Savannah State should drop back or drop kick football

Imagine for a moment if Congress only accomplished 15-percent of what was best for the country. Okay, bad example. We seem to send most of those jokers back to Washington repeatedly regardless of what they do. Let's instead say that your daughter came home from school to tell you she had only answered 15 questions correctly on a 100 question English exam. You would tell her, naturally, that you can't accomplish much in the world if you have a success rate of 15-percent. Someone desperately needs to deliver that message to Savannah State University when it comes to its football program.

Robby Wells resigned this week after just two years at the helm of the Tigers. His win-loss record: 7-15, good for a winning percentage of .318. How sad it is that winning 32-percent of the time, something that is only acceptable to a major league baseball hitter, was considered wildly successful at Savannah State. This is a program, after all, that hasn't had a winning season since 1998. SSU was a Division Two school back then, and judging by its lack of success since moving up to Division 1-AA (now known as FCS), it should either drop back down a division or perhaps just save the money and not play football at all.

Since becoming a full-fledged member of 1-AA in 2002, Savannah State's record on the gridiron is 13-73, good (good?) for a .151 winning percentage, almost as low as John Edwards's latest approval rating. The Tigers won only six games in six years before Wells was hired prior to the 2008 season. Why the lack of success after the change in divisions? At this point, who cares. The bottom line is that the record shows eight years of failure, with very little if any chance for improvement, and the only place where someone would tell you to keep doing the same thing after eight years of failure is Washington D.C.

Some will say that other schools have gone through similar football swoons and have emerged successfully. You would, however, be hard pressed to name one such school with the athletic budget and ability to tap alumni for donations, or lack thereof, such as Savannah State. Also, with one of the most successful FCS programs in the country in Georgia Southern just up the road, it is clear there is not enough talent available for the Tigers to be competitive. Drop down to Division Two, and that changes. Indeed, the Tigers' only football playoff appearance in the school's history came as a D-II school in 1992 (full disclosure, SSU was blown out in the first round by Jacksonville State, and the author was a student at JSU at the time).

Sadly, since it is 2010 and we should have moved on by now, one can't help but wonder if skin color played a role in Wells's tenure. You may recall that there were some not-so-subtle protestations from some alumni when SSU hired its first white football coach and, five months later, its first white athletics director in Bart Bellairs. Some believed that the historically black school had betrayed its heritage. Both Bellairs and Wells are now gone; Bellairs resigned in November just 18 months after he was hired. While they both officially left SSU on good terms, only those behind the scenes know the true story. The timing, though, is fishy considering that most thought the football program was still making progress under Wells despite going 2-8 last season.

The true story should be that Savannah State has nowhere to go but up. But unless SSU has it's own version of T. Boone Pickens ready to properly fund a Division One football program, it's record on the field has shown that it has no business trying to compete in that division. There is no shame in competing in Division Two; ask Armstrong Atlantic State if it hurts them. But if Savannah State is more ashamed of dropping down a division than of a 15-percent success rate, the school would set a much better example for its students by spending its money on them rather than football.

USC vs. USC not the first initial battle

Having never lived in Southern California, I don't know if the folks there have the luxury of taking time out from their pine tar and gila monster droppings mud baths at the spa to care about their university's battle of initials with the University of South Carolina. USC has won the battle so far, but USC isn't giving up just yet on what may turn out to be the most famous of the many battles over initials that have taken place. Frankly there should be a third contender in the battle for the most famous use of SC, one that has nothing to do with athletics.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court upheld a trademark board's decision that South Carolina could not feature an interlocking "SC" logo on it's baseball team's caps. Normally, any decision involving Gamecock baseball gets the attention of 47-and-a-half people, including members of the baseball team. Sure, the couple thousand fans that typically show up for baseball games at South Carolina pretend they are watching, but about 1,940 of them are usually busy discussing whether the Gamecocks football team will ever return to it's glory days of contending for third-place in the SEC East and getting invited to the Outback Bowl. But the logo decision has ignited a long-simmering anger among a lot of Gamecock fans because it reminded them yet again that, in the eyes of the nation, South Carolina will never be the real USC. That title forever belongs to the University of Southern California.

