There are plenty of questions in the wake of Wednesday’s announcement that Melky Cabrera would be suspended for 50 games for testing positive for testosterone. For the Giants and their fans, the questions are of the “how could this happen?” and “what do we do now?” variety.

In Phoenix, or Los Angeles, the question being asked tonight is, “Why do they get to keep those wins?”

I understand that the answer is obvious, that there is no provision in the PED rules that would require a team to forfeit games played by a person who tests positive, but shouldn’t there be? Is it fair to the Dodgers and Diamondbacks that the Giants got 117 games of an enhanced player?

And if you’re loading up the “testosterone didn’t really help Melky” defense, don’t waste my time. If Melky thought he was capable of the season he’s having this year, and the one he had last year, without PED’s, he wouldn’t have used them. I trust his judgment on the matter, and think it’s ridiculous to try to make the case that his drug use didn’t have an impact on his play.

Cabrera was 18-for-39 this season against Arizona, with 2 homers, 6 RBI and 8 runs scored. The Giants have won four games against the D-Backs, and in those games he was 11-for-17 and scored four runs. If Arizona had won two of those games, they’d trail the Giants by 1.5 games rather than 5.5.  In the four games the Giants have won over the Dodgers, Cabrera was 5-for-15 with 3 runs scored.

According to CSN Bay Area’s Andy Baggerly, the failed test is said to have happened around the All-Star Break. That means Cabrera has played more than a month’s worth of games while he was appealing his suspension. Is that fair? Baseball has a pretty good idea that a player has an illegal edge over his opponents, and yet he gets to keep playing while they make sure?

There’s a strong current of opinion that Cabrera’s suspension is proof that baseball finally has a PED policy that works, and to a degree that’s true. A player who was trying to game the system was caught, and now he pays a penalty. In Cabrera’s case, the penalty is actually bigger than usual, because of his status as a free agent next season. It’s impossible to calculate how much money this escapade has cost him.

But while the policy punishes the guilty player, there’s no sanction against the team which benefited, either knowingly or not, from his presence in the lineup.

I’m not a “Giants’ Insider,” but I feel pretty strongly that Melky Cabrera’s suspension means we’ve seen the last of him in a Giants’ uniform. When the announcement was first made, it seemed that Giants fans rushed to their schedules to see how many games the team has left.

It doesn’t matter, folks. Cabrera is done.

Two things can happen the rest of the season. One is that the Giants pull together, hold off LA and Arizona for the Western Division title, and go deep into the playoffs. In which case, they don’t need Melky Cabrera anymore.

The other thing that could happen is that they miss the playoffs this season. While one of the things that makes baseball great is that one player is rarely the difference between a team achieving the post-season or not, if the Giants fail this season, the blame will like squarely at the feet of Melky Cabrera. Gone will be thoughts of the 117 games he played for San Francisco this season, or the 61 wins. This season will be all about the PED’s, and Cabrera’s willingness (or perhaps eagerness) to roll the dice and see how far he could get.

If that scenario comes true, I don’t see the Giants bringing Cabrera back next year. Even though his salary demands will be extremely low, there would be too much emotional baggage to have him around.

No, it’s “circle the wagons” time at AT&T Park, and Cabrera is definitely outside the circle. He’s on his own, to try to get someone to give him a contract next year. That team will not be the San Francisco Giants.

OTHER NOTES ON CABRERA:

1)      If Cabrera had accepted his suspension when he was told about the test, which, according to CSN Bay Area’s Andy Baggerly was near the All-Star break, The Giants would have had three weeks to work a trade to replace his bat. There has been some speculation that the Hunter Pence signing was a more urgent matter because the Giants had gotten wind of Cabrera’s possible suspension. That can’t be true. The Giants have needed another bat for two years now, and Pence was supposed to replace Blanco in the lineup, not Cabrera.

2)      Another benefit to Cabrera not appealing the suspension would have been that he would have come back with almost a month to play, which might have been a more appealing option to the Giants than activating him during the playoffs.

