good to talk to him for a few minutes today.