March 30 - Denver's Experiment with the Three Stooges

You have to wonder what the Denver Broncos are doing with their defense this off-season. It started out with the news that the Broncos were putting high-priced defensive end Trevor Pryce on the trading block. They then went out and acquired two problem children from Cleveland – Courtney Brown and Gerald Warren. Brown was the first player selected in the entire 2000 draft, while Warren was the third overall selection in the 2001 draft, but each was a certifiable bust in Cleveland. Now the Broncos have gone out and traded running back Reuben Droughans to Cleveland for defensive lineman Ebenezer Ekuban (20 sacks in 70 NFL games). So the Broncos have now re-assembled Cleveland’s inept line out in Denver. Is this a good idea? At first glance, these moves collectively look a bit tortured. I say this because Cleveland was dead last in the entire NFL last year in stopping the run. That is not a misprint. The Browns were last! To put this in perspective, teams went out and chalked up 144 rushing yards per game against this line. That is not too pretty. So what the hell is Denver doing? Why would they go out of their way to acquire a threesome that is basically on par with Jack, Chrissie and Janet? Something must be amiss in that highly regarded rocky mountain drinking water because someone at Broncos HQ has lost his mind. Hey, reclamation projects sometimes work out, but this seems like a stretch unless Denver is simply throwing a bunch of noodles at the wall and hoping one sticks. This series of moves is particularly puzzling given the fact that Denver plays in a division with a couple of guys named Priest and LT. These two have got to be licking their chops in anticipation. Meanwhile, the natives must be getting restless in Denver. This team hasn’t won a playoff game since John Elway walked off the field after Super Bowl 33, and 2005 doesn’t exactly look too promising at this point. How much longer can Coach Mike Shannahan get away with such mediocrity? The bet here is two years at most.

Where is this steroid mess going to end? Last week, we heard that an Irish equestrian gold medalist is under suspicion for shooting up his horse with juice and now CBS is reporting that Carolina punter Todd Sauerbrun, along with two of his teammates, was greasing himself up with testosterone cream during the 2003 season. What the hell is a punter doing with this stuff? I guess you can picture steroids helping a punter extend his length, but this is getting a bit ridiculous. The funniest part of this story concerns how the puffed up punter reacted when he was confronted by 60 Minutes. According to reports, when asked about a doctor who is under suspicion for illegally dispensing banned substances, Sauerbrun said, “I like him very much.” Just ten minutes later, Todd called 60 Minutes back and claimed he was confused and doesn’t even know the doctor in question. With that move, Todd is now a candidate to become Mayor of Lameville.

If the steroid story being run by CBS has merit, the NFL has got a real credibility issue. I say this because the NFL has long argued that its testing program has largely cleaned up the sport and thus it is the gold standard of professional sports. But now we hear that three Panthers were juiced for an entire season and that begs the question of whether the NFL’s program is all that vigorous. Such insinuations are heresy to NFL apologists like ESPN’s Mike Golic who claim that the league is free and clear, but if that were the case, how come these three guys weren’t caught in the net? Perhaps it is because these drugs are becoming harder and harder to detect, but that may not be the entire story. It is time for the NFL to get with the program and introduce mandatory random testing.

You cannot accuse the University of Virginia Athletic Department of being bashful. I say this after hearing Virginia wants to speak with Kentucky basketball coach Tubby Smith about the coaching vacancy in Charlottesville. Why stop there guys? Why not put out a feeler to Tom Izzo or Coach K why you’re at it? Heck, why not try John Wooden while you’re shooting for the moon. For god’s sake – this is Virginia we are talking about. Somebody should tell UVA’s AD to stop wasting his time because there is virtually no way he is going to pull a guy away from a premier program like Kentucky to take a job in the cellar of the ACC. Virginia is a great school located in beautiful surroundings, but it has a terrible gym and is simply not a leading basketball program. As such, I would counsel Virginia to tone down its expectations. The other guy that is high on Virginia’s list is Texas coach Rick Barnes. Again, Virginia is probably shooting too high since Barnes has a pretty good gig at Texas even though he bemoans the fact that basketball is a red-headed stepchild in Austin. Virginia needs to ratchet down its expectations and focus on guys who actually would consider taking this job. The guy they should recruit is just over the mountain range in Morgantown. Jim Beilein, the coach of West Virginia, would be a perfect fit for Virginia, although I am not so sure he is willing to leave after having just taken his Mountaineers to the NCAA regional finals. It is easy to say now, but the coach Virginia really should have pursued was South Carolina Assistant Ricky Stokes – a Virginia alum who has been assistant for Dave Odom at Wake and South Carolina. Stokes is known as a solid recruiter and he would have been the perfect choice for Virginia had he not just decided to take a job at East Carolina. Virginia really screwed up by waiting until the end of the year to fire Pete Gillen. Had Gillen been pink slipped sooner, perhaps UVA would have been in a position to grab Stokes before ECU athletic Director Terry Holland was able to snag his former point guard.