Indeed it was Southern Cal who challenged South Carolina's logo because it looks too much like the one USC (Southern Cal USC, that is) has used for many years. Southern Cal's attorney, Scott Edelman, then poured salt on the wound by saying the logo fit the Trojans' warrior image more than "a goofy little chicken." Some on South Carolina's side have tried to fight back by pointing out that South Carolina came along before USC (Carolina founded in 1801, USC in 1880), and that the last time the two schools met on the football field in 1983, the Gamecocks won 38-14. Or, as Neil White wrote in "The State" newspaper, "two little words: Lane Kiffin."

There are two problems with those arguments. If it happened before the iPhone came out, you might as well be arguing that South Carolina is better because a T-Rex who lived in what is now Columbia ate those pesky little velociraptors from what is now Los Angeles. The cocaine or frog-licking afflicted memory of So-Cal folk only goes back so far, and not as far as the meth-afflicted memory of an Upstater. For the 18 people in So-Cal who don't use drugs, reminding them of Kiffin's hiring as the Trojans' football coach is not an insult. USC fans take Kiffin as a compliment because he and his family are so purty, which is the number one quality Southern Californians look for in a person.

So the battle for initials appears headed the same way as other famous, or maybe not-so-famous, battles for letter supremacy. The World Wildlife Fund won a Royal Rumble over Vince McMahon for use of the WWF letters and logo, and 97-percent of the world promptly forgot what WWF stood for. The Atlanta Braves thought they would have supremacy over the "AB" logo, but of course lost out to Food Network guru Alton Brown, who won his case by pointing out the Braves were full of lecithin (which, regardless of whether it comes from soybeans or egg yolks has low solubility in water).

Though it appears Southern Cal has beaten South Carolina, don't think for a minute the battle of SC is over. There should be another contender, one that has had more of a positive impact on people's lives than both universities combined. I speak, of course, of the "Sick Call", the greatest radio program in the history of Athens, Alabama. Were it not for the "Sick Call", thousands of folks would never have had their "death and funerals" announced over the radio. The same can be said for thousands more who were patients at Athens-Limestone Hospital, and the rest of us who were fortunate to have lived in Athens would have no idea that Hometown Grocery had turkey necks, lard, and tampons on sale this week. So if there is a lawyer who could represent the "Sick Call" in this ongoing fight, I would bankroll it...if I had any money. Then, after the "Sick Call" got its due, perhaps Athens itself will go after those goobers in Georgia and Greece for the right to call itself the true home of real Athenians.

Litmus this

Boy, it sure was swell this morning, having my coffee with my biscuit, gravy, grits, sausage, bacon, eggs, oatmeal (gotta watch the ole ticker), chocolate cake, milk, and orange juice for breakfast, followed by a half-pack of unfiltered Camels. A big, Southern boy breakfast like that hits the spot when I am trying to become angry. After all, every white man is an angry white man. An angry, right-wing, tea-bagging white man, though I usually hold off on tea until the afternoon. Wait, tea? Why, that would mean that this angry, white, Southern, right-wing Jesus freaky dude would actually be a lefty commie pinko frog-licking figure skating fan. What's wrong with me? Maybe it's because I don't meet all of the litmuses (or is the proper term litmi) of the supposed litmus tests many folks in this country would apply to me.

I am Southern and proud of it. When I say that to some people, they assume that I have a giant Confederate battle flag outside my house, a flag to which the entire family salutes every morning at daybreak as we sing "Dixie" (well, the toddler sings "Mississippi Mud", but we're working on that), while the hired help makes our breakfast and washes all my white hoods. You haven't lived until you hear a Canadian wife sing "Dixie." We draw beards and hats on our dollar bills so that George Washington resembles Robert E. Lee, and we never, ever buy Northern toilet paper, even if it's half-price. Ludicrous? Of course, but you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to convince some people that being a Southerner doesn't mean you long for the days of "Roots", the Ed Asner/Chuck Connors side of "Roots" anyway.

Stereotyping like that shouldn't happen in 2010, but it does and not just to Southerners. There are a legion of folks who believe that President Obama at this moment, at least after he prays to Mecca and shreds his real birth certificate one more time, is using the Folgers Crystals commercial formula to secretly insert Instant Islam and Karl Marx For Kiddies into the school lunches of every child in America. He then holds his daily meetings with the Eternal Flamers, the gay and we don't mean happy gay lobbying group, to conjure up ways to turn half the population into homosexuals through mass exposure to musical theater and women's softball. It must be working, because I checked out two Fred Astaire movies and two Gene Kelly movies from the library last week and also have a strange urge to pitch underhanded.

