Beaver County Times, November 24, 2013

Here's the funny thing about the Ben Roethlisberger rumors that have been persistent for the past few weeks:
They're coming from Ian Rapoport, who works for the NFL Network, which is owned and operated by the NFL.
So while sports teams are fond of demonizing the media as outside enemies who want to undermine their operations, this is actually something of an inside job. (Bill Parcells used to refer to Giants beat writers as "communists.")
If the NFL Network has total editorial independence, it's enjoying freedom that isn't all that common.
Teams generally try to control the message whenever they can.
Once the Pirates were on the road when the opposing shortstop inexplicably dropped the most basic pop-up. Incredulous at the misplay of a chance so easy, Greg Brown exclaimed that a Little Leaguer could have made the play.
At the next commercial break, the man then in charge of the Pirates' marketing was on the phone to the booth, angrily complaining that Brown's candid assessment somehow downgraded the product the team was trying to sell.
When Myron Cope called attention to the "Steelers Streaker" in the 1970s, no less an authority than franchise founder Art Rooney scolded Cope for making a miscreant a folk hero.
Penguins general manager Craig Patrick was once watching a late night telecast from the west coast at home. He grew impatient with Mike Lange's words of praise for the opposing team and phoned the production truck to relay the message he'd like to hear some good things about the Penguins.
Lange's response was to call the rest of the game without his usual expressions to adorn Penguins goals. No drinks for Sam or his dog, no messages to Arnold Slick in Turtle Creek, just straight calls of the plays.
The online mlb.com, which purports to cover all 30 MLB teams with some independence, reportedly doesn't allow its writers to use the word "fail" in stories.
If NFL Network staffers are free from that kind of interference, good for them, even though it's proven to be inconvenient for the Steelers and Roethlisberger.
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--DOCTOR'S APPOINTMENT
Anna Benson, the scary ex-wife of former Pirates pitcher Kris Benson, has been interviewed by TV's Dr. Phil.
The show is scheduled to air on Wednesday.
Anna Benson refers to herself as the most famous sports wife since Marilyn Monroe, a claim Gisele Bundchen or Victoria Beckham might dispute.
Anna is a former exotic dancer who improbably married one of the quietest people on the planet, then used his fame to create her own notoriety. When Benson pitched for the Mets, she famously did some interviews on Howard Stern's radio show. She operated a personal website, where she offered racy photos and profanity-filled insults of those who didn't agree with her conservative political views.
Benson last pitched in the major leagues in 2010, and Anna has also faded away. She returned to the headlines in July when she showed up at Kris' home with a gun, hatchet, knives and a bulletproof vest.
Maybe Dr. Phil can write her a prescription.
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--SCRAMBLED MESSAGE
Spell check always flags Dan Bylsma's last name and suggests "abysmal" as a replacement.
Everyone's a critic.

Beaver County Times, November 17, 2013

Stay calm. It's a long season.
The Penguins just had a stretch of three games, all losses, in which they failed to score an even-strength goal.
This brought back memories from the spring, when the Penguins' high-powered offense sputtered and conked out in the playoff loss to Boston.
When Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are healthy and the Penguins can't score 5-on-5, something is wrong.
It's up to the coaching staff to make the necessary strategic corrections.
But there shouldn't be any doubt that the problems are correctable. Maybe it's as simple as getting more traffic in front of the net.
The Penguins have long had a tendency to value the pretty play over the gritty one. With their skill level, they always think they're just one no-look pass from scoring.
But when goals are hard to come by, back to basics almost always works.
Crowd the net and take advantage of deflections and easy rebounds. People call them garbage goals, but there's no premium for style points. One that glances off a skate counts as much as a breakaway.
The return to the full 82-game schedule requires a perspective adjustment.
The lockout limited last season to 48 games. Points were at a premium. A long losing streak could be devastating.
The 82-game schedule is more forgiving. A team can have a bad month and still recover.
All things considered, the Penguins aren't in bad shape, even with the losing streak. There's plenty of time to get things right and maximize this team's considerable talent.
It's only November.
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--SELLING OUT
Bill Mazeroski's champagne-stained jersey from the 1960 World Series brought $632,500 at auction.
That's probably close to the amount of money Mazeroski was paid for his 17-year career with the Pirates.
The items he put up for bids sold for about $1.7 million. Good for him. At 77, he's established a nice trust fund for his sons and grandchildren, and it's more likely the items sold will now be on public display.
If you spend $632,500 on a shirt, you probably want to show it off.
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--SIGNING OFF?
There are persistent rumors that 93.7 The Fan (KDKA-FM) will be breaking up one of its most dysfunctional on-air teams soon.
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--BALLOT BLUNDERS
Some people are upset that Andrew McCutchen was listed as low as fourth on one of the MVP ballots cast from St. Louis.
The bigger injustice is that Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was ninth on one of the ballots from Pittsburgh.
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--IF YOU BUILD IT AGAIN...
As much as everyone likes PNC Park, it was a huge waste of money when Three Rivers Stadium was demolished after 30 years of use.
It was ugly, but it was still functional. The Steelers doomed Three Rivers when they jumped on the stadium-financing bandwagon and insisted on a new venue packed with luxury boxes.
That's how we got Heinz Field, which is ugly but functional.
Every elected official who's ever caved in to the stadium shakedown must have been chilled by the news that the Braves will seek a new ballpark, hoping to abandon Turner Field, which opened in 1997.
Three Rivers lasted half as long as Forbes Field did. Has the shelf life of publicly-financed sports palaces grown even shorter?

