On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever...

le 14 de juillet 2008
Happy Bastille Day!

"On a clear day, you can see forever..."

True enough from atop La Tour Eiffel en Paris, http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/ and especially in one of my all-time favorite films, 1956's Funny Face, strarring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson (See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050419/ for info and http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3499137024/tt0050419 for great photo!)

But as this delicious and interesting post Thursday by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's Anthony Man on their Broward Politics blog makes clear below, it's also true from atop Broward County Govt.'s HQ at 115 S. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale.
From interim County Administrator Bertha Henry's office, it's apparently nothing but blue skies -and green lights!

This attitude certainly explains a lot around here!
With friends like this...

Most of today I'll be down at the Circuit Courthouse on Flagler Street at the trial of Norman Braman v. Miami-Dade County, Ciudad de Miami y Los Marlins.

I'd planned on being there Friday, taking some notes and photos for les blogs, but something came up. Given what happened with the delay, I lucked out.

Happy Bastille Day!
Apropos of the French holiday today, over the weekend on FOX Movie Channel, I finally saw the non-musical 1952 film version of Les Misérables, starring Michael Rennie as Jean Valjean and Robert Newton as Inspector Javert. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044907/

Por aujourd'hui, I'm going under my nom de guerre, Laurent.

"On a clear day, you can see forever..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rSA0Va-xTQ Barbra Streisand at her best!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066181/
La Babs est magnifique!!!
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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward Politics blog
July 10, 2008

Something to think about when you're stuck at a traffic light in Broward County: the government believes the signals are timed
Posted by Anthony Man at 10:15 AM

Broward County has a $3.5 billion annual budget. But it hasn't come up with the dough to synchronize the traffic lights, so taxpayers can save time, gasoline, and wear and tear on their cars.

The reason, perhaps, is that at the top of Broward government, it isn't seen as an issue.

The view from county government headquarters is that the lights are synchronized.

It just doesn't seem that way to drivers who travel at the speed limit along many major streets and get stuck at light after light even when there is hardly any other traffic around.

To see the rest of the post, see: http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2008/07/something_to_think_about_when.html#more

Is South Beach too hot for athletes? No, just dumb ones.

SouthBeachHoosier relishes the opportunity to connect some dots on an issue raised by this recent Sun-sentinel story that allows him to finally use, for the first time ever, the famous remark attributed to notorious bank robber Willie Sutton and his rationale for robbing banks: because that's where the money is.

Similarly, the reason why so many athletes are arrested in South Florida or, like Michael Vick at MIA, detained but not arrested- is because of, in no particular order, that's where the sun, the fun and the women are. That's the list!
Honestly, it's not like they're going to be hanging out at the casinos in Hallandale Beach, though Dontrelle lives lives over at the Hard Rock Casino condos in Hollywood.


For comments of bemused and irritated Sun-Sentinel readers, see: http://www.topix.net/forum/source/south-florida-com/TJDRIPJA7BRU7VLDO

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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-flspsouthbeacharrests15nbjul15,0,1476657.story?coll=sofla_home_util

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Is South Beach too hot for athletes?
By Michael Cunningham
July 15, 2007


MIAMI BEACH

The South Beach wine-and-dine is a standard recruiting tool for South Florida teams trying to woo players.


But now some agents and Heat coach Pat Riley are telling their players to stay away from South Beach in light of recent athlete-police confrontations.


Since spring 2006, at least 11 athletes have been arrested in Miami Beach's famed party district. That includes the June 23 arrest of former Dolphins defensive tackle Fred Evans and the December DUI charge against Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis. (Evans and Willis have pleaded not guilty).


In eight of the 11 arrests, police allege the athletes failed to heed their orders. It's doubtful the player clashes with cops will stop athletes from enjoying the popular destination, but some of their advisers wish players would find another place to party.


"I cringe when I hear my clients are going down there," said agent Mark Bartelstein, who represents about 40 NBA players. He said he tells them to avoid South Beach because he believes in some cases police "mishandled and mistreated" athletes.


Heat coach and President Pat Riley also indirectly raised questions about the Miami Beach police. Riley immediately suspended guard Robert Hite after a DUI arrest in January but, after charges were dropped against Hite, Riley didn't discipline forward James Posey for the same charges in April.