Speaking of Tubby, there was probably a bit of grumbling down in horse country this week when it was reported that coach Smith intends to honor his contract which runs through the 2011 season. I suspect that there are more then a few wildcat fans who were hoping Smith would pack his bags and jump to the NBA at some point – and sooner rather than later. Now some may disagree with me, but Smith has not exactly impressed with his recent tourney resume. His record speaks for itself. Since winning the 1998 national championship with a team he inherited from Rick Pitino, Tubby has been unable to get Kentucky back to the Final Four. He has made three regional finals since 1998, but he lost two of those games to Tom Izzo and the third to Marquette. The fourteen point loss to Marquette was particularly unsettling since that Kentucky team was absolutely loaded and was penciled in to play Kansas in the national semis. The story on Smith is he has been able to rack up big win totals during the regular season, but his teams just cannot breakthrough in March. Case in point is 2004 when Kentucky entered the tourney as the number one team in the country and ended up losing in the second round to Alabama- Birmingham. Don’t get me wrong - 27-5 is a real nice season, but UK fans get a little steamed when that fifth loss comes on the first weekend of the NCAA tourney. Tubby’s resume would be plenty good at places like Florida or Alabama, but it falls a bit short at a place like Kentucky where expectations are super-charged. Smith has done more then enough to keep his job, but the fans have got to be getting restless, especially after Tubby made some crucial mistakes that contributed to last week’s loss to Michigan State. Smith will be on the sidelines next year and I suspect he will be there again in 2007, but if both those seasons end with losses in the regionals, my bet is Tubby will not be around to coach the 2008 wildcats.

I think the only guy in America who is upset to see the Lakers collapse over the past month is Boston GM Danny Ainge who will now have to wait at least another year for the Lakers to make good on a deal the two teams made last year. This is because the Lakers had the foresight last year to “protect” the pick they sent to Boston in exchange for Chucky Adkins. Boston got that pick under the condition that it would return to LA if it became a lottery selection, which it now appears will happen. Boston will not get that pick so long as LA stays in the Lottery and that could be a while given the current makeup of the Lakers. Ainge, on the other hand, was sitting pretty a month ago since LA looked like it would be the last Western team to make the playoffs. This was the perfect scenario for Boston since it would have given them a pick in just about the best spot possible under the terms of the trade. It is a striking comment on the state of the Lakers that this superfluous provision ended up being exercised.

The early returns are in and it now looks like Annika Sorenstam’s marital separation is paying big dividends. The Swede announced earlier this year that she was leaving her husband and since that time, she hasn’t been touched. It is not as if Sorenstam needed any help, but if last week’s Nabisco was any indication, Sorenstam has taken her game to a new level. She won the Nabisco by eight shots and that gives her five straight victories on the LPGA tour. She is basically having a “Tiger 2000” year and it is only March. After the Cracker Open, Annika followed tradition and took a dive in a nearby lake. If I had to guess, I would say more then a few early finishers stuck around to watch the tour’s most eligible bachorlette frolic in that pond.

Why is there so much breathe being wasted on the subject of whether the Tournament Players Championship should be relocated from March to May? This issue seems to have gained plenty attention this year and the momentum only increased after this year’s TPC was nearly washed out by rain. Proponents argue that the TPC, as currently constituted, lacks its own identity since it is played during the NCAAs and only a couple weeks before the Masters. And if the TPC were held in May, proponents argue it wouldn’t have to compete with any majors and chances are that it wouldn’t face the same weather problems that it does in March. So what? Since when are we here to take care of the poor old TPC? The TPC is doing just fine where it is. It comes at the end of the Florida swing and in most years, the weather is just fine. Hell, if the weather was good enough in Jacksonville to host a Super Bowl in early February, it is good enough to host a golf tournament six weeks later. And so what if the TPC is held in the shadow of the Masters? I am tired of people making this tournament into something it is not. I will say this once – the TPC is not a national treasure that deserves federal protection. Granted, it has a big purse and a nice field, but it also is played on a gimmicky track that does not exactly conjure up images of Pinehurst or Oakland Hills. At the end of the day, the TPC is not a major and it is time people stopped discussing it as if it were.