MUCH BIGGER SOCHI PROBLEMS

Yesterday, I poked fun at all the funny things going on in Russia ahead of the Olympic games, but I left out the biggest travesty of the entire thing.

The Russian government has partnered with an extermination company and is paying them to round up all the stray dogs and cats throughout the city and kill them. They're shooting them with poison darts and leaving poisoned meat for them to eat. The poison causes the animals to suffocate and it takes up to 90 minutes for them to die.

These dogs aren't strays, not really. Most of them are pets that were abandoned by families whose homes were demolished to make way for the building of Olympic venues. There are some people that have been trying to get dog sanctuaries up and running, but construction crews are in short supply, because most of them are still trying to finish building the hotels that athletes, journalists and other visitors are staying in.

The company hired by the Russian government, Basia Services, refers to the animals as "biological garbage" and feel they're doing the right thing.

Here's Keith Olbermann talking about it on his show recently. I hadn't planned on watching anything related to the Olympics because I don't care about winter sports, but now I'm in full on "Fuck This" mode.

Welcome to the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. Gay people aren't welcome, you can be arrested for swearing, and now they're killing dogs in the streets by the hundreds.

It's horrible.

SOCHI PROBLEMS

The 2014 Winter Olympics start tomorrow in Sochi, Russia. Things aren't going so well over there.

Construction on most of the arenas and stadiums is finished and the Olympic Park looks glorious apparently, but the Russians seem to have forgotten one minor detail: there are A LOT of people coming, too.

From everything I've read, all the facilities that will be featured on TV look fantastic - because they'll be featured prominently on TV. Everything else is a different story. I've been reading up on a bunch of things this morning and it sounds like everything from where the athletes are staying to the press hotels to the visitors hotels are a mess.

These are a few of my favorites.

From Stacy St. Clair of the Chicago Tribune

My hotel has no water. If restored, the front desk says, "do not use on your face because it contains something very dangerous." #Sochi2014
— Stacy St. Clair (@StacyStClair) February 4, 2014

Then later...

Water restored, sorta. On the bright side, I now know what very dangerous face water looks like. #Sochi #unfiltered pic.twitter.com/sQWM0vYtyz
— Stacy St. Clair (@StacyStClair) February 4, 2014

From Dan Wetzel of Yahoo!

To anyone in Sochi: I am now in possession of three light bulbs. Will trade for a door handle. This offer is real: pic.twitter.com/7AeesqDi8Y
— Dan Wetzel (@DanWetzel) February 4, 2014

From pro snowboarder Sebastien Toutant

Well that's interesting... Sochi rules in the bathrooms!! #haha #olympics pic.twitter.com/xacSVimwXY
— Sebastien Toutant (@SebToots) February 1, 2014

From Euro News:

#Sochiproblems: baffled Olympic journalists tweet surprising, gross finds http://t.co/ZILTaJfPxJ pic.twitter.com/7f7z2upNLK
— euronews (@euronews) February 5, 2014

From Ilya Yashin, who finds the dual toilets just as ridiculous as everyone else:

Прибывающие на олимпийские игры иностранные спортсмены с удовольствием позируют в диковинных туалетах города Сочи pic.twitter.com/NFzUmybHar
— Илья Яшин (@IlyaYashin) February 3, 2014

From Stephen Whyno on the men's Canadian Hockey team rooms:

Crosby could have to sleep in one of these beds. No frills for Canada men's hockey: http://t.co/ismTHD9s6h pic.twitter.com/5e7sWrYSSK
— Stephen Whyno (@SWhyno) February 4, 2014

From Jo-Ann Barnas of the Detroit Free Press

Watch your step @Sochi2014 -- I've noticed on walkway and on sidewalks that not all man holes are always covered. pic.twitter.com/a5Nv4wu5iA
— Jo-Ann Barnas (@JoAnnBarnas) February 1, 2014

I'm sure there will be more to come. After all, the games haven't even started yet.

THE BALLAD OF FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

I broke down and watched the majority of the Jazz game last night (they won!) and they, surprisingly, looked half-decent.

Richard Jefferson had something of a breakout performance and gave the team a little lift late in the 3rd quarter. It seems that everyone was kind of surprised by it - even the crew in the production department. They made a little snafu when Bolerjack and Harpring (the home announcers) asked them to get the KFC Bucket Chart up so they could show how much better he was last night than in just about every other game so far this season.

