Athletic Rules Are Made To Be ... Followed

In Uniform: Baltimore County Cross Country Championships

(Photo: Baltimore Sun)

This is a story getting some legs – about the Baltimore area high school cross country team that lost a championship because of a uniform rules violation involving Spandex undergarments.

In local and national newspaper sports and editorial pages, blogs and readers forums, debaters are asking when is a seemingly insignificant rule infraction worth distorting the outcome of the competition. A larger view is whether some rules should be overlooked to maintain the purity of competition.

On Oct. 26, a runner for Hereford High School's boys cross country team competing in the Baltimore County championships wore Spandex beneath his uniform shorts sporting a white pinstripe on the side instead of a solid color as a Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association uniform rule requires.

The rule says the undershorts have to be the same color as the uniform shorts. Six other runners at competing schools were disqualified as well. The rule was changed in Maryland over the past year to conform with a national governing body.

Hereford, a Mecca for cross country located along rolling hills and lush pastures in the hamlet of Parkton in far northern Baltimore County, won the championship. But not long afterward, the celebrating stopped. Meet officials bumped the superior Bulls team down to fourth place after the runner was disqualified for the wayward undergarment stripe.

Losing the county championship was a tough one for Hereford. They grow premier cross country runners at Hereford like daisies that sprout up in spring on the countryside. Since the agriscience school opened in 1954, the Bulls have won 12 boys state championships and five girls titles. The school’s annual "Bull Run" Cross Country Invitational attracts more than 100 schools along the East Coast, and the challenging Hereford course hosts the state cross country championships November 14.

So why punish a cross country powerhouse over an obscure stripe on compression shorts when it had the best team as born out by the competition? Simply, the Hereford runner broke the rule.

Indeed, rules are made to be broken, as the saying goes, but you get caught and you pay the piper. Rules keep the competition honest and keep the playing field level. They must always be applied evenly.

Hardly cross country, but consider some rules established by the Southern Maryland Invitational Livestock Expo and Horse Show held annually at fairgrounds in St. Mary’s County in southern Maryland. One says steers and heifers must be dehorned and healed. Another says dairy goats must have a collar. And still another requires that market lambs must be slick shorn.

So should you win the blue ribbon if your dairy goat comes in collar-less? While not knowing anything about livestock, the answer has to be a resounding "no." Where's the collar? Whether it makes sense or not, there is a reason for a collared dairy goat – whatever it is. Same with the Hereford runner. There is a reason for solid-color Spandex -- versus ones with a thin stripe or even tie-dye, Fergie screenshots or American flags.

Wearing Spandex under uniforms is a fairly recent phenomenon among athletes. Maryland officials noticed their proliferation and sought to standardize them with the actual uniforms.

In Amateur Athletic Union basketball, there is a rule that asserts uniforms cannot be adorned with logos or advertising of sponsors. Seems silly considering that a logo could support a cash-strapped amateur team with the cost of its uniforms. But it is the rule.

"Barely noticeable" beneath the Hereford runner's uniform is how one report described the infraction. On a reader's forum on the Baltimore Sun Website, one writer decried the lack of "common sense" in such rules. And there were suggestions that the team being elevated to champion after the disqualification should refuse the trophy. Nonsense, if they followed the rules.

Often times, officials running athletic events will overlook the rules, especially on uniforms. (You should see some of the rules violations that occur in AAU over uniforms, but teams and players still get to participate.) Rule violators will hit you with the "what difference does it make" consideration or that the "player will be hurt" if not allowed to participate.

The notion of following the rules, whatever they are, does not rise to the level of a teachable moment.

As a coach, parent or player, you just read the rule, inform your team and follow it. As an athletic official, you just enforce it.

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More: A look at Hereford cross country

Yankee Haters Raise Your Hands

Enough Already: The Yankees win the pennant again

Photo: Associated Press

It was the bottom of the eighth in Sunday night’s closeout game of the ALCS and the Yankees were tacking on some extra runs on the way to another World Series appearance.

With Mariano Rivera coming back out to shut down the Angels in the ninth and preserve the victory, I was coming to the realization that my dream would not come true – that the Angels would actually take Game 6 and I would be able to say, "The Yankees lose … The Yankees lose … Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees lose." No such luck.

The great American pastime, the World Series, begins Wednesday night, and I’ll be watching every pitch like every year. And you guessed it, I’ll be rooting for the Phillies. Sorry.

