It's Chow Time on the Farm

When Buddy Teevens was hired to replace Tyrone Willingham in 2001, I was optimistic. Here's a guy who worked under Steve Spurrier and had great success in constructing prolific offenses. His first game as Stanford's coach last season was a rout of San Jose State, and I thought "No Tyrone, no problem. We haven't missed a beat."

The two consecutive Big Game losses were shameful enough. But yesterday's debacle against Notre Dame made it clear just how far Stanford football has fallen in the last 15 months. The coach should have been more than able to get the team motivated for the ABC cameras last night, given that it was Senior Night, you're up against your former coach and the team you're facing is the most hallowed program in college football. Given those circumstances, a 50 point loss sends a perfectly clear message: Buddy Teevens has completely lost his team. I know that athletic director Ted Leland has repeated that he will give Teevens three full seasons. I know that Stanford didn't have great talent or experience this season. But to give up the worst home loss in school history tells me that this team has no future with Teevens. Can anyone say with a straight face that the program is better off now than it was after that SJSU game last year? Does anyone honestly think that Teevens can magically dig us out of the canyon he's created from a squad that went 9-3 in 2001?

Stanford needs to suck it up and cut its losses. We can't endure another year of quarterback controversies (next year it's just gonna be Edwards, Matter and Ostrander playing musical chairs), impotent offensive schemes (we averaged just 283 yards per game this year) and blowout losses (we were outscored by 138 points this season). So let's be proactive and hire USC's offensive coordinator Norm Chow as our coach. Chow's offense has been one of the best in the nation for the past few years and he obviously knows how to succeed against Pac 10 defenses. Chow is the hottest commodity on the coaching market, and Stanford would be foolish to let him get hired by someone else. Pass the collection plate to buy out Buddy's contract!

 
The Grandest Sport of All

That's right, folks: college basketball has returned from a painfully long offseason, so it's time for my season preview. Before I get to my predictions, I will (as expected) offer up some random thoughts:

* This column would have come sooner had I felt that the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic were a worthy season-opener. The Memphis-Wake Forest/Marquette-St. John's doubleheader two weeks ago was a less-than-tittilating slate compared to the preseason tournaments of years past, which always featured top 10 teams. To me, the season starts in earnest this Tuesday when Michigan St. takes on Kansas.

* I love how everyone looks at Syracuse and says "Oh, losing Carmelo Anthony won't be that big of a deal. Let's rank them in the top ten." There's absolutely no way that Gerry McNamara and Hakim Warrick will simply fill the void of the #3 pick in the NBA draft. The 'Cuse won't be any higher than a 7 seed in the tournament.

* Every year there are a few players who make me think "What? That guy still hasn't graduated?" This year's winner of the Jason Kapono Award for over-staying one's college welcome goes to Chris Duhon. Doesn't it seem like he started at Duke about six years ago? Honorable mentions go to Jameer Nelson of St. Joe's, Gerald Fitch of Kentucky, Arthur Johnson of Mizzou and Amit Tamir of Cal.

* I look at Maryland's roster and I don't see a single name I recognize. It's unbelievable to think that this is the same school that won the title just 19 months ago.

* I just love the fact that Patrick Ewing's son is playing college basketball. So many questions: will he too sweat like a monsoon? Will he be a frequent customer at the Bloomington area strip clubs? Will he be the ultimate anti-hero that the media loves to hate? Watching him at Indiana will be pure entertainment.

* It's ridiculous to see so many college basketball writers making Final Four picks in the preseason. How in the world are you supposed to predict which teams will end up in which region? As if making final four picks after the brackets are released wasn't hard enough.

* As for which new coaches, will have the most immediate impact, you just have to look at the caliber of their players. I think Roy Williams will have the most success as his trio of sophomores will continue to be outstanding. Bill Self will won't have an easy job at Kansas, because I just don't see Langford and Simien compensating for the loss of Hinrich and Collison. As for Ben Howland, he'll soon realize that Steve Lavin was unsuccessful because he couldn't recruit any smart players.

* The best conference race will be in the ACC. Does UNC have enough firepower to hang with Duke, which will be much-improved with the addition of Luol Deng (and the subtraction of Casey Sanders)? The teams split their regular season games last year and this year's editions will surely remind us again why this is the best rivalry in all of sports. Should the Devils or Heels falter, N.C. State (masters of the Princeton offense) and defending conference champion Wake Forest will challenge for the ACC crown.

* UConn's future one-and-done freshman Charlie Villanueva is a lot like LeBron James in one respect: he looks like he's about 28 years old.