Even the @utahjazz production department has lost all interest in this team. #NOPatUTA pic.twitter.com/1HojypBfU8
— Trevor Hale (@trevorhale) November 14, 2013

I noticed the "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME" error, snapped a picture and sent a Tweet. I figured I'd get a few laughs and that would be that.

Wrong.

The replies blew up for about an hour while I cooked some delicious Top Ramen and I got a kick out of it. Definitely the most popular Tweet I've ever sent out - even more popular than those hilarious Twilight Concert ones.

Didn't think much about it today until my brother sent me a text that said, "Did you see your Twitpic is a top story on Yahoo!?"

Sure enough, it was. Must have been a really, really slow news day. But hey, at least they gave me credit.

JERSEY GUY

Remember when I told you that I worked in an office? It's been a little over three months now, and it's been... good. I guess. It's weird. There are as many aspects of this job that I love as I hate. Mostly I hate sitting in a chair all day.

I spent a lot of years waiting tables at a restaurant with a patio, so from March until November, I'm used to being outside nearly all day every day. It was a weird transition to make and one that I'm still struggling with. Fortunately, there's a huge pond out back with ducks. I get along well with ducks. I feel very Tony Soprano about the whole thing. There's something about them that relaxes me. If I ever own a home with a pool (however unlikely), I think I'll be okay if a family of ducks moves in. If they fly away and I collapse from a panic attack and have to go to therapy, we'll rethink things. But for now, I'm cool with ducks.

Every afternoon, I go outside and hang out by the pond with the ducks for a few minutes. It's relaxing for some reason. Not sure why, but it is. It takes the edge off being cooped up in an office all day.

Another thing about working in a big office like this? There are A LOT of people that work here. We're talking hundreds. I know maybe 15 of them and I talk to maybe 6 of those 15. There are a lot of energy drinks, fauxhawks, flip-flops, bedazzled jeans and Affliction shirts littered throughout these two buildings.

After the first week, I kind of stumbled into a bit of an office anthropological study.

My first desk (i.e. cubicle) faced the doorway and we were tucked away in a corner of the sales floor with a few other companies. The first day, I noticed a guy in a Lakers jersey. I only noticed it because I hate the fucking Lakers. The next day he was wearing a Reggie Bush USC jersey. The day after that, a different Lakers jersey. The next Monday he wore a Derek Jeter Yankees jersey, the day after he wore a Johnny Damon Red Sox jersey.

This is where my head almost exploded - simply because I couldn't get a read on what kind of fan he was. Obviously, it was a total frontrunner situation, but surely there had to be a pattern, I thought.

After my third week and a slew of different jerseys, I decided I had to keep track. I started a spreadsheet and began organizing what jersey he wore and how often he wore it. Each morning, I'd see him walk through the door and make a note of the jersey he had on.

It continued this way until last Friday. Last Friday, they moved me to a different part of the building and now I no longer see him every day. It's kind of a shame. I went over to his side of the building the past two days to get water from the break room, but really to see what he had on. He's been running repeats the past two days, which is a little disappointing.

Currently the count stands at 38 different jerseys. It's getting harder and harder to keep track of now, but I'll do it. I've just gotta keep coming up with reasons to go over there.

Don't worry though. I won't give up.

THE GREATEST PRIZE IN SPORTS

I don't follow hockey. Never have and most likely never will. It's just not a sport that I've ever had much interest in and believe me, I've tried.

I like to think of myself as a well-rounded, but very casual sports fan. Basketball is number one, because we have the Utah Jazz and I love them. The NBA is constantly on TV at my house and I follow it pretty closely. Football and baseball are probably pretty even for second place and I usually know what's going on and who's doing well. Baseball has that great "new car smell" for about the first month of the season, but then the NBA playoffs start and I lose interest until sometime around July. I watch it casually until the postseason when things usually get exciting. After the World Series, I switch to football because it's entertaining.

There are teams that I root for in each sport, but none of them as much as I root for the Jazz. I love the Yankees, but get excited when Tampa Bay gives them and Boston a run for their money. It makes it more fun. In football I'm a 49ers fan, but other than that I just root against the Cowboys and the Giants.