See, I hate the Yankees. But I don’t want to be predictable about it (OK, yes, I am an Orioles fan whose hometown club hasn’t had a winning season in 12 years). I also don’t want to be trite and petty. I love the great game of baseball too much for that -- a dyed-in-the-wool fan who really does believe that everybody has a chance to win the pennant at the start of spring training.

Only the Yankees have won 7 of the last 14 American League pennants and make their way to their 40th World Series against the Phils.

My ill will toward the Yankees began long ago. It probably started first watching the 1958 classic film "Damn Yankees" as a teenager -- when Joe Hardy had to sell his soul to Mr. Applegate just so the Washington Senators could beat the Yankees for the pennant. Gosh, just to beat the Yankees you have to make a pact with the devil.

Then growing up in Baltimore, I realized that Babe Ruth was a native of my city who went on to become baseball’s most legendary figure, of course, with the Yankees, no less.

There was having Reggie Jackson play a wonderful season in Baltimore in '76 before unceremoniously bolting to the Yankees for money and fame. There was the Jeffrey Maier game in the 1996 ALCS between the Orioles and the Yankees, in which the Yankees prevailed in the series after 12-year-old Maier’s "dastardly" deed. Then there was losing our best pitcher since Jim Palmer, Mike Mussina, to Yankees’ free agency in 2001. (For Orioles fans, what if Mussina makes the Hall of Fame and goes in as a Yankee?)

All in all, I am OK with Yankee fans. There are plenty of them here in Baltimore and Washington. True baseball fans do respect Baltimore's winning tradition with Frank and Brooks, Eddie and Cal and Palmer, McNally and Cuellar. I lived once in New York City, and I do love New York. It has to be the greatest city in the world in my view.

And I do admit to love Yankee history and lore. Who can argue with the Babe, Lou Gehrig, DiMaggio and the magical season that was Mantle and Maris in 1961. And my favorites like Whitey Ford, Elston Howard, Thurman Munson, Billy Martin and Guidry, Mattingly and Bernie Williams.

So no problem with Yankee fans or the city. It is a big place up there with lots to satisfy. I understand Wall Street, big money, celebrity, endorsements and market size. I know what it means to be in New York.

Still I just hate the Yankees – but also all the other "payroll" teams of current day baseball.

In the run up to the 2009 World Series, I am reminded that I feel a similar way about the Dodgers, Red Sox or Angels, too. The Dodgers and their money still lost with Thome, Pierre and Hudson as bench players. Bench players, mind you. Boston for all its payroll was swept by the Angels after spending the season beating up on rookie teams like the Orioles. The Angels plucked Torii Hunter from free agency a couple of years ago, sending (former Oriole) Gary Matthews Jr. and his millions to the bench. That's baseball today.

When the Yankees signed C.C. Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, A.J. Burnett and Nick Swisher to start the 2009 season, I figured you could just spot them the pennant -- not much unlike in a courtroom when you stipulate to a set of facts and move on with the testimony. You could have played the World Series in April between the Yankees and Phillies/Dodgers and let the rest of us (Orioles, Pirates, Indians, Nationals, etc.) just play out the season against one another.

In a post game interview to conclude the ALCS, Yankee captain Derek Jeter said, "It's not easy to get to this point of the season." Well, with the big payroll, Derek, it really is. Put your roster up against the Orioles or Pirates (who have won World Series before). It really is easy in 2009 to get to this point as Yankees when you buy everybody’s players.

This is not to say the Yankees don't do a good job of developing players. There is Jeter, Rivera, Posada, Cano, etc. They all came through the system, but the big money gets them over the hump. And you might say the Phillies would not be where they are had it not been for adding Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez at mid-season. But adding a piece or two to get over the hump is a time-honored baseball tradition.

I also cringe when I hear Joe Girardi interviews about his 2009 Yankees team. And, as beloved as he is for baseball, Joe Torre was the same way. They talk as if winning with the teams they have (compared with everybody else) is hard -- almost as if what they are doing is professorial, thoughtful and born of greatness. Dudes, your franchises bought the best players. You didn’t grow them like the great teams of the past.

I like to think I am a modern man who understands the era we are in today. But I loved baseball when, for the most part, you won pennants by developing and retaining players.

The Yankees are in another World Series. But for me, Alex Rodriquez will always be a Mariner, Sabathia an Indian, Teixeira a Ranger, Swisher an A, Burnett a Marlin and Johnny Damon a Royal.

Editor's Note: For readers of this blog, sorry for the ranting. I usually don't write in first person. But when you "hate" the Yankees, what is a Baltimore Orioles fan supposed to do.