In explaining the different approaches, Riley said he'd made a mistake with Hite and wouldn't decide on any discipline for Posey until he got the "real, real" facts. Police said Hite's blood-alcohol level was well below the legal limit when he was arrested.


Posey has said he wasn't drunk or driving.


"The police, they're watching, they know who's there and you're driving away and you're putting yourself in jeopardy," Riley said recently. "We talk to our guys more now than ever about it."Agent Chubby Wells' client, NBA center Dale Davis, scuffled with police and was arrested last year but later was acquitted by a jury. Wells said he's still considering filing a lawsuit over the incident.


"I am not saying that people don't do anything bad or that all cops are bad," Wells said. "These athletes travel all over ... and it doesn't happen over and over in those places."


Sgt. Bobby Hernandez, the Miami Beach police spokesman, says overzealous police aren't the reason for the string of athlete arrests. Instead, Hernandez said the unique layout of South Beach and the strict public nuisance laws can put athletes at odds with officers.


There's a better chance athletes will come into contact with police at South Beach as opposed to other hot spots, Hernandez said, because it's a relatively small area. Most of the action in South Beach is within a roughly 40-square block area.


Also, Hernandez said Miami Beach police arrest for minor offenses more than cops in other cities because many bars and nightclubs are near residential areas. So loud music, public drinking or blocking traffic can affect locals who don't wish to be part of the party.


"We're a beach community that has to maintain a balance between the residents and the partyers," Hernandez said. "One way to control that is enforcing laws that seem to be minor and go overlooked other places but that affect quality of life tremendously. ... We can't have people playing loud music in the middle of the street at 4 a.m."


It's under that kind of circumstance that athletes have quarreled with Miami Beach police in the past 15 months. Most of those police reports include allegations that athletes were arrested when they didn't follow police instructions.


In May 2006, police arrested then-NBA player Awvee Storey because they said he blocked traffic and wouldn't move when told. Washington Wizards teammate Gilbert Arenas was arrested after police said he approached them to question their handling of Storey and then wouldn't get back in his car when instructed.


Those arrests, as well as that of NFL player Santonio Holmes, came amid a police crackdown on revelers during the South Beach hip-hop party on Memorial Day Weekend. Prosecutors later dropped the charges against all three players, who made $250 donations to a police assistance fund.


In April, Posey was arrested after police said he failed to move his car from a traffic lane when instructed by an officer; his case is pending. Former Panthers goalie Ed Belfour's incident worsened when police said he refused to leave a popular club; he later agreed to a plea bargain.


Police say Evans, the former Dolphin, resisted after they ordered him to leave a taxi. Police arrested NFL player Dhani Jones when he allegedly wouldn't stop dancing in front of a club (a disorderly conduct charge was later dropped).


Thomas Julin, a First Amendment attorney in Miami, said citizens have a Constitutional right to question police action as long as they do not interfere with officers' efforts to maintain order.


"If the athlete is questioning the police and thinks they are being too rash, and is arrested just for that, you definitely have the potential that the officer is acting in violation of the person's rights," he said. "But it's unusual that the First Amendment comes into play in those kinds of arrests you see on [South Beach]."


Police said Davis, the NBA center, refused to leave a hotel when asked repeatedly, accused police of targeting him because he's black and then walked toward police in what they said was an "aggressive manner." Police shocked the 6-foot-11, 250-pound Davis with a stun gun and arrested him.


In December, a jury found Davis not guilty on counts of assault and resisting an officer without violence. Davis told the Associated Press "justice was served." Wells, his agent, said police were too aggressive."You really have to be careful there because people have their eye on you," Wells said in an interview.


Bartelstein, the agent for Storey and Posey, said he's "not trying to lay all the blame on the authorities, because people have to take responsibility," but his experience has shown police to be unfair to athletes."


I think there have been cases where athletes have done wrong but also a lot of cases where guys were taken advantage of," Bartelstein said.


That's not true, Sgt. Hernandez said, adding that police "don't discriminate on who gets arrested and who doesn't." He said, if anything, Miami Beach cops are tolerant of party people, but that circumstances like the time, place and manner in which they party dictate the police response.


