Google: YouTube tool won't block uploads

Digital fingerprinting technology will make it easier for copyright owners to flag and request removal of illegally copied content, says Google

Contrary to recent speculation, an antipiracy tool Google is developing for YouTube will not block uploads to the video-sharing site.

Instead, the tool will check videos after they are put on YouTube and flag those that match legitimate material submitted by copyright owners and compiled by Google into a library of restricted uploads, a Google spokesman said.
When the digital fingerprinting tool finds a match in the library, it will take predetermined actions, such as issuing an alert, removing the clip, or both, said Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes.
In this way, the digital fingerprinting tool remains consistent with descriptions of its core design made by senior Google executives in recent months.
It is also congruent with Google's position that YouTube is on the right side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as long as it removes, upon request, illegally copied videos that owners don't want uploaded without their permission.
The tool became news on Friday, when a Google attorney briefly described it during a routine hearing in the copyright-infringement lawsuit that Viacom filed against the search-engine company.
As press accounts of the attorney's comments began circulating, a number of bloggers and industry insiders wondered if the tool's design had been altered so that it would prevent offending video clips from reaching YouTube's site.
Responding to a request for clarification from IDG News Service, Google's Reyes said that the tool has always been based on digital fingerprinting technology that will flag video clips after they have been uploaded to YouTube.
It is the same tool that Google CEO Eric Schmidt described in April during the company's first-quarter earnings call, Reyes said. At the time, Schmidt said the tool wasn't being designed to filter out and block pirated videos, but rather to help "somewhat automate" the process through which content owners flag illegally copied videos so that Google can remove them from the site.
"It's not a filtering system. The technology doesn't block uploads," Schmidt said in April. "It makes it much more effective and quicker to get us to remove inappropriately uploaded content. It's very much compliant with the DMCA."
The tool is still in development and testing, so some features haven't been finalized yet, Reyes said, adding that Google is now testing the tool's speed and scalability. "I don't have the answers to all the questions [about how the tool works]. We are at very early stages of testing the technology," Reyes said.
On Friday, attorney Philip S. Beck of Barlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton that Google would try to deliver the video recognition tool by September, according to published reports and a hearing transcript provided by Viacom, which otherwise declined comment.
"Somebody who has a copyrighted video ... would provide it to us and say, 'we don't want this up on YouTube.' We're developing a way to take basically an electronic or video or digital fingerprint of this material so that if somebody does try to upload it, within a minute or so the computers will figure out that that's one of the items that the copyright owner said they don't want up on the system, and we would be able to pull that down until any issues are resolved," Beck said, according to the Viacom transcript.
Reyes stressed that Google isn't developing this tool to comply with any law, but rather to help copyright owners flag videos they don't want up on YouTube.

Letter from CSAI to FIA

We have been informed about the outcome of the most recent meeting of the World Motor Sport Council held on July 26, 2007 in Paris. We have also exchanged views with our license holder, Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro (owned by Ferrari SpA).
We must confess that we find it quite difficult to justify how a team has not been penalised while it has been found in breach of clause 151c of the International Sporting Code. Indeed, this is probably the most fundamental provision of our sport. In the present case the infringement is very serious since it has been assessed that the team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has repeatedly breached such provision, over several months, through several top team representatives, to the detriment of its most direct competitor and therefore to its direct or indirect advantage and knowing that such infringement would still be ongoing would it had not been fortuitously discovered.
The very fact that the breach of clause 151c has been assessed by the World Motor Sport Council means that all conditions of such breach were fulfilled. We cannot see why additional conditions would have to be demonstrated in order for a penalty to be inflicted. The recent history of Formula One offers several examples of cases in which a party was inflicted a severe penalty because of a breach of clause 151c, without the subject matter of such breach having been used by a team or having had any effect on the outcome of the competition.
We fear that the decision of the World Motor Sport Council could create a precedent which, at this level of the sport and stage of the competition, would be highly inappropriate and detrimental for the sport.
In any event, in view of the aforesaid, we respectfully suggest that you, in your capacity as President of the FIA, in accordance with the powers granted to you by clause 23 paragraph 1 of the FIA Statues and article 1 of the CIA rules, submit the matter to the International Court of Appeal of the FIA.
This would also enable out license holder, Ferrari, on behalf of which we would take part to the proceedings, and perhaps other teams as well, to fully submit their position and protect their rights. In effect, Ferrari - as at least two other teams - attended the World Motor Sport Council in Paris as observers and not as a party. Accordingly, they did not have a full right of audience. As, however, Ferrari in any event had been seriously and directly affected by McLaren's behaviour, we deem it appropriate that Ferrari (directly or through ourselves) enjoys full rights of due process which would be the case in accordance with the rules applicable in front of the International Court of Appeal.
Yours respectfully,

McLaren not yet off the hook as spying scandal is sent to court of appeal

Formula one's governing body has reopened the investigation into the spying scandal by referring to a court of appeal the decision of the World Motor Sport Council not to punish McLaren. McLaren had escaped any penalty in the WMSC hearing due to "insufficient evidence'", though they were found to be guilty of possessing classified material belonging to Ferrari.
Luigi Macaluso, president of the Italian motor sport body CSAI, had written to the FIA president Max Mosley to express his surprise at the WMSC's decision. In the letter Macaluso pointed out that the sport's precedents for breaches of the relevant law - 151c of the international sporting code - suggest that a penalty would have been appropriate. He ended the corrspondence by requesting that Mosley refer the case to the FIA's international court of appeal.


Mosley responded with a fascinating letter which confirmed that depite the numerous suspicions surrounding McLaren's actions there was nothing that amounted to proof. However, he added that he was sending the matter to appeal because of "the importance of public confidence in the outcome".
It means that for McLaren there is still a very real possibility of a points deduction or even a total ban.

Putting our sport in the frame

CAERPHILLY husband-and-wife team Alun and Shirley Sedgemore, pictured right, are well known to point-to-point fans.
For the past 20 years, Alun has been taking pictures of horses and riders and Shirley has spent many happy hours sitting by their trailer showing them to the many owners and riders who have in time become their friends.
Alun said, “Taking photos at point-to-points is exciting. You never know how they are going to come out and some horses are more photogenic than others.”
He added, “There is such a friendly atmosphere at Welsh meetings.”
However, on one occasion at the Vale of Clettwr in 1999, Shirley was standing safely, or so she thought, behind the roped area at the start when a horse got loose and struck into her.
Story continues
ADVERTISEMENT

She ended up in hospital with a broken collar bone and 10 stitches in her head. If proof was needed of the couple’s popularity the huge number of get-well messages Shirley received was evidence.
Alun has noted that when riders look at the photographs he has taken of them they are more interested in their position in the saddle rather than the quality of the picture.
He has taken thousands of photographs and is toying with the idea of producing a book. So if there are any publishers reading this article they can contact him at his address below. Alun says it was former Welsh champion rider Tim Rooney who introduced him to the sport.
Back in 1984, farrier Tim, who used to shoe their daughter’s pony, suggested that they visit the Tredegar Farmers point-to-point. They took his advice and have been hooked ever since.
Meanwhile, Stewart Peters’ latest book, The Irish Grand National – The History Of Ireland's Premier Steeplechase (Published by Tempus at £20) is to my mind his best yet.
Bentom Boy who won in 1984 was trained by Tim Rooney’s uncle Willie Rooney and ridden by Tim’s cousin Ann Ferris the late trainer’s daughter. Not many people know that Willie Rooney originally came from the Vale of Glamorgan, but perhaps more about him in a future article.
Over the years, this race, first run in 1870, has been won by some really good horses such as Prince Regent, Arkle, Flying Bolt, Brown Lad, Fortria, Tied Cottage and Devon Orchid to name just some of them.
The race soon established itself as Ireland’s most famous steeplechase and this lavishily illustrated book with photography by Pat Healey is a winner.
Welsh point-to-point champion rider Tim Vaughan is making a name for himself as a trainer and saddled his fifth winner last week when Kings Euro, owned by Rhondda retired greengrocer Norman John, ploughed through the mud to land the Empower Training Novices Hurdle under Richard Johnson at Uttoxeter. Kings Euro won three point-to-points this year with Tim in the saddle and should be one to watch when he goes novice chasing.
Later in the afternoon, Johnson was successful on Insignia for Carmarthen’s Alison Thorpe.

Peace found in sport

Take Iraq's historic football win on Sunday night.
Iraq beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 to win the Asian Cup soccer tournament, a sporting prize of global standing.
Iraq's win makes major political statements.
War between Shiites and Sunnis is not an inevitable feature of life in Iraq.
Iraq's Brazilian coach, Jorvan Vieira, forged a winning team from the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish populations.
This mob was not fancied to even make the finals.
In the final itself, against three-time Asian Cup winner Saudi Arabia, the Iraqis were the red-hot underdog.
On Sunday, they played the Saudis off the park -- and what drove their success was the passionate spirit oozing from every Iraqi player's skin.
Their skill and earning levels were not as high as their opponents', and Iraq's many problems meant logistical nightmares for the national team.
But when these players of divided backgrounds raised their hands in one giant fist before resuming play in the second half, you could tell this team was unstoppable.
The second major political statement in Iraq's win is that it shows, once again, the immense power of the Iraqi people when they are allowed to speak.
Tragically, dozens of Iraqis were murdered by warmongers while the people were out celebrating in the streets after one of the national team's wins last week.
The Baghdad bombings that marred the street celebrations were an all-too-familiar sight.
Yet what these bombings show is the fear in the heart of the bombers when Iraqis show unity.
This is the tragedy and the hope that has been revealed in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Only on the rarest of occasions have Iraqis had the opportunity to raise their voices above the din of the country's violence.
Each time those voices have been clear. The Iraqi people believe in the reality of the Iraqi nation.
They also believe in those things that are the opposite of violence, such as expressing their opinions peacefully and sharing the pride that every nation feels in a major sporting achievement.
No, sport is not the opposite of politics.
Sometimes, in fact, it's the only way a people can express a political opinion.

Google Plans YouTube Antipiracy Tool for September

Google Inc. aims to deliver in September a long-awaited and much-promised technology to combat piracy in its YouTube video sharing site.
During a hearing Friday in the copyright-infringement lawsuit that Viacom Inc. filed against Google, a Google attorney told the judge Google was working "very intensely" on a video recognition technology, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The technology will be as sophisticated as fingerprint technology used by the FBI and Google plans to roll it out in the fall, "hopefully in September," attorney Philip S. Beck of Barlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton, according to the AP. Fall runs from late September to late December.
Viacom sued Google in March in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging copyright infringement from YouTube and seeking US$1 billion in damages.
The video recognition technology will allow copyright owners to provide a digital fingerprint that within a minute or two will trigger a block from YouTube whenever someone tries to upload a copyright video without permission, the AP reported.
However, contacted by IDG News Service, a YouTube spokesman put some caveats around the attorney's stated timeline for implementing the technology.
"We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by some time in the fall, but this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it's difficult to forecast specific launch dates," he wrote.
Google is collaborating with "some of the major media companies" in experiments with video-identification tools and is "excited" about the progress so far, the YouTube spokesman wrote.
Google officials have acknowledged that the company is working on a system to deal with copyright videos uploaded to YouTube without permission, a nagging problem that has earned Google many enemies among TV and movie companies.
In April of this year, during Google's first-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Eric Schmidt said the system in development wasn't being designed to filter out and block pirated videos.
Instead, he said Google's upcoming "Claim your Content" tool would help to "somewhat automate" the process through which content owners flag illegally copied videos so Google can take them down from the site, he said.
"It's not a filtering system. The technology doesn't block uploads," Schmidt said in April. "It makes it much more effective and quicker to get us to remove inappropriately uploaded content. It's very much compliant with the DMCA."
It's not clear whether Google changed the design of the tool at some point after Schmidt made those comments, since the attorney's description on Friday seems to indicate that the system would indeed block offending videos automatically without content owners notifying Google. The YouTube spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for clarification of this point.
Friday's hearing was a procedural one intended to set the schedule for the case, such as when the discovery period will begin and end and when the actual trial will begin, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig told IDG News Service.
The comment from Google's attorney came at the start of the hearing, when the judge gave attorneys on both sides a few minutes to present a short outline of what the case is about, to set the stage and put things in context, Zweig said.
The scheduling wasn't completed, so another conference was set for Aug. 6, although that hearing could be canceled if the companies resolve the scheduling issues and notify the judge of their agreements, he said.
Google acquired YouTube in November of last year in a $1.65 billion deal.

Wikipedia's founder builds an open-source search engine

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, announced today that his for-profit community hosting site Wikia has deepened its investment in developing an open-source Web search engine. Wikia purchased Grub, a company that makes distributed a Web crawling program. Instead of having a single set of computers index the Web -- as Google and other search engines do -- Grub passes out the indexing work to computers across the globe.
You can download the Grub client to make your own computer pitch in on the indexing work. While you're not using it, the machine will scan the Web and send back its index to a central server; your scan, combined with input from others running the Grub client, will form the index that will power Wikia's open-source search engine.
Wales, who was speaking at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Ore., announced that Wikia has turned Grub into an open-source program; the company hopes for input from developers all over the world.
Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia's search engine will run as a for-profit venture. Gil Penchina, the CEO of Wikia, has said that the company hopes to one day reach 5 percent of the search market -- a number that sounds small but that could be quite lucrative. But because the project is open-source, anyone else could build a competing search engine -- whether for-profit or non- -- based on the same index, Wales pointed out to me this afternoon in the briefest of phone conversations (we had some kind of cell-phone issue).
Wikia sets out several guidelines for its open engine: It will be transparent -- the algorithms determining how results are ranked will be visible to all. Google and other engines invest huge sums to develop these algorithms, and they guard them extremely closely. But that's precisely why Wales believes we need an open search engine -- the world, he says, must have an alternative to a Web that's ranked by "invisible rules inside an algorithmic black box."
But Wales isn't looking for transparency for transparency's sake: the project rests on the idea that community involvement will actually improve upon today's search results. Whether that's possible seems a gamble; Wikia has not announced a timeline for the project's debut. A search engine is a huge undertaking, and there's something nearly crazy about the idea of doing it with volunteers. But then, so too does Wikipedia and every open-source project seem somewhat impossible; that all those people could make something together doesn't seem likely. Miraculously, though, these projects work -- and the same thing could happen for search.
Update: I just got back in touch with Wales. He clarified, first, that the open search engine will not only take contributions for its source code, but that community members will also be actively involved in the editorial process governing search engine results.
"The idea would be a wiki-like process where the community can whitelist URLS, blacklist URLs, control for spam, block users who are being bad, that kind of thing," Wales says.
Wales says that Wikia will have the front end for the search engine built by the end of this year -- a place where people can "enter a search term and get some results," very simple. "We expect that it probably won't be very good at that point, and we'll probably have to put a big disclaimer on the site, 'We know this isn't very good, please help us to make it better.'"
I asked Wales if it's possible he's too late in starting this -- is Google too entrenched to beat? "Sure," he said. "I could fail. I have no idea. But I'm going to have fun trying."

Is Google American?

Some X part of the traffic at AD comes via a Google search or Google News and we appreciate that. However, Google seems to be embracing the Progressive denial of the threat by IslamoFascists to the USA.Google may not realize it, but they are doing business in the USA. When the IslamoFascists start to exert more control in the USA. (Indirectly supported by Google censorship, Google will become a prime target of Sharia Islamic Totalitarian Law!)A variety of authors have been blacklisted by Google because they dared to question Islamic or Muslim positions.As I remember, religion is not a valid political test for members of the government and the government is prohibited from establishing a state religion.However, Google using censorship of discussions of Islamic or Muslim positions has indirectly empowered Islamic or Muslim positions.CAIR is running wild with attempts to establish Sharia Islamic Totalitarian Law in the USA, but last time I checked Google refused to index such info.

Microsoft scores a win over Google

There is no free lunch, even in cyberspace. Had the industry heeded that little piece of ubiquitous advice during the dotcom boom years, the bust might never have happened. After wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising (does "because pets can't drive!" ring any bells?), the industry learned that the best way to make money online - sans actually selling something tangible - is by selling ad space, not buying it.
Maybe it's no surprise that two of the companies that have learned this lesson best are both sitting in key positions in the industry today: Microsoft and Google. It's also no surprise that these two are each other's biggest competitors in term of managing online advertising.
');
//-->
It's far too early to tell who will win the war, but Google lost one battle last week. Digg.com, which claims it receives over 17 million visitors a month, ditched Google's AdSense, instead opting for a three-year deal with Microsoft to manage its online advertising.
Google has been offering AdSence since 2003. At the time it came out, it provided small business with a way to get their products listed on Google's main search page, but not much has been done to enhance AdSense as a business option since. The price of using AdSence has skyrocketed as competition in the bid-for-prime-position scheme has increased, and click fraud - where competing advertisers can drive up the price of rival advertising by repeatedly clicking on pay-per-click ads - has frustrated many users. Google claims to be aggressively combating this type of fraud.
Advertising partner
Digg doesn't seem to care. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, said in his blog that "[t]his move gives us an advertising partner with a larger organisation and a more scalable technology platform to keep pace with Digg's growth." Maybe it's just me, but you could read that as a saying Digg is tired of dealing with old technology and wants something new. Signing Digg has to have the execs in Redmond dancing in the street. Digg will be Microsoft's second biggest advertising client behind Facebook.
While Facebook isn't the largest social networking site online, it is the fastest growing. The website hit the 30 million user mark last month, and many people are expecting the company to eclipse MySpace. Even Rupert Murdoch, who purchased MySpace for $580 million a few years ago, has been heard lamenting about how fast MySpace seems to be going from the cool space to be online to "lost in space". Last week's announcement that there are 29,000 registered sex offenders cruising around Myspace won't help boost its popularity either.
Regardless of who eventually wins, the war to control and sell ad space means only good things for the industry. As long as the ad dollars flow, there will no more dot-com busts and no more annoying socks puppets promoting websites.For those who don't understand that, look up pets.com on wikipedia.

Sprint and Google Team Up on WiMax

Google and Sprint Nextel announced Thursday that they will team up to develop a portal to let consumers search the Internet and mingle on social networks using mobile devices that work on a new, ultrafast WiMax network. The deal makes Google the exclusive provider for Web search on the portal and the preferred provider of Internet chat and e-mail. Google also will be providing mobile ads, along with its search results, and sharing the revenue with Sprint. Sprint, the third-largest wireless carrier by subscribers, said it will begin testing the new WiMax network in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., by the end of the year. Commercial service will start in April and be available to 100 million people nationwide by the end of 2008, the company said. Sprint announced plans in August to invest up to $3 billion in the new WiMax network. WiMax has a range of up to 10 miles and can transfer data at speeds similar to cable and DSL. Sprint said its new network should offer speeds of up to 4 megabytes per second -- more than twice as fast as the average broadband connection in California. "The idea here is that Sprint is the pioneer and leader to create mass-market mobile services," said Bin Shen, Sprint's vice president for mobile broadband. "This deal helps us start on the journey." For Google, the deal brings additional distribution for its mobile products, noted Craig Mathias, principal analyst of wireless research group Farpoint Group. "Google is very interested in getting greater exposure across the board," Mathias said. Carriers have blocked applications from Google and other Internet companies from running on certain phones. In the spring, T-Mobile users were upset to discover that Gmail no longer worked, for instance. Sprint already has announced partnerships with Intel, Samsung and Motorola, which are expected to develop devices that will work with the new network. Sprint also announced last week that it would team up with Clearwire, a start-up founded by communications pioneer Craig McCaw, to build the network. Sprint's goal is to blanket entire cities with WiMax coverage -- and the deal with Google could give consumers something to use on such a network, such as online productivity applications like Google Calendar. Shen said Sprint would also have a "friend finder" application and video chat, though he declined to say who the provider would be. He said it would not be Google. Despite the deal, Sprint said Microsoft would continue to be its preferred provider for local search on its regular handsets. WiMax represents a potential threat to cell phone carriers because it could enable upstarts to offer low-cost phone service via a WiMax network. But Sprint Nextel has chosen to embrace WiMax as a way to expand its ability to serve heavy volumes of data to its own consumers.

Barcelona too hot for Hearts

Is this the future of Scottish football? Playing one of the great clubs of Europe in front of a massive attendance in the late-afternoon sun, Hearts caught a glimpse of what life could be like at the top table.
Barcelona are a big draw - this game was being shown live on TV in over 100 countries - but there is obviously real appetite for football in Edinburgh. The 57,857 who made their way to Murrayfield, the home of Scottish rugby, broke the 75-year old record for a Hearts game in the capital. It only emphasised the need for Hearts to move to a ground that can accommodate this wider fan base. Tynecastle holds only 17,420, which would be embarrassing in the Championship.
Going down 3-1, they were far from embarrassed here though. This Barca team promises to be one of the great attacking line-ups in the history of the game. Ronaldinho scored twice and Hearts could not get near him. Samuel Eto'o was just too quick and, when Thierry Henry came on in the second half, he was at his disdainful best, gliding past lesser mortals. When the Frenchman hits match fitness, he will take La Liga by storm.
What will surely inspire dread in the rest of the European elite is that Lionel Messi will be added to this mix after recovering from Copa America duty with Argentina and Barca are coaxing through two exceptional talents of the future. Giovanni dos Santos, 18, scored the third and is like a mini-Ronaldinho, while Bojan Krkic, a Spanish forward of Serbian descent, is frighteningly gifted. He turns 17 next month.
The glamour of it all could not obscure Hearts' real mission though. The Scottish Premier League begins a new season next weekend and Hearts open their campaign with an Edinburgh derby against Hibernian.
Scottish football has been pinned under a Glaswegian thumb since Alex Ferguson left Aberdeen 21 years ago but there is evidently potential away from the banks of the Clyde.
Aberdeen themselves are resurgent and if Hearts can provide a serious rivalry to the Old Firm, then Scottish football can break away from the provincialism that has made them one of the minor players in the European game. It is a recurring refrain, but there has never been a more opportune moment for Scottish football to elevate its own expectations.
The national side is in rude health and the defeat of France in October demonstrated there is ample Scottish talent emerging from the academies. Celtic and Rangers have both encouraged the emergence of players from their youth system.
This is the problem with Hearts. There were just four Scots in the starting line-up yesterday and the goalkeeper, Craig Gordon, has been the subject of serious bids from English clubs, including Sunderland. The majority shareholder, Vladimir Romanov, continues to shuffle players between his three clubs, with a large number of Lithuanians imported on loan from FK Kaunas.
Three more Lithuanian trialists were doing their best to impress yesterday but, while some of the transfers have genuinely improved the Hearts squad, there is an undercurrent of instability at the club, especially after the popular Steven Pressley and Paul Hartley left in ugly circumstances last season. It is difficult to build confidence when you operate by the whims of a plutocrat, and one who has gone as far as accusing Celtic and Rangers of trying to fix matches. This is the wrong side of eccentricity.
As it stands, Hearts are managed by Anatoly Korobochka, who does not speak any English. On a day-to-day basis, they are coached by Stephen Frail, who does not know whether he will still have his job when the season begins. The players love him but Romanov remains inscrutable. Until they get their house in order there is no way they will challenge Celtic or a revived Rangers, being led once again by Walter Smith.
The problems Hearts will have were clearly demonstrated yesterday. The team made an encouraging start and, when Juho Makela equalised Ronaldinho's early penalty, there was a sustained period where Hearts held their own. But they faded badly after the break, looking disjointed and fragile as a catalogue of trialists and sub-standard reserves took to the field.

Saturday AM Practice: One for Frye

If Derek Anderson and Charlie Frye are competing for the job at starting quarterback, the former needs to look better than he did today. Today's practice belonged to Frye, who looked sharper than his challenger.
The mainstream media and the "national" NFL pundits have a lot of words they need to pour out over the coming weeks, and there's no doubt what subject will occupy the vast majority of those words: quarterbacks.
The Browns have themselves a three-headed quarterback controversy, even if one of the heads is still a limo ride and contract signing away from participating.
The problem with focusing on a quarterback compeition with the Browns at this point, and it's not something I like writing, is this: neither of the quarterbacks currently competing is very good.
While the team hoped for more from QB Charlie Frye, the off-season hopes of many Browns fans were focused on Frye's 2006 backup quarterback, Derek Anderson. Anderson has a the right size for an NFL quarterback, and he has a big arm, something lacking behind center for orange and brown since their return.
All of this, plus Anderson's solid performance in replacement of Frye for a couple of games in 2006 obviously excites both the team and fans. There has been hope expressed in the OBR forums, blogs, and among fans in general that Anderson would take his game up another notch this off-season.
Based on the morning practice on July 28, 2007, however, Anderson looks far from ready to take over as the team's start quarterback.
This morning's practice belonged to Charlie Frye, who combined with WR Tim Carter to complete a long pass on the play of the day. Frye looked far sharper than Anderson, whose first pass of the day was picked off by Brodney Pool.
While possibly a miscommunication, the pick set the tone for Anderson, who later bounced a pass off the pads of a reciever and tossed another out of bounds, unable to find an open receiver.
As Browns fans saw last year, Anderson can look very good when he's "on". When he's off, however, you get a game like the team's loss to the weak Tampa Bay squad, where four passes were intercepted.
A team needs consistency from the quarterback position, and today's practice, like the Buccaneers game, creates concern about whether Anderson can turn that element of his game around.
SHAFFER ON THE RIGHT: For the first time today, we saw Joe Thomas take some reps at left tackle while 2006 starting LT Kevin Shaffer worked on the right side of the line.
WRIGHT ON THE FIELD: Browns cornerback Eric Wright was at practice today, playing most frequently with the second unit. Kenny Wright got some time with the first team opposite Leigh Bodden.
ATTENTION!: Special Teams coach Ted Daisher was less than thrilled with the focus of his charges during kickoff return drills during the morning's practice. Several times the Browns fans present reacted with whoops and hollers when Daisher yelled at players to pay attention.
STING LIKE A BEE: Fullback Charles Ali has gotten some reaction on the sidelines from his hard hits during practice. Ali is competing with J.R. Niklos

'Where's Strahan?'

decision to skip the opening of Giants training camp while mulling retirement after 14 seasons is a personal and business decision and not a major distraction.
That what many of his teammates said Saturday.
"A couple of players have asked me, "Where's Strahan?" fellow defensive end Osi Umenyiora said less than an hour after the Giants held their first practice. "Well, he's not here, that's all I can tell you, I don't really know where he is. But, nobody is in a panic. Everybody has a lot of issues they have to deal with. People are trying to win jobs. They can't be too overly concerned about what Michael Strahan is doing."
Giants management also was left guessing about the future of the seven-time Pro Bowler.
General manager Jerry Reese was still waiting to talk to the 35-year-old star, and coach Tom Coughlin was playing telephone tag with the veteran.
Strahan called the coach around 7:40 p.m. Friday, 10 minutes after the team meeting started -- something Strahan had to know, having played for Coughlin for three years.
"I am not perturbed," Coughlin said of the failure to communicate. "I was disappointed right away that he is not here. You'd like to have him here on the field, but because I have not talked to him it's not an issue. Those things happen."
Strahan, who lost a bitter divorce case and asked earlier this year to renegotiate a contract that will pay him $4 million this season, was not immediately available for comment.
Tony Agnone, his agent, has not returned several telephone calls by The Associated Press the past two days.
The timing of Strahan's decision was bad for the Giants, coming less than 24 hours before players were to report to the University at Albany.
For the past seven months, the Giants planned on having the NFL's active leader in sacks (132½) line up at left end. They even moved second-year pro Mathias Kiwanuka from defensive end to strongside linebacker in April to get both of them on the field.
A day into training camp, they are considering other options.
For now, Kiwanuka is still a linebacker. William Joseph, the 2003 first-round draft pick who has never lived up to expectations, is starting for Strahan.
Kiwanuka believed Strahan didn't think about retiring until recently, adding that he waited a long time last year before deciding to leave Boston College to enter the NFL draft.
"If Michael comes back, it will be a tremendous help to this team," Kiwanuka said. "If he doesn't, we still have talent to go ahead and be strong."
Moving back to defensive end would not be a problem, Kiwanuka said, adding he has to know where the defensive ends are going on every play.
"My gut feeling is 'Yes,' that he'll be back to play," Pro Bowl middle linebacker Antonio Pierce said of Strahan. "But that's my opinion strictly."
Veteran receiver Amani Toomer also felt Strahan would return, but he was not certain.
"I know he has a lot of offers and opportunities to do other things in life," Toomer said. "It might just be that one day he woke up and said that was it. For me, selfishly thinking, I don't think it is it."
Center Shaun O'Hara said he considers retiring at each exit as he drives up the New York Thruway toward training camp.
Veteran offensive tackle Kareem McKenzie felt Strahan just needed some time to think things out.
"In this heat, he is lucky right now," McKenzie said. "It is miserable out there. But I mean, I'm definitely going to miss him. You definitely have to bring your 'A' game; therefore, I'm definitely going to miss a 14- or 15-year guy that's been to seven Pro Bowls. That's going to be tough."

NFL Player Roy Williams Scores Big By Opting To Shed Pounds With Alternative Weight Loss Program

Amidst all the commotion over recent disproportional statistics of obesity in the African American community and worldwide, we should all take the time to recognize and celebrate developing progress that any one of us can achieve. Obesity can take even the best of players out in this game of life that we only get one shot to score in.
Not so for one NFL player, Roy Williams of the Dallas Cowboys. Williams decided that he was going to score a major touchdown off the field by shedding unwanted pounds from his body.
Is this not the goal for a lot of us? We don’t have to be NFL players to make a concerted effort to slim down, but we do have to take the game very seriously and be ready to do what it takes to score big and win the victory.
We have to be team players and have open minds to trying other methods that are safer, more natural and ultimately more effective than fad diets. That is what Roy Williams was savvy and witty enough to do for himself.
How did Roy obtain his weight loss victory? While vacationing and relaxing, Roy’s weight got up to 246 pounds and his coach asked him to get down to 225 pounds. Roy acknowledged the fact of his weight gain by saying, “I really did get heavy, but I did a program called Isagenix. It’s a weight program and it got me down."
By doing this, Roy was able to release 26 pounds from his body bringing his weight down to 221 pounds.
Isagenix is the world’s leader in nutritional cleansing, which helps cleanse your body of impurities, release stubborn fat and build lean muscle. It helps you to lose weight and become healthier through the use of meal replacement shakes, high grade nutrients and regular exercise.
What did Roy have to say about his results from utilizing this nutritional program? "It’s a huge difference for me," he said. "I’m flying around, I'm full of joy and energy."
Now that is truly winning! Anyone of us can jump on a fad diet and drop a few pounds. Take your pick, as there are hundreds to choose from. However, when you can get yourself on a system that can give you what most of us are really searching for - this is quite phenomenal.
That same feeling of joy and, energy at the same time is what we all can have. While playing in the game of life, we should all be “in it” to “win it. So why cheat yourself when you can have more than just temporary weight loss?
If weight has been a challenge for you, you have tried all kinds of diets, maybe its time to do something different. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of all times stated, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Unfortunately dieting has been the common approach for solving weight loss issues, but we are now in the 21st century and can begin to move forward with our advancements. Roy Williams' coach only asked him to lose 22 pounds for the start of training camp, he decided to go the extra mile and lose four more.
“But I challenged myself to go lower than that," Williams said. ”This is for me."
As you can see not only do average Joe’s and Jane's struggle with their weight, but so do athletes even if they are not considered to be obese. They just want to do something for themselves to make them feel and look better. Whatever your goal weight is, it is what you want for yourself.
We can all take a lesson from the athlete and go a step further, go for the gold, the big play and stop making small plays that don’t even get us onto the field. We want it all joy, energy, clarity, stamina, as well as quick, safe and permanent weight loss.
Through technological advances made in the last five years you have the opportunity to have a level playing field in which to get one up on obesity and become more clean and lean than ever before. The time is now to release the weight and let the true champion in you - shine through.
This is the line of scrimmage and you are in the perfect passing situation, just don’t hesitate, and whatever you do, don’t drop the ball! We're all rooting for you, victory, victory, victory!

