The LeBron-to-New York Myth

The myth that basketball superstar LeBron James will sign as a free agent with the New York Knicks picks up steam this week because the influential New York magazine is telling us in a cover story why it should happen.

Nice try, New York.

Particularly cute was the Photoshopped cover image of LeBron appearing to pull an orange-and-blue suitcase on wheels complete with the Knicks logo and an I Love New York button.

But LeBron, the NBA’s most dynamic talent, will not come to the Knicks because there is no compelling reason for him to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers.

First, the supporting players with whom LeBron runs in Cleveland (Mo Williams, Antwan Jamison, Shaquille O’Neal, Anderson Varejao, Delonte West et al.) are far better than his Knicks’ supporting cast would be.

And that would be true even if the Knicks could convince free agent power forward Chris Bosh to leave the Toronto Raptors and join LeBron in New York.

Second, it is no longer necessary for a great athlete to play for a New York team to maximize his earning potential. This is not the late 1970s when Reggie Jackson’s baseball star ascended once he traded his Oakland A’s and Baltimore Orioles uniforms for Yankee pinstripes.

Nowadays, a great athlete in a team sport can play anywhere and rack in major endorsement dollars.

Just ask Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts.

I lived in Indianapolis in 2001 and '02. Even the locals call it "India-no-place" and "Naptown."

Sidney Crosby is the most marketable star in hockey. He’s not a New York Ranger or New York Islander or New Jersey Devil. Crosby works his on-ice magic in a Pittsburgh Penguins uniform.

While it is true that Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter earns more money in endorsements than any other baseball player — a reported $35 million a year — Jeter rakes in the big bucks because his team wins championships — four World Series rings in his first five full seasons — and his image is squeaky clean.

If LeBron stays in Cleveland and lead the Cavs to their first-ever NBA title, he’ll be well on his way to becoming the world’s second billionaire athlete (after Tiger Woods).

LeBron does not need NEW YORK across his chest to become filthy rich. He already is.

If LeBron, a native of Akron, Ohio, were to leave the Buckeye state for New York, his image would change overnight, and not for the better.

No one perceives LeBron as greedy today. But many would consider him greedy if he leaves a place where he is revered to become the latest bold-faced name in New York City.

And athletes who are perceived as greedy and opportunistic do not rank high on the marketability scale.

At least New York put LeBron on its cover in a Cavaliers jersey, not in a Knicks jersey with No. 6 — the number he says he’ll switch to next season because he wants No. 23 to be retired in honor of Michael Jordan. (A New York Post article last week put LeBron in a No. 6 Knicks home jersey.)

By the way, Jordan did not need to play for the Knicks to validate his greatness.

Neither does LeBron.

Tiger Woods: The REAL Hank Haney Project

The comedian Dave Chappelle does a riff in which he asserts that you know a man is famous when if someone performs fellatio on him, then that person becomes famous.

Chappelle used former White House intern Monica Lewinsky as a case in point.

I was reminded of Chappelle’s riff when a parade of women appeared in articles in tabloids and magazines and on TV gossip shows after alleging to have had sexual relations with golf legend Tiger Woods.

No one would care about any of those women were it not for the famous man to whom they so desperately cling.

Surely, Tiger would fire those women if he could, the same way he fired his former caddie, Fluff Cowan, for extreme publicity-seeking away from the golf course.

Perhaps Tiger will also fire his swing coach, Hank Haney — not only for publicity-seeking, but also for poor results.

Were it not for his association with Tiger, Haney would not have had his own so-called reality show on The Golf Channel last year, "The Hank Haney Project: Charles Barkley."

Each week, on this prime-time program, Haney attempted to fix the massive hitch in the golf swing of Barkley, the basketball Hall of Famer. Whether or not Haney succeeded doesn’t matter. Barkley is merely a recreational player.

What matters is whether Haney can fix Tiger’s now-broken golf game, particularly his shockingly errant tee shots.

Even before Tiger withdrew from today’s final round of The Players Championship in Ponte Verde Beach, Florida, with what he believes is a bulging disc in his neck, his game bore no resemblance to the one that made him the sport’s dominant player.

