Man Of Troy

Old dude Troy came all the way into the city for a few beers, Ohio State football and my sausage chowder. That's soup, btw.

Anyway, Troy offered up some fairly profound insight on today's OSU game at Illinois.

"I'm looking at two matchups in particular," he said. "Ohio State's offense against Illinois' defense, and Illinois' offense against Ohio State's defense. If either one of those teams can with both of those matchups, I like their chances."

Favre From True

I'm a big fan of tradition. My sports heroes are guys who stay loyal to one team, work hard and stay out of trouble off the field.

The retirement/Packers/trade fiasco notwithstanding, Brett Favre remained near the top of my short list of guys who I think get the wins the right way.

But I have a hard time believing him when he's said, after a win a few weeks ago, and again last night, that those games rank near the top of his list of most memorable victories. Come on dude, you played in a million high-pressure games in your many years with Green Bay. Two midseason victories in your first season with a decent Jets team that's still trying to get to know you cannot rank up there.

Memory Lane

I often get nostalgic this time of year, what with the holidays around the corner, and the Ohio high school football playoffs set to begin this weekend.

It seems not long ago that Dad was taking me to see Hiawatha Francisco lead nationally feared Cincinnati Moeller when the Crusaders came up to Cleveland to take on annual power St. Edward, led by the elusive Chris Mobley.

Pops pulled a string or two to get me into prestigious St. Ignatius High School, which I promptly chose to leave just one semester in because the hammer surely would have dropped before the end of the second one. I wanted to get that transfer back to Plan B Richmond Heights promptly certified so I could actually earn a spot on a basketball team.

But as I went through high school, and my Spartans were adding on to the nation's longest losing streak each week, Coach Chuck Kyle was building a dynasty back at Ignatius. His daughter Maureen wasn't even 10 yet, but little did I know I'd have a big crush on her upon meeting her in Louisville 14 years later.

Anyway, one of Kyle's first state championship teams was led by Joe Pickens, who I met just two months ago when this conversation went down at a bar here in New York:

Me: "Oh, you were on that team?"
Some big guy named Joe: "I was."
Me: "Hey, that quarterback from those first title teams, Joe Pickens ... I know he started out at Ohio State, then transferred to Duke. What's he up to these days?"
Some big guy named Joe: "He's at a bar on the Upper West Side, drinking a beer right now."

Anyway, if you're like me or PAE contributor Wall and you frequent the agate page and you've got excellent recall, you've probably heard of the Richmond Heightses of the great state of Ohio. Sure those big schools are impressive, but the Buckeye state has its share of cornfields and rural roads and its own Friday night lights. So without further delay, here's a re-run of one of my favorite columns that I've ever had the privilege to write:

Ohio Prep Football: Bring On The Playoffs!

Leave Spitz Alone

Some newspeople are quick to forget that the reason they have other people's quotations to critique is because their colleagues go ask those people questions. Most of the time, the reaction that's being dissected is exactly that -- a reaction to tiresome questions by pesky media types. Mark Spitz was not seeking out the microphones; they came to him.

I was getting along just fine in the world, not really hearing anything about the 1972 Olympics superstar. But as this summer's games drew near and Michael Phelps appeared poised to break Spitz's record for most gold medals in a single Olympics, naturally, Spitz returned to the spotlight.

Reporters disrupt his life by asking questions, Spitz gives them answers. A centuries-old practice.

People cannot control their feelings. We can control what we do or say, but there's no way to force a feeling. If Spitz feels like he's been slighted by not being asked to join a U.S. contingent in China and support Phelps' gold rush, then he is plenty entitled to feel that way.

Americans celebrate so many things and so often in over-the-top fashion, that it's indeed a surprise that the USOC didn't extend such an invitation to Spitz. It wasn't too long ago that we made a big deal about Hank Aaron not getting too involved in the Barry Bonds hoopla when the surly slugger was chasing down Aaron's all-time home run record.

Though 36 years have passed, Spitz still feels strongly about his contributions to an otherwise tragic Olympics in Munich. I've always been a sucker for passion, especially when for years it's tactfully kept quiet and only brought to the surface by an annoying television reporter whose colleauges later sit on their air-conditioned sets and ridicule a man who accomplished in one week more than we'll achieve in a lifetime.

Michael Phelps: 2 For 2

Michael Phelps swam the opening leg of the men's 4-by-100 meter freestyle relay, and teammate Jason Lezak closed with an improbable anchor effort and the USA beat a confident French foursome in Beijing Monday.

Phelps remains on course for a record-setting gold collection now with this second first-place finish in two tries.

Please watch this video of the race.

Broadway Brett

I spent an hour this morning annoying Central Park visitors with questions about the Jets' acquisition of future Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, also known as the guy from "There's Something About Mary." Responses ranged from "It's great for the team" to "I didn't say you could take my picture." I shot the video, wrote the story and made the poster image.

>> Read More Here

More All-Star Weakness

I used to think ESPN celebrated itself far too much, but this is ridiculous. MLB has given itself an erection about its great players, past and present. Do we really need nearly 40 minutes of introductions?