On the other side, there are folks who faithfully believe that Rush Limbaugh is about to give marching orders to millions through headsets that look like Bluetooth but were actually installed by Cybermen imported from a "Doctor Who" episode. Those people don't eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, vote, or root for their favorite sports team unless Rush tells them to, which would explain the alarming number of Pittsburgh Steelers fans in the South. Of course, Rush can't do this until he comes back from his daily cross burning with Glenn Beck, the skeletons of Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, and Strom Thurmond, Michael Steele, and Clarence Thomas, the latter two being white dudes in blackface, of course.

As silly as that sounds, we sadly live in an era where you are virtually banned from being part of the daily discussion of issues unless you believe in some stereotypes. Just this week, when expressing agreement with the Supreme Court's decision striking down the ban on some corporate and union campaign contributions, some folks thought I had suddenly emerged from the broom closet as "Tea-Bagger Man", fighting to ensure that all liberals are fed to the billy goats, or at least have underwear that is two sizes too small. I am still amazed that, because I believe everyone regardless of their politics should be able to say whatever they want and spend whatever they want to get their message out, some believe that necessitates an anti-gay slur, as if it is okay to use an anti-gay slur as long as you use it toward the right people.

Litmuses (or litmi, I need to look that one up) sadly don't discriminate, regardless of your politics. There are many Democrats who do not believe you are one of them unless you believe there should be no restriction on abortions at all, even if you agree with the Dems on every other issue. At the upcoming Republican National Committee meeting in Hawaii, while a handful of nutjobs hold the state's department of health hostage until they provide Obama's "real birth certificate", there is an actual litmus test proposal on the table. If it is approved, the RNC will not give money to political candidates unless they agree with the RNC on at least eight of ten "conservative principles." "You ain't a Republican unless you say Obama is a socialist poopy head. Say it, son. Say it!!" No wonder independents are so disenchanted with Washington right now. It is too bad that, even though independents have all the political power, the two major parties will never let a meaningful third-party take away the fun they have jerking us around.

Don't get me wrong. People should have principles. You don't have to compromise over everything a la Lindsey Graham, whom I always liked but who will bend over for just about anyone. But if we disagree on a few things, that's okay. You shouldn't be labeled a Klan member if you don't believe in affirmative action. You shouldn't be told you are going to burn in Hell if you don't have a problem with two guys being in love with each other. This is America, after all. I think it is anyway. Or maybe I'm just a jingoistic, flag waving, xenophobic dummy being controlled by Jeff Dunham, who, as anyone who reads the 'internets' can tell you, is actually George W. Bush in disguise.

Glavine can come back, but only if he pulls a Nature Boy

Tom Glavine reportedly is coming back to the Atlanta Braves, either as a broadcaster or in some sort of front office role. If he does, he should make an entrance like this...


Glavine cutting a promo where he says "There are three reasons I returned to the Braves. Number one, I hate the New York Mets..." would help me forgive him for being so p.....errr, rhymes-with-hissy when the Braves released him last year and for his role in the players' side of the work stoppage of 1994. Seriously, it would be nice to see Glavine with the organization that helped make him a future hall-of-famer, and if Glavine is smart, he would know he will probably outlast the man who released him, General Manager Frank Wren.

Not that Wren was wrong to release Glavine, he wasn't. Wren's mistake was waiting so long as to give the impression that Glavine would pitch again, when it was obvious to everyone except Glavine that he was done....at the end of 2007. Sure, he was 13-8 with a 4.45 ERA for the Mets that year, but his ERA was only that low because of the 2.80 he posted in March/April of that season. Glavine had a 5.83 ERA in June of '07, 5.14 in July, and 6.10 in September/October. When he gave up seven earned runs in only one-third of an inning in his final start of 2007 against the Marlins, the consensus was that, great as he once was, Glavine's arm might as well have been an udon noodle.

