Thank You

Wow.

I mean it.

Wow.

As I’ve written this week, Mother’s Day isn’t an easy one for me anymore. 

It used to be, though. My mom’s birthday is May 21, so I could always combine her birthday and Mom’s Day into one big celebration. And it was always a great day when we celebrated both of them. Always.

(I just realized that I wrote about her birthday in the present tense. I saw it and thought about changing it to the past tense, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know why. It’s not a big deal, is it?)

When I wrote last week’s column in advance of Mother’s Day, I didn’t think I’d be able to bring myself to publish it. It wasn’t that I was putting a lot of myself out there in black and white — I don’t know that I really did — but rather because it wasn’t a sports column, and I wasn’t sure how that would be received on the front page of the Sports section.

Now I know.

I write this completely and utterly humbled. I honestly can’t believe the response it’s gotten from my colleagues at the Herald, from friends and family, and most of all, from readers. 

People have written and said some incredibly wonderful things to me and about me over the last few days, and while I don’t think I deserve any of it, I can’t thank each and every one of you out there enough. I appreciate all of it.

You are all entirely — entirely — too kind. 

Thank you.

A break from the norm

I realize that the world doesn’t revolve around me, and I realize that my column is typically a sports column — at least it is about 50 out of 52 weeks a year.
And I know that Sunday’s column isn’t one for everybody, and actually, may have only been for me. Maybe that’s what this space is for, and that I should leave the printed space for something more athletically tangible.
But Mother’s Day has become a tough one for me the last couple of years after my mom passed away suddenly. And when I stumbled upon an old picture of her and me at one of her favorite places in the world, Chapel Hill, it hit me hard. Real hard.
I’ve written before about how much my mother loved sports, and that while I do believe she enjoyed watching competition, I think a big part of it was that sports were something my dad and I really liked. Sports were just another way for my mom to connect to both of us, but it was a big way, and one she could always count on. Seeing something about the Cubs gave her a “reason” to call me up in the middle of the day for a 20-minute talk.
I miss my mom terribly, and I think about her every single day. I’m overjoyed that my daughter is old enough to remember her grandma, but saddened that the memories only go so deep. It’s finding a 14-year-old photo that reminds me how lucky I truly was to have my mom around for 30 years of my life.
So Sunday’s column wasn’t a sports column. Didn’t have to be, I don’t think. Be thankful, those of you who still can, to be able to share Mother’s Day with your mom.
I had to find another way.

Here’s the column:

The envelope was just sitting there.
Not a regular envelope. Not business size or one of those large manila mailers.
A photo envelope.
The crate had many of my old notebooks from my college years. Old exam essays, notes and handouts that were yellowing on the edges with fading print after a decade of neglect, first in a closet, then in a garage.
The notebooks, after one more trip down memory lane (the red ink, it turns out, seemed as though it hadn’t faded a bit — red ink, the foreboding color of mistake-laden writing), were tossed out with the rest of the garbage.
The yellow envelope, though, was a keeper.
Tucked inside, with not a fold to be seen or a frayed edge to be found, were snapshots of life before digital cameras. Of life before real bills. Of life before a daily job. Of life when a five-page paper was daunting.
Freshman year. Old East dorm. Chapel Hill.
Buddies Matt, Neil, Chuck, Schwarzen, Miller.
Beer. (I know, I know.) A 13-inch TV. With a game on.
It wasn’t a whole roll of film. Then again, it might have been. There weren’t 24 pictures in the envelope, but then again, there weren’t always 24 photos on a roll of film. You could get 18. Twelve, even. Remember?
Leafing through them, they replayed a night like many in college. A quick little get-together in your dorm room at school. It may have been a weekend. Or not. Eight a.m. class? Big deal in those days. Big deal.
Lots of smiles, a few blurry eyes. A relatively quiet night. No trouble. This is what my group of friends would do. Come over, and we’ll find a game. You never needed a color analyst, though. The game wasn’t background noise because you didn’t need the broadcasters. You weren’t really watching the game anyway. It was just on. It was a reason to get together, hang out and have a few.
You could go through these pictures pretty quickly. I remember taking them. Honestly, I do. Maybe that’s why I didn’t give them much mind as I looked at them. One after another. Different people, but essentially the same scene.
But then…
It was a picture I didn’t take. I was in it. Still as goofy-looking as I am now, just, my God, 14 years younger.
I could see it. Not the picture. The time. The day. The moment. The exact moment. You know how you pose when a picture is being taken of you, and then after the click, you relax, your shoulders slump slightly and you become, well, natural again? I remember doing all of that.
It was hot, humid, the sun high in the sky. Clear blue, but dotted with big, puffy white clouds. The kind you always see on a brutal summer day. The kind that eventually come together and make a late afternoon storm.
First day of college. Moving in.
The picture, though, was taken after I had trudged my stuff up one whole flight of stairs. Did I know how good I had it? That many of my friends were on a 10th floor somewhere on south campus? I don’t know. I don’t remember.
The picture, though, I remember.
On the front steps of Old East, I stood, wearing a hideous green golf t-shirt and standing with my mom for a quick photo.
My mom, an easy smile spread across her face, standing in the sun with her only child.
I can see her. Not because the picture brings back the image. No, I can see her. I can hear her. I can feel her hug before she and my dad left to go home.
I can feel myself walk back up that flight of stairs, back to the second-floor corner room that was too good for us three idiots. I can feel myself tug on the door and open it. I can feel myself wonder if I was ready for all this.
The other pictures from the envelope reveal that I was.
But that one, the one that brought tears to my eyes in the cool shade of the garage of my home 14 years later and nearly two years since she’s been gone, the one that showed me why I was ready, is also the same one that reminds me of how much I miss.