Clocking Ochocinco All in the Show

Ray Lewis hit Chad Ochocinco in the mouth a couple of Sundays ago in Baltimore’s game versus Cincinnati.

Predictably, the NFL took exception. The league fined Lewis $25,000 for breaking its "defenseless receiver" rule among other charges of unnecessary roughness on a play where Ochocinco was clocked coming across the middle late in the fourth quarter of Cincinnati’s compelling 17-14 win over Baltimore.

You would think Ochocinco would be fuming mad and pointing to Nov. 8 for retaliation when the Ravens and Bengals hook up again in Cincinnati. But with Lewis and Ochocinco, two of the league’s premier players, everything is not always what it seems.

Ochocinco’s pummeling reverberated around the league that Sunday and ignited a mini-firestorm over the state of rough play in the NFL. Old-school NFL types may besmirch Lewis for the hit and say he deserved the fine. Granted, the league did have to fine Lewis in its attempt to reduce unnecessary injuries.

Only this was different.

No case of bad blood between rivals, just part of the intricate relationship among of some NFL players. This was just show. Thirty years from now Lewis and Ochocinco will reminisce on the hit from their rocking chairs.

Each time the Ravens and Bengals play, the good-natured Ochocinco puts on his serious face, takes to the airwaves and tells the local media about how he is going to hit the Ravens in the mouth. This tete-a-tete is, well, hilarious.

In the days leading up to the Oct. 11 game, Ochocinco "challenged" Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs to a boxing match. He then complained Lewis had bounced him around in games over the years and this time he would hit Lewis in the mouth. It was Ochocinco at his funniest. Then Ochocinco went on a tweeting binge, describing how he would torch Ravens cornerbacks Fabian Washington and Domonique Foxworth during the game.

Before a Ravens-Bengals game in 2008, the "target" then was former Ravens linebacker Bart Scott: "The last time we played, he (Bart Scott) cussed me out and told me to stay out of his huddle, and I took offense to that, so this Sunday I am going to hit him in the mouth. He's really rude," Ochocinco said in that conference call.

Ochocinco is legendary for his antics, but fact is, Lewis is like a "big brother" to Ochocinco and a number of players around the league who hold the middlebacker in high regard. And despite their personas, both Lewis and Ochocinco are solid citizens in their communities. They are ultimate showmen.

Players respect Lewis for the adversity he overcame early in his career (remember the Atlanta trial in 2000?), achieving big-money contracts, pushing himself to a Hall-of-Fame stature, taking advantage of business opportunities and engaging Baltimore youth in charitable projects. No matter how you see things, there is no arguing that Lewis rates with Cal Ripken, Brooks Robinson, Wes Unseld, Jim Palmer, Johnny Unitas and Michael Phelps as among beloved Baltimore sports figures for their influences on and off the field.

Ochocinco just last week received some major pub when he joined with technology company Motorola to buy remaining tickets for Cincinnati’s home game Sunday versus Houston to avoid a blackout so fans could watch the game on TV. He was a hero in Cincy for the gesture.

Ochocinco credits Lewis for settling him down two years ago when Ochocinco was hemming and hawing about getting out of Cincinnati.

"Ray is really the reason I’m happy, smiling and ready to go again ... He had me thinking about how I got to where I'm at, the things I went through, understanding the blessing it is to be where I am. There are millions of people that wished they were in my shoes doing what I do ... He told me to get back out here and smile all the time ... It's worked for me," he said in an interview with a Cincinnati newspaper.

Despite getting hit in the mouth, there is little doubt that Lewis is Ochocinco’s guy.

"Beautify game, Ray knock my head off, all part of the game, I love my big brother Ray Lewis, hope you all enjoyed thee event!!!!!" Ochocinco said afterward in a tweet.

Lewis defended the big hit, saying, "I've never played this game to hurt anybody. But the bottom line is, when I turn to go, I'm like a missile. When I’m locked in, I'm locked in. Whatever’s there is there."

For Lewis, could it be simply what you do when your "little brother" gets a little full of himself? You hit him in the mouth.

Showman: Chad Ochocinco

Photo: Getty Images

Coaching Suits Hoya Great Williams

You think of Georgetown Hoya basketball and you think of the coach, John Thompson, and Ewing, Mourning, Iverson and Mutombo. And you think more, and there is Sleepy Floyd, Craig Shelton, Freddie Brown and Mike Sweetney.

