I may have been a trifle hasty in joining the deafening chorus condemning Auburn’s decision to hire Caucasian Gene Chizik over African-American Turner Gill as mainly a racist one. (For the record, I “misremembered” when I wrote that Gill wasn’t even interviewed for the job. He was, in fact, given a token interview before being told that the university was pursuing other options.)

Anyhoo, Jason Whitlock, who’s fast becoming the sports version of Thomas Sowell, had a well-reasoned piece in foxsports.com last week that’s cause me to rethink my hasty reaction a tad. His point isn’t that racism might not have played a part in the decision — there’s more than a whiff of that, no matter how they spin it.

Whitlock’s big point is that Turner Gill is extremely lucky that he didn’t get the job, because it was a setup for failure. Not just because it’s probably a crappy situation. What African-American college coach gets his first big-time head-coaching gig at a program that’s not troubled? And yes, that includes Karl Dorrell at UCLA. The reason it was a setup for failure is that there’s simply no question that had he landed the gig, Gill would never have had the full backing of the administration and the booster network necessary to lay a foundation, to allow for the inevitable learning curve, and to forgive neophyte mistakes.

I’m not sure I’m 100 percent sold by Whitlock’s argument, but I do agree that what’s needed IS NOT for a lot more African-American coaches to get head coaching jobs at which they’ll fail — not necessarily because of any personal shortcomings, but because of the situation. What’s needed instead is for one African-American coach to get the right job, and make such a success of it that hidebound administrators and ADs won’t be so afraid to give the second, third and fourth qualified African-American coaches shots at jobs with a future.

Amazingly enough, the African-American D-1 head coach with the best career winning percentage is . . . wait for it . . . the much (and justly) maligned, aforementioned Karl Dorell, who went 35-27. The higher-profile, far more respected Ty Willingham and Dennis Green were 76-88 and 26-63, respectively. If Dorell, of all people, is the current “gold standard,” it’s no wonder that ADs, who are conservative sheep, are hesitant to hire more African-American head coaches. Their day will come, and it’s up to the media and the talking heads to keep the ADs’ feet to the fire, but the day will come sooner once the right African-American head coach is put in the right situation.

Heck, it wasn’t that long ago that people dismissed the idea that African-Americans could succeed as NBA head coaches. Now that Lenny Wilkens, Al Attles, K.C. Jones, Doc Rivers — and, I guess, player-coach Bill Russell — have won NBA championships, African-Americans are hired and fired on their perceived merits, not to make statements. The same is true, to a lesser extent, for the NFL, although the recent travails of Romeo Crennel, Lovey Smith and a few others haven’t helped matters. It’s still the case, unfortunately, that Caucasian hacks — and Hacketts — get cut a lot more slack.

Wasn’t it predictable? When Plaxico Burress got into trouble for his unlicensed firearm incident, I vented about how ridiculous it is that pro athletes, who’re making lots of money and have troops of hangers-on, can’t get it together sufficiently to have one of their minions assure that licenses and registrations are valid and up-to-date. Naturally, we’re now hearing that Burress’s stupidity and carelessness extended to his wheels. He recently rear-ended some poor woman while driving his $140,000 Mercedes — so what else is new? — and, wouldn’t you know it?, turned out to have let his liability insurance lapse 3 days earlier. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.

That brings to mind yet another of my pet peeves: athletes who apparently can afford such simple luxuries as multiple million-dollar homes, cars that cost six figures, suits that cost 4 and 5 figures, bling that costs who knows what?, but can’t be bothered to pick up a tab or leave a tip. I’m not suggesting that they have to go out of their way to be generous tippers, but how about paying their own freight, or leaving tips in the same proportion that normal people do? Is that really asking too much?

Apparently so. For every story about how Kobe during last year’s playoffs picked up the tab for an expensive team dinner during every round of the playoffs, or about quarterbacks buying each of their linemen a Rolex as a gesture of appreciation, there’s something like this, as reported by Peter (I Make Up Rumors) Vecsey:
“Almost a year later, hotel people out here are still badmouthing Mike Bibby for insisting on ordering everything not on the menu for his party of hangers-on (‘I want fried chicken just the way my mother makes it . . .’) and then trying to sign Ron Artest’s name and room to a $330 bill. Precluded from doing so by the waiter, Bibby sniffed the waiter with a sneer, leaving no gratuity. This obnoxious behavior occurred a couple days before the Kings traded him to the Hawks.”

Or this gem, about the new face of the NBA, King James: He allegedly hosted a few friends late last season at a Cleveland restaurant called “XO Prime Steaks,” keeping the waiter there until about 4 a.m., running up an $800+ tab for food and drinks — and then left a $10 tip. My guess is that he was so P.O.’d that they expected a big star to pay anything — after all, the restaurant enjoyed the pleasure of his ineffable company, which is priceless — that he deliberately stiffed the waiter.

Of course, I don’t know what he is or isn’t really like, and the restaurant’s story — put out after a couple of condemnatory reports — was that it was all an innocent mistake, and that he returned the next day to leave a generous tip. I’m not so sure. If the story is true, believe me, LBJ is far from the only big-name, richer-than-Croesus star athlete (or entertainer) who rarely leaves anything but his fingerprints behind at restaurants.

Barack Obama, by the way — who’s worth a lot less than LBJ — tipped $18 on a $2 beer tab at a joint in Raleigh, NC, around the same time last year, during the Democratic Primary campaign. Of course, Obama was running for public office, and LBJ isn’t, but still . . . .

While I’m on the subject of pet peeves, is it really, really too difficult for American sports media types to learn some of the basics about foreign names — in particular, Chinese names? It’s not as if there are so many Chinese players in the NBA that anyone should be overwhelmed. First, everyone insisted on referring to Yao Ming as if his given name is “Yao” and surname “Ming,” when of course it’s the other way around. There’s really no need for us to look like total hayseeds by never learning that in Chinese culture (and other East Asian cultures, too) the surname comes FIRST, and then the “given” name. That’s why Chairman Mao was always known as, well, “Chairman Mao,” not “Chairman Tsetung.”

It’s not as if there are lots of Yis and Yaos in the league, so they have to use the given names to avoid confusion. And, just by the by, even if that were the case, the people who typeset box scores seem have no problems distinguishing players with the same surname, even if they’re playing against each other. Like, say, I don’t know, the brothers Gasol who played against each other Monday night, an d were identified in the box scores as “Gasol, P,” and “Gasol, M.” Not exactly rocket science.

So I just have to grit my teeth when I read — as I did just yesterday — box scores showing how many points and boards some Nets’ player named “Jianlian” got. Is it really, really too much to ask that he be referred to as “Yi,” just as Kevin Garnett shows up as “Garnett”?

Speaking of those Nets, how’s that J-Kidd for Devin Harris trade working out for you so far, Mark Cuban? Thought so.

I like the fact that the Yankees are willing to spend serious money to give their fans the most competitive team they can. True, they may not always spend their millions wisely — boy, is that an understatement — but the passion to win is evident and welcome. But really, if I’m the ownership of Tampa, Minnesota or Milwaukee, all three of which made the playoffs with total payrolls that might not even cover A-Rod’s tab for Kabalah Water, I’m laughing. Especially when, because of the luxury tax, the Yanks will have to fork over $26 Million-plus, some of which will go to help Tampa and Minnesota keep the Yanks out of the playoffs again.

If there’s any question that Boston is better-managed than the Yankees, by the way, the luxury tax seals the deal. Boston has a payroll second only to New York’s, yet, because of canny planning, owes not a shekel in luxury tax. And the Sox have beat the Yanks like a drum lately, to boot.

My criticism of the Yankees’ financial profligacy DOES NOT extend to their reported deal with Mark Teixeira. I’m sure they’re overpaying for him — that’s a given with a high-profile Scott Boras client. In fact, if the reports are true, he’ll be the second-highest paid player ever, behind only another former Boras client and new teammate, A-Rod.

I’ve dumped on A-Rod for being less than he can be, at times when his team needs him most, but he’s still consistently one of the top producers in baseball, year-in, year-out. If Teixeira is “merely” as consistently good as A-Rod, he may well be “worth” the money, whatever ‘worth” means in that context. And Teixeira, in case we’ve forgotten, was the only consistent Angels’ hitter in their most recent postseason drubbing at the hands of the Sawx. All singles, true enough, but at least he was laying wood on the ball.

Otherwise, Teixeira looks like a reasonable investment. He’s not a drama queen and has no obvious steroid, drug or lifestyle issues. If he doesn’t quite have the pop that the Giambino had, he still swings a pretty big stick, is as constant as the evening star, to paraphrase The Bard, and is for sure going to be the Yanks’ best First Baseman defensively since Tino Martinez. I don’t know that he’ll put asses in seats, but it’s New York, for Pete’s sake. The asses are attracted to the seats regardless. Whether he can handle the inevitable boos is the only imponderable I can see.

Speaking of asses in seats, if there were any doubt that PGA players should stop badmouthing Tiger Woods, and instead be sending a percentage of their winnings to the charities of his choice, the fate of the PGA in Tiger’s post-U.S. Open absence should put the lie to that. There have still been a lot of highly talented golfers competing, and there have been a lot of good story lines, but nobody’s been interested enough to watch the tournaments. Viewership is down, sponsors are bailing left and right, and sales of equipment and gear are in the toilet. Sure, a lot of that has to do with the economy, but it says here that a lot of it also has to do with the fact that most people don’t even know the Tour is going on unless Tiger’s striding down the 18th fairway in contention on Sundays.

What’s that they say in poker, the winners tell jokes, the losers yell “Shut up and deal.” Rod Marinelli, for sure, isn’t telling, or taking, any jokes. Not after his Lions have gone 0-15, with a really good chance to become the first team ever to go 0-16. How anyone in a normal, rational frame of mind could possibly misconstrue a columnist’s question whether Marinelli’s daughter wished she’d married a better defensive coordinator as an attack on Marinelli’s daughter?