Sometimes I'll pretend to care about college football, but I usually just end up rooting for whoever is behind in a close game. When that team takes the lead, I switch and root for the team I was just rooting against. Except, I always root against BYU and usually against USC. So, in other words, there's roughly two teams in each sport I'll root against just because.

Soccer is a sport that I've just learned to appreciate over the past few years, but even that's pretty low on the list. I love Real Salt Lake (even if I can't wear any RSL merch because I have tattoos and don't want to get lumped in to association with "those" RSL fans) and the games are incredibly fun, but I don't follow MLS, EPL or Champions League very closely.

Hockey though? Never was able to get into it. I picked a team and tried once, but lost interest after about 2 periods. Never bothered to learn the rules or anything else, so hockey is always just kind of there. I pay very little attention to it and each year it comes and goes with very little effect on my daily life.

All that said, I fully believe that the Stanley Cup is the greatest prize in sports.

Unlike the other professional sports, which make a new trophy each year so the teams can display them after they've won, the Cup is a one-of-a-kind thing. Each year, the team and everyone involved get their names engraved on one of the five rings at the base. Once there is no more room for names, the oldest ring is removed and placed in the hockey Hall of Fame, replaced with a new ring to make room for the names of the next champions.

Beyond that, the winning club keeps the Cup in their possession for roughly 100 days after the Finals are over. This gives enough time for it to be displayed in the victory parade and the various promotional stops that go along with winning a championship.

But there's one other thing that sets it apart from the other sports, and probably the most exciting part about it:

Each member of the winning team gets the Stanley Cup to himself for a full 24 hours. It's theirs to do whatever they want with and the stories that accompany that are some of the best around.

When the New Jersey Devils won in 2003, Martin Brodeur took the cup to a movie theater and ate popcorn out of it with his family.

Baptism

In 1996, Colorado Avalanche defenseman Sylvain Lefebvre had his child baptized using the bowl at the top of the cup.

In 1980, Clarke Gillies of the New York Islanders used it as a bowl for his dog's food.

The cup is professionally and meticulously cleaned after each player has their turn. It has to be.

Even before they let the players take the Cup for a day, it had its fair share of adventures with overzealous (and oftentimes a little inebriated) hockey players.

The 1906 Montreal Canadiens took the cup to have pictures taken with it and left it at a photographers studio. Weeks later, officials finally went back to the studio only to find that the photographers mother had placed it in the window and used it to plant geraniums.

Once, a drunken Ottowa player tried to drop-kick the cup over the Rideau Canal. It didn't make it and it was recovered sitting on the frozen water the next day.

After Detroit won the Cup in 1998, Kris Draper placed his newborn daughter in the bowl at the top. It made for an adorable picture until she defecated in it. Draper cleaned it out and drank champagne from it later that day.

The 1941 New York Rangers celebrated two things at once: their Stanley Cup victory and the fact that the mortgage of Madison Square Garden was finally paid off. They placed the paperwork in the cup and lit it on fire, only it set the Cup on fire as well. The team peed on it to put the fire out.

Last night, I caught the last period of the Kings-Devils game 6. I wanted the Kings to win, but only because the NBA Finals start tomorrow night and this is probably the only time I'll care about hockey until next year. I just really wanted to see the look on their faces when the finally got to hoist the Cup over their head. There's a real tradition to it that I like and admire. But again, that's the only time I'll care about hockey in 2012.

Well, there's a chance I'll care about it once more this year. The right wing for the L.A. Kings, Trevor Lewis, is from Salt Lake City. If he brings the Cup back here when he has it, and I'm off work that day, I'll join the two dozen other people that actually care about hockey in Utah in the Brighton High gymnasium for a few minutes to catch a glimpse.

The thing that made me start looking into all of this was Chris Jones, a writer for Esquire and ESPN the Magazine that I really like (and the guy sitting with the Cup in the picture towards the top of the post) convinced the NHL to let him have the Cup for a day to take it around his hometown of Port Hope, Canada about and hour east of Toronto. The one catch was that he couldn't tell anyone it was coming, he just had to show up places with it.

It's a great little story about how excited the people of the town got when they saw the Stanley Cup randomly show up and how much something like that means to them. Read it if you have a minute.

It's stories like that and all the rest of them that make the Stanley Cup the greatest prize in sports—even if I'll still never be able to watch an entire hockey game as long as I live.

FAN UP

The facade is over. I don't think we should be allowed to talk about how we're the best fans in the world anymore. We're not. At all.

