Sports Notes, 1/20/08: I'm Moving To Somewhere Warm Edition

Short list this week, as Chicago's sports scene is almost as cold as its weather right now ...

-- Welcome back, Jon Leiber. Were you really the Cubs’ last 20-game winner?

-- I mean, I can believe it’s been since 2001 since they’ve had one, considering that the leader in each of the playoff seasons since then has been 18 (Mark Prior, 2003, and Carlos Zambrano, 2007). It’s just that sometimes I wonder how you and your 80-odd mph fastball managed to put together 20 wins in a career, let alone a season.

-- I wonder if Illinois would be able to beat Illinois State this year.

-- No, I seriously wonder, considering that Illinois State’s RPI has them in the same class as Indiana and Miami-Ohio, both of whom have taken down the Illini this year. (And you don’t want to know what Illinois’ RPI is.)

-- The Fire are awfully excited about drafting Virginia Tech forward Patrick Nyarko in the MLS draft, as everybody expected him to be long gone well before the seventh pick. (Or at least everybody who follows the MLS draft, which has got to be upwards of eight or nine people.) I'm reporting it just because I think it's funny that there's a major league sport in America where you can obtain a draft pick by trading a coach, as the Fire apparently did to get Nyarko.

Don't Just Say No To Noah

So this Joakim Noah thing has gotten out of hand to the point that I feel I must somehow acknowledge it, albeit a couple days late. I seriously do not follow the Bulls closely enough to be at all knowledgeable, but with that said …

I will take Sam Smith’s word for it that whatever kind of tantrum Noah threw in practice was worth a suspension. From the coach, that is. It may have been worth two games. It may have been worth 10, for all I know. As long as the length of the suspension was determined by the coach.

Say what you will about Noah, but don’t forget that he knows how to be a champion. He did, after all, win back-to-back college championships at Florida. In the few times that I’ve watched the Bulls and seen Noah expressing frustration on the court, his outbursts always struck me as childish, but I also viewed them through the prism of his past successes and recognized that they are born of his desire to win.

The suspension handed down by the players makes me question whether any of them want that as badly as Noah. This is a group of veteran players who were slowly building a solid base of success, and then suddenly quit this year.

For that particular group to censure a rookie for actions that are intended, regardless of how misguidedly so, at further improving the team, sends a really disturbing message. This is not a team taking ownership of itself. This is a bunch of under-achievers serving retribution on someone who dared challenge them to be better.

And I don’t even want to get into what this does for Jim Boylan’s credibility. What kind of a coach just shrugs and says “OK” when a bunch of cry-babies come to him and say “we don’t want to play with that guy”? Whatever happened to “shut the fuck up”? Whatever happened to “do your goddamn job”? Whatever happened to “you just let me worry about the personnel, and you worry about getting your sorry asses back over the .400 mark”?

It’s one thing for players to plead their case when they really think they can improve the team more than a coach can. But for a coach to honor this kind of request, he simply cedes control.

The Bulls may have looked like they put all this behind them with a 30-point win on Wednesday, but as it came against the worst team in the conference, it may well be a mirage. Tougher games are coming up, and if the Bulls don’t show up for them, I say let Noah start handing out the suspensions.

Sports Notes, 1/6/08: People Were At My Home Until 5 A.M. Edition

-- Y'know, on second thought, Illinois-Hawaii and USC-Georgia would've been more compelling matchups.

-- Switching to basketball, Illinois really, really, really, like seriously really needed to pull out that home game against Penn State that they lost 68-64. Five of the Illini's next seven games are on the road against teams better than them.

-- Then again, this Illini team was destined to play a lot of teams better than them on the road. And at home.

-- Because this is all supposed to be Chicago-related, I have to back into this next one: It was nice to see BEARS' offensive coordinator Ron Turner's brother Norv do what he was hired to do by winning a playoff game with the Chargers. If the Titans had won, Jacksonville and Indianapolis would have had to go head-to-head for the right to play New England. This way, they can both have a shot at shutting up the Patriots.

-- KITT as a Mustang is JUST PLAIN WRONG!

A Little Love For Illinois, Please?

OK, so I've been watching Rose Bowl pregame shows all morning, and I am totally sick of hearing about how Illinois is overmatched against USC.

Don't get me wrong. I think that USC will win. I think there's a good chance they will cover the two-touchdown spread, despite my initial prediction of a 31-20 final score.

But it's not like it's a foregone conclusion. There ARE ways that Illinois could win this game. If Rashard Mendenhall asserts himself, for example, it will be neck-and-neck throughout. And if USC takes Illinois too lightly -- a distinct possibility -- Illinois WILL take control.

I'm not counting on either of those things happening. I'm just saying it's worth playing the game.