kudos

my colleague jack, who's too modest to have stories about him posted online, was recently honored by the united states basketball writers association.

he placed second, behind espn.com's jay bilas, for best columnist. that puts him in the company of writers from the washington post, the boston globe and sports illustrated.

the thing i love and respect about jack is that he tells it like it is, based on the best information he can get, uncolored by personal loyalties or favoritism, based on sound reasoning and logic and delivered with clever or biting or sometimes unabashedly corny wit.

i can read his opinion pieces about my west virginia university mountaineers and know whether i have a right to be outraged, proud or pleased about nearly any development or accomplishment.

he helps me understand how sports works. he gives me perspective. he's a great sports booster -- and balloon buster. if he says it's good, it must be good.

i can trust him. and for anyone dealing in information, that's money in the bank.

here's the column that got him his award. it was about the first wvu coach to leave for michigan. good job, jack.

John Beilein was never a WVU guy; he was simply a basketball coach

To those Mountain Staters heartbroken or disgruntled over John Beilein's desire to make Michigan his next extreme makeover, here is the reality:

Beilein, first and foremost, is a basketball coach, period. With most coaches, loyalty is a one-way street. Control is everything. Nothing is forever, even in the most storied programs.

Don't believe me? Look west, not toward the maize and blue of Michigan, but over I-64. Tubby Smith bolting Kentucky for Minnesota is Exhibit A.

The romantic notions about Beilein and WVU forever were flawed, no matter how many wanted to think he'd never run that backdoor play himself.

The attitude in these hills and valleys as the news broke was sort of, "Almost Heaven Help Us."

Didn't it seem the glow of an NIT championship lasted about a New York minute?

Someone with fingers and toes crossed Tuesday pointed out that football Coach Rich Rodriguez eschewed Alabama for West Virginia at the 11th hour.

Yes, but Rodriguez is as much a part of West Virginia as coal. Beilein, 54, isn't a WVU guy. He still can wear that same blue and gold necktie, however.

He is a basketball coach, period - probably as good as anyone I've seen work in my three decades-plus on press row, as good a one as college hoops has right now.

In five seasons - the same number of years he stayed at previous Division I stops Canisius and Richmond - Beilein did what he hoped to do. He did more than even he expected (and sooner than a state figured), particularly for a guy who was a third choice in the hiring process.

West Virginia won 73 games the last three seasons, with five NCAA Tournament wins and an NIT title. Only a three-winter stretch that included the legendary Jerry West has brought more victories in Morgantown. Beilein beat 16 ranked teams in five seasons.

The guy was money in March, when it counts most. His career record in 10 NCAAs and NITs is 20-10. Add conference tournament play at Canisius, Richmond and WVU, and he's 39-21 in the postseason.

Beilein made WVU basketball a more attractive job, which should benefit the Mountaineers in hiring his successor. He leaves the program in much better shape than he got it.

He probably stayed one more season than he really wanted. Beilein would have bolted a year ago, after the graduation of his hoops-shooting son Patrick, if the coach could have gotten Indiana or North Carolina State to help with a then-$3 million buyout (now $2.5 million for Beilein to exit).

He can try to paint it otherwise, but his move to Michigan undermines the notion that Beilein was content at WVU.

Maybe he saw that WVU contract as something that constricted his freedom. Then again, he signed it, didn't he?

Don't blame WVU. Since last summer, and as a stunning season blossomed into an NIT title and 27-9 finish, WVU Athletic Director Ed Pastilong, Deputy AD Mike Parsons and Beilein met on several occasions to discuss the coach's contract.

Beilein wanted his buyout reduced significantly, if not eliminated, if a new deal were done.

Beilein's contract (seven years, $5.32 million guaranteed through 2011-12) paid him $720,000, plus incentives, this school year.

It was a great deal for WVU - but the Mountaineers were more than ready to redo it now for a fourth time in five years. The back-and-forth showed that.

Beilein figured to get a minimum $1 million annually at WVU (that rose to $1.3 million in the 11th hour), but Pastilong and Parsons weren't going to break on a buyout. Bend yes; break no. Nor should they have. WVU wanted to keep Beilein in the worst way, within reason.

The school not only wanted (and needed) to protect itself, but it wanted to retain a coach who had transformed a program. When Rodriguez's deal went from last season's $1 million to $1.75 million for 2007, his opening-year buyout doubled to $4 million.

It wasn't that WVU didn't do enough to keep Beilein. It was about him wanting to go.

