Mike's Marbles

Moved to:

http://www.LouisvilleMojo.com/sportz

I don't know about the rest of you, but I turned on the TV Saturday, looked at the sorry bunch of infomercials, dirt bike riding, and other swill, and thought to myself, "When I turn the TV on in a month, there will be 5 college football games on instead."College football looks like the pristine sport right now. Sure, it's had its scandals, and will again, but at the moment it looks as clean as a Barry Bonds syringe before insertion. Corrupt officials? Loads of 'em! But their motivation is the home team, not money. I think.I'm looking forward to the return of college football with more anticipation than Microsoft's earnings report.

Bring on the gridiron.
Bring on Bill Curry.
And bring on the hated Irish, Nittany Lions, and Cornhuskers.

I'm ready.

In the immortal words of Don Barzini, "Certainly the NBA could present a bill for services -- after all, we are not communists."

The bottom line with the NBA gambling ring that is about to be exposed by the refs' answer to Henry Hill: Loyalty costs money.

There's a reason Michael Jordan never threw a basketball game. He was paid, and paid quite handsomely.

What do NBA referees get paid? I don't know for sure, but I do know it is significantly less than the $25 million Jordan made in his final season with the Bulls.

If Stern had chosen to pay his referees to the tune of seven-figures, we wouldn't be having a discussion about it. Wasn't that airline ticket exchange a few years ago a wake-up call? If those old men were so strapped for cash that they needed to exchange first class tickets to make a few bucks, it was only a matter of time before one of the league's referees came under the thumb of organized crime.

Vick is in trouble. The only Michael I know that could get out of this mess is named Corleone.

At President Bush's next news conference, Helen Thomas should ask, "Do you plan to pardon Michael Vick?"

And just think, until today, most of us thought Marcus was the black sheep in the family.

In the words of the late Howard Cossell, Ray Lewis, you've got yourself some competition!

Look for Bud Selig and his cronies to nix this deal as Selig digs deep into his bag of tricks learned from years of selling used cars.

Cuban is the exact kind of owner Selig doesn't want.

Cuban's the type of billionaire that'll go out and invest money in scouts, organization, and players.

In short, he will show that anyone with a Billion dollars (i.e., ALL of the owners) can make their teams work if they only invest money in building.

Selig and his phalanx have spent the better part of two decades trying to convince fans that Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Oakland are just too poor to spend as much money as the Yankees.

And it's all garbage.

Show me a billionaire that couldn't match Steinbrenner's $200M of player payroll.

It can't be done.

Oklahoma is now tied all-time in second place with Auburn, Texas A&M, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Wichita State.

They lag behind only SMU and Arizona.

At what, you ask?

NCAA Major Infractions, of course. The Sooners have reached the lofty total of seven, once again disproving the Oldsmobile addage, "This is not your father's Oklahoma Sooners."

It is. Cheatin' and Hollerin'.

Bob Stoops and his minions didn't seem too apologetic about the whole thing, either. The arrogance is mind-boggling. They should be embarrassed for getting caught. Duke never gets caught. But they have guys with 2,000 on their SAT's working around the clock to protect their program. Oklahoma is just a quiet Midwestern school without that kind of brain trust resources.

So congratulations, Oklahoma Sooners. Perhaps in the near future you'll reach for the stars and tie the greatest renegade program of all time, SMU, and the greatest point-shaving empire of all time, Arizona State, atop the charts at eight violations. REACH FOR YOUR STAR!

When you turn on ABC and CBS on a Sunday afternoon, and find car racing.

NBC? Track and field. And the Olympics are nowhere in sight.

ESPN's showing bowling. ESPN2, fishing. FOX Sports, boxing.

There's really not much to hope for this summer until the first exhibition football game rears its ugly head sometime in August.

Wimbledon starts tomorrow. The NBA draft is on Thursday. And there's that steroid-laced baseball thing.

My kingdom for a T.O. outburst!

Why did he go? Why did he come back? We'll never know. All we will ever hear is spin.

Now that the Billy Donovan saga has concluded, we can be sure of two things. One, Vitale and company will sing his praises for doing the "right thing", passing up big time money for the excitement of playing the "pristine and pure" college game.

Whatever!

Also, it is likely Donovan has permanently burned any bridges he might have had with the NBA. No other franchise will want to have the egg on its face that the Magic have right now for dealing with a wishy-washy candidate.

I can't believe how long they make us wait between games. Thursday-Sunday? It feels like the Cavs already lost the Championship because they lost Game 1 and so many days have passed since the loss with no more action, so it must be over. Right?

ESPN was the All-Roger network yesterday.

The sports reporter shows were all about whether Roger can turn the Yankees around. One said no way, another said let's wait and see. You gotta love the contrasting, in your face opinions at ESPN!

Later on SportsCenter, extended segments were devoted to showing footage of Clemen's rehab assignment on some minor league team. They showed pitch after pitch, using a telestrator to demonstrate how on-target his strikes were.Finally, an actual interview with the amazing man himself.

How much more of this can we endure?