Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . .
The time to give Roger Clemens the benefit of the doubt is now over. Clemens simply embarrassed himself and his family on Wednesday. Clemens' lame attempt to explain Andy Pettite's testimony was reminiscent of Clemens claiming he thought the bat was a ball when he threw it at Mike Piazza. Clemens continuously licked his lips, fidgeted in his seat and stumbled through his responses all day. He looked like a Fernley football player nervously putting on his Cal cap. So do us all a favor and just fade away, Roger. Make like Mark McGwire and disappear. The less we hear or see of you, the better off baseball will be.
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Clemens said he didn't know that Brian McNamee injected Clemens' wife with Human Growth Hormone. Clemens said he didn't know that Pettite was using performance enhancing drugs. Clemens said he didn't know that Pettite believed Clemens was using performance enhancing drugs. This is a guy who prides himself on being a great friend and a great family man. He sure didn't know much about his wife and his best friend, did he?
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The only people who embarrassed themselves more than Clemens on Wednesday were the committee members who fell just short of asking Clemens for his autograph. They looked like O.J. jurors.
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Do baseball fans care whether or not Clemens used performance enhancing drugs? Of course not. Oh, sure, Wednesday's circus was interesting theater but other than that, who really cares? Baseball fans didn't care about all the steroid rumors when baseballs were flying out of ballparks in the late 1990s and earlier this decade. And they still don't. Pitchers and catchers have reported. All is well in the world again.
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The saddest part of baseball's steroid era is not that guys like Pettite and Clemens got caught and ruined their reputations. Those guys are big boys. They knew what they were doing and it paid off for them in millions of dollars. The saddest part of this mess is that high school athletes all over the country started looking for the same shortcuts in disturbing numbers. Here's hoping that every high school coach in America sat their entire teams in front of a television set on Wednesday. It's also time that every high school athletic association starts to test its athletes for performance enhancing drugs.
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The Wolf Pack men's basketball team seems to be peaking at the right time. The Pack, once again, is the best team in the Western Athletic Conference. It can score inside and out, play defense, rebound and block shots. It is handling the ball like a championship team and everyone seems to be falling into their roles. Mark Fox is doing his best job of coaching this season, molding a young team into a title contender.
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Who should be the WAC's Player of the Year? The Pack's Marcelus Kemp and Utah State's Jaycee Carroll are both more than deserving. You really can't choose between the two. This would be a good year to name Co-Players of the Year.
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If the NCAA really wants to conduct a postseason tournament with its best 64 teams, the Wolf Pack needs to be involved.
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In case you haven't noticed, Wolf Pack point guard Armon Johnson is one of the best freshmen in the country. The kid is going to win WAC Player of the Year one day. Johnson can do it all - shoot from the outside, score inside, rebound, handle the ball, run an offense and sell popcorn. And you're not going to find a young man who works harder and loves the game more. But none of this surprises anyone who saw Johnson play at Hug High.
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Everything you need to know about what's wrong with the NBA (OK, most everything) can be summed up in the fact that a guy like Devean George is all it takes to ruin a blockbuster deal involving Jason Kidd. Players run the NBA. Everyone else is just window dressing. Players force trades, they block trades, they get coaches fired, they get general managers fired, they run the whole show. It makes you wonder why any coach would leave college to coach in the NBA.
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Nobody should be surprised if the Northern Region wins its third consecutive Class 4A boys basketball state title later this month. Reno winning in 2006 as well as Galena winning in 2007 wasn't a fluke. Those schools were truly the best teams in the state. No other team had five starters who played as well together as those two teams. The South will always have more talented individual players - most of the South schools are twice as big as those in the North or bigger - but the days of the Las Vegas area dominating the state tournament are over.
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If you still don't think that hockey is the toughest sport to play, take a look at the film of Richard Zednik getting his throat sliced by a skate.