N.F.L. Looks to Bolster Pipeline Beyond Border

“How can a Mexican have the last name Wong?” he said Friday after his first training camp practice.
Wong, whose father’s grandfather was Chinese, joined the Jets this season after one season in the Arena Football League and two in the now-defunct N.F.L. Europa. Born and raised in Mexico, he has pursued football from age 6, spurning soccer for a sport that he said was now probably more popular in his homeland than baseball.
Wong was among 99 foreign-born players on N.F.L. rosters as training camps opened across the country last week. That number has nearly doubled since the beginning of the preseason 10 years ago, when there were 52 foreign-born players on rosters.
Making sure international players are able to find their way onto N.F.L. rosters is a part of the league’s strategy in trying to spread its popularity throughout the world, said Mark Waller, the senior vice president of N.F.L. International.
Since N.F.L. Europa folded in June after 16 years, Waller said in a telephone interview Thursday, the goal of the league has been to show the world “the best product we have to offer.” That includes playing regular-season games overseas.
“Once we build the popularity of the sport, the players will follow,” said Waller, who added that the N.F.L. was focusing on Mexico, Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan and China.
In its fourth year, the N.F.L. International Development Practice Squad Program is giving 11 international players positions on team practice squads. Each N.F.L. team is also eligible for an international player exemption, a spot on the roster for a foreign-born player who does not count toward the 80-man limit.
One of those exemptions is Noriaki Kinoshita, a wide receiver from Japan who signed with the Atlanta Falcons after three years with the Amsterdam Admirals of N.F.L. Europa.
Kinoshita is trying to become the first regular-season N.F.L. player from Japan, a country that loves its baseball and soccer but also has football teams at the collegiate and professional levels. He drew Japanese news media to Flowery Branch, Ga., for the first day of training camp, on Thursday.
“Hopefully, this way, future players will not be so scared and will come over and play in the N.F.L.,” Kinoshita said Thursday in a telephone interview, with the help of an interpreter.
“I’ll probably be the first Japanese player to play. I can show them how it’s done.”
Even with the recent increase in international players, less than 4 percent of all potential N.F.L. roster spots were occupied by foreign-born players when camps opened. International players made up 20 percent of N.B.A. rosters last season, and 29 percent of Major League Baseball roster spots at the beginning of this season.
Kim Bohuny, the N.B.A.’s vice president for basketball operations-international, said that international sports clubs with basketball teams helped the influx of foreign-born N.B.A. players by complementing several other important events: the beginning of N.B.A. telecasts throughout the world, the fall of the Eastern bloc and the 1992 Dream Team’s dominating performances.
Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball’s president and chief operating officer, said that baseball had benefited from having more than one method of obtaining players, including a protocol agreement with Japan that brings premade stars to the United States.
But international sports clubs do not have football teams, and football does not have the same global history as baseball. The N.F.L. also lost a major international feeder system in N.F.L. Europa. That “puts a lot more pressure on us as a league to continue to do a great job” of making sure foreign-born players get into the N.F.L., Waller said.
They would provide exposure for the N.F.L. in their native countries and the world’s best athletes should get an opportunity to play in the league, he added.
Even when foreign-born players make their way onto preseason rosters, most are a long way from the success that some international stars in other American sports leagues have seen. In the N.B.A., the last three Most Valuable Player awards have been won by players who were not born in the United States.
Nick Polk, the director of football operations for the Falcons, said that Kinoshita was “a long shot” to make the team.
And Wong had only four catches in two N.F.L. Europa regular seasons, and he is undersized at 5 feet 11 inches and 179 pounds.
One day, if the N.F.L.’s strategy succeeds, a name like Juan Wong might not be the topic of conversation for the opening day of training camp.
“I think it would help a lot,” Wong said about the impact he would have in Mexico if he played for the Jets. “It would help the young kids, to be some kind of inspiration to see that a Mexican, who was born and raised in Mexico, can make it on an N.F.L. roster.”

U.S. Forces Europe Track and Field Championships

Jamie Eckford of Bamberg wins the men’s 200-meter dash with a time of 22.10 seconds, more than 5 seconds faster than the runner-up, Gregory Marshall of Giessen. Eckford also won the men’s 100-meter dash and the long jump, but Giessen took the team title in the U.S. Forces Track and Field Championships on Saturday at the Sport Anlage West in Regensburg, Germany.

U.S. Forces Track and Field Championships
Scores and top finishers in the U.S. Forces Europe Track and Field Championships in the Regensburg, Germany, Sport Anlage West on Saturday. Meet hosted by U.S. Army Garrison Hohenfels:
Team scoring
Giessen 36; Aviano and Bamberg 30; Ansbach 28; Heidelberg 26; Vilseck 20.
Men
100 meters—1, Jamie Eckford (Bamberg) 10.92 seconds; 2, Romaine Johnson (Giessen) 12.98200—1, Eckford, 22.10; 2, Gregory Marshall (Giessen) 27.27400—Marshall 53.54; 2, Francisco Gonzalez (Heidelberg) 54.55800—1, Marshall, 2 minutes, 1.18; 2, Gonzalez, 2:03.29High jump—1, Gonzalez, 4 feet 7 inchesLong jump—1, Eckford, 19-4.Shot put—Edward Cook (Ansbach) 36 feet, ½ inch; 2, Alfred Boone (Vilseck) 35-5.Discus—1, Edward Cook, 104-10¾; 2, Boone, 96-09¾Javelin—1, Boone, 114-2½; 2, Cook, 77-4¾
Women
200—1, Danielle Todman (Aviano) 29.31 seconds800—1, Todman 2 minutes, 48.76 seconds5,000—1, Jennifer May (Baumholder) 20:28.87.Long jump—1, Todman, 14 feet, 9 inches

Report Warns Against Too Many 'Net Rules

Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
'Governing the Internet,' issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the online policing 'a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes - democracies and dictatorships alike - seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.'
'Speaking out has never been easier than on the Web. Yet at the same time we are witnessing the spread of Internet censorship,' the report said.
Miklos Haraszti, who heads the OSCE's media freedom office, said about two dozen countries practice censorship, and others have adopted needlessly restrictive legislation and government policy.
Among those are Malaysia, where a government official said this week that laws would be drafted for bloggers and authorities would not hesitate to prosecute those deemed to have insulted Islam.
Haraszti cited separate research by the OpenNet Initiative, a trans-Atlantic group that tracks Internet filtering and surveillance, which pointed to questionable online restrictions in Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere.
The OSCE report says Kazakhstan's efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era 'spy mania,' and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online.
Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of 'dirt' and 'lies.'
'Those who think it is impossible to control the Internet can continue living in a world of illusions,' Yertysbayev told the Vremya newspaper in a recent interview.
On Thursday, in a speech at OSCE headquarters in Vienna, Yertysbayev insisted his country was committed to democracy and the creation of what he called an 'e-government' that would expand Internet access and make 'our information sphere more open and our media more free.'
In the most publicized instance of a government crackdown, Kazakh authorities took control of .kz Internet domains in 2005. It then revoked a domain operated by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of the movie 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.'
Baron Cohen since has relocated his satirical Web site, which Kazakhstan considered offensive.
The OSCE report warns that Kazakhstan's approach to the Internet has produced a hostile atmosphere where 'any dissident individual, organization or an entire country could be named an 'enemy of the nation.''
Georgia, the report says, has laws that contain 'contradictory and ill-defined' provisions 'which on certain occasions might give leverage for illegitimate limitation of freedom of expression on the Internet.'
'It is important to support the view of the World Press Freedom Committee that 'governance' must not be allowed to become a code word for government regulation of Internet content,' the report says.
___

Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk Unmanned Aircraft Completes 1,000th Flight

SAN DIEGO, July 27, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- The high-flying RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial systems (UAS) built by Northrop Grumman Corporation recently completed their 1,000th flight. The fourth production Global Hawk, designated AF-4, flew the milestone mission June 14-15 in support of the global war on terrorism (GWOT).
"AF-4 cruised at extremely high altitudes for more than 18 hours without refueling -- a feat that very few aircraft, manned or unmanned, have matched thus far," said Gary Ervin, vice president for Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems sector.
This was the 517th combat mission flight for the Global Hawks, which have logged more than 10,700 combat hours, accounting for 71 percent of the program's total flight time of 15,135 hours.
"Global Hawk's GWOT support has been outstanding, with two Block 10 variants currently deployed and surging with 20-hour missions, with only four hours between recovery and the subsequent launch," said Randy Brown, Global Hawk program director with the U.S. Air Force's 303rd Aeronautical Systems Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. "This achievement and the system's excellent track record reaffirm what we already know -- the Global Hawk is a highly reliable, flexible and cost-effective intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) weapons system that meets the needs of our troops on the battlefield."
Since its initial deployment immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, the Global Hawk program has maintained a 95 percent or better mission effectiveness. Out of the 277 combat missions flown since January 2006 until its 1,000th flight, only 11 have been canceled due to maintenance, weather, or mission reasons.
Another significant accomplishment this year occurred when three Global Hawks were airborne simultaneously on Feb. 21 and April 24. In both instances, Global Hawk AF-5 flew a GWOT mission in the Middle East while AF-7 flew a series of flight tests from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. At the same time, another Global Hawk, N-1, flew from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. N-1 is one of two U.S. Navy aircraft designated for the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration (GHMD) program.
"From these three sites, the aircraft could have reached any point on the planet and provided persistent ISR and returned to their respective home base," said Jerry Madigan, Northrop Grumman vice president of high-altitude long-endurance systems. "The Feb. 21 flight marked the first time the GHMD program exercised Global Hawk's certificate of authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate outside of the restricted area into national airspace."
Another important milestone for the GHMD program took place April 11 when Global Hawk N-1 provided surveillance support for the Navy's Commander Carrier Strike Group One Ship Sinking Exercise (CCSG-1 SINKEX) at NAS Patuxent River, taking 114 near-real-time images in approximately eight hours.
The CCSG-1 SINKEX sortie featured several firsts for GHMD, including the first night launch, first maximum-weight launch from NAS Patuxent River, and the first GHMD operations in the Atlantic Ocean. It was also the longest-ranging GHMD flight flown from NAS Patuxent River to date.
Global Hawk is the only UAS to meet the military and the FAA's airworthiness standards. It is the first UAS certified by the FAA to have its own flight plans filed and use civilian air corridors to fly regular flights in the United States. The Block 20 variant is the only UAS tested to manned aircraft standards.
In addition, the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center determined in March 2007 that the Global Hawk is fully qualified for the intelligence collection needs of battlefield commanders after conducting an operational assessment of the Block 10 variant. The operational assessment included testing during actual GWOT sorties as well as two domestic flights. The first domestic flight was over Florida to evaluate electro-optical, infrared and synthetic aperture radar sensor performance in dense foliage. During the second 27-hour sortie, the Global Hawk system collected images over Alaska to test its performance in the upper latitudes and to collect intelligence information in a snowy environment.
"Without a doubt, Global Hawk has proven its capabilities and value to the warfighter as it continues to be on cost and on schedule for the past 19 months," said Madigan. "Most recently, the Block 20 configuration equipped with an enhanced integrated sensor suite was delivered to the Air Force on May 17. The Block 20 aircraft provides 50 percent more payload capacity, further enhancing Global Hawk's ability to identify and track insurgents."
Global Hawks are operated overseas by Air Force pilots from a mission control element stationed at its main operating base at Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif. A launch and recovery element and a combined Air Force and Northrop Grumman team are forward deployed with the air systems. The air vehicle can fly at altitudes up to 65,000 feet and can survey vast geographic regions with pinpoint accuracy. A third Block 10 Global Hawk will be deployed to support GWOT later this year.
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a $30 billion global defense and technology company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in information and services, electronics, aerospace and shipbuilding to government and commercial customers worldwide. CONTACT: Gemma Loochkartt
Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems
(858) 618-4245
gemma.loochkartt@ngc.com

Report Warns Against Many Internet Rules

Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
'Governing the Internet,' issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the online policing 'a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes - democracies and dictatorships alike - seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.'
'Speaking out has never been easier than on the Web. Yet at the same time we are witnessing the spread of Internet censorship,' the report said.
Miklos Haraszti, who heads the OSCE's media freedom office, said about two dozen countries practice censorship, and others have adopted needlessly restrictive legislation and government policy.
Among those are Malaysia, where a government official said this week that laws would be drafted for bloggers and authorities would not hesitate to prosecute those deemed to have insulted Islam.
Haraszti cited separate research by the OpenNet Initiative, a trans-Atlantic group that tracks Internet filtering and surveillance, which pointed to questionable online restrictions in Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere.
The OSCE report says Kazakhstan's efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era 'spy mania,' and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online.
Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of 'dirt' and 'lies.'
'Those who think it is impossible to control the Internet can continue living in a world of illusions,' Yertysbayev told the Vremya newspaper in a recent interview.
On Thursday, in a speech at OSCE headquarters in Vienna, Yertysbayev insisted his country was committed to democracy and the creation of what he called an 'e-government' that would expand Internet access and make 'our information sphere more open and our media more free.'
In the most publicized instance of a government crackdown, Kazakh authorities took control of .kz Internet domains in 2005. It then revoked a domain operated by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of the movie 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.'
Baron Cohen since has relocated his satirical Web site, which Kazakhstan considered offensive.
The OSCE report warns that Kazakhstan's approach to the Internet has produced a hostile atmosphere where 'any dissident individual, organization or an entire country could be named an 'enemy of the nation.''
Georgia, the report says, has laws that contain 'contradictory and ill-defined' provisions 'which on certain occasions might give leverage for illegitimate limitation of freedom of expression on the Internet.'
'It is important to support the view of the World Press Freedom Committee that 'governance' must not be allowed to become a code word for government regulation of Internet content,' the report says.

EU Charges Intel With Monopoly Abuse

EU regulators said Friday they have charged Intel with monopoly abuse for blocking rival chipmaker AMD's access to customers.
It said Intel gave 'substantial rebates' to computer makers for buying most of their computer processing units, or CPIs, from Intel; that it made payments to manufacturers to get them to delay or cancel product lines using AMD CPUs; and that it sold CPUs below cost to certain server customers to try to muscle into that business.
'These three types of conduct are aimed at excluding AMD, Intel's main rival, from the market,' the European Commission said. 'The three types of conduct reinforce each other and are part of a single overall anticompetitive strategy.'
Intel has 10 weeks to reply to the preliminary charges and can seek an oral hearing to defend itself, after which regulators may make a decision that would force the company to change its behavior under threat of fines.

Toshiba Quarterly Profit Jumps Fivefold

Profit at Toshiba Corp. jumped fivefold in the April-June quarter on brisk sales of personal computers and semiconductors, the company said Friday.
Net income rose to 20.63 billion yen ($173.8 million) in the electronics company's fiscal first quarter from 4.04 billion yen a year ago, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement.
Sales climbed 14.6 percent to 1.66 trillion yen ($13.9 billion) from 1.45 trillion yen.
The company said its semiconductor business saw higher sales in NAND flash memory chips and large-scale integrated, or LSI, chips for use in flat-panel televisions and other digital electronic appliances.
Its personal computer business grew especially in the U.S. market, Toshiba said.
Special profits from the sale of real estate and its stake in a music-content venture to Britain's EMI Group PLC also helped its profit soar, it said.
Toshiba also said it has revised its forecast of profit for the first-half of fiscal year to March 2008 to 40 billion yen ($336.9 million), up from the 10 billion estimate announced April 26. The company's profit during the same period last year was 38.8 billion yen.
Toshiba had project that its profit will fall about 13 percent in the current fiscal year ending March 2008, on a 5 percent gain in sales. The company said Friday it was currently reviewing its forecast for the full year.
Toshiba reports its earnings based on U.S. accounting standards.

Robots Clear Waterways of Deadly Mines

As it slowly moves in the shallow water along a beach, the robot splashes its fins like a small child playing in the surf.
But the prototype device has a serious mission: destroying mines that could kill Marines and Navy SEALs as they come on shore. Such technology is considered the future of underwater bomb detection.
'It's a kamikaze vehicle, a suicidal robot,' said Mathieu Kemp, a scientist with Durham, N.C.-based Nekton Research, LCC, which created the Transphibian.
The 3-foot-long device, which will some day carry 14 pounds of plastic explosives and attach itself to an underwater bomb before igniting, can be maneuvered by a joystick, which Kemp demonstrated last month at the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Fest, an annual two-week gathering of researchers who design robots for military use.
Experts with the Panama City Beach-based Naval Surface Warfare Center say such robots eventually will replace minesweeping ships and perform dangerous jobs now done by specialized divers.
A 2003 mine-clearing operation in the port of Um Quasar, Iraq, was a major test for autonomous underwater vehicles. The technology helped the U.S. Navy clear a path for a British ship carrying 200 tons of food and emergency supplies. It took the AUVs about 16 hours to search nearly a square mile and help divers locate an undisclosed number of mines - a task the Navy says would have taken 21 days for divers working without the technology.
In the future, scientists plan to put explosives on the AUVs to destroy the mines. Meanwhile, they are using them to quickly and accurately differentiate ocean clutter from mines.
'The closer in you get to any port or harbor, the greater amount of clutter you will encounter - tires, rocks, coral reefs - there can be so much clutter you would not believe it,' said Daniel Broadstreet, a spokesman for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which specializes in neutralizing underwater mines.
'To screen out all that clutter is a huge job and it takes some very, very technologically advanced sensors,' Broadstreet said.
The Um Quasar operation was a milestone for AUVs because it marked the first wartime use of the technology, said Tom Swean, team leader of the Office of Naval Research's Mine Warfare Science and Technology Program.
Swean joined the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., in 1981, but his work took off in 1997 when the Navy SEALs got involved. They tailored the systems for missions including surveying the seabed, finding channels near the shore and locating mines.
'It was important that they have underwater vehicles that could not be seen very easily,' Swean said. 'Their missions are near shore and are very dangerous.'
A decade later, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed advances in unmanned and robotic technology, especially on land and in the air where robots routinely inspect improvised explosive devices and drones conduct air reconnaissance.
'It's gone from zero to 60 pretty fast,' said Jeffery Bradshaw, a scientist at the Pensacola-based Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, which is working with the warfare center on a project to use robots for port security.
The military is expected to spend more than $50 million on the acquisition of AUV technology in the next five years, Swean said. At the same time, more than $12 billion is expected to be spent on unmanned aircraft programs.
The next steps for the researchers include creating robots that function alongside troops as members of an operational team and ones that work with other robots.
'If one robot breaks or if one of the human team members is in trouble, they would know how to coordinate interactions - sort of like buddies,' Bradshaw said.
Despite the interest in robotic technology, changes won't be immediate, Swean said. The Navy likely will phase out large mine sweepers, but it will need ships to deploy the robotic systems, he said.
Among the robots with the most promise is the Transphibian, which is still being developed.
'It's a good example of a hybrid concept, it can swim in the water and it can crawl on the sea floor,' Swean said as he watched a prototype splash along the waters near Panama City Beach. 'The last piece is to efficiently and cheaply go out to a real mine and place a charge on it.'
___

Navteq Charts Digital Map Expansion

Getting lost is getting rarer nowadays, and any yahoo with a keyboard or a GPS device can find precise directions or pinpoint the location of an out-of-town landmark.
Now drivers hooked on digital maps are looking for more than just streets and turns. They want ever more accurate and up-to-date points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels and theme parks.
For digital mapmakers like Navteq Corp., it's up to road teams like Ann McNeil and Rich Joyce to deliver.
Like luxury-class explorers, the geographic analysts cruise streets and roads in a tech-laden SUV outfitted with a satellite tracking computer, electronic clipboard and rooftop cameras.
'Our customers are wanting more and more information,' said McNeil, who has driven hundreds of thousands of miles in a decade at Navteq. 'We're expanding all the time.'
It's all part of a race with Dutch rival Tele Atlas NV to not only chart the world more accurately but combine the maps with other relevant data.
A pioneer of the digital map business, Navteq produces the maps and software found in automobile navigation systems, portable navigation devices made by Garmin Ltd. and other companies, and Internet map sites like AOL's Mapquest, Google Inc.'s Google Maps and Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Maps.
Navteq is the Rand McNally of the 21st century, according to Colorado-based map industry consultant Henry Poirot. And the rapid growth may be just beginning.
Thanks to global positioning systems and recent technology advancements, Navteq is fine-tuning ways to let consumers use a phone or other handheld device to track their dogs, find where to jog in another city, learn how many calories they will burn doing it, learn where the nearest 24-hour gas stations are and see current traffic and weather conditions. Tele Atlas has its own projects under way.
'There's a lot of competition going on,' said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst for Gartner Inc. 'Both companies are trying to show that their data is better, by being innovative in gathering more detailed information.'
The mapping duel heated up this week with the announcement that Tele Atlas agreed to a $2.6 billion acquisition by TomTom NV, the world's largest maker of personal navigation devices.
While that should make the combined European company a more formidable foe, Navteq's stock also soared. Analysts said TomTom's competitors such as Garmin may now go to the Chicago-based company for their maps rather than buy from a rival.
Navteq would like to improve its current share, which already includes most of the Internet mapping market and a split of the handheld device market with Tele Atlas. Its European rival drives the roads, too - the two companies' teams even sometimes spotting one another covering the same turf.
The biggest threat facing the two competitors in the future may be user-generated map content - a mapping equivalent of YouTube, as it were.
Google also could be a rival. The Internet search leader is deep into research, development and even acquisitions related to its mapping services, which include Google Earth as well as Google Maps.
Navteq has shown a knack for adapting to changing technology.
The company was born in 1985 as Navigation Technologies, focusing on kiosks at car rental agencies and hotels where patrons could print out directions and maps for chosen addresses. Dutch conglomerate Philips Electronics became its primary investor starting in 1989, a role it held until recently.
Navteq finally became profitable in 2002 thanks to global positioning systems, a boom in car-based navigation guides and its increasing grip on the exploding Internet mapping market. An initial public offering in 2004 helped ignite fast growth, and today it has more than 3,000 employees in 30 countries and a new headquarters in Chicago.
The company made $110 million on $582 million in sales last year and posted big gains in both categories in the first quarter. It reports second-quarter results Tuesday.
A heavy reliance on the slowing auto market, which accounted for nearly all its sales in 2000 and still brings in about 60 percent, has sent its stock price on a bumpy ride. Hoping to smooth things out, CEO Judson Green, who headed Disney's theme parks division until coming to Navteq in 2000, has steered the company into more diversification.
A pair of acquisitions for a combined $216 million in the past nine months underscore that effort: Traffic.com, which produces live traffic reports for cities around the country, and Map Network, producer of special maps for travel destinations, major hotels and big events like the Super Bowl.
In a swiftly moving business, it's not clear if that will be enough to stave off Tele Atlas and any nascent competitors.
'They're not moving fast enough,' said Koslowski. 'It's not just a question of acquiring companies like Traffic.com. ... The company needs to focus more on emerging markets.'
To map 12 million miles and 69 countries, Navteq has used an estimated 100,000 different sources, from satellite images and aerial photography to maps issued by local governments and commercial companies.
But to Green, the 'secret sauce' keeping the company on top of the mapping world is the 700 employees who spend half their work time behind the wheel or in the passenger seat.
'I would say that 80 to 85 percent of the effort that we put into making a digital map is from that very labor-intensive driving that we do,' he said. 'We cannot find the quality, accuracy or richness of the information from all these other sources unless we go do it our way.'
The road teams capture 225 different attributes for every link or block of road - one-way signs, turn restrictions, lane information, obstacles in the road and points of interest that may include a hardware store, park or hotel. Every year, the list grows based on customer demands.
Teams ride in the specially outfitted SUVs and rely on sophisticated monitors displaying moving maps and icons while live video from the multi-camera system is shown on separate screens. Among the recent additions: six tiny high-resolution cameras concealed under a glass dome on the roof.
On one recent mapping run, Joyce made sketch pen notations on the electronic clipboard while he and McNeil watched both sides of the street for discrepancies or updates from the existing data.
They quickly spotted a cafe in Chicago's West Loop that had changed its name. This is familiar territory; based on customer requests, they may drive the same streets as often as every three months to check for errors or gather new categories of information, such as bookstores and coffee shops.
'The real world is constantly changing and our challenge is to keep up with that change,' said Navteq spokeswoman Kelly Smith.
Tele Atlas has fewer drivers and road testers than Navteq but claims a bigger database covering over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Its business is more balanced between devices and maps.
For its part, Navteq has a new product in use in Europe called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems that Green says effectively puts the map in the engine to help drive the car. For example, it turns headlights to match the road's curves, changes the transmission as the car approaches a large hill and warns the driver when a lane line is crossed without a turn signal.
The company also is pushing aggressively into information for pedestrians and is eyeing mobile phones as a huge developing market.
'The next wave of location-enabled devices will be cell phones, and there we're penetrating less than 1 percent,' he said. 'That opens up all kinds of opportunities if you know where you are.'
It's clear, in other words, that the digital map world now is about much more than getting from Point A to Point B.
'The whole array of location-based services - we're just at the beginning of what's going to be possible,' said Green. 'It'll be pervasive in your life.'

Newspapers Feel Real Estate Woes

It's bad enough that a cratering housing market is leading to a slump in real estate advertising at newspapers, as a dreary series of earnings reports showed this week.
What's worse is that a lot of that advertising may never come back to newspapers even if the real estate sector recovers. That's because a significant chunk of those advertising dollars are moving - you guessed, online.
Exactly how much of a shift is occurring is difficult to measure in terms of dollars or market share, but several real estate executives say they are making a conscious decision to move money out of newspapers and onto the Internet as that medium grows in importance as a tool for researching home-buying decisions.
Granted, a significant amount of the declines in real estate advertising in newspapers can be attributed to the general weakness in real estate markets, particularly in hard-hit markets such as California and Florida, which were booming a year ago - leading to big gains in advertising back then.
This week Tribune Co., the No. 2 publisher by circulation, posted a 24 percent drop in the second quarter, while industry leader Gannett Co. has reported a 9.9 percent decline and McClatchy Co. reported a 19 percent decline, citing big losses in California and Florida.
Like the housing market itself, much of the up-and-down movement in newspaper real estate advertising can be viewed as cyclical, meaning it will be weak in down markets and bounce back in the upward part of the cycle, whenever that comes up.
But what's worrying analysts this time around is that real estate could become the next category of classified advertising - after help-wanted ads - to mark a significant and permanent shift away onto the Internet. The stakes are big for newspapers since classifieds are highly lucrative and make up more than 35 percent of their revenues.
Mike Simonton, the top media industry analyst at the Fitch Ratings credit analysis service, says that currently a good 30 percent of help-wanted classified advertising is now online, while the Internet's share of real estate and auto classified advertising is lower, at about 15 to 20 percent, but poised to move higher.
'The threats from the Internet are real,' Simonton said. 'Newspaper advertising should remain under pressure until newspapers are better able to address the threat of online advertising.'
Representatives of several major real estate franchisors said in interviews that many home sellers still see newspaper advertising as an essential component of selling a home, but that younger brokers, home sellers and buyers are clearly more focused on using the Internet.
'For our agents, newspapers are an old standby,' said Abby Lee, director of regional advertising in Denver for RE/MAX, a major real estate franchisor. 'With younger agents, there's a trend of going online. There's a realization that's where they need to be.'
Suzy Antal, director of marketing, communications and public relations for Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc., said many Prudential agents have been pulling back on advertising during the current downturn, but as they return, they're shifting ad budgets to their own Web sites, creating blogs, and taking different approaches beyond newspapers.
'Is newspaper a high priority? No,' Antal said. 'I don't believe my buyers and sellers are going to be in that market.'
Newspaper publishers understand they need to move more aggressively to hold on to real estate advertising. 'We can't sit on our hands,' says Charlie Diederich, the director of marketing and advertising at the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group.
Diederich said newspapers are still a key part of most people's real estate searches and an important tool for realtors to make people aware of their brands. But he also acknowledged that newspapers need to do more to make their own Web sites essential to home buying decisions.
'We've got to improve both our print but especially our online products ... so consumers will continue to come to us first so we can deliver that audience to the professional realtor,' Diederich said.
A group of five major newspaper publishers also owns Classified Ventures, a Chicago-based business that powers the real estate sections of the Web sites of its 125 member newspapers.
Tim Fagan, president of that group's real estate division, said Classified Ventures would 'significantly increase' its investment in Homescape, a real estate-related Web site that provides home listings, but he declined to provide specific numbers.
Whether those efforts will be enough to stanch the flow of real estate ad dollars to online alternatives remains to be seen.
Blanche Evans, the editor of Realty Times, an online real estate news service, says that realtors now have a number of alternatives besides newspapers for listing homes for sale, such as Realtor.org, a site run by the National Association of Realtors, in addition to major online destinations such as Yahoo Inc.
As home-buyers flock online, it's also tough on realtors, Evans said, since home-buyers are becoming accustomed to seeing extensive color photos, descriptions of the neighborhood as well as video tours of the property - all of which costs money to produce.
With all the online tools available today, realtors 'have the ability now to really expose the property in a significant way,' Evans said. 'People have the ability to tour the house. That has changed everything.'

Papers Losing Real Estate Ads to Online

It's bad enough that a cratering housing market is leading to a slump in real estate advertising at newspapers, as a dreary series of earnings reports showed this week.
What's worse is that a lot of that advertising may never come back to newspapers even if the real estate sector recovers. That's because a significant chunk of those advertising dollars are moving - you guessed, online.
Exactly how much of a shift is occurring is difficult to measure in terms of dollars or market share, but several real estate executives say they are making a conscious decision to move money out of newspapers and onto the Internet as that medium grows in importance as a tool for researching home-buying decisions.
Granted, a significant amount of the declines in real estate advertising in newspapers can be attributed to the general weakness in real estate markets, particularly in hard-hit markets such as California and Florida, which were booming a year ago - leading to big gains in advertising back then.
This week Tribune Co., the No. 2 publisher by circulation, posted a 24 percent drop in the second quarter, while industry leader Gannett Co. has reported a 9.9 percent decline and McClatchy Co. reported a 19 percent decline, citing big losses in California and Florida.
Like the housing market itself, much of the up-and-down movement in newspaper real estate advertising can be viewed as cyclical, meaning it will be weak in down markets and bounce back in the upward part of the cycle, whenever that comes up.
But what's worrying analysts this time around is that real estate could become the next category of classified advertising - after help-wanted ads - to mark a significant and permanent shift away onto the Internet. The stakes are big for newspapers since classifieds are highly lucrative and make up more than 35 percent of their revenues.
Mike Simonton, the top media industry analyst at the Fitch Ratings credit analysis service, says that currently a good 30 percent of help-wanted classified advertising is now online, while the Internet's share of real estate and auto classified advertising is lower, at about 15 to 20 percent, but poised to move higher.
'The threats from the Internet are real,' Simonton said. 'Newspaper advertising should remain under pressure until newspapers are better able to address the threat of online advertising.'
Representatives of several major real estate franchisors said in interviews that many home sellers still see newspaper advertising as an essential component of selling a home, but that younger brokers, home sellers and buyers are clearly more focused on using the Internet.
'For our agents, newspapers are an old standby,' said Abby Lee, director of regional advertising in Denver for RE/MAX, a major real estate franchisor. 'With younger agents, there's a trend of going online. There's a realization that's where they need to be.'
Suzy Antal, director of marketing, communications and public relations for Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc., said many Prudential agents have been pulling back on advertising during the current downturn, but as they return, they're shifting ad budgets to their own Web sites, creating blogs, and taking different approaches beyond newspapers.
'Is newspaper a high priority? No,' Antal said. 'I don't believe my buyers and sellers are going to be in that market.'
Newspaper publishers understand they need to move more aggressively to hold on to real estate advertising. 'We can't sit on our hands,' says Charlie Diederich, the director of marketing and advertising at the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group.
Diederich said newspapers are still a key part of most people's real estate searches and an important tool for realtors to make people aware of their brands. But he also acknowledged that newspapers need to do more to make their own Web sites essential to home buying decisions.
'We've got to improve both our print but especially our online products ... so consumers will continue to come to us first so we can deliver that audience to the professional realtor,' Diederich said.
A group of five major newspaper publishers also owns Classified Ventures, a Chicago-based business that powers the real estate sections of the Web sites of its 125 member newspapers.
Tim Fagan, president of that group's real estate division, said Classified Ventures would 'significantly increase' its investment in Homescape, a real estate-related Web site that provides home listings, but he declined to provide specific numbers.
Whether those efforts will be enough to stanch the flow of real estate ad dollars to online alternatives remains to be seen.
Blanche Evans, the editor of Realty Times, an online real estate news service, says that realtors now have a number of alternatives besides newspapers for listing homes for sale, such as Realtor.org, a site run by the National Association of Realtors, in addition to major online destinations such as Yahoo Inc.
As home-buyers flock online, it's also tough on realtors, Evans said, since home-buyers are becoming accustomed to seeing extensive color photos, descriptions of the neighborhood as well as video tours of the property - all of which costs money to produce.
With all the online tools available today, realtors 'have the ability now to really expose the property in a significant way,' Evans said. 'People have the ability to tour the house. That has changed everything.'