WVU wasn't buying more money, more facilities enhancements - and less buyout. Now what? Dial 1-800-HUGGINS?

For all that Beilein has accomplished at WVU, it's always going be a program that is targeted by others who want a coach. Beilein's exit says that. He didn't go from the Atlantic 10 to the Atlantic Coast. He moved from the Big East to the Big Ten.

It's a lateral move.

He moved to a place where football was, is and will be king. He moved to a place with much more money than WVU has. He moved to a program that has been to six Final Fours, but hasn't made the Big Dance since 1998.

Is Michigan a better basketball job than WVU? No (thanks to Beilein), but it is easier to recruit to Ann Arbor (40 miles from populous Detroit) than to Morgantown.

Will recruiting against the established Tom Izzo at Michigan State make it tougher on Beilein? Is it easier to win in the 11-team Big Ten than in the 16-team Big East? Probably, but coaching moves into the conference by Beilein, Tubby and Todd Lickliter should juice things.

Beilein is moving to Ann Arbor at a good time. He is taking a program that has been ranked only two weeks (and no higher than 21st) in the last nine seasons.

The Big Ten has played smaller in recent seasons. It had no Sweet Sixteen entrants last year, and only national runner-up Ohio State got to the regional semifinals this season. Besides the Buckeyes, five big Ten teams went 4-5 in the NCAA last month.

And he'd better make the NCAA Tournament, which at more places has become the be-all (and end-all) for coaching survival

Whatever happens, Beilein should know this: Unless he guides the Wolverines to a second (1989) national championship, he will never be as loved as much or appreciated as deeply by fandom as he was (until Tuesday) in West Virginia.

WVU passes as this state's pro sports franchise.

It's often too much an obsession. Now, Beilein's program will contend with Lions and Tigers ... and Pistons and Red Wings and Spartans.

For Beilein, it's hail to the victors. It was hell for the Mountaineers.

Copyright 2007 Charleston Daily Mail

maintaining a presence

do you see that moron with the stupid expression that every idiot in a bar puts on when he's getting his picture taken with a group of women?

well, in case the mug shot of me at the top of the page disappears, that's me.

this was taken a couple of weeks ago when i went out to dinner and what became an evening of karaoke with "the kids," as i like to call our pups at the paper.

this was the weekend kris went out of town and it was time for my bi-weekly cheeseburger fix.

the kids thought it would be funny to go behind her back and feed me the food that has somehow come to define me. (they approached it sort of like sneaking scraps to the dog under the table.)

young jess, the lass whose eyes peek just above the bottom of the frame, posted this on her facebook page. i'm standing next to sweet ann, a former intern and now with the business weekly here in town.

(i sang "heard it in a love song" by the marshall tucker band, if anyone cares to know.)

i post it here to illustrate how something i thought 10 years ago would be a way to add a tiny voice to the din of the information superhighway has become ... well, a small band of tiny voices amid the superhighway din.

a friend of mine contacted me late last year inviting me to read his message to me on facebook, which i didn't belong to. but to read it, i thought i had to sign up. so i did. then i left the site alone.

i figured with this blog -- which still embarrasses me somewhat to say i have -- another blog on myspace, the myspace page itself, and an ersatz photo blog, i had plenty of outlets for expression, pseudo-personal interaction and sharing harmless, personal news.

(plus there's a wedding web page, an online portfolio and an actual work site i help maintain, much to kris' chagrin.)

well, last week, i got facebook friend requests from a cousin in the philippines who i may or may not remember, and then from a former colleague who's now with the associated press.

it was weird. nearly two months after opening an account that i'd pretty much ignored, i find it suddenly coming alive with two more people who know me and wish to add my listing to their online profiles as friends.

then at work today, jess showed me the above image that she posted on her account, and i knew i had to a) write about the experience of seeing myself on someone else's web page and 2) add her to my friends list if i was going to use her photo in good conscience.

i'm not so sure i'll be nearly as active on the facebook as the kids in the office are. my understanding of the site is that it grew out of a social networking site for school-aged types and only recently became open to grownups.

if i felt weird about joining myspace, with its youth-oriented content and targeting, i feel even more out of my depth on the facebook, like a middle-aged alumnus sitting in a college bar.

things are getting busy for me at the moment, what with the wedding and all, and i'm not sure i can blow off hours out of my week learning another set of rules and features for another community-oriented site.