But Glavine didn't go. He came back home to Atlanta for one last go of it. But when he went 2-4, 5.54, with 37 walks and 37 Ks in 63.1 innings before getting hurt, Wren should have been man enough to say there wouldn't be room for him in '09. Wren didn't. Glavine's feelings were justifiably hurt, and the Braves had managed to hack off two legends (Glavine and John Smoltz) within the first six months of '09. Now, the healing has apparently begun, which is good for everyone.

Still, I'd love to see Glavine break character just once and lay the smack down. You know it is in him, because he used to be a hockey player. Wonder how much it would take for Glavine, should he join the broadcast crew, to go Hanson Brothers on the Mets? Oh, and just so there is no misunderstanding, there is only one true set of Hanson Brothers, and they will break your friggin' "Mmmm Bop" neck.

Should the Braves go after Johnny Damon?

Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is among those who believe the Braves should make a run at free agent outfielder Johnny Damon, late of the New York Yankees. The Yankees seem reluctant to re-sign Damon as his agent, Scott Boras, originally asked for a two-year contract worth $14 million.

While Damon could certainly help the Braves, especially since they only got Melky Cabrera for Javier Vazquez, part of Schultz's reasoning is that Nate McLouth "looked only average" last year. Certainly, McLouth wasn't a superstar in 2009, but his 3.6 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) ranked him fifth among National League center fielders. He is projected to be about the same as he was last year, which isn't great, but is definitelyabove average.

McLouth also is 28, and Damon is 36. Still, Damon would be a good pickup for at least one year unless he has a complete meltdown offensively, unlikely if he moved to the weaker National League. Damon had a 3.0 WAR in 2009, and that number was dragged down by his terrible left field defense. His wRC+ (weighted Runs Created, adjusted for ballpark) was 132, meaning he was 32-percent better on the offensive side of the ball than the average American Leaguer. Needless to say, that's pretty dang good, and even a small drop in production in 2010 would be light years ahead of the waste of uniform material that was Garrett Anderson (a negative 1.0 WAR) in '09.

So yes, Johnny Damon would help the Braves, but Schultz makes the mistake of saying the Braves need him so they will have (cue the big ballsy voice guy) a "legitimate leadoff hitter." Jeff trots out the tired old line used by many. "The Braves have not had a legitimate leadoff hitter since Rafael Furcal left town after the 2005 season. That’s also the last season they made the playoffs. Funny how that works out." Gee, I wonder how the Dodgers made the playoffs in '09 without a "legitimate leadoff hitter" (LLH) last season? They had Furcal, you say? If the main function of an LLH is to get on base, then in the immortal words of children's book author Dan Gutman (who also wrote the baseball classic "It Ain't Cheating If You Don't Get Caught), nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you. Furcal had a .335 OBP in '09, 17 points below McLouth and 30 points below Damon. The Cardinals also made the playoffs without an LLH, and the World Series runner-up Phillies alleged LLH, Jimmy Rollins, had a sterling OBP of .296.

You say that bolsters Schultz's argument that Damon is a LLH? Only problem with that is that Damon hit behind Derek Jeter almost all of last season because Damon's legs are not Derek Jeter's legs (Jeter had 30 steals to Johnny's 12). I'm not saying Damon would be a bad pickup for the Braves, because he could help the team. Even though it might be disastrous from a defensive standpoint, having McLouth and Damon hit 1-2 in the lineup for a full season would, if they stayed healthy, be potent and would take some of the pressure off an aging Chipper Jones. What I am saying is that Schultz and others are mistaken in their thinking that Atlanta needs a LLH to win. Not only that, McLouth is closer to being a LLH than is Johnny Damon.

I don't think Frank Wren will spend the money on Damon because Wren is either incompetent or is handicapped by the money changers above him. The Braves have already committed $3.1 million to Cabrera, and I doubt they did that with the idea of platooning Melky with Matt Diaz until Jason Heyward is ready. Still, if Wren finds enough pennies under the couch to sign Damon, I hope he will outlaw razor blades from his locker so we can once again see the grubby Damon from the Red Sox "idiots" days, as immortalized in an "Arthur" cartoon on PBS that was one of my daughter's favorites.

Ox should look for the Dade Co. cable TV shooter next time

News from my hometown. Someone in the hunting party of state insurance commissioner and Republican candidate for governor John Oxendine was sprayed by pellets from an accidental gunshot in Dade County. Ox and his sons were at a quail hunting preserve which I have never heard of, although to be fair, I haven't lived in Dade in some time. However, if Ox knew my home county at all, he should have known there are plenty of shootists there who could have prevented such an accident.