Navteq Charts Growth of Digital Maps

Getting lost is getting rarer nowadays, and any yahoo with a keyboard or a GPS device can find precise directions or pinpoint the location of an out-of-town landmark. Now drivers hooked on digital maps are looking for more than just streets and turns. They want ever more accurate and up-to-date points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels, theme parks and more. For digital mapmakers like Navteq Corp., it's up to road teams like Ann McNeil and Rich Joyce to deliver.
Like luxury-class explorers, the geographic analysts cruise streets and roads in a tech-laden SUV outfitted with a satellite tracking computer, electronic clipboard and rooftop cameras.
'Our customers are wanting more and more information,' said McNeil, who has driven hundreds of thousands of miles in a decade at Navteq. 'We're expanding all the time.'
It's all part of a race with Dutch rival Tele Atlas NV to not only chart the world more accurately but combine the maps with other relevant data.
A pioneer of the digital map business, Navteq produces the maps and software found in automobile navigation systems, portable navigation devices made by Garmin Ltd. and other companies, and Internet map sites like AOL's Mapquest, Google Inc.'s Google Maps and Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Maps.
Navteq is the Rand McNally of the 21st century, according to Colorado-based map industry consultant Henry Poirot. And the rapid growth may be just beginning.
Thanks to global positioning systems and recent technology advancements, Navteq is fine-tuning ways to let consumers use a phone or other handheld device to track their dogs, find where to jog in another city, learn how many calories they will burn doing it, learn where the nearest 24-hour gas stations are and see current traffic and weather conditions. Tele Atlas has its own projects under way.
'There's a lot of competition going on,' said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst for Gartner Inc. 'Both companies are trying to show that their data is better, by being innovative in gathering more detailed information.'
The mapping duel heated up this week with the announcement that Tele Atlas agreed to a $2.6 billion acquisition by TomTom NV, the world's largest maker of personal navigation devices.
While that should make the combined European company a more formidable foe, Navteq's stock also soared. Analysts said TomTom's competitors such as Garmin may now go to the Chicago-based company for their maps rather than buy from a rival.
Navteq would like to improve its current share, which already includes most of the Internet mapping market and a split of the handheld device market with Tele Atlas. Its European rival drives the roads, too - the two companies' teams even sometimes spotting one another covering the same turf.
The biggest threat facing the two competitors in the future may be user-generated map content - a mapping equivalent of YouTube, as it were.
Google also could be a rival. The Internet search leader is deep into research, development and even acquisitions related to its mapping services, which include Google Earth as well as Google Maps.
Navteq has shown a knack for adapting to changing technology.
The company was born in 1985 as Navigation Technologies, focusing on kiosks at car rental agencies and hotels where patrons could print out directions and maps for chosen addresses. Dutch conglomerate Philips Electronics became its primary investor starting in 1989, a role it held until recently.
Navteq finally became profitable in 2002 thanks to global positioning systems, a boom in car-based navigation guides and its increasing grip on the exploding Internet mapping market. An initial public offering in 2004 helped ignite fast growth, and today it has more than 3,000 employees in 30 countries and a new headquarters in Chicago.
The company made $110 million on $582 million in sales last year and posted big gains in both categories in the first quarter. It reports second-quarter results Tuesday.
A heavy reliance on the slowing auto market, which accounted for nearly all its sales in 2000 and still brings in about 60 percent, has sent its stock price on a bumpy ride. Hoping to smooth things out, CEO Judson Green, who headed Disney's theme parks division until coming to Navteq in 2000, has steered the company into more diversification.
A pair of acquisitions for a combined $216 million in the past nine months underscore that effort: Traffic.com, which produces live traffic reports for cities around the country, and Map Network, producer of special maps for travel destinations, major hotels and big events like the Super Bowl.
In a swiftly moving business, it's not clear if that will be enough to stave off Tele Atlas and any nascent competitors.
'They're not moving fast enough,' said Koslowski. 'It's not just a question of acquiring companies like Traffic.com. ... The company needs to focus more on emerging markets.'
To map 12 million miles and 69 countries, Navteq has used an estimated 100,000 different sources, from satellite images and aerial photography to maps issued by local governments and commercial companies.
But to Green, the 'secret sauce' keeping the company on top of the mapping world is the 700 employees who spend half their work time behind the wheel or in the passenger seat.
'I would say that 80 to 85 percent of the effort that we put into making a digital map is from that very labor-intensive driving that we do,' he said. 'We cannot find the quality, accuracy or richness of the information from all these other sources unless we go do it our way.'
The road teams capture 225 different attributes for every link or block of road - one-way signs, turn restrictions, lane information, obstacles in the road and points of interest that may include a hardware store, park or hotel. Every year, the list grows based on customer demands.
Teams ride in the specially outfitted SUVs and rely on sophisticated monitors displaying moving maps and icons while live video from the multi-camera system is shown on separate screens. Among the recent additions: six tiny high-resolution cameras concealed under a glass dome on the roof.
On one recent mapping run, Joyce made sketch pen notations on the electronic clipboard while he and McNeil watched both sides of the street for discrepancies or updates from the existing data.
They quickly spotted a cafe in Chicago's West Loop that had changed its name. This is familiar territory; based on customer requests, they may drive the same streets as often as every three months to check for errors or gather new categories of information, such as bookstores and coffee shops.
'The real world is constantly changing and our challenge is to keep up with that change,' said Navteq spokeswoman Kelly Smith.
Tele Atlas has fewer drivers and road testers than Navteq but claims a bigger database covering over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Its business is more balanced between devices and maps.
For its part, Navteq has a new product in use in Europe called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems that Green says effectively puts the map in the engine to help drive the car. For example, it turns headlights to match the road's curves, changes the transmission as the car approaches a large hill and warns the driver when a lane line is crossed without a turn signal.
The company also is pushing aggressively into information for pedestrians and is eyeing mobile phones as a huge developing market.
'The next wave of location-enabled devices will be cell phones, and there we're penetrating less than 1 percent,' he said. 'That opens up all kinds of opportunities if you know where you are.'
It's clear, in other words, that the digital map world now is about much more than getting from Point A to Point B.
'The whole array of location-based services - we're just at the beginning of what's going to be possible,' said Green. 'It'll be pervasive in your life.'
___
On the Net:
http://www.navteq.com

EBay Can Continue Using 'Buy It Now'

A federal judge Friday denied a request from a small Virginia company to stop the online auction powerhouse eBay Inc. from using a feature that allows shoppers to purchase items at a fixed price.
U.S. District Court Judge Jerome B. Friedman denied a motion by MercExchange LLC for a permanent injunction against San Jose, Calif.-based eBay over the 'Buy It Now' feature.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that although eBay infringed upon MercExchange's patent for the service, it was up to the lower court to decide whether eBay had to stop using it.
In his ruling, Friedman said the company was not irreparably harmed because it continued to make money from its patents, either by licensing them outright or by threatening litigation against those it believed infringed upon them.
A federal jury found in 2003 that eBay had infringed on Great Falls-based MercExchange's patent and awarded the company $35 million. The amount later was reduced to $25 million.
MercExchange attorney Greg Stillman called the opinion a 'double-edged sword.'
'It was sort of good news, bad news for both sides,' Stillman said. 'I'm sure eBay is relieved that they're not going to be enjoined, but on the other hand (Friedman) made it quite clear that they're going to have to pay for that right.'
Catherine England, a spokeswoman for eBay, said the company is 'extremely pleased' with the decision.
Friedman denied eBay's request to stay proceedings on the 'Buy It Now' patent because the infringement suit already has been tried by a jury and a final verdict and damage award was affirmed by the federal circuit.
The judge did stay proceedings on a second patent held by MercExchange until the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has time to reexamine it.
In the closely watched case, the high court ruled that judges have flexibility in deciding whether to issue court orders barring continued use of a technology after juries find a patent violation. The decision threw out a ruling by a federal appeals court that said injunctions should be automatic unless exceptional circumstances apply.
The case became a rallying point for critics who argue the U.S. patent system is riddled with abuse from small businesses that sue established companies to enforce patents for ideas that have never been developed into products.
___
On the Net:
http://www.ebay.com
http://www.mercexchange.com

Wikia eyes Google, Yahoo

San Francisco - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Friday he is putting the building blocks in place for a community-developed web search service that would rival search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Wales told a conference of software developers in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering web crawler that will enable Wikia's forthcoming search service to scour the web to index relevant sites. "If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers," said Wales, chairperson of San Mateo, California-based Wikia. "I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome." Wikia - which has helped groups set up thousands of Wikipedia-style sites on topics ranging from popular TV shows to specialist health or travel - plans to develop an "open source" web search service with the help of volunteers. Wales founded the anyone-can-edit Wikipedia encyclopedia, a non-commercial project that is one of the web's most popular sites. He also co-founded the Wikia ad-supported network of self-edited wiki sites. However, the two organisations have no formal ties. The new Wikia search service will combine computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing when the company launches a public version of the search site toward the end of 2007, Wales said. Human editors would help untangle terms with multiple meanings, such as palm, which can refer to location like Palm Beach, or generic topics like trees or handheld computers. Search results are generated via another open-source software project called Lucerne. Wales said he is looking at options to enhance Lucerne, but would not detail his plans. 'We have interest from a lot of other commercial players...' Grub was originally an open source project that was freely available to software makers to enhance as long as they shared any improvements they made. Wikia has acquired Grub from LookSmart Ltd, which had halted work on the project. Wikia plans to open up Grub to other developers to make improvements or to incorporate the crawler into other sites. Terms of the deal between Wikia (http://wikia.com) and LookSmart (http://search.looksmart.com/) were not disclosed. However, last week, San Francisco-based LookSmart, which provides banner and search-based online advertising to websites, said it had agreed to supply advertising across Wikia's network of wiki sites. Wikia had been using Google's advertising service. "We have interest from a lot of other commercial players in the search space," said Wales. Grub relies on distributed computing technology to power the crawler. Computer users who download the software at www.grub.org can share computer processing time when they are not using their machines, cutting the cost of Wikia developing its own network of computers to crawl the web. Open search is part of Wikia's broader push to promote the spread of free content publishing on the web. Wales's objective is to make explicit the editorial judgments involved in modern web search systems. Proprietary search systems such as Google Inc keep secret key details of how their search systems work to prevent spamming and for competitive reasons. Ultimately, Wales wants the Wikia search service to be available to other websites and smaller publishers who would be able to install a custom version of the service that points website visitors only to links with a specific site.

The Deafening Roar of the Shrug

AFTER so much attrition from doping, we could be forgiven for expecting the winning rider today in the Tour de France to be a 3-year-old on a tricycle who tests positive for nothing more ominous than apple juice.
Sport’s despairing week has brought another puncture to cycling’s credibility; Barry Bonds’s continued grim chase of baseball’s home run record; a game-fixing investigation of a professional basketball referee; and gruesome dog-fighting accusations against the Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. Now a scorecard, a urine sample and sometimes even a police lineup are needed to keep up with the players.
“I’m not sure pro sports have had something this serious confront them in the last 50 years,” said Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, who has just been named the university’s athletic director.
The confluence of scandals might suggest that sport has reached some shocking nadir, at which celebrity, commercialism, multimillion-dollar salaries, doping and bad behavior have won out over authenticity and integrity in the pursuit of athletic excellence. But has it, really?
The legitimacy of competition, after all, has repeatedly been cast into doubt for more than a century. The American Thomas Hicks won the Olympic marathon in 1904 after taking strychnine to stave off exhaustion. College basketball had betting scandals in the 1950s; the N.F.L. had gambling problems in the 1960s; and the N.B.A. had a cocaine habit in the 1970s. Academic fraud persists in college sports. The carousel of corruption has never stopped spinning.
Yet, fans keep making accommodations. They rationalize, even persist in willful denial about the transgressions of their heroes, staying devoted to sport as entertainment and facilitator of moral development, however quaint that notion can seem.
Fans may be concerned about drugs in baseball, but not enough to stop buying tickets. In the steroid era, the major leagues remain on pace to set an attendance record for a fourth consecutive year. Bonds is often booed on the road over suspicions that his body has been corked like a bat, but his home runs still draw cheers.
“I’m sure people are saying this is the death knell of sports,” David Malloy, a sports ethicist at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, said of the current scandals. “But it’s a coincidence these things happened at the same time. I’m sure fans are still going to come and watch.”
Professional sports are “entertainment, business, pure and simple” and scandal should come as no surprise, Malloy said, adding: “I don’t think the average person cares that players are on steroids. I think they just want to see them hit the ball a mile out of the park.”
The gambling scandal involving the referee Tim Donaghy seems more troubling.
“In terms of impacting integrity, you can’t get much more serious than gambling,” Roby said. “If people don’t trust the games are real, it’s tough to keep them interested. You don’t want them to be predetermined. The beauty of sport is that a 1-6 team can beat a 7-0 team, and you want to think that is legitimate.”
But in truth, we don’t always care that the fix is in. One of the most popular programs on cable television features the theatrical fakery of professional wrestling.
The only real outrage displayed by fans in recent days was not in regard to sport, but to the government’s charge that Vick helped operate a dog-fighting ring that killed underachieving animals by hanging, drowning and bashing them into the ground. Vick was jeered on Thursday as hundreds gathered outside a courthouse in Richmond, Va., for his arraignment. He pleaded not guilty.
“People are animal lovers; if you own an animal, something he did becomes a little more personal,” said Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.
While the world’s most famous bicycle race is now under threat, only the most naïve have considered cycling to be clean. It seems inhuman to ask athletes to pedal their bikes at great speed some 2,200 miles in three weeks, often up tortuous mountain passes, without chemical assistance.
Fausto Coppi of Italy, who won the Tour in 1949 and 1952, was once asked if he ever fueled himself with amphetamines.
“Only when necessary,” he said.
How often was that?
“Most of the time,” Coppi replied.
Jacques Anquetil of France, a five-time winner, once said with sarcasm, “Do they expect us to ride the Tour on Perrier water?”
History suggests that baseball should think twice before imposing stricter control on the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Cycling and track and field, the two sports that have tried most ambitiously to catch drug cheats, have suffered an unintended consequence, losing much of their credibility — and the cover of plausible deniability — by flagging many top stars.
“The reward for doing the right thing is being labeled as having a drug problem,” said Craig Masback, chief executive of USA Track & Field.
There is a small but seemingly growing movement to legalize banned performance-enhancing drugs. Given the widespread drug use in society, some say it is unfair to single out athletes for punishment. Why allow Viagra as a performance enhancer, but not steroids, the thinking goes.
“The minute you become an adult, you should have a choice of whatever you want to put into your body,” said Andrei Markovits, who teaches a course in comparative sports at the University of Michigan. Athletes doctor themselves with Lasik eye surgery and the so-called Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery. Why not drugs? We can’t even agree on what an athlete should look like, given the hand-wringing about the South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who runs on prosthetic legs.
In an interview before his death in 2005, Steve Courson, a former lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers and one of the first athletes to admit to steroid use, said it was time to acknowledge that the values taught in youth sport bore no resemblance to the values of elite sport. He suggested that childhood values were ethical fungo drills, for practice only, not applicable between the lines of big time sport, where athletes seek any edge they can get — from doping to stealing a catcher’s signs — and it isn’t considered cheating if you don’t get caught.
“Don’t give me any of that ‘Chariots of Fire’ stuff; cut the box of Wheaties bull,” said Charles Yesalis, a professor emeritus of health policy and kinesiology at Penn State University and a friend of Courson’s. “There’s nothing pure about it. The noble cause is all gone. These guys are entertainers, period, in the money sports. They’re not role models.”
In the end, Lapchick said, disappointment over these scandals will melt into numbness for fans accustomed to seeing corruption at all levels of society.
“I think we are a forgiving people and a sports-loving people,” Lapchick said. “We have the potential to forgive a lot of athletes who do stupid things, or at least the sports they play.”
But, he added, “I don’t think society is going to forgive Michael Vick, unless the charges prove wrong.”

Google's (GOOG) Back Door Wireless Grab

Google's (GOOG) Back Door Wireless Grab
Google (GOOG) has cut a deal with Sprint (S) to provide search and its GMail and calendar functions for handsets that will operate on Sprint's new WiMax network. The deal could expand to include customers on Clearwire's (CLWR) WiMax system as well.
As The Wall Street Journal points out: "Google's collaboration with Sprint comes as Google is battling in Washington to impose new rules for a coming auction of valuable radio spectrum." The search company may not have its way in terms of opening up the spectrum to more competition. AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless are doing what they can to block Google. They cannot afford to have an open systems where their handsets can be used on other networks and consumers can download wireless applications at will without paying their primary carrier a toll.
So, Google will go in the back way. If Sprint's WiMax network is successful, it could create the single biggest threat to the 3G plans of its larger competitors. And Google can make certain that the Sprint product can be feature rich.
In addition to the Google software, Sprint will open its system to allow consumers to download any handset-ready software, including VoIP applications
As the FT writes: “Google’s partnership with Sprint signifies one of the many avenues that the company is taking to enter the wireless space, with other paths bypassing mobile network operators entirely,” said Nick Holland, a senior analyst with Aite Group.
Google intends to win its fight for open wireless networks whether the FCC cooperates or not.

Google 'the most improved brand'

Google is the brand that has gained the most in value over the past year, according a survey of global brands.
The report from Interbrand found that Google's brand value had risen 44% in the past 12 months to $17.8bn (£8.8bn), which put it in 20th place.
Coca-Cola came top of the league for the seventh year running, despite its value falling 3%.
Nokia is the highest-ranking brand from outside the US, while American brands made up more than half of the top 100.
The brands are valued using sales and a consideration of how important the brand is in the sector.
In soft drinks, for example, branding is considered very important, while it is much less important to people buying garden tools.
The biggest faller was Ford, whose brand value fell 19%, putting it at number 41 in the league.
The report says that Ford's long-term decline demonstrates how an iconic brand can lose its way.
It highlights the carmaker's permanent discount policy in the US as a factor that has eroded the value of its brand.

Google, Sprint Nextel in WiMAX Tie

Google and Sprint Nextel have reportedly announced they will develop a new mobile Internet portal that uses WiMax wireless technology to offer Web search and social networking. As per the agreement, customers of Sprint's wireless broadband network will get Google services such as email, chat, social networking, calendaring, and so on -- beginning early next year.
Sprint will provide open standard APIs (application programming interfaces) to developers to enable Google Web services run on a wide range of WiMAX-enabled devices including NBs and phones. While the agreement spells cooperation, analysts do not rule out the possibility of future competition between the two companies. For instance, earlier this month, Sprint announced plans to connect its WiMAX high-speed services with those of Clearwire Corp. For Google too, as analysts point out, it's but natural for the company to increase its presence in the wireless sector by working with as many operators as possible. It is expected for the WiMAX service to be tested in Chicago, Washington, and Baltimore by the end of this year. WiMAX is considered slower than wired broadband but reportedly offers Web access speeds that are nearly 5 times faster than typical wireless networks.

Microsoft's master plan: be Google. Be Apple

Microsoft executives used the company's annual financial analysts' day to lay out their plans to grow the company in the face of the industry shift to software-as-services and mobile computing.
The plan? Having come to dominate its core software markets, it now wants to grow by becoming more Google than Google, more Apple than Apple.
As is usual for these types of events, Microsoft's evolving strategy was presented in terms of the last thirty years of computing - how the software giant morphed to tackle the GUI, client-server enterprise computing, and now the internet.
Despite naysayers on each occasion, the company has become a powerhouse in each of these areas, either leading the market or giving the specialists a run for their money.
So where does it go next? Judging by Ballmer's remarks yesterday, the company is simply following the money, creating a battle plan to take on Apple and Google on their own proven cash-making turfs.
"We're investing today in two new capabilities. We are going to be an advertising company, and we are going to be a devices company," Steve Ballmer said during the meeting.
Advertising is the revenue stream that supports software-as-a-service, he indicated, making it vital that Microsoft becomes better at selling and delivering ads, and not just on Microsoft's properties.
"We're the number three seller of internet advertising today," he said. "We sell primarily on our own sites, but we also sell Facebook, we now signed a deal to sell Digg, and a variety of other people. But we're number three. Number three is better than number four, but not as good as number two or number one."
On the road to number two, the company also yesterday announced the creation of a dedicated Internet Services Research Center, essentially a war room focused on brainstorming ways to better Google in search and advertising technologies.
The ISRC will be peopled by "crack research teams with brilliant minds and fires in their bellies", according to corporate vice president Harry Shum, who will lead the team.
Later yesterday, Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, took the stage to elaborate on how the company plans to grow as an advertising platform.
The strategy centers on Live ID, the user accounts that you need to create before you can use many of Microsoft's Live-branded web services. Microsoft has about 380 million such accounts under management at the moment, and wants more.
Google has focused largely on targeting advertising based either on the context of web pages or, primarily, the words and phrases users search for. While it has a system of user accounts, they're not strictly necessary to use its most interesting services.
Microsoft is instead putting its knowledge of the individual, via their Live ID at the forefront.
"This creates significant amount of opportunity for us to know more about the users when they are signed in versus just a cookie or an IP address," Johnson said. "As users are signed in, we can do a better job of behavioral targeting or ad targeting to these particular users, which is good for the user - more relevant advertising - and it's good for the advertiser."
In a few months Microsoft plans to release another version of Windows Live, which Johnson described as "A single suite of user services. A single download and install to the PC that will enable users to use these services whether they're on the PC, on the phone, or just directly from the browser."
This appears to be what Microsoft means by "software-AND-services", the term it has been grooming to replace "software-AS-A-service" in the minds of users over the last few months. Windows Live, in its current incarnation, is just a collection of web sites, rather than a download.
"We're going to drive very hard on continuing to expand the number of users we have using these Windows Live services," Johnson said.
Another area of focus is redesigning the existing web services to keep users on Microsoft properties for longer, creating more page impressions or minutes than can be monetized with advertising.
On the sell-side, Microsoft is also determined to build a platform for advertisers that it hopes to rival Google's AdWords. Microsoft's adCenter will this quarter start deploying ads targeted contextually against content within Microsoft's own sites, and this will be expanded to third-party publishers within the next 12 months, Johnson said.
Having plotted the demise of Yahoo and Google's, Microsoft executives then turned their attention to Apple, where slick hardware design and novel interface work on the iPod and iPhone have given the company a domineering mindshare position in mobile devices. A position that, naturally, Microsoft would like to erode to its own advantage.
"On the devices side, we need to embrace retail, hardware, hardware design where we need to," Ballmer said.
While executives yesterday stopped short of spelling out the company's hardware plans, Ballmer did say that Microsoft needs to look into consumer devices to stay relevant.
"I will get asked, do you really need to do consumer device?" he said. "And the answer is, we really do, because our ability to leverage our technology, our ability to innovate, our ability to drive growth, we need to have this business outlet for our software creativity to continue to grow, to continue to innovate, and continue to be relevant."
It's not an ideal situation for Microsoft's partners. Imitating Apple's strategy with the iPod and iPhone perhaps, Microsoft's mobile devices strategy will be more closed-system that its longstanding PC strategy, which by some standards could be considered "open".
"We're a believer in what we think of as a managed ecosystem," Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft's devices business said. "If you want to compare two worlds, you can compare the open world and you can compare a closed world closer to an Apple model. We want to be in a place where the consumer's experience is managed but where there's openness for a broad variety of partners to participate."

Sony President: no plans for another PS3 price cut

OYAMA, Japan - Sony Corp. currently has no plans for a further price cut to its PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console following a $100 cut in the U.S., the electronics conglomerate's president said on Friday.
"We've announced the price cut in the U.S and have no additional plans beyond that at this time," Ryoji Chubachi told Reuters on the sidelines of a gathering of business executives in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan.The price cut, announced earlier this month, had confused some industry watchers because it came just a few days after Chubachi told Reuters in an interview that the company had no immediate plans to lower the PS3 price.Sony's PlayStation 3 has been far outsold by rival Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s Wii console in large part because of its lofty price. Even after the $100 cut, the PS3 at $499 is twice as expensive as the Wii.Sony announced on Thursday that it sold 710,000 units of the PS3 in the April-June quarter, less than a fourth of 3.43 million Wii consoles sold in the same period.Some analysts have said the $100 cut would not be enough to counter the momentum of the Wii and predicted that Sony would have to lower the price again in the near future.Sony's stock was up 0.6 percent at 6,390 yen in early afternoon trade, bucking a sharp fall in the broader market.Investors are buying Sony after the company announced on Thursday that its quarterly profit more than trebled on the back of strong digital camera sales and a softer yen, which far outstripped losses on the struggling PlayStation 3.

"Lost" world offers game, mobisodes, books

SAN DIEGO (Hollywood Reporter) - Although Comic-Con International lost a scoop when ABC executives let slip this week that actor Harold Perrineau would rejoin the cast of "Lost," fans attending the show's panel Thursday were still rewarded with the first look at the video game based on the show.
Included in the more-than-hourlong discussion by the show's co-creator/executive producer, Damon Lindelof, and executive producer Carlton Cuse were 30 seconds of footage of the game being developed by Ubisoft.
And there's more to come from the "Lost" universe, Lindelof said
"It will allow us to focus our time and energy into creating separate medias like the game, mobisodes, another 'Lost Experience,' and we have a couple of cool book ideas that tie into the show," he said. "This will allow us to really supervise that stuff and be involved."
The first-person action game for the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3 and PC will be released in February to coincide with the debut of the fourth "Lost" season. Gamers will be able to play as a survivor of Oceanic Flight 815, exploring familiar locations, unraveling mysteries and puzzles as well as interacting with the main characters on the show.
Cuse noted that development of the game by Ubisoft's Montreal studios is in its early stage but promised it will be a "really cool" experience for fans.
Perrineau appeared during the panel, and though he offered little details on his character's return, he did say he had known about the move for some time but kept silent while he did other projects, including the film "28 Weeks Later."

Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center publishes new website with an array of new on-line features

(PRLEAP.COM) PLYMOUTH (MI): Shortly after publishing a stand-alone website for Performance Benchmarking (www.performancebenchmarking.org), its comprehensive manufacturing benchmarking service, Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (MMTC) announces a sweeping upgrade to its main website - www.mmtc.org. Significant new content has been added along with a completely revised navigation schema. "The new website plan was developed with the user in mind”, stated Mike Coast, President. "MMTC wants visitors of its website to have a pleasant and informative experience. The benefits of our array of services are apparent and the site user can follow links to more detailed information as desired. Also, MMTC Success Stories are readily available in an indexed archive along with many other MMTC publications."The site contains new features that previously were not available on-line including: easy-to-use events registration, data on MMTC’s positive impact on client companies and scrolling news items that are of interest to small and mid-sized manufacturers. Please visit our new website at www.mmtc.org. MMTC welcomes your comments and feedback on the new site.

New technology could end misery of flat congestion charges

A new infrared imaging system that automatically counts the number of people in moving road vehicles could offer a simple and cost effective solution to help lower carbon emissions and congestion.
Demand for innovative ways to encourage vehicle sharing is particularly acute in major cities as only 20% of the road capacity is used by multiple occupancy vehicles. With 80% of vehicles occupied only by the driver, congestion charge zones and toll gates are an increasingly common feature on Britain’s traffic black spots. But unless vehicle occupants can be easily counted, it is impossible to implement variable charging to encourage more journeys to be shared.
Dtect, the new technology developed by optical engineering experts at Loughborough University, can be used for a variety of scenarios where multiple occupancy could attract lower fees, such as congestion zones; toll roads, bridges and tunnels; high occupancy vehicle lanes and car parks. It illuminates the moving vehicle’s windscreen without distracting the occupants and then processes images using a patented formula to detect the number of occupants. Occupant identity and vehicle registration can be stored in case penalties need enforcing, otherwise this information is data protected. The process takes a fraction of a second and results can either be integrated into a larger automated traffic management system or transmitted to a remote terminal.Avingtrans Plc, who own Crown UK Ltd, the leading UK supplier of roadside camera housings, has recently made a major investment into the Loughborough technology. For John Tyrer, Loughborough inventor and director of Vehicle Occupancy Ltd, the company formed to commercialise the technology, this partnership is ideal: “Flat rate charges are not the answer to congestion and the resultant pollution. Getting more people to share their journeys can only happen with incentives like variable charging. We have developed the step change technology to make this happen and Avingtrans / Crown have the credibility to incorporate it into the market.”

PlayBox USA To Open

PlayBox Technology continues its expansion into international markets with the opening of an office in the USA. On 1st August, the doors open at PlayBox USA situated in Atlanta, Georgia to provide a full range of services for its existing and future American customers of its PC-based television playout systems.

With over 100 installations of PlayBox AirBox playout servers already in the country, PlayBox USA brings a full range of services directly to the rapidly growing number of customers in the US video broadcast market. Sales are supported both from Atlanta, where Van Duke who heads up the US operation as well as East Coast sales, and Los Angeles where John Biedenharn is responsible for the West Coast. The customer care operations include 12 months hardware support for PlayBox systems and an optional further 12 months extension. It also offers annual software maintenance contracts.Vassil Lefterov, General Manager of PlayBox Technology comments, “We have already established a considerable customer base in the USA and are delighted that we can now offer them a full range of local support. Also this move is well timed as we are now delivering HD playout systems and this is of great interest in the American market.”The opening of the US office is a further expansion of PlayBox’s rapidly growing global sales network with offices already including: Belgrade (Serbia and Montenegro), Bucharest (Romania), Istanbul (Turkey), Sydney (Pacific), as well as the London-based international headquarters.PlayBox Technology is an international communications and information technology company serving the broadcast and corporate markets worldwide. It is dedicated to the research, design, development and provision of broadcasting products, systems, solutions and services. With Over 3,900 TV channels powered by PlayBox Technology the chances are you will have experienced our solutions for yourself. PlayBox Technology has solutions for start-up TV channels, webcasters, interactive music channels and satellite broadcasters as well as local, regional, national and international broadcasters.