Then stop and think even more and your thoughts settle on Reggie Williams. Call Reggie Williams the "forgettable" Hoya great.

As personalities, Patrick Ewing offered that ever-embracing smile, Alonzo Mourning the beat-down toughness, Allen Iverson the homeboy defiance and Dikembe Mutombo the earnest dignity. Williams was just a back-of-the-room quiet and unassuming kid from Baltimore who spoke loudest in big games on the court. Lest we forget, it was none other than Reggie Williams who sparked the Hoyas to their only NCAA basketball national title 25 years ago.

Williams memories abound on the recent news of his selection as men’s head basketball coach at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills on Maryland’s picturesque Eastern Shore.

Williams took a circuitous route to the Skipjacks job, but Chesapeake Athletic Director Frank Szymanski says the school lucked out big time. "Not only has he played at the highest possible level, he has also shown the ability to build winning programs everywhere he has coached," Szymanski said.

As coaching jobs go, Chesapeake is hardly the Big East, but Williams clearly will take it. He seems to be itching to coach. "I viewed this as a great opportunity for me," Williams said in a Chesapeake news release to announce his hiring. "I just want players who love the game, want to work hard and do well in school."

Chesapeake is a community college founded in 1965 as Maryland’s first regional community college to meet the educational and training needs of residents on the upper and middle Eastern Shore.

Before taking the job, Williams had signed on during the summer to coach at Baltimore’s illustrious Towson Catholic High, the school that recently sent Carmelo Anthony and Donte Greene to Syracuse and then the NBA and counts Gene Shue, an all-time great NBA player and coach, as another alumni. But before Williams could get settled in, Towson Catholic closed because of declining enrollment.

Williams got the TC job after leaving Jericho Christian Academy in Landover, MD after three seasons when it closed, too.

Chesapeake was the last man standing, and Szymanski made his pitch, knowing he was getting a true baller who has won at every level.

Growing up and playing ball on the hard streets of East Baltimore in the early 1980s, there was one word for the 6-7 Williams – his nickname "Silk" for his smooth, all-around game. Certainly, John Thompson took notice.

Williams led his Dunbar Poets high school team to a 60-0 record in his junior and senior seasons in a group that included Muggsy Bogues, the late Reggie Lewis and soon-to-be Hoya teammate David Wingate. In 1982-83, USA Today awarded Dunbar the nation’s "mythical" national championship and Williams was named a coveted McDonald’s High School All-American.

Old school Baltimore basketball still debates today whether it is Williams or Allen "Skip" Wise, the first freshman to be named All-ACC while at Clemson in the mid-1970s, who was the city’s greatest basketball prodigy.

At Georgetown, the 1984 championship team belonged rightfully to Ewing. But the championship game belonged to Williams – an 84-75 victory over the University of Houston and Hakeem Olajuwon. Williams, a freshman, led all scorers with 19 points and grabbed seven rebounds. (Wingate, also of Baltimore, scored 16.).

By the time Williams reached his senior season at Georgetown in 1986-87 season, he had the Hoyas contending again as the leader of a young team – leading the club in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots as a consensus All-Big East and All-America selection. So smitten was Thompson at Williams' numbers and leadership that he dubbed that Hoya team "Reggie and the Miracles."

That big senior season propelled Williams to the No. 4 pick in the 1987 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Clippers. He went on to enjoy 10-year NBA career with the Clippers, Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and New Jersey Nets, logging a career total of 7,508 points and 2,393 rebounds while averaging 12.5 points per game.

But when you think of all the Hoya greats, the unassuming Williams doesn’t immediately come to mind. Yet, the Georgetown Basketball History Project, which chronicles Hoya basketball history, saluted Williams, now 45, as No. 3 behind Ewing and Floyd on its list of the 100 leading names of Hoya basketball. Among others, Mourning was No. 4, Iverson No. 5, and Wingate No. 11.

In February, Williams and the Hoyas celebrated the 25th anniversary of the 1984 championship team.

Williams’ ultimate legacy might be the "bridge" he was between Baltimore and Washington sports.

Despite the mere 40 miles of separation, sports in two towns could not be farther apart. DC is the nation’s sophisticated capital city; Baltimore remains a blue-blooded port town. Baltimore will call Redskins football soft; Washington scoffs at the antics of the haywire Ravens.

The great Reggie Williams eclipsed both worlds.