those are probably hours left best to the young, willing and not-yet-committed.

six personal web sites are probably six more than most 40-somethings possess. i think, as far as maintaining an internet presence goes, that six pack puts me well above my saturation point.

it's probably time for last call.

message massage

i was clearing off my kitchen table for dinner today and removed a hand-written thank you card from a friend for her wedding gift, as well as a birthday present my buddy brad sent me.

it was a gift only comic book-loving, sci-fi geeks like me would appreciate, the first season of the new battlestar galactica. he had a note enclosed wishing me a happy frakking birthday and called me a cylon. (google your galactica lingo for a possible meaning. or wiki.)

the card made me laugh and i, of course, grabbed my mobile phone and sent him a text calling him a dagget. (again, the google.) i sent him another, though, thanking him for the dvd set.

it didn't occur to me until today, though, that i'd managed to breach my personal communications etiquette with a text messaged thank you.

i've decided if you want to pass along a message -- i.e., say something to somebody -- there exists a hierarchy of communications that bears a direct relationship with the immediacy of said message.

if it's crucial and immediate, you talk. face-to-face when possible, by phone if it can't wait. it's the direct connection. once you've got them by the ear, there's no escaping that its importance is known.

maybe next is text messaging. if there's a mobile phone, there's a window for reception. i maintain it's dangerous, however, while driving and just a pain in the ass for someone to watch who's not in the exchange with one of the participants. and messages can be ignored.

next is e-mail. it can be as detailed or concise as the sender wants. its weakness is technological. unless the receiver has a blackberry or is by a computer, that message can be hanging out there for hours, if not days. and it, too, can be ignored.

last is the letter. it's as fast as driving.

(aside from legal stuff or passing along a copy of a printed document, does anyone fax anymore?)

of course, speed isn't everything. there's tone. there's permanence. there's sentiment. there's weight.

i don't think anyone will ever get a court summons via text message, for instance. (and i sure as hell wouldn't want someone to break up with me that way.) and a printout of a love e-mail in a shoebox just ain't the same as a hand-written letter.

which brings me back to the thank you text i'd sent brad.

i think if i didn't have text messaging, i'd probably have said thanks at work. the convenience of the text was its immediacy for a light-hearted, geeky gift. Lord knows, if not for that, there'd be no "written" thank you at all.

come wedding time, though, there's going to be nothing of the sort. it's all going to be hand-scrawled personal notes of appreciation. that may be the last place where technology won't let you cheat when you want to get a word in somewhere.

reporting -- it's not just a job, it's an adventure

this is a ringside shot of my buddy brad at last weekend's rough and rowdy brawl -- local boxing at its amateur best.

in addition to the actual pugilistic showdowns, there was a competition for best ring girl -- those bikini-clad beauties who parade around the ring between rounds with signs announcing the next round.

from a purely sociological standpoint, brad felt compelled to share with the reading public a behind-the-scenes look at the motivations and personalities of the women who enter these contests.

he did a pretty good job of, um, fleshing out their stories and revealing them as people you might know yourself.

some were poignant, some were silly, some were full of the cockiness of blessed, yet blessedly unaware, youth. it's definitely worth a read. (there's a link to a slide show of photos, as well.)

the pic was shot by our pal tom, who has a few other shots from the brawl and scads of other outtakes and favorites from photo assignments and images from his personal forays on his photo blog. bookmark it and check back often.

sucking on fumes

it's friday evening. kris is out of town. i've eaten my dinner. (then scarfed down a sleeve of crackers with peanut butter -- i think i desire salt. should've picked up a pizza instead of eating leftover tuna steak.)

but all i'm doing in the midst of dinner and runs back and forth to the kitchen to make plates of crackers is reading all my sports sites for college football news.

the season ended monday with the highly gratifying ass-whupping of ohio state's buckeyes by the louisiana state tigers in the national title game. (i can't help but wonder if we could have been the team to have administered the beat down. holy shit, how i hate pitt.)

i satisfied myself for the next couple of days reading how osu should be forever kept out of bowl championship series title games, how dominant the southeastern conference is (which i don't seem to mind acknowledging these days nearly as much as did about 10 years ago) and national reaction to west virginia's hiring of bill stewart to replace rich rodriguez. (not good.)

but now, while i'm very much concerned with the kind of coaching staff stewart will assemble, what he does won't be big national news and the information comes along in dribs and drabs, like today, when he hired some new assistants.