Hernandez said the attitude of suspects toward police matters, too. His "no-brainer" advice for athletes and other visitors to South Beach is to do as told by police.


"You are not going to win that argument with a cop out on the street," he said. "You might win later on in court; you might find justice or maybe even win a lawsuit. But that night, you are not going to win."


Staff Writer Ira Winderman contributed to this report.

Michael Cunningham can be reached at mcunningham@sun-sentinel.com.


Copyright © 2007, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

M.I.A. State Senator Mandy Dawson is still alive, but still not straight with constituents

SouthBeachHoosier asks the following public policy question:
Why is the South Florida media so relatively easy on female elected officials who don't show up for work and shirk their responsibility to constituents?
Quick, what recent health situation affecting a local elected female official does this Mandy Dawson case closely (but not exactly) resemble, complete with softball treatement from The Miami Herald?
To be honest, it was one that had me completely dumb-founded, since much like Dawson's case, below -which Linda Kleindeinst does a great job of deconstructing and destroying here alibis- when it was first revealed olast year, it showed that the official put herself above her constituents' interests in having an effective, elected person representing them, not staff.
Is she paid per diem from taxpayers when she's NOT there -in Tallahassee- in person but there "in the spiritual sense?"
Send guesses to southbeachhoosier@gmail.com
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-flfdawson0630nbjun30,0,541902.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Florida state Sen. Dawson speaks out on her long record of absences
By Linda Kleindienst and Gregory Lewis
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
June 30, 2007

TALLAHASEE -- Mandy Dawson, who missed more sessions of the Florida Senate this year than any of her colleagues, seemed to have vanished from the public eye.
The Fort Lauderdale Democrat, whose district stretches from Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach Gardens, was absent for more roll call votes this year than any of her fellow senators and skipped the entire three-day special session on property tax reform this month.
But Friday evening, Dawson spoke by cell phone and e-mail with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. She suffers from a degenerative spinal disease and has already had two operations to relieve the pain. Now, she said, she is worried she might also have cancer.
"I've been down for most of three months. I deal with pain constantly," she said.
Since the Legislature adjourned its regular session May 4, few political colleagues had seen or heard from the three-term senator. Before and during the session, Dawson frequently missed committee and floor votes as well as meetings of the Broward and Palm Beach County legislative delegations and the Senate Democratic caucus. There was never a public explanation to her constituents or fellow lawmakers of where she was.
Dawson, 48, said she has been staying at a friend's house in Fort Lauderdale but had communicated with Senate President Ken Pruitt and said, "He knew I was in pain."
She said doctors earlier in the week found a spot on an X-ray of her hip. Women in her family have a history of cancer, she said.
"I'm spaced out, worried and I've been introverted," she said.
Until Friday, Dawson had not responded to numerous interview requests made to her office staff, and even longtime friends and political allies said they had no idea where she was. No one answered the door at her apartment in the Dorsey Riverbend section of northwest Fort Lauderdale earlier in the week.
Dawson has been plagued with health and attendance problems during her nine years in the Senate and has often cited pain as the reason for the absences. She said Friday that she has no intention of relinquishing office.
"Why would I think about resigning?" said Dawson, who is term-limited out of the Senate in 2008.
This year the full Senate has met 26 times, including four times during a January special session to address rising property insurance rates, twice during a mid-June special session on property tax relief and 20 times during the regular 60-day session.
Dawson missed the call-to-order roll call for nine, or more than one-third, of those sessions. She also was absent for three afternoon sessions of the Senate.
Senators can call or write the Senate president asking that an absence be excused. Dawson was officially excused four times. On April 13, she said she had a family emergency. On April 30, it was for an undisclosed personal matter, and she gave no specific reason for missing the property tax special session.
While she did attend every meeting of the Health Policy Committee she leads, she missed between one-third to one-half of the meetings of other panels she is on, including the Banking and Insurance Committee, the Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee and the Criminal Justice Committee.
Speaking in an interview earlier, Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, said he has no plans to remove her as chairwoman of the Senate Health Policy Committee.
"Her constituents are not being unserved," said Pruitt. "While she's not there in the physical sense, she's there in the spiritual sense."
Last year, Dawson missed several weeks of committee meetings and legislative proceedings as she recovered from surgery on her spine, her second operation since 2002. On her return to the Capitol, she wore a neck brace and navigated the hallways in a wheelchair.
Her past issues include public reprimands by then-Senate President Toni Jennings for chronic tardiness and absences in 2000, an agreement to undergo rehabilitation to avoid prosecution on a 2002 criminal charge that she altered a prescription for pain-killers, and a 2005 public reprimand by Senate colleagues for soliciting money from lobbyists to pay for a 10-day trip to South Africa for herself and a companion she refused to name.
Dawson said she is trying to deal with her pain without narcotics. "I don't want to go down that road again," she said. "So my options are to go to bed or keep moving. I am dragging my leg. I'm worried. I really am."