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More: Reggie Williams bio, stats, Georgetown History Project Top 100, Chesapeake College men's basketall

Reggie Williams Photos: hoyabasketball.com

Broken Record: Running Up the Score

Star QB: Maryland Arundel High's Billy Cosh

Photo: Arundelfootball.com

In high school football when is enough enough?

Same question for high school basketball and amateur sports. Same even for girls travel soccer.

It is a question for coaches, team managers, parents, sports administrators and others. Needless to say, it probably is a question being asked at sports fields and in gymnasiums everyday across the country.

On Friday night at a high school football game in Anne Arundel County, MD, the host Arundel Wildcats beat the Glen Burnie Gophers, 75-19. What is notable about the game is that Arundel’s star senior quarterback Billy Cosh threw seven touchdown passes. What is more, Cosh’s first TD pass 54 seconds into the game allowed him to tie the Maryland public school record of 80 career touchdown passes. Then at the 4:01 mark of the first quarter, Cosh broke the record.

Cosh, listed at 6-foot-2, 195-pounds and reportedly headed to Kansas State to play big-time college football, finished the night with his seven TDs completing 16 of 19 passes for 267 yards. He left the game shortly into the second quarter. Certainly, Cosh, the son of a college football coach, is a special talent coming out of a public high school.

Undefeated Arundel is the No. 1 rated team this week in the Baltimore Sun’s varsity football poll and No. 5 in the Washington Post. Glen Burnie is mired in scrubville.

Arundel is a large public school in Anne Arundel County -- about equidistant between Baltimore and Washington in the bedroom community of Gambrills adjacent to the Fort Meade military reservation. Unlike Glen Burnie in most years, Arundel is a sports powerhouse public school in the county and state, competitive nearly every year in several sports, including football, baseball and girls basketball.

But back to the question. When is enough enough?

What is the point of a 75-19 score in a high school football game? Why would a coach allow a top incoming college QB recruit to throw seven TD passes in a game against sorry Glen Burnie? Such questions deserve straight talk within the realm of high school, amateur and recreational sports.

One person posting to the Sun’s high school forum had this reaction: "I just have one question, why was he still throwing the ball honestly after 4 TD’s? He had already gotten the record! GB is really really bad, what was the coach trying to prove? Cosh should not have played after the 1st quarter!"

Sure, some teams are really good in sports and some are really bad. But on the high school, amateur and recreational level, aren’t we rooting for all the kids to compete well, succeed and have a positive experience? Can that occur in a 75-19 game? Doesn't it matter?

No one is saying Arundel should have rolled over in the face of a lightweight opponent. But don’t you just run the ball more after the first few easy touchdowns (Arundel led 40-7 at the end of the first quarter)?

Coaches will say you have to game-plan and execute no matter the opponent. They will say you do not want to develop bad habits and you just can’t let the other team score. They will say you are preparing for tougher opponents down the line. All true. It would send as bad a signal to players to play down to your opponent as seemingly running up the score.

Yet 75-19 scores happen much too often. Maybe Arundel’s coach had a bone to pick with Glen Burnie’s coach. Maybe the Glen Burnie coach did the same thing at one time or another. Or maybe he is just a prick who deserved such an outcome. Who knows what the history is.

Aimlessly running up scores happens on the amateur level as well, and it just doesn't feel right. In Amateur Athletic Union girls basketball, coaches will press 10- and 11-year-old girls relentlessly until they achieve a 50-point win. You know that "wonderful" 62-8 victory or similar in a game where everyone should be focused on teaching the fundamentals of the game.

And what about you, Arundel parents? Did you enjoy and encourage the shellacking, too? Parents do have responsibility as well to use their influences to keep things on an even keel, but it is doubtful they will.

In an under-11 girls’ travel soccer tournament Sunday in Dundalk, MD, a soccer dad could be heard admonishing his daughter's team to "don't let up now" – despite a 5-0 lead deep into the second half when the other team couldn’t get the ball across midfield all game and wouldn't possibly come back to win. (The final score was 8-0.)

Shouldn't it matter that the losing team of girls were competing just as hard. Should they have to hear rip-roaring applause from parents on the winning team at every easy goal scored as if their daughters were the next coming of Mia Hamm?

Let's root for all the kids. Let the kids compete. Let them enjoy the experience. Unlike record-breaking Billy Cosh, it ends with high school or sooner for the vast majority of them.

More: Arundel High School's football records page.

A Prescription for Paper Cuts

Real Sports: Frank Deford, left, and correspondents

Photo: HBO

Frank Deford’s "Paper Cuts" piece that aired Sept. 15 on HBO on Bryant Gumbel’s "Real Sports" program should give vendors of sports journalism plenty to chew over.