Robots Clear Waterways of Deadly Mines

Associated Press Writer
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla.As it slowly moves in the shallow water

like a small child playing in the surf. But the prototype device has a serious mission: destroying mines that could kill Marines and Navy SEALs as they come on shore. Such technology is considered the future of underwater bomb detection."It's a kamikaze vehicle, a suicidal robot," said Mathieu Kemp, a scientist with Durham, N.C.-based Nekton Research, LCC, which created the Transphibian.The 3-foot-long device, which will some day carry 14 pounds of plastic explosives and attach itself to an underwater bomb before igniting, can be maneuvered by a joystick, which Kemp demonstrated last month at the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Fest, an annual two-week gathering of researchers who design robots for military use.Experts with the Panama City Beach-based Naval Surface Warfare Center say such robots eventually will replace minesweeping ships and perform dangerous jobs now done by specialized divers.A 2003 mine-clearing operation in the port of Um Quasar, Iraq, was a major test for autonomous underwater vehicles. The technology helped the U.S. Navy clear a path for a British ship carrying 200 tons of food and emergency supplies. It took the AUVs about 16 hours to search nearly a square mile and help divers locate an undisclosed number of mines - a task the Navy says would have taken 21 days for divers working without the technology.In the future, scientists plan to put explosives on the AUVs to destroy the mines. Meanwhile, they are using them to quickly and accurately differentiate ocean clutter from mines."The closer in you get to any port or harbor, the greater amount of clutter you will encounter - tires, rocks, coral reefs - there can be so much clutter you would not believe it," said Daniel Broadstreet, a spokesman for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which specializes in neutralizing underwater mines."To screen out all that clutter is a huge job and it takes some very, very technologically advanced sensors," Broadstreet said.The Um Quasar operation was a milestone for AUVs because it marked the first wartime use of the technology, said Tom Swean, team leader of the Office of Naval Research's Mine Warfare Science and Technology Program.Swean joined the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., in 1981, but his work took off in 1997 when the Navy SEALs got involved. They tailored the systems for missions including surveying the seabed, finding channels near the shore and locating mines."It was important that they have underwater vehicles that could not be seen very easily," Swean said. "Their missions are near shore and are very dangerous."A decade later, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed advances in unmanned and robotic technology, especially on land and in the air where robots routinely inspect improvised explosive devices and drones conduct air reconnaissance."It's gone from zero to 60 pretty fast," said Jeffery Bradshaw, a scientist at the Pensacola-based Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, which is working with the warfare center on a project to use robots for port security.The military is expected to spend more than $50 million on the acquisition of AUV technology in the next five years, Swean said. At the same time, more than $12 billion is expected to be spent on unmanned aircraft programs.The next steps for the researchers include creating robots that function alongside troops as members of an operational team and ones that work with other robots."If one robot breaks or if one of the human team members is in trouble, they would know how to coordinate interactions - sort of like buddies," Bradshaw said.Despite the interest in robotic technology, changes won't be immediate, Swean said. The Navy likely will phase out large mine sweepers, but it will need ships to deploy the robotic systems, he said.Among the robots with the most promise is the Transphibian, which is still being developed."It's a good example of a hybrid concept, it can swim in the water and it can crawl on the sea floor," Swean said as he watched a prototype splash along the waters near Panama City Beach. "The last piece is to efficiently and cheaply go out to a real mine and place a charge on it."

Samsung DisplayPort technology

In a move likely to confuse the average HD consumer, Samsung has developed the world's first LCD panel featuring the VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) approved DisplayPort 1.1 connection jack.
Said to be a rival to HDMI and successor to your DVI and eventually VGA connections, DisplayPort is unquestionably an exciting development but you have to wonder if its Q2 2008 launch date may have it stepping up a little late in the game.
Samsung's 30-inch LCD touts some impressive specs though. The DisplayPort technology transmits data at an furious 10.8Gbps data rate, which allows for an unbelievable 2560x1600 pixel count (compared to the current 1080p best of 1920x1080) for an unrivalled picture. Elsewhere there's a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 180-degree viewing angle, 6ms response time and 300cd/m2 brightness.
All very impressive but it's a long time until anyone will see it in the flesh. Let's just hope it's good enough to make it worth the wait.

Tech money: Chico schools chasing grants for welding, construction and media technology

Chico Unified School District is lining up for state money.
A pot of funds available for career and technical education, or CTE -- once called vocational education -- would help the district expand industrial technology programs at Pleasant Valley High School to include building construction, and would help make improvements to the Academy of Communication and Technology, also called ACT, at Chico High School.
This summer, a crew of students, along with instructors Miles Peacock and Jerry Joiner, have been busy working to redesign the space at Pleasant Valley that currently houses the welding program.
If plans for the department come together, the huge shop area that was once an auto shop will become the welding shop and the current, smaller welding room would become a new building construction shop.
This fall, the department will offer more sections of welding and one course in a new career pathway -- construction technology -- optimistically hoping the funding will come through, Peacock explained.
To prepare for more enrollment, Peacock, Joiner and 16 students in a summer Regional Occupational Program welding-and-construction class created new welding stations, replaced gates, moved and repaired storage units, painted and installed lockers, and performed other renovation work that doesn't require permits.
The complete remodel and modernization would cost about $270,000, and the district would have to foot half the total to qualify for the grant.
Some of the work already completed could count toward the district's match.
The introductory class, as well as the whole pathway, is a response to an increase in the number of students wanting to enroll in industrial technology classes and a growing market demand for skilled workers.
The department already offers three industrial arts course sequences -- engineering design, architectural design and welding technology -- with some courses overlapping.
While students worked determinedly Thursday morning, trying to finish their projects before the last day of class today, Peacock talked about all the work they'd accomplished.
Students Chad Millard and Justin Adkins labored to install the shop yard's rolling gate, to replace an old, narrow swinging gate, while Kelvin Miles dismantled pieces of old fence, saving reusable parts and putting those beyond use into a bin to go to the scrap yard.
Peacock pointed out huge pieces of equipment donated by local businesses, including a press brake, a mechanical shear, lathes, a drill press, a forklift and other equipment.
Industry partners have contributed more than $50,000 worth of materials, Joiner said.
But the largest cost outlined in the grant application is the power and ventilation system that the old auto shop would need to make it adequate for industrial technology, he said. That work will have to go out to bid and could cost as much as $200,000.
Eventually, the construction class could partner with an organization such as Habitat for Humanity and build a home, involving student work in every aspect, from design to woodworking.
Teachers in the Academy program at Chico High School have also written a grant application to reconfigure and modernize the program, at a cost of about $2.2 million.
The 13-year-old program needs to be aligned to new standards the state has set for career and technical education, instructor Ron Pope explained.
The current program, although in need of new equipment to meet industry standards, satisfies two career pathways in media and entertainment education: media and design arts, and production and managerial arts.
With grant funding, ACT could expand to include a third career focus, in performing arts.
The CTE advisory committee met Wednesday morning and put its stamp of approval on the grant applications, which will need approval from the board of trustees before being sent to the state by Aug. 3.
Staff writer Chris Gullick can be reached at 896-7760 or cgullick@chicoer.com.
BACKGROUND: Chico Unified School District has had some success in pushing through grants to help support its programs, partly because of the expertise of district grant-writer Liz Metzger.
WHAT'S NEW: The California Department of Education has a pot of money available, earmarked for career and technical education — $4.3 million designated for programs in the northern region that includes Chico.
WHAT'S NEXT: The grant applications must be approved by the board of trustees and are due to the state by Aug. 3.

New Report Will Provide a Thorough Market and Technology Analysis of the E-Paper Market

DUBLIN, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c63988) has announced the addition of “E-Paper Markets: An Eight-Year Market and Technology Forecast” to their offering.
Electronic paper (e-paper) has recently burst onto the scene as a radically new display technology that matches the characteristics of paper in terms of flexibility and readability, but adds the ability for constant updating from a network. The first applications for e-paper have been found in book readers and novelty products, such as flexible clocks. But e-paper is a serious product with sizeable addressable markets, especially in signage and smart shelving and in roll-up mobile displays. Major electronics and materials firms, as well as the usual slew of start-ups are already investing heavily in this technology.
Nonetheless, many uncertainties and challenges beset the e-paper market. There are competing technologies -- electrophoretic inks and cholesteric LCDs, for example. Many of the products being designed with e-paper are entirely novel and have no established markets. E-paper-based book readers may be the next consumer electronics hit or the whole concept could very well crash and burn. Similarly, there are no established supply chains for e-paper products which has left technology developers to try and create them while at the same time attempting to manufacture their own products.
This new report will provide a thorough market and technology analysis of the e-paper market. It will analyze the key materials and production technologies and assess in which market segments they are likely to take off or fail. Applications sectors for e-paper that will be discussed and forecast include smart-shelves, smart cards, smart packaging, book-readers, cell-phone displays, computer displays, information displays, clocks and other novelty products. The report will also project performance improvements expected over the next eight years and assess the marketing importance of such factors as flexibility, system architecture, resolutions, backplane switching speeds, and color capability.
The report will also provide critical profiles of the leading providers of e-paper and a detailed eight-year market forecast of e-paper markets, broken out by application and technology. This report builds on the highly-regarded research previously published in the display and printed electronics sectors.
Contents:
Executive Summary
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: E-Paper Technology Trends
Chapter Three: E-Paper Market Analysis
Chapter Four: E-Paper Suppliers
Chapter Five: Eight-Year Forecasts of E-Paper Market
List of Exhibits
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c63988

PM hopes for lasting change from 2012 Olympics

As work begins on the Olympic Park in east London five years before the opening ceremony, the PM has said that he hopes the 2012 Olympics will be a "catalyst for lasting change".
He said:
"Five years from today the Olympic flame will be lit in London, marking the start of the greatest celebration of sport we will have ever seen in this country. But the vision for London 2012 is about more than just hosting a fantastic summer of sport. It is about using this opportunity as a catalyst for lasting change in our country."
Following his recent announcement of extra funding for sport in Britain's schools, the PM said that he wanted "the anticipation and reality of hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games here in 2012 to spark a renewed passion for sport in Britain's young people".
He also said that he was determined to see maximum regeneration in the deprived area of east London where most of the construction will take place, as well as major benefits for the rest of the country, particularly in business and tourism.
The Olympic Delivery Authority took control of the land where the main Olympic park will be yesterday. The 500-acre site will include a main stadium, aquatics centre, velodrome, three sports arenas, a hockey centre and accommodation for competitors.
Mr Brown added that the Olympic team were on course with their preparations and had his full support in making "the most of the great prize of staging the Games here in Britain".

Space computer 'sabotage' probed

Nasa is investigating the apparent sabotage of a computer due to be flown to the International Space Station.
The US space agency said the damage to wiring in a network box was intentional and obvious, but said it could be repaired before take-off on 7 August.
Nasa stressed that the lives of its astronauts had not been put at risk.
The discovery came as an independent health panel was reported to have found that astronauts had been allowed to fly after drinking alcohol.
The panel found that on two occasions Nasa astronauts had been allowed to fly despite warnings from flight surgeons and other astronauts that they were so drunk they posed a safety risk, flight journal Aviation Week and Space Technology reported.
The panel was set up by Nasa to study health issues following the arrest on kidnapping and assault charges of the astronaut, Lisa Nowak.
Ms Nowak is accused of attacking her love rival, the girlfriend of a fellow astronaut.
The findings of the panel do not deal with Ms Nowak directly or mention any other astronaut by name.
The official review into astronauts' medical and behavioural health is expected to be released by Nasa on Friday.
The agency has so far refused to comment on the allegations.
'Sub-contractor'
Nasa's Associate Administrator for Space Operations, William Gerstenmaier, said the apparent sabotage of a non-essential computer had been discovered earlier this month.
"The damage is very obvious, easy to detect," he told reporters. "It's not a mystery to us."
Mr Gerstenmaier said wires had been found cut inside the unit before it had been loaded onto the shuttle.
The computer is designed to collect and relay data from sensors which detect vibrations and forces on the space station's external trusses.
"It's currently being investigated by the [Nasa] inspector general's office," he added.
The equipment had been supplied by a sub-contractor, he added.
Mr Gerstenmaier said engineers would try to repair the hardware before take-off in two weeks' time, but that the mission would not be delayed.
The damage is believed to be the first act of sabotage of flight equipment Nasa has discovered.

Huge Chinese piracy ring tackled

Pirated software worth $500m (£250m) has been seized as the FBI shuts down a world-spanning piracy outfit.
Before the raids the Chinese counterfeiting syndicate was thought to have sold and distributed software worth more than $2bn.
The FBI and China's Public Security Bureau arrested 25 people during the two-week operation against the pirates.
Despite recent crackdowns, industry figures suggest that 82% of the software used in China is counterfeit.
Piracy probe
The FBI said it had been building up a case against the piracy syndicate for years before staging the raids on the software production plants in China's Guangdong province.
During the raids, dubbed Operation Summer Solstice, the FBI seized more than 290,000 CDs with a claimed market value of $500m.
The gang was known to be producing pirated versions of 13 of Microsoft's most popular programs including Windows Vista, XP and Server as well as Office 2003 and 2007.
The syndicate sold versions of these programs in eight languages including Croatian and Dutch.
In a statement Microsoft said vital information that helped to track down the pirates came from its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) scheme.
WGA forces users of some versions of Windows to validate their copy of the operating system with Microsoft when updating their software.
Microsoft said information gathered by WGA from more than 1,000 fake copies produced by the counterfeiters and sold around the world helped law enforcement agencies home in on the pirates. Fake software produced by the group was found in 27 countries.
"Countries around the world are expected to experience a significant decrease in the volume of counterfeit software as a direct result of this action," said Microsoft in its statement.

Spurs lead chase to capture Dyer

Spurs are leading the chase for Newcastle's Kieron Dyer after boss Sam Allardyce admitted the midfielder could be allowed to leave St James' Park.
Manchester City had been strongly linked with a swoop for Dyer, 28, but BBC Sport understands boss Sven-Goran Eriksson will not make a move.
West Ham are also interested, but it is believed Spurs are Dyer's first choice.
Boss Martin Jol is believed to have lodged a bid of about £5m for the Ipswich-born England international.
Newcastle boss Allardyce confirmed Dyer would be allowed to leave, citing "family reasons".
Dyer was left out of the squad for the friendly against Celtic on Thursday evening.
Allardyce said: "We are protecting our asset. There's a big value in Kieron Dyer, the player that he is, so I am protecting the asset.
"He could have ended up playing today and being one of the casualties like Nicky Butt or Steven Taylor, so it was my decision to protect that asset and not risk him today because he is a valuable asset for Newcastle United."

INJURY MAY HAMPER GREENE IN TRIALS

Swansea Harrier David Greene is facing a big problem ahead of this weekend's World Championships trials in Manchester in which he was hoping to clinch a ticket to Japan.Greene, the fastest man over 400 metres hurdles in Britain this year, was celebrating his European Under-23 Championship gold medal last week.But he brought an unwelcome present back from Hungary and it is causing him serious worries ahead of this weekend's trials, which also double up as the UK Championships - previously called the AAA Championships.For a tendon problem, which struck his right foot throughout June but seemed to clear after a course of pain-relieving injections, hit him in the left foot at the under-23 competition.And he has been unable to shake it off before this weekend's crunch meeting.Greene will try to compete but he is not expecting miracles.He said: "I'm going to go up, warm up and see how it goes."I'm not expecting to win but it's not the end of the world because I can still get selected for the Worlds. I'm fastest in the UK, so they should take me."The 21-year-old suffered the injury during his European final, and added: "I've had a couple of injections and it helped bring it along but I've got to get back into racing. It needs proper rest but I haven't got time to do that."I've done a few sessions in training but, after them, I've had to lay off my foot but I'm going to go up there this weekend with the intention of running. It's a big ask."Welsh shot putt champion Sally Hinds is missing out on Manchester altogether to work behind a bar in Cardiff tomorrow night.The 21-year-old has just started a new job at the Owain Glyndwr in the capital's centre and did not want to ask her boss for time off straight away.Hinds, who won a winner's medal as a rugby prop in the BUSA University's final at Twickenham for UWIC in April, threw 14.62 metres to take her Welsh title at Cwmbran this month.She was aiming to go the World Trials but work takes precedence now as she gets into the employment market, having graduated from UWIC this month with a Sport and PE degree.The Swansea Harrier is hoping to join the police force or fire service in a few years but is now concentrating on saving up some cash from her new job.Hinds said: "There are a lot of good girls who will be throwing 15 and 16 metres up there and, if I was going to do well, then I would go up."But this is my first week in my new job and I don't want to be asking for time off already. I'm a little bit disappointed but, at the moment, my job is what I have to look at."If I can get a competition in again this summer, that will be a bonus. I haven't been training as much as I should so it's not the thing to go up there (to Manchester) and not throw very well."Neath's Philippa Roles, though, is down to compete in the women's discus and is determined to notch up a top performance.The London train driver retired last year in disillusionment at athletics but has returned to the sport, supports herself financially and is throwing ''just for me now.''She said: "Training at the moment is the best it has ever been."Carmarthen Harrier duo Anwen Rees and Heather Jones are both down to go over the hurdles - 400m and 100m respectively - in Manchester, while clubmate Bruce Tasker is set for his specialist men's 400m flat as well as the optional 200m.Also, Swansea Harrier Rhys Williams is on the entry list for the javelin where he came second in the Welsh Championships this month with a throw of 62.35m.And Welsh high jump record holder Rob Mitchell, whose family are scattered around West Wales, hopes to get over his own injury jinx to land a place on the plane this weekend.

Golden girl makes a splash

A HEXHAM girl is on top of the world this week after being crowned double world canoeing champion.Sandra Hyslop, who celebrates her 17th birthday next week, won the women’s kayak singles championship at the Junior World Championships in South Carolina, USA. The Hexham Queen Elizabeth High School sixth former was also a member of the Great Britain squad which won the team gold.And just for good measure, Sandra also won a silver medal in the sprint event.She took gold in the classic event, which involved a 20-minute wildwater ride down the boiling Saluda river at Charlotte, by a clear 38 seconds.There to cheer her on were her parents, Maitland and Jackie, of Elvaston Grove, but big sister and fellow international wildwater canoeist Jennifer was away on a trek in Greenland. Sandra, formerly a prominent swimmer, has been paddling since she was 10 years old and trains every day on the Tyne with Hexham Canoe Club.She puts a lot of the credit for her success down to the coaches at the club, who have taught her vital skills.Sandra, who has just completed her AS levels, has already represented Great Britain as a junior and was selected for the 2006 Senior World Cup where she was the highest ranked British female at 13th.In the 2005 Junior World Championships, in Mezzana, she came 15th in the classic and 16th in the sprint, and was part of the GB team which won a bronze medal at the Junior European Championships.In the 2006 Junior European Championships, Sandra came ninth in the sprint event and seventh in the classic event.She is sponsored by Middlesbrough-based technology solutions providers Onyx Group, and also receives Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme funding. Sandra is also supported by Tyne Valley Insurance, Northumberland Schools Sports Association, The Henry Bell Trust, Tynedale Sports Council and Leisure Tynedale.Sandra would like to thank her coaches Michael Mason, Neil Stamps and Alan Tordoff and her parents, Maitland and Jackie, for all the effort they have put in to help her achieve her goals.Sport England North East regional director, Judith Rasmussen, said: “We’re so proud of Sandra and her phenomenal success in this exciting sport. “To bring a world gold medal back to the North-East is a credit to the determination and effort of Sandra and the incredible support she receives within the region. “She offers an exceptional example for the younger generation and is sure to help increase participation in kayaking and sport in general. “We congratulate her on what is a great achievement.”

Olympic hopeful targets sponsor

Archer earns a place in national trials after record-equalling performanceOLYMPIC hopeful Ben Humphrys is on the verge of fulfilling his dream of representing his country after being invited to take part in a series of testing trials by the Great Britain Archery team. The William Ellis schoolboy will be joined by some of the best young bowmen from across the country when he attempts to secure a place in the elite squad in November at the school of excellence at the National Sports Centre in Lilleshall, Shropshire.Having taken the archery world by storm, there’s little doubt that the Highgate youngster, who has just celebrated his 13th birthday, has what it takes to make it to the very top of the sport. But there is still one major factor that stands in his way as his family struggles to cope with the spiralling costs of the sport.Having reached such a high level Ben is in desperate need to upgrade his equipment if he is to push forward and fulfil his outstanding potential. But with a new compound bow and arrows set to cost in the region of £2,500, Ben desperately needs to find sponsors to help him in his quest for glory. Having already won countless trophies and recognition within the sport, it’s hard to believe that Ben only took up archery four years ago after becoming mesmerised with the epic film trilogy Lord of the Rings. Pleading with his dad Dave to let him try archery, the pair discovered Camden and Islington club Hampstead Bowmen, a recreational society based at the Royal Free Hospital in Pond Street, where they both train every Saturday. Ben continued to display his pinpoint accuracy in his previous outing when he twice came within a single point of setting a new British record.Tackling horrendous weather conditions, Ben managed to use his compound bow to maximum effect when he scored an incredible 636 points out of a possible 648, hitting the centre of the mark with 66 of his 72 arrows. Despite just missing out on setting a new British record, Ben could still have carved his name in the history books as the first ever archer to equal a national best score twice in one day. Ben also recently clinched a bronze medal at the Grand National Archery Society’s Junior Outdoor Championships. Competing in his first-ever outdoor competition, Ben overcame a niggling arm injury to hit the gold centre 123 times out of a possible 144 to notch up a score of 1,254 points out of a possible 1,296. Not only was Ben presented with an elusive Purple Rose Award for scoring over 1,250 points, but he was also awarded a six gold end badge, which an archer receives when all six of their arrows consecutively score inside the gold centre.An excited Ben revealed to the New Journal: “Hopefully I will continue to improve and maybe even have a shot at being part of the British team at the 2012 Olympics

Tigers fume at 'biggest injustice' in sport's history

Castleford are likely to demand the guarantee of a Super League place in 2009 as compensation for being relegated last season as an indirect result of Wigan's breach of the salary cap. The Tigers described it yesterday as "one of the greatest injustices in the history of the sport".
"We are both devastated and angry," said Castleford's chief executive, Richard Wright, after Wigan were docked four points for breaking the £1.7m cap by a record £222,314 in 2006 - when they finished three points above the Tigers, albeit after a two-point deduction for breaching the cap in 2005 which slightly undermines the Yorkshire club's argument.
"In simple terms a four-point deduction [for Wigan] last year would have kept us in Super League and we felt that we had done enough to achieve that aim - including defeating Wigan both home and away. And we would seriously question what punishment it is to Wigan to be deducted four points this year. It seems to us very little, if any at all. The loss to Castleford is impossible to quantify. Financially the loss of £800,000 from [Sky] TV rights was only the starting point. Players had to leave the club and others had to accept pay cuts. Yet even worse is the effect on the club itself and our fans."
Castleford were convinced that Wigan were breaching the salary cap throughout the second half of last season, largely because of the arrivals of the Great Britain prop Stuart Fielden from Bradford and also Michael Dobson - an Australian scrum-half the Tigers had also tried to sign after an impressive loan spell with the Catalans Dragons. "Things were very tight throughout the campaign and just one example of how we feel cheated is that we were outbid by Wigan in our efforts to bring Michael Dobson to the club, a player who was hugely influential in their avoiding the drop," Wright said.
The Tigers are retaining the threat of taking legal action, although against the Rugby Football League rather than Wigan for rejecting their plea for the Super League to be increased to 13 clubs last October. "This injustice could have been avoided," Wright added. "We asked the RFL to deal with this in October, as everyone knew that this was going to happen. Doing so could have avoided what we believe to be one of the biggest injustices in the history of the sport. As a club we will now have to sit down with our legal advisors and determine what steps to take next and will be doing so in the very near future."
However, with promotion to and relegation from the Super League to be scrapped next season, the Tigers are likely to be appeased by being awarded a licence to play in the competition from 2009. They had been expected to bounce straight back to the Super League this season but are in danger of missing out on the one promotion place to Widnes, who are a point ahead at the top of the National League and have beaten the Tigers twice.
Wigan's chairman, Maurice Lindsay, has yet to respond to Castleford's complaint but their coach, Brian Noble, will be pressed on the issue today ahead of Sunday's Challenge Cup semi-final against the Catalans in Warrington.
St Helens will be without their influential New Zealand prop Jason Cayless for tomorrow's semi-final against Bradford. He has returned to Sydney following the death of his mother.

Tour de France: The Race, the Sport and the Fans

There has been a remarkable drama at this year's Tour de France. A slew of athletes have been pulled from the race amid doping allegations.
The race's first place rider, Denmark's Michael Rasmussen, was ousted by his team for lying about his whereabouts during training. This comes on the heels of news that the pre-race favorite, Kazakhstan's Alexander Vinokourov, tested positive for doping. That pushed him and his team out of the running.
Still, bicycling's top event is going on. Alberto Contador is leading for Thursday, and has a good chance of winning the race. Contador is just 24.
Stephen Farrand of Cycling Weekly and Cycle Sport America talks with Alex Chadwick about the race, the sport and fans stunned by almost daily revelations of cheating.
/**
* echeck function modified from DHTML email validation script. Courtesy of SmartWebby.com (http://www.smartwebby.com/dhtml/)
*/
function echeck(str) {
var at="@"
var dot="."
var lat=str.indexOf(at)
var lstr=str.length
var ldot=str.indexOf(dot)
if (str.indexOf(at)==-1){
alert("Please check the the format of the email addresses you entered.")
return false
}
if (str.indexOf(at)==-1 str.indexOf(at)==0 str.indexOf(at)==lstr){
alert("Please check the the format of the email addresses you entered.")
return false
}
if (str.indexOf(dot)==-1 str.indexOf(dot)==0 str.indexOf(dot)==lstr){
alert("Please check the the format of the email addresses you entered.")
return false
}
if (str.substring(lat-1,lat)==dot str.substring(lat+1,lat+2)==dot){
alert("Please check the the format of the email addresses you entered.")
return false
}
if ((str.indexOf(" ")!=-1) && (str.indexOf(" ")!=str.length-1)){ //altered by eme -- a space at the end should be ok
alert("Please check the the format of the email addresses you entered.")
return false
}
return true
}
function deleteSpaces(textStr)
{
// replace any spaces/linebreak characters w/ nothing
var textStrSave = textStr.value.replace(/[\s]+/g, "");
textStrSave = textStrSave.replace(/\;/g, ',');
textStr.value= textStrSave;
}
function formSubmit() {
if (checkStation()==0) {
docUrl = document.URL;
document.frmSendToFriend.title.value=document.title;
poundFind = docUrl.indexOf("#");
if (poundFind>-1)
{
docUrl = docUrl.substring(0, poundFind);
}
if (docUrl.substring(0, 14)=="http://npr.org")
{
docUrl = "http://www.npr.org" + docUrl.substring(14, docUrl.length);
}
document.frmSendToFriend.pageUrl.value= docUrl;
if (window.vstag)
{
document.frmSendToFriend.vstopic.value = window.vstag.primaryTopic;
document.frmSendToFriend.vsprogram.value = window.vstag.programId;
document.frmSendToFriend.vsagg.value = window.vstag.aggIds;
document.frmSendToFriend.vsbyline.value = window.vstag.byline;
}
else
{
document.frmSendToFriend.vstopic.value = 0;
document.frmSendToFriend.vsprogram.value = 0;
document.frmSendToFriend.vsagg.value = 0;
document.frmSendToFriend.vsbyline.value = 0;
}
from=document.frmSendToFriend.from.value;
to=document.frmSendToFriend.recipient.value;
if (document.frmSendToFriend.MSG.value.length > 600)
{
alert("Your message contains " + document.frmSendToFriend.MSG.value.length + " characters. The maximum is 600 characters. Please shorten your message and try again.");
document.frmSendToFriend.MSG.focus();
return false;
}
if ((to==null)(to=="") (from==null)(from=="")){
alert("Please enter information into the email address fields.");
document.frmSendToFriend.recipient.focus();
return false;
} else if ((echeck(from)==false) (echeck(to)==false)){
return false
} else {
document.frmSendToFriend.submit();
}
}
}
function checkStation() {
if ( ((document.frmSendToFriend.callletters.value== "Enter Call Letters") (document.frmSendToFriend.callletters.value== "")) && (document.frmSendToFriend.localcontact[0].checked == true)) {
alert ("Please enter the call letters of your local NPR member station if you would like to receive information from them.");
return 1;
} else {
return 0;
}
}

COMMENTARY: Tide fans go football crazy

The lobby of the Wynfrey Hotel on Thursday was packed with people decked in crimson and white and toting footballs, jerseys, hats and Sharpie markers, as they waited on Alabama head coach Nick Saban to stroll by.
It looked like some sort of backwoods Star Trek convention, with the Spock ears replaced by hound's-tooth ball caps.
It was just the latest sign that this isn't your average coaching job. As if another sign was needed.
If the 92,000 fans at the spring game or the hundred or so at the airport when he arrived wasn't a clue, UA fans should probably start worrying about Saban's perception of reality.
Obviously, Saban has figured out by now that he's in a unique situation. But he hasn't exactly figured out how to appropriately describe his feeling about it. When asked Thursday if he was comfortable yet with all the hoopla surrounding his hire and the constant attention, Saban sort of diverted.
"We certainly appreciate the passion and the support from fans," he said.
The diversion in this case is certainly understandable. I mean, how do you call your fans crazy in a good way? And make no mistake about it, these people -- to put it delicately -- are crazy. Not normal crazy, but football crazy. Not that that's necessarily better.
If anyone needed proof of that they had it on Wednesday and Thursday in Hoover. On Wednesday, Auburn's Tommy Tuberville breezed through the Wynfrey lobby virtually unimpeded. There were a dozen or so AU fans who were relatively subdued and casual. On Thursday, there were probably 100 Bama fans shoving footballs, hats and jerseys at Saban, and security personnel were forced to hold people back. (I would ordinarily think having security at the event was a bit much, but then, I'm reminded of the video of that liquored-up woman who met Saban at the airport. Given that, I don't know if anything short of armed guards with attack dogs is enough to protect Saban.)
The contrast between the AU and UA fan bases, especially considering the circumstances, was amazing. Keep in mind, this Auburn team has beaten Alabama five straight times and has had one of the top records in the country the last few years. At the same time, the Tide has been more bad than good and is now on its fourth coach in five years.
None of that has dampened the spirits of UA fans, apparently.
As I stood off to the side watching the madness on Thursday morning, a friend of mine said, "Why weren't the Auburn fans out like this yesterday?"
My reply: "Because they have jobs?"
See, that's the difference between the two groups. Some UA fans legitimately believe that if their jobs interfere with Alabama football, those jobs just aren't worth it. Auburn fans, on average, seem to realize that this football thing is just a game.
It's tough to say which mindset is better for a program. I mean, obviously it's easier for me and everyone like me to poke fun at the Alabama fans. But those fans also instill a championship mindset in the program and leave no question about the expectations.
At the same time, the mindset of AU fans will allow a coach time to build a program and doesn't tend to chase candidates away. There's also the added bonus of not being viewed by the rest of the country as a little, well, deranged.
However, I think that by now most Bama fans realize the national perception they've obtained. They're comfortable with it and have reached a point where they don't really care anymore. To them, there's still a chance that the last few years can all turn out OK.
After all the grief they've taken, after all the jokes that have been fired their way, after all the negative publicity their school and team has endured, if this Saban guy, a couple of years down the road, is holding up a big glass trophy at midfield, all of what they've forced on the UA program will have been worth it.