Obviously, it was a lame-assed attempt at a humorous attack on the guy she married — who, by the way, is about as inept as it gets, judging by the results we’ve seen. Nice spin job by Marinelli, by the way, attempting to divert attention from the fact that, well, the guy his daughter married really does kind of suck. Who knows, maybe bad judgment does run in the Marinelli family?

Happy Christmakwanzannukah, everybody.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.

I know that MLB scouts are now scouring the world for athletes who may be able to be developed into baseball prospects. They’re even going to places that have never been, and never will be, hotbeds of the sport. As witness the fact that the Pittsburgh Pirates recently signed two 20-year-olds from India who’ve never played baseball, but won some Indian reality TV contest called “Million Dollar Arm,” to free agent contracts. Sounds crazy, but as we’ve seen from the Monopoly money thrown at free agent pitchers of modest achievements and dubious durability, there are never enough good arms to go around.

So, in my own attempt at world peace and ecumenism, may I suggest that some MLB team give a tryout to the Iraqi news reporter who threw not one, but two shoes at outgoing President Dubya at a photo-op, goodbye tour presser last weekend. As anyone who’s seen the video of the incident can attest, those shoes were coming in with some serious velocity, and pretty much on target. Anyone who can throw a shoe like that can probably throw a baseball, too.

Of course, he may be in jail for a few years. And who knows how good his velocity or accuracy will be after a few sessions of “enhanced interrogation techniques” in some hellhole? But it’s worth a shot.

On the other side of that exchange, I think that Foxsports.com’s Mark Kriegel probably wasn’t the only person wondering whether Oscar de la Hoya might’ve had a better chance against “Pacman” Pacquiao if he could’ve slipped a few punches the way 60-plus Dubya dodged those shoes.

I have no clue whether Turner Gill is or is not ready to take center stage as the head coach at a high-profile D-1 football program — like, say, Auburn, which didn’t even bother interviewing him. I DO know that he’s done everything he’s supposed to have done since he took over a Buffalo program that ranked in the bottom few in D-1, and improved the record every year until, this year, his team went 8-5, won the MAC championship and was invited to a bowl game. Not the greatest record, maybe, but it looks pretty OK next to that of, say, Gene Chizik, who actually DID get the gig — he of the flashy 5-19 record at Iowa State, including 2-10 this year, with the only two wins coming against North Dakota State and Kent State. Of course, Buffalo lost to Kent State, so maybe that was the deciding factor.

I’m not 100% certain that the reason Chizik got the job, and that Gill wasn’t even considered, is that, as Sir Charles said, the former is Caucasian and the latter isn’t — but I’m pretty sure. The only reason my certainty isn’t 100%, is that Auburn in particular really, really likes coaches who come from the “Auburn family,” and Chizik was after all the defensive coordinator of the 13-0 team and a couple of other good teams — teams that, I believe, never lost to ‘Bama.

It’s not a trivial issue. I thought Terry Bowden did a pretty decent job as the Tigers’ head coach when he took over a program devastated by NCAA sanctions and not-bowl-eligible in 1993. All he did was go 11-0 that season, and then run the undefeated games string to 20-0-1, which remains the longest undefeated streak in Auburn’s history. He won 2 bowl games after the team became bowl-eligible, and lost one. Although I can’t really argue with his firing when his team started 1-5 in 1998 (after having gone 10-3 the previous season), talk was that he was always on a short leash, and resented by rabid Auburn boosters because he was an “outsider.” This, despite the success he had with a program so toxic no one wanted to touch it.

But at the end of the day, I don’t see how race couldn’t have factored into the process. Sure, success as a head coach in the MAC — especially 8-5 success — doesn’t necessarily translate to success at a big-time program; but surely FAILURE of monumental proportions as head coach in one of the top conferences, like the Big 12, DOES translate to lowered expectations at the next job.

Will this be a banner year for NBA head coach firings? Reggie Theus became the sixth one let go this season, after Sacramento decided to “go in a different direction.” I don’t think Theus was the greatest coach in the league, but he showed last year that he had some ability. The problem with Sacramento, as with a number of teams that have axed their coaches this season, is either that they have mediocre players, period, or that they have some players with talent, but there’s been no real thought to putting together a roster that makes sense, or that jibes with a coach’s own style and, dare I say it?, “philosophy.”

Injuries are never an excuse, I guess, but it sure didn’t help Theus that the best player on his roster, Guard Kevin Martin, has been sidelined by injury for much of the season; just as it didn’t help Eddie Jordan that Gilbert Arenas still hasn’t played, and that Brendan Haywood has been out for a long spell. Of course, it also hasn’t helped Jerry Sloan that he doesn’t have Carlos Boozer and that the Jazz were missing Deron Williams for a lot of games, or Gregg Popovich that every significant starter other than Tim Duncan has missed a lot of games. The difference is that those two great coaches have job security, while more junior members of the fraternity are only as secure as their past ten games.

Don’t even get me started on the Raptors and Sam Mitchell. It’s probably unfortunate for the Raptors that Mitchell won Coach of the Year and couldn’t be fired after Colangelo, Jr., came on board, because word on the street was that Colangelo was just itching to fire Mitchell last year, so he could bring in Mike D’Antoni this season. Since the Knicks are playing surprisingly well under D’Antoni so far, maybe that would have been a successful hire. But, D’Antoni or no D’Antoni, who’s going to win consistently with wasted draft picks like Andrea Bargnani, who apparently was required by immigration laws to leave his testicles in escrow back in Europe?

I mean, I love Chris Bosh, but he’s not that strong, and given his slim body frame, last summer’s Olympics probably took a bigger toll on him than on some of his Team USA teammates. Unfortunately, he has to play a lot of center because, who the heck else do they have? I do get frustrated with Andrew Bynum from time to time, even though I realize he’s still a young whelp, but has anyone seen just how pathetically Jermaine O’Neal, for whom AB came within a whisker of being traded, has performed in the post for the Raptors? Thank God Mitch Kupcake didn’t listen to Kobe’s whining and pull the trigger on that deal — and thank God that Larry Bird, for reasons not entirely clear, overvalued J.O. so ridiculously.

I also love Jose Calderon, and, sometimes, Jorge Garbajosa. But one look at the rest of the roster young Colangelo has put together, and it’s a wonder that Mitchell managed even to keep the team’s record respectable while he was there.

Getting back to coaches and their firings, though, it does seem that a common thread isn’t just that the coaches weren’t winning, but that they were getting paid a lot of Benjamins for not winning. Nobody comes to a game to watch a coach prance around on the sidelines, and I’m guessing that some of the thinking was that the teams that fired those coaches can lose just as well with guys on the sidelines getting paid a third or less of what the firees were making for filling out those Armani and Zegna suits.

The theory for years has been that no player’s going to respect a coach earning less than the last player on the bench. But as it turns out, a lot of players don’t even respect coaches making $10 million a season. Why waste the money if the coach can’t get the job done? Baseball’s already realized this, which is why, with only a few exceptions like Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre, baseball managers don’t get paid like their NBA or NFL counterparts.

What is with Francisco Rodriguez? No sooner does he get a munificent multi-year contract from the Mets, than he thinks the way to earn it is to start mouthing off like a New Yorker. Instead of being appreciative of the Angels for giving him the opportunity to eventually become a multi-decamillionaire, he insisted on burning his L.A. bridges on the way out. The model for that, in my opinion, was David Eckstein, the feisty little former Angels’ shortstop, who told the press that he was actually grateful to the Angels, even though they wouldn’t pay him what he wanted, because he wouldn’t be a Major Leaguer, or a millionaire, had they not given him a chance and nurtured him along. No bridges burned there. Not K-Rod’s style, though.

Then, instead of uttering the usual platitudes about how he wants to fit in and help the Mets to the postseason, he brashly guarantees that they’re now the “team to beat” — in a division that, just by the way, contains the team that just won the World Series. I sense that K-Rod is starting to write checks with his mouth that his ass won’t be able to cash, as they say on the street.

First, no matter what personnel they assemble, the Mets always seem to find some way to choke at the end of the season. And, second, well, just how much better are they with K-Rod (and, to be fair, J.J. Putz and Sean Green)? My gut feeling is, not a whole heckuva lot, actually, since they’ve also lost some setup guys who could really eat up innings, as well as Billy Wagner, who was infuriating and blew a bunch of save opportunities (7 of 34 last season), but was still another live arm. So, while K-Rod is probably going to be a welcome addition to the Mets’ bullpen — and he’d better be, for that kind of money — I’m pretty sure the Mets will find some other way to finish next season the way they finished the last one — playing golf. And, just for perspective, K-Rod’s record-setting 62 saves came in 69 save opportunities, which means that he blew as many opportunities as the much-maligned Wagner last season, albeit in a lot more appearances.

Although the polls haven’t yet closed, is there any question — at least so far — that the Nuggets got the better of the Billups for AI swap? On a one-to-one basis, at any rate. The fact that Detroit sent Antonio McDyess to Denver as part of that trade, then got McDyess back for cheap after Denver bought him out, certainly goes into the plus column for the Pistons. But Billups has certainly done a lot more to help the Nuggets, who’re currently 16-4 since the trade, than AI’s done for Detroit.

I understand that Detroit (allegedly) traded for AI because of some belief that their playoff losses the past couple of years have been because of a lack of offensive explosiveness and a dearth of players who can create their own shots, and that trades have to be judged after the season, not during it. But the way Denver was going, it wouldn’t even have been a playoff contender with AI instead of Billups, while Detroit may find that, because of AI, they face much tougher opposition in the first couple of rounds as a 6th or 7th seed, than they’ve been used to as a 2nd or 3rd seed.

It’s amazing enough that three teams in the NBA this year are still playing .800 ball or better. What’s even more incredible is that one of those three is Cleveland. They were crap last year, even though, let’s admit it, they played the Celtics a lot tougher than the Lakers did. That’s because, although they had no offensive flow or élan whatsoever, they always played hard-nosed, swarming defense that kept scores low and gave them chances to win in the playoffs. The obvious difference this year is that they’ve improved by leaps and bounds offensively, while still taking care of business on defense.

