I am officially tapped out.

Just filed four articles for Home Team Sports and wrote a piece for a corporate client a day ahead of deadline so that I can shut everything computer and word-related down for Christmas week.  This is also the 10th month of this blog and I have yet to take an extended period of time off (although some might debate that). 

My brain throbs, my fingers are numb, and I’ve run out of words.

Almost…

• Our family is not exchanging gifts this year.  BEST.  CHRISTMAS.  EVER.  Instead, we’re going to enjoy a nice meal, each other’s company, a snowball fight, and lives devoid of mall madness.
• Speaking of unnecessary consumerism, I love Biggby – friendly staff, cozy environment, decent coffee — but I would love for two things to change in 2010: settle on one, universal size for a medium drink so that when I say, “I’ll have a medium coffee” the barista no longer responds with, “OK, which size?”; and no more greeting customers with a yell (WELCOME TO BIGGBY!) when we walk through the door.  It’s embarrassing, especially when the place is packed.  The door dings, the barista screams, and everyone stares at you while you walk down a little tile path.  If I wanted to experience something like that, I’d be a model.
• Wait, I am a model … and I’m scheduled to do a bridal show at The Wine Loft in January, which will — without question — provide the basis for an epic blog post in the new year.

Merry Christmas, and gooooooooo Broncos!

Jim Culhane’s contract expires on May 31, 2011, which may seem like a long time from now – really long if you’re a Western Michigan hockey fan – but it’s actually not that far off in terms of discussing his future as the team’s head coach.

Professional teams almost never let a coach enter the final year of his contract without an extension.  It’s unheard of in college, mainly because it would hamper – check that: destroy – a coach’s recruiting capabilities.  Players like to know who they’re playing for, even if the guy they’re playing for hasn’t won anything in 12 years.

So here we are: Christmas break 2009 and the Broncos are yet again in last place.  When they return to the ice in January, they will face in this order: Bemidji State (10^th-ranked), Michigan (down, but still Michigan), Bowling Green (sneaky), Miami (top-ranked, at Oxford) and Notre Dame (20^th-ranked)—all before Valentine’s Day.  Say hello to 7-15-4 by the time Hockey Cares rolls onto the concourse.

The boys close out their schedule against Northern Michigan, Ohio State and Ferris (11^th-ranked) before they go on the road for the first-round of the CCHA tournament to get blown out by Lake State, Notre Dame or some other team that falls within the 5/11-seed matchup range, which could be pretty much anyone at this point with the obvious exceptions being, of course, WMU and Bowling Green, who are bound and gagged together in the league’s basement with 10 points.

Make no mistake: WMU will finish dead last or next-to-dead last.  But even if the team does something completely ridiculous like win 14 of its final 16 games – in which case I will drive over to your house and bong the gasoline out of your snow blower — it still shouldn’t be enough to save Culhane’s job.  Too much damage has been done.  Culhane didn’t deserve his current extension and Kathy Beauregard, despite using every cliche, excuse and flat out bullshit line to justify keeping her hockey coach this long, knows it.    

Either way, the point is that it’s not melodramatic in the least to say this spring is the most crucial in the 35-year history of the program.  Bronco hockey is zonked out in a decade-long coma and near the point in the white tunnel where nobody returns, but a decision on Culhane in April will determine whether we should stand at the program’s bedside and hope for a long, hard recovery or pull the plug forever and move on to other, more interesting forms of entertainment like tax preparation.

As I mentioned, programs either announce an extension or fire a coach at the end of the season prior to his contract year.  Otherwise, there’s just too much bullshit twisting in the breeze along with the guy: media speculation swirls, recruits ignore phone calls, texts, Facebook messages, Tweets, greased-up escorts, etc. and the entire program suffers paralysis because of one person.

Kind of like now.

