MINNEAPOLIS -- I have stopped listening to Bobby Knight.I no longer attend his press conferences. I do not interview him. I had no interest in his insulting words these last few weeks of the NCAA basketball tournament. And I did not go to hear him after Indiana's semifinal Saturday against Duke.I see no point. My reason is simple: Why would anyone willingly enter a room when he knew he was about to have garbage dumped on his head?
MINNEAPOLIS -- Sports writers get the best seats. That's what people say. But apparently, they are not good enough. Based on what I've heard at recent press conferences for Michigan's Fab Five freshmen -- including the ones for today's Final Four showdown against Cincinnati -- we media would prefer a chair smack in the middle of the court.So we could hear the trash.Trash talk, that is. Never in my years of covering college basketball have I heard more questions about this subject."Chris, what do you plan to say out there?"
It was time for Juwan Howard to tell his grandmother about life as a man, to tell her about college and basketball and the new fame he had found in Michigan. He leaned over. He began to speak. "I'm doing good, Grandma," he said. "College, it's, like, not as easy as I thought it would be. But you know, I'm doing OK. I'll get good grades, like you want. . . . "Our basketball team is doing fine. We're progressing. We just need a little time. The fellas are real nice and all. We're like . . . this family. . . . "
If you were driving around Tuesday night listening to the Red Wings game on radio -- and as it turns out, that could be the last hockey game of the year -- you might have heard a segment between periods called "Spotlight on Amateur Hockey." It's an odd little program in which announcer Budd Lynch, with his deep, resonant voice, talks to kids about their hockey, in this case a 13-year-old:"So . . . I see you play defenseman.""Yeah.""Do you enjoy that position?""Uh-huh.""How's your coach?'"He's good."
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The first newspaper I ever worked for, where I earned as much money as your average beggar, was also the first place I faced The Old-Young Thing. It didn't last long. Just long enough for the publisher, a fat man with a goatee, to bring in a tall fellow whom, he told me, "will be the editor from now on."This bothered me, mostly because, until that moment, I was the editor. (It was a tiny newspaper; being editor only meant you got a desk.) But what really bothered me was that this fellow, who was otherwise a nice guy, turned out to be younger than me.
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Who you calling young? Who you calling freshmen? The team that was supposed to show its immaturity, the team that was supposed to have a squeaky voice, the team that was due to get its comeuppance when it finally faced a "real" challenger in this tournament, just sent that real challenger on a very real summer vacation, it now has three victories under its belt in college basketball's biggest tournament -- supposed to be for big boys only -- and tomorrow it will play Ohio State for the right to go to the promised land, the Final Four.Who you calling young?
SAN DIEGO -- A guy with a tape recorder around his neck was crouched low. Above him were at least a dozen long-stemmed microphones. Behind them, TV cameras, humming in unison. And tucked in between, maybe 100 sports writers, craning their necks. The focus of their attention was a chair. Dexter Manley's chair. It was empty."They're interviewing a chair?" someone asked.
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.