I could be catty and claim that their record reflects the fact that they haven’t played many good teams, and have lost to those they’ve faced. But the same applies to the Lakers. A 20-4 record is a 20-4 record. And, unlike the Lakers, they’re not letting the stumblebum teams stay in games.

But look at the Cavs’ roster. Not only is it largely the same as the one they closed last season with, but some key players have only gotten older and slower. Ben Wallace was already in decline last season. He’s not any better this year. Wally Mxsptlk is still a conscienceless shooter who’s slow and plays no D, except that now he’s even slower. Delonte West is back after a useless half-season with the Sonics, but his stats aren’t any better now than they were the first time he was with the Cavs.

Nope, seems to me there are only two reasons for this incredible advance. The first is that LeBron James is, in fact, playing at a higher level since his return from the Olympics. He was already near-MVP good offensively, but he’s better all-around now. True, his points, rebounds and assists per game are all down, but his field goal percentage is up (even as his three-point average descends to a number that challenges the latest Federal Reserve rate) and his free-throw percentage is above .800 for the first time in forever. He’s also playing 5 fewer minutes per game.

The biggest change is in his defense, though. He’s not taking possessions off on the defensive end. In fact, he’s not just playing hard, but doing it against the opposition’s best players. Whether he can keep this up all season and through the playoffs remains to be seen, but so far, he’s been the real deal.

Even that shouldn’t be enough to explain the Cavs’ current record. The only other explanation I can find is that they added Guard Mo Williams in the offseason. Williams actually had better numbers when he was with Milwaukee, but then again, he wasn’t playing in many games that meant anything. He’s made a huge difference to the Cavs’ overall offensive flow. He’s no Chris Paul, but apparently he’s more than good enough for the situation he’s in — especially given that the other point guard is Eric Snow, who was OK 30 pounds ago, but is now twice the man, and half the player, that he used to be. If Snow is within 15 pounds of his listed weight of 205, I’ll eat a few slices of pizza, the way Hot Plate Williams used to do on the Clippers’ bench during games.

Speaking of point guards, I really, really believe that Chicago super-rookie Derrick Rose cut his left forearm so badly that he needed 10 stitches while eating an apple. His story, spoken with an ingenuous, straight face, is that he was using a kitchen knife to cut an apple that he was eating in bed, got up to get a drink of water, and flopped down on the bed, forgetting he’d left the knife there. Yep, sure. Ranks right up there with Wade Boggs’s pulling a muscle in his back while putting on cowboy boots; Jeff Kent’s separating a shoulder due to a fall from his RV while washing it; or Latrell Sprewell breaking his hand tripping and falling off his (now repossessed) yacht). The one thing all those explanations have in common is that they were all BS.

Please. It’s like a woman claiming she got pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat. I guess that’s possible, as long as there’s another human being of the opposite sex between the women and the toilet seat. Personally, I don’t care what Rose did to get the injury. I do, though, care a great deal that athletes think everyone’s as dumb and gullible as they are.

I say this, mind you, knowing that I’m a total klutz, and that I absolutely could throw out my back putting on or taking off a pair of boots, or cut myself shaving — with an electric shaver. But those guys are superior athletes. No way things like that happen to them.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.

Gotta love that NHL. NHL players pummel each other into bloody goo, hit each other, legally, with force and malicious intent that would land them in the slammer off the ice, curse worse than sailors, construction workers, or participants in a Comedy Central roast, spit, hawk loogies, moon the fans, God knows what, and no problem. In fact, the only time the league really acts to suspend players for “conduct unbecoming” is when goons like Marty McSorley or Todd Bertuzzi hit unsuspecting opponents from behind and nearly kill them. Even then, it’s only if the incident is ugly enough to inspire local prosecutors to bring criminal assault charges. I’ve always thought that the league wouldn’t do Jack Squat even in the extreme cases if the specter of criminal liability weren’t looming.

Even though it’s allegedly tried to cut down on brawling, and ethnic slurs, the NHL isn’t really known for doing a whole lot to rein in the excesses of its players. Hockey is, after all, a man’s game, heavy on the testosterone, and the number of fans drawn to smooth skating, clever passing, dazzling stick work and brilliant shooting pales in comparison to those drawn to the prospect of violence and the smell of blood. Not quite MMA with skates, but close enough for government work.

Just for the record, I’m totally down with the campaign to decrease racial or ethnic taunting. Players can call it “gamesmanship,” but that kind of behavior has no place even in a Neanderthalic sports culture. Trash talking is fine, but some topics really are, and should be, off-limits.

On the other hand, I have no problem with fighting in hockey, as long as the players don’t use sticks or skates. I believe there’s truth in the received wisdom that it’s a safety-valve and allows the players to “police themselves.” If fighting were outlawed, I’m convinced to a moral certainty that really dangerous things like spearing and kicking skates would proliferate. Plus, most fans love it, and at this point, anything the league can do to retain or maybe even grow market share should be welcome. Unfortunately, the NHL powers that be seem determined to make the sport as bland and corporate as possible.

Which brings us to the league’s latest attempt to polish turds. The Dallas Stars’ Sean Avery, a league gadfly, all-around pain in the rear, and trash-talker and s**t-stirrer extraordinaire, was initially suspended indefinitely (since reduced to 6 games) for telling members of the media in Calgary, after a morning skate, that he found it interesting and inexplicable that so many NHL players are satisfied with his “sloppy seconds.” He was presumably referring to Elisha Cuthbert, who’s now “dating” Calgary defenseman Dion Phaneuf, and also “dated” the Canadiens’ Mike Komisarek after she and Avery broke up, and, to a lesser extent, SI swimsuit model Rachel Hunter, who’s now “dating” the Kings’ Jarrett Stoll.

Most people believe, as I do, that the crude, smartass remark was mainly intended to inflame Phaneuf, a member of the Stars’ opponent for that night, and put him off his game. It’s his M.O., of a piece with his earlier remark about the Flames franchise player Jarome Iginla being so boring that nobody cares about him, and suggesting that the league should do more to promote its villains. Like, I suppose, Mr. Avery, who’s such a villain that even his own teammates in Los Angeles and Dallas have hated him almost as much as have opponents. He’s an equal-opportunity crap artist that way.

Avery does things like that all the time. He loves to make opponents hate him, believing (often correctly) that it makes them less effective. An added side-benefit is that, as far as Avery’s concerned, notoriety is as good as fame, as long as they spell his name right. He’s a very good and effective player, although hardly a superstar, yet, devout narcissist that he is, he’s one of the few players in the league, if not the only one, to employ his own personal publicist.

I’m happy just on general principle that he’s been suspended. But I’m irked beyond patience that the league is punishing him for all the wrong reasons — just as it incenses me that O.J. Simpson may get a disproportionately severe prison sentence in Nevada to punish him, not for his criminal stupidity in that state, but for the fact that he was acquitted of murder in Los Angeles. That’s retribution, and all well and good, but not justice.

Not to defend Avery’s public comment. It’s a misogynistic insult of the worst kind to the aforementioned two former paramours. It’d be offensive even if the former GFs were Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton, who’ve been through more hands than a Dodger Stadium hot dog on its way to someone in the middle of a row. Avery should have apologized to those women. But not to Dion Phaneuf; not to his team; not to the league; not to the public. Stupidity, crudity and gross insensitivity aren’t felonies — yet. And don’t tell me that hockey players don’t say a lot worse things to each other — when reporters aren’t present.

I mean, really. THIS is the issue on which the NHL has decided to take a stand? There’s nothing else out there that demands Gary Bettman’s attention? I’m reminded of the climactic scene in that classic sports movie, “Slap Shot,” where the ice is full of players pounding the poop out of each other and turning the white surface red, when Michael Ontkean decides to stage his own protest of the violence by stripping down to his jock strap and sashaying around the rink with provocative gestures. Naturally, the most violent and least evolved sasquatch out there — I think it’s the human hairball, “Oglethorpe” — is utterly outraged by this repugnant breach of hockey decorum.

What is this, “Casablanca,” where Captain Reynaud is “shocked, shocked, to find that gambling has been going on” at Rick’s Café Américain? This is even worse than convicting Al Capone on tax-evasion charges because they couldn’t nail him for murder, extortion, arson, prostitution, or even spitting on the sidewalk. Or, as noted, punishing O.J. disproportionately because he got away with murder somewhere else.

What irks me even more, is that the NHL also forced Avery to accept an evaluation for that universal, useless and irrelevant but politically correct panacea for all behavioral issues, “anger management training,” which is a money-maker for charlatans in the pop-psychology business, but generally useless for those on the giving or receiving end of the “anger.” Heck, why not go for prefrontal lobotomies or electroconvulsive shock treatment? Avery’s problem isn’t a lack of “anger management”; it’s that he’s an inveterate and confirmed a-hole. I don’t know what the appropriate treatment for that is, but it surely isn’t “anger management therapy.”

Every parent has been asked at one time or another by a child why, if there is a God, He (or She) lets bad things happen to good people. There’s no real answer, other than faith. The real vexing question, I think, is why, if there’s a God, He or She lets good things happen to really, really bad people. In the sports context, I’m thinking right now of Nick Saban. If there’s a God, how come Alabama is doing so well with that guy as its coach? There’s some justice in the world, as Florida just kept ‘Bama from reaching the National Championship game, but it’s still in a top BCS bowl. Just asking. Feel free to substitute your own “bad guys making good” examples.

There was a lot written this past “Rivalry Week” about the continuing, but largely tacit, animosity between Norm Chow and Pete Carroll, his former head coach, and soon-to-be Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian, once a Chow protégé. None of them has been publicly forthcoming about the break-up, and I have no idea who was in the right. Most likely, everybody and nobody. But it’s a great story, in a Greek tragedy meets tabloid news kind of way.

