Dan Le Batard joined The Herald back in 1990 and is a graduate from the University of Miami. Recognized as one of the top sports columnists today, Dan has covered several of sports' top events and is also a regular correspondent for ESPN.
Ask Dan your questions LIVE on Mondays between 1-2 p.m. in his chat.
Email Dan at dlebatard@miamiherald.com
It is 3 a.m., and I'm standing outside the W hotel on South Beach with a couple of Super cartoons.
To my right, there is a giant partyer. Literally, a giant. He is 6-foot-8, 355 pounds. I can make the argument he is the biggest and most infamous partyer in our celeb-soaked town this week -- certainly the most infamous one in this section of the newspaper. It is hard for someone this large to vanish, but Bryant McKinnie somehow managed it as the only guy dismissed from this year's Pro Bowl because he kept missing obligations without officials knowing how or where to find him. He says, hurt and a little sad, that it was all a terrible misunderstanding.
Do you believe in this religion? In the pure and holy power of Saints?
Stand here and bear witness, humbled servant, at the intersection of Bourbon Street and Canal, and listen to how joyful it sounds and feels when a desperate city finally has its prayer answered.
The talking heads on radio and TV stations are congregated in the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center for their yearly gabfest for Super Bowl XLIV, and there is no telling what kinds of stories will be told.
Did you see what they did? The very moment that the world's largest football party officially began in South Florida for the week? Here they were, at the Pro Bowl, the NFL all-star game, about to start player introductions in a sold-out stadium. This was a celebration. Of football. Of accomplishment. Of themselves. And, one by one, as they emerged from the tunnel to have the moment to themselves, to hear their family names echo at the top of their workplace before a national audience, the 11 University of Miami Hurricanes in the game -- 11! -- did something a bit unusual.
Columnist Dan Le Batard and his brother, David, an internationally acclaimed artist, chronicle Super Bowl week in South Florida.
You know why so many people care about sports in a way that is unreasonable and fanatical? It's not just because of how good games can make us feel. It's because they make us feel, period. Up. Down. And all the spots of "alive" in between.
What if the confession came from Derek Jeter or Cal Ripken Jr.?
One of the beloved guys wrapped in the kind of myth we like to create and applaud, in other words. It could be Michael Jordan or Dwyane Wade or Dan Marino or Tom Brady, too, given how paramount healing is in sports and how prevalent medicine has been around our games the past quarter-century, but let's stick to baseball. And what if the press-conference confessional lacked tone and tears and excuses/rationalizations/lies and was just honest, logical and explanatory?Ihave some writing blind spots.
For example, I have a ``What's the big deal?'' attitude about most of the outrage surrounding our games. Manny Ramirez and Ochocinco and Ron Artest are always sources of joyful comedy for me, not indignation. This gets me called an apologist or a contrarian because I tend to laugh at behavior that upsets many of you, and it undermines my credibility because I too often sound like I'm defending the indefensible.
College sports are so very lopsided.
The famous coach, especially a winning one, has an inordinate amount of the power. He earns more than anyone else on campus. He has a higher profile and paycheck than even his bosses. And any helpless kid who has a complaint is voiceless because the kid's choices are to a) quit in a cave man culture that stigmatizes quitters, b) transfer to another school and sit out an entire year or c) be vocal and risk either being branded a whiner or punished for said whimpering, no matter how justified it might be.
Grandpa, always classy and kind, deserved to leave us with more dignity. He requested just a touch of respect at the end. Pleaded for it, in his own humble way. The family fortune? He built that, from nothing. The family name? He not only made it matter but made it his life's work to represent it with uncommon grace.
Fame?
``I hate it,'' Dennis Rodman says. ``Absolutely hate it.'' Anything about it you like?
Before Allen Iverson and Ron Artest, before Terrell Owens and OchoCinco, before Trick Daddy and Lil Wayne -- before America was quite ready, in other words -- there was championship University of Miami football.
The world Woods entered 13 years ago was one where Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan behaved like rock stars in private, but now The National Enquirer and TMZ have realized how much money there is to be made by disgracing athletes.
The news-gathering landscape has mutated so quickly and so absolutely, at once enhanced and contaminated by the immediacy of everything from texts to Twitter to TMZ, that America's most famous athlete this weekend went from suffering a serious injury in a car accident . . . to suffering a minor injury in a car accident . . . to being ``fine,'' according to his agent . . . to reportedly being unfaithful to his wife . . . to maybe having his face scratched by his angry wife . . . to being rescued by his helpful wife from his crashed car with a golf club . . . to having his car smashed up by his betrayed wife and her golf club . . . to not being any kind of ``fine'' at all.
Florida Marlins Rookie of the Year winner Chris Coghlan is, all at once, eager to share his beliefs but concerned about how they'll be received.
Former Miami Heat player Tim James finds himself in the thick of war, not because he has to be there but because he wants to be there.
Y ou remember him wrapped in so much armor. Muscles. Helmet. Padding. Distrust. The late Sean Taylor was known as one of the most menacing hitters in a violent game. But when the news organizations started putting his fresh face on TV screens in recent days -- no helmet, no scowl, no aura -- you couldn't help but notice this: My God, he looked like such a baby-faced child.
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