Yes, Virginia, you can pull the keeper

I’ve always wondered, and now I know.

I never grew up playing soccer. I may have been the only one in my demographic never to have even stepped onto a soccer field as I was coming up, but I’ve covered the sport since college.

Still, I had always thought that a team should pull the goalkeeper late in a game and send in an extra attacker to try to score a tying goal and send a match to overtime. But after never seeing it, I figured it couldn’t be done.

I should’ve asked long before now, but when you work on deadlines, the time for idle chatter comes and goes in a hurry. That said, I should have made the time to ask the question to any number of soccer coaches I’ve come in contact with. 

Can you pull the goalie like they often do in hockey?

On Tuesday night, I got my answer.

With Southern Lee Cavaliers down by a goal with just 6 minutes remaining in their first-round playoff match against Bartlett Yancey, coach Jason Burman was ready to make the move. Deborah Bolden was ready to go in and keeper Jazmin Sotelo was set to come out if the score didn’t change in the next minute.

But then it did. Colleen Pisano made a clutch goal in the 75th minute and Sammi Palme later connected on a penalty kick late in overtime to send the Cavaliers into the second round.

But Burman was ready to do it. “I grew up in Indiana,” Burman said. “I love hockey. It’s a part of me.

“I idolized Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr growing up. I loved those guys. Sure, I was going to do it.”

Alas, it didn’t happen and I didn’t get to see it, and I guess that ultimately it’s a good thing because the local team won. 

But in over a decade of never seeing the move done in a varsity high school game, what’s more remarkable is that in talking to Burman about it more on Thursday, I found out that the Cavaliers had actually made the switch earlier this season.

In the waning moments of a critical league game on April 23 against Western Harnett, the Cavaliers took Sotelo out and sent in another player in an effort to knot a 4-3 game that had conference title implications.

“I knew it was a big game,” Burman said. “We were getting beat and all of a sudden I thought about it, that maybe an extra player might shake them up a little.”

It didn’t work that night, but after talking more about it that night and tinkering with it in the following practices, the Cavaliers now seem comfortable with the idea.

Because Palme is so adept playing on the back line, and because she also has keeper experience, Southern Lee’s plan would be to bring Deborah Bolden and her 12 goals on the season into the game. Coming in, Bolden would bring to Palme a penny practice jersey, giving Palme a distinguishing color jersey and “goalie rights”, which basically allow Palme to use her hands.

The move can also be deceptive because offsides rules would still be in effect, as Palme is the last defender before the goal. 

“There’s a good chance that the move could throw somebody off,” Burman said.

Sure, and why not? I haven’t seen it in 10 years. And there are probably quite a few players who have never seen it either.

Unless they are big hockey fans.

The Goal of Youth Sports

I’ve learned a lot about myself during my daughter Allison’s first foray into organized athletics.

I’ve always pledged to myself that I’d never be one of those parents, the ones who yell too much or get too involved in how their child is performing on the field.

