RE: Why swim upstream?

Well looks like you single deviation is really going to cost you. And what reasoning did you have for that prognistication of picking the 3rd best team in the Big 12 to do better than the 2 best teams from that conference? Should have stuck with the "experts" in the committee. I guess I'm just going to have to win this thing. Your chances a now quite slim. Meanwhile, Kansas is looking like a shoe-in for the final 4 (my pick).

Why Swim Upstream?!

A few observations...
THE RESULT of Jordan's decision not to fill out a bracket? Probably that his time as lunch club president is nearing an end (re: impeachment).
BECAUSE they have the same finsl four (inter-firm consultations?), the race between Morgan and Chris is going to come down to whether Georgetown (Morgan) or Texas A&M (Chris) makes the finals--I like Morgan's chances on that a lot better than Chris's, but if neither of those two teams makes it to the finals then Morgan had better hope Tennessee upsets Ohio State and Wisconsin makes an early exit, otherwise H8BYU will be impossible for Fife to catch. BTW Morgan, what were ye smoking when ye picked Notre Dame to go to the Elite Eight? That was bold, but so out-of-nowhere and irrational that that's normally the kind of improbable risk you see Sheed take. Speaking of which...
AFTER THE FIRST ROUND, Sheed is in the penthouse--and don't expect that to change much, mates. With the exception of prognosticating Durant and Co. to go to the finals, Sheed picked the lower seed to win every single game in his bracket. Why go to all the trouble of trying to brilliantly forecast upsets when men (almost) as smart as us spent entire days locked in a conference room determining how to seed the shin-dig?

Re: Bill Simmons

At first I was wary to believe Simmons' characterization of All-Star weekend which was based mostly on 3rd hand accounts which sounded exagerated. Then the police figures seeemd to show that it wasn't any worse than any other big weekend. But I still didn't like Scoop's article at all, and now I am on board with Simmons. With 400 arrests, it seems pretty clear that the Po-po had their hands full and probably made all the arrests they could. Thus, 400 could really be close to the most arrests they could have made given the number of officers.

But what really changed my mind was the account of what I consider a much more reliable voice, even though I heard it second hand. A certain former professional basketball player who I am related to spoke with Big T - Thurl Bailey - On Thursday night (conincidentally the occasion of the conversation was in Logan at the outstanding USU-Nevada basketball game on Thursday). Thurl agreed with Simmons assessment of the atmosphere in Vegas that weekend and said that it seemed like one long rap video (that is a paraphrase). I don't know how many rap videos the Mormon gospel singer watches, but I think he meant pretty much what Simmons described.

Just thought I'd drop a couple names, I'm out.

Sports Guy v. Scoop Jackson

The following is taken from Bill Simmons's most recent basketball blog. I think it is very interesting that he is calling out Scoop Jackson here. If you remember, Jason Whitlock (an African-American sportswriter that used to write for Page 2 on ESPN.com) completely went off on Scoop Jackson last year. The exchanges between Whitlock and Jackson are really interesting. Jason Whitlock wrote an article in the Kansas City paper about ESPN that has a link to the blog about Scoop Jackson. Scoop Jackson later wrote a couple of rebuttal pieces on ESPN.com. Here is Simmons's rebuttal to Scoop's most recent article:

I hate writing a rebuttal to another writer's column. I hate it. These days on the Internet, people spend far too much time writing about other writers instead of just writing about sports. Pretty soon, there will be Web sites devoted to writers writing about writers who write about other writers. We're not headed in the right direction.

At the same time, I couldn't let Scoop Jackson's "Vegas wasn't that bad" column just fade away without disputing two crucial pieces of his argument:

Piece No. 1: Scoop's assertion that "only" 403 people were arrested during NBA All-Star Weekend, a number apparently obtained from Deputy Lt. E. Sterr Bunny of the Las Vegas Police Department. I don't think it's very smart to base the premise of a column around a leap of faith that Vegas police reported every single crime, mugging, brawl, assault, theft and indiscretion from that weekend (even the ones for which the perpetrators weren't caught). Besides, how many arrests can you have when there weren't enough cops in the first place? Almost all of the police were concentrated between Mandalay Bay and MGM, with everyone walking the other half of the Strip (from Bellagio to the Wynn) apparently expected to fend for themselves.

As Cavs beat writer Brian Windhorst pointed out this week, there was a lawlessness and lack of decency along the Strip almost defied description. (Hell, even some of the players were scared -- check out the comments from Tracy McGrady and Rafer Alston in the Houston Chronicle.) Did those 403 "reported" arrests cover everyone who robbed cab drivers, menaced tourists in unpatrolled parking garages, pawed women's breasts, started fights in cab lines, skipped out on restaurant bills and everything else? In my opinion, no. Everything I witnessed and wrote about last week was backed up by scores of other writers and media people.