When cable TV arrived in Dade County around 1978, everyone was talking about it. Then, just a few weeks after it went on, cable TV was gone, snowy pictures for my family and all the other charter subscribers. Some had suspected it was the work of a church group who had lobbied against cable TV because the president of the cable company was Mephistopheles himself. You know the story, Mephistopheles greases the palm of the county commissioner (yes, there was a single commissioner in Dade County at the time, but his palm was never greased. It was slicker than K-Y 24/7). The county commissioner then talks about how Mephy is a fine upstanding member of the community even though Meph openly admits the only reason he wants to bring cable TV to Dade County is so boys don't have to sneak into theaters to see movies with cussing and nekkid women. Meph wins, and we got our cable.

Until, that is, it went out. It was gone for a few days, which felt like decades for a kid who had already become accustomed to watching the hapless Atlanta Braves and the Three Stooges every day (sometimes simultaneously). Then, like the prodigal son, cable was back. The explanation of where it went was given to us on the public access channel, which was a black and white channel where public service announcements on cards were held by hand (I'm not joking) in front of a camera. The announcement held up to the camera several times in the days after our Valhalla returned simply read, "We apologize for your cable TV being out. Someone shot the cable." We later learned from the rumor mill, which is Dade County is 100-percent true, that someone had repeatedly been using the wiring near the cable company's headquarters for target practice until they were finally caught.

So next time Ox is in Dade County, he should ask some locals about the cable TV shooter, and if that guy is still around, everyone in Ox's hunting party will take home a covey of quail or a bevy of squirrels, or whatever it is they are hunting. And if Ox is ever hunting in Covington, Georgia, he should avoid my beloved first cousin as if he were Glenn Richardson on Bourbon Street. Once when we were about 12, my cousin decided it would be a swell idea to hold a pellet gun to his left palm and pull the trigger. He then tried to talk his uncle (my dad) into cutting out the pellet with his pocket knife so his mother (my aunt) wouldn't find out. I will give you three guesses as to whether that line of persuasion worked.

When what's offensive shouldn't be offensive anymore

They say you are never too old to learn, and this week, Denver Public Schools taught me something I never would have learned otherwise. Denver schools taught me that Paula Deen, our beloved Miss Paula, is a bigot. So, for that matter is Colonel Sanders and Savannah's Mrs. Wilkes. And don't forget Popeye and Mr. (or Mrs.?) Church. They are all virulent racists bent on perpetuating an old and devastating stereotype. For that matter, so am I, at least according to Denver's educators, or perhaps more accurately, the parent of one Denver student.

Last Friday, in honor of Martin Luther King, Junior, Denver schools decided to offer their students a "Southern" meal. Yes, "Southern-style" chicken and collard greens. Denver schools issued a lengthy apology for its insensitivity after receiving a mountain of complaints from hundreds, nay thousands of outraged parents, who immediately organized a march from.....oh, wait a second. They did so after getting complaints from......one parent. Only one, and she wasn't any ordinary parent. This speaks volumes about what used to be a degrading stereotype of African-Americans.

The negative depiction of African-Americans and foods such as fried chicken and watermelon goes back almost as far as when the first black slaves were forced to come to this country. They began to fade somewhat during the civil rights movement of the 1950's and '60's, and since then have only resurfaced every so often courtesy of a few ignorant people. One of the most recent examples was golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, who referred to Tiger Woods after the '97 Masters this way, "He's doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it." Zoeller then smiled, snapped his fingers, and walked away before turning and adding, "or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve." Zoeller apologized, but as we now know, Tiger was probably too busy in the back seat of his limo to notice the whole kerfuffle.