Allison played in the under-5-year-old league of the Sanford Area Soccer League this spring, and she loved a lot of it. There were times she wasn’t exactly thrilled about getting up in the morning to go to a game, and there were certainly times when she appeared timid and a little overwhelmed by the whole thing.

But she smiled a lot this spring, during practice, which was her favorite part, and then after the games. She struggled with the notion that she wasn’t the best player on her team, but actually, that’s probably a pretty good lesson for her.

It was also a good lesson for me. I did find myself hollering encouragement to her, but I did also find myself a bit miffed when she didn’t do as well as I knew she could do at times. (“Don’t just stand there, Allison. Go get the ball! Kick it!”)

Still, I could feel myself restrain myself. And I take comfort in how she reacted after practices and games, when a slight sense of pride would fill her when describing some of the events to younger friends of hers, friends not quite old enough yet to be playing soccer.

I’m thrilled she played. And I’m thrilled I didn’t cross the line, though I can see how someone might approach it. But her smiles and joy of just playing, of just being a part of a team, were more than enough.

The goal she scored on Saturday was just icing on the cake.

Here’s the column:

The Goal of Youth Sports

She goes out there, and looks as though she is less than an hour removed from the warmth of her bed.

The sun is still far from reaching its afternoon apex, but it provides just enough comfort against the morning breezes that sweep across the fields.

Kids are everywhere. Everywhere. Yet she seems somehow oblivious to many of them. Her eyes stare far off into the distance, seemingly past the action in front of her. It’s controlled chaos between some of the white lines. But that’s how it’s supposed to be.

She rather not get too mixed up into the scrum. She’s small, maybe the smallest one in a uniform and shin guards in the entire complex. She may not know that, but she can sense it.

You see it when she plays in the under-5 league. There are no goalkeepers and the score isn’t kept. This is fun. For many kids, like her, this is the first step in participating in organized athletics. The first time listening to a coach. The first time, outside of a preschool atmosphere or daycare, interacting with other children toward a common goal.

Ah, the goal.

She knows which way to go, which way her team needs to move the ball down the field and which goal to shoot toward. She knows that going the other way aids the other team, that their goal is on the other side of the field and that they are trying to score, too.

The action seems to move much faster out here than it does in the front yard at home. And certainly there are more of them. So when the throng comes toward her, she sometimes freezes, unsure of herself. When the throng is away from her, she runs toward it, tries to mingle into it, but sometimes, by the time she gets close, the ball is going in another direction.

She’s cute, though. Way cute. The tiny shin guards that would work well as a wrist brace for an adult. The high socks. The black and white ribbon with little soccer balls on it that ties her long blonde hair into a ponytail.

The pink cleats.

Some of it is hard. She can tell when the other team is having a good day, when they’ve scored more than her team. But when one of her teammates boots one in, she throws her hands into the air and jumps ever so slightly, the hair bouncing and the smile emerging. 

And she has her moments. The ball comes toward her, and before the scrum gets there, she redirects it just enough. The ball dices through the web of legs and feet and finds a teammate, who fires into the back of the net. 

She has no idea what she has done, or that she had anything to do really with the score. She just kicks it. Dad says it goes down as an assist.

But the season progresses and she’s missing one thing. Not the smiles and not the laughs and not the gentle boasting she tells her younger friends. Those are all there, and Mom and Dad can feel good about that. She likes practice the best, and though the games can wear on her a little, she opens up about them as the day goes on, and is eager to hit the front yard by the time she gets home. 

In the front yard, though, she scores. Often.

In the games, she doesn’t. She hasn’t. Not once. And the word “can’t” begins to crease her lips. And that’s where a parent’s heart can begin to hurt.

There is one last game, though. She doesn’t talk about it. She just goes out and does the best she can. She’s a little timid at first, like usual, but she’s waking up. She’s not crying and running to her mother’s arms. She’s playing. What more can you ask?

And besides, look how cute she is. 

The game moves along. She kicks the ball away from the other team’s net, saving a goal. She mixes in with the crowd as it comes toward her, scoots another one loose, and it goes for a score off the foot of a teammate. These are her highlights, the ones her mom and dad will talk about in the car on the ride home.

She starts the fourth quarter, the final eight minutes of the season. She trots out there, her little gait sashaying her ponytail from side to side.