It certainly seems to an outsider like me that Chow got out of Dodge when he correctly perceived that there was an effort to marginalize him, either because Carroll was irked at the individual praise Chow was getting for the Trojans’ offense, or, as Bill Plaschke suggested in Friday’s L.A. Times, because Carroll didn’t want the offense so linked with Chow that it would hurt recruiting if Chow left.

But there’s no need to rewrite history, as Plaschke did, when he wrote that Chow, seeing the handwriting on the wall, left to become offensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans. That’s true, of course. He did go to Tennessee. In the interim, however, he interviewed for the head coaching job at Stanford, and, rumor has it, certain that he’d landed the gig, started trying to lure recruits away from USC. If true, it certainly doesn’t put Chow in the best light.

I do know that USC has done better than all right since Chow’s departure. How could it not, given the wealth and depth of primo talent it has? But at USC’s level, success is measured in championships, and one is left to wonder whether they might not have a couple more had Carroll tried to keep Chow happy.

Chow isn’t God, and as we know the Trojans lost a few games they maybe should have won when he was up in the booth designing and calling plays. Even so, there’s a reasonable argument that their signature losses could have been wins had Chow been the strategist and play-caller. I can’t prove it, but I strongly suspect that he’d have called a better play than the 4th-down stinker that either Carroll, Kiffin or Sarkisian — or all of them together — called in the 41-38 loss to Texas; and I also suspect he’d have found a way for SC to score more than 9 points against the Bruins in ought-six. That’s two National Championships right there, by my count.

(For purposes of full disclosure, Jon Castro has reminded me that the Trojans had 3 key defensive players out with injuries in the Texas game. Absolutely true. I still contend that USC would have won that game if it had Chow, instead of the three-headed, bumbling monster, calling the offensive plays.)

Yeah, I know Chow’s offense hasn’t dazzled at UCLA this season. But look at what he’s had to work with. A surfeit of chicken guano is never the ingredient for a great chicken salad, even if the chef is Wolfgang Puck or Joachim Splichal.

We’ll never know if Kevin Craft actually is as bad as he’s looked. Like Jeff Garcia in his last seasons with the ‘Niners, he’s been playing behind an O-line with more holes than Emmenthaler cheese and more leaks than the Titanic. He’s not in the running for any football honors, but I hear that the guys who run the “Jackass” TV show and movie franchise have offered him a gig, since there’s nothing anyone on that show does that’s more dangerous than standing under center for UCLA this year.

As for Chow’s comparatively disappointing stats at Tennessee, I have two words that provide an almost complete explanation: Vince Young. Tennessee ownership was understandably committed to its First-Round draft pick, and that draft pick was equally committed to ignoring Chow’s offensive schemes, and to rejecting any attempts to teach him technique. That was a daisy chain made to order for disaster to Chow.

There are many reasons for Tennessee’s perceived offensive resurgence this season, but the two biggest, I think, are the addition by subtraction that resulted when Kerry Collins, who barely played last season, replaced Young, and that the Titans have a runner — rookie Chris Johnson, who’s averaging 4.7 yards per carry and has over 1,000 yards rushing after 13 games — that they lacked last season. The biggest difference between last years and this isn’t that the passing game is better. In fact, isn’t appreciably better statistically, although Justin Gage is averaging a tad more per reception. It’s a mere 24th in the league right now, and wasn’t much worse, if at all, last year. Of course, it’s 3rd in rushing this season, and, of course, it’s Chow’s fault that he didn’t have Chris Johnson or that the offensive line last year was a sieve.

The passing game, just by the way,

Statistics don’t tell the whole story, of course, but the fact is that this year’s 12-1 Titans aren’t that much more prepossessing than last year’s edition that went “only” 10-6. They’re 17th in the league in total offense after 13 games (18th after 12 games); last season they were 21st. They average 332 yards per game this year (up from 325 per game after 12 games); last year it was 311. They have 230 First Downs this season in 12 games, which translates to 283 for 16 games. Last season, under Chow’s “horrible” offense, they had 26 more.

True, they had more trouble scoring points last season. Maybe that was because of Chow’s schemes, notwithstanding the lack of a consistent outside running threat and the problems created by Young’s incompetence. Or maybe it was because they fumbled 32 times, losing 17, while, so far, they’ve fumbled all of 14 times, losing 7. Or maybe it was because Collins, who isn’t Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, but runs the offense efficiently, and makes fewer mistakes on a bad day than Young did at his best, has thrown for 11 TDs with only 6 interceptions this year, while Vince Young was a turnover machine, throwing for the 9 TDs in 3 more games, but with 17 interceptions. Or maybe it was because their O-line sucked last season, and has played well this year. Chow’s fault or not? As “Faux” News likes to say, you decide.

I can’t really disagree with Jon Castro that the Lakers’ commitment to defense, and for that matter their ability to put any commitment into practice even if they had it, is still AWOL — especially because I take the same position. It’s not as if their performance on their 3-game road trip against 3 teams with injury problems and losing records has done anything but reinforce that impression. They are about the shakiest 17-2 team I can recall. Oops, make that 17-3 after their stinker against the Queens on Tuesday. But I can’t agree that they’d be better off with the names Jon suggested: Kenyon Martin and Ron Artest.

Martin looks tough, talks tough and acts tough, but he doesn’t necessarily PLAY all that tough — certainly not against people his own size — and in any case doesn’t consistently play the kind of defense the Lakers need under any circumstances. People accept that he plays tough defense because he says he does, because he blocks shots, and because nobody else on the Nuggets does. I have to agree with Charley Rosen that when he’s on defense, he’s often TOO intent on trying to block shots, and not as interested in using his strong body to win the battle for position under the boards.

Many people confuse blocks, steals and even rebounds with good defense. Although many players who block a lot of shots or get a lot of steals are also good defenders, that’s not necessarily always true — especially when the player is the sort who gambles on getting blocks or steals because those are stats that are measured, and not only leaves himself out of effective defensive position, but puts extra pressure on teammates who have to cover for him. K-Mart isn’t the only offender. Our own Kobe Bryant is guilty of that all too frequently.

Artest authentically IS tough. He’s still a hard-nosed, outstanding on-ball defender and a hard-working, high-energy player. Unfortunately, he’s not quite as accomplished at or effective in the team concept of defense. Worse, although his offensive game isn’t bad, it’s not nearly as evolved or well-rounded as he believes it is. He tends to pout if he perceives he isn’t getting enough plays run for him. The Lakers already have enough of those types.

I don’t think the Lakers need either player. I DO think they need a major infusion of toughness from somewhere, though. They don’t need a star, just a solid role player, like James Posey and P.J. Brown were for Boston last season. Who that player is, or if they could even get him, whoever he is, I have no idea.

As unprepossessing as the Lakers’ defense has been, though, just imagine how much worse off they’d be defensively had they not suckered Orlando into taking Brian Cook off their hands in exchange for Trevor Ariza. Ariza couldn’t shoot worth a lick last season, and he was kind of stuck behind Rashard Lewis in any case, so it’s understandable that the Magic considered him expendable. But for B. Cook and Reggie Evans?

Whatever flaws Ariza’s game had or has, no one can accuse him of lacking energy or commitment. By contrast, no one ever accused B. Cook on his best day of having either quality. The Magic are already looking to pawn Cook off on some other unsuspecting team that believes it needs a near-7-footer who hangs around the three-point arc and shoots only from the outside. Not a bad deal by the oft-maligned “Kupcake.” Oh, and by the way, Ariza’s shooting is a lot better this season.

Good to see that Kevin McHale has been required to coach the T-Wolves now that Randy Wittman and his 4-15 record have been axed. Guys responsible for so many years of consistent mismanagement and bumbling deserve some punishment, and what punishment could be more fitting than to have to coach the rabble he put together?

Indeed, it’s hard to remember any good decisions McHale’s ever made, since he’s made so very, very many bad ones. The whole Joe Smith debacle, that resulted in Minnesota’s losing its First-Round draft picks for 5 whole years, should have given us some inkling. He must have made a few good decisions, I guess, since the Wolves did make the Western Conference Finals in 2004, and were perennial one-and-out fixtures in the playoffs during fixtures in the bottom, but darned if I can remember them.

Just wondering, whom would McHale rather be coaching, and counting on to help him win games, Kevin Love, or O.J. Mayo, whom McHale drafted and then sent to Memphis in exchange for Love? I’m guessing that McHale the coach kind of wishes that McHale the team VP had a do-over on that deal.

Not that Love is a total disaster. His stats are OK, I guess: 8.9 points per game, 6.6 boards, 1.1 assists. He shoots free throws well. But he’s oil-tanker slow on defense, has limited lift, and is managing a stunningly bad 42% from the floor. His physical limitations weren’t a big drawback in college, where he unquestionably was a more effective player than Mayo; but college is college and the NBA is the NBA and rarely do the twain meet. Love’s had a couple of promising games, and is starting to see more minutes, so the jury’s still out; but thus far, he’s not having the kind of year a Lottery pick is supposed to have.

And he certainly pales by comparison with Mayo, who’s averaging just over 20 points, 4.6 boards, 2.3 dimes and 1.3 steals. Mayo’s own shooting percentage is just barely better than Love’s, but he does play a different position. A percentage in the low ‘40’s is inexcusable for a big man who wants to be taken seriously.

Mind you, statistical analysis is always iffy, and is especially dicey when it’s applied to players from losing teams. But I still kind of think McHale would prefer to be coaching Mayo.

Interesting what stat nerds will come up with. A guy named Jay Jaffe pointed out on si.com that K-Rod’s save record, in and of itself, is kind of meaningless. Not that it isn’t an impressive accomplishment to make the saves when the opportunities present themselves, but the fact that K-Rod made so many saves is due in large measure to the fact that he had so many more save opportunities than other closers. Or, as Jaffe put it, “The saves record itself simply isn’t terribly impressive. It’s a function of circumstance, namely the need for close ballgames. The Angels, with an excellent pitching staff but only a so-so offense, were ideally suited to providing Rodriguez with more save opportunities than your average team by playing close games; of their 100 wins, 71 were in games decided by three runs or less.”

