Santa won't be visiting the sporting world

By By Stan Torgerson / sports columnist
Dec. 22, 2003
This is not going to be one of those greatly overdone-at-this-time-of-the-year columns about what I wish Santa Claus would bring to various members of the sports world.
Sorry, but where sports are concerned there ain't no Santa Claus.
No coach, player, athletic director, college president or team owner can lie awake nights before Christmas morning wishing, leave cookies and milk in front of the fireplace and wake up the next morning to discover his or her dreams have come true.
Call it cynicism if you wish. I prefer to think of it as reality.
Santa is not going to find a way out of the alleged football recruiting violation mess in which Mississippi State currently finds itself. Dr. Charles Lee, the university president, bought his own present when he acquired Sylvester Croom, whose reputation as a straight arrow should mean that in the future, the only time the school will see representatives of the NCAA hanging around its door is when they are there to present a plaque for winning something.
The old guy in the red suit is not going to supply cash money for 10,000 tickets to every Southern Mississippi game so the athletic department isn't always worrying about making ends meet so they have to go on the road time and time again to play big name opponents in order to earn big money guarantees, an equally big disadvantage. The school is going to have to find their own way to increase its fan base and get rid of the empty seats that are all too common in Hattiesburg. Just winning hasn't seemed to do it. With the sizeable increase of enrollment in recent years the alumni, past and future, must develop the same Saturday excitement found at Oxford and Starkville and show up 30,000 strong, and more, to watch and support their consistently good teams.
Coach Rod Barnes at Ole Miss must perfect a sales pitch that will start attracting Mississippi's best high school basketball players to his campus. One of them has got to be 6-10 or better. It makes no sense to go into SEC play with your post player at only 6-'7 when everyone else has a guy jumping center who looks down at your man literally, if not figuratively. Santa doesn't stockpile those players but there are some around, virtually everywhere that is, except in Oxford. If Rod doesn't find a way to recruit better, someone wearing a plain business suit is liable to tell him he's been a bad boy and forget about giving him a new contract as a present.
The same can be said of James Green at Southern Miss. He needs players and he won't find them sitting on his doorstep Christmas morning.
In the NFL you have to buy what you need to win. Nobody gives presents in that league and it's about time for the New Orleans Saints to do some shopping. They could start with a quarterback who is at least reasonably consistent one game to the next, then purchase defensive help and a wide receiver or two.
Eli Manning has earned his Christmas present, even if it won't arrive until this spring. His performance this past season will result in an upfront position in the pro football draft and more immediate money than most of us will earn in a lifetime. He's a perfect example that if you give you shall also receive. He gave the best he had and will receive his reward.
Critics of BCS aren't going to get what they want either a national playoff. The college presidents, who have given so much ground in recent years, won't budge any further. One president told me a few months ago that coaches' salaries have escalated to a ridiculous level. They're not going to make the sport any more dominant than it already is. They have the funny old-fashioned idea that colleges and universities are primarily educational institutions, so a playoff for the national championship is not in Santa's bag.
Baseball would like Jolly Old St. Nick to keep the New York Yankees from dominating the game in 2004 but they got that last year and the year before so the way things are going that might not be on their gift list this season.
Women's sports aren't likely to get what they wish for either, such as national TV, fans filling the stands for their basketball games, taking their soccer league seriously and newspapers giving them front page publicity. When people pay their money for entertainment, muscle beats cuteness virtually every time. It may not be fair, but who says every package must be worth the same value as the other?
Don't misunderstand. Golf clubs, tennis raquets, jerseys and shoes, footballs, baseballs and bats, all make great and available gifts. But no one has yet figured out how to package wins and losses. You can't buy them although some coaches and owners seem to keep trying.