* I absolutely love Stanford's team this year. There's much more intensity, heart and hustle in these players than there were in The Borchardt Era. Curtis really epitomized those years for Stanford basketball: robotic efficiency, consistent success, but a lack of killer instinct and a penchant for inopportune injuries. This year's players are diving on the floor for loose balls, hollering at the crowd after alley-oops and their pre-game huddle bristles like a 13-man riot. If the newly-chisled Rob Little, the tenacious Justin Davis and the frenetic shot-blocker Matt Haryasz (my new favorite player) can stay out of foul trouble, our frontcourt will be outstanding. Matt Lottich and Chris Hernandez are both intense guys who are solid at their positions. The only question: how good does Josh Childress want to be? J-Chill has the talent to be the best player in the conference (and lead us to the Pac 10 crown) but so far hasn't shown the cockiness needed to become The Man. Our future is in his hands.

Mr. Predicto

CONFERENCE WINNERS
ACC: Duke
Big 12: Missouri
Big East: UConn
Big 10: Indiana (sleeper pick alert!)
SEC: Florida
Pac 10: Arizona
Conf. USA: Louisville

FINAL REGULAR SEASON AP POLL
1. Florida
2. Duke
3. Missouri
4. North Carolina
5. UConn
6. Kentucky
7. Gonzaga
8. Arizona
9. Kansas
10. Notre Dame
11. Stanford
12. Indiana
13. NC State
14. Michigan State
15. Louisville

FISRT TEAM ALL-AMERICA
C Emeka Okafor, UConn
F Ike Diogu, Arizona St. (Naismith Award Winner)
F Julius Hodge, NC State
G J.J. Redick, Duke
G Raymond Felton, UNC

2ND TEAM ALL-AMERICA
C Arthur Johnson, Missouri
F Ronny Turiaf, Gonzaga
F David Lee, Florida
G Rashad McCants, UNC
G Bracey Wright, Indiana

NATIONAL CHAMPS
I made this prediction way back in April and I'm sticking with the Gators. In a season with few dominant teams, Florida has the closest thing to a complete package. They've got a nice backcourt with super soph tandem Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh. Their terrific frontcourt combines Christian Drejer (who will merit the hype that he was supposed to live up to last season) with David Lee, who'll be SEC player of the year. Their crafty coach (maybe too crafty if you ask Monty) Billy Donovan is one of the best in the game, with one Final Four appearance already under his belt despite his youth. This time, he'll take home the trophy.

 
'Roid Rage

Most of the recent criticisms of baseball's laughable steroid testing policy have been on point. But while most are focusing on the prevalence of steroids (5-7% of players tested positive last year), it's the absurdly lenient penalties that have me up in arms. From the SF Chronicle: "Players who test positive for the first time will enter a treatment program. After that, they'll be suspended or fined -- 15 days or $10,000 for the second offense, 25 days or $25,000 for the third offense, 50 days or $50,000 for the fourth offense and one year or $100,000 for the fifth offense."

So let's say you're Anaheim slugger Troy Glaus and it's the start of the 2004 season. You think to yourself "I'm in the last year of my contract and I had a lousy season last year. I really need to put up some huge numbers and my team isn't gonna be a contender. Hey, I might as well start using 'roids. The worst case scenario: I happen to be randomly selected five times in one year and I test positive five times. Instead of taking the suspension, I'll just pay the $100,000 fine, which is less than two percent of my $9 million dollar salary."

And that's in the worst case scenario. I mean, what's to stop anyone from juicing up? Some may worry about soiling their reputation, but two months after his corked bat incident, everyone treated Sammy Sosa like nothing happened. I fear that this new testing program will do more harm than good.

 
The Bootleggers Ain't The Problem

Yesterday's release of two major rap albums, Jay-Z's The Black Album and G-Unit's Beg for Mercy, illustrates the irrationality of the music industry. At a time when the industry is desperate for hit records, it makes no sense for Def Jam and Interscope (which are both owned by Universal Music Group) to put out both albums on the same day. Given that these are the two biggest rap releases of the fall and target the same audience, why divide your potential first-week market? Granted, if you were a fan of both acts you would buy each record, but there's no arguing that sales would have been better had they been released in separate weeks.

Then there's the fact that both of these albums had their releases pushed up because they had been leaked to bootleggers and file-sharers. This has become a standard practice now in rap, as every artist now grandly announces then hastily shifts up their street dates so as to avoid being victimized by music pirates. But by making these switches so abruptly and releasing records on unorthodox days (as opposed to the standard Tuesday) you just end up confusing retailers, the press and your audience- not to mention the fact that you waste all the marketing dollars you spent trumpeting what is now an inaccurate launch date. Why not just save everyone the trouble and just plan for the inevitable leak ahead of time? This lack of common sense is what's submarining the music industry while other entertainment mediums (movies, video games, cable TV) withstand the country's economic downturn.