Lynette Norris of the Tallahassee Bureau contributed to this report.
Linda Kleindienst can be reached at lkleindienst@sun-sentinel.com or 850-224-6214.
Copyright © 2007, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Nick Saban the Interloper

After Dave Wannstedt was finally fired, it was hard to find a reasonably sane person down here who didn't agree with the-then conventional wisdom that the Dolphins were lucky to have outbid numerous NFL competitors in grabbing LSU head football coach Nick Saban, just as he was finally willing to make the jump up to the next coaching level.
That Saban was "The Answer," someone who'd help turn the Dolphins around and pull them out of their longstanding doldrums, became, overnight with his hiring, a 'given.'
That there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel went the unspoken assumption.
But as the maxim goes, "be careful what you wish for," since now we recognize that, thanks to Saban's questionable coaching strategy and personnel moves, it was a locomotive barrelling down on us in the tunnel, not a light out of the tunnel, and for our troubles, we just experienced two completely bad years for nothing, because the train engineer bailed out on us.
Now, with the 20/20 vision that hindsight always affords, we recognize that we were all, to differeing degrees, unwitting test subjects in an uncontrolled case study of community hysterical amnesia. Not like that's a first for South Florida!
Now, though, we all see Nick Saban for what he is, and undoubtedly always will be: a very smart but humorless football coach whose particular Achilles heel is that he's not just a belittling lying opportunist, but also chockablock with personality complexes of yet undetermined origins, complexes that will surely get their deserved notoriety once his track record becomes better known nationally while he toils at the University of Alabama.
Fortunately, the Crimson Tide fans will get a taste of their own medicine: they wanted him in the 'worst' way, and that's exactly how they'll get him. In the worst way. Saban's personality quirks, and the consistently shoddy way he treated people who were NOT high-profile folks within the Dolphins organization, like injured player Will Poole for instance, but also including office staffers, will someday become "common knowledge" nationally.
It surely will become a staple of CBS-TV's future football telecasts featuring Alabama during slow-moving third quarters. Then the real debate will begin: are Saban's extra-large bag of personality quirks and lies, like Terrell Owens', ever worth the trouble?
That's a question for another time in the future for most of the country, even while South Florida tries to recover from the petty tyranny of "the Nick-tator," while new Dolphin head coach -and former Hoosier QB and head coach- Cam Cameron continues to charm South Florida media and Dolphin fans in the present by simply being honest and forthright, a nice change of pace after Saban's neverending mendacity.
(I'll be posting my own "Six Degrees" connection to Cam Cameron in just a few days, which in my case, is or more accurately was, just one person removed while I was in Bloomington.)

Yesterday, the Miami Herald's Israel Gutierrez, in perhaps the funniest AND most truthful thing that's been published in the Herald all year, summed it up quite succinctly.
His column precedes excerpts from an email that I sent last December 27th about Saban to some knowledgable folks I know up in the DC area, who usually never miss a thing -but hadn't yet heard about the Poole fiasco.
It's just Saban being Saban.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/632/story/114559.html

Miami Herald
May 22, 2007
Local recruits hold no grudge toward Saban
By ISRAEL GUTIERREZ