Beaver County Times, November 10, 2013

Richie Incognito? Are they kidding?
The villain in this bizarre story has a name right out of "The Sopranos?"
The Miami Dolphins' bullying controversy will drastically affect several careers. Incognito, accused of intimidating and harassing teammate Jonathan Martin, will probably be unemployable.
Based on the way some NFL players have closed ranks and argued, "People just don't understand..." it's hard to believe Martin will find an NFL locker room that's a comfortable fit.
Joe Philbin is unlikely to get another head coaching job once he's fired in Miami.
The intent here is not to excuse the peculiar behavior that's been described, but to point out that some players genuinely don't see a lot of this as anything terribly unusual.
They've been brought up in a locker room culture from high school. They don't understand how strange this all looks to the real world.
The rookie dinner, where the team gathers at a high-end restaurant, runs up a five-figure tab and sticks the rookies with the bill? The Penguins were doing that as of a few years ago.
In a different generation, it was hockey tradition to pin a rookie down and cut his hair, or crudely shave his body hair. The Penguins banned that a while ago, but Mario Lemieux got an involuntary haircut in his rookie season.
That isn't how the corporate world does things, but the IBM guys don't shower together at the end of the work day, either.
In football, favorable impressions aren't made by someone's wit or intelligence, but are often based on how much weight someone can lift, how much pain they can tolerate and how much beer they can drink.
A long time ago, quarterback Bobby Layne would demand Steelers rookies join him for an extended night of drinking that didn't stop until the new players were physically ill. To skip that rite of passage was to risk the scorn of teammates.
The Pirates had a tradition where veterans would sneak into the clubhouse during a game and steal the rookies' clothes. They'd substitute a weird outfit the players would have to wear on a travel day, and they'd kick the rookies off the bus before it reached the hotel. Jason Bay walked those final blocks in Chicago wearing a bright yellow chicken suit in his rookie season.
Theirs is a different world. If anything good comes out of the Dolphins story, it will be showing players just how grossly distorted that world is sometimes.
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--Mayor Mucker
Bill Peduto, who won election last week, is the Pittsburgh's first hockey-playing mayor. He has a passion for the game, and was part of a celebrity team that played charity games in the area.
Predecessor Luke Ravenstahl played on the Washington & Jefferson football team.
Ravenstahl was a kicker, which could explain some of his Jeff Reed-like behavior during his time in office.
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--The Other Kid
Nice story by KDKA-TV's Bob Pompeani last week on Taylor Crosby, who is a goaltender at prep school in Minnesota.
Sid's 17-year-old sister hopes to represent Canada in the 2018 Olympics.
The Crosby parents provided some vintage family photos. There was one of Sid -- when he really was a kid -- holding his baby sister.
It was the kind of story that even connected with viewers who aren't hardcore sports fans.

Beaver County Times, November 3, 2013

If the Steelers have a rotten season (and aren't they building quite a foundation?) no one important will get fired.
We know that because it's not the Steelers way.
But is that still true?
Just because the person in charge is named Rooney doesn't mean that things are done the same way.
Current team president Art Rooney II shares his father's placid mien, but he's not necessarily the same guy.
Considerable circumstantial evidence points to Art Rooney II as the person behind the ouster of offensive coordinator Bruce Arians following the 2011 season.
You can argue that Dan Rooney once ordered Chuck Noll to fire several assistants, but that came after a 5-11 season in 1988, the Steelers' third losing season in four years. It was clear by then that the franchise had made the sad, slow slide into mediocrity.
Arians was banished after the Steelers finished 12-4 for the second consecutive year. Given that, and Art Rooney II's suggestions for changes in offensive philosophy, it's logical to conclude that he's more hands-on than his father was.
(Former GM Tom Donahoe was fired, but that was after his relationship with Bill Cowher had deteriorated to the point that one of them had to go).
If the Steelers have a losing season, veterans like Ryan Clark and Brett Keisel are likely gone. Troy Polamalu's future would be in doubt, too. Potentially they could have three more starters to replace on defense, something that a single draft wouldn't accomplish.
The Steelers could have a $102 million quarterback and not much else. It could be a full-scale rebuilding.
In that case, the question would be whether Mike Tomlin and Kevin Colbert are the people to trust with that project.
Are the Steelers inevitable victims of a salary cap system? Or have they blundered their way into this spot?
If the losing continues, those are the tough questions that ownership has to confront.
There's no guarantee the patience that characterized the organization in the past will continue.
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--Getting acquainted
KDKA-TV had a genuinely odd feature on Penguins rookie Olli Maatta last week.
Jory Rand interviewed the 19-year-old defenseman as the two toured the city. Their walk-and-talk included coffee in Market Square, then shifted to an observation deck on Mt. Washington. You were waiting for them to ride a tandem bicycle through Schenley Park.
It looked like something that been brokered by eHarmony.com rather than a hockey team's PR department.
It wasn't bad. Just peculiar.
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--They're No. 1
These are happy days at 93.7 The Fan (KDKA-FM), which topped the local radio ratings for October.
This surge was influenced primarily by the Pirates' first postseason games since 1992.
The Fan not only has a large audience at the moment, it also hits the demographics advertisers want. Programming remains spotty. After nearly four years in the format, there still isn't a signature destination show.
But they're printing money. Clear Channel, the other big radio operator in town, should be getting itchy to grab some of that action by starting an FM sports station of its own. Clear Channel to this point has spread its sports content over WDVE, WXDX and ESPN 970 AM, which has as many listeners as the police scanner.
Clear Channel's inaction is allowing CBS-owned The Fan to feast on the whole pie.
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