Soon, her team has a goal kick. A teammate puts the ball in front of the other team’s goal as the opposing players move back, readying for the ball to be put into play. She lines up near midfield, just beyond the center line, on the right side.

The ball comes toward her. The other team’s players are on the other side. She’s all alone. She corrals it, dribbles it like she was taught.

She dribbles again. And then again once more. The kids are closing, the scrum in its infant stages of forming, but she’s ahead of it. 

She gives it one more kick and the ball rolls. This is her chance. Her shot. She slows and watches.

The ball rolls. It could miss the right post. It could be wide. It really could. 

Or it could hit the post, and the scrum would be there.

Or it could slip just inside the post and settle softly in the net. And her parents could erupt. And her teammates could run to her. And her coach could give her a high-five. And the parents of her teammates could congratulate her after the game.

And she could smile. 

And isn’t that the point? Not the score, or the team’s record, or the stats.

Isn’t that the idea? Isn’t that the goal?

Oh, it’s the goal all right. 

 

Skip Holtz is getting the job done

When you talk to East Carolina football coach Skip Holtz, you can’t help but think to yourself, “Yup, this is Lou’s son.”

Not because he rattles off one-liners or tells quirky stories or morphs into that thing Lou becomes when he does one of those zany “pep talks” previewing the big game on ESPN.

It’s not that. Skip isn’t a football coach and a character.

He’s a football coach with character.

Holtz is impossible not to like after meeting him, which I did for the second time in three years when he came to Sanford on Thursday to speak at the local Pirate Club banquet. He’s immensely personable and looks you square in the eyes as he answers your questions. (He can also rip off 6-minute answers to a single question, which is a sportswriter’s dream.)

Standing around the Elks Lodge waiting for Holtz to arrive on Thursday, the general feeling of excitement was palpable. Holtz has taken a team that won three games combined in the two years before he got there and won 20 times in three years, leading the Pirates to back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 1999-2000 and to their first bowl win in seven years, a 41-38 victory over No. 22 Boise State in the Hawaii Bowl.

East Carolina is on the rise, and you can make the argument that the Pirates are farther along in their building process than either North Carolina or N.C. State. They have a brutal opening to their 2008 schedule — in Charlotte against Virginia Tech on Aug. 30 before the home opener the following week with West Virginia.

But the stadium will be full and the fans will be jacked, no matter what.

Thanks to Skip Holtz.

Here is my story on Holtz’s appearance that was published in The Herald on Friday:

SANFORD — East Carolina fan Wallie Tyler is exactly the kind of guy Skip Holtz likes to talk about.

Tyler is a dedicated ECU alum, fervent about his alma mater’s athletics and its reputation. He follows the university’s programs and makes it to every Pirate Club function that he can.

Tyler has been around awhile. He remembers many banquets like the one the Lee/Chatham/Moore Counties Chapter of the Pirate Club hosted in Sanford on Thursday night. He remembers the East Carolina football coaches of the past, like John Thompson.

But Tyler’s voice lowers when he talks about the Thompson years, when the Pirates won three games and lost 20 in two seasons.

“Those were some bad years,” Tyler said. “Coach Thompson was a good man, a nice fellow, but he just couldn’t get the job done.”

But the job now is being done by Skip Holtz, who made his second visit to Lee County at a Pirate Club function in three years to speak to about 150 dedicated alumni like Tyler.

And Tyler couldn’t be happier about it. 

“He’s enthusiastic. He’s a go-getter,” Tyler said about the Pirates’ coach. “He’s a very dynamic speaker and a motivator. He not only gets the players motivated, but he gets all the Pirates’ fans motivated, too.”

Three years ago, before leading the Pirates onto the field for the first time in 2006, Holtz was known more for his famous father, legendary coach Lou Holtz, than for his attributes as a football coach.

But following the first back-to-back winning seasons at ECU since 1999-2000, and five months after the Pirates beat 22nd-ranked Boise State in the Hawaii Bowl for the program’s first bowl win in seven years, Holtz can feel the well of excitement brewing again over East Carolina football.

“It’s an exciting time for East Carolina athletics right now,” Holtz said. “The fan base we have has been awesome. There is so much excitement and enthusiasm right now. You go around to these (banquets) and everybody’s upbeat and positive. They’re excited about the future and where we’re going.”