3)       For anyone who looks at sportswriters and thinks “wow, those guys get paid to go to games!,” consider Baggerly’s role in this saga. On June 27^th, Baggerly had been hearing on various social networking sites that Cabrera had failed a drug test and was looking at a suspension. Before writing anything about the rumors, Baggerly went to Cabrera, telling him what he was hearing and asking for a comment. Cabrera got upset, proclaiming his innocence and indicating that he didn’t know anything about anything. Baggerly felt that by even talking Cabrera about the story he had linked the player to PED’s, and he apologized in his column for mentioning it to Cabrera. Three weeks later, it turns out that the rumors were really leaks, not rumors, and Baggerly had the story right all along. Trouble is, he never ran with it. Talk about a no-win situation!

Written February 8th, 2012

As is often the case, I feel the need to start this column with a disclaimer: I have nothing against Eli Manning or the New York Giants. I actually pulled for them in their first Super Bowl win four years ago, and watched this year’s game as an interested, but unbiased, observer (let’s face it, unless you’re from New England, the Patriots are pretty hard to root for).

So the viewpoint I bring to you today, while certainly a minority one, is not one developed in resentment over a game result, but one that started in my head watching the Giants beat the Packers three weeks ago, the 49ers two weeks ago, and the Patriots in the Super Bowl last night.

I have never seen a luckier big-game quarterback than Eli Manning.

I’ll go into specific plays in a moment, plays that kept the Giants’ run to the title alive that Eli had nothing (or very little) to do with, but first, I need to address the “Eli is a Hall of Fame Lock” meme that has taken hold in the sports media after SB46.

Manning’s career regular season record is 69-50. His playoff record is 8-3, but all eight of those wins have come in the Giants’ two Super Bowl runs. The Giants have been “one-and-done” three times in Manning’s seven-year career, and missed the playoffs entirely twice. In one of those seasons, the Giants made the playoffs despite being 8-8, and in the other two, had home-field advantage and still lost their only game.

Manning has the distinction of quarterbacking the Super Bowl champions with the two worst winning percentages, 10-6 in 2007 and 9-7 this year.

Not exactly Hall of Fame stuff, in my opinion, but I’ll tip my hat to him, he’s got something special going for him. Let’s examine how these two Super Bowl Championships came to be.

I’m going to just give one example of Manning’s luck from the 2007 season, but it’s a good one. Guy catches a game-changing pass on the top of his helmet. Yes, Eli made a nice play to evade the rush, and got the ball down there, but David Tyree, or any other receiver, makes that play “zero times out of a hundred.” Chris Collinsworth wasn’t doing that game, but that’s what he would have said.

That was the defining play of that game, and of that season, and for the quarterback, it was sheer luck that it worked out that way. If that pass falls incomplete, which by all rights it should have, Manning, obviously, is neither the winning QB nor the MVP.

This season, I started paying attention to the Giants’ luck in their divisional final game against Green Bay. The New York Times, however, was kind enough to write a story before last nights’ game listing a few regular-season breaks that went the Giants way and kept the playoff fires burning.

In Green Bay, the Giants benefited first from Packers’ coach Mike McCarthy’s controversial decision to rest his starters in the final regular season game, which, combined with the bye week, gave them three weeks between meaningful snaps. The Packers, who also suffered a terrible personal loss with the death of the son of OC Joe Philbin, never got in synch, and QB Aaron Rogers saw his receivers drop six very catchable balls that could have helped his cause. The game turned on a Hail Mary play at the end of the first half that seemed to take Green Bay by surprise, despite the fact that they took a timeout prior to the play. They didn’t have enough players in the end zone when the ball came down, and as a result went into halftime trailing 20-10 instead of 13-10.

Did Manning play well? Of course! He moved the ball against Green Bay’s defense at will in the second half, and kept the ball out of Rogers’ hands. Were the Giants very lucky that the Packers, who flirted with perfection until late in the regular season, picked that day to be decidedly imperfect? Yes, they were.

That luck held in San Francisco. Everyone remembers the Kyle Williams muff (unforced error) and fumble (great special teams play, Manning was on the sidelines) that turned the game around, but I think the two best examples of Manning’s not being worthy of the “Mr Clutch” label were two other fourth-quarter plays.