It did that for me, a former sports-section reporter and editor, confirming some conclusions I had come to years ago.

Here was the description of Deford’s piece from the Real Sports Web site:

As newspapers across the country struggle to maintain circulation and clout in the volatile world of digital media, sports editors at virtually every daily newspaper have made difficult decisions to reduce staff and pages. The result has been a mass exodus of top writers from some of America's most prestigious sports sections, which has reshaped the reporting and consumption of sports news and opinion. In this REAL SPORTS/Sports Illustrated report, correspondent Frank Deford probes the decline of this great tradition and considers the prospects for newspaper sports sections in the new media environment.

Let’s start with a word about Deford of Sports Illustrated. He is an old school, curmudgeon-like sports guy who probably knows as much about sports sections as anybody. Deford is legendary, still writing strong and brings credibility to the issue. Any contemporary sportswriter worth his/her salt today should know Deford’s legacy in newspaper, magazine and broadcast sports – just like the way newbie LeBron James appreciates what it meant to be Earl "The Pearl" Monroe in the 1960s and 70s.

I wrote about my background and orientation to sports in my introductory post for WorldSportsBlogs on August 25. I am no 25-year veteran of the sports department. Haven’t spent a career writing columns or covering Super Bowls. Just spent a half-dozen years in my first job out of college in the sports department of my hometown newspaper in Baltimore (some of the best times of my life amid a career in news and communications).

But there is one thing I do know and that is I love sports and sports coverage in the newspaper. Like Tony Soprano, I shuffle out to my driveway expectantly each morning to get the paper. And yes, I read the sports section first -- always. Simply, I am sucker for a sports section.

Deford’s Real Sports piece sought to bring some relevancy to what is fairly obvious – that newspaper sports sections like the print newspaper itself is being hit hard by the digital age. Some recent reports, such as from the Newspaper Association of America, say subscriber churn is waning and that consumers still view newspapers as a highly valued product.

Whatever the situation, newspapers remain a beleaguered commodity that in many cases is threatening to go the way of the dinosaur. My question for newspaper sports sections is what can you do better to keep diehards like me buying you?

Without oversimplifying, what editors have to understand in the digital age is that the average 20-25 year old isn’t buying – much less subscribing – to the paper for sports coverage or anything else. Yet I am. But there is a twist. I am going online, too, for my sports information fix (Yahoo! Sports is the home page on my browser). I go online heavy like the 20-25 year olds. But unlike them, I still like a newspaper coming to the house and pay for it.

My question is whether the newspaper sports section delivery model is being directed to the appropriate demographic – me. I suspect not because the paper typically isn’t giving me what I want from sports.

Here is what I want: More news and information, less opinion, "readable" agate type. There is probably more, but those three really give me pause. The challenge for print is to really break the mold from the past and deliver these for my $40.00 or so a month.

Everyone knows that when compared to digital, newspaper news is quickly outdated. Nonetheless, I want more. I want specifics. I want to know who tweaked a hammy before the big game, who is about to break a personal record or who had to leave the dugout because his wife was about to have the baby. Just factual, news and information spread throughout the section. I want the minutia.

What I want less of is to read the opinions of columnists. It takes up too much space – like the antiquated newspaper takeout. Perspective is fine, but, in my view, opinion is not perspective. Besides, in the digital age, I can find opinion in droves on the Internet at any number of Web sites, including at WorldSportsBlogs.

Here is a case in point: I read a recent newspaper sports column about the entertainment value of flamboyant Bengals’ wide receiver Chad Ochocinco. Somehow, this led to Ochocinco being labeled a "knucklehead." Really? That’s not how I feel about the guy. In fact, why would anyone call Ochocinco that? He’s a brilliant football player, superb marketer and seemingly pleasant young man. I’ve never read about drug arrests, gang ties, club-hopping or even womanizing with Ochocinco. When I watch his TV interviews, he is polite and respectful. Frankly, all I care about with Ochocinco is how the Ravens are going to stop him on Sunday. I don’t care that a columnist has a problem with his perceived bad-boy image.

Labeling an athlete making millions of dollars on and off the field a knucklehead is old-time, outdated sports journalism. To get to his level, the guy must be doing something right. Sports venues are littered with the ghosts of superbly talented athletes never to make big, but seems to me Ochocinco has persevered. So, I don’t care what makes Ochocinco tick or what anybody thinks about him. It is just not important to my life. I just want to see the game.