That’s obviously true, now that it’s been pointed out to me, and makes me wonder about other statistical records, like homers, RBIs and the like. I think all of them have to be analyzed in context.

Not that K-Rod has to apologize for having set the record. He was still one of the top 3 relievers in the game this year by other sabermetric measures. Even had he not set or approached the saves record, he was still overcoats better than anyone the Mets, who just signed him, had. The irony, however, is that he may have been even more impressive in 2007 and 2006, when he didn’t set any records — and didn’t even come close to setting records.

Of course, sabermetrics are all well and good, but they aren’t the universal solvent. Even the greatest relievers blow important games — and I’m not even talking about Dennis Eckersley in 1988. Mariano Rivera is about as good as it’s been for the past 10-plus years, whether judged by sabermetrics or by the evidence of my own eyes. But even he’s blown some big opportunities at exactly the wrong time. Indeed, I blame him for the plague of Curt Schilling BS and bafflegab we’ve had to endure for the past few years. Had Rivera not committed that crucial error in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, the Yanks would have won the Series. Had the Yanks won, Schilling wouldn’t have been the Series MVP and, who knows?, maybe he wouldn’t have wound up being the hero for Boston. Darn you, Rivera!

So, sabermetrics, shmabermetrics. Relievers still have to play them one opportunity at a time, and there’s no nerdly stat that can predict which opportunities they’ll blow. Or that can predict how long a pitcher with K-Rod’s violent, herky-jerk motion will stay healthy and effective.

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with stat nerds. They sometimes come up with interesting insights that help me see the game in a different way. But, damn it, the game is, and should be, played by real people on fields or in arenas. It’s more than just numbers. If it’s just about numbers, my preferred numbers game of choice is the vital stats of female porn stars.

This past Presidential election, however, changed my attitude a bit. Far and away the best polling information and insight was fivethirtyeight.com, run by “reformed” baseball stat nerd Nate Silver, whose other incarnation was and is as a writer, analyst and partner at Baseball Prospectus, where — full circle here — the aforementioned Jay Jaffe writes. Nobody, but nobody, did a better predictive job, and Silver did it using techniques gained from baseball stat “nerdery.” So there’s some real-world value to all that, after all.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.

More proof that I should never, ever be relied on as a sports prognosticator: no sooner had I finished and posted a piece praising the Atlanta Hawks, then sporting a perfect 6-0 record, than they tripped over their egos and proceeded to drop 5 straight. I never thought they’d go 82-0, but I kind of assumed they wouldn’t succumb to the rare air of success and immediately go into a tailspin.

They remind me of cartoon characters like Wile E Coyote, who’s always running off a cliff but continues to stand on the thin air. Then he looks down, sees the chasm below, and immediately plummets. As long as the Hawks didn’t KNOW they were supposed to be good, they were. When reality set in, and they looked down, they face-planted. . . . splat.

They’ve recovered somewhat, and still look to be a solid, talent-laden, playoff-bound team. But not a top seed. Not this year, and maybe not ever.

What I take from it all is that although this kind of idle speculation helps sports talk show hosts fill countless hours of air time on slow news weeks, it’s insane to project either monumental success or abject failure from incomplete data. Eight straight wins or even 8 straight losses early in an 82-game season isn’t enough of a data sampling for any kind of prognostication. I mean, c’mon. Half the teams in the NBA are “on pace for” an 82-win season after Game 1, every year. It’s meaningless. Doesn’t stop people from talking about it endlessly, but it’s meaningless — even more meaningless than fantasy sports leagues.

Nor, by the way, are even record-setting streaks in the middle of a season predictive. The year the Angels won their only World Series, the Athletics went on an ungodly 20-game win streak that had observers thinking World Championship. As we know, the Angels managed to hang in their rear-view mirror throughout that streak, and were the ones playing the best ball when the playoffs rolled around, while the Athletics couldn’t even get past Minnesota. And let’s not forget last season’s Rockets and their second-best-ever 22-win streak last season. All THAT got them was the opportunity for another First-Round exit.

For the sake of my argument, I’m conveniently and unfairly ignoring Yao Ming’s annual season-ending foot in jury — this one coming with 10 games to go. But that shows that win streaks in and of themselves don’t provide any assurance of future performance. There are lots of things that have to be factored in — such as, in the Rockets’ case, the near-certainty that Yao will be injured and unavailable by the end of the season. Or the almost equal certainty that Tracy McGrady will go down for an extended period. Oops, there he goes again.

And don’t even get me started about how even 18-game win streaks and undefeated regular seasons in the NFL don’t assure a Super Bowl win . . . .

Speaking of teams that need to face reality — your Los Angeles Lakers. They started out 7-0, including back-to-backs on the road against Dallas and New Orleans, and brain-dead Lakers honks were talking about 82-0, or at least equaling or surpassing the Bulls’ 72-10 all-time record. (For the record, and for laughs, they’re still “on pace for” a 76-win season.) It would have been impolite to prick the balloon by pointing out the embarrassing facts that (a) they’d played only 2 teams with winning records; (b) in all but one of those games, they started slower than my old Dodge Dart in a Canadian winter; and (c) no matter what the quality of the opposition, they managed to fart around enough to keep their opponents in all but one of those 7 games.

And that’s forgetting just how fragile a lot of the Lakers’ players are. To expect them to be able to play with energy and determination for even 70 of the 82 regular-season games is a pipe-dream.

So I wasn’t all that surprised that they lost their next game. What disturbed me was that it was a HOME game, against a far-from-prepossessing Detroit team that went out 2 nights later and lost to the Suns by 18 points, managed a whopping 70 points in losing to the Celtics, and even managed to lose to the Timberwolves by 26 — conjure with that image for a while! — at home.

The insults to the injury were that Kwame Brown — Kwame effing BROWN — outscored and outrebounded the Next Big Thing, Andrew Bynum, and that the Lakers’ alleged newfound toughness and commitment to defense evaporated faster and more completely than Fred Thompson’s Presidential campaign. The Lakers let the Pistons score 106 points, for Pete’s sake. By contrast, the Lakers’ eminence grise, the big, bad Celtics, have held the Pistons to 76 points — 30 fewer — in a game played in Detroit, and to 70 in Boston.

I’d like to say it was a fluke, but the Lakers’ subsequent performance, a home win against the Bulls, didn’t quiet any doubts. Yeah, they won, but they allowed the Bulls to score 109 points, and played matador defense. Ditto for their more recent home win against a Sacramento Kings team missing three key players, but was still allowed to score 108.

So much for winning the NBA championship in the first few weeks of the season, as the blinkered, pig-ignorant Lakers faithful believed. Until they prove otherwise, the Lakers are still talented, still very deep, still solidly in the championship mix — I mean, despite my negativity they are, after all, 14-1 and sporting the NBA’s best record as of this writing (which is just before their road game against the Pacers) — but STILL softer than the current stock market. Even Jerry Buss has stated publicly that we won’t really know about this team until it’s been on one of those long road trips in the dead of winter.

I’m tired of hearing the minions of USC faithful bemoan their fate. (To his credit, Pete Carroll has generally been upbeat, and has acknowledged that it’s his and his team’s own fault.) It’s unfortunate that there’s no NCAA D-1 football playoff that would allow them to atone for the embarrassing loss to Oregon State that put them out of the BCS Championship calculus, but I don’t recall any great cry from these parts for a playoff when, just for example, Auburn went undefeated and was still unable to play for a national championship. Of course not, ‘cause the Trojans did. Sour, sour grapes.

Not that there shouldn’t be some kind of playoff system. Any system where a team can win the mythical poll-voters’ National Championship without even winning its own league — right, Texas Longhorns? — has to have its head up its fundament.

The Trojans WOULD be in the championship picture, despite the universally acknowledged weakness of the Pac-10 this year, had they simply taken care of business and won all the games they were supposed to win. Whose fault was that loss, exactly? Yeah, Oregon State was and is well-coached, and came up with an outstanding game plan that worked to perfection. But we’re talking about a team that had lost 3 games before USC hit town, including a conference loss to Stanford, and out-of-conference losses to Utah and Penn State. Sorry, all damage to USC’s championship hopes was self-inflicted.

And not for the first time. Despite a talent stockpile that’s the envy of just about every other program, the Trojans always manage to lose at least 1 game a season to lesser opposition and, not infrequently, 2. Either the talent isn’t as good as it’s cracked up to be; or the talent is all body, no brain and/or no heart; or, as I strongly suspect, the coaches who are supposed to prepare their youthful charges to play at or near their peak every game aren’t always bringing their own A-games.

Not to overreact, mind you. USC’s run under Coach Carroll would be the envy of just about every other program. Who else is in the Trojans’ class for sustained excellence during the same period? Texas, probably, although they stumbled last season (10-3); Florida under Urban Meyer, maybe, although they, too, stumbled — nay, tumbled — last season (9-4, including an ugly Gator Bowl loss to, ugh, Michigan); Ohio State, maybe, except that they crap out in their bowl games; LSU, I guess, though they’ve been pretty ordinary at 7-4 this year, with bad losses to Florida and Georgia, a close loss to ‘Bama, and an inexplicable not-even-close loss to Ole Miss — which, to be fair, also upset Florida and hung tough against Alabama, and is more than just bowl-eligible. Oklahoma’s had a few pretty good years, including this one, but they do have trouble with Texas, don’t they? Anyway, it’s a short list, with a high barrier to entry and pretty strict standards.

When a program is at that level, it’s allowed to lose to primo opponents — although not too often — but is expected to be able to beat the mediocre ones, as they say, like a drum. That’s what USC fails to do, more than those other programs.