Eli threw two balls that not one, but two defenders had legit shots to intercept. As an added bonus for him, the first of those two plays knocked out CB Tarell Brown, and it was Brown’s replacement who was exploited for the Giants’ go-ahead TD. That score came just two snaps after the second of these throws, when Carlos Rogers and Dashon Goldson (who was also the one who collided with Brown earlier) interfered with each other’s attempt to make the pickoff.

In neither case did Manning’s intended receiver have any chance to catch the ball. If there had been only one defender present, there would have either been an interception or a drop. Either of those outcomes are acceptable, as the teams each get what they “deserve.” Interception drops happen all the time, and when they do, the defense suffers as it should.

When, however, the ball hits the turf not as a result of a defender making a bad play, but because the pass was so poorly thrown that two defenders had a shot to intercept it, then the QB is one lucky son-of-a-gun, and to have it happen twice in one quarter with the Super Bowl on the line puts a guy into lotto-winner territory.

Were the Giants lucky to win the Super Bowl? I say yes. Again, Eli stood on the sidelines and watched an opposing offense drop pass after pass. When the Patriots had a chance to put the game away in the fourth quarter, Wes Welker dropped a pass that would have kept that drive alive. When Brady got the ball back unexpectedly with a chance to win the game, his first two passes were both dropped. The Giants fumbled three times, with one being nullified by a penalty and the other two bouncing right to teammates.

I’m not saying that Eli Manning doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame ever. I’m just saying that his first seven years have been marked by inconsistency, and that his two crowning achievements were due more to luck than skill. There’s no shame in that; luck is a big part of any sport. Ask a golfer who just crushed a drive and sees it land in a divot 300 yards away about that.

When we’re talking about the Hall of Fame, however, we need to evaluate not just the end results, and not just the high points, of a player’s career. The Bradys, Montanas and Bradshaws of the NFL reached the pantheon with consistent 12+win seasons, trips to the conference finals and Super Bowls, and season MVP awards. The only time Manning has won 12 games in a season he lost his first playoff game, despite a first-round bye and home field advantage. He has never led the league in any passing statistic.

So raise your glasses and tip your hats to the Giants and Eli Manning today. They won the games, which is what the Championship

Published on CSNBayArea.com on January 19, 2012

Since the 49ers clinched the NFC West title and assured themselves a spot in the playoffs, people have been talking about their last playoff appearance nine years ago, highlighted by that wild 39-38 win over the Giants at Candlestick Park.

What people may not remember is that the 49ers and Giants have a rich playoff history, both in number (this is the eighth postseason meeting between the two teams, which ties an NFL record) and significance. Here is a rundown of that history:

49ers 38, Giants 24 – NFC Divisional Playoff, Jan. 3, 1982
This was the first playoff appearance for the 49ers in 10 years. Two seasons before, the 49ers had been 2-14 in Bill Walsh’s first year. Suddenly they were 13-3 and hosting a playoff game! The Niners never trailed, taking advantage of four Giants turnovers. Ronnie Lott had two picks, one of which he returned for a TD to put the game away in the fourth quarter.
Significance:  Without this win, there’s no “The Catch.” Dallas was the next opponent for the 49ers on the march toward their first Super Bowl.

49ers 21, Giants 10 – NFC Divisional Playoff, Dec. 29, 1984
The 49ers rolled through the NFL that year, losing only one regular-season game. They scored twice in the first quarter on passes from Joe Montana to Dwight Clark and Russ Francis, and cruised to victory despite Montana throwing three interceptions. The  defense also forced three turnovers, and no points were scored in the second half.
Significance: The Giants may have gone quietly in this game, but they were becoming the team that would win two Super Bowls.  Bill Parcells had become head coach, and Phil Simms and Joe Morris were established starters. From the 49ers standpoint, it’s easy to forget that while this may have been their best team, Jerry Rice was a still senior at Mississippi Valley State.