This can't possibly sit well with parents.
Knowing that Nick Saban, a unanimously hated figure in South Florida, has come back to town to get his grubby hands on your kids, trying to convince them to move 750 miles to Tuscaloosa, Ala. He will spend anywhere between zero and four years teaching them the value of cowardice, the practice of not following through on your commitments and the lost art of telling bold-faced lies in front of large groups of people.
Yet here he was last week, strutting back through the scene of the crime, hopping from Northwestern to Krop to Dillard to Chaminade-Madonna on high school recruiting trips, having the audacity to move on with his life and his new job in a place where the level of disgust for him hasn't weakened even a little in the four months since he took his tired act to Alabama. The Dolphins haven't even played a preseason game since he bailed for the cash-lined safety net provided by the Crimson Tide, and here he was, throwing his new job in everyone's face, probably sporting a ''Got Twelve?'' T-shirt under his dress shirt that brags about Alabama's tradition-rich football program.

NOT SO FAST
No kid in his right mind would fall for a pitch from this guy, right? Not this soon after he became the biggest villain in South Florida sports history, right? No high school coach would push his players in the direction of a man actually wielding a pitchfork, would he?
Wrong, apparently.
Saban might have disgraced the position of coach of your beloved Miami Dolphins, then somehow turned that into a lucrative college coaching position and left trails of deceit and insincerity the entire way out the door. But to these Division I prospects, he's just another big-time college coach offering a playing opportunity on a big stage. And to these high school coaches, Saban is just another man trying to do right by those kids for the next four years.
One horrific experience with a professional football team isn't going shape their opinions on the coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

NO BIG DEAL
''Those kids, they didn't have no hatred toward him because of the Dolphins,'' Dillard coach Keith Franklin said about Saban's visit to his school. ``To be honest, there are a lot of kids who don't even like the Dolphins.''
Fans or not, there would seem to be an easy argument against Saban for student-athletes who witnessed firsthand what he did with the Dolphins. Loyalty and integrity would seem to be principles high school athletes look for in a coach they are about to commit four years to. Saban is hardly a man oozing those qualities these days. It can't possibly be easy to trust a man who just duped an entire sports community and is somehow convinced he did nothing wrong.
But there are no such judgments being made on the recruiting trail -- not even down here. Maybe it's because these students and their coaches have come to terms with an idea that is commonly tossed around in their world: There is no loyalty in sports.
Why worry about Saban's integrity and the possibility he will leave this job, too, when not even the most honorable of coaches can truly promise they will be around for the next four years?
Northwestern High School coach Roland Smith was recruited to the University of Miami by then-coach Jimmy Johnson, who was only around two more years before leaving for the NFL.
Krop coach Rick DiVita sees loyalty and commitment as two-way streets.
''The baseball coach at FIU [Danny Price] was the head baseball coach for 28 years and he got fired [Saturday],'' DiVita said. ``That upsets me more as a coach. Nobody's loyal to you.''
So when it comes to Saban, they will overlook his disastrous exit from the Dolphins. And the kids?
''I hope they're not shallow enough to judge somebody because he made a job choice and moved on,'' DiVita said.
Added Smith: ``You can't fault the man for following his heart.''
So as much as it might disgust Dolphins fans that Saban was back in town, parading in front of high school athletes and selling himself and his latest university to them, it's not worth getting upset about. Because not only do the athletes and coaches still accept Saban, some of them still believe he actually has a beating heart.
If it's any consolation, Saban wasn't welcome onto the St. Thomas Aquinas campus. That has less to do with Saban and everything to do with athletic director and football coach George Smith's disagreement with the way Alabama treated its previous coach Mike Shula, but it's a small victory.
Take that, Saban.

© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company
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the aforementioned email from last December, a few days following a Dolphins' Monday Night Football encounter:

"...I say that because I know the AP version of the story you guys would probably read in the Washington Post would necessarily neglect the abject sense of ridiculousness about this latest case of Saban's poor treatment of underlings, morphing into someone from within the Dolphins organization finally deciding that a MNF perch was the perfect venue to drop-the-dime on Saban and the team's funk behind his back.
What goes around goes around, indeed!
Apparently, those bad feelings have been festering for weeks and months, from the absurd to the sublime, with example number one usually being Saban's policy that makes his assistant coaches veritable hostages, unable to speak to the press about anything.
(Such a contrast with the Shula years, glory and not-so glorious years, when Carl Taseff, Bill Arnsbarger, Monte Clark and all the others were always available at some point in the week to help offer some insight to Shula's thinking or coaching technique thru the local media so that the Dolphin fans would have a better idea of what was going on and not be so anxious.)
There are apparently other examples of him undermining people, but they have yet to become public.