This model of sports journalism – of the "respected," all-knowing columnist gloating over a personality, occurrence, issue, game – simply is gone. Newspapers need to understand this and redistribute that coveted news hole. In today’s multichannel and digital environment, everybody has an outlet for an opinion if they have time to express it. You don’t need a newspaper columnist to tell you what you should be thinking. I can find opinion in blogs -- if I choose to read them. But for my daily paper, just give me the straight news and information and let me make my own decisions.

The last thing is the agate type, such as standings, boxscores, transactions, scoreboards, etc. As a pure sports guy, this is my favorite part of the sports section. I read agate because if a guy went two-for-four with a homerun and three RBIs, that’s what he did that day. But I will never see 25 years old again with 20-20 vision. In other words, in today’s sports pages, most agate type is too small. Why should I have to find a magnifying glass to read a boxscore? Hey, I am figuring that if you drop more opinion columns you could make agate type readable.

Finally, here is another thought, on coverage of sports in the sports section. From Baltimore and Washington, I follow the Ravens and Orioles religiously in the Baltimore Sun and the Redskins and Nationals just as hard in the Washington Post. But I also want specific, ongoing news and information about "everything else" in my sphere: Wizards, Michael Phelps and swimming, track and field, horse racing, auto racing, preps, amateurs, WNBA. Even ice hockey and lacrosse.

Sometimes newspaper guys give you want they think you want. For instance, how can you run the result of Game 4 in the WNBA championship series without running the boxscore? Granted, there’s more interest in the boxscores for the baseball playoffs.

But ask yourself, why do I as a reader care about women’s professional basketball. Sure, I prefer the NBA, too, but for the WNBA it is because I have kids, girls. I have a daughter who plays in college. So, I have an interest. In fact, I would venture to guess that most of a newspaper’s subscribers are like me – dads with kids.

Running that WNBA boxscore might be enough to keep me from dropping the paper.

Bottom line for me as a sports-section consumer is that newspapers can’t continue to present sports news the same way they did years and years ago. It is a different time today. Everyone has more choices.

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More: Frank Deford's bio, Another take on "Paper Cuts."

Baltimore's Bad Dream ... Brady in a Skirt

Baltimore Ravens' Coach John Harbaugh

Sunday's Don’t-Hit-Brady Game

Photo: Associated Press

Baltimore is having a bad dream over the notion of Tom Brady in a skirt.

It is so bad that you just want to run down the hall and tell your mother about it. Even after two days, the image just won’t go away.

See, Brady is an NFL golden boy, Super Bowl champion, etc., etc. His New England Patriots beat the Ravens 27-21 Sunday in Foxborough in a key AFC matchup.

But for a lot of Ravens fans, along with pro football commentators and observers nationally, some of that Brady mystique is taking a beating after perceived favoritism the QB received on officials’ calls Sunday.

Two particular drive-extending roughing-the-passer penalties against Ravens’ tackle Haloti Ngata and linebacker Terrell Suggs that led to two second quarter New England touchdowns are drawing major scrutiny around the league.

It was not so much that the refs threw the flags. Ngata was whistled for a clear blow to the side of Brady’s helmet. More questionable, Suggs was flagged for brushing Brady’s knees while falling to the ground -- the "Brady Rule." Clearly, the NFL must have rules to protect its quarterbacks, but Ravens coach John Harbaugh says Brady got calls his QB Joe Flacco didn’t. Harbaugh wouldn’t claim favoritism outright, but his words at his Monday press conference were clear.

Flacco "got hit (six) different times hard, and there was one call," Harbaugh said. "Tom didn’t get hit five times. We want him to be hit more than he was hit, but when he did sort of get hit, it was called. That goes to the credibility of the whole thing."

Others were even more strident on the charge of Brady favoritism. His former teammate Rodney Harrison on the NFL Sunday night pre-game show on NBC looked into the camera and told Brady to "take off the skirt." On the Suggs brush by, Brady excitedly pointed toward his knees and the penalty was called.

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis simply termed the penalties "embarrassing." Brady, who is coming back from a knee injury that wiped out his 2008 season, mockingly countered after the game that the refs were right to throw the flags. Brady, Lewis said in the tit-for-tat, "is good enough to make his own plays. Let him make his own play. When you have two great teams that are going at it, let them go at it. …The embarrassing part is when he understands that, and he walks up to one of us and says, 'Oh, that was a cheap one.' "

Lewis’ comments served to shine a spotlight on the seemingly obsession in the NFL with the pristine Tom Brady brand.