Giants 17, 49ers 3 – NFC Wild Card game, Dec. 29, 1985
What a difference exactly one year made! The 49ers finished second to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC West, so they were forced to go to the Meadowlands to face the Giants, who also were 10-6 but had won the NFC East. The Giants ran the ball down San Francisco’s throat with Joe Morris, and while the 49ers were able to move the ball through the air (Montana threw for 296 yards), the Giants kept them out of the end zone.
Significance: This was the first time in the Bill Walsh Era that the 49ers failed to score a touchdown in a playoff game. It would not, unfortunately, be the last.

Giants 49, 49ers 3, NFC Divisional Playoff, Jan. 4, 1987
Easily the worst playoff loss for the 49ers in terms of the score, but this one hurt in more ways than one. In the second quarter, with the Giants already leading 21-3, Giants nose tackle Jim Burt hit Joe Montana as he was releasing a pass. Montana bounced off the Meadowlands Astroturf with a sickening thud, and Lawrence Taylor intercepted the pass and returned it for a TD. Montana did not return to the game, and the 49ers’ chances of winning left with him.
Significance: For the third time in the four playoff matchups between these two teams, the winner would go on to win the Super Bowl.

Giants 15, 49ers 13, NFC Championship Game, Jan. 20, 1991
After the playoff debacle of four years before, the 49ers had re-asserted themselves as the top dog in the NFL. They won Super Bowls following the 1988 and 1989 seasons, surviving the retirement of Bill Walsh in-between. They had also dominated their rivals from the east, beating the Giants in four straight regular-season matchups, including a 7-3 struggle earlier in the 1990 season. The 49ers seemed to have this game in hand with a 13-12 lead in the fourth quarter when Roger Craig fumbled while trying to run out the clock. The Giants recovered, kicked a field goal, and won 15-13.
Significance: There are two significant facts from this game: 1) Seven times in NFL history, Super Bowl champions have repeated the following year. No team has ever won three in a row. You could make an argument the 49ers came closer to accomplishing that feat than any other team in NFL history. This loss, while it doesn’t tarnish the team’s great legacy, still stings for 49ers players, coaches and fans alike. 2) As if the loss alone wasn’t enough, this game was effectively the end of Joe Montana’s incredible career with the 49ers. He was injured late in the game, taking a huge shot from Leonard Marshall, missed almost the entire 1991 season, and was traded to Kansas City.

49ers 44, Giants 3, NFC Divisional Playoff, Jan. 15, 1994
This was a different 49ers team than the one which had those great battles with the Giants over the previous 10 years. Rickey Watters scored 5 TDs but the 49ers would fall next week to the Cowboys.
Significance: It put the fire in the belly of the Steve Young-led team that won the Super Bowl over San Diego the next season, propelled by a win over Chicago in the NFC Divisional game and a 38-21 defeat of Dallas in the NFC title game.

49ers 39, Giants 38, NFC Wild Card Game, Jan. 5, 2003
The Giants were seemingly in control 38-14 in the third quarter before Jeff Garcia led the 49ers to 35 unanswered points. The Giants had a chance to win the game with a late field goal, but a botched snap cost them that opportunity.
Significance: This was the last gasp of the 49ers Dynasty, as it turned out. Twenty-one years after the first playoff meeting between these two teams, they met again on the soggy turf at Candlestick . The outcome, a crazy finish Hollywood would have turned down, was an indication of things to come as the once-proud franchise turned into a revolving door of coaches and players. Until now.

January 14, 2012

There will be considerable hand-wringing and consternation on the part of many Raiders fans as they learn that Hue Jackson is no longer their team’s head coach.

For reasons I’ve had a hard time understanding, Jackson has largely escaped blame for the disastrous 8-8 season the Raiders just completed, and fans and many media members just assumed he’d be back for a second season.

But what would you do in McKenzie’s situation? Here is your choice regarding the head coach. First, let’s look at the reasons to keep him:

1)      He was a rookie last year, and should get better

2)      The team had several key injuries last year

That’s about all I have. I can’t think of one thing that Hue Jackson did for the Raiders, one stamp he put on that team, which would lead to him being given the precious spot as “Reggie McKenzie’s First Coach.”