It’s showing on the bottom line. ECU football has set three straight attendance records and recently sold out the season ticket base for the upcoming season for the first time in school history.

“There’s going to be a rear end in every seat,” Holtz said. “It’s going to be awesome.”

So is the competition. The Pirates have won 15 games in the last two seasons combined, picking up wins over North Carolina, N.C. State, Virginia and Southern Miss along the way. But 2008’s schedule may be the toughest yet, with the Pirates opening the season on Aug. 30 in Charlotte against Virginia Tech before returning for their home opener the next week against West Virginia.

“You open the chutes with two top-10 teams,” Holtz said. “We’re going from a program that had a hard time competing with anybody to having to line up against some heavyweights and having to compete. It’ll be a great standard for us.”

But that’s fine with Holtz, who has a plan.

“There are two ways to build a program. You can build a program from the outside-in or from the inside-out. And by building it outside-in, you schedule light teams and you win a lot of games, and the public perception is that you’re a really good team.

“Or you can turn and schedule as many tough teams as you can, and the wins and losses may not fall out — I mean, we lose five games last year and three of them are to West Virginia, Virginia Tech and N.C. State. But I think by scheduling it inside-out, what you’re giving yourself a chance to do is build your program, so that when you finally get to that level, you’re ready to compete on the field.”

In the meantime, though, Pirates fans, excited as they are, should remain patient as well.

“You’re going to take three steps forward and one step back when you do this,” Holtz said. “We’re ready to compete at that level, but I don’t know if we’re ready to win at that level on a consistent basis. But I think we can line up and we can play and we can compete and we can be competitive.

“But you are also talking about a couple of the elite programs in the country.”

Still, the fervor is there, and it’s catching on at all levels, including the NFL. Star running back Chris Johnson was selected 24th overall in the first round of NFL draft last week — the second ECU player to go in the first round in the program’s history — while several other former Pirates players will be attending minicamps this week hoping to catch on with other teams as free agents.

“For the NFL teams to recognize the job that we’re doing and some of the talent that’s in place is big,” Holtz said.

“We’ve come a long way,” Holtz added. “A long way since that first year.”

Tyler agrees.

“We’re doing it the right way,” he said. “Coach Holtz preaches academics as much as sports, and I like to see that stressed. And if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best. A lot of coaches are great with Xs and Os, but Coach Holtz has an enthusiastic personality that bubbles over.”

Jordan, Brown have a lot on the line

So Michael Jordan got his man, luring vagabond coach Larry Brown away from the potential openings in Dallas, Phoenix, Toronto and Atlanta to come lead the Charlotte Bobcats.

What’s interesting is that both men need this pairing to work to rebuild their slumping reputations. Brown is coming a disastrous campaign with the New York Knicks, a situation he worsened by insisting on trading for Steve Francis and clashing with Isiah Thomas, who, to be fair to Brown, wasn’t, well, fair to Brown in dealing with complaining players.

Still, Brown’s rep for turning moribund franchises into playoff contenders is on the line with Bobcats, a team with a lot of young talent and parts that don’t really mix all that well together. 

But Jordan has even more at stake. If this move fails, it will fail spectacularly. A lot of eyes will be watching to see how this plays out, moving Charlotte into the NBA spotlight for the first time since the Hornets were in the process of leaving town.

Jordan’s legacy as a player is undeniable and unassailable. His reputation as a basketball executive, though, is bordering on the laughable. He has wrecked two top-five draft picks in his short career with Kwame Brown and Adam Morrison, and with Brown has named his fourth coach in less than 10 years holing up in a front office. When he was with the Washington Wizards, Jordan hired Leonard Hamilton without any NBA head coaching experience and fired him after one year. And just last year, he hired Sam Vincent without any head coaching experience and then burned him after one year.

Now Jordan turns to a friend in Brown. And at Brown’s introduction on Wednesday everybody was all smiles and eager to talk about their North Carolina connections.

But these are two irascible personalities that have a long, long road ahead of them, even in the weak Eastern Conference. On paper, this seems like the perfect move. After all, Brown got the Los Angeles Clippers into the playoffs. 

But it seems as though everything Brown and Jordan The Executive touch end badly after a brief honeymoon period.

That they both have so much to gain and so much more to lose may be the best thing to happen to both of them.

