Lessons learned from the game

This is the last column of mine to appear in the IDS. Beginning in January 2002 and including summers, I have written a weekly column for the bigger part for almost two years.\nIt's time for someone else to have a turn.\nIn case you haven't been here for all of them or in case you decided to read something more scintillating, like an astrophysics textbook or the side of a cereal box, here is a brief summation of my columns.\nDick Vitale should not be allowed to broadcast Duke games because of a conflict of interest with the V Foundation and fellow board member Mike Krzyzewski.\nOf all the things wrong with college football, the Bowl Championship Series is somewhere around No. 322 on the list. The lack of minority coaches is closer to No. 1.\nThis week, someday, somewhere, a boxer will die due to injuries suffered in the ring. If you look hard enough, you will find somebody.\nDusty Baker likes baseball players that will share their Geritol.\nIn case a sports columnist wants to start a controversy, write something about Michael Jordan.\nWe'll never see anything like the Williams sisters again.\nGertrude Ederle, who died Nov. 30 at age 98, not only became the first woman to swim the English Channel, but did so in record time for any gender and pretty much sacrificed her hearing in order to accomplish it.\nSomebody will get upset when a player scores a touchdown and then celebrates the fact.\nSomebody from the older generation will take a cheap shot at the athletes of today's manhood, especially when a famous athlete of their generation dies. (See Warren Spahn.)\nOccasionally, I see the puck.\nScandal will always be more prevalent in college basketball than college football because in college basketball, one player is more likely to single-handedly make a difference in a game.\nLeBron James is good. Duh.\nThe NFL is a quarterback's game. Any team with a quarterback controversy probably isn't going anywhere.\nTrent Green? Who knew?\nDefense doesn't win championships. Offense and defense win championships. One-dimensional teams don't win championships.\nNothing changes the momentum in a baseball game, especially an important one, than a great defensive play.\nWe'll never see anything like Tiger Woods again.\nWe'll never see anything like Tiger Woods' fiancee again.\nSoccer will always be more popular on college campuses than in the Joe Six-pack suburbs.\nThe Indy Racing League will not be interesting unless Chevrolet starts designing competitive engines.\nMen's tennis is way more interesting, competitive and exciting than women's tennis, which only starts to get interesting until about the semifinals of any major tournament.\nLSU women's basketball coach Sue Gunter criticized her team's play as "lethargic" after a 2002 win over Alabama State. Despite being "lethargic," LSU won 65-19. But remember, they were lethargic.\nIf one team beats another 77-0 in college football -- as Oklahoma did to Texas A&M on Nov. 8 -- or if one teams beats another 115-2 in a girls high school basketball game -- as Walkerville beat Hart Lakeshore Academy in Michigan in 2002 -- that usually reflects just as much, if not more, on the team that loses, not the team that wins.\nBaseball is still the best game because there is no salary cap. Teams fight with one another for the best players. It's good for competition and doesn't lead to nightmarish, NFL-style parity where two-thirds of the league will finish somewhere between 7-9 and 9-7.\nThere is far more big-market, small-market disparity in the NBA than in baseball.\nChris Berman isn't funny.\nWhile patriotism has boomed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, jingoistic pride in many of our national sports teams has gone down. A typical example is the general indifference to Team USA's embarrassing sixth-place finish at the 2002 FIBA World Championships of Basketball, which couldn't draw flies to Conseco Fieldhouse.\nTony LaRussa is a bigger bully than Bill Parcells.\nWe'll never see another Alex Rodriguez.\nWhen MLB commissioner Bud Selig credits the new labor agreement with the Kansas City Royals' success instead of Tony Pena's managing, the emergence of their farm system or shrewd front office decisions, he ruins any of the goodwill for the supposedly positive changes he's made toward the game.\nFor me to make as much money writing columns as Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly does in a year writing his brutally bad columns, I would have to write one column a week for 2,163 years. Life ain't fair.\nThe guess here is that the Chargers will move to Los Angeles and the Colts will stay.\nIn hell, "Pardon the Interruption" is on 24 hours a day.