Now, here are just a few things on the other side of the ledger:

1)      The play by the team in the fourth quarter was atrocious all season long

2)      The Raiders broke a record for penalties. It wasn’t just the usual Raider penalties; they were not lining up correctly, even late in the season

3)      His handling of the media was unprofessional at best. This was probably best exemplified when he kept everyone in the dark regarding whether Carson Palmer would play against Kansas City.

4)      His post-season press conference, when he said that “now that the season is over, I can tell you what I really think,” told everyone that he had been dishonest with them all season.

5)      The fact that all of the above reasons were present all season  gives no indication that Jackson was aware of the problems or had any idea how to fix them.

McKenzie reportedly told Jackson that none of these things were factors in the decision to not bring him back, and that is probably true. McKenzie has been waiting a really long time for this opportunity, and he’d be crazy not to look at every coaching possibility. He’s probably been keeping notes for years about people he’d call if he ever got this far, and I’m guessing that Jackson was not on that list. Announcing the firing before his introductory press conference removes that distraction, and also sends the message throughout the organization (and the locker room) that everyone is up for review.

The bottom line, Raider fans, is that this is really good news for you. Jackson hired by the only person in the NFL who ever would have hired him, Al Davis. 15 years as an assistant at five colleges, nobody ever gave him the shot. 11 years as an assistant in the pros with five teams, and finally Al Davis promoted him to head coach.

Al, as we all know, liked a particular kind of head coach, and one of the things he liked was a coach that was extremely grateful for the opportunity. 25-year assistants are that kind of grateful.  Davis wanted to call the shots, and he didn’t want an accomplished head coach disagreeing with him on anything. Even the men he hired who had been head coaches (Norv Turner, Joe Bugel, Art Shell), were not sought-after candidates.

Reggie McKenzie brings to the Raiders the experience in working in one of the league’s best organizations. He will structure the team in the Packers’ likeness, and that includes a strong head coach who will run that part of the program. Look for similar hires in personnel and “capology.” In the days following McKenzie’s hiring, the chorus from around the NFL was unanimous, “good guy, smart guy.” This means he will have his pick of people that he wants to surround himself with, and that can only be good for the Raider fans.

It might not be good for current Raiders’ employees, however. I wouldn’t be signing long-term leases right now if I were working in that front office, or if was a free-agent player. To steal a line from “48 hours,” There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name is Reggie McKenzie.

Published on January 10, 2012 at CSNBayArea.com

With any luck, Monday night was the last time we’ll have to suffer through a “National Championship Game” under the current setup.

Over the next six months, the power players in college football will decide whether to keep the BCS in its current form or change it any of several ways. For the past 20 years, the BCS (or its predecessors, the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance) have tried to give the public what it wants (an on-field champion) without using the only means that make sense, which is a playoff system.

The method that seems to have the most traction at this time is the “plus-one,” in which the No. 1 and No. 4 seeds would play a bowl game, and the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds would play one, and then the following week the victors would meet for the big trophy.

After a lifetime of defending the bowl games, I’m finally ready to throw in the towel. This conversion hasn’t happened overnight; the bowls have been getting progressively harder to defend ever since current version of the BCS came into being. The gulf between the stated goals of the BCS (to determine the best two teams for a championship game and pit the next eight best teams against each other in high profile games) and the actual outcomes (create the matchups that produce the most money for the games, the conferences and the TV networks) has widened to the point that there’s no reasonable argument against a playoff anymore.

Surprisingly, though, it’s not the ridiculous state of the BCS that has finally forced me to see the light on this subject, it’s the evolution of our society. America has changed over the past 20 years, and even over the past 10 and last five years. Cable TV, the Internet and now social media has completely changed our culture, sports and otherwise.

When life was slower, families would sit down around the TV to watch a game between two schools from faraway lands. It was often the best way to avoid talking to relatives who were visiting your house. There wasn’t much else to watch, for one thing.  Just having college football games on TV was a big deal until the ’90s.  Unless you’re at least 35 years old, you have no idea how few college football games used to be on television. There would be a big national game on Saturday on ABC, and if you were lucky and lived in a major market, your local teams might get on once in a while.