Tiger was never a contender at this year’s TPC, one week after missing the cut at the Quail Hollow tournament in Charlotte.

And with 2010 Masters champion Phil Mickelson playing superior golf, Tiger’s hold on the world’s No. 1 ranking has become tenuous at best.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Butch Harmon, who coached Tiger during his most successful years on the pro tour, now coaches Mickelson.

Some golf analysts, including Johnny Miller of NBC and Brandel Chamblee of The Golf Channel, fault Tiger and Haney for changing the swing that made Tiger so great.

Tiger holds the driver differently, with his thumbs down instead of wrapped around the club, Chamblee argues.

Tiger’s follow through is not nearly as smooth as it used to be, asserts Miller, a former U.S. Open champion.

Miller also says Tiger should spend every night watching highlights of himself winning the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach by a record 15 strokes — paying strict attention to how he gripped the clubs and swung them — because that is the finest golf Miller has ever seen.

Of course, Tiger still suffers from the humiliation of being outed as a serial philanderer. But his golf game, especially his awe-inspiring tee shots, used to be above reproach.

Not anymore.

Tiger needs in his corner not a reality-show seeker, but a truly devoted coach who can resuscitate a limp golf game.

The Tiger Tale We'll Never Hear

Tiger Woods is only two strokes behind the leaders with two rounds to play at The Masters tournament in Augusta, Ga.

Golf’s player of the decade, in more ways than one, is just 36 holes from winning his 15th major title, which would leave him three shy of the all-time leader, Jack Nicklaus.

But it is worth remembering that the last time Tiger was in this enviable position, he imploded.

Last August, he led the PGA Championships by four strokes heading into the third round. Yet he played cautiously, sluggishly, and, by his lofty standards, sloppily, allowing anyone in the field to climb back into the tournament.

The only one to take Tiger up on the challenge was Y.E. Yang, a wiry South Korean known only to golf fanatics in his own country.

Yang moved into second place, two shots behind Tiger going into the final round, and was paired with the world’s No. 1 golfer on Sunday.

As we now know, Yang became the only golfer to overtake Tiger on the final day of a major, shooting a 2-under-par 70 to Tiger’s 3-over-par 75 to win the PGA title by three strokes.

In light of what we now know about Tiger’s serial philandering prior to Thanksgiving weekend 2009, it is entirely likely his energy at the PGA tournament had been sapped by a series of sexual threesomes, or intense one-on-one rendezvous with a woman not named Elin Woods.

No wonder Tiger blew the PGA. It’s a wonder that didn’t happen more often. It’s stunning that all the cheating and lying had not caused his majestic golf game to collapse sooner.

We don’t really know Tiger Woods, no matter how often we see him, with or without a club in his hand and that TW cap covering his receding hairline.

But it’s a safe bit that he’ll never tell us whether sexual recklessness was a factor in his meltdown at last year’s PGA. It’s also safe to wager that whatever woman or women he may have spent illicit time with during that tournament received a princely sum to remain silent.

I still root for Tiger to win tournaments, especially majors. I want Tiger to break Nicklaus’s record. It is because of Tiger that I started watching golf—during his victorious run as a 21-year-old at the 1997 Masters.

I root even harder for Tiger the man to live an honest life, mentally and spiritually. I root for him to be a better human being. Whether his marriage survives or not, I root for him to be a better father to his two children.

As much as I would love to know what happened to him at last year’s PGA, I’m sure Tiger will never tell that tale. So the fan in me hopes he seizes this golden opportunity and wins Masters title No. 5.

Better to see Tiger Woods morph from the world’s No. 1 punch line back into the world’s greatest golfer.

Jets' Best Chance: Hurt Manning

Upset victories at Cincinnati and San Diego have given the New York Jets enough of a cushion to squeeze into Cinderella’s glass slippers in the 2009-10 NFL playoffs.

You could argue, and I will, that the Jets have already accomplished the hardest tasks they will face on the road to Super Bowl XLIV.