Seriously, does anyone believe Vegas would accurately report arrest figures when the city was using that weekend as an audition for an NBA franchise? Since when did Vegas become a bastion of integrity? It's Vegas! That's why we love the place -- because it's NOT a bastion of integrity, remember? I'm trusting the eyewitness accounts of people who were there -- friends, friends of friends, readers and other writers -- over a dubious arrest figure from a woefully unprepared city.

Piece No. 2: Scoop's insinuation that certain media members were intimidated by the blackness of the event and ended up stereotyping hip-hop culture with phrases like "The Hip-Hop Woodstock" (I wrote that one) and "The Black KKK" (Jason Whitlock wrote that one and, by the way, he's black). I found this interesting because Scoop wrote in his original All-Star column that (A) somebody joked at one of his dinners that their casino was "South Central," and (B) Vegas was a "four-day Freaknic [sic]."

Hmmmm ...

The "South Central" reference needs no further explanation, although it was a terrible Glenn Plummer movie and that probably needs to be mentioned. "Freaknik" was started by African-American college students in Atlanta in the early '80s; they had a noble dream of turning Freaknik into an annual party weekend, almost like a Black Mardi Gras. And for a few years, they actually pulled it off. By the mid-'90s, the event became so overcrowded and dangerous that Atlanta cops legitimately couldn't police the crush of people, leading to negative press and a groundswell to disband the event that didn't fully take hold until a brutal rape in '99. That was the final straw for Freaknik.

Needless to say, comparing All-Star Weekend to Freaknik isn't the most flattering comparison. Scoop still made that connection Feb. 20. Eight days later, here's how Scoop started his Feb. 28 column:

As the reports continue to flow from the activities during NBA All-Star Weekend, the rage begins to build.

Hip-Hop Woodstock. The Black KKK. Weekend leaves NBA with a black eye.

What? Seriously? For real?

As difficult as it is not to turn this generalization of the entire hip-hop culture into an issue of race, let's be honest, it is about nothing else.

The generalization of the entire hip-hop culture? Wait, wasn't this the same guy who compared All-Star Weekend to a four-day Freaknik? No wonder he ended his column with a "pot calling the kettle black" reference ... perhaps it was a Freudian slip.

Here's the sad thing: There was a good follow-up column that needed to be written about Vegas. The NBA was unfairly blamed for the general craziness of the weekend, with the Pacman Jones incident getting the most play ... like it was the NBA's fault that an NFL star caused the biggest riot of the weekend. The NBA didn't screw up; Vegas screwed up. The city failed to stack the Strip and the surrounding parts of the city with enough cops and security guards, and they made the mistake of hoping everyone would act appropriately.

For any other weekend, that was a reasonably sound game plan. For a weekend in which the NBA All-Star Game was the THIRD biggest event behind Chinese New Year and the Fashion Convention? Not a good idea. If you owned a car and resided within driving distance of Vegas, you needed only to find a space in a garage and you were good to go for the weekend, even if you didn't have a place to sleep. Contrary to public belief, New Orleans won't be as chaotic an All-Star destination because the city will flood downtown with cops -- no way the Big Easy makes the same mistake as Vegas did -- and because out-of-towners won't be able to cruise into the city and park downtown without any trouble. Over everything else, that's where Vegas screwed up.

So who gets blamed? Naturally, the NBA. The league's fundamental issue has remained the same for four decades: It's a league of mostly black players marketing itself to a mostly white audience and a mostly white media. That delicate balance was the premise of David Halberstam's watershed sports book "The Breaks of the Game," which was published 25 years ago, back when MJ was playing for Carolina and Michael Jackson was on his second nose. Nothing has really changed. Just look at the way Iverson's credentials were belittled when Philly shopped him last December, or the comically skewed reaction to a Nuggets-Knicks brawl that wasn't one-tenth as violent as the Senators-Sabres brawl last week. Certain media members will always delight in sticking it to the NBA, with the underlying theme being, "Sorry, I just can't identify with those black guys."

I wish Scoop had tackled this subject, asking why some media members gleefully used All-Star Weekend as their latest excuse to crush the league. Instead, he played the race card, based his premise on a dubious statistic and came off misguided. Once upon a time, the late Ralph Wiley repeatedly proved an African-American sports columnist could write intelligently about racial issues without using his skin color as a crutch. After Ralph passed away three years ago, Scoop Jackson vowed to carry Ralph's torch on Page 2.

I just wish he'd brought that torch to Vegas.