Reggie Bush's Heisman Decision Prompts Other NFL Promises

Widespread speculation surrounding the NCAA's investigation finding that Reggie Bush and his family accepted cash and gifts from fledgling California sports agents prompted the 2005 Heisman winner to return the venerated Trophy.

The New Orleans Saints RB star's surprising decision spawned a series of other unlikely NFL players, coaches and teams to proffer these proclamations and generate the following gracious gestures.

NY Jets' cocky, corpulent coach Rex Ryan committed to construct a much better football team than the highly overrated one that never showed up for last Sunday night's nationally televised game on NBC.

Arizona Cardinals' management moved to waive 1st round pick Matt Leinart, so that the ex-USC QB bust could hone his skills and compete for a starting job on his old Pop Warner football team.

Tampa Bay Bucs, after an embarrassing opening day media blackout, vowed to draw more fans in the stands at Raymond James Stadium for their 2011 season kick-off than the total number of players who participated on the field in last week's battle between the Bucs and Browns.

New England Patriots' WR Randy Moss and Washington Redskins RB Clinton Portis guaranteed they'll continue to offer juicy, inane and selfish sound bites with Terrell Owens type flair until Commission Roger Goodell opts to step in and squash their reckless rants.

NJ Jets CB Antonio Cromartie, responding to HBO Hard Knocks' criticism of his irresponsible sexual behavior, pledged to remember the names and sexes of the seven children he fathered with six separate women in five different states during continuous one night stands over the past few years.

ESPN's John Clayton reports that the Heisman Trust in NYC will present Bush's return Trophy to the 2005 runner-up Vince Young as soon as they can identify the latest strip club where the former Texas QB is purported to spend all his time.

Straight Talk. No Static.

MIKE - Thee American Made Voice on Sports.

www.facebook.com/theemikefans

No Penance for Pitino

Another fallen skirt chaser in the sports world will not be disciplined.

University of Louisville Athletic Director Tom Jurich reiterated his school's unwavering support for Men's Basketball Coach Rick Pitino yesterday following the conviction of Karen Cunagin Sypher, 50, for attempting to extort millions from the Cardinals' high profile coach after their tawdry tryst.

The skirt chasing Pitino's foolish philandering in 2003 has cost him and his school public embarrassment and national ridicule. However, Slick Rick won't face any disciplinary action from the university or, at this time, from the NCAA.

Astonishingly, the Big East School earlier this year awarded Pitino with a four year contract extension through 2017. As many Catholics expressed, "What a Cardinal sin of epic proportions!"

This torrid tale would not be so tawdry and worth retelling had it not been for Pitino presenting himself as a paragon of family values while parading around with a Parish priest and piously pontificating about Catholic principles.

The media has had lots of fallen skirt chasers to report on these days, and Rick Pitino hasn't been the only adulterer asking for forgiveness for his duplicitous decisions. Pittsburgh Steeler QB Ben Roethlisberger regretted running after a Goergia vixen, and iconic golfer Tiger Woods apologized for his serial indiscretions. While the NFL suspended Big Ben for the start of the season, the PGA Tour took a much different approach and never even attempted to correct the wayward Woods - the sport's undisputed cash cow.

So, it'll interesting to witness which philandering philosophy the usually conservative NCAA embraces as the lurid details of Pitino's frolicking and subsequent cover-up have publicly unfolded. Will the NCAA face Pitino's foibles straight fowardly and formally kick his can to the curb for violating the collegiate organization's morality standards? Or, will the NCAA support Louisville and stauchly stand by its "stud" coach like the the PGA Tour's laughable loyalty to its lecherous lout? After all, aren't there 20,000 seats in Louisville's new downtown arena that need to be filled?

The University of Louisville had the opportunity to take a stand by setting the example that wanna-be womanizers need to keep their zippers zipped.

Now, it's the NCAA's turn to prescribe penance for Pitino's pathetic hypocrisy.

Staright talk, No static.

MIKE - thee American made voice on sports!

What CBS Misses in its March Madness Coverage

Going into this weekend, the NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament has been officially trimmed to four fantastic teams, and this year's CBS March Madness television coverage has once again frustrated the lucid, logical thinking of reasonably intelligent college basketball fans everywhere.

