Almost necessarily the news

My take on the headlines of the week

News Item: Saints fire GM Randy Mueller

New Orleans owner Tom Benson must think we're all a bunch of rubes. (Well, some of us are.) But he insults the intelligence of his fans and the sporting public when he says he wants a different management style from and better communication with his GM. Now, I'm not the president of the Randy Mueller Fan Club. I think some of his signings -- Albert Connell, Dale Carter, Jake Reed -- had, and continue to have, disaster written all over them. He has overspent the cap. But this is a results business. The Saints won 15 games in the three years prior to Mueller's arrival, and they'd won zero playoff games in the franchise's 33 seasons prior to Mueller's arrival. In the two years Mueller ran the show, the Saints won 17 games in the regular season and one in the playoffs. A couple of months ago, Benson said Mueller kept him abreast of club's decision-making. Now he fires him? Shame the devil, Tom. Tell the truth. You didn't want to pay a GM real NFL money. Admit it. Your fans, 7,000 of whom are choosing not to renew their season tickets this year, deserve honesty from you.

List of the week Tom Benson communicated these thoughts at a news conference last week on communication, after firing GM Randy Mueller, in part, for what he said was poor communication ...   1. "I think that communication is very important."  2. "I've had 1,500 to 2,000 people working for me, and when your communication breaks down between yourself and the other individuals that are running it, that's when you have chaos and that's when things don't work. And I don't think there's anybody in this room that says we had a good year last year, so maybe communication started breaking down then."  3. "I can see when people don't know about things, what happened and they haven't been communicated with."  4. "I saw a lack of communication between everybody and it being a one-way street."  5. "Jim Finks was a general manager here for 10 years. He and I had great communication together."  6. "Jim Finks and I ... were able to communicate very good with each other. I was always well-posted."  7. "[Randy] would come in and might send me a memo that we got this player, that player or we did this, that or the other. That isn't the communication I'm looking for."  8. "The decision we made today had nothing to do with wins and losses. It had to do with the style of management and the communication style of what we want to do."  9. "I think that anybody that has a job has to see to it you have to communicate it with other people."  10. "I think that if you are working for somebody for a long time and you keep finding out that what you have done does not please them, that is pretty good communication."

News Item: NFL bans the stimulant ephedra

I mean, who can argue with this? Ephedra is just like speed. Players use it to lose weight close to training camp. Nothing good can come from having to take a stimulant to work out harder. And though no ephedra was found in the autopsy of the late Korey Stringer, I will never be convinced that the cycle of weight loss and weight gain was not a factor in Stringer's death -- the same way that cycle leads to long-term health problems for players after they retire. This ban is very late in coming.

News Item: Chiefs president Carl Peterson freaks over Tony Gonzalez negotiations

The Chiefs have offered state-of-the-art tight end Gonzalez the highest bonus and contract in club history, Peterson said. Gonzalez, who has averaged 81 catches a year over the past three seasons, wants to be paid like a wide receiver and not like a tight end. A great tight end makes about half of what a great wideout would make. Peterson says if Gonzalez wants to be a wide receiver, he should have been one coming out of college. And Peterson wrote a letter to the local paper, the Kansas City Star, decrying Gonzalez's refusal to agree to terms. Now, I have only one problem with Gonzalez's stance. There is a provision in the collective bargaining agreement between players and owners that calls for each team to have the right to pick one player as its franchise player and pay him the average of the top five players at his position. Gonzalez is such a player. He has to adhere to that CBA, period. If he can't reach a deal with the Chiefs for a long-term contract, he has to play for the franchise number, just over $3 million a year. If he doesn't, he gets no sympathy from me. He's just another holdout violating his contract as far as I'm concerned.

News Item: Tim Duncan edges Jason Kidd for the NBA MVP

Just because I live 10 miles west of the Meadowlands doesn't mean I'm Mr. Net. I've been to one game in the past three years. I don't like the NBA much. I find it hard to believe the guys who cover that league wouldn't think Jason Kidd was the best and most impactful player in the league this season. The Nets doubled their wins, from 26 to 52, by making only one change -- adding Kidd. But the thing I hate about this debate is that in extolling the virtues of one man, the media invariably denigrates the other guy. And Duncan, it seems to me, is everything that is good about sports. He's a great scorer and rebounder. He's apparently a Boy Scout type. He plays hard every night. He is an irreplaceable player on the one of the best five teams in the game. Kidd probably should have won, just because of his medicine-man cure of a sick franchise. But a man who's fifth in the league in scoring and second in rebounding, on one of the best teams in the game, is an excellent choice, too.