Anyway, needless to say, if Beauregard extends Culhane for even 10 more seconds she’s going to be greeted at the glass doors of University Arena by mobs of angry, torch-wielding – hahaha, just kidding!  No she won’t.  Nobody cares anymore.  The only way Beauregard could get a pulse out of cold, dead, frozen-over Bronco hockey nation is by not announcing an extension for Culhane (and, therefore, implying he might not return in 2011-12).  Even better: announce 2010-2011 will be his final season, that he is getting kicked upstairs to a position in the athletic department, then have a ceremony during which he will be presented with a plaque for Most Ninth Place or Lower Finishes in College Hockey History and officially slam the Zamboni doors shut on WMU Hockey: The Siberia Years.

Or invite him up to your office and sign him to another extension.  Just make sure to jump into a life boat while the last of the spewing, gasping, sinking mess you’ve helped create disappears beneath the surface and sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor forever.

It’s deadline week around these parts, which means providing content for people/companies that pay me actual dollars for it. 

In the meantime, enjoy Jon Stewart at his best.

Tiger Woods is a perfectionist.

The clenched jaw.

The relentless workouts to maintain the body of an NFL free safety.

Eating three chicken breasts and broccoli … and virtually nothing else (as it was once reported in Men’s Health).

Precisely tailored clothes.

Control — control of the golf media, control of camera-snapping fans in the gallery, control of his image.

The Barbie Doll wife.

Work before play.

Ah, yes.  The now infamous play.

People who spend an obsessive amount of time trying to be perfect — whether because of brain chemistry, defense mechanism, parental influence, or all three — repress desires and impulses, repress donuts and off days, repress … repress … repress … until they explode.

There can be a shadow side — a dark side — to an unhealthy perfectionist.  Repressed desires never stay completely repressed.  Instead, they emerge elsewhere: excessive drinking to quiet the inner critic; obsessive house-cleaning; in this case, kinky sex with women in hotel rooms across the country.  

There’s an anger piece to perfectionism, too.  Perfectionists are angry because they don’t give themselves permission to relax, to cut corners, to cheat — well, er, you get the point.  They resent those who indulge, yet their anger and resentment is almost never directed at other people.  It might bubble to the surface in the form of a greenside, putter-slamming outburst or a stray F-bomb within earshot of NBC television cameras, but perfectionistic anger largely remains contained within and focused on the individual.  Perfectionists are their own harshest judge and worst enemy.

Of course, I am making assumptions about Mr. Woods from afar.  And I am not a licensed sports psychologist.  But I can spot a perfectionist a mile away – even through a television.  How?  Because I am one.  I’ve studied and used the Enneagram for seven years.  Powerful and, for some people, scary stuff.

Anyway, Tiger –

Tiger has spent so much time being Daddy’s (and the world’s) good little boy that him slipping from the pedestal upon which we’ve placed him was inevitable.  Something like this was gonna happen.  To this extent?  Yikes.  Didn’t expect that.  But there’s a lot more to Tiger — a lot more to people — than a personality type.

Rick Reilly has a brilliant take on the situation over at ESPN.com.  Others — hell, everyone — have weighed in, too.  Wherever you stand on the issue, just remember nobody is probably beating Tiger up more than Tiger.

Not even Elin.

I covered Western Michigan University’s hockey team from 2006-2009 and, during that time, could count on one hand the number of people not directly involved with the program who possessed the knowledge and, even rarer, willingness to discuss the team in a I-know-the-name-of-the-backup-goaltender sort of way.

The guy who ran the Bronco Hockey Blog was one of them.  I say “ran,” because when I popped open my Google reader today, I found this post:

I am seriously thinking of giving up on this blog. I still love Bronco hockey, despite the dismal state of the program and the terrible coaching in the driver’s seat, but I have lost interesting in writing about it. I love writing, though I’m obviously not a professional, but what started out as something fun to do for a sport I love now feels like an obligation to me.

I’m going to take some time off from writing this blog. I may find I miss it too much and come back, but there is a good chance that this will be my last post ever on this blog.

Thanks to all who have regularly read my posts and put up with my opinions. Thanks to those who motivated me to start this blog. And most of all I thank God for the greatest sport ever created… hockey.