You know how I know? I went to the game last night. It was game 4 of the first round, the Jazz were down three games to none and on the brink of elimination. That's when those so called "fans" need to step up. They didn't. Tip off was at 6 PM, which is a little early, but the game was nationally televised on TNT and they had to fit two west coast games in last night. So it was a little earlier than the usual 7 PM start, but that's of little matter.

It's a playoff game and when tickets went on sale last week for games three and four, lower bowl seats were around $140 a piece. I bought a lower bowl seat yesterday afternoon for $40. Season ticket holders were having a hard time GIVING these seats away.

I've said some harsh things about the Jazz (CJ Miles and Raja Bell in particular) this year, but that's because I love the team and want to see them succeed. I made it a point to be at the game and in my seats for the opening tip-off and I was. I couldn't say the same for most of the rest of Energy Solutions Arena, though.

Best fans in the league.

I took this picture with 7:10 left in the first quarter. How pathetic does that look? The arena is barely 1/2 full, if that. About midway through the second quarter, the place was a little more full but still not at capacity. The game went on and the Jazz kept it close for a bit, but then towards the end of the third quarter, the Spurs went on a run and before anyone knew it, we were down by 20. A few people grabbed their stuff and headed for the exits.

Then things started happening. DeMare Carroll started playing hard (and pretty much gave them a spark they needed), Favors, Millsap and Jefferson all got back into it and suddenly, we were on a little bit of a run and just as quickly as we got behind big, we were right back within 4. Less than a minute left and only down by 4. It's still a long ways away from winning the 4 straight games we needed to advance, but at least it looked like we might not get swept and embarrassed completely.

The problem was, that a lot of people were gone already and more people were leaving every second. There was a long delay while the refs looked at a replay that would give the Jazz the ball back for a chance to pull within two. While that was going on, more and more people were leaving. The jazz got the ball back, but immediately squandered the opportunity and Manu Ginobili hit a wide open, fast break layup to put the Spurs back up by six with 18 seconds left.

That's when the whole building emptied out. With 18 seconds left.

You're telling me that we're the best fans in the world and we love this team and all that but we can't sit in our seats for 18 more seconds? Are you kidding me?

When time ran out and we'd been swept out of the playoffs we weren't even supposed to be in, against a team that is probably the heavy favorite to win the NBA title, some fans started booing. They were booing their own team, for the second time in as many games (because that happened at the end of game 3, too).

Best fans in the world? Please.

You can't bother to show up on time or stay for an entire playoff game. Stop kidding yourselves.

RANDOM JAZZ NOTES

• Raja Bell is pissed because he didn't play the entire postseason and barely played at all the second half of the year. Raja Bell also thinks he's still the same great player he was the last time he was on the Jazz and the first few years he was in Phoenix. He's not. He also said he was willing to do whatever the Jazz organization asked of him and be professional about it. Corbin basically asked him to sit on the bench and not do anything. Then any time Bell was asked about it, he complained and said he didn't want to play for the Jazz anymore but in the same breath said he wouldn't ask for a trade, but kept heavily insisting on it. Really glad we gave him that 3 year contract. I bet we can get a lot for him in the offseason.
• The CJ Miles era (hopefully) ended last night. He said this morning that Corbin did a poor job communicating with him and he never knew what was expected of him this year. I don't play professional basketball, so I can't exactly speak for the coach, but my guess would be that pretty much all that was expected of CJ Miles was to play hard, not take dumb shots, actually play defense and maybe try to live up to some of that "potential" we've been hearing about for the past six years. Since he did none of that, Corbin put in people (like Alec Burks and DeMare Carroll) that did the things they were supposed to do—probably without having to be specifically instructed to do so like Miles apparently needed.
• I love Paul Millsap, but I hate that he's fantastic for about 2.5 quarters and totally replaceable for the other quarter and a half. With the way Favors played during the playoffs and the 15 million Jefferson is owed next year, Millsap will either have to learn a few new moves and shift to small forward (where he'll have to play like/guard Melo and LeBron) or he'll be gone when the season starts. I love him to death, but I can't decide which is a better option.
• I have no idea what we're supposed to do with Devin Harris. Neither does Devin Harris.
• I'm afraid that Gordon Hayward is becoming the new CJ Miles. I hope that's not the case, but the evidence is there—one or two great games followed by one or two really, really bad ones.
• DeMare Carroll said that the Jazz are picking up his option for next season. I'm totally okay with this.
• I hated the idea of Jamaal Tinsley on the team, but now I really like it. I think he'd be great to have as the number two PG. But that also means I'm okay with getting rid of Earl Watson, which I think I am.
• Josh Howard is in the same boat as Devin Harris.
• Enes Kanter and Alec Burks will be really good. I just hope they're both still on this team when that time comes.
• Corbin also said that Sloan has had enough time off that he'll reach out and see if he wants to be involved with the Jazz in some capacity. I say we give him Kevin O'Connor's job. Unless Vinny Del Negro or Scott Brooks gets fired after next round and Sloan takes either of those jobs. Because then I'll be a full fledged Clippers or Thunder fan.