I know, I know, Carroll’s never lost in November, and the Trojans always get better as the season goes along — except maybe when a barely .500 UCLA team beats them and prevents their appearance in a National Championship game. And they do tend to win their bowl games. But that’s not quite the big deal it might appear to be, since the wins seem to come against Big Ten teams, which have been perfect patsies in the big bowl games; when the Trojans had a chance to make a statement against a flawed Texas team in a National Championship contest IN THEIR HOME TOWN, they couldn’t close the deal.

So but me no buts. Coach Carroll is one helluva recruiter and deal-closer, and his Trojans deserve to be praised as one of the most consistent top programs of the past couple of decades. But they, and their head coach, are still overrated by the special standards that have to apply at that level.

Although, if we really want to talk about “overrated,” how’s about Charlie Weis, who’d gladly swap records with Coach Carroll? It’s not his team’s record that’s overrated — 6-6, and yet another blowout loss to USC, isn’t anything to crow about. It’s the coach himself. He came in blowing a lot of smoke about how he was going to lead the Domers back to glory, because, after all, he was a genius, had a Super Bowl coaching pedigree, and was an epigone of the great Bill Belichick, so the Irish were going to have — I believe this is a direct quote — “a decided schematic advantage.”

The thought was that he was going to be able to recruit like a mother, since he had all those pro credentials, and therefore (in theory) knew how to get his players to the “next level.” How’s that been working out for you so far, Charlie? Not too many pros coming out of South Bend these days, despite three straight (allegedly) top-5 to top-10 recruiting classes. Either the players he’s been recruiting are all a lot less than they’ve been cracked up to be, but inflated because the national recruiting services always pump up Notre Dame — this is Colin Cowherd’s theory — or Weis isn’t quite the molder of men he’s touted himself to be.

Oh, yeah, and about that “decided schematic advantage”? ND almost lost to Navy, and DID manage to lose to hopeless, hapless Syracuse, after Weis grandiosely declared that he was going to take over the play-calling duties. Oops.

It’s not just that El Corpulento — the final nail, I think , in the stereotype of the “jolly fat man” — hasn’t transferred that well from the pro to the college game. He’s hardly the first. Just ask Dave Wannstedt, Bill Callahan, or UCLA’s own Karl Dorrell. There are enough differences between the two games that make such maladjustment more than a rarity. And, although Weis has a couple of Super Bowl rings that he likes to show people, the reality is it’s not all that clear how much he, personally, deserved them. I mean, Paul Hackett — a name no true USC fan can ever say without spitting — probably has one from his time with the 1984 ‘Niners, where he was promoted as the coach who “developed” Joe Montana as a QB. Slight gap between “cause” and “effect” there, I’m guessing.

I see that the Washington Wiz just fired coach Eddie Jordan after his team’s execrable 1-10 start to this season, coming off three straight First-Round playoff losses. Interesting how chickens come home to roost. Jordan, after all, was one of Byron Scott’s former assistants with the Nets when Scott was unceremoniously fired after a so-so start, coming off two straight trips to the NBA Finals. That “so-so” start, just by the way, was 22-20, which, although I’m no math whiz, sure seems a lot better than 1-10.

Scott has resolutely refused to point fingers, and many believe that the prime and immediate cause of his firing was a locker-room shouting match between him and J-Kidd after a blowout loss. In between bouts of domestic abuse and some of the best point guard play in the NBA for a fair number of years, Kidd was known as a consummate egoist and backstabber, who engaged in power plays against any coach he couldn’t control, and pushed to get coaches who’d be more amenable to letting him have his own way. Like current Nets’ coach Lawrence Frank, who may be quite competent, but who owed his elevation to head coach to Kidd’s endorsement — and treated Kidd accordingly.

But Kidd wasn’t the only one who greased the skids for Scott in NJ. He had some henchmen, including Frank, who’s rumored to have supplied some of the anonymous background “information” that led to the media’s characterization of Scott as a lazy, out of touch, irrelevant and clueless figurehead — a rah-rah guy who couldn’t be bothered to watch game film or read scouting reports, while the assistants were the ones who were really responsible for any success the Nets had (and none of the failures).

There’s no hard evidence that Jordan, the head assistant during Scott’s tenure, stuck in his own shiv, though it’s certainly no secret that he and Kidd were tight. Jordan was hyped — perhaps even self-promoted — as the real “brains” behind the version of the Princeton Offense that the Nets used with some success for a few years under Scott. He rode that hype all the way to his job with the Wiz, where he was far from the worst coach there’s ever been, but didn’t exactly set the NBA world on fire, either.

All of the criticism of Scott may well have been true, and may still be true. Nonetheless, facts are facts, and they can be troublesome things that get in the way of theories. The undeniable fact is that the Nets team Scott had taken over had posted the third-worst record IN THE NBA the previous season, and within 2 years he had them at 52-30 (Nets’ franchise best-ever NBA record) and in the NBA Finals. He had a few bad records with the Hornets — not surprising, given the gooey, feculent mess he stepped into — but even when his teams went 38-44 and 39-43 just before their 56-26 breakout of last season, they had a reputation for being undermanned but scrappy and hard-working. Heck, he was voted Coach of the Year after his 38-44 season in recognition of just what a monumental achievement it had been just to get back to the outskirts of genteel mediocrity.

True, it hasn’t hurt Scott that for the past couple of years he’s had Chris Paul, who’s been far better than anyone thought he’d be, and that David West has blossomed into a premier player. No one can win without players. But it sure doesn’t seem like Scott’s been just a potted plant in his new job. He surely has SOMETHING to do with whatever success the team’s had. It can’t just be about the assistants.

Meanwhile, “genius” Jordan, with a roster that has more talent “on paper” although it looks like a bagel with a big hole in the middle, has managed records of 45-37 and a loss to the Pistons in the 2006 Eastern Conference semis, and then 42-40, 41-41and 43-39 and First-Round losses the past three seasons to their “kryptonite,” the Cavs. Not a terrible “body of work,” but not exactly deserving of the “genius” accolades or of a long rope, either. Especially when you consider that, had the Wiz played in the West, they wouldn’t even have qualified for the playoffs in 2 of those years. Think Jordan will be applying for a job in New Orleans any time soon?

Chris Erskine had an interesting column in the L.A. Times a couple of Sundays ago on his nominees for the “All-Ego” Sports Team. I can’t really fault his choices — among them Al Davis, Barry Bonds, Charlie Weis, Mark Cuban, Jim Rome, the two football “Bills” (Belichick and Parcells), and a host of other “un”worthies. But what, exactly, was the point? Like Diogenes’s fruitless quest in ancient Athens to find an honest man, the tougher task would have been compiling a list of star athletes and athletic figures who AREN’T narcissistic possessors of bloated egos. News flash: Erskine’s next columns will discuss the stunning news that water is wet and that bears relieve themselves in forested settings.

I’m certainly not pleased at how top athletes, coaches, agents, announcers and their ilk bask in the glow of their own perceived greatness, but why should it be such a shock to anyone that they do? We seem to accept that kind of mind-set from music, film and media stars, politicians, and captains of industry. Has there been any athlete, ever, more in love with himself or more convinced of the perfumed nature of his excrement, with less reason, than Donald Trump — who’s about to default on a $51-Million interest payment — or any of the top execs of the Wall Street firms that recently collapsed?

So it’s hardly surprising that the world of athletics should have a surfeit of egoists. And, while I’m sure there are a few — a very, very few — who are comparatively level-headed about it all, I’m also convinced, as Colin Cowherd says repeatedly, that if we knew the real story on any popular athlete, we’d cringe.

Or maybe not. After all, what counts these days is celebrity, not character. When society rewards pond scum Joey Buttafuoco, Amy Fisher (the “Long Island Lolita”) and their worthless ilk, or fawns over “celebutards” who are more famous for being famous than for actually accomplishing anything, I don’t want to hear about spoiled, bad-role-model athletes. At least some of the people on Erskine’s list — in fact, a lot of then people on his list — produced against tough competition, in endeavors where they actually keep score and play defense. What contributions, exactly, have all those other “famous” people made, other than pedophilia, attempted murder, public displays of genitalia, boorish, loutish behavior, and the like? As far as I can determine, their sole “value” to society is that they provide jobs for paparazzi, tabloid publications, gossipmongers and other parasites who feed off society’s dung heaps.

Notwithstanding, feel free to talk all you want about Plaxico Burress and his stupid, self-inflicted gunshot wound. I’ve said before, and I reiterate: forget about the morality of carrying around unlicensed loaded weapons or driving cares with expired plates; concentrate instead on the combination of stupidity and penurious behavior. With all the money those top athletes are making, it’s utterly inexcusable that they don’t pay a few bucks of it for “go-fers” who can make sure that the licenses and insurance for their tricked-out vehicles, and their own driver’s licenses — are current and in force, and ditto for any weapons they feel obligated to carry. Better still, maybe they could pay just a few bucks more, and have people with valid driver’s licenses drive them around in licensed, insured vehicles, and bonded bodyguards to obviate the perceived need to pack their own heat. But they just won’t do it. Millions for bling and flash, but not a penny for prudence. But what the Hell do I know? I’ve never walked so much as a yard in their shoes.

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.

Stop the presses.  Move over “Greased Lightning” and Willy T. Ribbs.  You’ve got company.

For those ignorant of the accomplishments of those two gentlemen, let the record reflect that Wendell Scott was the first African-American to win a NASCAR race.  I wouldn’t have known that — heck, I have trouble knowing who any of the CAUCASIAN NASCAR luminaries are — except for the fact that I’m a Richard Pryor fan, and he starred in an otherwise forgettable 1977 biopic about Mr. Scott called “Greased Lightning,” which I watched because, hey, Richard Pryor was in it. 

Willy T. Ribbs — as aptly surnamed an individual as anyone who’s competed in a sport that treats barbecue almost as reverently as it does cars and speed — was merely the winningest African-American competitor in any motorsport.  Not that that’s saying a lot.  In some ways being the winningest African-American in a sport that has so few is like being the world’s tallest midget.  But by all accounts Ribbs was pretty good. 

