Bottom of the Bird Cage 4/8

It’s the 98th day of the year, and we honor the men who wore that number for the Chiefs, led by defensive ends Eric Hicks and Leonard Griffin.

On this day in 1975 Frank Robinson managed the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first black manager in major league baseball. And on this day in 19897, Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigned amid a controversy over racial comments he made on the TV show Nightline.

It was on April 8, 1992 that tennis great Arthur Ashe announced he had AIDS, acquired through blood transfusions.

And on this day in 1926, Vegas comedian Shecky Greene was born in Chicago. Back in the 1970s, Greene was one of the highest paid comics in the country. One of my favorite Shecky Green jokes was when he talked about how Frank Sinatra saved his life one night. Five guys were beating him up, just punching and kicking him when Sinatra said “OK, he’s had enough.”

Don’t forget to tip your wait staff.

From Yahoo.com:
The woman in the Facebook picture is attractive, with auburn hair and icy blue eyes. She is flanked by several other women, each armed with an inviting smile and curvy features. Along with the photo is a hopeful note from the female “fan” asking to be added to a player’s personal networking profile.

The twist? These women don’t actually exist, at least not in the way that some unsuspecting NFL prospects are led to believe. Indeed, they are a figment of one NFL team’s imagination – a phony Facebook profile, used as a tool by one franchise in the pre-draft vetting process. A Trojan horse that, when used effectively, unlocks a door to a world of Internet pictures and information which most NFL teams are now consistently compiling to help polish their dossiers on draft picks.

“It works like magic,” said a personnel source that was familiar with his team’s tactic of using counterfeit profiles to link to Facebook and Myspace pages of potential draft picks. The source directed Yahoo! Sports to one of the team’s “ghost profiles” – a term he coined because “once the draft is over, they disappear. It’s like they were never there.”

The practice may have an underhanded, back-alley feel to it, but most NFL teams are unapologetic when it comes to picking through the lives of prospective players. And with the tentacles of the Internet extending further than ever into the lives of athletes, online information has offered a wealth of fresh ammunition for teams. Whether it’s networking sites like Facebook, Myspace or Twitter, personal blogs, or just the random bits of information that can be found with an hour of free time and a powerful Internet search engine, NFL teams are gleefully delving into new cracks and corners that didn’t exist even a decade ago.

A fascinating story about the lengths that NFL teams will go to research college players and this whole Facebook and MySpace phenomenon. I have to admit: I don’t get it, but anybody under the age of 30 years old does get it and they can be found on these social networking sites. Some of the things that people put on their own Facebook and MySpace pages are stunning. Nothing appears to be out of bounds or embarrassing. At least not until a prospective employer picks up on the information.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer Op-Ed page:
The NFL has been misleading the public by accusing Comcast of depriving cable customers of its network. I would like to set the record straight. The truth is that Comcast wants to carry NFL Network, and we have been working hard to come to an agreement to do just that before our current contract with the NFL expires on May 1. In fact, we have offered to continue to carry the network under the terms of our current contract, but the NFL has refused.

You may wonder why. We’re asking the same question.

The NFL is the most sophisticated, lucrative, and powerful professional sports enterprise in the world, with a special exemption from antitrust laws that helps it maintain its monopoly on televised football. The NFL already makes more than $20 billion through long-term deals with ESPN, CBS, Fox, and NBC - more than the television-rights fees collected by the NBA, NHL, and NASCAR combined.

But the NFL wants more, and it’s trying to use its enormous market power to force millions of our customers to pay for games they have always seen for free. (On top of that, it denies tens of millions of cable customers access to hundreds of games provided exclusively to DirecTV.)

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This piece was written by David L. Cohen, an executive vice-president of Comcast and again highlights the biggest problem the NFL has with its TV network. Owners were sold a bill of goods about the NFL Network and the kind of reach it would have on the country’s cable system. There are increasing grumbling among the owners about the various problems and costs that have come from the network. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel either, or if there is, it’s a freight train getting ready to run over the league’s effort. The guys running the NFL Network thought they could force themselves down the throat of cable companies because they were the NFL. They found out differently.

From the New York Times:
“We can’t even keep up with our regular Bemidji State stuff,” he said. “We didn’t expect this. I was in Grand Rapids for the regional. I didn’t think we’d beat Notre Dame.” Who would? The unranked Beavers, winners of the lightly regarded and soon to be defunct College Hockey America conference, stunned the second-ranked Irish, 5-1, and ninth-ranked Cornell, 4-1, to win the Midwest regional in Grand Rapids, Mich., and become the first No. 16 seed (in the 16-team tournament) to advance to the Frozen Four.

Bemidji State will meet Miami of Ohio on Thursday at the Verizon Center in Washington. Boston University will play Vermont in the other semifinal.

Entering this season, C.H.A. teams had won one N.C.A.A. tournament game in eight attempts. Niagara was the lone winner, in 2000. Bemidji State lost first-round games in 2005 and 2006. The Beavers’ victories were so unexpected this year that the college booked a trade show at the hockey arena, John S. Glas Fieldhouse, for last weekend and removed the ice. So they have been practicing at the rink at the Bemidji Curling Club, about a mile away. The club has a tiny locker room and no showers.

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OK, I know some of you hard-core types figure Gretz has lost it. College hockey? First, hockey is a great game, under-appreciated by most Americans. If you like football, you’d love hockey because it combines all the same elements. Second, the Frozen Four NCAA ice hockey championship is one of the great events in the country. But third, and most importantly, this is a great story that reminds us again that athletic accomplishment does not just happen in big cities, does not just happen in the suburbs, and does not just happen on ESPN. Bemidji, Minnesota is a town of 13,500. The team is a 16th seed and at one point was 8-13 this year. That they’ve reached the Frozen Four is truly one of the sports years more remarkable stories. Even if you don’t like or understand hockey, you can appreciate this Hoosiers like story.