And with that, we'll see you next year.

Also, I've still got a few LONG LIVE SLOAN shirts left in case you still wanted to get in on that.

ALL CLASS

I always have the TV on in the background while I'm at the computer. Usually it's tuned to ESPN and a lot of the times it's on mute. The one half hour a day that I usually sit down on the couch and watch an ESPN show from start to finish is 3:30PM when Pardon The Interruption comes on.

I love Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. They have such great chemistry, they're funny and more than that, they seem to know what they're talking about. Which is more than I can say for probably 75% of the staff at ESPN. Most of them just like to hear themselves talk (I'm looking at you Skip Bayless and Jim Rome) and want to say the most outrageous things they can to get viewers.

Kornheiser and Wilbon were both writers for the Washington Post before (and for the most part during) the show, but more than that, they're likable, charismatic guys. I've read a lot of their early stuff and really enjoyed it. They both have a sarcastic, cleverness about them (Kornheiser more so) that comes across so well on TV and they're just fun to listen to.

And Wilbon is the subject of one of my favorite things I've ever seen on TV. During one episode they cut back to the set in the middle of a commercial, as they often do, and during a wide shot of the desk Michael Wilbon was visible wearing a suit jacket, dress shirt and tie but underneath the desk, he had on gym shorts and sneakers. I had always heard the joke about newscasters not wearing pants, but in this instance, I knew it was true. Maybe not all the time, but I caught it once and it makes me laugh every time I think about it.

But anyway, Wilbon left his job at the Washington Post to go to ESPN full time recently and his last column ran yesterday. If you're a fan of sports writing or just good writing in general, I suggest you check it out. I pasted it below, but you should really head over to the Washington Post site for the full effect. He links back to other articles that he mentions, and most of them are great reads.

Washington Post -- This is the first column I ever dreaded writing, the only time I can recall experiencing that thing known as writer's block. It's my last column for The Washington Post, 20-some years after my first one and 311/2 years after I walked in the door as a summer intern. It's not Shirley Povich's 75 years but I hung around long enough to think it might last forever.

Sadly and of my own doing, I've come to that part in the program where it's time to say goodbye, where I need to tell readers, editors, colleagues, even some of the people I've covered over the years just how enormously grateful I am for their helping me have the greatest adventure imaginable.

I remember thinking in the summer of 1980, after graduating from college and coming back to Washington for a second summer, that it would be a successful career if I got to have a byline from each of the major sporting events once in my life. It never dawned on me I'd wind up covering nine Olympic Games for The Post, or more than 20 Super Bowls, more than 20 Final Fours, more than 20 NBA Finals, or more importantly evolve to the point where the editors of this newspaper would trust me to lead the daily discussion about the news of the day and the changing cultural landscape as it all related to sports.

I never woke up a single day in those 30 years hesitant to go to work, whether I was reporting on something as surprising as Virginia's top-ranked basketball team losing to Chaminade in Honolulu; as terrifying as Mike Tyson biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear 30 feet in front of me; as historically significant as John Thompson navigating a Georgetown basketball program through the hostility of a sports world not yet comfortable with a black coach; as locally galvanizing as the Redskins winning a Super Bowl; as personally rewarding as being front and center to see David Robinson and Grant Hill and Byron Leftwich grow from boys to men; as selfless as Gary Williams leaving a perfectly good basketball program at Ohio State to come and save his alma mater; or as tragic as the death of young Len Bias.

