* LIONS 28, BUCS 20: Sorry, Tampa. I know you enjoyed that brief moment at the top. But your 15 minutes are up.* CHICAGO 21, ATLANTA 20: This should be a good contest. I know a better one: Mike Ditka and Jerry Glanville, middle of the field, in mud wrestling.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. -- The question is no longer can the Bulls win it, or will they win it, or, when they win it, will Michael Jordan wind up with more money than OPEC? No. The question is now: Why are we waiting until Wednesday to finish this thing? Even Dyan Cannon can tell you these NBA Finals are history, done, stick a fork in them. Michael Jordan and his CapaBulls will not be beaten, not by challengers, not by defending champions, not even by all those yellow banners hanging from the Forum walls.
The season begins now. You can forget all those January nights in Denver and Charlotte when you just want to get to the buzzer and get to the plane and get out of town. That is the opening act, the lube job. This is the real thing. Inside the Palace Thursday night, the minutes ticked down and the Pistons were ready. They marched through the tunnel, heads up, eyes glazed, like rock stars sucking in the last breath before they leap onstage.
Could Bo be a Bear?Sources confirm that Bo Schembechler was in contact with the Chicago Bears on Tuesday evening, just hours after coach Mike Ditka was fired.The Bears reportedly expressed interest in the possibility of replacing the near-legendary Ditka with Schembechler, who totes his own legendary baggage."At the present time, I am not a candidate for the job," Schembechler saidwhen reached at his home in Ann Arbor. "But if the Bears are seriously interested in someone like me coaching their team, then I would certainly be interested in talking to them."
The instructions are taped to the wall above his bed. They show diagrams of hands and feet, with arrows pointing left and right. His mother pulls on his limp right arm, forward and backward, forward and backward, as if rowing a boat."He couldn't move nothing at first," she says. "Now he can do some on his own. Show him, Damon."
BARCELONA, Spain -- And you thought your little 9-year-old, sitting in the house playing video games all day, was blowing his chance at the Olympics. Are you kidding? We have a job for him right now.Boxing judge.In fact, if we had a few more 9-year-olds over here, we would probably have one fewer Olympic controversy this morning. That's because boxing, a sport that seems determined to sink under its own stupidity, has suddenly made it more important to test the reflexes of its judges than its boxers.See if you can follow this:
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- On the last day of the year, and the day before their college football careers end, I'd like you to meet five guys you've never heard of. Sometimes, I think their coaches never heard of them either. They do not start. Some back up the backups. One guy never got in a game in four years.They are about to leave Michigan. The Rose Bowl will be their swan song --and if any of them get in the game, it will be big news. But where you would expect bitterness, you don't hear it. Where you would expect anger, there is none.
THE HUDDLE:All right, HUDDLE UP! Throw your arms around one another and lean in. We are here to answer questions from the football weekend. We are here to call the play for next week's games. We are here to--Would you mind getting off my foot?WHAT'S THE PLAY?Wait a minute. I'm thinking.While you're thinking, Huddle, I gotta tell ya, I am so geeked on the Lions! I am psyched! This is the year, baby! We're thunderin'! We're smokin'! We're cookin'! I'm in the ZON --Turn your radio down. Take a sedative.Hey, Huddle, can I get in?
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