He raced in IndyCar circuits, including CART, the Indy Racing League and even a couple of Indy 500’s.  He was the first black man of any nationality to race Formula One.  He came along before the heyday of NASCAR, but I suspect that the fit wouldn’t have been good anyway, since he’s been quoted referring to NASCAR (not without some grain of truth, I think) as “Neck-car.” 

Ribbs did have a semi-significant impact on NASCAR, though not intentionally and not directly because of his race.  According to his Wikipedia entry, a Winston Cup car owner entered him to drive a car in the 1978 World 600 at the Charlotte track, but after he “skipped two practice sessions and was arrested for evading police when he drove the wrong way down a one way street,” the owner replaced him with some guy named Dale Earnhardt (Sr., not Jr.), of whom you may have heard a thing or two.    Mind you, given stock-car racing’s NASCAR’s roots in the moonshine-transportation industry we know so well from “The Dukes of Hazard,” I’m guessing that getting arrested for evading police after driving the wrong way down a one-way street would have gotten most drivers back then a standing ovation, not a suspension, as long as their skin was the right complexion. 

But anyway, why am I dredging up this ancient history?  ‘Cause a 23-year-old black man (a Brit, not an American), Lewis Hamilton, has just won the most coveted single title in Formula One circles, the World Driving Championship.  In only his second year in Formula 1 racing, no less. He won 9 of the 35 F1 races he entered, and had 22 “podium finishes,” en route to this year’s championship.  Last season, as a “rookie,” he finished second overall by a single point.

The achievements of black athletes should be no great surprise by now.  But motorsports in general have been somewhat hostile to non-Caucasians.  And Formula 1, in particular, with its aura of polo, gentlemen’s clubs and money, wouldn’t have been my first guess as the circuit that saw this stunning breakthrough. 

Given that this is a Presidential election year in the U.S., take note that Mr. Hamilton, like Barack Obama, is the product of a marriage between a Caucasian mother and a black father; that he didn’t get where he is via “affirmative action”; and that, like black soccer players, he’s endured his share of vile racial taunts and epithets on the circuit.  Is he an “agent of change”?  Is he “the one” (or, as John McCain called him, “That One”?  We should all stay tuned.

Speaking of matters of color, please color me “perplexed.”  What is Detroit’s upside in 86ing Chauncey Billups, still one of the premier all-around point guards in the league, and Antonio McDyess, who’s not exactly washed up — or wasn’t in Game 4 of last season’s Eastern Conference Final, anyway, when he scored 21 and snared 16 boards to help the Pistons even that series — for an exciting, competitive, but oh-so-seriously flawed chucker like Allen Iverson? 

Well, maybe they didn’t really trade McDyess.  In the loony world of NBA trades in the salary-cap era, McDyess was thrown in to help make the salaries match, since AI earns more this year that McDyess and Billups combined.  Indeed, Denver bought out McDyess and his final playing destination may well be — you guessed it — Detroit, at a reduced salary.  Always fun to see a player traded for himself. 

I understand that changes had to be made to the Pistons, who’ve underachieved and disappointed in the postseason for the past 4 years.  Sure, they managed to win it all against an utterly dysfunctional (and injured) Lakers team in 2004, and have reached the Eastern Conference Final 4 straight years.  But they’ve lost the last 3 straight, and have performed worse in each successive Conference Final.   And even getting to that stage was a lesser achievement than it would seem to be at first blush, since there are fewer good teams in the East than in the West, even now.  They never really had to play anybody until the Eastern Final. 

The Pistons have had an enviable regular season record although the Pistons have perhaps the best overall regular season record the past 4-5 years, their weaknesses have been exposed cruelly in the playoffs.  Among those weaknesses are:  a lesser commitment to defense than they had when they were coached — and driven to distraction — by that neurotic genius, Larry Brown; no real inside play to speak of, once Ben Wallace went downhill seemingly overnight and the other Wallace, Rasheed, decided to play as if he were 5’11” instead of 6’11”; no real team speed; and no real “go-to” guys on offense. 

Rip Hamilton is a fine player OFF THE BALL, and gives opposing defenders fits with his constant movement.  But neither he nor, seemingly, anyone else on the team can get his own shot  without lots and lots of screens.  He’s sure not going to see the ball where he wants it MORE often, now that AI is responsible for its distribution. 

Tayshaun Prince was deemed sufficiently accomplished to play for Team USA in this year’s Olympics.  He’s a consummate role player, and a better-than-good defender, whose length always seems to give Kobe trouble.  Every so often, he can stop and pop from outside.  He’s effective when his team needs his offense, but he doesn’t need the ball all the time to be effective.  But he’s not much of a rebounder, is easily muscled off his mark, and he isn’t all that consistent a shooter.  And did I say he’s a role-player, albeit a very, very good one?

I like Rodney Stuckey’s physical skills and potential.  But anyone who believes that playing with/behind Billups has been holding him back from stardom has, as they say, another think coming.  The only thing Stuckey will learn more of from seeing AI strut his stuff in place of Billups is what NOT to do to run a team. 

Still, it all starts and ends with Rasheed Wallace, who, were he so inclined, certainly could be a dominant power forward, if not a center.  But the self-indulgent, narcissistic Rash-weed doesn’t like the scrum inside, and is ever more content to stay far away from the basket and shoot from outside, and to loaf on defense.  He’s actually a decent shooter from distance, but the result is that he shoots only about 43% from the floor, instead of the 50%-plus that any near-7-footer should be averaging, and is always out of position for offensive rebounds and second-chance plays. 

Does an NBA team with designs on a championship really want to have its sole significant inside presence — unless you count Kwame Brown, which no one who saw him play for the Wizards and the Lakers will ever do — voluntarily and selfishly remove himself from the place where he’s most valuable to the team?  To ask the question is to answer it.  If a team has to rely on Kwame “Scissorhands” Brown and Jason Maxiell to do what Wallace could and should do so much better, it’s not going anywhere.

As if Wallace’s self-indulgent play weren’t bad enough, he’s an even worse leader.  That’s bad for the Pistons because, unfortunately, he’s probably the most influential player on the team, now that Billups is gonzo.  Wallace’s attitude hurts his team even worse than his half-assed play.     He’s a world-class pouter and head-case.  He had one “bright, shining moment” during his half-season in the Pistons’ championship year, when his respect for Larry Brown and his realization that the gravy train would be consigned to the roundhouse permanently unless he straightened out, caused him to clean up his act long enough for a while.  Even then, had Karl Malone been healthy during the Finals, Wallace would have vanished in 2004 the same way he has every playoffs since. 

Despite his talents — and, some say, considerable intelligence — Wallace refuses to accept coaching; is now reaping the consistent and dubious “benefit” of his perpetual childish and erratic on-court behavior over the years that hasn’t endeared him to the people who hand out foul calls; and always seems to melt down emotionally at the most inopportune times.   And THIS is the guy whom Dumars put in charge of the Pistons’ locker room by trading away Billups? 

Billups, while obviously given far too much credit for whatever success the Pistons have had, was still crucial to the Pistons’ ability to compete.  He’s lost a step or two, and seems more injury prone now than he used to be.  But he was and remains a smart player, a pass-first ball distributor, a stalwart defender, a decent shooter when he has to be, generally unafraid to take shots in clutch situations, and, most importantly, an adult and authoritative voice in the locker room.  What, AI of all people is going to keep Wallace in check?  It is to laugh.      

So, now, the Pistons have a “point guard” in name only, who’s justly known for being physically tough and a fearless competitor, but equally notorious for gumming up every offense he’s ever run — except, ironically, that one magical year when he bought into Larry Brown’s program.  AI certainly has skills, and he’s still quick.  But he’s not as quick as he used to be, and he hasn’t replaced his inevitable physical decline with increased “smarts” to compensate.  He scores a lot of points because he’s a conscienceless volume shooter, but he’s not all that consistent. 

Not only can’t he defend nearly as well as Billups, but he doesn’t even make any pretense of trying.  Does anyone truly believe the Pistons haven’t suffered a net defensive loss with the swap?

As for offensive flow, Iverson’s averaged a tad over 6 assists per game over his career, and his assist totals over the past 3-4 years have been about the same as Billups’s, so it’s a wash in that department, right?  Nope, just shows how misleading stats can be.  Billups actually tries to run an offense and get his teammates involved; AI doesn’t.  Sure, he gets assists, but his passes come, not as part of any cogent offensive plan, but only when he gets into trouble.  And, unfortunately, there’s no stat of which I’m aware for making the initial entry pass that results in a basket one or two plays removed.  Billups makes those passes; AI doesn’t, because he basically won’t pass unless it can show up on the stat sheet.  His “pass only when the shot isn’t available” mentality certainly can gum up an offense — especially since his teammates rely on off-the-ball movement to get open for intelligent passes within the offensive flow.  Not bloody likely to happen often, now.

I have a great deal of respect for Joe Dumars’s abilities as a GM.  Who wouldn’t, given how well the Pistons have done for so many years under his “rule”?  But c’mon.  Who can seriously believe him when he says he got AI because the Pistons lacked a go-to guy who can create offense?  The fact is that Billups’s best years are probably behind him, and it probably made little financial sense to tie up a lot of money in a long-term contract extension for him.  Meanwhile, although AI has a monster contract, it expires after the season, leaving the Pistons room to go after top free agents, like LeBron James.  As if LBJ includes Detroit among the teams on his wish list. 

I understand the financial issues.  I just don’t like anybody — not even the estimable Mr. Dumars — peeing on my back and telling me it’s raining. 

Speaking of icky bodily functions, what was rising young star Alexander Semin thinking when he ripped the NHL’s designated darling, Sid Crosby, in an interview with Puckdaddy.com?  May be he was inebriated by his sudden success, since he was leading the league in points when he eructed about Crosby.

