Just under a year ago, we took a talented young golfer and turned him into a god. Fortunately, for Tiger Woods, he has turned himself back into a man.Unfortunately, for Tiger Woods, he's had to do it by losing.That's right. Tiger loses. He loses close. He loses far. He loses a playoff. He loses by collapsing on the final day. He even loses, once, by missing the cut.
The people who run sports at the University of Michigan insist their basketball coaching job is a juicy plum, a sparkling treasure, a gem of a position that the best coaches in the business would lunge at if given the chance.The funny thing is, they never get the chance.
CHICAGO -- The difference between Friday and Sunday is the difference between a party night and a school night, between the fun starting and the fun ending, or, in college basketball's thrilling, season-ending tournament, the difference between a future and a past. Three Michigan schools, two of them strangers to this kind of spotlight, woke up Sunday with a sweet taste of success and dreams of more, more, more. By evening, reality had hit home: One taste was all there would be.
Right off the bat, I confess a certain nostalgia for my school years. I had fun. I had friends. I had laughs. So perhaps my logic is blurry. I never realized that being a boy was such a distraction.I knew girls were a distraction. I discovered that in sixth grade, when the first girl I liked cast a quick glance in my direction, fluttered her eyelashes, and I felt a queasy, goose-bumping rush. At that moment, the teacher could have said "America was discovered by hyenas" and I would have written it down.
So much has been written, broadcast and debated about Brian Ellerbe -- the job he has done with Michigan basketball, good, bad, whether he should get to keep it -- and over and over, people keep missing the points.First of all, his biggest accomplishment was not winning over his players, it was winning over his assistant coaches.
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.