Go Broncos!!!

Every sports team endures consecutive losing seasons, a stretch of organizational rot typically characterized by fans who show up wearing bags over their heads while holding FIRE (WHOEVER) signs or a team marketing department’s one-stop Wal-Mart shopping spree offer of 20 tickets, 40 cokes, 60 hot dogs and unlimited visits to the Storm Squad Cheer Team’s hand job booth – ALL FOR ONLY $10! 

When teams suck, pajama-wearing fantasy geeks call into sports talk radio shows, but now they’re discussing the performances of players who should still be on a bus playing in Toledo and Wheeling for 500 bucks a week instead of replacing overpriced, underperforming veterans who were shipped out with their Range Rovers as part of the front office’s cost-cutting, future-building fire sale. 

Oh, sure, the diehard fans still show up despite a team’s lousy record and three straight seasons of missing the playoffs, only now they’re wearing replicas of the club’s new third jersey, which the tapped-out, suicidal marketing team unveiled during the summer in order to drum up short-term operating cash. 

There is a silver lining among all the signs and paper bags and half-literate scrawls on team message boards, though: people still care.

WMU hockey?

Nobody cares. 

Administration apathy, terrible coaching, microwavable recruiting leftovers, player mutiny, locker room brouhahas, players with NHL futures leaving early because sticking around would destroy their careers and lead to premature management of convenience stores — all of this has driven WMU hockey so deep below the crust of relevance that it would take a van packed with Fallujah-grade explosives, followed by a backhoe, followed by a father-son well-drilling tandem from Van Buren county, followed by a team of TauTona gold miners on meth to excavate this program and drag it back up to the above-ground hockey conversation.

Google “Western Michigan University hockey chat.”  Good luck finding more than one or two sites devoted to discussing the team.  Drive around Kalamazoo.  Good luck finding billboards or yard signs or marquees in front of diners that read BRNCO HCKEY 2NITE.  Go to a game.  You won’t need luck to find a ticket.  The Broncos are 6-7-3 this season and 2-7-3 in the CCHA, a conference which they haven’t won since 1986.  They last made the NCAA Tournament 14 years ago.  Since Jim Culhane took over as coach in 1999, the team has finished with a winning record exactly twice.  Attendance has dwindled to the point that the league will not televise any games from Lawson Arena this season because, well, gaping stretches of empty yellow bleachers don’t exactly offer a vote of confidence to viewers that they should be watching this instead of “Tabitha’s Salon Takeover.”

The Bronco Hockey Blog ceases to exist because the guy who ran it is burned out.  And it’s too bad, because he was the most thorough at scouring the web for information about recruits and most consistent about offering comprehensive and objective takes on the program — a lot of work when you also have a full-time job.

But I guarantee — guaran-fucking-tee — that if WMU was tied for first-place instead of eleventh and had a coach who grasps the importance of letting his players be creative on the ice, who speaks to the media like an actual human being instead of a suit-wearing, string-pulling cliche machine that deals in moral victories, The Bronco Hockey Blog would probably not be closed for business.

Bad press is still press.  And while it might suck if you’re A.D. Kathy Beauregard and someone scribbled BRONCO HOCKEY BLOWS inside a bathroom stall at Gallagher’s, at least the person was thinking about your hockey program while they were taking a dump.

No press, though? 

No press is indifference.

And indifference for a sports team equals death.

My favorite Sunday morning ritual is to go downstairs, grind coffee beans, brew a steaming cup of goodness (straight black) and pick through the carcasses of Saturday night’s hockey games.

I start with NHL scores and work my way through the alphabet soup: AHL, ECHL, IHL, CHL, OHL, CCHA.  I do this because I want to know what’s going on, but also because I have friends playing, coaching or broadcasting at all of these levels.  Then I log on to the CBC web site and watch the hat trick of Hockey Night in Canada television segments: Coach’s Corner, Coast to Coast, and Hotstove.

Yum.  E.