So from an historical perspective, it might be easy to see why the Denver schools menu would cause offense. The only problem is that, for some reason, it didn't apparently cause offense to any African-American parents or any black school officials. The one and only person who raised the ruckus was a white parent of a kindergartner, Jennifer Holladay. Fine, you say. A parent has a right to complain if the school system does something they don't like, and that is true. However, we then learn that Ms. Holladay calls herself an "anti-bias educator." She is the former director for something called Teaching Tolerance, which is an offshoot of the Southern Poverty Law Center. That means that, whether or not she was legitimately offended by the Dr. King menu, her complaint has to be marked with an asterisk.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 and was once a great organization, helping to bring Ku Klux Klan members and other legitimate bigots who got away with murder and other crimes during the Jim Crow era to justice. However, a perusal of the SPLJ's "Klanwatch" blog these days finds that it is virtually indistinguishable from places like MoveOn.org. There are many crackpots on the conservative right to be sure, but the folks at the SPLJ these days seem to think that everyone who doesn't agree with the crackpots on the left are members of "hate" groups. I suppose one does what one can to stay relevant when your original mission has just about been completed.

If there had been more complaints other than those of Ms. Holladay, perhaps one could take them more seriously. The problem is that Ms. Holladay's "job" as an "anti-bias educator" goes away unless she can continue to find bias behind every nook and cranny, just as the SPLJ apparently thinks it will disappear unless it becomes a nut job organization. The Denver school system did not wake up one day and think, "hmmm, how can we offend some people today?" They thought they were doing a good thing. The president of Denver's school board, Nate Easley, Jr. said it best in his response. "As a black man, the things that offend me more is how we are doing with kids in the district," he said. "It's not having kids graduating and doing well. The outcomes of the district are more offensive to me than someone trying to do the right thing and being offensive. If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today, I think he would be more concerned about our outcomes of our students than what they are eating to honor him."

It is 2010, more than a year after we elected a black president just four decades after Dr. King's death, long before Dr. King thought something like that would be possible. How much does it say about how far we have progressed that one of the most delicious meals in the world is not seen as an invidious attack by African-Americans but only by someone who has a vested interest in "racist" behavior? Can we please enjoy our soul food in peace? It is almost a certainty that most folks, black and white, love fried chicken (and some of us love the collards, too), so I hope Ms. Holladay look the other way when we chow down. Otherwise, we'll have to break out the tacos. Oh wait a minute, Mexican stereotype. Ah, there's a ham in the freezer. Nope, offends the Jews. Some matzo balls? Aw, what the heck is the North American Matzo Preservation League?

It's McGwire or no one

"If you had a pill that would guarantee a pitcher twenty wins, but might take five years off his life, he'd take it." - Jim Bouton in "Ball Four."

The greatest sports book of all time, and arguably one of the five greatest books of any genre, was published in 1970. Back then, the only people using steroids were bodybuilders with huge pecs and not-so-huge other thingies to get them ready for competitions or the latest gay magazine layout. But there was another drug of choice for big league ballplayers back then, one that was not described as a "scourge" or turned major leaguers into "cheaters", "villains", "poopyheads", or any number of other descriptives handed down by the sanctimonious media. Those drugs were just the latest way ballplayers tried to get a leg up on their competitors, something that's been going on since the invention of the professional game. That's the reason all the hyperventilating about Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, et al is just that, a bunch of hot air that should be sucked away so those guys can eventually take their rightful place in baseball's Hall of Fame.

McGwire, as you may know, apologized the other day for his steroid use during his playing days, an apology we knew was coming ever since the Cardinals named McGwire as their hitting coach for the upcoming season. That apology wasn't enough for some of the baseball writers who are, of course, without sin in their lives. The apology wasn't sincere. McGwire didn't apologize in the correct way. He never admitted that steroids made him a better hitter or shrunk his manhood, that they were the reason he broke the (cue the big ballsy voice guy) "most hallowed of baseball records", Roger Maris's 61 homers in a season. The only problem is McGwire couldn't apologize for that, because it simply cannot be proven to be true.

As Jim Bouton wrote, the baseballers' drug of choice in the 1960's and '70's was the "greenie", an amphetamine that probably didn't enhance anyone's on-field performance. But the players who popped copious amounts of greenies thought they did, many claiming they couldn't take the field without them. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, talked openly about greenies before "Ball Four," and even after Bouton's book was out, most of official baseball said that Bouton was off his rocker and continued to deny that greenies existed. We now know that official baseball was lying, just as blatantly as Commissioner Bud Selig appears to have been lying when he claims not to have known about steroid use in the 1990's. This begs the question, did Roger Maris pop greenies in 1961?