There's no "favorite" or "best" interview, no "greatest" game because there were simply too many, thousands of each, over the years. But there is a favorite moment: Aboriginal hero Cathy Freeman winning track and field gold in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, leaving me to write through tears the only time in my career.

There is a favorite athlete: Michael Jordan, because he had and continues to have the greatest impact on the culture of sports since Ali and because, as Scott Turow wrote, "Michael Jordan played basketball better than anyone else in the world does anything else."

There is a biggest influence outside the profession: Coach John Thompson, whose 2 a.m. return phone calls would often begin with, "You want to sleep or you want a scoop?" and evolve into 90-minute conversations that usually had nothing to do with the Hoyas but everything to do with what was right or wrong with the world.

And most definitely there was and is a most important story in my career: the death of Bias, a young man with godly physical talents who was so much more than a headline to me because I covered just about every game he played his first two years at the University of Maryland. My friend Jay Bilas observed a few years ago that those of us of a certain age mark time with Bias's death the way the generation older than us does with the death of John F. Kennedy - and Bilas wasn't exaggerating.

The vast majority of my time at The Post has been anything but sad. I arrived at the paper close enough to the end of Watergate that Robert Redford was still occasionally popping into the newsroom to visit Bob Woodward, the man he portrayed in "All The President's Men." As difficult as it is for me to accept the notion that I became a colleague of the world's best reporter, it's nothing compared with the complete awe, even 30 years later, I still feel whenever I'm in the company of Ben Bradlee, even if it's just seeing him in the elevator.

Everything I have now professionally I owe to The Washington Post, specifically to George Solomon, my sports editor of a quarter century, for taking a chance on a 20-year-old kid, to Don Graham and Len Downie for allowing me the freedom to go anywhere and write about anything and anybody, especially for giving me the green light to do television at a time when TV and the Internet had newspapers pinned on the ropes while landing one haymaker after another.

I can only hope, as I leave for my own personal gain with a full-time career with ESPN, that the men who shepherded my career don't regret granting all those opportunities over the years. So many of us used The Post sports department as a launching pad to fame and (in some cases) fortune. Long before ESPN unleashed "Pardon the Interruption" on the world, Tony Kornheiser and I did pretty much the same thing on the fifth floor of the newsroom.

We also owe - let me speak for myself: I certainly owe - the people who indulged us over the years: our readers. No big city daily newspaper in America has an audience as educated, as diverse and as literate as The Post. And for those of us who care less about who was moving from guard to tackle and more about the significant issues of the day, whether it pertained to eligibility or race or performance enhancing drugs, it opened up grand possibilities for assignments, for pursuing fascinating stories that appealed to the widest audiences. Few newspapers had the means or the interest in sending a young columnist to Shoal Creek, Alabama, for several days to write about the difference between an exclusive country club and the local municipal track where the descendants of slaves and slave owners found themselves, willingly, to play in the same foursome.

I don't recall ever being told "no" if I wanted to write about something, even when it had little to do with sports. Probably my favorite enterprise assignment, one I viewed skeptically in the beginning, was going with Dave Sheinin to Los Angeles during the riots in the aftermath of the Rodney King drama in 1992 to try to find out whether there was any correlation between the decrease in funding for community programs related to sports and recreation and the increase in gang-related activity in the city.

Oh, yes there was a correlation. Kids who wanted to be running backs, center fielders, sweepers and shooting guards had become, largely through civic neglect, gang leaders. There was nothing quite like being invited one night to the Hollywood Hills home of the one and only Jim Brown to join members of the Crips and Bloods who had accepted his invitation to stop the violence for at least one night to talk about their differences.

Don't get me wrong; I loved covering some of the greatest events of the end of the 20th century, like the game where Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's streak for consecutive games played. But the stories like the one in Los Angeles were the ones that separated The Washington Post from 99 percent of daily newspapers, and those issues were the ones that began to reshape the discussion of sports in America, the ones that led people to look to columnists essentially as discussion leaders. The complex stories, the ones that made people examine their own values and beliefs, were so far removed from box scores and game analysis, but they now drive viewership and readership.