Now, let’s fast forward to today. Every conference has a TV package.  There are games on Thursday and  Friday nights, and on Saturday from dawn to dusk. In order to get people’s attention, those games had better mean something, and with the exception of the “big one,” the bowl games don’t. So ratings are down, and that’s the one thing that signals that a change is in the wind.  As long as the ratings were strong, there was no motivation among the power players in college football to change anything.

You would figure that the bad economy would help bowl game ratings, right? Fewer fans able to travel with their teams mean more eyeballs on the sets, right? It hasn’t worked out that way.

The BCS title game rematch between LSU and Alabama drew only a 13.8 rating. That’s down 14 percent from last year’s game between Auburn and Oregon, and 24 percent lower than the Alabama-Texas game in 2010. It was the lowest rating for a championship game in the “BCS Era.”

This continued a trend during this bowl season. The other four BCS games drew a combined 33.8 rating this year, down from 36.8 last year. That was despite a big increase in ratings for the Fiesta Bowl, which scored a 9.7 thanks to Andrew Luck, compared to a 7.1 last year with Oklahoma and Connecticut.

So out of five BCS games, four had significantly lower ratings this year than last. The ratings for the lower-tier games showed similar results.

These just look like numbers on a page to you and me, but to the TV networks, the conferences and the bowls themselves, each rating point has a certain number of dollars tied to it, and if they can’t get the ratings with the current system, they’ll have to change it.
The “plus-one” doesn’t fix everything; it only gives relevance to two bowl games plus the championship game.  The networks (mostly ESPN, which has cornered the market on most of the bowl games) will have to figure out a way to make America care about the other games, something they haven’t done so far.

The bad news is that there are cities whose games are not big enough to survive, but they’ve been propped up long enough by the schools (who have to buy the bulk of the tickets) and the TV networks. It’s way past time for a 8-or 16-team system that leads to a true national championship in college football.

Upon thinking more about this, I realized that I won’t miss the bowl games, but I’ll miss the America in which they mattered. It’s an example that progress isn’t always forward.

But please, somebody save us from the BCS!

Published Dec. 30th at CSNBayArea.com

You can’t turn on a radio this week or pick up a paper without hearing about the poor Oakland Raiders and all of the bad luck they’ve suffered this year.

I’ll start by acknowledging that having the owner/general manager/face of the franchise/final decision-maker on everything pass away suddenly during the season does add an element of chaos to a situation. It’s only fair to point out, however, that every Raider season seems to be chaotic, and that Al Davis was not only comfortable in that element, but often was the cause of the turmoil.

Still, a structural change like that is difficult for an organization to handle mid-year, and that is probably the most inarguable example of bad fortune that has befallen the Silver and Black this season.

As I look back on the Raiders’ season, however, I find that there are actually more examples of the football gods smiling on them than times when they did not. First, let’s look at the misfortune, although these facts are on the tip of the tongue of most Raider fans, so we don’t need a lot of detail.

What I think is overlooked when this season is evaluated, however, is the fact that the Raiders have had some things go in their favor this year, and you could make the argument that they really should have already clinched a playoff spot, rather than need a win and some help to get to the postseason. The biggest lucky break they had was  a 3-week run of good fortune in the middle of the season:

Three straight wins, right? That’s pretty cool in today’s NFL. But a closer look reveals three close victories against teams that had similar injury problems as the Raiders. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised when the team went down to Miami and laid the biggest egg of the season.

Another thing they had going for them was a soft schedule. This needs a qualifier, because any schedule that has the Patriots and Packers on it can’t be too soft. The 2011 NFL, however, is filled with teams just like the Raiders: good one week, bad the next. Even the two best “quality wins” are suspect:  The Jets turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments in the NFL, and the Texans are stumbling to the finish after clinching the worst division in the league.

None of this matters if they make the playoffs, of course. You can ask the Seattle Seahawks what the regular season means once January comes. But if they don’t, please don’t try to make the case that Oakland missed the postseason because they were unlucky. That dog won’t hunt.