Harbaugh said he was submitting film to the NFL showing what he believed to be questionable calls. Ron Winter’s officiating crew called 14 penalties for the game for 126 yards – 9 for 85 yards against the Ravens, including a puzzling 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty against Harbaugh in the third quarter.

If anything, the Don’t-Hit-Brady Game came down, as usual, to none other than Patriots coach Bill Belichick. He may have outsmarted everyone again.

Belichick conceded he game-planned for penalties – noting that Winter and his crew have been the league’s most aggressive officiating crew at calling penalties the past two years. "It tells me the game's going to be tight. So yeah I did mention that to the team. And they did call it tight."

Those damn Pats.

'Sonny and Sam Show' Runs Course

Call it the "Sonny and Sam Show" -- maybe the most entertaining aspect in a season of moribund Washington Redskins football.

The Redskins' loss to the always-bad Detroit Lions on Sunday, allowing the Lions to snap a 19-game winless streak, along with an uninspiring 9-7 home win over the lowly St. Louis Rams the week before, has Washington fans in a lather. So bad is the 2009 version of the Redskins so far that the rampant speculation among fans and in the media is that head coach Jim Zorn might not last the season.

But about Sonny and Sam. Sonny is the colorful quarterback Sonny Jurgensen, and Sam is the legendary linebacker Sam Huff. Sonny and Sam are Redskins color analysts on WTEM/ESPN 980 in Washington, thus the "Sonny and Sam Show." They are a hoot.

Simply, Sonny and Sam are beloved Redskins heroes -- not to be taken lightly. But is anybody in Washington wondering why these two are still announcing Redskins games? Maybe Sonny and Sam are characteristic of what is wrong with the Redskins franchise in today's current era of professional football.

Sonny is 75 and Sam turns 75 on Oct. 4. The two Hall of Famers are nearing great-grandfather status with the new crop of NFL players. You listen to their radio game commentary and wonder if they are relating to Clinton Portis or a Haynesworth, Campbell or Moss. Sounds like they are announcing the games from recliner chairs -- seemingly no real sense of urgency about the game, but plenty of thoughts about outmoded 1950s, 60s and 70s football.

Nothing against the wisdom of age, but pro football -- unlike Major League Baseball where skill is defined by experience -- is a young man's game. Except for a few select players, football players compete for a few years and then drop out the game. Sorry, Sam. Sorry, Sonny. Behind the times.

It is entertaining if it means anything today that Sonny was backup to the great Norm Van Brocklin for the first four years of his career starting in 1957 or that he played for the great Vince Lombardi when the coach took over the Redskins for the 1969 season after leaving the Green Bay Packers.

Sam started out with the New York Giants in 1956 (when Lombardi and Tom Landry of Dallas Cowboys fame were assistant coaches). In fact, Landry, then the Giants defensive coordinator, put in the revolutionary 4-3 defense in to capture Huff's middle linebacker skills. Huff also played in what has been known as the "The Greatest Game Ever Played" -- that 1958 sudden death title contest won by the old, Johnny Unitas-led Baltimore Colts, 23-17.

Surely, you can't diminish what Sonny and Sam have meant to pro football. But to hear them over the air carrying on like Matthau and Lemmon in "Grumpy Old Men" gives a reason to tune out. On one play during the Rams game, one of them was heard saying, "He leaped and caught the ball." Boy, that's insightful.

In many respects, the nation's capital is an old town with 70- and 80-year-old politicos in their twilight years running the country. And as historic championship-winning franchises go, you can't argue with the tradition of the Redskins, dating back to 1937 and irascible owner George Preston Marshall. But should that be the draw in 2009?

Sonny and Sam calling Redskins games for over 30 years really should be enough.

Football is a game growing in popularity each year. In fact, judging by television ratings and polls, the NFL has never been as popular. Young people, women and minorities today all are embracing a sport that no longer has an offseason. Sure, grandpa is still there rooting, but times are changing.

We all know that ex-players become announcers. Take a listen someday to the Baltimore Ravens' broadcasts with the impressive Rob Burnett, the defensive end who retired in 2003, and then do a comparison with acknowledged greats Sonny and Sam. Just no comparison.

Time to change Redskins.

• More: Wikipedia's current list of NFL announcers.

Photos: Sonny Jurgensen (top): http://www.hailredskins.com; Sam Huff:
http://www.art.com