If the Jets beat the mighty Colts in Indianapolis today, it would not be the biggest upset of this NFL season (see Browns over Steelers, Dec. 12, 2009).

Nor would it be the biggest upset in the history of Jets vs. Colts.

That upset occurred on January 12, 1969. As guaranteed by Joe Namath in Super Bowl III: Jets 16, Colts 7.

Defense and a strong running keyed the Jets’ upset that day. And football experts cite those factors as the Jets’ best chance for a win today.

Actually, there is an easier way.

Easier but unsportsmanlike.

Knock Peyton Manning out of the game.

The Colts are virtually unbeatable with Manning, their All-World quarterback, but undeniably mediocre without him.

In the Jets’ last visit to Indy, they scored a desperately needed 29-15 victory only because the Colts chose to rest Manning with a lead in the second half rather than pursue an undefeated regular season.

Manning’s replacement, Purdue rookie Curtis Painter, had a deer-in-the-headlights look in the Week 16 game.

Imagine how terrified Painter would be in today’s game with the AFC Championship at stake!

One solid hit on Manning by the blitz-happy Jets, or an accumulation of hard hits, could put him on the sideline and the Jets in firm control of the game.

Would Jets Coach Rex Ryan do such a thing?

Well, his father would. Remember the “Bounty Bowl?”

On Thanksgiving Day 1989, a Philadelphia Eagles team coached by Rex Ryan’s equally irascible father, Buddy, literally beat up the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium.

Giddy Eagles players revealed afterward that the team had a bounty on the heads of Cowboys kicker Luis Zendajas, whom they injured, and star quarterback Troy Aikman, whom they tried hard to injure.

Buddy Ryan stopped at nothing to win a game. And he never got to a Super Bowl as a head coach.

Rex Ryan is just one victory from a Super Bowl as a rookie head coach.

It appears to me that Ryan, the hot new coach in The Big Apple, has not fallen far from the tree.

So would Ryan tacitly urge his players to knock out Peyton Manning?

Why not?

If you’ve been paying close attention to football this month, then you know sportsmanship has been taking a pounding.

Two cases in point:

In the college national championship game on January 7, Alabama Coach Nick Saban’s team scored a needless touchdown in the final minute against Texas to produce a 10-point victory.

Last Sunday, with the Vikings already crushing the Cowboys 27-3, Minnesota Coach Brad Childress (a man who once said his team needed to play like “serial killers”) had Brett Favre throw a rub-it-in-their-faces touchdown pass on fourth down.

Neither Childress nor Saban apologized for his lack of sportsmanship.

Winning isn’t everything, both seemed to say. It’s the only thing.

Obviously, the Jets want to reach their first Super Bowl in 41 years.

If they decide to paint a bulls-eye on the back of the Colts’ No. 18 today, then they will show us exactly how badly they want it.

Shame on CNN

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, there is no need to exploit the immense human suffering on the impoverished Caribbean island.

Unfortunately, a CNN crew ignored that fact.

Scenes of Haitians seeking food, water, medical attention and information about the fate of loved ones are heart-wrenching enough.

But just as bad are the manufactured scenes.

On Friday night, Anderson Cooper’s CNN program showed footage of reporter Chris Lawrence in the midst of a crush of Haitians trying to get biscuits distributed from the back of a truck by relief workers.

“You can see the incredible chaos here!” Lawrence yells over the noise of people yearning for their first taste of food in days.

“Everybody pushing and shoving, desperate for anything to eat,” Lawrence shouts while being jostled from side to side and back and forth.

Lawrence had no business positioning himself, and a camera/sound person we did not see, in the midst of the tumult.

Whoever at CNN decided to inject Lawrence into the scene should be fired.

Two hours earlier, I saw the same footage on BBC News, but shot from a wider angle.

And the BBC reporter—who, like Lawrence, gets to sleep in a warm bed in a hotel room in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, at the end of every grim day—did not insinuate himself into the chaos.