They have to make this work, not just hope it does.

A new low in the Clemens steriod saga

Back when the Roger Clemens/Brian McNamee steroids and HGH story blew up, we knew it would get ugly well before it ever got resolved.

One would’ve thought the ugliest high point (low point?) would have been congressional discussion of a “palpable mass” on Clemens’ buttocks, but things sank to a new depth on Monday.

In a report filed by McNamee’s attorney, allegations have been raised of a decade-long extramarital affair between Clemens and country singer … well, former country singer Mindy McCready.

Because Clemens filed a defamation lawsuit against McNamee a few weeks after McNamee’s claims came to light in baseball’s Mitchell Report, Mac’s representation is saying that “all is fair game”. Evidently that includes personal mudslinging of Canseco-like proportions.

McCready has been such a train wreck since the years following her platinum-selling debut “Guys Do It All the Time” that she makes Britney Spears look like a choir girl. And now Clemens is mixed up into all of this.

It wasn’t very long ago, a mere three months, in fact, when our first thought upon hearing the name Roger Clemens was “Hall of Famer.” Or maybe, “Legend”.

We may never know for sure whether Clemens doped or not, but his reputation for flirting with and possibly using steroids has landed him on the first ballot of the Hall of Shame — right next to Brian McNamee.

If that’s not enough to keep anybody away from touching performance-enhancing drugs, then there’s no hope.

And it can only get worse.

Hansbrough’s coming back, but is it the right move?

Tyler Hansbrough, the national player of the year, has made his decision — he’s coming back for his senior season at North Carolina.

He may or may not have his point guard back with him, or the team’s deadliest outside threat. Both Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington have declared for the NBA draft, but neither will hire an agent. They have until June 16 to decide whether to go on or come back to Chapel Hill.

Whether those two return or not, the Tar Heels will again be among the favorites to reach the Final Four with Hansbrough back in the fold. Would they be a prohibitive favorite to win it all should Lawson and Ellington return? Sure. But Hansbrough might be enough.

But is it the right decision? Should Hansbrough have entered the draft as well?

He’s the first player of the year to return to school since Shaquille O’Neal did it in 1992 — a very different time in college and NBA basketball. Early entries into the draft just weren’t nearly as common — or as expected.

But can Hansbrough hurt his future draft stock? Of course he can, and there are certainly those who will say that he can’t necessarily help his stock by coming back for another year, either. A knee injury would likely plummet him into the second round instead of the 15-to-25 range that he is probably in right now, but that’s a risk Hansbrough is willing to take. He may turn out to be Matt Leinart, who left the No. 1 pick on the table after winning the Heisman trophy his junior to return to Southern Cal for another shot at a national title.

But something else is at work here, one has to think. While the jury will be out on Hansbrough’s effectiveness at the next level for some time — is he a quality role player on a good team, a glorified version of Mark Madsen or could he develop into a starter? — we know what he can do in the college game.

And that’s dominate.

He might not win another player of the year award, but with Hansbrough, that’s not what he’s after. He wants to win a national title, and if he does, something else will happen along the way. Just 122 points behind Phil Ford on the UNC all-time scoring list and only 601 away from the ACC scoring mark set by Duke’s J.J. Redick, Hansbrough has a chance to be the most decorated Tar Heels’ player — statistically-wise — in the history of the program. If he can collect a title as well, then Hansbrough, already a cult figure among sportscasters and Heels’ faithful, will be in the pantheon of UNC basketball, right up there with Jordan, Rosenbluth and Ford. Put him on Mt. Heelsmore.

Wouldn’t that be enough for most of us, no matter how the NBA career panned out?

As for Lawson and Ellington, we will see. Lawson may or may not have been hampered by a troublesome ankle against Kansas in the national semifinal, but he wasn’t even one of the top 5 players on the court that night. Did he just have a bad game? Maybe. Or was he simply not as good athletically and physically in a game featuring the two deepest teams in the country? One would also have to figure that Lawson, a decent shooter in college, would be woeful from NBA 3-point range.

Ellington is harder to figure. He can certainly stroke it and teams always need shooting. And on a team with as much talent as the Tar Heels, it’s likely that we didn’t see everything that he’s capable of doing. 

At the same time, though, is Ellington better than Rashad McCants was in college? That’s a tough call, isn’t it? And 6-foot-4 shooting guards tend to struggle in the NBA.