While surfing the CBC site this morning, I noticed Scott Oake’s bio.  Oake is an award-winning member of the network’s broadcast team.  His bio states he is very popular on Twitter and encourages people to follow him, so I wandered over to Twitter and logged in to my account, which I use, oh, twice a month.

I just don’t see a whole lot of value in Twitter.

Apparently, Oake doesn’t, either.  His last tweet was dated Nov. 7 and thereby reinforces what I’ve said all along:

• Twitter is a fad
• People who actually do things — people like Scott Oake — don’t have time to tell everyone else about them

Also: Former Western Michigan forward Mark Letestu had an excellent game for Pittsburgh last night, even though he did not score and the Penguins lost to Chicago in overtime.  Letestu created plays, hit the post with a backhanded shot and won the key face-off in Chicago’s end that led to Jordan Staal’s game-tying goal with under a minute left.

He did not, to the best of my knowledge, Tweet about it.

I covered Mark during his only season in Kalamazoo and remember the phone conversation we had on the day he announced he signed with Pittsburgh.  Here is the article from that day:

March 20, 2007

By Rick Shanley
Special to the Gazette

KALAMAZOO — Sidney Crosby, Jordan Staal, Evgeni Malkin… Mark Letestu?

It might take a few years, but Letestu is at least in the Pittsburgh Penguins pipeline after signing a two-year contract with the organization Tuesday.

Letestu leaves Western Michigan University after just one season, during which he led the Broncos in scoring and won the Central Collegiate Hockey Association’s Rookie of the Year award.  He has already reported to the Penguins’ American Hockey League affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where he practiced Tuesday.

“It kind of took form when the season was winding down,” Letestu said of his decision.  “I just had to re-evaluate my hockey career.  It came up on me real fast.  I don’t even know if it’s hit me yet.”

Which is ironic, considering how Letestu surprised the college hockey world this season.

He led the nation in rookie scoring for much of the campaign and finished with 24 goals and 46 points.  His five shorthanded goals also led the country.

Letestu said “three or four” National Hockey League teams, including the Penguins, pursued him, although he wasn’t permitted to say which ones.  However, Detroit Red Wings’ general manager Ken Holland attended a game at Lawson Ice Arena late in the season and Steve Yzerman, now a Red Wings vice president, had lunch on campus recently.

Despite interest from the Red Wings, Letestu said his decision to sign with Pittsburgh was based on the way he feels the organization develops its players.  And it doesn’t hurt that the Penguins currently have three of the NHL’s top young players.   

“Obviously, you dream of that,” Letestu said of one day playing with Crosby, Staal and Malkin.  “But these first couple of years I’m here to develop as a pro.”

Of course, Letestu’s decision to leave WMU creates quite a large void for the program, which anticipates a strong freshman class next year and the continued development of some of its young impact players, like forward Jeff LoVecchio and goaltender Riley Gill. 

“It presents a challenge for us, there’s no question about that,” said Broncos head coach Jim Culhane.  “From a selfish standpoint for our program, he will be missed.  But we’re excited for him and he has our full support.”

Letestu is just the second player to leave early under Culhane’s tenure.  The other was forward Vince Bellissimo, who turned pro during his junior season in 2005.

“I ran some statistics (Tuesday),” Culhane said.  “There were 25 players who left early last year and I think that’s a trend that we’re seeing right now around the country.  It’s not going to be unique to us; it’s maybe a trend with the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.”

Culhane said he feels a player’s year in school doesn’t really matter when it comes to making the decision to turn pro, but Letestu’s situation was a bit unique.  At 22, he was older than most players on WMU’s team.  Plus, he possesses an unusually high level of maturity, which he feels will help his transition.

“For me, it was just the time to start my job,” Letestu said.  “I was 22 as a freshman and was going to be 23 as a sophomore.  It was just time to get on with it.”

What happened to Wayside?

It’s empty.

It smells like sawdust.

The chicken nachos, much like the bartenders, are not what they used to be.