Regardless of what anyone tells you, the only person who knows that answer passed away on December 14, 1985. If the answer is yes, then Maris's breaking of Babe Ruth's record is just as illegitimate as that of McGwire or Bonds, at least it is if the virginal media critics of the 'roid users are to be consistent. Therefore, Babe Ruth once again holds the legitimate single-season home run record. Then again, there is now a lot of evidence that Ruth used corked bats during his playing days, which is, you guessed it, cheating. Did he use corked bats during his 60-homer season in '27? The only person who truly knows that passed away on August 16, 1948.

If he did, then the "legitimate" single-season dinger record goes back to the first person everyone thinks of when it comes to homers, the great Ned Williamson. Who, you ask? Why Natty Ned, or as he was known to his teammates, Snoop Neddy Ned. In 1884, Snoop hit 27 homers for the Chicago White Stockings, an amazing total for an era in which only one baseball was used in each game. Since spitballs were still legal, that ball usually was the color of the Oval Office ashtray and had the consistency of a cow pattie by the end of a game, so 27 bombs is an amazing total. That is until you consider that 1884 was the first year in which a ball hit over the fence on the fly was counted as a home run. Before then, it was counted as a double. Couple that with the fact that the White Stockings' home ballpark was smaller than Jay Leno's ego (186 feet and 190 feet down the left and right field lines respectively), and Snoop's record becomes dubious.

That would give the record to Harry Stovey (14 homers in 1883). But Stovey played in the American Association, and while most historians consider the A.A. of that era a major league, the older National League considers it a ball of phlegm. If you're a National League tory, then baseball's single-season home run king is....Charley Jones, with an amazing nine dingers in 1879.

Now, some will say this is silly, that only McGwire and Bonds actually benefitted statiscally from their drug use, unlike Maris and other greenie users or the Babe and other corkers. But one thing McGwire did say accurately, and I dare anyone to challenge this scientifically, is that sometimes he had good seasons when he was on 'roids and sometimes he had bad seasons when he was on 'roids. His numbers bear him out. Steroids may help make you physically stronger, but they don't help you generate bat speed, which is the number one component in hitting the ball out of the ballpark.

So why, you ask, did Bonds' numbers go up after he (apparently) started juicing? If you recall, it was about that same time that Bonds started wearing giant elbow pads, forearm pads, hand pads, butt pads, and other body armor that made him resemble a character in "Rollerball." Bonds also started standing practically on top of the plate, and no pitcher was man enough to throw at him to back him off. Couple that with an altered swing to generate bat speed, smaller ballparks than those of the '70s and '80s, and voila, dinger records galore.

Did 'roids help Mark and Barry? Maybe. Were steroids the only reason they hit a ton of homers when they did? Of course not. Therefore, just as the 'corkin' Babe and the possibly greenied Maris, not to mention a possibly greenied Hank Aaron, were hailed when they broke their records in their eras, McGwire, Bonds, et al should not be treated as pariahs for following baseball's grand tradition of finding ways to win. What McGwire and Bonds took were not outlawed by baseball at the time, and may even have been tacitly encouraged by Selig and the rest of official baseball. Bottom line, McGwire and Bonds were two of the best players of their era, and that means that like the other best players of other eras, they both belong in the Hall of Fame.

Rembember, Vols, you asked for it

Now that Lane Kiffin is leaving Tennessee after one season filled with some decent football and a lot of tongue, I must admit I am going to miss the guy. Oh, sure, I will get to see him on TV more than ever, but unlike if Kiffin had stayed at Tennessee another few years, it won't be the same.

Granted, he will be all over the telly because, regardless of the righteous indignation you currently hear from some commentators, Lane is tailor-made for the Hollywood treatment his predecessor, Pete Carroll, always received. Kiffin is young and hot and can talk s*#@. It doesn't matter whether he has any coaching ability. He is a looker and can yap, and that is all that matters in the world of big time television these days. Just look at how Carroll was treated even after revelations that Reggie Bush may have been making more money in college than he does with the Saints. The media couldn't wait to be seen next to him, the pathetic hot dog eaters desperate to hang with the cool guy.