Douglas High football players committed to conditioning

Not long ago, summertime for a high school football player meant lying on the beach, hanging out with friends and maybe participating in an occasional game of touch football.
Not anymore.
These days, it means bench presses, agility drills and pass patterns.
With only 10 days of official practice required before games start in the fall, nowadays summertime is when coaches build a team.
Halfway through his team's summer program, Douglas High School football coach Mike Rippee said this one has been a productive summer for the Tigers.
"It's going very well," Rippee said. "The kids are working hard and they have great attitudes."
Participation in offseason conditioning programs are voluntary, but Rippee said the Tigers have gotten great participation this summer. That was far from the case when he became a coach.
"This is my 23rd year, and when I started summer weight training in about 1985 I was happy if I had seven or eight kids lifting," Rippee said. "It's evolved to the point where we have around 55 kids just at the varsity level."
And unlike basketball or baseball players, offseason workouts for football can only encompass so much. Summer work is usually limited to lifting weights, lots of running and 7-on-7 passing drills that don't involve linemen.
"For football, you don't get to play games in the offseason," Rippee said. "It's not really football until you put on the pads. You've got lead into that, but that's the easy part because that's what attracts kids to football."
Contact drills
Putting on the pads will happen Aug. 13, the first day teams are allowed full-contact practices. Fall practice for football officially begins Aug. 9, with three days of non-contact drills.
At the end of their first full week of practice, the Tigers will participate in a scrimmage Aug. 18 against Galena, then open the season Aug. against Reed.
While most of the Washoe County schools participate in a 7-on-7 passing league and weightlifting competition, the Tigers work out on their own. Rippee said his summer program is designed to help players get stronger, faster and quicker, and being ready to work on football, not conditioning, when fall practice starts.
"I'm really big into agility, improving speed and quickness, and I don't want to start Aug. 9 to get kids in shape," he said.
The summer program can be tedious, although Rippee said the number of players involved and the enthusiasm they've shown demonstrates their eagerness to get better.
"That's one of the keys to our success," said senior Brock Peterson, a tailback and outside linebacker. "We're always the best conditioned team in the league."
Curtis Hartzell, a senior defensive end and offensive guard, said the Tigers have been doing more this offseason than in his previous years with the program. He said he already feels more prepared for the season than if he'd been working out on his own.
"Weightlifting helps a lot when you go against defensive linemen, and defensive linemen aren't small," Hartzell said. "And we need to run to stay in shape, especially if we're playing both sides of the ball, so we can be in shape to beat teams in the fourth quarter."
Offseason program
After a three-week spring football session before school ended, the Tigers began a six-week offseason program in late June, and will finish Aug. 2. During spring football they worked on their offensive and defensive schemes, but the summer work is all about conditioning.
"By the time we get to the first day (of fall practice), everyone, especially the younger kids moving up from JV, get an idea of what to expect at the varsity level."
While the summer is about improvement, Rippee said it's also another useful tool to evaluate players.
"I'm with them most of the year, so I have a pretty good idea about their commitment level, and as we do go through it we do evaluate how they're doing," Rippee said. "We learn a lot about their work habits."
Those work habits, Rippee believes, are the key to either success or failure in football.
"If you work hard, you get a lot out of the sport," he said. "You don't have to have great talent. That's not to say we don't have talent, but you don't have to have it to get a lot out of the sport."
Just as importantly, Rippee said it's crucial that the seniors-to-be take over leadership roles vacated by last year's seniors.
"You always lose great seniors, but it's really important for the new seniors to step up and be great leaders," Rippee said. "We've been lucky that five of the last six years we've had that, and those five years we had good teams."
Even after losing a host of talented seniors from last year's Sierra League championship team, Rippee said everything he's seen this offseason indicates the Tigers will have another good team this fall.
Douglas was 8-3 last season, 7-0 in the Sierra League. The Tigers lost to McQueen, 21-12, in the first round of the playoffs.
"We had some good players (last year), and I think we'll have some good ones this year," Rippee said. "When I first got here I didn't know how we were going to win a game. Hopefully, we're past that."

Phil Neville a fan of the American way

PHIL NEVILLE is just like anybody else in America. Well, apart from the 56 England caps won during 12 years at the pinnacle of Premier League football, with the medals to prove it.
An honours haul almost identical to his good friend David Beckham, the man whose soccer celebrity is so super-sized over here that his is the only name available on the back of a replica shirt in his club shop.
Yet wandering though hotel lobbys and restaurants unnoticed and making his way down the sands of Venice Beach without so much as having to stop for a mobile phone picture, the Everton training gear just isn’t a big enough clue to Neville’s stature in the game.
Which is why, despite being a long-time team-mate of Beckham during Manchester United’s glorious decade of dominance, Neville sat in the stands of LA Galaxy on Tuesday night in relative anonymity.

Becks' Galaxy quest on hold

David Beckham is still a major injury doubt for the Los Angeles Galaxy's SuperLiga clash with Mexican giants Chivas Guadalajara on Saturday.

The former Real Madrid midfielder has continued to struggle with a swollen left ankle following ligament damage sustained at the end of the Spanish La Liga season.
Having made a late substitute's appearance against Chelsea last Saturday, Beckham missed last Tuesday's 2-1 SuperLiga victory over Mexican champions CF Pachuca.
And although head coach Frank Yallop revealed on Monday that the ankle problem was improving, the former England captain has still not taken a full part in training since his arrival in California two weeks ago.
The 32-year-old missed another practice session on Thursday, according to a team spokesman, who said that rather than joining his team-mates on a practice pitch at the Home Depot Center, Beckham stayed inside to receive "more treatment and rehab".
Whether Beckham plays or not, it will have little bearing on the size of the crowd for Saturday clash with Chivas.
The Guadalajara club and Mexico City's Club America are their nation's biggest two clubs and have a huge following among Mexican communities in cities across the United States.
The last time they played in Los Angeles, Chivas drew a record crowd of 92,650 as they took on Barcelona 12 months ago at the Coliseum.
Manchester United played at the Coliseum in a friendly against Club America in July 2003 and the match-up, won by United, attracted 57,365 a month after Beckham left for Real Madrid.
Chivas and the Galaxy return to the stadium this weekend with Coliseum spokesman Jon Lee anticipating another big crowd, which is expected to reach 60,000,
"It's difficult to say what the attendance will be," Lee said. "It's more of a walk-up crowd but we have sold plenty of tickets. We're expecting a big crowd, it's got a lot of momentum.
"Chivas against Barcelona was a sell-out last year, 92,650, which was an all-time record for us here at the stadium for a soccer game.
"That's a lot of people and it felt like it too. Then it was predominantly a Mexican crowd but not exclusively.
"It's a big building and you've got an audience that cares a lot about the product on the field and is emotionally invested so that's a prescription for it being pretty electric."

Beckham still doubtful for Saturday

David Beckham's hopes of making his first start for Los Angeles in their SuperLiga clash with Mexican giants Chivas Guadalajara on Saturday remain in doubt.

The 32-year-old England midfielder is still struggling with a swollen left ankle following ligament damage sustained while on international duty last month.
Beckham aggravated the problem as he helped Real Madrid to the Spanish title before suffering swelling after the flight to California a fortnight ago.
He did manage to come on for the last 12 minutes of the Galaxy's 1-0 friendly defeat at the hands of Chelsea last weekend but has been unable as yet to take a full part in training with his new club.
Whether Beckham plays or not, it will have little bearing on the size of the crowd for Saturday clash with Chivas.
The Guadalajara club and Mexico City's Club America are Mexico's biggest clubs and have a huge following among Mexican communities in cities across the US.
The last time they played in Los Angeles, Chivas drew a record crowd of 92,650 as they took on Barcelona 12 months ago at the Coliseum.

Keywords: sport, England, David Beckham, football, LA Galaxy

As the sports world turns

Where's a sports fan supposed to turn to now?
Dogfighting and doping, gambling and game-fixing, cheating the system and cheating the fans.
Michael Vick, Alexandre Vinokourov, Barry Bonds, Tim Donaghy, "Pacman" Jones, "Tank" Johnson, the Cincinnati Bengals. And all the while, we are left to sit here to contemplate exactly what the hell has happened. Every sport seems to be imploding at all once. Yogi Berra once said: Ninety percent of the game is half mental. I think we can modify that to say: Ninety percent of the game is half controversy.
If NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is smart, he'll seize this opportunity to grab some fans looking for a sport not mired in a scandal. I can see the marketing campaign now: "Watch the NHL. Our players don’t electrocute dogs." Or perhaps Major League Soccer can have David Beckham make a public-service announcement: "Come on America, no one is watching soccer, so no one is betting on it. Our games aren’t fixed. We put on a bloody good show." The segment could end with Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham in a skimpy outfit embracing her man. Hey, sex still sells.
I’ll bet (OK, maybe not bet; bad word to use now) baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is exhaling just a little bit. Wherever he is, whether he's at AT&T Park or not, Bud has to be smiling, even if it's just on the inside. Barry Bonds, 755 and steroids? That scandal is so last week.
It's all about former NBA referee Tim Donaghy and whether his gambling on games he officiated affected the outcome. Oh, and by the way, he allegedly had some sort of relationship with the mob, so what do you think?
As reported in Newsday, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, the average number of free throws attempted in an NBA game last season was 52.2. During the 2006-07 season, Donaghy officiated eight games in which at least 72 free throws were attempted. Of those eight games, six had final scores exceeding the over/under by an average of 26.8 points. And according to Covers.com, 43 of the 73 games he officiated hit the over, the third-highest percentage in the league. Hmmm … .
At a news conference Tuesday, NBA Commissioner David Stern said, "Mr. Donaghy is the only referee alleged to have bet on NBA," adding, "I'll say it again, I understand this is an isolated case." You know, David, it better be, because if one more ref is even accused, you might as well cancel next season.
The worst part about this is it turns out that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was right. My God, and you thought he was unbearable before, just imagine what he's going to do the next time a bad call goes against Dirk Nowitzki. The man who had been fined for saying the game is "rigged" may want to ask for his money back.
Even NFL head honcho Roger Goodell has to be feeling a little better. Stories about electrocuting dogs, slamming them against the ground, rape stands, pry bars and fight pits got pushed to the side by the NBA.
Maybe Goodell and Selig are giving Stern a big chunk of change to take the heat off of them. Now, wouldn’t that be a controversy?

Get rid of NBA’s summer league blues

What a time for the NBA with this scandalous activity going on and seemingly no one able to do anything.
No, no, not that referee thing.
Tim Donaghy, NBA enemy No. 1?
I guess for now, though I continue to believe, as NBA commissioner David Stern said and hopes, that Donaghy is merely one rogue criminal. And what business or government doesn't have one? I really don't know of any. Though this, at the very least, will lead to some referee accountability that has been missing.
No, the scandal which won't go away is the NBA summer leagues.
What is the point of all that? And why do they continue to have them?
Really, have you ever, ever heard any team say they are keeping a player based on summer league? Heck, just about the entire rosters are filled anyway between veterans and drafted players. Just what is the purpose of these things?
Yes, other than team types getting a week in Vegas or somewhere on the team, plenty of golf and good meals and, you know, "Honey, I'm working."
Yes, there's that.
But the real malfeasance is the way this thing really works, and because of the often sinister backdrop to summer league, teams are starting to pull out.
Don't be surprised within a few years if many teams simply hold there own, extended mini-camps in the summer to evaluate their prospects and take a serious look at players they are interested in under their systems.
That's what summer league is supposed to be, but it's degenerated into a series of exhibitions and a strong arm showcase for the players of certain powerful agents who use their top players as leverage to help sell their other clients.
It's one of the secrets of the summer league dance.
Certain agents pressure teams to hire players the team have no interest in, using the bigger name players they represent as leverage. Sort of, "I'll talk a deal with my main guy if you give this other guy a look." Or, "Do me a solid. I'll make it up to you down the road."
Teams are always chasing that carrot for a better deal or another player, so they put the stiff on their summer league roster, and it gives the agent another selling point for future clients, that he can get you on an NBA roster for a look. It can produce more clients for the agent and perhaps bigger and better ones. Sort of by saying "Just look at the guy I got a shot for. Imagine what I can do for you."
It's a dirty business that teams get sucked into.
There are situations where the summer leagues make some sense, like with a team with a half dozen or so young players or free agents, a chance to see those players in game situations.
Though the bigger ones can get bored quickly.
After a few lackluster efforts, Greg Oden went home for ice cream.
Kevin Durant spent a little time throwing up shot after shot and showing that it may be tougher than he thinks to be the next great thing when Renaldo Balkman gave him all sorts of trouble.
There is some competition of a varying level as guys who are looking to make rosters or maybe avoid the D-league play aggressively. Though teams worry some at that point of their valuable properties getting hurt.
There once was a lot more competition to the thing.

A Scandal The NBA Can Live With

Call it the storm before the calm.
So says Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban of this week's revelations over a gambling scandal involving a National Basketball Association referee. As long as no widespread corruption concerning numerous referees and players is uncovered, there is no reason to believe fans will turn off their television sets or stop buying tickets.
"Look at bad news and its impact on entertainment businesses. Baseball, football, European soccer and even the WWE," Cuban told Forbes.com in an e-mail message. "When has negative information had a negative impact on revenue?"
Indeed, baseball's issue with steroids and the NFL's trouble with lawless players hasn't dented their numbers. MLB revenue has climbed 22% in the last two years, to $4.7 billion. The NFL? Up 43% since 2004, to $4.3 billion. And while the NBA situation is potentially more serious because it involves the possibility of game fixing, it's unlikely that fans will dump watching pro hoops because a single referee got caught up with gamblers. Expect little long-term impact on the $3.3 billion business of basketball.
The ref in question, Tim Donaghy, is being investigated for betting on league games, including some he officiated. Donaghy has already resigned from the league and is reportedly cooperating with investigators.
That hasn't stopped the league from charging into full damage control mode, with Commissioner David Stern muzzling team owners while he and his deputies handle public relations. Stern went through his league's process of weeding out bad apples in painstaking detail at a press conference Tuesday.
He described the revelations the most serious problem he's had to deal with in his 24 years in office. He also says it appears that Donaghy was a "rogue criminal," meaning there's no evidence at this point to suggest that the problem extends past a single referee. If he turns out to be right about that, then the league probably has little to worry about.
That's partly due to the fact that since 1984, Stern has marketed his league through individual stars, highlighting their ability to entertain by wowing crowds with shake and bake moves and acrobatic slam dunks. Fans still want their teams to win, of course, but there's the reality that the long, arduous regular season is carried by stars' exploits. A night at the arena these days is little different from a night at the theater--more about admiring talented stars performing their skills live than about pure competition. That can wait for the playoffs.
"If the NBA is seen to have done everything possible to prevent this, and this one slipped through their fingers, they shouldn't be in trouble," says consultant David Carter of the Sports Business Group.
Representatives from several NBA teams told Forbes.com that owners and club executives were directed by the league not to comment on the matter. But Cuban, as always, wasn't shy about expressing his opinion. He doesn't see the current scandal as a threat.
"People consume entertainment like movies and sports so they don't have to care about other people's problems," he says. "I'm confident the same trends will apply here."

Hardy Vision: Could Prince have conquered NBA's court?

The Grand Royal Purple Maestro Prince -- whose new album Planet Earth was released this week -- has always made a habit of reinventing himself and his music.

So excuse me while I reinvent his back story and imagine what it would be like if he had been a college and pro basketball player in the '70s and '80s.

Through all his years in the media spotlight, Prince has maintained a respectful -- though distant -- relationship with pro sports. The Minneapolis native has been photographed courtside at Timberwolves games. He once sang that "Style is the face you make on a Michael Jordan dunk." He goes on tour so often that sports stadiums and arenas are practically his second homes.

And talk about a crowning achievement -- his knockout performance at the Super Bowl halftime show in Miami this year wowed fans who hadn't thought about his music since before Justin Timberlake was in daycare. The only way he could have made that night more exciting is if he would have hijacked quarterback duties from Rex Grossman and upset the Colts with a pirouetting bootleg touchdown on the final play.
Ripopgodazippa -- easily a nominee for the most X-rated Prince song ever (any song that made it into the movie Showgirls has to be over the line) -- talks about gettin' it on in the home gym. Here's how one verse starts:
This bench that I normally use 4 the weights My girl, she lay me down ...
... and if you need to know what happens next, let's just say his partner got in her reps for the day.
Can you imagine a Prince exercise video? Well, Eddie Murphy practically did one already in his Little Richard Simmons sketch on Saturday Night Live.
But there has been growing evidence over the years that Prince has a hankering for hoops:
First, there's that classic Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories bit on Chappelle's Show. The brother of Eddie Murphy recounts how a night at the clubs in the '80s ended with Charlie and his buddies getting scorched in a pickup game against Prince and the Revolution -- even though the purple posse was still decked in full glam regalia.
If we're to accept that sketch as evidence, Prince can run the floor, shoot from the perimeter, reverse dunk ... and, uh, levitate. "I dare you to challenge Prince to a game of ball one-on-one," Murphy warns in the aftermath. "You might get embarrassed. Trust me!"
Kevin "Silent Bob" Smith spends a half-hour of his An Evening With Kevin Smith DVD spilling some of the secret life of Prince he learned while filming a documentary at Paisley Park. The chunky filmmaker was obsessed with the funky hitmaker's fashion sense. Why all the Shakespearean getups and high heels?
One of Prince's assistants assured Smith that Prince wears warm-ups and sneakers when he plays basketball. Nothing hand-made. Typical store-bought stuff. From Nordstrom's.
Norstrom's sells stuff in Prince's size? Smith asks. Yes, the assistant explains -- in the boys department. "That is so (effin') cute!" Smith marvels.

Carlos Boozer tried going one-on-one against Prince last year -- in a lawsuit. The NBA player had rented his Hollywood mansion to Prince for $70,000 a month, then sued after the place got pimped-out Prince style. We're talking stuff like a purple paint job and a Prince Symbol carpet installed in the master bedroom. Boozer's people later had the lawsuit dismissed, but what I want to know is: Can I find anyplace to rent in Hollywood for slightly less than $70,000 a month? If not, can they at least waive the security deposit?
OK, I know what you player-haters are going to point out. How could the 5-foot-2 Prince make it as a basketball player? It's not like Nike makes basketball shoes with high heels.
Yes, it would be an uphill battle. After all, NBA mini-great Spud Webb (5-6) would have four inches on him -- though Prince would be about neck-and-neck with Muggsy Bogues (5-3).
One thing to remember before we kick in the revisionist history. Realize that the back of his jersey would read "Nelson" -- as in his given name is Prince Rogers Nelson. Whenever I see "Prince" in a headline on an NBA story, I do a double-take. It takes me a minute to realize they're talking about Detroit's Tayshaun Prince.
Music man Prince was born June 7, 1958, so let's put him as a freshman walk-on for the University of Minnesota Gophers in the 1975-'76 season (he'll major in music, of course). He contributes minutes here and there, but through an indefatigable work ethic earns himself a scholarship and a starting spot by his senior season.
It doesn't matter who drafts him in 1979. He'll force a trade to the Lakers so he can wear purple.

Decades before NBA stars released vanity rap albums, Prince devotes his offseasons to making contacts in the L.A. music scene. Unlike how Ron Artest manages his girl group, Prince's girl groups would be successful.
I'm not saying Prince would elevate himself to NBA All-Star status. But he would be on-hand at the Forum in 1983 to lend a guitar solo to Marvin Gaye's spellbinding interpretation of The Star Spangled Banner.
And he would be ahead of his time as an NBA fashion revolutionary. He'd show off every variation of hairstyle, length of shorts and style of shoes and socks. You think Dennis Rodman freaked people out just by painting his hair different colors? What would they have said when Prince took the floor wearing shorts that had holes in the seat so you could see his butt cheeks?
All right, all right, I'll stop with the crazy talk. Prince is Rock and Roll Hall of Fame material, not Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame material.
But you know what? I'll bet Prince could pass as a member of the WNBA. And I don't mean in an alternate reality. I'm talking he could suit up tonight and pull off a Juwanna Mann secret life.
Think of his athleticism: At 49, he's in better shape than a lot of pro athletes, male or female. OK, he doesn't get crashed into by a 250-pond hunk of chiseled muscle during his sets, but between his encyclopedia of dance moves, and the way he has been leaping off speakers twice his size for 30 years, that's a big grind to put on a tiny frame.
I say give him two weeks and he would be in the top 10 in scoring in the WNBA. "Princess Rogers Nelson" would take the league by storm -- and would be able to belt out the national anthem before each game.
Oddly enough, Prince provided me with my greatest sporting moment. This was at the old Miami Arena when Prince was showing off his three-CD Emancipation album.

The night was Friday, Aug. 15, 1997. My wife (then fiancee) and I had fourth-row seats. During the encore, Prince threw his towel into the crowd.
Maybe it's because I was close to where the actual basketball hoop would have been if the arena were set up for a Miami Heat game, but I suddenly was blessed with mad rebounding skills. Because my seat was on the aisle, I had freedom to have a little more space around me. Not inhibited by the rows of metal chairs, I went straight up, then came straight down with it in my hands. I windmilled my elbows out hard to complete the box out. Prince's towel. Mine!
I shoved it under my shirt for the rest of the show so no one would swipe it. Perfect.
When the lights came on, and the audience starting filing out, I was approached by a South Beach version of Tony Soprano. Big, older guy, blinding electric blue sports coat that distracted from his fake blond hair. "Are you the guy who caught the towel?" he asks.
"Uh ... yeah!" I pulled it out from under my shirt.
"My girlfriend would really like it,' he jerked his thumb back behind him, and I saw his aging beauty queen. "How about I give you a hundred bucks for that?" He whips out the obligatory fat wad of a cashroll from his trousers.
"I don't know," I mused. "It's pretty special." Actually, this was a plain white terrycloth towel indistinguishable from what you would find on a floor of a YMCA. It wasn't even like it was embroidered with a Prince Symbol to prove who it was who wiped what. "How about two hundred?"
"One fifty," he said, letting me know that's that. I said sure.

When we left the arena, people were handing out cards advertising an after-show at Prince's club on South Beach. With our new windfall, we sped to the shore. South Beach Tony's donation funded our cover charge and the drinks we started buying for strangers at the bar. Then, after spending two hours in an arena watching Prince play from 10 feet away, we spent an hour in a night club 2 feet from where he kept rocking.
So maybe Prince never did tear up the NBA. At least my basketball skills paid off on the floor of the Miami Arena in front of thousands of cheering fans. Baby, I'm a star.
Down to earth. Oh yeah -- let me at least mention my thoughts on the new album. Planet Earth is 10 tracks long, but so far only three songs really grabbed me. Guitar demands to be heard performed live. Chelsea Rodgers sounds wonderfully like something Sly and the Family Stone would have recorded in the early '70s. And Mr. Goodnight is an amusing comic take on his usual seduction ballads (though if it turns out that Mr. Goodnight isn't meant as a joke, then Prince has officially morphed into "Old Guy at the Club" territory).
On a scale of one to five Prince towels, I give it a three.

Newest Sonic's mentoring could be Thomas' final NBA task

SEATTLE — Mentoring Kevin Durant may be one of the last tasks of Kurt Thomas's NBA career.
Not that he is focused on that. Not yet, anyway.
"No, I don't think like that. I just go out and play. When the time comes, I'll deal with that," the rugged and wise Thomas said Thursday after dining with new coach P.J. Carlesimo and getting a physical with his new team, the Seattle SuperSonics.
So what does he know about Durant, the 18-year-old player who was Seattle's pick at No. 2 in last month's draft?
"He's young," Thomas said, quickly.
Thomas isn't. He is a veteran of 12 NBA seasons spent with the Miami Heat, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks and Phoenix Suns. He will turn 35 in October and has one year remaining on what could be his final contract.
Thanks to last week's trade in which Seattle obtained him and two of the Suns' future first-round draft choices, Thomas is suddenly the oldest member of the completely overhauled Sonics - by 4 1/2 years over recently acquired Wally Szczerbiak.
The Sonics got Thomas not because he averaged a career-low 4.6 points in 67 games last season for Phoenix, but because he personifies the mentality new general manager Sam Presti wants on his rebuilt team. Thomas has averaged 7.4 rebounds per game in his career and is also known for a commitment to defense.
Defense is an area that freewheeling - and free-falling - Seattle hasn't embraced in years.
"Kurt really represents the identity we are trying to develop," Presti said last week.
Seattle also craved Thomas' respected presence and experience in a locker room that will look more like a Romper Room when training camp opens in just over two months. He will try to impart the advice he learned from Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson and Patrick Ewing, who mentored him a decade ago.
Thomas, whose best season came in 2001-02 when he averaged 14 points and nine rebounds for the Knicks while starting all 82 games, is also one of nine forwards on Seattle's roster. That includes Durant and 20-year-old Jeff Green, the fifth overall pick.
"That's definitely a lot of forwards," Thomas said, smiling. "I just am looking forward to getting with all these young, athletic guys and just going out and banging with them.
"Even though I'm a little up there in age, I am still going to try to show the young guys I know a thing or two."
Last season, Phoenix often used the 6-foot-9 Thomas as a center who didn't exactly fit the Suns' run-and-gun ways. And with the Suns figuring to be about $10 million over the luxury tax limit for next season before the trade, Thomas' contract that has $8.1 million remaining on it was an obvious target for new GM Steve Kerr to shed.
"I knew there was a chance for a trade with a new GM coming and having a new philosophy," said Thomas, who played in 120 regular-season games and 12 in the playoffs in two seasons with Phoenix. "I knew there would be changes - and the changes were for me. I didn't have any hard feelings about it. I enjoyed my time in Phoenix.
"Just like I am going to enjoy my time here."
Much of it will be spent tutoring, something Thomas already realizes. And relishes.
"I've learned a tremendous amount from many guys in this league. Larry Johnson is from the same city I'm from (Dallas). He took me under his wing," Thomas said. "I've learned a lot and been around a while. If a young prospect is willing to listen, I'm definitely there to be of help."

Pac-10 reacts to NBA scandal

LOS ANGELES – The Pacific-10 Conference has no plans to increase its scrutiny of game officials in reaction to the ongoing NBA scandal, even as coaches and league administrators acknowledged that something similar could happen in college sports.
“A couple of other coaches from other leagues have talked to me and said they truly believe that it’s going on in their leagues,” Oregon’s Mike Bellotti, dean of Pac-10 coaches, said Thursday at the conference’s media day. “I don’t think that stuff’s going on in the Pac-10. I think that there’s enough scrutiny and replay and understanding that it’s hard to think it could occur. Now, are we nave enough to say that there’s nothing at all, and it’s never ever happened? Probably not.”
The Big Ten and Atlantic Coast conferences do background checks on the people who officiate their games.
The Pac-10 and most other conferences rely on NCAA checks of those who officiate bowl games and NCAA tournament games.
About half of the Pac-10’s football officials are estimated to have been checked in this way.
“(The NBA incident) hasn’t changed anything, but it just brings home again the critical role the officials play in every game in all sports and the vulnerability we have with people,” Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen said. “No matter how hard you work to observe, to check, to do everything you can with people … you can never be certain. That’s why we’re very diligent.”
NCAA rules prohibit coaches and players from even friendly wagering and office pools, and the same rules apply to the people who officiate games. The Pac-10 stresses these prohibitions regularly. And instant replay brings officials under a closer microscope.
But for all that, the coaches of Washington’s two state Pac-10 schools acknowledged that humans make rules and humans break rules.
“These problems exist because human nature exists,” Washington coach Tyrone Willingham said. “My quick belief is when Eve gave Adam the apple, everything after that was gone. Those things are going to happen, it doesn’t matter what safeguards are put in.”
Washington State coach Bill Doba framed it similarly.
“Not to say that they’re doing it and not to accuse them of it, but we’re human,” Doba said. “Sometimes we get in a hole and do things that are out of character.”
In the NBA case, referee Tim Donaghy resigned while under federal investigation for allegedly betting on games he officiated, perhaps affecting the point spread of games on which he and/or associates had wagered.
It also alleged Donaghy might have provided inside information to bettors, something else the Pac-10 warns against, even among its sports-information personnel.
Unlike NBA referees, college officials usually work other jobs. Because of that, Bellotti speculated, they might be less susceptible to temptation because they often get into officiating because of their love of the game.
Hansen added that the Pac-10’s relationships are more personal and might foster the kind of knowledge that could quickly trigger suspicions than those officials have in the NBA.
“We know these people,” Hansen said. “If all of a sudden (an official who makes his living as) a school teacher starts buying summer property or boats or fancy cars, most people know him well (enough to wonder). I think that might be our single best way of knowing.”
The Pac-10 will play this season under a new coordinator of football officiating.
Dave Cutaia was hired in April after almost three decades in officiating and 34 years in law enforcement.

NBA finds itself in foul trouble

Tuesday morning, a sombre David Stern stood before a room of sports reporters to outline what he called "the most serious situation that I have experienced either as a fan of the NBA, a lawyer for the NBA or commissioner of the NBA."
Last month, the National Basketball Association was informed that the FBI and the justice department were investigating Tim Donaghy, a 13-year referee, on suspicion that he bet on NBA games and provided inside information to gamblers. On July 9, Donaghy tendered his resignation to the league. He has not been charged with a crime. But there's potentially worse news for the league: Donaghy has reportedly told investigators that he will name other officials and players involved in gambling.
For now, Stern and his league deserve the benefit of the doubt. The league has regular contact with state gaming officials in Nevada and employs a consultant in Las Vegas who monitors any unusual movements in NBA betting.
The league captures every call – and every non-call – made by every referee in every game, regular and post-season. Those who monitor the games are overseen by a group of auditors. This year, the league audited the auditors. Until now, that information has been used for training purposes, not to screen for potential criminal activity. That could change: The NBA is rethinking how it discourages gambling.
The NBA did miss one warning sign. Two years ago, the league got a tip that Donaghy had been spotted placing bets at a casino in Atlantic City. "We checked out every casino in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, and all of our investigations came up negative," Stern said.
It's tempting to compare the NBA to Major League Baseball, which for years ignored signs that it had a problem with cheaters – players who used steroids and other substances that enhanced their performance. But from what we know, the NBA did not have reason to suspect that referees or players were gambling on league games. (Other than an exception for summer racetrack visits, all gambling – not just betting on sports – is forbidden for referees.)
Over the decades the NBA has survived plenty of problems – concerns about drug use and the character of its players, and, yes, concerns about gambling.
Stern says he thinks this is an isolated case. For the sake of professional basketball, let's hope he's right.

Price a sign of Brown's leaving

The Jazz's hunt for a third point guard took a surprising turn Thursday morning, when former Utah Valley star Ronnie Price agreed to sign a multiyear contract. The addition of Price means popular second-year point Dee Brown will not return to Utah, although vice president of basketball operations Kevin O'Connor declined to comment on the situation until Price passes a physical. Price averaged 24.3 points as a senior at Utah Valley. He was not drafted by an NBA team, but spent the last two seasons in Sacramento after signing with the Kings as a free agent. Last season, the 24-year-old Price averaged 3.5 points and just under one assist in limited playing time for Sacramento. "He was a sensational athlete for us at Utah Valley and, after two years in the NBA, he's still a sensational athlete," said Dick Hunsaker, Price's college coach. "That's a dimension - an ingredient - the Jazz could be looking for." Hunsaker called Price "a wonderful, wonderful kid" who could thrive under Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. "His attitude, his work ethic . . . whatever role Coach Sloan cuts out for him, whatever role he's in, Ronnie will embrace it," Hunsaker said. At the start of free agency on July 1, the Kings tendered a qualifying offer to Price. That meant they had the
At the start of free agency on July 1, the Kings tendered a qualifying offer to Price. That meant they had the right to match any offer he received. But last week,


Sacramento rescinded the qualifying offer, allowing Price towalk away and sign with any team. "Going to the Jazz is heaven-sent," Hunsaker said. "Coach Sloan and his staff are wonderful teachers - the best in the pro game, I think - and Ronnie is a learner. He wants to learn. He has a tremendous thirst that way. . . . We're all happy and excited for him down here." Brown will likely be the odd man out in Utah. Emerging star Deron Williams is the Jazz's starting point guard, and free agent Jason Hart signed a two-year, $5 million contract last week. With the addition of Price, the Jazz seemingly made their decision about saying goodbye to Brown, who is a former second-round draft pick out of Illinois. If the Jazz haven't already, they can now rescind an earlier qualifying offer made to Brown and send him on his way.