Anyway, these current and former baseball greats participated in a -- you guessed it, lengthy -- parade up Sixth Avenue Tuesday afternoon. My pictures are at the bottom of this story on MyFoxNY.com.

All-Star Lame

I can't get over all the hoopla over a meaningless July baseball game up here in New York.

"The last All-Star game ever to be played at Yankee Stadium," is what we've been hearing all about for at least a week now. Who cares?

In its 85-year-history, tonight's Midsummer Classic is only the fourth one to be played at what surely is one of the more famous sporting facilities around the world. But baseball's all-star game is weak, and really all all-star exhibitions are stupid.

Now if the Yankees make it to the World Series and they're playing a Game 7 in the Bronx come October, by all means, give the House That Ruth Built a proper sendoff.

But for now, enough with the hyperbole, perhaps best -- or worst -- expressed by none other than Gay-Rod himself, he of the perfect hair and orange face: "It's truly magical." Magical is what PR people and losers with no originality say when they want to overstate something's worth.

Paul Pierce

I don't know what kind of incentive clauses are in Paul Pierce's contract, but I'd bet there's some sort of a one-time monetary bonus for having led his Boston Celtics to the NBA Championship. We're talking hundreds of dollars here.

So if there's some extra income flowing into the ole bank account, perhaps he might splurge on a razor blade and shave that awful excuse for facial hair.

Caaashtastic

Those great Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals matchups in the 1980s were happening at the same time as that "NBA Action ... It's Faaaaantastic" campaign. And ever since, commissioner David Stern and other NBA suits have claimed that the game is for the fans.

Is that why the Finals is being stretched out over two weeks, with no games on Fridays or Saturdays, and school-night games running from 9 p.m. until midnight when much of its target audience has to wake up early for work the next day?

How's My Fanhood?

Remember that recent ESPN Mobile campaign where one user seemed to question his friend's fanhood?

Well, a good friend and fellow Ohioan seemed to do that to me on the phone the other night, and a healthy debate ensued. I told him this was going on the blog, but I'll be polite and not drop his name.

Sure I'm one of the more sensitive dudes I know, and some friends are thick enough to think that's a bad quality. But one thing I don't do is get emotional over my squads. Consider this lineup before you wonder if I've endured some heartache:

+ Cleveland Indians (1997 debacle against the Marlins)
+ Cleveland Browns ("The Pass" and "The Fumble")
+ Cleveland Cavaliers (Some guy named Jordan)
+ Cincinnati Bearcats (Kenyon Martin breaks his leg in 2000)
+ Ohio State Buckeyes (losers of the last two national championship games)

So yeah, those are my teams. And my boy seems to think that not taking bat to chair, matches to couch or forehead to brick wall means I'm not down.

I told him I could probably recall all the starting quarterbacks and running backs at Ohio State the last 20 or 25 years. His reply was sensible, that just being knowledgeable, a student of the sport and team, isn't enough to make me a die-hard fan.

As a former sportswriter, I've covered many games, coaches, teams and players, but only was lucky enough to interview John Cooper for a season preview once in the 1990s. Ohio State football would be a dream job for a beat writer.

But my friend continued by saying that growing up in smaller, rural towns in central Ohio as he and some others in our circle did offered only OSU football as their childhood athletics outlet. Having grown up in the gigantic metropolis known as Cleveland, I had those other teams to distract me from OSU football. So he and the others are hard-core and I am not, by his logic.

"You had a lot of other options when you were growing up that they might have watered down your interest in each. Did watching any of those Cleveland teams lose make you cry?"

No, they didn't, because it's dumb to get emotional over games, especially since they're played by people I've never met. "Watching Ohio State lose has made me cry three times," he said.

Don't get me wrong; I took the sports I played pretty seriously in high school and there is sports in my family's history. But I think being even-keeled as you support the local team is OK if you still want to call yourself die-hard.

That's why I can be proud that my Indians took the best team in baseball to seven games in the ALCS last fall before bowing to the eventual World Series-winning Boston Red Sox. I'm not the typical hater to call talk radio, for example, and blast my squad because "they suck." You know what? The Tribe was supposed to merely contend for a postseason spot, not beat the best team in the sport.

And that's why I can be proud to have watched my Cavaliers hang within one point of the Celtics, with two minutes left in Game 7 of their series two weeks ago, on Boston's home floor, before losing.

And that's why I can handle OSU's having lost the national championship game because after that embarrassing loss to Florida the year before, everyone had their sights set on 2008, not 2007. So this is the year for Buckeye football, and it begins in less than 100 days. Expect me to be there when OSU plays at USC in September.

And expect me to watch every game with Steve and Bruce and the gang up here at our favorite bar.

Just don't expect me to get emotional if they don't win the national championship. I see my friend's point; I really do. But to me, it's just games, fellas. I don't really cry about much else, so why would I cry about college football?

Must Shut Up

Dear Sports Media:

A must-win situation is only a situation where the team facing it will be eliminated from the playoffs if it loses that next game.

A 2-0 series deficit in a best-of-7 is not a must-win for the trailing team, so please quit trying to make things more dramatic than they are. That's called lying.

And a "virtual" must-win is the same thing as being somewhat pregnant. It's either a must-win or it's not. Please make a note of it.