The "Big Game" : Cal 27, Stanford 3 - Steve Levy Is The Star, But Some Cal Fans Point Out "He's Jewish"...According To Ratto, He's Not

After losing four of the last five games, Cal clobbered Stanford 27 to 3, and retained "The Axe" four years in a row, something Cal has not done since 1939.

From the time Levy was annouced as the new signal caller for the Golden Bears to the game, I've been bombarded with comments that "He's Jewish." Well, great, I thought, but not much else. In fact, I was getting a little annoyed with the whole deal as it seems to reveal how knee-jerk racist American society insists on being.

Given that, I laughed when Ray Ratto revealed that Levy was not Jewish in his Sunday SF Chronicle column.

I laughed because it seemed as if God placed a giant trap for society. A way to bait some of us and see just how stupid we can be. I write this because after Levy's fantastic performance, I privately wondered if the reason Cal's coaches didn't invest more time in him was because they thought he was Jewish. Every time I've seen this young man in action at quaterback, he's performed well, including earlier this year. Well, he did have one mistep, but so does every other somewhat green signal caller with talent -- you work with him and cause him to improve.

There's a huge untold story here. But perhaps it's best forgotten in the shadow of his impressive performance at The Big Game. I hope this ugly matter never comes up again. Personally, I'm sick of racism. It is the product of a distinct lack of desire to think of people as individuals, and that's a byproduct of anti-intellectualism. In other words, a habit of being stupid.

Now, for those who were proud that they thought Cal was starting a Jewish quarterback, I understand -- I was one of them. It's those comments in the stands -- the negative ones regarding his assumed "Jewish" status I heard behind me in Section "L" and which came after he threw is his only interception -- that I'm referring to.

What I enjoy about being black is no one has to guess; it's obvious. It also makes me fully aware of how dumb some people can act, or maybe just plain are. Perhaps this giant trick God played on us will make some think before they talk so negatively about someone because of their race or ethnicity.

American society must be conditioned to expect diversity, to erase decades of social brainwashing to desire segregation. It's the only way to improve our condition.

"Big Butts, Thunder Thighs, Tomboy Knees" - Nike's New Ad Campaign Get's Em Talking

Nike -- in a move very much like the Dove commericials -- is featuring women athletes who have, well, more muscular features than the typical model used to sell apparel.

This has sparked a firestorm of emails and conversation. But sex does sell, according to a recent study. It drives men to spend money, and men are still the largest consumers of sports-related products.

But more to the point of the ad is this: it gets everyone talking about -- and thinking about -- Nike.

So, Nike wins.

More on this latter...

Eagles LB Trotter On Terrell Owens: "The Eagles Would Be Better With Him"

This was reported on ESPN today, and confirms what I've started to believe: the Philadelphia Eagles are a very dysfunctional organization. The tone is set from the top, and extends downward from there. This is true for any company: managment sets the culture.

The job of an athletic organization is to coax the best from its players. At times the most talented athletes are also the most tempermental. This is nothing new. If that's the case, why can't the Eagles get the most from their most talented receiver?

NCAA Minority Coaches - Black Coaches Association Gives San Jose State an "F" Grade; Notre Dame, "B"; Indiana University "A"; University of Utah "F"

From the BCA Report Executive Summary. See www.bcasports.org

"Since 1982, there have been 404 head coaching openings at the NCAA Division IA level.


African American coaches have been selected for 19 (4%) of the head coaching opening with 17 of the appointments
occurring after 1990 (Hill, 2005).

In the history of Division IA, African American coaches have been selected a total of 23 times as the leaders of college football programs (Hill, 2005). Since 1996, only 9 African American coaches have been hired (one each year) out of 165 vacancies. The same historical pattern of Division IA football is even worse at the Division IAA, II, and III levels. This year the pattern held true for IA with the hiring of Tyrone Willingham at University of Washington.

Last year,predominately white IAA schools had zero coaches of color; however, this has changed with the hiring of
Lou West, an African American, at Indiana State.

In the 2004-05 Hiring Report Card #2, the grades did not improved in terms of the overall letter grades.
Further, when each of the five categories of the Hiring Report Card is examined, low marks across the
categories empirically indicate the need for more improvement in the various areas..."

And the grade list (partial and for selected colleges)

BYU - C
East Carolina - B
Indiana U - A
Louisiana State - D
Notre Dame - B
Ohio U - A
Stanford - C
San Jose State - F
University of Utah - F
Western Michigan - A

_______________________________

Who got the F Grades? Well, San Jose State for one. Think about this. A major university in our supposedly liberal and diverse San Francisco / Oakland / San Jose Bay Area gets an "F" -- a "F" grade -- in minority hiring.

What the heck is going on down there? For San Jose State to receive an "F" grade means in part that they didn't even take time to work with the BCA Survey administrators, not to mention a total lack of minority coaches. Wow. I guess one can infer from this that San Jose State doesn't care. I'll bet it's easy for them to go out and locate a black fullback, right? This is all about stereotypes and how powerful a role they play in our society. The still new athletic director down there is Tom Bowen, whom I met when he worked at Cal Berkeley and was with the SF 49ers Foundation. I've even had cocktails with Bowen on several occasions.