VEGAS TOO TEMPTING - HOLY CROSS' STAR

While the NBA's potential plans of having a franchise in Las Vegas are, at the very least, stalled, thousands of the nation's top high school basketball players have spent much of the past week in Sin City.
And to one of them, that's not the wisest idea.
"It's crazy out there," said Holy Cross' Sylven Landesberg, who returned from Las Vegas on Wednesday after playing with the New York Panthers. "There's all kinds of temptations out there and if you want to do something illegal, that's the place to do it."
That's also the main place to play basketball during this week in July, one of the few times during the summer Div. I college coaches are permitted by the NCAA to watch players. And Reebok, Nike and Adidas all sponsor tournaments there.
"There's gambling there, drinking, drugs," said Landesberg, who is spending the next few days in relative tranquility at the Empire State Games at Iona College. "I'm a pretty mature kid and we have good coaches, but if you weren't a good kid and didn't have someone watching you all the time, you could do a lot."
The Holy Cross star said he has seen players arrive back at the hotel - often located right on the strip - just in time to make their morning games.
"A lot of times you only play one game," Landesberg said. "That leaves a lot of free time. I'm sure if they moved the tournaments, the quality of basketball would go up."
His AAU coach, Gary Charles, isn't as sure Las Vegas is worse than anywhere else to hold the events.
"Wherever you go, you have to stay on top of the kids," said Charles, who has been taking teams there for over a decade and never encountered a serious problem. "We have one coach for every three kids. If you don't do something like that, it doesn't matter if you're in Vegas, Los Angeles or anywhere else things can happen."
True, but few other cities are as ripe with temptation and problems as Vegas, as the sports world was made aware of again when the NBA held its All-Star game there last year and Pacman Jones of the Titans allegedly was involved in an incident that left a man shot and paralyzed.
"Let's not be naive," Charles said. "People like coming to Vegas. It's a treat for grassroots [AAU] coaches, college coaches and players. Just because of one incident, we shouldn't all just pack up and leave."
He pointed out that the NBA still has a summer league there.
"All the NBA players, they're still here," Charles said. "And even if there are temptations here, if we really wanted to get away from that, we'd all have to get up and move from New York City."

Wake Forest mourns following death of Skip Prosser, basketball coach and teacher

Skip Prosser was remembered for more than his coaching.
Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman couldn't help but marvel at the coach's knack for routinely using obscure words in their perfect context - "Prosser words,'' as they were known around campus.
It was, Wellman said, the ultimate reflection of how Prosser viewed himself - as not just a coach but also an educator.
"I can't cite one word. All I can remember is that trait,'' Wellman said. "He ingratiated himself to so many people - academicians, if you will - because he did that. He would use a vocabulary that was unlike any other basketball coach I have heard.''
Prosser, who led the Demon Deacons to their first No. 1 ranking three seasons ago, died Thursday of an apparent heart attack, the university said. He was 56.
"He considered himself a teacher,'' Wellman said. "He always talked about teaching. Not just coaching, but teaching.''
Prosser rose from being a coach in the smallest classification of West Virginia high school basketball to the leader of Wake Forest's first top-ranked team in the nation.
He was found slumped on his office couch and unresponsive by director of basketball operations Mike Muse shortly after the coach returned from his noon jog, Wellman said. Medical personnel performed CPR and used a defibrillator on Prosser, who was taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and pronounced dead at 1:41 p.m.
Wellman said he was unaware of any previous health issues for Prosser, calling his death "a devastating loss'' during a news conference Thursday night.
"Because of his strength, we'll be able to go on and we'll be just fine eventually,'' Wellman said. "We're not right now. We're all suffering right now.''
Confirmation of Prosser's death was delayed until Thursday night because his wife was traveling to Cincinnati and could not be reached to notify her, Wellman said. Several players were taken to an off-campus location without their cell phones in the afternoon to temporarily shield them from news reports of Prosser's death.
"The longer it went, probably they realize that it was a tragic situation, but when I told them, it confirmed their worst thoughts,'' Wellman said.
Support poured in from across the Atlantic Coast Conference, with North Carolina coach Roy Williams saying he was "absolutely shocked and deeply saddened,'' while Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said Prosser was "ultimately respected for his coaching ability, his quick humor and, most importantly, for being a quality person. We lost him far too soon.''
Prosser spent six seasons at Wake Forest, winning an ACC regular-season title in 2003 and reaching the NCAA tournament in his first four seasons. Wake Forest went to No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time during the 2004-05 season.
Chris Paul, who went on to star in the NBA, was the point guard on that team.
"He played a very significant role in my life and his influence extended well beyond the game of basketball,'' Paul said in a statement.
Before arriving in Winston-Salem, Prosser was head coach at Xavier for seven seasons and at Loyola of Maryland for one. He is the only coach to take three schools to the NCAA tournament in his first season at each.
Prosser had a career record of 291-146 as a head coach, including 126-68 with Wake Forest. While there, he coached future NBA stars Paul and Josh Howard, and was the ACC coach of the year in 2003.
Prosser averaged nearly 24 wins in his first four seasons at Wake Forest - including a school-record 27 in 2005 - with his up-tempo offense. But after Paul left for the NBA after his sophomore year, Prosser's last two teams struggled to a combined 32-33 record, including 8-24 in the ACC, with youth-laden teams.
Prosser is survived by his wife, Nancy, and sons, Scott and Mark. Mark Prosser is an assistant coach at Bucknell.

Even a little bit of Nash 'worth it'

Rautins said yesterday that the door has yet to close on getting the former NBA MVP back into a Canadian uniform in time for the FIBA Americas Olympic qualifying tournament in Las Vegas next month.
"Ideally, it would be a no- pressure situation," the Canadian men's basketball coach said. "If he does play, it will be a limited-minutes situation. We don't need to tax him. Just his leadership and confidence would be more than enough.
"What he can give in limited time is well worth it."
Rautins stressed that he wouldn't pressure Nash into playing and would understand if he turned down the opportunity.
'OBLIGATION TO FANS'
"He has an obligation to his fans now as an MVP," the coach said. "He won't even entertain the idea unless he has got enough time to be physically ready (for the 2007-08 NBA season).
"I completely understand. He has played a lot of years with this team. He has had back problems. He has a young family and it's a long NBA season. Whatever he decides, it's up to him. But the fact that he hasn't closed the door is a positive."
Rautins said he is also working on the recruitment of two more NBAers -- Toronto's Jamal Magloire and Philadelphia 76ers' Samuel Dalambert, a 6-foot-11 centre who is working on acquiring his Canadian citizenship.
The uncertainty of the NBA trio has an effect on how Rautins and assistant coach Dave Smart evaluate the play in this week's Pan Ams. So far, Canada has suffered blowout losses to Brazil and Puerto Rico.
Rautins said a handful of players from the Rio roster could be in Vegas as Canada attempts to earn a berth in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

House Subcommittee Chair Wants to Meet With Stern

The chairman of a House subcommittee is requesting a meeting with NBA Commissioner David Stern concerning the betting scandal involving former referee Tim Donaghy.
Rep. Bobby L. Rush, who heads the subcommittee on commerce, trade and consumer protection, said he is also considering calling a hearing on the matter "should the facts warrant public scrutiny."
"If the allegations prove true, this could be one of the most damaging scandals in the history of American sports," the Illinois Democrat wrote in a letter sent to Stern on Wednesday and released to reporters yesterday.
Donaghy is the target of an FBI investigation for allegedly betting on games, including some he officiated, over the last two seasons. He resigned July 9.
Rush wrote that he would like to meet with Stern at "the earliest appropriate time."
"Unfortunately, fairly or not, the NBA, more than any other professional sport, has been consistently dogged with allegations that league referees needlessly affect the outcomes of games by making bad calls," Rush wrote.

AFC ASIAN CUP 2007: Underdogs rule the day in semis

HANOI--The 2007 Asian Cup has been a tournament of upsets, so it was fitting that regional powerhouses Japan and South Korea were both sent packing by underdogs in the semifinals.
Japan fell 3-2 to Saudi Arabia in Vietnam, while South Korea bowed out 4-3 to Iraq in a penalty shootout after 120 minutes of scoreless soccer in Kuala Lumpur.
The favorites in both matches were let down by their shooting. Japan was dogged the entire tournament by a reluctance to pull the trigger and it finally did the defending champions in on Wednesday. Despite making the Saudis look like amateurs for most of the first half, Japan was unable to turn its domination into an advantage on the scoreboard.
That allowed Saudi forwards Yasser Al Qahtani and Malek Maaz to work their magic, Al Qahtani scoring the opener and Maaz following with two world-class finishes to crush Japan's dreams of collecting a third-successive title.
South Korea was also guilty of failing in the final third of the pitch, scoring only three times in five matches at the tournament.
As disappointing a day as it was for East Asian soccer, Wednesday was equally as joyful for the game--and life--in the Middle East, according to Saudi Arabia manager Helio Anjos.
"Today was a victory for Arabian football, especially for Iraq because everyone knows what is happening there. These victories will bring happiness to the people of Iraq and Saudi Arabia," Anjos said.
Japan coach Ivica Osim congratulated the Saudis on the win even though he felt they had benefited greatly from lady luck to get it.
"They scored three goals with their three chances. We created more chances but they had more luck and unfortunately we couldn't find the third equalizer. Their goals came when we switched off," he said.
Japan's intricate passing and constantly shifting attack in the first half seemed to mesmerize the Saudis, who looked decidedly one-dimensional in comparison.
But Osim's men were once again foiled by their refusal to light the fuse, and once again it allowed their opponent to remain in a match that should have been wrapped up by halftime.
For the third time in as many games, Japan conceded the first goal.
Al Qahtani, nicknamed "The Sniper," gave the Saudis the lead in the 35th minute when he beat Yuki Abe to a pass inside the Japan area and drilled it home.
Yuji Nakazawa equalized two minutes later, the central defender getting his mop-headed cranium to a Yasuhito Endo corner before keeper Yasser Al Mosailem could get his fist to it.
The Saudis looked to be fairing far worse than their opponents in the 30-C heat and almost 80 percent humidity during the opening frame, so it surprised almost everyone when they took the game to Japan in the second half.
Saudi Arabia restored its lead two minutes after the restart when pint-sized striker Maaz outjumped the Japanese defense to nod home a cross from Taiseer Al Jassam.
Abe leveled the score minutes later with a bicycle-kick following a nice feed from Eintracht Frankfurt forward Naohiro Takahara, who otherwise had a quiet night.
Maaz had the goal in his crosshairs again not long after, however. The mercurial forward undressed Abe and Nakazawa at the side of the box before expertly toe-poking the ball passed a shell-shocked Japan captain Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi for the win.
Japan only began uncorking from distance with 10 minutes left to play, Naotake Hanyu rattling the crossbar with his effort, but it was too little, too late.
Osim admitted much work was left to be done after a bitter loss to an opponent Japan had traditionally had its way with.
"If I had to tell you what we need to improve in the future, it would take a very long time. We need to get better in international football. Some of the players, who I will not name, failed to play to their potential today. You'll know who they are if you watched the match."
The matchup everyone had expected for the final, Japan versus South Korea, will instead take place in the playoff for third place scheduled for Saturday night in Palembang, Indonesia.
Iraq and Saudi Arabia duke it out in the final on Sunday in Jakarta.
The July 7-29 Asian Cup is being co-hosted by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.(IHT/Asahi: July 27,2007)

Chinese delegation prepping for the real deal

Greater Victoria, with a population of 350,000, passes for a medium-size city in Canada.
But in China, with 115 cities of one million or over, medium-size equals Taiyuan and its population of 3.4 million.
Between them, the capital of British Columbia and the capital of Shanxi province will be the bookends for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics qualifying process in BMX. Olympic qualifying starts tomorrow at the new Juan de Fuca track when the elite riders race at the 2007 world championships. Qualifying closes at the 2008 world BMX championships next May in Taiyuan, which is perhaps fittingly a five-hour train ride from Beijing, which is considered a mere stone's throw by the vast-distance standards of China
Taiyuan vice-mayor, Gaosuo Yuan, is leading his city's delegation this week to check out how Victoria is doing things.
"We're very confident we can host a very successful world championships next year," said Yuan, through an interpreter.
"We've learned some things while here in Victoria that will help us locally for next year."
The biggest change from Victoria, which is hosting the 2007 worlds in the Western Communities, is that Taiyuan will stage the 2008 world championships more centrally in the main city park adjacent to the Fen River.
The delegation is being followed around Victoria by a crew from the local Taiyuan TV station, which is filing stories back home daily for broadcast on the nightly news.
"Victoria is clean and the people are extremely hospitable," is the consensus of Xin Liu, Fang Guo and Xuan Liu from the Taiyuan TV crew.
The UCI, cycling's world governing body, has attached its Swiss-based development chairman Yan Shi to all things related to competitive cycling in China in order to help Beijing prep for all Olympic cycling classes - road, mountain, track velodrome and BMX.
"Cycling in China has historically been more a means of transport than competitive sport, but with more and more cars in China, bikes are being regarded differently," said Shi, who has also accompanied the Taiyuan group to Victoria.
"Cycling as a sport has been introduced to China and is really coming up, thanks to the Olympics upcoming next year."
Vice-mayor Yuan said he considers it "more of a motivation than pressure" that his city is hosting the last BMX qualifier, indeed last event, before the sport makes its Olympic debut 600 kilometres down the road in Beijing.
"It is a big opportunity for us, leading to the Games," he said.
Taiyuan and Beijing may seem unlikely destinations for a hang-loose, rad sport that started with a bunch of California kids in the 1970s emulating on bikes their motocross heroes. But BMX is in the Olympics now. And starting in Victoria this week and heading across the Pacific, all routes lead to China next year.

Milan Asked Barca To Sign Chivu

The Director of Milan, Adriano Galliani, was spotted in Barcelona some weeks ago and everyone was convinced that the Rossoneri's vice-President was there to negotiate a possible move of Eto'o or Ronaldinho to Milan.However, it has emerged now through the Spanish newspaper 'Sport' that the reason of Galliani's visit to Spain was in fact to convince Barcelona to sign Cristian Chivu, so that rivals Inter will not strengthen themselves for the new season.This was the only contact that Milan and Barcelona had in Spain, and if this report is confirmed, then there will be further reasons for the sport feud between the Rossoneri and Inter to continue this season.Unfortunately for Milan, Barcelona opted to sign Milito instead, and Chivu is expected to be officially announced by Inter later on today.

Fix the fix on sports

The summer is shaping up as a record breaker in the wide world of sports – one more likely to disappoint than please. Allegations of cheating and criminal behavior abound, from the baseball diamond to the basketball court. It's time to remember that sport is about character, not bad characters.
The parade of high-profile individuals suspected of unfair play and illegal activities seems to be zipping by with the speed of cyclists in the Tour de France. There, a string of top-ranked pedalers, including leader Michael Rasmussen, has been thrown out of this year's event for suspicions related to doping.
Back in the United States, NFL star quarterback Michael Vick has been indicted for alleged involvement in a cruel – and illegal – dog-fighting ring. The FBI, meanwhile, is investigating a professional basketball referee for betting on NBA games. And then there's the old story of home-run-hammer Barry Bonds, renewed this week as he approached baseball's most hallowed record – allegedly with the help of steroids along the way.
There's a reason that character counts in sport. Without honesty, without a pure pursuit of skill, there is no level playing field on which to compete. What's the point of playoffs, for instance, if the fix is already in? What's the point of the world's greatest bicycle race if it's a contest of performance-enhancers instead of performers?
Society looks to athletes as role models, but to a great extent, sport mirrors society. So it's perhaps no surprise that a hip-hop culture that equates pit-bull viciousness with manhood coincides with a football hero supposedly caught up in an inhumane business of pit-bull fights.
State lotteries promote gambling, so is it any wonder that a referee with a reported gambling problem may have been tempted to bet on games that he was involved in?
And in a materialistic culture ever striving for greater physical beauty, youth, muscularity, and sexual prowess, perhaps the temptation of athletes to artificially enhance their bodies is just as much a reflection on "us" as it is on "them."
Destructive cultural values and practices, however, can change. Witness the antismoking campaign, begun in the US and now catching on around the world. Or the trend against superskinny fashion models. Or the rapidly growing interest in green and sustainable living.
It's encouraging that the world of high-profile sport is making a much more serious effort to combat doping and behavior issues.
For all the disappointment of this summer's Tour de France, for instance, credit must be given to the vigilance of those trying to catch the cheaters – and many others now fed up with what looks to be a common practice of doping in cycling.
In Germany, major television stations have refused to broadcast the now deflated race. Similarly the top Swiss newspapers have stopped writing about it. Some cyclists protested doping by delaying their start this week, and it was the sponsor of Mr. Rasmussen's team, Rabobank, that took him out of the race and sent him pedaling home.
This amounts to a societal rejection of cheating – a potential tipping point that could return the Tour, at least, to a contest of man versus mountain. Let's hope this same kind of pushback from fans, sponsors, and fellow athletes gains ground in other sports.

Barbaric 'sport'

They just don't get it. The two Canton boys who sicced their pit bull on a cat, with fatal results, don't get it. Neither do their friends who, angry that the dog warden took the dog away, threatened to kill the cat owner's other pets. The callousness of these children is mind-boggling. But events hundreds of miles away put this disgusting, disturbing incident in a more understandable context. Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, indicted on charges of operating a dog fighting ring, is a timely symbol of a subculture in this country that regards animals as instruments of fear, as sources of bloody amusement and, ultimately, as disposable commodities when they outlive their usefulness. Police say the Canton boys had raised the pit bull in secret, and it showed the scars of previous fights. These kids need punishing - and they need all the help they can get to instill respect for living things. And residents who know of dog fighting in Canton need to tell police what they know. It's bad enough that adults engage in this barbaric practice. It seems clear that it appeals to a whole new generation, as well.

Mired in scandal, sport fails to learn from past

PARIS - An optimist - and there aren't many left in cycling - would say that the only advantage for the scandal-mired sport is that things can't get much worse.The Tour de France is in agony, and it has gotten there by failing to learn from the past - from as long ago as 1998 and as recently as last year.After Lance Armstrong won cycling's premier event for seven straight years from 1999 to 2005, the Tour has been going downhill faster than the riders on their descent from the Alps.
But even the Armstrong years, and the decades that preceded them, were riddled with doubt. There were questions about how a cancer survivor managed to rebound enough on a race as tough as the Tour. While Armstrong always insisted he was clean and was never sanctioned, riders he beat - including 1997 champion Jan Ullrich and Italian Ivan Basso - are now out of the sport in disgrace.Italian rider Cristian Moreni didn't learn from the case of American Floyd Landis, the 2006 Tour winner who isn't defending his title because of doping charges still hanging over him.Like Landis at the last Tour, Moreni tested positive this year for the male hormone testosterone. Unlike Landis, who maintains his innocence and spent heavily on lawyers, Moreni admitted wrongdoing and waived his right to a follow-up test, according to his team, which pulled out of the race Wednesday.Despite their tough anti-doping talk, Tour organizers gave a wild card invitation to Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan and his Astana team. That proved to be a huge mistake, because Vinokourov and his team were pulled from the race on Tuesday after he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.But those cases were merely a sideshow to this year's real bombshell: the case of race leader Michael Rasmussen of Denmark, who was sent home for lying about his wherabouts during drug testing.He had said he was in Mexico and couldn't send e-mail to let everyone know where he was because he didn't have a computer. But a former rider, Davide Cassani, said he had seen Rasmussen in Italy in mid-June. Rasmussen also said he had sent at least one letter to inform people of his whereabouts. although it didn't seem to arrive."Michael told the team that he was in Mexico and it turned out ... that he wasn't in Mexico but was in Italy," said Jacob Bergsma, a team spokesman. He said its sponsor, Rabobank, ordered Rasmussen out of the race.Patrice Clerc, president of ASO, the company that runs the Tour, was even more direct. "There was, in his behavior, an evident intent to cheat," Clerc said.Bergsma said Rasmussen had subsequently admitted that he was, indeed, in Italy. But that wasn't what Rasmussen told the Danish tabloid BT."This is too crazy. I do not get it. This is totally cuckoo," he was quoted Thursday as saying. "I was not in Italy. Not at all. This is the story about a man who claims he recognized me."Unfortunately for the Tour and for those still-clean riders who trailed in his wake, Rasmussen had been wearing the race leader's hallowed yellow jersey for eight days by time he was told to pack his bags.Tour director Christian Prudhomme, clearly eager to get the Rasmussen scandal behind him, described his withdrawal from the race as "the best news of the week."But the affair left the race's credibility in tatters, and cycling may be running out of time.France Soir newspaper ran a mock death notice for the Tour, saying it died Thursday "at age 104, after a long illness." «The newspaper Liberation said in an editorial that "the Tour must be stopped.""This procession of cyclists has been transformed into a caravan of ridicule," Liberation wrote. "If the organizers really want to save cycling, they should stop the competition and declare a pause of a few years, enough time to treat these athletes-turned-druggies."Should the Tour, be stopped? Should cycling be kicked out of the Olympics? That such questions are being asked shows how desperate the situation has become.

WOTTON MOVES STEP CLOSER

Plymouth Argyle captain Paul Wotton has admitted he can 'see light at the end of the tunnel' as his recovery from a serious knee injury nears a successful conclusion.The 29-year-old has been taking part in practice matches for the first time this week, during the club's pre-season training camp in Austria.Wotton is not allowed to make tackles, or be tackled by his team-mates in those games as a precaution but, even so, he is enjoying playing football again.The midfielder suffered an anterior cruciate knee ligament injury in the 1-0 home defeat of Hull City in December.But an operation was not carried out until late January because he also had medial ligament and cartilage damage.Now, six months later, Wotton is in upbeat mood with his left knee causing him no problems at all.He told Herald Sport: "I have been doing everything, other than tackling. At the moment, I'm non-contact."That just means the lads can't tackle me and I can't tackle them."But they are pressing and closing me down and I'm pressing and closing them down. The one thing left to do is to go into contact."I'm absolutely thrilled with how it has gone," continued Wotton."We had pencilled in this week to maybe get into a few keep-balls, but things have gone even better than we thought."I have been involved in some eight-a-sides, as well as crossing and finishing and some shooting exercises."My body is still getting used to doing it all again but, touch wood, the knee feels rock solid so to say I'm thrilled is an understatement."Wotton spent virtually all of the close season in the gym at Home Park working on his rehabilitation with Argyle physio Paul Maxwell.He said: "You can do as many weights as you like, and as much running as you like, but you can't really recreate what you do in a game."I have had a few aches and pains but it's nice to feel them. It's great to be back out there and part of it, although not fully."To be honest, I don't feel too far off the pace. I have worked unbelievably hard with Maxie and the stuff I have done with him has obviously stood me in good stead."I have had a couple of really good weeks of fitness work."Wotton is still reluctant to put a timescale on when he could be ready to make his comeback, but it does not seem to be too far away.He said: "Maxie and I have spoken about having between a week or two of non-contact."Then I would like to maybe get another couple of weeks of full contact in and then it's just gearing up towards a reserve team game, or a behind closed doors one."Maxie and I will have to see how many of those games I need before I can say to the gaffer (Ian Holloway) I'm ready for the first team."But I can definitely see light at the end of the tunnel now."Wotton added: "It seems like forever since I last played a game, but I have recovered very quickly."Some people think all I had done was an ACL reconstruction, but I didn't."I tore my medial ligament as well and my cartilage had to be repaired as well."It's 26 weeks after the operation so, in terms of what I'm doing now, it's phenomenal really."It has been, and still is, a long, hard slog and I'm going to have to do leg weights and stuff for the rest of my career, but that's a very small price to pay."

Zimbabwe: Ministry Probes Harare School

THE Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture is investigating a school in Harare for allegedly operating without registration for the past four years.

Vatal Junior School in Marlborough, with an enrolment of about 250 pupils, is not registered with the ministry and is operating from a house where temporary structures were erected to serve as classrooms and toilets.
Boarders at the school share small rooms at a nursery school in Mabelreign.Each room has five bunk beds squashed together where up to six pupils share a bunk bed three on top and three below - exposing them to potential airborne and waterborne diseases.Documents show that Vatal School defied Government's directive to reduce fees and revert to pre-June 18 levels as it doubled fees from $2,5 million in June to $5 million in July.The headmaster of the school, who only identified himself as Mr Maturure, said he was not aware that the school was not registered and wanted time to establish the position.He produced a letter dated July 20, which he claimed was a registration certificate.The letter was a response from the Ministry of Education that acknowledged that some pupils at the school be registered to study for correspondence."I will have to check with the director (Mrs Maida) of the school as I am not aware that the school is not registered. I will have to consult my director about talking to you in detail," Mr Maturure said, before closing the school gate.Contacted for comment, Harare deputy provincial education director, Mr Calvin Mazula, said the school was not registered with the ministry and that Government was not aware of its existence."The ministry is not aware of such a school as it is not registered with us -- it is an illegal structure. As far as I am concerned, the school in question does not have a centre number and I don't know how they are going to write their Zimbabwe Examinations Council examinations if they have Grade Seven classes," Mr Mazula said.
He alleged that Vatal School violated standing regulations by offering boarding facilities without being registered.The education ministry, which explained how correspondence schools operate, said centres registered for the programme were not allowed to offer tuition as they only facilitated students to use Government material."Registration for correspondence school is not a formality for registering a school with the Ministry and this registration does not legalise them to operate as a school," said an education official.

Unsung heroes bask in praise from afar

It's hockey all right, and this country's new "Great One" is a guy named Wayne who fired the top-shelf, overtime winner on Wednesday to give Canada a Pan-Am Games gold medal and a coveted berth in the Beijing Olympics next year.
But the iceless version of Canada's favourite pastime is surely the Rodney Dangerfield of the national sports scene. That's one reason why, on perhaps the greatest day for field hockey in Canada's history, the game's top Canadian official couldn't watch the dramatic victory on television (or even the Internet), and contented herself with a flood of congratulatory e-mail messages -- from the Netherlands.
"They understand this is a big thing," said Field Hockey Canada executive director Suzzanne Nicholson from her office at the sport's national headquarters in Ottawa.
She acknowledges that her passion is "the other hockey" in a land of snow and skates and Stanley.
But Nicholson is hoping the national men's triumph in Brazil -- thanks largely to a two-goal performance in the final against Argentina by Wayne Fernandes, the country's top scorer at the Pan-Ams -- will "leverage a bit more sponsorship and attention" for a sport stuck in the summertime shadows of the Canadian consciousness.
"Something like this is huge for us -- really important. We really needed this," Nicholson told CanWest News Service in the afterglow of the "big, big day" for Canadian field hockey -- a stunning upset win over top-seeded Argentina at Rio de Janeiro, and a surprise bye for the world's 15th ranked team into the 12-country Olympic tournament at the 2008 Games in China.
"We've had seven terrible years," Canadian captain Rob Short of Victoria said after the gold medal game.
"This is the most important win of my career."
But Canadian field hockey's "miracle on grass" down in Rio has been overshadowed in the sports pages here at home by news that Eric and Jordan Staal -- a couple of Canada's favourite (ice) hockey stars -- got drunk and disorderly at a bachelor party.
A headline writer at one of the few papers that did give good billing to Canada's field hockey triumph deftly captured the sport's quirky, puck-free status in the national mindset: "Look, ma, no ice!"
The sport, in fact, is played on a soccer-sized field with 11 players and has more in common with the "beautiful game" than with the brutal game on ice that most Canadians love -- save the curved stick, known in old French as a "hoquet," that gives both sports their name.
Nicholson -- no relation, by the way, to Hockey Canada president Bob -- is a former player with the national women's field hockey team and an award-winning coach in a sport with much deeper roots in history and much broader global appeal than its ice-bound cousin.

Doping seizing up future of cycling

An optimist -- and there aren't many left in cycling -- would say the advantage for the sport of being in such a deep black hole of scandal is things can only get better from here.
Perhaps.
One main reason why the once revered Tour de France is in such agony, suffering a thousand cuts from doping, is the sport failed to fully heed the lessons from previous drug scandals.
Time to save cycling may now be running out. Should the Tour, a 104-year-old institution, be stopped? Should cycling be de-listed as an Olympic sport? That such questions are now being asked shows how desperate the situation has become.
For once, apportioning blame is a valid, even necessary, step if credibility is going to be restored.
Cycling's governing body, the UCI, has proved a poor custodian, failing to stop the doping rot that has been evident for years. It has toughened this year, with a more rigorous program of testing.
And despite their tough anti-doping talk, Tour organizers gave a wild-card invite to Alexandre Vinokourov's Astana team. That proved a massive mistake. Vinokourov and Astana were pulled from the race on Tuesday after he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.
Dick Pound, head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, lambasted the sport yesterday, suggesting everyone involved in the controversy is culpable.
"Obviously, the UCI can't do it by itself," Pound said. "Obviously, the Tour organizers can't do it by themselves. Obviously, the teams are conspiring to have doping. You can't do blood doping without people being aware of it."
Pound, a Montreal lawyer, offered cycling an olive branch, suggesting WADA could play a key role in helping to clean up the sport.
"We're happy to help," said Pound. "We're happy to have a summit where we bring in all of the people involved in cycling and say 'all right, how are we going to solve this problem?' "

Ex-state swim champ ends up with model job

Laura Swander's family name is synonymous with swimming in Indiana. It isn't much surprise she's making her living in the sport.

The surprise is it came with a dash of modeling, too.
"I would love it if it (continued)," said the former Center Grove High School standout. "If they want me, I'm wide open."
Swander swam collegiately at Auburn and now is a product tester for Tyr, which produces competitive swimwear and equipment. She will represent the company during next week's U.S. National Championships at the Natatorium at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
She can be seen on its home page (http://www.tyr.com/) modeling a blue, one-piece suit. That wasn't supposed to be part of her job duties.
"It was kind of a last-minute decision," she said. "We had one of our athletes get sick, and she couldn't make the photo shoot until the next day. I had to fill in."
Added her mother, IU assistant swimming coach Pam Swander: "I think deep down inside, she really likes that stuff."
The younger Swander returned to the Indianapolis area after graduating from Auburn in 2005 and worked in real estate for one year.
But her heart was still in the water, even though her competitive swimming days had ended nearly two years earlier. She headed West when Tyr founder and vice president, Steve Furniss, offered her a position with the Huntington Beach, Calif.-based company.
"It was a little bit of culture shock when I moved out here, with all the surfers and the laid-back, Southern California lifestyle," she said. "But so was Auburn. People talked slow, walked slow in the Deep South. It really wasn't that much different."
Pam Swander said her daughter is doing almost exactly what Mom envisioned.
"Ever since she was a little girl, she's enjoyed art and design," Pam Swander said. "She wanted to redo her room when she was very young, and we just let her go with it. She always had that creative side, and we tried to foster it."
Laura Swander tests products for the company to help gauge how consumers might react to them. She said it's a perfect combination for someone who competed at a high level and has a bachelor's degree in industrial design.
"I was going down a track in real estate where I could see myself having a future," she said. "But the chance to get back in the swimming world, something I've lived and breathed for the last 20 years, and to combine that with my degree, was kind of something I had to do."
Swander won two state titles in the 100 breast stroke while at Center Grove, setting the state record with a time of 1:01.98 in 2000. (Current Center Grove standout Michelle McKeehan broke the record this year.)
She twice swam in the U.S. Olympic Trials and retired from competitive swimming in 2004.
Swander said she misses the competition but isn't missing the training regimen and early-morning practices.
Next week will be a reunion of sorts with younger brother Kevin, who swam at IU and finished second in the 100 breast stroke at the 2006 National Collegiate Athletic Association championships. He's since graduated and is training for the 2008 Olympic Trials.
And yes -- he will be wearing a Tyr suit next week.
"There's still things I wish I had done differently and times I would have focused a little more during my career, but it's getting easier every day," Laura said. "The place I'm in now, it's hard to complain. My swimming career really did get me to this place."