George Solomon, Len Shapiro and Sandy Bailey were the most influential editors in my life and could see so much of this coming. That they allowed me to be the junior member of a columnist lineup featuring Tom Boswell, Andy Beyer and Tony Kornheiser starting in 1990 was beyond my dreams. My very first "audition" column came before that in 1988 and was about Jimmy "The Greek" and some controversial remarks he'd made after lunch in downtown D.C. (at Duke Zeibert's for those of you of a certain age) that got him fired and truly kicked off the discussion of language, stereotypes and race in sports. Sally Jenkins, Tracee Hamilton, Mike Wise and Boswell will write, as they always do, with such passion and insight and grace that many of you might not have noticed for months I was gone. Still, knowing that I'll no longer have those kinds of discussions in this newspaper, from the frivolous to the serious, will be far more traumatic to me, I suspect, than to you.

The past 20 years, I've had the best job in America. My only regrets are that my father, who taught me the art of making a good case from the time I was 7 or 8 years old, died just before I became a columnist, and that my son Matthew, 21/2 years old, will never truly know what his old man did for a living most of his adult life. Everything else - all 30 years of it, thank you - was candy sweet.

LIL' WAYNE - TENNIS ENTHUSIAST

Who knew Weezy was a tennis fan? Probably a lot of people actually, but not me. He wrote this letter in late August. And he was right on both accounts.

Open Source Blog -- When Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., (a/k/a Lil Wayne) isn’t cutting some of the freshest and most inventive music of today, the Grammy-award winning rap artist can be found watching, talking or blogging about sports. Even while serving an eight-month prison term on Rikers Island stemming from a 2007 weapons charge, Wayne finds time to opine on the latest news and release new music. His latest single, “Right Above It,” dropped Aug. 17 and was the top debut on this week’s charts at No. 6, marking the New Orleans native’s highest debuting single as a lead artist. We asked Wayne, who is an avid tennis fan, to share his thoughts on the upcoming U.S. Open, which begins Monday in New York. We mailed our request along with a self-addressed stamped envelope and three leafs of SI stationery … and Wayne’s thoughtful outlook for the tournament arrived in our mailbox yesterday. (Post your questions and messages to Wayne in the comments and we’ll pass them along.)

(hint - if you click on the image, it appears, bigger, in a new window. Don't strain those eyes.)

9/02/10

Last Thursday was an "unofficial holiday" in pop culture. It was September 2, 2010 which, shorthand, is the zip code of one of the greatest/most ridiculous shows of all time, Beverly Hills 90210.

I've talked about my personal history with that show before and if it's on TV, I'll definitely put it on. It's one of those shows that I can have as background noise when I'm doing other things, but not really pay attention to. I get the gist of each episode and there's always something to enjoy about it.

But last week, one of my favorite podcasts, The BS Report with Bill Simmons dedicated the entire show to 90210, giving out ridiculous awards like "Best Attempt to make Brandon Appear Athletic" and other fantastic categories.

If you're even a casual fan of the show, it's definitely worth checking out. Do it now.

Part 1 & Part 2

IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN

College football starts this week. As a University of Utah student (sort of) I'll be rooting for them just like always. Aside from that, I don't have a college team that I root for. I enjoy watching some of the games, but  a lot of them I just don't care for. More than half the players at the college level just aren't very good and it can be bring to watch. Most of these people will never make the NFL, so most of the time I feel like I'm watching a lot of future personal trainers, bank tellers, high school coaches and those hoping for the revival of the XFL living a dying dream in front of tens of thousands of people.

That said, I will be paying close attention to the standings and the win/loss column for the next four months. But only because I'm more of a sports hater at heart. Here are the things I'll be "rooting" for over the course of the college football season.

- For Boise State to lose as many games as possible. Their blue turf and gimmicky plays bug the shit out of me. Mostly the blue turf, though. It brings a smile to my face every time I think of how they ditched the WAC for the Mountain West WAC.

- For Notre Dame to also lose as many as possible. Much like the Raiders and Bulls of the 90s, I hated any team it was cool to like, and Notre Dame fell right into that category. That's the only reason. That, and my friend Tom likes them. I root against the Bears and Liverpool for that reason, also.

- USC. I like Southern California and USC was kind of my team when I was younger. But this year I'll be rooting against them for one reason—Lane Kiffin. Never met the guy, but everything I've read/heard about him makes me hate him. He's the epitome of a guy that was born on third base but acted like he hit a triple.

I'm sure there are more, so I'll be sure to update this list throughout the season.

P.S. - I'm a Yankees fan, so I know all about the stones, glass house, etc. Doesn't change anything, though.