Big Dance diehards have fallen fast for the foolish fodder and boyish banter beaming from the CBS broadcast booth without ever questioning the corny, cliche cloaked commentary and overt omissions of CBS' celebrated basketball announcers.

At times, CBS ignores the blatantly obvious right at the tip of your nose stuff, while hypnotically hounding fans with hokey, hyperbolic play-by-play analysis, subtly sucking viewers brains right out of their cranial cavities.

So, college basketball fans, put the Panasonic plasma on pause and ponder these missing March Madness oversights, compliments of CBS' college basketball announcers.

Here are my first 4 forgettable picks:

#1. The Missed Free Throw Party - OK, so why can't we find anyone in the CBS broadcast booth with some bravado to decry the dubiously dreadful display of celebrating shooting ineptitude nearly every time a free throw shooter misses a gimme from the charity stripe?

Doesn't anybody else on the planet find it utterly ridiculous when teammates enthusiastically approach the brick-laying free throw shooter and congratulate him with high fives and pats to the butt after he just clanged an important freebie from 15 feet? Imagine if MLB infielders raced to the pitcher's mound to bask in the embarrassment of a pitcher who's last fast ball wound up 450' away as some fan's souvenir in the center field's stands!

CBS' silence on the Missed Free Throw Party makes no sense whatsoever to me.

#2. Tattoos - Once again, why doesn't someone in the CBS broadcast booth blurt out the obvious and bemoan the proliferation of butt-ugly tattoos blanketing far too much of the basketball players' exposed skin? After witnessing Northern Iowa's upset of Kansas, I'm all for lobbying for an NCAA ban barring big, beefy boys without a tan from ever sporting multi-colored tattoos on any part of their bodies.

My second petition will be for the NCAA to mandate long-sleeved, turtle necked shirts to cover any future fashion paux of all heavily inked players because it seems like inebriated frat house friends frolicked with Etch-a-Sketch art on the chiseled players' forearms, biceps, backs, necks and shoulders!

Perhaps CBS should initiate a think before you ink campaign to spare viewers at home from witnessing these unsightly tattoos.

#3. College Basketball's Teflon Coated Coach - OK, why aren't college basketball conspiratorial crazies feasting on the journalistic blackout concerning Kentucky coach John Calipari? Never heard a peep from any of the boys in the CBS broadcast booth scrutinizing this slippery and unscrupulous coaching cad from Lexington. College basketball's highest paid coach is historically a walking NCAA infraction-in-the-making with a well-chronicled resume of recruiting players with no regard for collegiate consistency, scholarship and integrity within their university's basketball program.

Perhaps the CBS boys believe Kentucky actually recruited Coach Calipari to improve its anemic 9% graduation rate or that the muck that Just in Time Johnny (getting out of the place before your sordid history catches up with you) left at Memphis and Massachusetts was merely coincidental. Duh!

#4 - There's a Lid on the Basket - Doesn't anyone else agree that this is one of the most over used cliches in sports? CBS sportscasters need to remove from their repertoire this ritualistic excuse for poor shooting. Come on, CBS, give the opposing team's defense better credit and mute any mention of this trite expression citing a metaphorical metal disk hermetically soldered to a rim. There isn't anything physical attached to the rim prohibiting the ball from going into the basket.

The only things preventing better shooting are better shooters or even better defense from the opposition..... and it doesn't require a handsomely paid former player wearing a thousand dollar suit sitting in a broadcast booth to figure it out.

Maybe CBS should put lids on the lips of some of their basketball broadcasting boys in the booth before they blurt out any more corny cliches or totally overlook the obvious.

OK, college basketball fans, email me your selections of slack CBS sports casting and blatanly obvious omissions from this year's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

Straight talk. No static.

MIKE - thee American made voice on sports!

Let the Nail Biting Begin!

Maddened by another early March malaise, munchers, crunchers and nibblers alike will be unwittingly fidgeting and feasting on fingernails while watching their favorite schools participate in College Basketball's Big Dance of 2010.

I say, let the Nail Biting Begin!

MIKE - thee American made voice on sports!

www.theemike.com

......MIKE's "Let the Nail Biting Begin" post was selected as a finalist in the nationally recognized Last Fan Standing 2010 Sports Blogging Contest. To read MIKE's "Let the Nail Biting Begin" blog in its entirety, click this link at www.lastfanstanding2010.com/articles/pages/5/