When I was in my early 20s, Wayside was the bar in Kalamazoo.  Lines to get in would wrap around the building and down Stadium Drive.  The bartenders and waitresses?  To quote the little black baby in the E*Trade commercial outtake: Ohmagoodness.

Wayside was it!  Especially for young, insecure, meat-shopping co-eds (like me) who needed the perfect venue to walk around in packs and check each other out without actually having the balls to make solid eye contact or introduce ourselves.  Instead, we’d lean on the railing.

“Damn,” we’d say, gazing down at the floor below.  “Look at that one.”

Later, when that one would walk by, we’d turn … and let her keep walking … and walking.  We’d stare longer, then sip our fifty cent beers.

“Damn.“

Anyway, the point is, like we once were, Wayside is LAME these days.  What happened?  I know downtown and its trendy, voyeuristic, bar-on-every-block landscape has captured fun-seekers like a giant lobster net, but is that any excuse for Wayside to ditch the giant projection screen that once hung high above the main floor?  To hire bartenders who apparently inhale all the good nachos?  To gut the place like the display advertising wing of a dying newspaper?  To put in a poker room?

Apparently, it is.

Or maybe I’m getting old.

*
I was at Wayside to meet my buddy Grant for a beer before the Western Michigan-Alaska hockey game, which the Broncos somehow won, 3-1, to snap a six-game losing streak despite being outshot 34-31, getting all three of their goals from defensemen, and showing absolutely no sense of what to do with the puck besides turn it over.

Here are WMU’s three options when one of its players has the puck in the neutral zone:

1. Chip it high off the glass to nobody in particular
2. Pass it to the other team
3. Dump it in and let one forward chase it while the rest of the team stands near the blue line and watches

I know they won, but gosh was it ugly.

As Grant said, while observing WMU’s slick new jerseys: “They have new jerseys like every four games.  They should just practice more.”

You know what makes me want to smash myself in the skull with a Titleist 400cc titanium driver?  

This.

“Woods owes us nothing, especially an explanation. If it was an argument that triggered the wee-hours accident, then that’s between husband and wife. If there was spousal abuse, then the charges will be made public and we’ll know soon enough. If not, then the 24-hour news cycle will have to find another story to attach its suction cups to.”

[from "Tiger Woods' business is his and no one else's" -- Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN.com]

Gene Wojciechowski is ESPN.com’s national columnist.  He usually wears it well.  When other media carnies foam at the mouth over the latest controversy, Gene swoops in, laptop under his arm, and pounds out a couple thousand words that make you laugh, nod your head and — unlike the drivel produced by most other chuckleheads with endless bandwidth — think.

Except in this case.

Gene tells us the Tiger Woods accident is none of our business.  Says Tiger owes us nothing.  He, himself, says he doesn’t even care whether Tiger is screwing around on his wife, whether she did or did not go after him with the six-iron he used to hole-out at Pebble.  

Uh, then why did he write the column?    

I don’t know The Worldwide Leader’s inner-workings, but I doubt Gene Wojciechowski’s editors tell him what to think.  He could’ve chosen any number of angles.  He chose this one – the only angle that is a hypocrisy by its very articulation.  (For the record, Jeff Pearlman, one of my favorite sports writers and bloggers, did it, too.)  

Worse, ESPN even embeds video of the Florida State Highway Patrol press conference on the same page.  Gene’s reference to the “24-hour news cycle” as if he’s somehow removed from it also reeks of disingenuousness.

Then again, this is our media: Telling us donuts are bad as they use their fingers to wipe every last ounce of custard off their bulging faces.

So the Florida Panthers’ Keith Ballard went all Elin Woods on his own goaltender, Tomas Vokoun, last night.

Atlanta scored.

Ballard was bent.

But instead of smashing his stick against the post, he brained his own netminder, who was eventually carted off on a stretcher.

What an idiot.

Location: Cincinnati Enquirer. Level of stupidity: Hail Mary

… but to fumble the headline about the football sucking? 

Next headline: “Weis losses job”