Tom's a good man, so I'd like to think he's going to straighten this out. Hey, Tom. What's up dude?

"Urbantic": A Great New Community Website To Learn About Places and People

My friend Michael Bean, who's firm Forio Business Simulations hosts the Sports Business Simulations website, has developed an exciting new website called "Urbantic." It's at http://urbantic.com

The idea behind Urbantic is very simple: to allow people to learn about places and people. It's kind of a cross between community sites like Ryze and Friendster and your common restaurant or city review website. All you do is set up a profile on yourself and type in comments about your favorite places.

You will then see a list of other favorite places posted by others than are near that venue. You can also see who's going to those places, and an automatic Google map of the location of the destination is visible. In other words, anyone who may have made a comment about that place will be added to a list associated with that venue along with a location map. It's really cool.

"Places" can be neighborhoods, bus stops, transit statiions, bars, ...you name it. It's a pretty habit forming device. Check it out. I think it's going to become a very huge place to be online.

For example, there's actually a review of the Oakland Coliseum.

Taking Money From FUBU: NBA Looks Like Right Fit to Clothing Companies - USA Today

According to the USA Today's Mike McCarthy, clothing companies like Dockers are offering to outfit NBA Players with their latest fashions for the entire season and for a cost of $432,000.

"It would be a blast. It would be a lot of fun," says John Ordona, director of non-traditional marketing for Dockers, a unit of Levi Strauss & Co. that generated nearly $800 million in sales in 2004.

So would the players -- and even Commissioner David Stern -- get all the clothes for free? "We can talk about that when they give us a call," Ordona says.

Menswear designer Joseph Abboud is in negotiations to outfit up to 100 NBA players, according to Marty Staff, the fashion company's president and CEO. Joseph Abboud has an endorsement deal with New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury.

My take on this? I think the NBA's Dress Code is essentially taking money away from such brands as FUBU, which has a huge following within the NBA and in African American culture.

FUBU is an African-American-owned, New York-based urban sportswear empire started in 1992 by five childhood friends from Queens. (The ubiquitous "05" on FUBU jerseys is a coded reference to these five founders.)

Its name is an acronym for "For Us, By Us," a slogan that expressed the founders' purpose of creating a line of popular clothing designed for African-Americans, by African-Americans. At the time of FUBU's inauguration, though numerous clothiers were targeting black consumers for their urban wear, none of these companies was black-owned or black-run.

Hopefully, FUBU and Sean John will push its more "mainstream" fashions and encourage NBA Players to wear them, now that the NBA dress code is in place. Regardless, some of the NBA stars of the past -- and who are black -- see the dress code a welcome change.

I met former NY Knicks guard Walt Frazier recently at Aqua, a great San Francisco Restaurant. Frazier -- in town for the Friday night Knicks game versus the Golden State Warriors -- said "I'm glad to see the dress code. You had brothas showing up at the Ritz Calrton in street wear. Come on now!"

Watch Out NHL! Here Comes A Pro Hockey League in Europe

This is from Howard Bloom's Sports Business News site. It obviously curtails any international expansion plans the NHL may have.

Revolution in Hockey? European NHL Set To Emerge in 2006
Monday, November 14 2005

A counterweight to the NHL could emerge in Eastern Europe next year. Director of the State Sports Agency of Russia Vyacheslav Fetisov, an Olympic champion, NHL Hall of Famer and a two time Stanley Cup winner, decided to make the difference in the hockey world and came up with a new project that could materialize into a new hockey league that would unite the best teams of the post-Soviet countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Kazakhstan. It looks like a huge gamble to many, but Vyacheslav Fetisov is sure it’ll work out and take Russian hockey to the next level. Russian Hockey Digest is offering a review of what’s been happening and how the project has been developing ever since it was mentioned in the media for the first time.

This spectacular event came into being on September 16th 2005 when Soviet Sport published Fetisov’s interview in which he spoke about his intentions to establish a new hockey league which would build relations with the NHL on the basis of equality. In this interview Fetisov also said that a group of experts had been working on the legal matters of this issue for one and a half years and the preparations had reached a high stage of development. According to Fetisov, this project was approved by the Presidents of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia. Fetisov also said he took a trip to Riga and got an approval from Latvian officials, too. Soviet Sport also mentioned that according to their information Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich who is also the owner of the Chelsea English Premier League football club also favored this idea.

President of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation Alexander Steblin was approached by Soviet Sport and asked for comments. Steblin sounded quite skeptical saying that ‘this project’s nothing but populism’. ‘We tried to establish a hockey league with teams from the former Soviet Union countries in the early 90s…Latvia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan left due to economical reasons…there’s much more to it than has been said, how are Superleague teams going to get to Ust-Kamenogorsk? Planes fly to Alma-Ata but not to Ust-Kamenogorsk…we’ve managed to keep Soviet hockey, teams from Ukraine and Belarus participate in Russian championship…if we want to establish a united league we have to set equal requirements for every team, can you be sure that teams from the post-Soviet countries will fit into these requirements? In order to establish such a league we have to prepare all the legal documents, assign a task force, promulgate the regulations…that’s some serious work,’ – he said.