News Item: Dan Devine dies

The other morning on ESPN Radio, Mike Greenberg said Devine was somewhat of a legend. Right. And Rico Petrocelli is somewhat of a Hall of Famer. I'm all for saying nice things about a man after he has died, and Dan Devine had a good coaching career. He won a national championship at Notre Dame. He won 74 percent of his college games. He was two under .500 as the Packers' head man. It's probably a shame, but what I'll always remember about Dan Devine is the Nixonian despot he appeared to be in Rudy.

News Item: Manny Ramirez lost for a month with a broken finger

Slay me now.

The Red Sox are 17-4 on the road. I'm not sure about this, but I don't believe they will play .800 ball the rest of the way away from home.

1. I think what we have in New Orleans is a failure to communicate.

2. I think I'm really looking forward to seeing the Patriots' new stadium. Sounds like a palace up there.

3. I think if I'm Sam Adams, and I'm the best free agent out there right now, I'm following Marvin Lewis to Washington. The Redskins, over the next two years, are more dangerous than the Ravens.

4. I think these are my personal thoughts of the week:

a. Montclair (N.J.) High School Softball Note of the Week: There is no joy in Mudville. The mighty Mounties have bowed out. Of the Essex County Tournament, that is. You may recall that the 11th-seeded Mounties (14-6), coming off upset shutouts of the sixth seed (Cedar Grove High) and the third seed (West Essex High), made it to the county semifinals. The game was Saturday night at local landmark Pulaski Park in neighboring Bloomfield, in front of a crowd of about 500, against second-seeded Caldwell (19-2), with southpaw Mary Beth King trying for her third consecutive county win. We started strong, building a 4-0 lead. Mary Beth retired the first 10 in a row. To say the roof caved in after that would be an understatement. Single, bunt single, triple. Eight of the next 12 batters scored. Six of the runs were charged to Mary Beth, five earned. Caldwell was a gritty, never-say-die bunch and managed an 8-4 win. The kid pitcher was down after the game, which she should have been. But she knows the game. She hadn't allowed more than two earned runs in a start all season, but some days are like this for pitchers. Some days the ball is chased down by the outfield, and some days the ball finds the gap. That's why it's a great game. You just never know. At the team's postgame postmortem at the King house in Montclair, the girls, crushed after the game, managed to swallow their disappointment, along with 12 large Dino's Pizzas (plain, pepperoni, mushroom/onion). They will come back, strong, to play another day. The previous three seasons this team won nine, six and nine games, respectively. Now we'll play in the state tournament starting in a couple of weeks, and we have a formidable regular-season schedule until then -- including a matchup with the state's No. 1 team, Immaculate Heart Academy, this week.

b. Coffeenerdness: It worked. My harangues about cleaning the pod, I mean. The manager of my local Starbucks told me they'd be more diligent after Seattle noticed my complaints. But let's make it clear: It's every Starbucks, not just the Montclair Starbucks, people. And yes, the drinks this past week were much, much better.

c. Laura King, prodigal freshman, returneth from Tufts. She starts a job in New York City this morning. In fact, she ought to be running for the bus right about now.

5. I think the Chargers play in L.A. by 2008.

6. I think the unthinkable happened. The Montclair Red Sox, as of Sunday, had taken over first place in our rotisserie league, the Suburban League. I owe it all to assistant GM Laura King. She's the one who told me to pick up Shea Hillenbrand when I was dubious, and she told me not to be scared about trading Pedro if I could get a good return. (I ended up getting Mark Mulder and Jim Thome.) Now, if only Mulder and Bobby Abreu would get going, I'd feel a little better about our long-term chances.

7. I think if Dan Patrick sits out many more radio shifts, he'll be right there with Howard Stern in radio days off.

8. I think your franchise is in trouble, Oakland A's, when your Cy Young candidate, Mulder, is coming off the DL to pitch at home against Toronto, with much of the hope of your season riding on his left arm, and it's Friday night date night, and you draw 10,000 fans. Sheesh. That is a horrible sign.

9. I think if Nate doesn't ditch Brenda and make a play for the rabbi sometime in the last two episodes of Six Feet Under, I am going to have to go to the set and personally change the script. Brenda's a bum, Nate. You will regret it every day for the rest of your life if you go through with this sham wedding.

10. I think I'm taking Six Feet Under a little too seriously. But understand something: Any TV show that causes me to miss an hour of Pedro Martinez has a pretty good grip on me.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space -- no kidding -- on Monday mornings.

 

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