The Baldest Truth

Everybody loves a big-time college athlete who chooses Boolah! Boolah! Boolah! over moolah-moolah-moolah.

How loyal of him to stay in school with his buddies instead of wandering out into the cold, cruel world of professional sports. How noble. How heroic.

How shortsighted.

I have my doubts about Jimmy Clausen being good enough to star on Sundays. Nevertheless, if NFL scouts love the Notre Dame quarterback so much that he’ll be a top draft pick next April, he only has one intelligent choice.

Go pro, kid, go pro.

Clausen shouldn’t make the same $80 million mistake Sam Bradford did. He shouldn’t stay in school because it’s fun. I’d give the same advice to Washington QB Jake Locker and any other underclassman who is top-10 material.

They can have plenty of fun in the NFL. If they have to, they can buy fun. They should think about the primary purpose of college: To prepare a young person for life and for the profession he or she wants to enter when the keggers, study halls, hook-ups and final exams are finished.

Bradford is the cautionary tale of all cautionary tales. He probably would have been the first pick in last year’s draft but he decided to stay at Oklahoma because, he said, “My three years here have been probably three of the best years of my life.”

He added: “I really feel that there is no need to cut this experience short.”

Need, no. Reason, yes.

Through the end of last season, the University of Oklahoma experience did for Bradford exactly what it was supposed to do. As the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and a kid generally considered the best QB available, he surely would have received more money than eventual No. 1 pick Matthew Stafford did from the Lions ($41.7 million guaranteed, with a chance to earn as much as $78 million).

Instead, Sam Bradford is damaged goods.

The first shoulder injury, suffered in this season’s opener, probably didn’t hurt his stock for the 2010 draft too much.

When he went down hard on the shoulder again last week, however, it meant only two words to NFL teams:

Injury.

Prone.

Where will Bradford be drafted now? In the middle of the first round, where his guaranteed take probably would be around $10 million? In the second, where he’d be lucky to get half that? In the third, where seven-figure signing bonuses are rare? Later? It’s a distinct possibility, especially if he isn’t in top shape come Combine time in February.

Obviously, when it comes to risk-reward ratios, it’s foolish for a top-tier college football player to delay his pro career.

Yeah, but what about Tim Tebow? Few say he should have left Florida after leading the Gators to last season's mythical title. Apples and oranges, folks. NFL talent evaluators weren’t even sure he had pro QB skills. (In fact, some still aren’t.) Tebow had to return and prove he was worth the high pick and the big bucks.

As for Clausen, he gets lots of ink because he’s at Notre Dame. OK, but did anybody who watched the USC game really believe he was the best QB on the field?

Matt Barkley had better stats, made more big plays and didn’t misfire repeatedly at the end with the game on the line.

The Trojans are 5-0 in Barkley’s starts, 0-1 in the game he missed. He performed superbly at Ohio State and at Notre Dame - giving him two more signature victories in half a season than Clausen has had in three years.

Yet we seldom hear Barkley’s name in the Heisman discussion because he’s a freshman. Clausen, meanwhile, is a Golden Domer. Nuff said.

Reason No. 849 why the Heisman is a sham.

Anyway, if Clausen finishes strongly against the non-USC-type opponents on ND’s remaining schedule, he certainly will be projected as an early draft choice, maybe even No. 1.

If so, he should go.

Why come back for another year under Charlie Weis, whose tutelage neither improved Brady Quinn’s draft status nor made Quinn an instant NFL star?

Cash over co-eds. Sunday's dough over Saturday's show. Moolah over boolah.

Those are the simple economics of football, a violent business in which one play, one hit, one cheap shot, one accidental collision can put a serious dent in a future paycheck or even end a career entirely.

Read Mike Nadel's musings daily at TheBaldestTruth.com.

The Bald Truth

Face it, the New England Patriots deserved to lose to the Denver Broncos. I mean, tails? Come on! Anybody with an ounce of intelligence, talent, guts and toughness (not to mention extra-sensory perception) knew the pre-overtime coin flip would come up heads.

Tails? As soon as Vince Wilfork said, "Tails," it was over.

What a league. The NFL measures first downs by fractions of an inch. A play is viewed and reviewed 100 times in super-slo-mo to make sure the officials got the call right. Quarterbacks get their marching orders via speakers in their helmets. Aerial shots of plays are available within nanoseconds so dozens of assistant coaches can break down plays on the sidelines.

All of this technology helps make it more likely that the "right" team will win on any given Sunday.

And yet the Patriots lost in Denver because Wilfork said "tails" instead of "heads." The Broncos got the kickoff, advanced into New England territory and kicked a field goal. Tom Brady might as well have gone home early to Gisele; at least then he would have had a chance to score.

OK, technically, the coin flip didn't "cost" the Patriots the game. There was no rule saying the New England defense had to let Kyle Orton march his charges down the field in OT as if the Broncos were playing 11-on-7.

But really, in 2009, isn't there a better way?

The answer, of course, is yes. At college stadiums every Saturday, games tied after regulation eventually end in exciting - and equitable - fashion.

Why the NFL refuses to run its overtimes the same way, giving each team at least one possession at the opponent's 25-yard line, I only can attribute to stubbornness.

The Balder Truth

The league actually could improve upon the NCAA rule by making each OT possession start at the 50. That way, a team wouldn't be in field-goal range right out of the box. An offense would have to get at least one first down to earn a shot at points.

Given what's on the line - victories, defeats, playoff berths, jobs and a few billion friendly wagers - I'll take a fair rule vs. dumb luck every time.

THE BALDEST TRUTH

While the NFL's overtime solution should be a no-brainer, MLB's umpiring conundrum is much more vexing.

Already this postseason, there have been so many blown calls - most of them in crucial situations - that Bud Selig is even more red-faced than usual.