(offensive coordinator -- not yet hired -- is going to be crucial. i'm totally sweating that one out, and coach stew wants to be deliberate.)

i crave something new. not necessarily about wvu, but about some team or person i'm interested in. and the tap is rapidly being closed for the next seven months. seven months!

this evening, as i ate, i was reduced to re-reading columns about the bcs game that i'd already horked down tuesday. i'm like a monkey pushing a button for a food pellet that isn't going to fall out.

and once that coordinator slot is filled, that's going to be it.

well, all can say is thank the Lord for the wedding. that should be good for speeding up two months.

then after that, maybe spring football.

and then, nothing.

hello. my name is philip. and i'm addicted to college football.

a thousand words for a picture

that's my sister pamy on the right after i told the family kris and i were engaged. it was the last day of last year's annual myrtle beach family vacation. (and despite the date stamp in the corner, it was friday the 10th of august.)

we'd been unofficially engaged since an impromptu proposal on a picnic lunch the first of july. but without a ring to show for it, we chose not to tell anyone.

kris thought i'd make the announcement during the vacation, but when the week passed and nothing, well ...

the perfect moment was a big dinner at mom and dad's place at the hotel complex on monday. my sister-in-law kim made a great pork loin, we'd uncorked open a big bottle of wine and everyone was there. but it occurred to me that i hadn't yet asked for her dad's blessing. i just couldn't do this without her folks knowing, so ...

the week ahead traditionally held a series of spontaneous, usually fragmented, dinner arrangements. before i could announce anything, i had to know: a) when the family would all be there; and b) when i should contact kris' dad in a timely enough manner that he and his wife wouldn't be holding their breath for days.

turned into a long week.

thursday was the final shot. it was the last, big, family dinner out. so i called kris' dad that morning, told him that at some point that evening i was going to seek his daughter's hand and asked if i could have his blessing. he said he'd be proud and honored.

(he also said something i'd never thought of, but has made me value the relationship of his daughter and me a little more each time i think about it: "you two make a great team." wife? yes. friend? from the beginning. but teammate? you know, in the game of life, i don't think i could've drafted better.)

anyhow, eating dinner out with the entire family means accommodating seven children under the age of 5. you had better have plenty for them to do or plenty of noise to cover up what happens when there isn't. we chose the latter. a fine night out, but no one was going to be hearing anything i was going to say.

mission scrubbed.

come friday morning, we started packing up at mom and dad's. i scrambled, looking for an opening, and there it was: lunch at my sister's before everyone hit the road.

we ate as much as we could of the week's leftovers in everyone's fridges. fattened and fortified for the journeys home, the gears were falling into place for the final push-off. kris and i stood at the entry to my sister's kitchen.

"well, it's about that time," i said to the family. kris nodded her assent.

"i think it's time to let you know that two people in this room are going to get married." kris was agape.

pandemonium ensued. crying. hugging. my mom repeating over and over, "this is too much."

finally, kris could breathe. our secret was out.

but i had one left.

after more than two weeks of having it burning a hole in my pocket, i was finally able to give her the ring.

there's another long story about the ring itself, but in a few sentences:

after i proposed to her in july, when talking about what kind of ring she should get, i joked i'd get her one out of a gumball machine.

on a grocery run to the local wal-mart thursday, i dropped a quarter into a machine and got a capsule with a rub-on tattoo in it. i placed the engagement ring inside -- later made sure the tattoo wasn't a skull head (it was a butterfly) -- and waited for the right time to spring it.

i prefaced the family on the gumball joke before i reached into my pocket for the capsule. kris was already crying, but when i handed it to her, she was shaking so that she couldn't open it. my niece celina helped her. (first she wanted the tattoo, then she wanted the ring.)

why this story now, almost five months after the fact and less than three before the wedding?

i found these and other images from that afternoon downloaded onto my dad's computer over christmas. my other sister joy had the presence of mind to grab dad's digital off the kitchen table and shoot.

i've got some from that set and other pics on a flickr photo album i started last year. i added a new shot today from a screen capture of new west virginia university coach bill stewart's introductory press conference.

i figured, well, i've got two blogs and two profiles on youth culture internet sites, might as well add to my internet presence and pimp my photo album, too.

i suspect one of these days i'll have a digital camera and will pollute the site with lots and lots of stupid crap.

anyway, that's the story behind the picture.

sick again

you can mark it on your calendar -- if it's the fifth of january, there's a good chance i'm sick in bed.

i can only guess that my early-morning newspaper schedule coupled with the december rush of holiday activities the rest of the day saps me of enough energy and rest that i can do nothing but lay around and rest.