After Lawrence’s piece, he appeared in a live shot with Cooper as darkness had descended upon the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

“Here’s what those people were so desperate for,” he tells Cooper, holding up what he described as a biscuit in a white wrapper.

Did Lawrence really have to take a biscuit just to play show-and-tell on CNN?

Of course not.

Why not simply show footage of a Haitian holding a biscuit?

But CNN found it more important to exploit the story rather than report it.

Tragically, there will be many more casualties in Haiti.

Basic human decency from news-gathering organizations need not be one of them.

If you text “Yele” to 501501 on your cell phone, a $5 donation will be made to the Haitian relief effort. Your cell phone will be charged $5.

Text “Haiti” to 90999 on your cell phone and a $10 donation will go to the Red Cross for Haitian relief efforts. Your cell phone will be charged $10.

Alabama 24, Texas 13

Tonight, Alabama running back Mark Ingram will become the second player in college football history to win the Heisman Trophy and the Bowl Championship Series title game in the same season. (USC quarterback Matt Leinart was the first.)

Ingram and his teammates are on the cusp of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship in 17 years.

The victory will be history-making and bittersweet for the Ingram family.

History-making because Ingram’s father, also named Mark, won a Super Bowl as a New York Giants wide receiver 19 years ago.

Bittersweet because the father won’t be in Pasadena, CA, to watch his son, nor will he be able to watch the game as a free man.

If Mark Ingram Sr. is allowed to watch at all, he will do so as an inmate in a Queens, NY prison, having been convicted of money laundering.

Mark Jr., a speedy sophomore, is 5-10 and 215 pounds and runs even bigger.

To his credit, he hasn’t succumbed to the pressure of playing big games while knowing he’ll be asked afterward about his father’s incarceration.

Heisman Trophy winners have struggled in national title games. They’re only 1-6 in such games, but Ingram will improve that record to 2-6.

The Texas Longhorns, his opponent in the national championship game, will do their utmost to stop Ingram.

The ’Horns may slow him down. But they won’t shut him down.

Two of Ingram’s teammates could be bigger factors in the game: Javier Arenas, a cornerback and superb kick returner; and Rolando McClain, a linebacker who will become an NFL star.

Just like Ingram.

Surely, you have noticed the man in the houndstooth hat that appears alongside this column.

That’s Paul “Bear” Bryant, the greatest coach in Alabama history, and one of the greatest football coaches ever.

The Tide won six national championships and 13 Southeastern Conference titles while The Bear prowled the sidelines, and they were title contenders virtually every year.

Every coach that has followed Bryant at Alabama has ridden in the back seat.

Gene Stallings coached Alabama to its last national title.

Nick Saban coaches Alabama now.

Each took the job after cutting his teeth as an NFL assistant specializing in defense—Stallings with the Cowboys, Saban with the Browns.

(Saban later became an NFL head coach, but he ran out on the Dolphins in season—after denying he would—to take the Alabama job.)

Stallings was very good. Saban is very good.

Both pale in comparison to The Bear.

Notice the crowd shots at the Rose Bowl tonight. You’ll see Alabama fans in houndstooth hats, paying homage to The Bear.

No other football coach has as tight a hold on the consciousness of his former team and its fan base as Bryant at Alabama.

Bryant coached during an era of enormous social upheaval in America. While he was not exactly a staunch supporter of civil rights, Bryant devised a cunning plan to convince segregationist Alabamans it was time for Crimson Tide football to integrate.

Bryant invited USC coach John McKay to bring his integrated squad to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to play the all-white Tide in 1971.

Bryant wanted Alabamans to see firsthand the speed, quickness, skill and athleticism of African-American players like USC running back Sam “Bam” Cunningham, who led the Trojans to an easy victory.

Bryant also wanted to keep winning big football games.

Since players like Cunningham were putting an indelible stamp on major-college football from coast to coast, The Bear essentially told Alabama: If we don’t get with the program, we’ll never compete for another national title.

Because of Bryant, I have always had an affinity for Alabama football.

The Tide lost their way for many years after his retirement, but Saban has rebuilt them into a national power.