 
Cineplex Complex

After an unusually intense week of filmgoing, I have managed to see all three movies that came out last week. Here are some spoiler-free observations on the week that was.

As has already been well-documented, The Matrix Revolutions stunk up the theater. To me it felt as if 10 minutes into the movie, the Wachowski brothers were clubbed unconscious, locked in a closet and the rest of the film was directed by some over-zealous Terminator fan. That dreadful 25-minute sentinel vs. human battle sequence (which didn't feature a single character I cared about) made me feel like I was watching Rise of the Machines. Plus, the movie didn't answer any of the franchise's philisophical questions- a complete cop-out for fans of the first two films. Walking out of the theater, I thought that the movie had to have been a hoax. I'm still waiting for the Wachowski brothers to be released so that they can make the real ending to the Matrix trilogy.

Elf was another movie that I was really rooting for, but ended up as a disappointment. I've been a huge Will Ferrell fan since his first Saturday Night Live sketch back in '95 ("Get off the goddamn shed!") and I'd even go so far as to declare him to be the best performer in SNL history. No one else could do impressions, goofy characters, physical comedy and play the straight man, which Ferrell did masterfully. And he carried the show during his last five seasons, appearing in seemingly every 90% of the sketches. So while I'm thrilled that he's finally been getting recognized as a star, I was rather miffed that his first starring vehicle turned out to be a rather sappy, witless kids movie. There were a handful of laughs scattered throughout the movie and I'm sure a wide audience will find it unobjectionable, but I felt Ferrell was too trapped in this role. He has such a broad array of comedic talents that it's a crime to confine him to a rather one-dimensional role in such a soft film. I'm very much looking forward to next July's Anchorman, where I think his full potential will be realized.

Easily the best movie I saw last week was Love Actually. The commercials make it seem like a cheery, heart-warming holiday chick flick- which, on some levels, it is. But I liked how much deeper the movie went in terms of tone and character. Several of the nine intertwining stories are ones of heartbreak and pain, and I'm glad that writer-director Richard Curtis didn't feel the need to give every character a happy ending. At the same time, all the characters were so likeable (especially the gorgeous Keira Knightley) that you still leave the theater with a big smile on your face. This movie really illustrates why the British do comedy so much better than we do. If this were an American movie, it would be a limp, predictable PG-13 piece of schlock, instead of the edgy, witty, adult, surprisingly politically conscious film that Love Actually was.

 
Shed

I had to shake my head at the news that Fox had canceled it's new series Skin after just three episodes. It was easily the best-reviewed drama on the network and was heavily promoted during the summer and throughout this fall's baseball playoffs. I watched the pilot, and while I wasn't blown away, I was at least pleasantly surprised by the depth of the characters (particularly the scheming parents). Yet this is just another example of a long pattern of programming impatience by Fox. Every time the network gets a new, offbeat show that gets great reviews, it's prematurely yanked. Shows like Action, Family Guy, Andy Richter Controls the Universe and Undeclared (one of the five funniest shows I've ever seen) were all original, creative shows fallen prey to Fox execs who give these shows competetive time slots because they don't have a "mass appeal." Skin (which was up against Monday Night Football and Everybody Loves Raymond) was basically set up to fail, so you wonder why the network even bothered in the first place. I just hope that creative producers learn their lesson and just go to cable, where they'll at least stand a fighting chance.

 
What Have You Done For Me Lately?

The most recent college football coaches poll was released today and it highlights the most vexing aspects of the polling system. Unlike in college basketball, each week's football polls are absolutely integral for determining the national champion. My first question: why is Florida State ranked five spots ahead of Miami? They have identical records and the Canes throttled the Seminoles in Tallahassee. Meanwhile, Miami's only loss was on the road to a team now ranked 5th- how does this translate into an 8 ranking while FSU is #3?

The answer, unfortunately, is that when coaches and writers are polled each Sunday, they put too much weight on what happened the day before instead of looking at the season as a whole. This practice is unfair because teams are at the mercy of the schedule-makers. Even teams that lose twice early (like #8 Michigan) are rewarded over teams that face a tough opponent late in the season (like #22 Oklahoma State). Pollsters need to stop punishing teams for losing by automatically dropping them a set number of spots in the polls.