In many ways, it reminds me of Mark Maske's lousy, time-delayed coverage of the Orioles at the Washington Post for years, when the late Johnny Oates was Manager, where Oriole fans didn't find out what was really going on with the team until the spring training after he'd been fired. For instance, how Oates and his pitching coach continually undermined the younger pitchers' confidence, with all sorts of stupid comments and actions that only made a shaky staff more insecure.
(As if the Orioles needed more probelems while competing within the same division as the Red Sox and the Yankees, and their loyal fans who make Camden Yards their second home when they came into town, much to Peter Angelos' neverending consternation, as they lead cheers for these teams and drown out loyal Oriole fans, who continue to turn out in lesser numbers every year for a bad product.)

Apparently, Saban's sort of self-absorbed philosophy, month-after- month, with no tangible positive results to show for it on the field, the only result that counts, has finally led some folks behind the scenes within the Dolphin organization to become so upset that they actually hope Saban fails, and say as much to local media.
Yes, the South Florida sports media, the usual suspects cowed by Saban even more than the team's fans, who, par for the course and what experience has taught us about them, kept some of the most shameful and egregious examples of Saban's ire and quirky behavior to themselves, lest they write or talk about it about it and suffer the 'slings and arrows' of Saban's 'outrageous fortune.'
The latter sounds very much like the bad old days last year with Hoosier Nation, under Mike Davis, even though everyone knew he was personally, a very good and classy guy.
The idea that both Saban and Mike Davis are now in the same state, somehow seems delicious irony to this Hoosier!

In an ideal world, equipped with your office answering machine phone number, I'd have at least been able to provide you all some quality/contentious audio clips to hear for yourself, while you prepped your dissection of NFL Weekend # 16.
But since I didn't have it, I couldn't even leave thirty seconds of nuggets on the answering machine, assuming it would give me that long. Here's why I mention this.

My usual routine after a Dolphins game is to throw in a blank cassette and start rolling once WQAM AM-560 Radio's 'Real post-game' coverage begins, hosted by Orlando Alzugaray
http://www.wqam.com/index.php?page=328 and former Giant & Hurricane linebacker Michael Barrow, who are both extremely more knowledgeable and opinionated than these types of football postgame shows usually are around the country.
I like them because they are also MUCH more -when appropriate- insightful/critical of the Dolphins' players and organization, game in and game out, than the Dolphins' current official broadcast partner, WAXY, AM-790.

Usually, about 30-45 minutes after the game, once the players and coaches have said their peace and beat a hasty retreat from the locker room, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's terrific Dolphin beat reporter Alex Marvez comes on and connects the dots on lot of things you wouldn't have known while the game was going on, that, in almost every case, the network TV talking heads doing the game never mentioned -or knew in the first place.

(Did you happen to catch ESPN's Mike Tirico's two rather obvious errors last night? Nobody's 100%, of course, but these ad lib comments were such obvious screw-ups that I was momentarily taken aback, since he's usually on top of things.
Tirico mentioned that the only Dolphin father-son pairing in history was former DL Randy Crowder and current LB Channing Crowder, forgetting that -HELLO!- Brian Griese was once here not too many months ago.)

Well, this time, Alex really outdid himself, providing an account of the Steve Young-Daunte Culpepper exchange that was very un-like the Herald's coverage that morning, which seemed even worse than usual because it was both a MNF game and a holiday.
Alex on the other hand, calls it pretty much as I usually see it, so I take his
take more seriously than anyone else's.

Last week, Marvez was the first reporter in South Florida to give Dolphin fans the unvarnished truth behind the horribly embarrassing Will Poole publicity disaster, mentioning on the WQAM post-game show, minutes after the 21-0 loss to the Bills, linking it in Dolphin fans' minds as just the latest in a never ending series of Saban screw-ups: Poole's release is news to him

Since Saban subscribes to the Bill Parcells philosophy that says that coaches should be able to pick the groceries they want and cook the meals themself, the fault in the Poole story resides with Saban alone, adding to the lore of his errors of judgment and signs of NFL imbecility.
I wonder if Saban will develop a fear of red hankerchiefs once he gets to Alabama?