Bizarre verdict in McLaren case

MONTREAL -- And you thought you were holding the sports pages. More like the scandal sheets these days, with tales of drug use, animal cruelty and industrial espionage in the top tiers of cycling, football and auto racing.
More bizarre than the allegations themselves, sometimes, are the verdicts.
Which brings us to yesterday's decision by the World Motor Sport Council of the Federation international de l'automobile in the spy saga that has shaken Formula One.
The ruling body found McLaren-Mercedes guilty of possession of unauthorized Ferrari documents -- but imposed no penalty for lack of proof the team had put the secret data to use.
"The WMSC is satisfied that Vodafone McLaren Mercedes was in possession of confidential Ferrari information and is therefore in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code," the verdict said.
"However, there is insufficient evidence that this information was used in such a way as to interfere improperly with the FIA Formula One World Championship. We therefore impose no penalty."
Of course, it's possible that McLaren's now-suspended chief designer, Mike Coughlan, found nothing useful in the 780 pages of Ferrari intellectual property that turned up during a court-sanctioned search of his home. Maybe the guy wanted nothing more than some light bedtime reading in anticipation of the latest Harry Potter tome.
You can even argue that if any of Ferrari's trade secrets had been used to develop the McLaren cars, they'd be breaking down every other week.
Just ask Kimi Raikkonen, who won the pole position at this past weekend's European Grand Prix in Germany only to retire from the race when hydraulic problems felled his Ferrari. The only consolation for Ferrari is that McLaren championship leader Lewis Hamilton ran into trouble of his own and failed to score any points for the first time this season.

Fury over McLaren escape

Ferrari reacted with fury last night after an emergency hearing into the Formula One spy row resulted in McLaren Mercedes escaping without punishment. The FIA, the governing body of motor sport, gave Lewis Hamilton’s team a “let-off” over the possession of a huge dossier of secret technical information, a decision the Italian team were quick to condemn.
After hearing the announcement by the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) in Paris, Ferrari said that it “legitimises dishonest behaviour in Formula One and sets a very serious precedent”.
The angry reaction in Maranello came as Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, his team-mate, were breathing a sigh of relief. The affair could have resulted in both drivers losing points or even being thrown out of the World Championship.
Barely had McLaren digested the good news than their deadly rivals in the paddock, who trail them in the drivers’ and constructors’ battles this season, launched a scathing attack on an FIA process that Ferrari said they regarded as “incomprehensible”.
The Italian team were particularly incensed that McLaren got away virtually scot-free, even though the WMSC had found that the Anglo-German team had been in possession of Ferrari data through Mike Coughlan, their disgraced chief designer, who has admitted having a 780-page dossier of secrets.
Ferrari said that “violating the fundamental principle of sporting honesty” should have resulted, as a “logical and inevitable consequence”, in the application of a sanction. The statement went on: “The decision of the World Council signifies that [the] violations do not carry any punishment.” The Scuderia added that they regard what happened in Paris yesterday as “highly prejudicial to the credibility of the sport”.
The sound and fury in Maranello came after the WMSC had convened to hear McLaren answer a charge of “fraudulent conduct” over the affair but decided against any immediate punishment because it found no evidence that Ferrari technical data had been used on this year’s McLaren race cars.
“The World Motor Sport Council is satisfied that Vodafone McLaren Mercedes was in possession of confidential Ferrari information — however, there is insufficient evidence that this information was used in such a way as to interfere improperly with the World Championship,” the WMSC said.
The council did impose a suspended sentence of sorts on McLaren when adding that, if evidence is found in the future that the Ferrari information had been used “to the detriment of the championship”, the team would be summoned back to Paris to face the possibility of being thrown out of this year’s championship, as well as being banned from next year’s.
Ron Dennis, the McLaren team principal, who appeared in Paris alongside Ian Mills, QC, the team’s lawyer, emerged from the session looking as though he had lost. “The process has been long and detailed and I’m not completely comfortable with the outcome,” Dennis said.
Then, in what may have been a note of deep irony from the veteran team leader — who has never admitted that McLaren, as a team, did anything wrong — he said: “The punishment fits the crime.”
While McLaren escaped immediate sanction and are free to concentrate on their World Championship campaign, the two individuals at the heart of the scandal were not so fortunate. Nigel Stepney, the former Ferrari mechanic who has denied allegations that he supplied Coughlan with the dossier, and Coughlan, have been “invited” by the WMSC to demonstrate why both should not be banned for a lengthy period from international motor sport.
The let-off for McLaren is all the more astonishing for the fact that the team admitted that Coughlan was in possession of the data for two months, amounting to a comprehensive picture of all Ferrari’s activities. The rules that govern Formula One make it clear that the FIA can punish a team for the actions of any individual within it, even if the team as a whole are not aware what that individual had been doing.
In the run-up to the hearing, the seriousness of McLaren’s position had been underlined by Max Mosley, the FIA president, who chaired yesterday’s meeting and who admitted that the credibility of Formula One had been at stake over the issue.

City Beaches To Sport New Bathrooms

Beach bathrooms in Long Beach are deteriorating, so this week the City Council approved the purchase of three new bathrooms to help change that.
One of the pre-fabricated bathroom buildings will go at the Marine Stadium launch ramp, one at the Claremont launch ramp, and one in Rainbow Harbor downtown.
“These are solid concrete buildings that we expect to last 25 to 30 years,” Phil Hester, director of the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department, told the council.
Money for the bathrooms — which will cost $850,000 total — will come from the city’s Tidelands Fund and from a grant from the California Department of Boating and Waterways. The city’s tidelands fund both collects and spends money in the city’s beaches and marinas, and it is doing well now due to the increase in oil prices.
Long Beach’s beach bathrooms do not have a good reputation, and city Parks and Recreation staff admitted that was deserved.
In a 2006 review, 70% of the marina and beach bathrooms were considered “below acceptable or satisfactory industry or customer standards.” That includes the potential shutting down of some facilities, the council was told.
This purchase is the first step in replacing and renovating all of the city’s beach bathrooms, the council was told.
The structures are prefabricated and preplumbed restroom buildings from a company called Romtec, which specializes in manufacturing of these types of buildings. The Oregon-based company has provided similar bathroom facilities to the East Bay Regional Park District in California, parks in Bend, Ore., the Coronado National Forest (northeast of Tucson, Ariz.) among other park facilities throughout the nation.

Fast-flowing football the aim of Collins

A DELIGHTED John Collins today demanded "more of the same" after watching his new-look Hibs side demolish English Premiership outfit Bolton Wanderers.
Collins believes last night's performance will go a long way to easing the worries of Easter Road supporters in the wake of the departure of a string of high-profile players over the past few months.
He said: "It's understandable that the fans have been a bit anxious but they have to trust us and get behind the players we have. Their response last night was fantastic but we have to continue to produce the goods and ensure they continue to back us.
"The supporters are a big part of it, they know the way we want to play - fast-flowing football and scoring goals.
"That's what we are after and what we work to try to achieve Monday to Friday and then taking it on to the match. Free-flowing football is what we all want to watch and the style Hibs fans certainly want to watch.
"We scored three goals against a very good Premiership side and we could have scored more as we created six or seven other chances. I'd have been delighted with our performance against any team but Bolton give the Manchester Uniteds, the Chelseas, the Arsenals and Liverpools difficult games, no-one likes playing against them."
And, for Collins, Hibs' second goal epitomised the style of football he wants to see, full-backs David Murphy and Kevin McCann combining on the edge of the Bolton penalty area for the former Middlesbrough player to score.
He said: "I think that said everything about the way we want to play football. I don't want players classified as defenders, midfielders and strikers but as football players, all comfortable on the ball and capable of interchanging positions. "We had a terrific pass from Lewis Stevenson for Steven Fletcher to score the first goal, a wonderfully disguised pass from Kevin to David for the second and a typical piece of magic from Benji for the third."
Bolton manager Sammy Lee was making no excuses, instead praising the performance of Collins' side, revealing he knew exactly what to expect having come across the Hibs boss during a coaching course.
He said: "It was a great test for us but that's what these games are for.
"We came up against a very well-organised and disciplined Hibs side, an excellent team with great movement all over the park and some outstanding individual performances.
"I'm not one who slates the Scottish game, I have far too much respect for the people up here to generalise in that manner.
"I always knew we'd face a tough test because I know John Collins very well.
"I'd overseen a Pro-Licence course he was on and I knew he would have his team organised."

Three 'Nova football players dismissed over rape allegations

Three freshman Villanova football players in the midst of a sexual assault investigation had their admission to the university rescinded late Wednesday.The trio was involved in a campus incident with a female student on July 14, which was subsequently reported to Villanova's public safety department the next day. Security logs listed the incident as "rape by force."The three players were told to leave campus last Friday and the university then decided to rescind each admission."Our primary concern has been the welfare of our students and particularly the students who have been involved in this situation," said Villanova coach Andy Talley. "We've tried to move forward with a great deal of respect for them and we trust that everyone else will do that as well."NBC 10 reports that the three players were enrolled for one summer class and knew the woman who reported the assault. The alleged victim, whose name has not been released by the school, has not gone to the police, however."Ultimately it is the students' decision whether or not to notify local authorities," University mouthpiece Liz Kennedy Walsh said. "Villanova's policy is not to notify without the consent of the student."

Sheedy on life and football - and Kevin Sheedy

"There are parts of being Paul Hogan I really enjoy and Robbie Williams and bloody Mr Bean. Why should I take that out of my life just because I'm a bloody bozo AFL coach?"
"To be No.1 you don't have to do the right thing just once - you have to do it ALL THE TIME."
"I give the AFL a bit of a touch-up every now and then, because they need one sometimes. And so do I. The deal is, in the end, they're pretty good."
On James Hird: "He's a guy who gets up at six o'clock in the morning regardless of what time it is."
On Tim Watson: "Sometimes coaches fall in love with their players.
I think we must have state of origin ... You should never have players go through their football careers without representing their state.
I never did anything on the football ground that I regretted.
The day I finish is going to be the worst day of my life. No, my real worst day will be when I kick the bucket.
If you haven't got a love for football, you might as well get out of the ball game. There are football people in football and there are people in football. And there's a bloody big difference.
We've got to build this game up to be the best game in the world. I don't see anything written anywhere to tell us how to do it. There isn't a manual. That's what I'm on about. I might chase things that aren't there sometimes, but the day you stop chasing, you may as well get out of the game.
One thing I learned is that to delegate doesn't mean to abdicate.
Once you stop recruiting you stop playing. But I've never cleared a champion. I'm very proud of that.
His biggest regret: If I had my time again I'd have gone in and tried to convince the Richmond football club committee to lift their ban on me playing for Richmond in the district cricket grand final in 1977-78. I was captain of the football team and they expected me to play a practice match. But cricket was so important to me at the time. I had reached the Richmond firsts (as a leg spinner) after coming up from the fourths the year before. My whole aim was to show people that even at 30 you can still make it. I missed out and I never got another chance.
Asked in 1991, what he would be doing at the turn of the century: If I'm good enough I'll still be a coach somewhere. If not I'll do something in footy, like the media or looking after kids.
I've been under pressure all my life. I've been to losing grand finals and winning grand finals. And there a lot of people who have never been to any.

Are you ready for some football?

It's time to get those keys ready, find that oversized purple sweatshirt and learn the words to the fight song. It's only five weeks until the Northwestern football season's opening game at Ryan Field, and the team is already preparing for a winning season.No one knows what to expect of the Cats this season. They had a disappointing season in 2006, but Coach Pat Fitzgerald is optimistic about new recruits and veteran players who just found their game too late last time.As the players head to training camp at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, The Summer Northwestern takes a look at last season and talks to Coach Fitzgerald about what to expect from Northwestern football this fall.The beginning for FitzgeraldLast season was one of the worst NU has had in recent history, beginning with the death of Head Coach Randy Walker. Fitzgerald told the Racine Journal Times that as he was tucking his son Jack into bed, he got a call on his cell phone telling him Walker had died of a heart attack.Fitzgerald was named NU's head coach a week later. Even though it was assumed he would succeed Walker in the position, Walker's early death made Fitzgerald the youngest head coach in Division I history, at the age of 31.Although they started off strong with a win against Miami University of Ohio, the team quickly lost momentum after losing to the University of New Hampshire, a Division I-AA school, a smaller division than NU's Division I-A. Things got worse during the Michigan State University game in the middle of the season. In 2005, NU beat the Spartans 49-14, and the 2006 game seemed to be going the same way until after halftime. In the third quarter, while trailing the Wildcats 38-3, Michigan State scored 38 unanswered points, winning by three and achieving the greatest comeback in Big Ten football history.Running back Tyrell Sutton, a Communication junior, said the defeat came because of "a lack of focus" during the game."When you're up by 30 points, you tend to get lackadaisical, and (it was) the same thing with New Hampshire. They were a I-AA team, so we figured there was no way they were going to come out and be serious," Sutton said.After Michigan State, the Wildcats suffered two more defeats - once against Michigan, and again versus Ohio State."I thought there was a lot of inefficiency, not problems," Fitzgerald said about last season. "We need to improve third downs quite a bit. We were too inconsistent (with our) kicking game. A lot of guys are stepping up for that."The Wildcats ended the season 4-8, with no bowl prospects. Still, the end of the season was a highlight for Fitzgerald, who thought the way the team rallied and won two of the four games after Michigan State was an improvement, not just for the team but for its coach as well."I don't have any regrets," Fitzgerald said. "The only disappointment is (that) we didn't go to a bowl game."But that's the goal this year. The Rose Bowl may be too ambitious, but Fitzgerald still wants to give his graduating players a bowl game to remember.The official football season opens September 1 with a game against Northeastern University. Although NU faces Big Ten power teams Michigan and Ohio State back-to-back, the coaching staff isn't worried."We're not going to look past our first game with Northeastern," Fitzgerald said.Player-by-playerBefore the season opener, though, the team will report to training camp on August 11 for 11 days in Wisconsin. Sutton laughed when asked what camp is like."Hell," Sutton said. "It's in the middle of nowhere. It's hot, it's humid. It's just long. It's only 11 days, but it's the longest 11 days of your life, and it's all football. That's all it is."CJ Bachأ©r, a Communications senior and one of NU's quarterbacks, echoed Sutton's sentiments."It's grueling," he said, "but the players really come together a lot more, being up in Wisconsin, not really getting to see anybody but your teammates and coaches. It's really a bonding experience."Camp is also a chance for the new freshmen to get to know older players, and for coaches to decide starting positions for the opening game."We need to take care of Northwestern first in our camp," Fitzgerald said.The player lineup Fitzgerald has in mind will feature several veteran Wildcats. On the offense, Bachأ©r will return as quarterback, although Fitzgerald said he will be greatly challenged for that position by other players. Bachأ©r injured his leg with a stress fracture in 2006's pre-season, but came back to start in the final five games of last season.Sutton, named this summer as a player to watch for Maxwell Award's College Player of the Year, will return as well. The junior from Akron, Ohio, ran for 1,000 yards last season and started all 12 games. He also had a great offseason, Fitzgerald said.Several NU seniors will be starting as the team's offensive lineup. including Adam Crum, Dylan Thiry, Joel Belding and Trevor Rees. Fitzgerald, however, said he is keeping his options open for other linemen to step up.The defensive line this season has a lot of depth, Fitzgerald said. Several players are competing for the starting defensive end position, and Deante Battle and Reggie McPherson will be returning to their old positions of cornerback and free safety.Having graduated wide receiver, Shaun Herbert in June, Fitzgerald said players like Ross Lane, Rasheed Ward, and former quarterback Andrew Brewer will get the chance to shine.The spring season also allowed some new faces to surface, mostly redshirt freshmen who will be seeing their first playing time this season."I was pleased with the improvement of several players," Fitzgerald said. He mentioned Nate Williams, a linebacker, and Mike Boyle, an offensive lineman, both redshirt freshmen who had good spring seasons.The surprise of last season, though, was cornerback Sherrick McManis. The rising sophomore from Peoria, Ill., ranked 7th last year in the Big Ten for kickoff return average. "McManis was a big surprise last year, a very gifted athlete," Fitzgerald said. "He truly has a chance to take the next step."As for special teams, Kyle Daley, a junior from Arlington, Texas, and Amado Villarreal, from Englewood, Colo., will return after not seeing any action last year."We're (also) going to have two first time kickers for Northeastern," Fitzgerald said. Additionally, Justin Pines, a senior from Media, Penn., and the goalie for Northwestern men's soccer, will try his hand at kicking this season. "(So) we've got a little bit of competition."Recruiting the next team of WildcatsOutside of this year's coming lineup, Fitzgerald is looking ahead to the next set of Wildcats. Recruiting is already in full swing for the class of 2012. Fitzgerald, who was the recruiting coach under Walker, is now aggressively seeking the best high school talent across the country."I text message our recruits every day or every other day, Fitzgerald said. "Recruiting is a 365-day-a-year job."NCAA rules prohibit Fitzgerald from commenting on recruits, but word has gotten out over the Internet about a few future Wildcats. As of July 24, eight have committed to Northwestern after graduating high school, according to Wildcat Report, an online scouting database.Fitzgerald is rumored to have recruited five linemen, as well as Jimmy Howell, ranked as the No. 7 U.S. high school punter, who will join the Wildcats in the Fall of 2008. Jeremy Ebert, from Hillard, Ohio, has beensigned on as a possible slot receiver. Northwestern's 8th rumored recruit, Jeravin Matthews, is capable of running a 40-yard dash in under 4.3 seconds, according to Wildcat Report.Fitzgerald attributes his success in recruiting to his own time at NU."Knowing Northwestern as well as any coach is a great asset in recruiting," he said. "I can tell them what it's like to have the discipline, focus and sacrifice. (College is) a big jump for all of us, especially student athletes. I understand what they're going through. It doesn't mean I sympathize, but I understand."Fitzgerald gains the most satisfaction from his job, however, by following an athlete from recruitment to graduation."To see a student four or five years down the line, developed and prepared for life (is the best part)," he said.Some students he has seen through the years are already succeeding. Nick Roach, who broke his leg during last season's Michigan State game, is now a free agent with the San Diego Chargers. Shaun Herbert, Terrell Jordan, Joe Tripodi and four other former Wildcats are also eligible for the NFL draft this year.Many of the star players on this year's team were recruited by Fitzgerald, and it's easy to see why Fitzgerald has had such success with recruiting. His passion for NU comes across even in a simple conversation."The number one thing I've learned is this is one of the most special places in the county," he said. "It's not for everybody, but if it is for you, it's a great place."As for the coming fall, the players are ready to deliver a winning season, and even a bowl game, to the student fans. Fitzgerald is just excited for the season to start."I look forward to seeing all our students out there wearing purple, cheering on the Wildcats."