Whatever happens, Heels fans can rest assured that the team’s centerpiece is coming back, and the team is obviously better for it. Hansbrough will be loved even more now than ever, and fawned over on an even grander scale.

Dick Vitale is probably doing cartwheels.

But so are Heels’ fans.

Pacman and Dallas — Bad Idea

You hear some things about Dallas.

You hear stories. And among them includes the high volume of strip clubs within the Dallas metro area. Maybe it’s nothing more than any other American city, but you know what they say about Texas…

There was something else about Dallas on Wednesday. The Cowboys, America’s (Most Wanted) Team in the 1990s, reached a deal to acquire Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones.

Jones has been suspended for the last year by the NFL for his various scrapes with the law, the most damning of which came in a shooting at a Las Vegas strip club that left a bouncer paralyzed.

Jones has yet to file for reinstatement into the league, meaning he won’t be donning the star-adorned helmet quite yet.

But when he does, he could be an electrifying football player who might be enough to help the Cowboys actually win a playoff game, something they haven’t done in 11 years.

He may also be the worst acquisition in the history of football. It’s too early to say.

But for a guy, who, after his 11th run-in with police, commented on ESPN that he sees nothing wrong with “scrip clubs,” let’s just say the odds of him getting quickly reacquainted with police procedure could be at an all-time high in his new home.

Pacman and Dallas? Really? Isn’t this like trading Chris Washburn to a team in Bogota, Colombia? Isn’t this like sending Gilbert Brown with a gift certificate to Golden Corral? Trading John Rocker to the Harlem Globetrotters?

This is not going to end well.

Annika, Danica — and my little girl

When my daughter was 2 months old, with my lovely wife working a 12-hour shift at the hospital, I propped my little girl up onto my lap and we watched Annika Sorenstam tee off on the first hole to open her Thursday round at The Colonial.

Throughout the course of the day, from changing diapers to bottle feedings to running the gamut of Fisher-Price toys, the TV in the living room was tuned to Sorenstam’s first round in a PGA Tour event. We saw her pars, her bogeys and her first birdie, the one she putted from just off the fringe that prompted Sorenstam to rock back and give us a fist-pump.

I was OK with Sorenstam getting a sponsor’s exemption to play in a PGA Tour event. And even though I knew there was no way my little Allison was ever going to recollect what was happening on the screen in front of us, I made sure to have it on so that I could remind her any time that I needed to that she watched, in some form or fashion, Annika take on the men on Thursday and Friday.

I’ve already told Allison that story a couple of times over her 5 years, and surely, she will roll her eyes when I bring it up over and over again in the future. She knows who Annika Sorenstam is more from EA Sports’ Tiger Woods series of video games, and though she rather dress Natalie Gulbis in her blue outfit and use her at times, Allison understands that Annika is good, that Annika is a girl and that Annika once played against the boys and beat some of them.

So when I told Allison about Danica Patrick on Saturday, her eyes got pretty big. Allison knows what auto racing is — she sees the NASCAR races on at our house and roots for Reed Sorenson, not because she knows who or what a Reed Sorenson is, but because he drives the Target car. She likes Target, likes the color red and wonders why the Target car never leads a race.

That question isn’t an easy one to answer to the satisfaction of a 5-year-old.

But she caught on to Patrick’s story.

Patrick became the first woman to win a top-level motorsports race when her fuel strategy led to an IRL victory in Japan on Saturday. It was Patrick’s 50th race in her much-hyped career, and for Patrick and those in her corner, the victory generated more of a sense of relief than pure joy. The Anna Kournikova comparisons could stop.

Naturally, some critics have tried to downplay Patrick’s accomplishment already, claiming she only won because of fortuitous fuel mileage or that the IRL boasts a relatively weak field. Some have even criticized Patrick for crying in victory lane, as if Michael Jordan’s desperate clutching and weeping over the NBA championship trophy never happened, or that Woods’ shedding of tears following his winning the British Open weeks after his father’s death was an illusion.

Patrick’s accomplishment is real. One would need to look no further than in my daughter’s eyes when I told her that a girl beat all the boys in a race to know that. Patrick was the only girl out there, and yet she beat them all. All the boys. 

Who cares exactly how it happened? 

My little girl doesn’t.