Do you remember how I commented in a recent email how things under Saban are rapidly approaching territory that I thought I'd never see again, i.e. the bad, sad and lean Redskin days under Richie Pettibon?
Well if you do, you'll also remember that I said that despite the criticism of Richie's coaching or bad decision making, even the most ardent -yet-critical- Redskin fan always liked or loved Richie the man. Of that there was never any doubt.
They wanted him to succeed.

Well, judging by the caller phone calls I heard -admittedly, not the scientific standard I usually employ, as I usually cringe myself when I hear an insipid caller comment- I'm starting to think that think even I understated the depth of public anger towards Saban and his simple refusal to learn from past mistakes, since Team Saban never publicly accounts for things than a
fair-minded yet knowledgeable objective observer would have to call him on the carpet for.

Saban has done nothing to endear himself with fans or media, from his refusal to allow his assistants to speak to the media -the Mike Mularkey Protection Act if you ask me- to his inability to project even a scintilla of sincerity, promising on even his own childrens' lives at a press conference that he was telling the truth and not bound for Tuscaloosa.

Alex previewed his own SFSS blog on the radio show by connecting these
interesting dots, which speaks volumes:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/football/pro/dolphins/

December 26, 2006
No news conference for you
For the first time in a decade since I've been covering the team, the Dolphins coach will not hold a news conference the day after a regular-season game.
According to a Dolphins spokesman, the reason a news conference wasn't held today is because Nick Saban's time is more limited than usual because of game-planning responsibilities in a short week, stemming from having to play the Jets on Monday night.
That never kept Jimmy Johnson, Dave Wannstedt or Jim Bates from addressing the media the day after a Monday night game.

SBH

P.S. While down the road in Aventura this afternoon at a nearby Starbuck's , I saw the police escort down Biscayne Blvd. for what I thought at first was Tony Blair, who got into town last night. But it was actually the fabulously tricked out Orange Bowl charter buses escorting the Louisville Cardinals football team.
Not sure if they'll be staying up the street from me at the Westin Diplomat, or whether that will be Wake Forest's home away from home.
Should be a great game!

Omar Kelly's sad reminder: U-M player Bryan Pata's murder still unsolved

Go to the Sun-Sentinel website, below, to see some really touching photos as well as a photo gallery of Bryan, his family and U-M teammates, and how they've tried to honor him and keep his spirit alive in them.

Sun-Sentinel Hurricanes beat reporter Omar Kelly, never one to shy away from his feelings, shares some additional thoughts on Bryan Pata:
"Bryan was in my thoughts on draft day. While I watched Jon Beason's family celebrate Beason achieving that life altering dream of making it to the NFL I thought about the pain the Pata family was in. Not just on draft day, but every day."
Read the whole entry on Omar's consistently prescient and insightful blog at:
http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/sports_college_hurricanes/

The Sun-Sentinel's up-to-date 'Canes site is at:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/college/hurricanes/
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sfl-sppata07may07,0,3820662.story
UM player's slaying 6 months ago remains unsolved
By Omar Kelly
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
May 7, 2007

NORTH MIAMI ·

Jeanette Pata's world is still turned upside down.

The Haitian immigrant who worked double shifts as a hotel maid to provide for her nine children can no longer work. She barely eats, and according to her 24-year-old twin sons, Edwin and Edrick Pierre-Pata, their mom still wakes up every other night crying, grieving over her youngest child, Bryan Pata, the University of Miami defensive lineman who was murdered six months ago today.

"She's still stuck thinking that Bryan will appear, come peeking out from around the corner. She still hears his voice, and every time it happens it crushes your spirit," said Edwin, the former Florida State tight end.

He had to leave his Tallahassee apartment to talk about his deceased brother because his mother was staying with him for a few days.

Talking about Bryan usually depressed Jeanette, who chokes up when she hears his name or anything about the Hurricanes. She was in Tallahassee because the NFL Draft took place the previous weekend and Jeanette knew all the buzz was going to be too much for her to avoid and handle.