If you are offended by the fact that Kiffin does talk a bunch, tough, because that is a badge of honor in 2010. Kiffin wears that badge in the form of a rap song, "Banned From TV" from Lil Wayne, which includes the line "smoke weed, talk s--- like Lane Kiffin." Kiffin will be the "in" thing, at least for now. If his team starts winning, look out, because he might actually become an appendage of ESPN (ESPNK, anyone?) Shoot, it already happened a little last year. Remember CBS's sideline reporter interviewing Kiffin first, rather than Urban Meyer, after the Vols lost to Florida?

So why am I kind of sad to see Kiffin leave the SEC? If nothing else, he injected some badly needed color into the league, even if he had to stick his foot in his mouth to do so. He clearly got under the skin of Meyer. Granted, that was pretty much the main reason he was hired by the Vols, who had just thrown the coach that got them a national title under the bus. Kiffin's act, unfortunately, has already been done in the SEC (see Spurrier, Steve). Now, Kiffin can go hang out at the beach and probably win a few more games playing in the weakling Pac-10 as opposed to the conference that has the last four BCS titles.

I believe in free speech, except for Jenny McCarthy

Did you know that there is evidence that Savannah State football players suffer from a defect that, in a controversial theory being postulated by some, is caused by the Savannah State campus's approximate distance from Wiley's Championship BBQ and other fine Savannah restaurants. Take this factor, multiply it by pi (that's 3.1416 etc., not lemon meringue), and you find the defect that will prevent the Tigers from fielding a winning team, at least until you put them on a special milk-free diet. Ludicrous? Sure, but no more ludicrous than the bizarre notions being spewed forth by "actress" Jenny McCarthy and others in the name of "curing" autism in children.

Autism, if you don't know, is a wide spectrum of issues that affect the way one out of every 110 people communicate and/or interact with others. Many people with disorders on the autism spectrum make poor eye-contact or perform actions such as rocking back and forth, waving their arms, or repeating with alarming detail the way you cursed out another driver during a road-rage fit, including the date and time of the incident and the proper conjugation of the curse words. Before you gasp at the flippantness of that last sentence, I should let you know that our daughter is autistic, so I speak from experience. I also wouldn't "cure" her for all the money in the world.

The latest in what has been an endless line of evidence that there is no known cause for autism, nor a medical "cure", comes from a panel of experts publishing in the journal Pediatrics. The report says there is no evidence that digestive problems are more prevalent in children with autism than in others, and that special diets being hocked by McCarthy and other charlatans don't do a thing to change autistic behavior. It's the latest blow to what we will call Wakefieldism, named after British doctor Andrew Wakefield, who finagled a study in 1998 that he claimed linked autism and a bowel disorder to the measles vaccine.

No serious researcher has ever confirmed Wakefield's findings, but that hasn't stopped him from making a ton of money at his clinic in Texas. It also hasn't stopped McCarthy from lecturing us that autism would go away if we simply expose our kids to the risk of measles, whooping cough and polio and have them eat char-grilled bean sprout burgers on gluten-free buns three times a day. I have a hard enough time getting our kid to eat normal, child-friendly food, not because she can't poop properly but because she inherited her father's childhood finickiness. But even if I could eliminate the fun from her diet, I wouldn't because it wouldn't change her autistic behavior one bit.

Ms. McCarthy and many other parents of autistic children would argue with me until they were blue in the face, but...and let me type this slowly so it sinks in....there is no evidence on their side. None, nada, zip, zero, not an iota of medical evidence backs them up. You can't say it hasn't been studied, because autism has been looked at incessantly for over eleven years ever since Mr. Wakefield apparently decided he needed a get-rich-quick scheme. I know, I know. The lack of medical evidence is part of the conspiracy and coverup by the vaccine companies, the government, Donald Trump's hair, and the aliens locked in the secret room at the top of the gold dome at Savannah City Hall. Silly me.

Yes, being a parent of an autistic child is difficult. So is being the parent of a blind child or a deaf child or a child with down syndrome. Our autistic daughter also brings us joy for her laughter, her musical gifts, her ability to read and do math well above her first-grade level, and the love she showers upon her little sister. Sure, her behavior is sometimes hard to control, but you know what, so is mine, particularly when Jenny McCarthy tells me how much I stink as a parent. I believe in the first amendment as much as anyone, but if there ever is censorship of ex-blond bimbos, I might look the other way.