And Ingram will help make them champions again.

Texas Tech Snubs Ruffin McNeill

Not every touching story in college football has a happy ending.

Take the story of Ruffin McNeill, a football lifer who deserves better.

After leading Texas Tech to a 41-31 victory over Michigan State in the Alamo Bowl last Saturday night, McNeill should have had the word “interim” removed from his job description and been named head coach of the Red Raiders.

That would have created a scene as heartwarming as anything in The Blind Side, the Sandra Bullock film about NFL player Michael Oher and the white family that adopted him as a homeless teen in Memphis.

But it appears McNeill will not get the chance to become the first black “non-interim” head coach in any sport in Texas Tech’s history.

Instead, the good ol’ boys stand to get their way again.

Tech is courting Tommy Tuberville, who spent 2009 working for ESPN after being paid by Auburn University to resign following the ’08 season.

Tuberville, 55, has had success in college football. He won the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Award in ’04 after leading Auburn to a 13-0 season.

He also has failed on the big stage.

He also has played fast and loose with the truth.

In 1998, he sought to dispel rumors he would leave Ole Miss by saying, “They’ll have to carry me out of here in a pine box.”

He signed with Auburn two days later.

Were it not for that 300-pound gorilla on the field known as race, Tuberville would not be considered a better choice for Texas Tech than McNeill.

Tuberville has no ties whatsoever to the Big 12 school in Lubbock, Texas. His past strongly suggests he would try to parlay any success at Tech to land a more glamorous gig somewhere else.

McNeill, meanwhile, has served with distinction at Tech for the past 10 years: first as a special teams coordinator hired by Mike Leach, then as the defensive coordinator.

When Tech fired Leach last week for mishandling a player diagnosed with a concussion, McNeill was named interim head coach.

“We all want Coach Ruff to get the job,” running back Baron Batch said after the game in explaining why Tech players walked onto the Alamo Dome field arm-in-arm with McNeill.

Batch, 22, is African-American, just like the vast majority of skilled players at Texas Tech and every other major-conference school.

Most of them will never see a black man in charge of a major-conference football program.

This sad reality makes it more difficult for these student-athletes to ever visualize themselves in such a position.

Batch, a senior in 2010, deserves to play more than one game for McNeill.

McNeill deserves the same opportunity Bill Stewart received.

Stewart, a career assistant coach, was named interim head coach at West Virginia days before the 2008 Fiesta Bowl after Rich Rodriguez abruptly signed with Michigan.

Mountaineers players took the field that night arm-in-arm with Stewart. They played hard for Stewart. They beat Oklahoma for Stewart.

After the game, Stewart was named head coach. He still has the job.

But the racial dynamics were different at West Virginia; Stewart is white.

McNeill is 51. His father, a retired high school football and basketball coach, played football at Johnson C. Smith, a historically black college in Charlotte.

McNeill’s mother played basketball and softball before earning her degree from Barber-Scotia College in Charlotte, a school founded in 1867 as “an institution for the training of Negro women.”

McNeill played strong safety and was team captain at East Carolina from 1976-79 before getting into coaching as a graduate assistant at Clemson. He holds a master’s degree in sociology.

If there is not room in the head coaching ranks of major college football for Ruffin McNeill, then the sport is sicker than you could imagine.

McNeill was candid and engaging with the media before and after the Alamo Bowl. He approved a daring quarterback change in the fourth quarter that sparked the team and made gutsy decisions to go for it on fourth-down plays that sealed the victory.

Afterward, McNeill’s players, black and white, doused him with Gatorade and gave him bear hugs as if he were their father.

But the administration, boosters, alumni and other friends of the program at Texas Tech evidently would rather pony up to Tuberville.

Never mind that Tech needs athletes who look more like a young McNeill than a young Tuberville to keep their program from becoming irrelevant.

There are 119 colleges competing in the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division 1-A. Of those 119 schools, only a dozen have black head coaches.

This is not an accident. It is a scandal…a scandal that continues with the apparent snubbing of Ruffin McNeill at Texas Tech.