Everyone who knew Bryan, from Miami Central High, knew he spent most of his life working toward and dreaming about the draft weekend. The signing bonus he anticipated was going to allow him to provide for his family, which had moved at least 20 times throughout his childhood because of financial struggles.

But those dreams ended on Nov. 7. An hour after leaving practice, Bryan Pata was murdered outside his Kendall apartment.The fun-loving, 22-year-old criminology major, whose world centered around his large family, football and tricked-out cars, was shot multiple times in the back of his head.

Instead of experiencing the highs and lows of draft weekend, Bryan, a two-year starter who was projected by some NFL Draft analysts as a potential mid-round selection, was buried Nov. 14 in the beige suit he planned to wear to his draft party.

His grave at Dade North Memorial Park lies across from the football field where he and his older brothers, Edwin and Edrick, who also played college football, grew up training, pushing one another to their limits.

Bryan's father, Junior Pierre, manicures the lawn every two weeks. Jeanette makes sure fresh flowers are always present, growing among the stuffed animals, balloons and a football with R.I.P. written on it. Edrick says every time he visits the grave he notices something new one of Bryan's friends has left, and for a moment, he smiles at the thought of how many lives Bryan touched.

The family plans to move him to a tomb 15 feet away when it finishes paying for the plot. The plan is for all the family someday to be buried around him.

Edrick said there's rarely a minute when he doesn't think about Bryan, and he knows he shares that habit with his siblings since the family's Sunday dinners haven't been the same.

A lot of the dinner discussions are about the investigation. Edrick admits he's obsessed with it.

"They have a lot of information, a lot of leads, but they can only tell us part of what's going on," Edwin said. "We try to fill in the other parts, but we've learned we can't do that."

A week ago, investigators told Edrick the case was starting "to heat up" with more leads. But after six months, there's no motive, no suspects and plenty of suspicion, despite the $25,000 reward for a tip leading to an arrest.

Jada Brody, Pata's girlfriend from West Palm Beach, and Dwayne Hendricks, Bryan's UM teammate who also shared the apartment, found his body just off the complex parking lot. According to Edwin, Brody mourned Bryan as much as the family did and has transferred from UM to Clemson.

Three Miami-Dade investigators call occasionally to update the family on the case and any leads. But when the phone calls stop and detectives take a few days to return messages, the Patas admit they become more discouraged.

Miami-Dade police refuse to discuss the investigation or details of Pata's murder.

"In open homicide investigations, we don't make a lot of comments so we don't take the chance of compromising the investigation," said Detective Mary Walters, a spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Police Department. "The need to know could run the risk of jeopardizing the case."

The family hired private investigator Greg Slate, hoping he would lead them to something relevant. But Edwin wasn't pleased with Slate's few discoveries and said Slate hasn't been in touch with the family after being featured in HBO's Real Sports segment about Bryan's murder. Attempts to reach Slate were unsuccessful.

Edwin Pata said if Bryan had died in a car accident or by something health-related, his death wouldn't be so unsettling. He suspects the family would have grieved, remembered and "maybe eventually coped." But with Bryan murdered execution style, the family has had a more difficult time.

Edwin, who graduated from FSU last spring and is working on a master's degree in educational leadership, said the only hope he has for closure is finding the killer.

Edrick has theories that his brother was killed by some element of "organized crime." He bases that off the police questions, and things people have told him, but won't elaborate.

"It was premeditated murder. They plotted on my brother," said Edrick, who played receiver at Division II Virginia Union. "They watched him. Someone knew and studied Bryan to the fullest, to the point where they knew what time he leaves practice, the route he took, when he gets home, where he parks his car."

Edrick pointed out that Pata's Infiniti QX56 SUV, a truck his brother-in-law helped him buy, wasn't stolen. Neither was his jewelry, nor the $700 Bryan had in his pocket that day to pay bills.

"They only wanted to kill Bryan," Edrick said. "In the process, they've destroyed my family."

If you have information about the murder of Bryan Pata, call Crime Stoppers, anonymously, at 305-471-TIPS (8477).

Omar Kelly can be reached at okelly@sun-sentinel.com.
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