For the record, Semin said the following:

“What’s so special about [Crosby]? I don’t see anything special there. Yes, he does skate well, has a good head, good pass. But there’s nothing else. Even if you compare him to Patrick Kane from Chicago. [Kane] is a much more interesting player. The way he moves, his deking abilities, his thinking on the ice and his anticipation of the play is so superb.”

Naturally he, his coach and his owner attributed the words to “bad translation.”  Yeah, right.  Just like politicians claim that their exact words, when repeated, were “taken out of context.”  I don’t buy it for a second. 

For reasons I can’t quite understand, the younger Russian players have always been savagely critical of Kid Sid.  Maybe not Sid’s Russian teammates, like Evgeni Malkin.  They seem to understand the leadership and skills he brings to a team that, lest we forget, did reach the Stanley Cup Finals last season while Semin’s Washington Capitals, even with league scoring leader and leading Crosby-hater Alex Ovechkin, didn’t do squat.  But the young stars like Ovechkin, Semin and Atlanta’s Ilya Kovalchuk are as red-faced irate about Crosby’s success and public image as John McCain was about that upstart, Barack Obama.   

Admittedly, Crosby did get overly upset about the no-calls and dirty hits he was taking during his rookie season — as an 18-year-old, mind you — and got a lot of penalties for his retaliation.  He may be a bit of a whiner.  But just to put matters in perspective, Wayne Gretzky, arguably the greatest hockey player or all time, and inarguably the face of the NHL in his era, was known outside Edmonton as “Whine” Gretzky because of the way he was always jawing at the officials.  And the equally great Mario Lemieux did his share of pissing and moaning.  So, while Crosby’s complaining may be irritating, it sure doesn’t detract from his greatness. 

This is only Crosby’s 4^th season in the NHL, and he’s still only, and barely, 21.  He’s already taken his team to a Cup Final, become the youngest ever to reach 100 points in a season, won a Hart Trophy as MVP, a Lester B. Pearson Trophy as best player in the regular season, and an Art Ross Trophy for most points in the regular season.  He’s been a “plus” in the plus/minus stat every year except his rookie year, when he was a mere -1 on a team that went 22-46 and gave up 316 goals.  He’s physically fearless, and doesn’t shy away from contact, either on the receiving or the “giving” end.  And he’s the unquestioned captain of his team.  It’s a big deal to wear the “C” in the NHL.        

No player can escape criticism.  Just listen to sports talk radio, and you’ll hear the “Jeff From Tarzanas” of this world tell you that Kobe Bryant isn’t just a horrible human being, but not really all that much of a player, that Tom Brady and Eli Manning suck as QBs, and, well, you know the drill.  But rational people can still hate great players and acknowledge that they’ve got game.  For all his flaws and faults, Crosby is a great player.  For Semin to flatulate on about him as he did suggests an irrationality fueled by jealousy.   And, oh, yeah, just by the way, Crosby has closed the points gap on Semin, and is now a mere 3 points behind him in the scoring race.  What’ll Semin be saying when all he can see is Crosby’s backside, as Kid Sid passes him in the scoring race?

 Also, just for the record, saying Semin went a bit overboard about Crosby doesn’t mean that he was wrong about Patrick Kane, who has the misfortune to play for the perpetually mismanaged and undermanned Chicago Blackhawks.  Kane, only 19 and in his second year, has talent to burn, and is currently just a point behind Crosby in the points race.  And Chicago is off of a surprising 7-3-3 start.  But just to put matters into perspective, while Kane got 21 goals and 51 assists as an 18-year-old rookie last year, Crosby went for 39 and 63 when HE was 18.  It’s no insult to Kane to say he hasn’t shown he’s a Crosby yet; but it certainly is an insult to Crosby to imply that he’s a lesser player than Kane — who, by the way, is a winger, not a center, which does make a difference. As a matter of fact, Semin, Ovechkin and Kovalchuk are all wingers, too.  Hmmm.

I can’t quit without a shout-out to the Atlanta Hawks, 2008-09 edition.  I thought they’d for sure take a step backward without swingman Josh Childress, who decided to play in Greece this season for about 33 Million reasons — all bearing a picture of George Washington.  I never thought Childress was a star, but he is a steady, intelligent “glue” type of player that the Hawks, with their plethora of young and talented but somewhat volatile and unstable group of players sorely needed.  Or so I believed.  A 6-0 start proved me wrong.  Of course they’re bound to come back down to earth eventually, and their dysfunctional, fractious ownership group is likely to screw up the chemistry badly and soon, but right now they’re the feel-good story of the young season, and a treat to watch.      

I underrated the Celtics all through last season’s playoffs — right up to the time they blew out the Lakers — because of how awful they looked when pushed to 7 games before escaping Atlanta in the First Round.   Heck, had the Celts played Game 7 on a neutral floor, they’d have been out golfing early.  Little did I know that the Hawks might have been the best opposition Boston faced in the entire postseason — including the Lakers.  Just shows that one should always believe the evidence of one’s eyes, rather than stats and “history.”   

Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.

Schadenfreude, the gift that keeps on giving.   The Red Sox aren’t going to the World Series, and all’s well with the world.  I don’t care who wins the damn thing, as long as Boston didn’t.  

The Tampa Bay Rays are a good, heartwarming story, for sure.  With all the talk the past several years about how the “small market” teams have no chance to compete against the financial behemoth Yankees, “Sawx,” Cubs and Angels, it’s refreshing to see a team with a collective payroll lower than A-Rod’s annual salary win the AL East, and then make it to the World Series.  Clearly one of the feel-good stories of the year, and a team worth rooting for, if anyone’s so inclined.

But that’s not why I was rooting for them to win the ALCS.  My main concern was that the odious Boston Red Sox NOT make it, and the Rays, being the last obstacle in their path, were the obvious favorite for my affections.  My preference for true poetic justice would have been that my semi-hometown “Los Angeles” Angels of Anaheim be the authors of Boston’s postseason demise, but I’ll take the ultimate result any way I can get it.  Thanks to the Rays’ improbable heroics, I’ll be spared the insufferable, incessant, self-congratulatory drivel from the troglodyte denizens of “Red Sox Nation” this offseason.

I don’t hate the players, mind you — except maybe that garrulous loudmouth Kurt Schilling, who apparently has no unexpressed thoughts (as Winston Churchill famously said of an overbearing woman who was boring him at a party).  I certainly don’t hate Terry Francona, who’s quick to praise his players (and opponents) publicly, and keeps any negativity private.  Heck, I even find it hard to hate that super “stat nerd” Harvard boy wonder, Theo Epstein, who’s proved that it’s possible to make SMART decisions with a huge payroll — unlike his Yankee counterpart.   But that damned obnoxious effusively self-obsessed “Nation” was badly in need of a comeuppance, and got it. 

It was a close thing, mind you.  Who’d have thought that, down 7-0 in the bottom of the 7^th in the close-out fifth game of the ALCS, the Sox would not only come back to stave off elimination, but win the next two and almost pull off the most stunning postseason comeback since — well, since they made history by coming back from an 0-3 deficit to stun the Yankees in 2004, en route to their first World Series championship in the post-Curse of the Bambino era?  How can anyone hate on a team with that kind of mental toughness?

We’ll never know, but I wonder if they might have pulled off the comeback — or, even, might not have needed one — had they not traded mercurial Manny Ramirez.  Sure, he had a bit of an attitude problem when he wasn’t offered the “respect” (pro athlete slang for value and length of contract) that he felt he was due, but he sure can pound the poop out of a baseball, can’t he?  The insult to the Sox’s injury was that they not only let him go for next to nothing, but that they actually paid most of his salary as he enriched the McCourts’ coffers and carried the Dodgers to more postseason glory than they’d had in 20 years. 

I was one of many who felt the Dodgers’ late-season acquisition of ManRam was ill-advised, given his well-documented attitude problems and his questionable approach to anything that doesn’t involve batting.  On the other hand, looking back, he couldn’t have been a worse clubhouse influence than that notoriously saturnine red-ass, Jeff Kent, whose mere presence in the dugout sucked out all the oxygen and stifled the performance of the Dodgers’ young talent.  When Kent went on the injured list, and Manny became the unquestioned man, the Dodgers finally started playing with energy, enthusiasm and success.  Not to mention, drawing thousands more fans per game, and selling thousands more dollars worth of memorabilia.

Meanwhile, what about my Angels?  Another year; another outstanding regular season; another pathetic postseason rollover to their Kryptonite, the Red Sox.  Well, at least they did manage to win one game this time.   It was a team loss, to be sure, but I can’t help but wonder whether Manager Mike Scioscia’s insistence on old-school “small ball” didn’t lose it for them — again.  Not that bunting, suicide squeezes and the old hit-and-run don’t have their place, but in the end, statistically, those ploys don’t usually produce a lot of runs.  And even if they’re successful, squeeze plays and sacrifices are just taking the bats out of the players’ hands and giving outs to the other team. 

Some people justify Scioscia’s stubborn clinging to such antediluvian tactics by pointing out that they (allegedly) worked when the Angels won the whole thing in 2002.  The simple answer is that no, they didn’t.  A major reason the Angels won in 2002 is that their opponents, the Giants, unlike the Red Sox, could be relied on to self-destruct in a 7-game series, and did.  More significantly, the Angels won because Scioscia let people like Scott Spiezio actually try to hit, and they responded with surprise home runs and extra-base hits.  The Angels also won that series with solid defense, stalwart pitching, a rookie phenom lights-out closer named Francisco Rodriguez, and lots and lots of timely hitting.  They DID NOT win it with “small ball.”

Scioscia’s still a fine manager.  It’s not as if the Angels win 90-plus games every year by just rolling out the baseballs.  How many years have we bemoaned the Angels’ refusal to disturb payroll sanity by signing a slugger who could protect Vladimir Guerrero?  That they’ve been so successful without power hitting surely owes a little something to Scioscia’s managerial skills. 

But this year, they broke the bank and traded for Marl Texeira.  Nonetheless, Scioscia’s team STILL came up short.