How embarrassing was that Chase Utley fiasco in the ninth inning of Sunday's Phillies-Rockies game? The home-plate umpire (and his five colleagues) didn't see that Utley fouled the baseball off of his leg, turning what should have been a foul ball into a slow roller. Then, Utley got away with running well inside the baseline. Then, the throw to first beat Utley but the ump there blew the call, too, resulting in an infield hit that sparked Philly's winning rally in the series' pivotal game.

Kind of a Buy-One-Get-Two-Free Sale on umpiring incompetence.

Really, though, what are Selig and his minions supposed to do? More replay reviews? Postseason games already take forever. Even managers burned by lousy calls have said interrupting play to review every borderline call would ruin a pitcher's rhythm and upset a game's flow.

Selig always could double the size of the postseason crews from six to an even dozen. That's one umpire for each fielder, one for the batter, one for the on-deck hitter and one to make sure that neither Jeffrey Maier nor Steve Bartman are in the ballpark.

You can never have enough umpires, I always say.

Or here's an idea the Commish is sure to like: Any controversial call involving an All-Star Game participant would favor that player; if the play involves two or more All-Stars, the call would favor the player who performed best in the Midsummer Classic.

Can't you just hear Fox's slogan now? "More than ever, this time it really, really, REALLY counts."

Read Mike Nadel's musings daily at TheBaldestTruth.com.

What will Tuesday’s one-game playoff between the Twins and Tigers look like to viewers three decades from now? Different, if history is a guide. Very, very different.

While channel-surfing over the weekend, I happened upon the MLB Network's airing of the famous (or infamous, if you’re a Bostonian) 1978 Yankees-Red Sox showdown - The Bucky Bleepin' Dent Game.

As a college freshman back then, I skipped all of my afternoon classes to watch it in my dorm room. On my trusty, 19-inch, black-and-white Zenith with the rabbit-ear antenna, of course.

I had seen bits and pieces of the game since, but this weekend marked the first time I re-experienced it in its entirety. While watching it this time on my 50-inch HD Sony, so many things struck me as interesting ...

The graphics and camera angles were from another era - sometime between the Cenozoic and Precambrian, I believe.

I mean, we couldn't even see Dent's home run. We never saw the ball off the bat, never saw the flight, never saw it settle into the net above the Green Monster. If the announcers hadn't told us it was a homer and if we hadn't seen Dent's gleeful trot around the bases, we never would have known.

To look at him, Goose Gossage didn’t seem especially intimidating.

For one thing, he didn't have the menacing mustache that became his trademark. For another, as my wife said: "Jeez, look at how little he is." And Goose wasn't the only bigger-than-life figure who actually wasn’t very big at all. Jim Rice was borderline skinny. Ron Guidry couldn't have weighed 165 pounds. Even Reggie Jackson bore little resemblance to today’s home-run hitters.

Here was the most fearsome reliever of the era, two future Hall of Fame sluggers and a dominant power pitcher ... and they practically were stick figures. Who could have known that in less than a decade, bulked-up, bench-pressing ballplayers would be using their keisters as pincushions?

Situational pitching - one-batter relief specialists and set-up men - was still a twinkle in Tony La Russa’s eye.

Leading 2-0, Boston starter Mike Torrez got into trouble in the seventh. As soon as Jim Spencer was announced as a pinch-hitter, just about any of today's managers would have gotten a lefty into the game pronto. Don Zimmer, as was the norm then, left Torrez in. Torrez got Spencer out but, within a New York minute, Dent was a legend.

Guidry, meanwhile, was working his third straight start on 3-days' rest - his only outings with fewer than 4-days’ rest the entire season - and he had pitched complete games his previous two times out. Though he clearly didn't have the kind of stuff that made him a 25-game winner that year, Bob Lemon let him pitch into the seventh inning.

Back then, an All-Star closer really earned his paycheck.

When Guidry finally did depart with one out in the seventh, he was replaced by Gossage, who got the final eight outs for the save. It was the 39th time that year Goose worked more than one inning - including five outings of at least 2 2-3 innings in the season’s final three weeks. It also was the 35th time he entered a game with runners on base.

Those were saves - unlike the wussy saves “earned” by today’s overpaid closers, who almost always enter a game to start the ninth and just about never work more than one inning. It makes one appreciate throwback Mariano Rivera all the more.

Lou Piniella was a darn good ballplayer.

These days, most people think of Piniella as an almost-retired, former hellraiser of a manager with a beachball stuffed under his uniform. But there he was 31 years ago, batting third on a great Yankees team that included Jackson, Thurman Munson, Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss. He wasn’t a home-run guy but was a reliable clutch bat with gap power.

I remembered all that. What I had forgotten was that he was an underrated outfielder whose intelligence and instincts made up for his lack of speed. Piniella saved two sixth-inning runs with a running catch near the right-field line, and he saved the game in the ninth when he prevented the tying run from scoring by acting as if he was going to catch a ball he had lost briefly in Fenway’s wicked afternoon sun. As a result, Rick Burleson only went from first to second on Jerry Remy’s one-out single and couldn’t score when the next batter, Rice, hit a deep fly. Carl Yastrzemski then popped out, ending one of baseball’s most memorable afternoons.

Unlike today, when even little guys swing for the fences on every pitch, ballplayers back then knew their roles and realized their limitations.

At least a half-dozen hitters in that game - including Dent - choked up several inches on the bat. By doing so, they increased their chances of fouling off a tough pitch and living to see another. Before delivering his Beantown bomb, Dent fouled a nasty slider off of his left foot and limped around for several minutes. We’ll never know how the delay affected Torrez, but we already know how it affected Dent - and history.

Read Mike Nadel's musings daily at TheBaldestTruth.com.