(or sit and blog, as my latest obsession shows.)

which wouldn't be so bad -- i've long maintained that a cold is the body's way of telling you to slow down -- if all that accumulated sleep deficit wasn't always coming due on or around my birthday.

(combine that with missing gatherings with friends to watch yesterday's amazing fiesta bowl win by west virginia university and it's pretty dang close to frustrating. yeah. could only lay in bed by the radio for that one.)

and it's not even that i'm a huge birthday celebration kind of guy. it's usually that it's one of the few times my family members here in state can converge on charleston -- or meet in beckley -- for a little get-together.

if i'm not half-delirious unable to taste what i'm eating or to participate in conversation, then i'm relegated to bed with a low-grade fever and eating soup from a can -- a perfect waste of family time.

well, i think i've tired myself out enough for now. hopefully, i can make it through the night for some real rest.

losing heart

i told my buddy jake at work today that i wasn't going to watch tonight's fiesta bowl game between west virginia university and oklahoma because i said i didn't like to watch dumb animals get hurt.

i likened the matchup between what some are calling one of the hottest teams in college football right now and my poor, rudderless mountaineers to watching a lost, stray dog shuffling along the side of the interstate. (yeah, i stole that one.)

i don't feel well. i may have caught something from one of the many young people at my sister's saturday night and i'm feeling kind of feverish, so it might not be a good idea to go anywhere where i can't just lie down to rest.

and it may be my fatigued, weakened state, but i don't think i have it in me to watch this ball game.

normally, my feeling would be that, live or die, i have to be with my boys when they meet their fate.

tonight, though, i don't feel like venturing out of the house to face a foregone conclusion. hell, even the thought that this could be our last bcs bowl game isn't enough to make me watch.

i'll be taking my bed hoping against hope that we'll have the desperation in us of a foe with nothing to lose and pull off the upset. but faith isn't strong enough to make me be present to will it to happen.

still, i like this position. we're supposed to be dead; no one expects anything from us.

who knows? we may yet write the last chapter in the year of the upset.

and if it does happen, i'll know when i stopped being a true believer and just another booster on the bandwagon.

a shared resolution

i told kris about the resolutions i make for myself and how i had to write them in my journal on new year's eve.

she asked if i'd managed to keep last year's.

i looked, and of the five, i managed to kind of keep one (exercise daily -- which helped get me within 10 lbs. of my triathlete weight, but nowhere near the fitness) and technically kept another (pray -- which i did every day, but what i really wanted to do was to return to a regular practice of meditation, which i did not).

getting my finances in order never got off the ground.

today, though, after work, kris told me her resolution for the year was to relax -- a mighty goal, as she and i agree that she worries for the both of us.

also mighty because in less than three months we'll be getting married, with all its attendant fanfare and fuss.

she cooked a new year's day feast of cabbage rolls and rice for dinner -- both cabbage and rice being good luck foods. it was delicious.

the during was a bit of an adventure, as she had never made cabbage rolls before and said she didn't quite get the knack of rolling them around the meat mixture. this proved a frustrating exercise for her, although i thought the meal looked quite lovely.

i, on the other hand, was paying bills online as she cooked, counting out the dollars and hoping i could kill some debt this year. the enormity of it frustrated me.

both of us, though, are starting to feel the list of things to knock out before the wedding piling up on us and, while small, are of a sufficient number to make us anxious.

it's not the ability to do them so much as doing them that is making us tense on a holiday when nothing can really get done anyway.

not doing anything today just makes our tasks look so monolithic, standing out there, impervious to accomplishing.

things seemed better after a full belly and a beer. i thought, this will all be fine if we just break this big thing into little doable things. remember that.

and i declared after dinner that one thing we neglected to resolve this year was to be easy on ourselves.

we both see in each other a desire for perfection that, when it does not come to be, leads to all manner of upset and self-directed criticism that we would never level at anyone else.

both of us, i think, so want to give the best we have to the other that when it doesn't work like we hope, we feel like we're letting the other down.

now i don't know about her, but all i see in her efforts are love for me. and that is enough. (well, that, and maybe a good bacon sandwich.) i hope she sees the same in my work for her.

so i will have four resolutions for the year. we'll check back in about 12 months to see how we did.

God bless us every one.