Story from ESPN

When I think of USC football, three things come to mind. Coach Carroll, Great Players, and Southern California. If the rumors are true, Carroll inherits a mediocre to average team of NFL players and weather conditions less than ideal in Seattle.

His NFL head coaching resume is barely over .500. He coached the Jets to a 6-10 season and was promptly fired. Hired by New England, he went 27-21 over 3 seasons before getting canned. Compare this to a 97-19 record over a 9 year stretch at USC. From 2002-2008 his team never finished the season outside of the AP Top 5.

So why on Earth would someone leave that situation to presumably resume an NFL career that is simply average? He has the keys to the city of LA, and is every bit as popular there as guys like Kobe Bryant. With no professional football team, his team rules that entire landscape. He has singled-handedly built a dynasty at USC, and could stay around for as long as he wants (aka job security). He can recruit from all over the country, and in the off season can bask in the California sun. Again – WHY WOULD ANYONE LEAVE THIS?

You won't see parties like this in Seattle coach... just saying

Maybe there is something he knows that the rest of us don’t. Maybe he feels he has to try to succeed in the NFL one more time. Whatever the thinking behind his reasoning, one thing is clear; he feels pretty damn confident in his abilities as a football coach to walk away from what I believe is the best job in football – period.

Best of luck Coach Carroll – you made USC the team of the decade, and one of the most fun teams to watch. Just wish you’d reconsider and cement your legacy in SoCal.

While everyone in the country is concentrated on the growing number of alleged mistresses coming forward claiming they had a romp with the worlds #1 golfer,  a new plot is developing, one in which Woods may be in the thick of.  The transgressions Tiger admits to, while disturbing from a family and personal perspective, are nothing new to society. All women in think men cheat on them and every few months when there is no news, the gossip magazines just make up a story about Angelina Jolie breaking up with Brad Pitt.

But today a Canadian doctor, who is linked to supposedly working with Tiger, is under investigation by the FBI and Canadian Mounties for a stop at the border where Human growth hormone and Actovegin, a drug extracted from calf’s blood, were found in Galea’s bag in the car (according to the NY Times)

As you dive deeper into the story, and how it’s related to El Tigre, Dr. Galea, visited Woods four times in February and March to provide platelet-rich plasma therapy as he recovered from knee surgery.  This therapy involves taking a blood sample, removing red blood cells that leave the platelet rich plasma, and re-injecting into the patient to expedite the healing process.

Of course, Tiger was not the first athlete to undergo the therapy. Early in 2009 Hines Ward, a Super Bowl MVP sprained his MCL in the AFC Championship game. By all estimates of traditional medicines, it was unlikely that Ward would play 2 weeks later in the Super Bowl. He did the therapy (after reviewing it’s history), and rigorous rehab. He played at least 2 weeks before playing if he had done a traditional recovery, yet the story went largely unreported. Perhaps it will take a mega-star like Tiger to bring this into our collective conscious.

With that said, the debate of the 2010’s may be just exactly what is a steroid or performance enhancing drug? In the 2000’s the media and congress went after baseball.  Society was painted a picture of artificially created pharmaceuticals that players were hiding in their lockers and going to seedy ‘clinics’ to get the drug administered. The reality is we may now see legitimate procedures being done on athletes by credited doctors who are pushing the boundaries of scientific medicine.

The line between what is and isn’t a performance enhancement is blurred more than ever. On one hand, what they are putting in your body with this particular treatment was created by your body, nothing artificial about it. On the other, your body never produced the platelet rich blood; it had to be modified in a lab to get the desired result.

As we learn more about this, and other therapies, opinions will form and lines will be drawn. Professional leagues will have a new, but all to familiar issue to deal with; defining what is acceptable for its athletes to do in terms of personal fitness. The talking heads on TV will likely be varied in their opinions, and everyone with a twitter account will chime in with their 140 character take.  But at the end of the day, it will ultimately be the athletes themselves who push and influence the policy. It just remains to be seen to what medical extremes they are willing to go in order to achieve athletic success.

Clay Zavada of the MLB’s Arizona Diamondbacks has won the American Mustache Institutes (AMI) “Mustached American of the Year” award for 2009. Not a bad ’stache by any means, but he beat out Capt Sully Sullenberger – the dude who landed a full sized commercial aircraft on a river next to Manhattan.

A statement from the AMI makes me question just how serious or dillusional members of the organization are.   -Via AMI

“Clay and his menacing mouth garden were a great story throughout the 2009 baseball season, and Quicken and the American Mustache Institute are proud to honor him as the ‘Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year’ award winner,” said Chelsea Marti of Quicken®, who herself is a robust supporter of the Mustached American way of life.

It’s good to know that females in the finance industry believe and support in a mans right to wear a mustache. But I don’t quite understand the appeal of a mustache. It seems like it gets in the way of normal activities, like blowing your nose. Plus, it predestines the wearer of said ’stache to a lifetime fighting crime, or riding around the country on a motorcycle. I’m all for the clean cut look which never goes out of style.

However, if i was going to sport a ’stache my only hope is it would be half as good as this one being worn by Nick Offerman for his character Ron Swanson on NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

This mustache conveys power and leadership. I would walk off a bridge for this man.