Nick Saban ReIntroduced To SEC Football

Obviously, we're pretty excited about starting the season. We got a lot of guys returning who played pretty well for us last year. A lot of experience in the offensive line for the first time since I've been head coach.
We got a little buzz going around Vanderbilt as far as our chances for improvement this year, and we're anxious to get started.
Had a lot of guys in summer school working hard. They're ready to go. We're ready to talk about Vanderbilt football. Be glad to answer any questions you may have.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Johnson.
Q. Could you talk about D.J. Moore. Was he a big surprise for y'all last year? What do you expect from him?
COACH JOHNSON: D.J. Moore is a cornerback, played a good bit for us last year as a freshman. Was not a real big surprise. We thought he was an outstanding athlete. I think he was athlete of the year in the state of South Carolina his senior year of high school, football player and basketball player.
There's always a learning curve, especially playing in the SEC. D.J. went through that. Very productive. Seems to be where the ball is all the time, makes a lot of plays for us. I think had four interceptions, maybe three, I can't quite remember.
D.J. gets better and better every time he goes on the field, especially practice. We had a good spring practice with him. He's going to probably be a starter at one of our corner positions. I think he'll be more comfortable this year than last.
It's pretty tough to ask a freshman to go in there and be great guns against the great receivers we have in this league.
We think he's a talented athlete. Hope to get more and more out of him.
Q. Talk about Chris Nickson, signing Larry Smith. Is Kikko Logan still with the program? Talk about his impact with the team.
COACH JOHNSON: Sure, we're excited about those Alabama guys playing for us. Obviously good high school football in the state of Alabama. We like to recruit down here.
Chris Nickson I think got better and better as he played last year. For a first year starter, I know Chris was a redshirt sophomore, but it was his first year starting, and he had a little rough game to open up with. Had to play Michigan up there in the Big House. That was pretty tough duty.
I was very pleased with his progress throughout the year. I think Chris was playing extremely well at the end of last season. We expect him to make that kind of progress.
He actually had a better sophomore year I think statistically and record wise than Jay Cutler. If he continues that progress we think he's going to be an outstanding quarterback.
Chris has a lot of pride. He works hard in the off season. I think he's becoming a better leader, doing the things he needs to do to be the quarterback on an SEC football team.
Chris was I think Mr. Football in the state of Alabama when we recruited him. Larry Smith from Prattville, Alabama, had a fantastic career there at Prattville High School. Led them to a state championship last year. He's just what we order for a quarterback. He's very athletic. He's got a great arm. He's got a great head for it. He's been in summer school for two sessions now. Has made great progress learning our offense from Chris and Mackenzi Adams, our other quarterback. We expect big things out of him.
For him to get in there this year is probably going to be a stretch. We'd like to redshirt him and give him a chance to maximize his eligibility while he's at Vanderbilt. Unless injuries come up, we're probably going to let him learn a little bit.
Kikko Logan, he's defensive end for us. We moved him to defensive end from linebacker because we've had some openings there. Kikko is a good athlete and he can move. It's good to have those guys coming off the edge playing defensive end.
We've had some success in the last two years especially of moving linebackers down to defensive end, getting those guys moving fast. I think Kikko is in that same vein.
Q. How much of a personal relationship do you maintain with the other coaches other than that three days in Destin? How much interaction is there?
COACH JOHNSON: Personal interaction, there's not a lot just because you're so busy and everybody has their schedule. You talk to them on the phone every once in a while. We all know what's going on in each other's programs and their lives most of the time.
You know, the Destin meetings, and we also have another one in December when the American Football Coaches Association convention is going on, we always have a meeting there. Those meetings, I like them. They're kind of fun to me. You hear what's going on. You share problems that you may be having, find out what other people are doing, how they're doing it.
We don't call each other up and go play golf or anything like that, or fishing.
Q. Could you talk about what you think about the rule changes for this year, specifically kicking off from the 30 and getting the plays back in with the clock management?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, the clock rules, I'm glad they're going back. I spent a lot of time talking about them really, to tell you the truth, last year. But I think it was good decisions, like Rogers has said, to try to save time when the clock is stopped, get things going a little more efficient there than messing with the actual seconds of the game. So I'm glad they changed those back.
I was not in favor of moving the ball to the 30. I think you had a good mix of returns and touchbacks, whatever. The rationale was to speed up the game. It's not going to speed it up because there are going to be a lot more kickoffs. There's going to be a lot more touchdowns because there's going to be better field position and more returns now.
Returns are exciting, but I want to give those defensive guys a chance, too, to get out there and play and show they're good, too.
Q. Can you talk about just your overall talent you have now compared to the last two years. Also talk about your expectations. Are they as high or higher now for the team even two years ago when Cutler was a senior?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, it's my opinion. But I think we're much more talented than we have been early in my career at Vanderbilt. I think our coaches have done a good job of identifying good players in high school and going out and convincing them to come to Vanderbilt and play in the SEC, get a top 20 rated university education.
Yeah, I think we're more talented. We got some ways you want to look at it. Some guys played some games and started some games. We have 17, 18 starters returning. We've won some pretty big games in the last couple years. I think that in itself is probably more important than talent level or whatever, is our confidence level. I think our guys feel like they can compete in this league. Their work habits reflect that. They want to be good.
When you get that working for you you're going to have a chance. Our guys right now feel pretty good about what we're doing as a team and how we're doing it.
As a coach, you really appreciate when guys work hard and feel like they can compete and get out there and try to do something about it.
Q. You have been close the last couple years. The perception is it's still Vanderbilt that can't get over the hump. What is keeping you from getting to that next level? Are you starting to feel more the pressure from the fans the closer you get?
COACH JOHNSON: No, I wasn't aware of that perception (smiling).
When you play in this league, I mean, you got to scratch and claw to get the victories. I mean, the people at the top of the SEC East and the SEC West are there for a reason. They've had consistent programs year after year after year. They have great talent, great coaches.
For somebody to come in and try to work theirselves up the ladder, I think Kentucky did a fantastic job last year. You know, but you look and see how tough it is to pass those teams that are ahead of us.
But we've had some quality wins the last couple years. We won some games on the road. We have been close, but we've also won some close games. It's just not Vanderbilt like it used to be where you got close, the end of the game, didn't win. We won some.
We feel like we're making progress. May not be fast to all of y'all, but, you know, we're working as hard as we can. Our guys are having fun doing it. Our coaches work extremely hard. We're looking forward to the season.
Our confidence is pretty high right now, but we also have to look at our schedule every once in a while and be realistic. You know, we played eight teams that were in a Bowl last year. So high hopes, but we got a tough job ahead of us. We're looking forward to getting it started.
Q. Could you address the quality of coaching in the SEC, in your estimation where it ranks nationally.
COACH JOHNSON: That's a loaded question, I tell you that right now (laughter).
Obviously I think it's the best. You look at how many championships have been won by the coaches, and not only the head coaches, but you look at the staffs at each one of these schools. You see people that have had great experience, great victories, great seasons. They know how to recruit. They know how to coach in games. They know the game of football. You know, you look down every school in this league, and it's pretty impressive.
Obviously, I have not coached against the PAC 10 and the Big 12. I have coached against the ACC before. You know, I think the SEC is going to rank up there with everybody.
Everybody knows you got to have good players, but coaching counts a bunch, too.
Q. Would you be in favor or not in favor of an early signing period for recruiting?
COACH JOHNSON: I'm in favor of it. I think guys make up their mind earlier now. If they've made up their mind, let 'em sign. It's their decision. I don't see why there's a certain magic date that comes in there and says, Okay, by this date you have already exhausted all your possibilities. You've looked over them. There is no magic date.
If a guy's ready to sign, let him sign. I think he's in good shape. The school who signs him is in good shape. All the other schools know he's not available anymore. You don't waste money recruiting him. The school that's got him committed doesn't waste money trying to baby sit him until signing day.
I think early signing date has a lot of merit.
Q. How are you and your staff changing your recruiting strategy with the ban on text messaging scheduled August 1st?
COACH JOHNSON: Excuse me, I've got to text somebody right here. Be with you in a minute (smiling).
We're not going to change a whole lot. Obviously, you know, you get in the season you got one phone call a week. You got to make that count. You don't just call him up and say hello for 10 seconds. You've got to have his position coach available, make it as important as you can.
You write them letters like we used to. We still did, even though you text them. You still do it. You can email them. They're pretty savvy with the computer. They'll be checking emails, too.
I don't think it's going to be a big change. I think it's going to be a big change in a positive way. I think young men will be able to go to school and not worry about getting text messages during class.
I talked to a lot of high school coaches last spring when I was out on the road. They were pretty fired up about doing away with the text messaging. They're asking their players to do well in school. They're text messaging under the table, under their desk. You know, I think it had become a problem.
Q. Can you talk about your eight game home schedule, the importance of that overall this year.
COACH JOHNSON: Well, we're thrilled that we have eight games. I think it worked out that all of our non conference games were at home this year. That's how we had the eight games out of the 12.
To tell you the truth, we'd had bigger wins on the road the last two years than we have at home. We need to play better at home. Hopefully that's going to spur us on to do that.
We actually made a little emphasis during spring practice to practice in the stadium more, to make sure that we did feel like that was where we were going to win football games.
It always makes it just a whole lot easier on the whole process when you're at home. You don't have to get on the bus, get on a plane, have your equipment trucked halfway across the country, things like that. It just makes life a whole lot simpler. Makes it easier for our guys in school. There's no travel.
I say "no travel." No travel on eight games. They can stay in their routine, get their schoolwork done. We're thrilled about it. I think right now our season ticket sales have been up a good bit. So hopefully we're going to have a full stadium on all eight of those home games, have a great atmosphere. That will help our football team, too.
Q. Did you have any idea Earl Bennett would be on the doorstep of becoming the all time leading receiver in SEC history as a junior? What does it say about the science of recruiting that a guy like this is about to break this record and wasn't a highly recruited guy?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, obviously you couldn't foresee him being that close to a record his junior year. We knew Earl was a good player when we recruited and signed him, but he's been pretty special.
I just hope he can stay healthy and do all the things he's capable of doing, because he's a pretty special player, an outstanding young man. I think day before yesterday he received an Outstanding Citizen award from Birmingham for the city. He's that kind of guy.
Everybody thinks we stole Earl. A lot of people knew about Earl. Our coaches did a good job of recruiting him. There are a lot of guys out there that blossom late in their senior year in high school or even in their career in college that don't have the ratings that some people do. That's what recruiting is all about.
As a recruiting coach and staff you look at those guys and you try to project where they can play in your system. You try to look, see who they played against in high school. There's all kinds of factors, not just the big plays they make every once in a while in big games.
It's a process. You said "science." It is not a science. That's the thing about it. Sometimes you take a chance and you make a big coup in recruiting. Sometimes you make mistakes. You try to limit those mistakes as much as you can. The key to I think having a great program is consistent recruiting, you know, over four , five , six year period.
"Consistent" means sometimes you're going to get a big star, but keep those mistakes to a minimum and make sure you're getting players who can contribute to your program year in and year out and stay in school.
Q. You brought up your offensive line being better than it's been since you've been there. Do offensive lines take longer to build?
COACH JOHNSON: Ours was decimated when I first got there. We had only four guys the first spring practice. We were looking for the fifth guy. Knew they were going to make us play with five when we started the season. We were looking hard.
Again, we were coming off just getting there, trying to recruit. It takes a long time to build up a position that's really down. Some of the guys we recruited were good players. Some of them weren't quite good enough. It took us a while to build it up.
Right now we feel like the last four years we've been pretty consistent in recruiting and we've retained some guys.
Chris Williams, our left tackle, 6'6", 6'7", whatever you want to call him, 325 pounds, and can run. He came to Vanderbilt as a 245 pound guy. He's worked extremely hard to make himself a great player.
Brian Stamper, who was an all SEC candidate last year, and didn't play because he got hurt, was awarded a fifth year by the NCAA. They did a smart thing. I applaud the NCAA for giving that young man another chance. But he's going to give us a lot of experience.
Experience and depth. We got some guys that are going to back those guys up, who are pretty good, and actually pushing some of those guys for the starting position. That some steady recruiting, good coaching by our coach Robbie Caldwell, our line coach, assistant head coach, I think we're going to have our best offensive line since we've been there.
Q. Two guys that you mostly did without last year were Jeff Jennings and Stamper, who you just mentioned. I assume they had major rehabs. Talk about their readiness to play this year, and what having a healthy Brian Stamper will have for your team.
COACH JOHNSON: Brian Stamper had a back injury. Had an operation on his back after the season. Was actually ready to go for spring practice and broke his foot about the third practice. We call him Lucky now (smiling).
To get him back, obviously he was a quality player but also just the depth part of it and the leadership part of it. He's ready to go. He's back to about 305 pounds now, running real well, lifting well. We think he's ready to go.
Jeff Jennings hurt his knee in the next to the last game in the 2005 season. Did not play at all last year. Jeff was having a very fine year. Jeff is a big back. He's 225 pounds. He can get those short yardage things. He also has a little in that case on the goal line to get in the end zone.
Those two things are going to help our running game. That's what we need to happen to be better and more consistent on offense. We threw the ball very well last year. Our quarterback ran very well. In fact, he was our leading rusher. Our running game needs to get better. Those two things, having Jeff Jennings back and having Brian Stamper improve our offensive line, is really going to help us.
Q. Can you assess the number two quarterback spot. Chris is established as your starter. How do you see that going into camp?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, I think Mackenzi Adams is working extremely hard. He's been in summer school all summer. He's up to 215 pounds now. He's worked real hard to try to improve his throwing motion.
I just think the world of Mackenzi Adams. He's just right there with Chris Nickson. We would feel very good about putting him in the game.
Richard Kovalcheck is coming back. Very experienced quarterback. He's a young man who transferred last year from Arizona. Excellent arm. Excellent vision. He can see the field, knows who to throw to.
Richard will be a senior. Mackenzi will be a redshirt sophomore. Probably right now, if something were to happen to Chris in a game, we'd probably go with Mackenzi to look to the future of the program, get him some experience.
But at certain positions, certain situations, Richard might be the guy to try to bring you back if you get behind in the fourth quarter, whatever. He's got an excellent arm and can do that kind of stuff.
We feel good about the quarterback position. We got some quality talent there. We got some older guys and we got some young guys coming up that we're excited about. It's a good spot for us.
Q. With Dr. Gee moving on to Ohio State.
COACH JOHNSON: Who?
Q. Your president.
COACH JOHNSON: I was just kidding (smiling).
Q. With him of moving onto Ohio State, do you see any changes in the way the Vanderbilt athletic department is organized? Do you expect to move back to a more traditional way?
COACH JOHNSON: I don't really think so right now because if you look at Vanderbilt's athletics assessed the last year, it's probably one of the best years ever.
Our interim chancellor, Nick Zeppos, who was our provost, he was in on the change and helped facilitate it the whole time it was going on.
I think he's very much in line with the same kind of thinking that we had before. In fact, I have a meeting with him tomorrow. But I expect the same kind of setup and same kind of organization.
I think David Williams, our chancellor in charge of athletics, I think is going to stay at Vanderbilt. I can't speak for him, but I think he is. All the pieces are still in place except for Chancellor Gee. I don't see why it would change.
Q. Where do you see Jared Fagan now in terms of his progress?
COACH JOHNSON: Jared was a freshman last year. He'll be a redshirt freshman this year. Jared made a lot of progress in the spring. Excellent arm. I mean, he's probably got the best arm of anybody on our squad. But he's got to learn the position a little bit more.
Especially in this league, you know, the defenses you see, the situations you see, are really tough on young quarterbacks.
For him to make that kind of leap and leap over Mackenzi or Chris Nickson is not strong right now. But, you know, we still feel good about his capabilities. If it gets to the point where he has to get in there, we wouldn't be afraid to put him in there.
Q. With you picking up two ACC transfers in the last few weeks, going back to Kovalcheck last year, is Vanderbilt becoming a more attractive destination for guys like this who may be seeking greener pastures elsewhere maybe because of the recruiting you guys are doing? Is there anything to it? How do you assess that?
COACH JOHNSON: Well, I wouldn't read too much into it. I think they were both unique situations. We had recruited one pretty heavily out of high school so he knew a lot about us. It was not like he was just reading it on the Internet or anything like that and decided, you know, he was going to go to Vanderbilt. He knew a good bit about it.
We think we got a good product there. Wonderful university. Get a great education. We play against some of the best teams in the country. We've been selling out since we've gotten there. I think it's gotten the message has gotten out to some guys. Right now our recruiting for next year's class that's going to sign next February is going really well. We couldn't be more pleased with that.
We got some good things going. We just got to do our job and keep our season going like we hope it can go. Believe me, that helps recruiting a whole lot more than phone calls and text messaging and fancy cards and things like that. If you're going to get them there, you got to prove that you can compete. Hopefully we can continue to do that.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach.
COACH JOHNSON: Thank y'all. Appreciate it.
Linebacker Jonathan Goff:
On expectations for the upcoming season:"We have really high expectations. We expect to win every game on our schedule. I believe we are physically and mentally prepared to do that."
On the close games:"It is good to realize what we could have done and then build off of that."
On trying to get over the hump:"We were able to hang in there and make the plays against Georgia to get the win. That was a big win for us to get over that hump. We had a lot of close games in previous seasons that we did not make the necessary plays to win."
On this being a breakthrough year for the team: "The mindset of the program has changed, and I just believe that Coach (Bobby) Johnson and his staff have done a great job with recruiting and changing the mindset of the team."
On Quarterback Chris Nickson:"He is one of the hardest workers that I have seen on the team. He is always out there doing extra work, and the team has a lot of confidence in him. After workouts, Chris (Nickson) is always out there throwing extra with the receivers. I have also played a little long toss with him just helping him out the best I can."
On potentially being an All-SEC athlete:"I believe that I am a quality player. I do as best I can to prepare myself physically during the off-season, and while we are in season I try to do as best I can to learn the game and learn my opponent. Then, I take that and try to give a great effort on Saturdays."
Wide Receiver Earl Bennett:
On being home:"It feels great to be back in Birmingham, my home city. There is a great crowd, wonderful fans, and it just feels great to be back home."
On Quarterback Chris Nickson:"Chris Nickson is a great athlete. He is so dynamic, he can throw ball, run the ball, and it is really hard to scheme against him. I really enjoy playing with him and I look forward to a great year with him."
On Vandy's chances this season:"Our chances are very high this season. We have a lot of returning starters and guys who have been working extremely hard this off season."
On Jonathan Goff:"Jon Goff is a phenomenal player. He is a great player both on and off the field, and one of the best linebackers in the nation. All of the recognition that he gets is deserved and I love to play with him."
On your expectations for this season:"I really don't set expectations for myself, I just go out there, play hard, and do the best that I can to help this team (Vanderbilt) win. That's the most important thing to me, for the team to win, not how many touchdowns or catches that I have."
ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE--
COACH NICK SABAN:
THE MODERATOR: We're ready to continue with Alabama head coach Nick Saban.
COACH SABAN: How is everybody doing today? Good to be here. Great to be back in the SEC.
First of all, I'd like to thank each and every one of you for the job that you do, the time that you spend giving a lot of positive self gratification to a lot of people, a lot of players who participate in college football in the SEC. It's great for our league. It's great for college football. It's certainly great for our players. I know our fans certainly appreciate it.
I've been asked the question on several occasions already today, What is the difference in the league now than when you left? And my response to that is: it seems like it's even tougher now than ever before. The competition from top to bottom, the great coaches in the league, the great programs, more good teams, lots of great players. But I also think that's what makes this an outstanding, competitive venue.
I know you're going to ask me a lot of questions about our team. But let me say this: In some cases, you may know more about our team than we do. When you take over a team, you go through an off season program, you go through a spring practice, you try to teach your offense, your defense, your special teams, you try to learn a little about your players in the 15 days that you have spring practice.
We've been very pleased with the attitude, the buy in by the players, the effort that they've given. You have a summer conditioning program where you really can't work with your players. A lot of the questions that we have about our team are probably going to be answered in this fall camp and this two a days, this early part of the season.
What I mean by that is, you know, what kind of team chemistry do we have? Do we have the kind of trust and respect that we're going to go out there and play well together as a group and execute well together as a team, have the kind of togetherness you need to be as successful as we'd like to be?
That's something that's kind of a work in progress, and we're continuing to try to build and develop. I can't answer that question right now. I think a lot of those questions are going to get answered for us all in this fall camp and the early part of the football season.
How positive are we going to be as a team? What kind of positive energy are we going to have? I think we're the type of team that improvement is going to be a big part of our success in terms of we're learning new stuff so we're going to have an opportunity to improve more.
How our team improves, how they can stay positive, work through some of the ups and downs we'll go through, I think, is going to be imperative to our being successful as a team. That's something I'm not sure about until we get into more competitive situations.
How many players do we actually have on our team that are going to be responsible for their own self determination on a consistent basis to be able to go out there and execute with the kind of discipline you need to do their job so that we have a chance to be successful as a group? That's something that we're going to have to develop, again, in this two a day, because it certainly hasn't been developed in the short time we worked with our players in spring practice.
The last thing is, are we going to be able to improve our ability to sustain our performance for four quarters in a game and play for 60 minutes? We've been pleased with the progress that we made in our strength and conditioning program in the off season, but we're not going to know that till we start playing games. I think that's going to be important for us to be able to finish games so that we have a better opportunity to win close games.
So all those questions are things that, you know, we kind of are still trying to answer ourselves about our team. I know there's always going to be the questions about expectations. Let me just say this: We would not want to coach someplace where they didn't expect to win. So expectations are something that can be very, very positive.
At the same time, I think that you want to be realistic in the expectations that you have relative to who you are, where you are, and how you're going to get there.
It's great to be optimistic. It's probably not so good to be pessimistic. But it's best to be realistic, to stay focused on the process of things you need to do to continue to improve so that you can reach your full potential and have every individual player reach his full potential so that you can have the best possible team that you can.
That's where our focus is. That's what we're trying to do. That's what we're anxiously looking forward to doing in this fall camp and early in this season.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Saban.
Q. The type of reception you got today in the lobby, from the day you got off the plane in Alabama, have you gotten used to it yet?
COACH SABAN: Well, first of all, we certainly appreciate the passion and support that our fans have, the excitement they have about the program. It's certainly heartfelt by the Sabans to see 92,000 people at the spring game to support us and our players.
That's the kind of positive energy that I think is going to be important for us to sustain as a program and will be very beneficial to us become successful in the future.
But we do appreciate it. It's heartfelt. My family, our family, certainly appreciates it.
Q. Last December you were pretty adamant you wouldn't be Alabama's coach. You're here today. Can you explain why or why not integrity should be an issue for maybe recruits and their families, considering what happened the two weeks before you took the job?
COACH SABAN: Well, I don't think, first of all I don't know that we need to go through all this. You know, when this job opened I said I wasn't interested in it. I said I wouldn't talk to anybody until the season was over. Somebody else got the job. It was pretty much over.
Basically for our players, our team at Miami, my focus was to help those players try to finish the season in a successful way, and this was not something we would entertain until the season was over.
When I made those statements they were true. I believed them. It was in the best interest of our team. We were going to protect our team and the players on our team every way we could from a loyalty standpoint.
When the season was over, as we sometimes do, my wife and I sat down and decided that maybe this is something that we should look into. We love college football. It had nothing to do with the Miami Dolphins or the NFL. We love college football. Something we had to learn about ourselves to go to the NFL.
When we learned about it, we felt like, 55 years old, where do you want to spend the rest of your time? We love college football because we like the spirit and enthusiasm of it. We feel like we can impact and affect young people in a more positive way in college football because of their age. The development process they're going through.
The idea that we can develop people that can be more successful in life for something been involved in our program by seeing them be successful as students, seeing them develop at football players, which is kind of a metaphor of life when you play sports. And to see them be successful in their career is all ways we felt like there was a lot of positive self gratification for us being a college coach.
That's certainly what we wanted to finish our career doing, and that's absolutely what we're going to do. That's my story and it always will be. Maybe we could have handled it a better way.
Q. Could you please briefly explain the four tenets of your Mission Statement on the back of the media guide?
COACH SABAN: The what?
Q. The four tenets of your Mission Statement.
COACH SABAN: Our Mission Statement has always been to create an atmosphere and environment for players to be successful first of all as people. Two things, to be successful in life and anything you choose to do, first of all, you have to know what you got to do. You got to make a commitment to it, be dedicated toward it, have some passion for it, work and invest your time in it, stick with it, have some perseverance relative to all of it, and have the kind of character and attitude, thoughts, habits and priorities on a day to day basis to make good choices about what you do and don't do so you can realize your dreams. That's the first thing we'd like to try to accomplish with our players and provide leadership for.
The second thing is we want them to get an education. That's the thing that's going to affect the quality of their life more than anything else, something that we want to provide support for relative to facilities and personnel and people who can affect them and help them reach their full potential academically.
We want them to be champions on the football field in terms of developing as players so that they can win a championship someday. And we'd like to use the resource that the institution has at the University of Alabama to help launch their career and get the best opportunities in life.
That's always been what we try to do as a college football coach, and that's what we'd like to do at the University of Alabama.
Q. Could you elaborate on a couple of mental aspects that you want to bring back to the program to restore Alabama's winning attitude and tradition.
COACH SABAN: Well, I think, you know, a couple things that are important I've probably already mentioned before. I think team chemistry is important and I think that everybody on the team not just the players, I'm talking about our administration, I'm talking about our athletic administration, I'm talking about our fans and supporters all have a role in how we can project positive energy so we can build and have a successful program.
If everybody does their part in being supportive and being helpful and working toward that, I think we'll improve and accomplish something significant.
So being a team is really important and being positive is really important. I think being responsible is really important for our own self determination in terms of how we go about what we do and investing our time in making good choices and decisions about what we do and what we don't do and being able to recruit well and get the kind of character and attitude people who want to get an education, who want to be good football players, is going to help us in the future.
And I think those ingredients are probably really important to the future success and us building on that in the near future.
Q. What were your thoughts when you began to see the reaction of LSU fans to your hiring?
COACH SABAN: You know, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the people of the state of Louisiana, toward LSU. What was accomplished when we were at LSU is special to the Sabans. It's certainly special to me and all the people involved in it. There were a tremendous amount of people that supported, including the fans, the players who participated, our administration there. All those people contributed to that success.
That was special. Nothing that will ever happen in the future will ever change that from my perspective. We will continue to have a tremendous amount of respect for the people of the state of Louisiana and LSU and the coaching staff and the people who are there now. Les Miles has done a tremendous job there in the two years he's been there: Won a lot of football games. Won the Sugar Bowl last year. Arguably has the best team in the west coming back this year relative to what his staff has been able to do.
So we have a tremendous amount of respect for LSU and we have a lot of great relationships in Louisiana and want to continue to have those. We hope that people understand that it's our love and passion for college football that brought us back. It was us learning about ourselves going to professional football to find out that we really did belong in college football that took us away from LSU.
All unfortunate things, because we have a tremendous amount of respect for those people.
Q. Two players that you have obviously appointed as leaders. Talk about them both as players and leaders off the field. Simeon Castille and John Parker Wilson.
COACH SABAN: Simeon Castille has been an outstanding player at the University of Alabama, certainly had a great spring for us. I think the biggest difference in what I see in him, he's accepted the role of leader and trying to affect a other people. I see him constantly trying to give instruction, set example for, helping other guys do their job. We certainly appreciate that. That's something that we need.
Antoine Caldwell is here with us, as well. He has been a great leader on the offensive line, done the same kind of job. He's got great character. He's a very good player. Certainly anchors the leadership on the offense.
Obviously the quarterback, John Parker, who has gained a lot of knowledge and experience last year relative to the starts that he's had, continues to improve, has done a fantastic job of setting good examples and being a good leader, continuing to prove his ability to execute and play winning football at his position.
So we're all very pleased with all three of those guys, their performance, how they've affected other people.
Q. You talk about wanting guys who get a start on being successful in life. From all the places you've been, what college football does to help guys do that, what any institution can do to help that along.
COACH SABAN: You know, I think that sports is a metaphor of life. Kind of all the things that we talk about and I've already talked about them today whether it's commitment, dedication, hard work, perseverance, investing your team in something that you believe in and have passion for, whether it's pride in performance to try to be the best you can be at whatever it is you choose to do, whether it's character and discipline to do what you're supposed to do, when you're supposed to do it, when it's supposed to get done, probably all those things are important to everybody on the football team.
I don't care what business you're in, I think all those things are probably important to you being successful in that. So really the ingredients that it takes to be successful don't change from one thing to another. Being a competitor, to be able to be consistent in what you do, not get affected by the bad things that happen and get frustrated where it affects your performance, not being able to deal with success when things go well, let that affect your performance, are also lessons that you can learn as an athlete that also are important in life.
So there's so many things that are important. You know, golf is a metaphor of life. It's about the only thing I can play now because you don't have to run around and do anything, run and jump or do any of that stuff. You hit a good shot, you got to live with it and hit a good one the next time. With my short game, any time I'm inside of 60 yards I'm horrible. So I hit a lot of good drives that come to no fruition for me in terms of positive performance.
I'm a great scrambler, so when I hit a bad shot I usually recover better because I'm in a lot of bad shot zones. But, anyway, I think it's all a metaphor of life. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned by young people through athletics and playing sports. I think that's why, you know, promoting high school football, young people playing in youth programs is very important, and a responsibility and obligation that we all have.
I was really disappointed when we voted as an SEC coaching group at our SEC meetings about the head coaches coming off the road and recruiting because we're all afraid somebody's talking to somebody or doing something somebody else isn't or whatever.
The number one reason I like to go out in the spring, it's the one time where you can go show the players and the coaches that what they do is important and you're interested enough to be there and watch 'em. I think that's a responsibility and an obligation we all have because it's promoting high school football. We need to do that. That's a part of our responsibility: To promote our game so that we continue to have people participating and learning how to be successful through our game.
Q. What do you think the biggest misconception is about Nick Saban?
COACH SABAN: I don't know. That's one you should ask my wife (smiling). She says I have a huge blind spot. I'm sure you've heard that one, right? What you think you are compared to how you're perceived to be. She said mine's as wide as the Grand Canyon.
It would be hard for me to answer that question. I think she could answer it much better than I do.
I think probably the biggest misconception about me is I've never adapted very well to the position that I'm in. I'm a country boy who grew up in West Virginia and pumped gas from the time he was 10 years old until he graduated from high school. Made a dollar an hour providing service to other people, cleaning windows, checking oil, changing tires. All right?
To me I'm still that way, but maybe sometimes I don't realize that. Sometimes the things I say mean a lot more than what I would intend them to be. Sometimes, because I'm a little bit shy, maybe that's misinterpreted as not being very outgoing. But I try my best, and I'm getting better and I'm trying to improve every day. Anybody out there that can give me any help, I'd welcome it. Thank you (smiling).
Q. I wanted to ask you about the media guide, recruiting media guide. You're on the cover and on the back. There's no players anywhere. I daresay that's the only media guide in the country with that. Is that a philosophical statement by you?
COACH SABAN: I didn't really make that decision. I would really rather have the players on there, to be honest with you. I can promise you after this first year, which I guess we're promoting the program that we bring, the positive energy that we try to bring to the program, that's something that is going to be the focus and emphasis in the future.
It's not philosophical on my part. I didn't even make that decision. The first time I saw the media guide was yesterday. They can certainly find some better looking people than what they put on there, I can tell you that. It doesn't do our program justice.
Q. What kind of philosophy do you have in scheduling non conference games? Are you going to have input in this?
COACH SABAN: Well, we're going to have input. Our schedule's set for at least 95% of what happens in the next five or six years, I guess. Philosophically, and I know there's a debate and a dilemma on this all the time, but we have a very difficult league. It's tough from top to bottom. If you're going to have success in the league, it's difficult to play a tough out of conference schedule.
But maybe it's from being at Michigan State for 10 years. We always played Notre Dame. We always played somebody out of the league in one of our three non conference games that gave us a national recognition, prominence, whatever you want to call it. I still philosophically believe that's important.
I am hopeful that we can try to find one opponent each year that we can do that. The thing with Florida State this year, even though they have a great program, all that, I think is healthy for the SEC. I think it's healthy for our program at the University of Alabama.
We're trying to work something possibly for next year, then '08 and '09. We do have Georgia Tech in the future, Penn State in the future in some of those years. Philosophically that's what we're trying to do.
One of the things I think would be more beneficial to our league in doing that and, again, this is kind of coming from the Big 10 we didn't start the Big 10 season until like September 20th, the fourth week of the season.
We played our three non conference games right off the bat, all right, which I think is an advantage because if you play a good opponent and you don't have success, your team can continue to improve and you can prove in those three games before you come into league play.
Like this year we play one game, and then we play Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Georgia. Later on in the season, when the players are geared into the SEC, we have non conference games we have to try to play. I think if we change that as a league it would be much more beneficial to all the teams and would benefit us all a little bit and would help scheduling. I think people would be more in tune to playing an opponent early on that was a quality opponent.
But philosophically that's what we're trying to do. I think it's important to kind of get the national exposure. People who have done that give themselves a better opportunity to win and be recognized nationally. With our current system, I think that's important. Now, you got to win those games.
But that's what we're going that's philosophically what we're going to try to accomplish.
Q. I don't know if you've noticed, but pretty much everything you've done this off season has been in the news. Are you looking forward to when the focus will be on players, team, program, that kind of stuff?
COACH SABAN: Absolutely. I think that's what it's all about. It's about the entire program, the people. I think that's what needs to be the focus in the future. We want to try to provide the leadership to help all those people be successful, and we'll certainly do that.
I think as the venue changes to them and their competition, I think that will be the natural thing that will happen relative to our players getting a lot more attention and positive self gratification for what they're trying to accomplish.
Q. Had the Alabama job never opened, would you be somewhere else coaching college football, or would you still be with the Dolphins, and did you bring your dog this time?
COACH SABAN: No, Lizzy is home. This is a different deal. We used to fly over here. Terry and Lizzie came. I don't know how many people were here when I was in one of these rooms and Lizzie followed the maid out, go the in the elevator, came down to this floor, ran up and jumped in my lap.
She still has a pretty prominent position at our house maybe a little more prominent than even mine. But she's not here, and Terry is not here, but doing fine. I appreciate you mentioning it.
Now I forget what your question was (smiling).
Q. Had the Alabama job never opened, would you still be at Miami or would you be coaching college football somewhere else?
COACH SABAN: Well, I never tried to leave Miami, so I wouldn't have tried to leave Miami. I would be at Miami right now. I have never tried to leave anywhere. I never tried to leave LSU.
Sometimes when people are interested and you have opportunities, which I'm sure all of you would look at your profession in a similar fashion, you have to decide whether it's something that you listen to or you don't.
We felt this is one of the better jobs in the country and was an opportunity. When we assessed it after the season, we thought we'd love to get back into college football. That's why we're here.
I don't think there were any other opportunities that would have created any interest on our part.
Q. When Coach Spurrier came back, he said he was a humbled person, kind of appreciated college football a little more. Do you have any of the same feelings at all?
COACH SABAN: Well, you know, I appreciate pro ball, too. It was great competition in that league. There's a lot of great players, a lot of great coaches. Everything's about football. You have an opportunity to learn a lot.
I've always had a tremendous respect for college football, the players who play it, how we can impact them as coaches to help them be successful.
I certainly feel that way, but I think I certainly have a lot of respect for coaches in the NFL who have made a tremendous accomplishment in that league because it's very difficult relative to the parity, the system you have to compete in there, as well.
Q. Given the NCAA rules that keep restricting the amount of time that coaches can spend with kids and spend recruiting kids, the amount of face to face time, does something need to be done with that because you guys are held accountable if your players go off and do something, yet the NCAA keeps restricting the rules that limit your contact and your ability to impact your players?
COACH SABAN: Well, I do think there's a balance somewhere in that. I do think that, A, you need an opportunity to be able to get to know a recruit well enough and talk to enough people about him to make a good our evaluation is about size and speed, athletic ability to play your position, character, intelligence, and attitude.
Well, the character, intelligence, and attitude part of it is more subjective, and you have to be able to do a lot of research relative to people who have associations and time you spend with that particular player getting a feel for what he's like.
When you don't have that, and we don't have it now because the way this whole recruiting calendar has gone, you know, we offer guys when they're juniors. And unless they come and visit our campus, we never have an opportunity to meet them or talk to them or meet their parents or talk to them, to learn what their principles and values are.
You are right, if we ever take someone who embarrasses themselves, their family, and our program, we're responsible for that.
I also feel like we've made a lot of progress, even though we're not allowed to spend a lot of time with the players once we get them on campus. I think a lot of progress has been made through the years relative to programs you can have that can enhance the development of players, whether it's a peer intervention type program where you address behavior issues, whether it's drugs, alcohol, agents, gambling, spiritual development, how you treat the opposite sex, macho man type stuff, that you educate and try to get players to try to respond to and react to a little better and with a little more maturity so you can minimize the issues.
You don't have to do that personally as a coach. You can affect life skills programs, things like that, that can be effective in those areas. So I do feel like we made a tremendous amount of progress in those areas, because just a few years back we didn't have a lot of that kind of stuff.
Q. The spring practice in Tuscaloosa that I saw looked very familiar to me after covering you for five years. Is there a significant area in your process or system that has been tweaked in the last couple of years? If so, can you elaborate on how that evolved?
COACH SABAN: You know, I think probably technically, from a football standpoint, there's probably been more changes in the philosophical part of how we conduct practice. There's only so many ways to do that. We did learn some things in pro ball. But in pro ball, you know, you practice a little less, you spend a little less time on the field, the season's a lot longer.
If there's anything taken from that it's probably how to keep your players fresh, the importance of that relative to how they can sustain the season.
Q. You talked about realistic expectations before. Since you've been hired, Alabama fans are talking national championship. Is it realistic for them to expect you to bring one to Alabama?
COACH SABAN: Well, I think if you just assess, we had a 6 and 7 team last year. You know who's coming back. You know what starters. We're going to win with people and our ability to develop those people to their full potential.
Our success has always been relative to the team of people that we've assembled around us, not necessarily what we've done. I think that's important. I'm talking about players, coaches and everybody who contributes to the success of the program. That's something that we're going to work to build.
What's always been my philosophy is where are we today and what do we need to do today to improve and get better, and our focus is always on improving. The quality of people, the quality of talent, the coaching methodology that we use to try to develop that talent, the togetherness, the people who can help develop that kind of team chemistry that's going to help you be successful.
There's no waving a wand and making all that happen. But we work hard and go from where we are right now to try to get to where we want to be. There's no real formula for what the timetable to do that is.
But we're going to try to stay focused on the process and not get hung up on the frustration that when you have high expectations and it doesn't happen immediately, how that can affect your performance.
You know, I'm just going to say this to everybody. I talk about it all the time. But, you know, in 1986, a priest gave me a book called The Road Less Traveled. It's a spiritual development. Great book. You ought to read it. Spiritual development, positive attitude book. Priest gives it to me at a banquet. I take it home, I open it up, and the first line in the book says, Life is difficult.
I'm thinking I got a crazy priest here that gave me this book. Give me a positive attitude, spiritual development book, and the first line is a negative statement. But when you read the whole book, it was about if you have if you think things are going to be difficult, if you're willing to work and invest your time in something, you think it's going to be hard, then when you do have bumps in the road, all right, you're going to have a more positive attitude about overcoming those things.
If you think everything is going to be easy, then every time something goes wrong you're going to have a tremendous amount of frustration and you're not going to respond to it properly and you're probably not going to be able to continue to improve.
That book, probably as much as anything, developed my philosophy about how to manage and handle expectations. All right? I'm talking about relative to getting the results that you want.
Hey, we want to win. We want our expectations to be to win. All right? But we want to do the things that we need to do to give our players the best opportunity to do that every day as we make progress toward that.
Q. Do you feel better about your defensive front seven after the spring, a position that's generally regarded as thin? You had some player arrests earlier this month. What is the latest there? I don't think you've spoken publicly about that.
COACH SABAN: I've been speaking about it all day today. I'm surprised it took y'all this long to ask about it (looking at his watch).
First of all, we did make some progress and improvement in the front seven. We don't have a lot of depth at that position. We don't have a lot of size. You know, we're going to have to adapt the way we do things probably to be able to persevere this year.
But I think the most important thing is we continue to make progress and improve, get our players a little bit more comfortable with their ability to execute on a consistent basis. It's a new system for them as well and we made quite a few mistakes trying to learn that system throughout the spring, and that's a part of process.
From a player standpoint, you know, discipline to me is not punishment. Discipline is what can I do to change someone's behavior to make them better. It's the same approach that I would use at home with my two children. You know, we can punish them, have no effect on what they do, how they change their behavior. Or if we take something significant away from them that is meaningful, educate them on how to do it correctly, we probably have a chance to get better results.
We will handle all discipline internally with our team. It will not be a public deal. All right? These players have been given things they need to do, and they are doing them. If they do them properly, learn from their mistakes, improve as people, then they won't face any suspensions or anything that will affect their ability to perform on the field.
However, if they don't do those things, then the consequences could affect their ability to represent the University of Alabama on the football field.
Q. How aware are you of the backlash that was created in Louisiana when you took the job, and has anything filtered back to you, anything you thought was funny or interesting from the people of Louisiana, anything that was said?
COACH SABAN: You know, I'm very aware of all the things that happened. One of our ladies, administrative assistants, who worked for us at LSU who went to a wedding in Baton Rouge got her tires slashed at the wedding. So I think we're very aware of the backlash; live it every day.
I absolutely hate to see people on my staff who we care about, love, and want to see have success have to be penalized, you know, for that.
But at the same time, I can't answer that question any differently than what I've already answered it. We have respect and admiration for the people in the state of Louisiana. What was accomplished there at LSU was special to us. We have respect for the institution and the people who are there now, the players that have represented the program there that we have had involvement with in the past, and would do anything to help any of them be successful.
We have no ill feelings towards anybody. It was not our intention to create any of this by leaving there. It was not a personal thing to us. It was strictly a professional decision. When we left LSU it wasn't personal. We thought it was professional. We learned about ourselves, made a mistake in terms of what we did, in terms of what we want to do, where we feel we should be, and you can't go back.
I mean, there was no opportunity for me to go back to LSU. This was a great opportunity that we had at the University of Alabama. We chose it. It wasn't personal. It wasn't meant to hurt or harm anyone at LSU.
Now, I can't say that any better, any more, whatever. I'd like for somebody to record it and we just push the button and go from there. How's that? I'm just kidding (smiling).
Q. Is it fair or unfair that every time you see a story on intercollegiate athletics your salary comes up, like the poster child for excess. There's the national image that Alabama was willing to do anything to buy a national championship, so they paid a guy $4 million a year. How do you look at that?
COACH SABAN: Well, I actually took a pay cut. Do you put that part in there?
You know, I don't think what I do is about money, to be honest with you. It really isn't. You know, I started coaching as a GA and didn't make anything. Loaded trucks at Roadway Express at night. My wife worked in a registrar's office so she could go to school part time and graduate. I worked at Coca Cola, drove a Coke truck in the summertime so she could go to school in full time in the summertime so I could be a GA so I could coach.
I burned up a clutch in that truck every summer. The mechanic said, This is not a footrest. I had those experiences. I worked for $8,000 a year for a long time. Went about coaching and recruiting the same way I do now. I love teaching. I love being with the players.
It's not about money for me. All right? I really enjoy it. We've tried to give back to the community through our Nick's Kids Foundation. We made a significant contribution through the University of Alabama. We will continue to do that.
I don't feel like I'm totally responsible for where this whole salary thing has gone, and I think that it will continue to go there in the future relative to what happens in the NFL and how the trickle effect comes down into college football.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach Saban.
COACH SABAN: Thank you. We look forward to seeing you throughout the season this year. We certainly appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
Center Antoine Caldwell:
On the media attention surrounding head coach Nick Saban:"It is a little more intense than recent years. It's not as bad as it is here, but there have been a lot more cameras in Tuscaloosa than last year."
On the difference between Nick Saban and Mike Shula:"Coach Saban is really intense. He is fiery, but he is also genuine. If you have a problem, you can go to him and he will sit down with you in his office and talk to you. He comes off as intense, and he is on the field, but he is really genuine."
On the off-season conditioning program:"It was tough. He made you toughen up mentality. We shed some pounds and got tough physically. But we focused on the mental aspect of it.
On the changes in the offense:"Coach Shula's offense and Coach Saban's offense are really similar. It has a few more spread-option plays involved. But it is designed to get the ball in the playmakers hands. That makes it similar in that we have the same people to run the offense."
On quarterback John Parker Wilson:"John Parker in really intense. He is probably the most focused and intense quarterback I have ever been around. He is always focused on ways to improve his game. And he is really intense on getting everything just right and playing to the best of his ability."
Defensive Back Simeon Castille:
On the summer workout program:"You didn't really have a choice: you either finished or you finished. They wouldn't let you quit. There was a lot of running. One of things they want us to learn is that you have to outwork your opponent, so they would simulate a lot of that in training. I definitely think it will pay off."
On Coach Nick Saban's background with defense and cornerbacks:"