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Should the Indianapolis Colts hire Jim Tressel as their coach?

Writers from around Tribune Co. discuss whether the Indianapolis Colts should hire former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel as their new head coach. Check back throughout the day for more responses and join the discussion by voting in the poll and leaving a comment of your own.

Dan Pompei, Chicago Tribune

Jim Tressel clearly is a pretty special coach. At least he was a pretty special college coach. It makes perfect sense for Tressel to be a candidate in Indianapolis. The Colts aren't looking for a candidate for beatification, or the next president of the United States. What they need is a man who can coach. 

Tressel hardly would be the only NFL coach or player with a skeleton or two in his closet. What we're not sure of is if Tressel's success at Youngstown State and Ohio State was primarily the result of his recruiting skills, as opposed to his coaching skills. He would need to be more than a salesman to win in the NFL.  

If Tressel helps the Colts win, no one in Indianapolis is going to give a darn about the NCAA rules he broke in Columbus.

Mike Berardino, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Could the sweater vest translate to the pros? Pretty sure free tattoos and fancy cars aren't frowned upon in the NFL the way they were at Jim Tressel’s last stop, so I’d definitely give the former Ohio State coach a long look if I were running the Colts.

There's a familiarity after Tressel spent last season as a game-day consultant (whatever that is) for the Colts. That has to help, considering all the upheaval (with more to come) in the Super Bowl host city. Even though he'd never worked in the pros before, Tressel's background is on the offensive side. (Then again, his Buckeye quarterbacks never looked like future pros.)

I'd also be tempted to hire Marc Trestman, fresh off some serious success in the Canadian league, but let's not kid ourselves: You'd have to run this by Andrew Luck’s people first.

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Photo: Jim Tressel. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times

Is Prince Fielder worth $214 million? [Poll]

Prince Fielder will be getting paid quite handsomely for his services to the Detroit Tigers over the next nine years. The two parties reportedly have agreed to $214-million contract, subject to a physical.

That's quite a deal -- one that Times blogger Steve Dilbeck is glad the Dodgers didn't make:

I don’t trust that body (5-11, 280) to stay healthy and at the same productive level over the course of nine years, or even close. And do you really want to be shelling out $214 million to Fielder when you’re paying $160 million to Matt Kemp? And a big payday still looms for Clayton Kershaw?

It's only the fourth $200 million-plus contract in baseball history and the second this off-season, following the Angels' $240-million, 10-year deal with Albert Pujols.

Fielder could be well worth the price for the Tigers, who might be without injured designated hitter Victor Martinez for the entire 2012 season. Fielder hit .299 with 38 home runs and 120 RBIs last season and has averaged 40 home runs and 113 RBIs over the last five.

What do you think? Did the Tigers overpay for Fielder? Vote in the poll, then leave a comment explaining why you voted the way you did.

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-- Chuck Schilken

Photo: Prince Fielder. Credit: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press

Joe Paterno viewing draws another large crowd on second day

Hundreds more mourners lined up outside a Penn State campus spiritual center Wednesday to pay their respects to the late Joe Paterno on the second of three days of mourning for the beloved former football coach.

The line started forming outside the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center in the early hours of the morning, several hours before the doors opened for the closed-casket viewing. But after the emotional tumult many students and alumni have experienced in recent months -- including Paterno's firing in the aftermath of a child sex scandal involving former assistant Jerry Sandusky, followed by the longtime coach's battle with lung cancer -- the wait was worth it.

“His ethics, doing things the right way, excellence in everything you do, all of that attracted me and attracted many others to Penn State,” said Tom Haack, a 59-year-old alumnus who said his admiration for Paterno influenced his decision to attend the university. "I think his influence made it a better school and helped make it what it is today.”

Thousands had gathered Tuesday for the opportunity to walk past the brown hardwood casket placed about 6 feet away from a black-and-white portrait of "JoePa," thick-rimmed glasses and all.

“It's hard to say goodbye to somebody that you feel you've known all along,” said John Whitney, a 21-year-old junior from Sparta, N.J. “A lot of us have never met him, but he's had such a big influence on everybody's life around here.”

Karen Gilchrist, a Penn State fan from Scranton, Pa., brought three of her five children -- ages 7, 8 and 6 months -- to the viewing. “There's going to be no one like him in my lifetime or theirs,” she said. “I wanted them to be part of a historic day. I felt compelled.”

Doors closed on the viewing at 11:30 a.m. EST Wednesday. A private funeral service and burial were to be held later in the day. A public memorial will take place Thursday at Penn State's basketball arena.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Upper photo: Alysha Ulrich, 10, left foreground, from Oley, Pa., waits in line to go through the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on the Penn State campus for the viewing for former Penn State coach Joe Paterno on Wednesday. Credit: Alex Brandon / Associated Press

Lower photo: Mourners console one another after paying respects to Paterno on Wednesday. Credit: Patrick Smith / Getty Images

Did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lose millions on special hotels for tall people?

BASKETBALL URBAN LEGEND: Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lost millions of dollars building specialized hotels for tall people.

In 2003, the rock band Pearl Jam released Lost Dogs, a compilation album consisting of notable B-Sides, unreleased songs and other rare material from the band over their then decade-plus career. One of the highlights of the album was the extensive liner notes where the band went into detail on each song on the album. Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament explained the history behind the unreleased song, "Sweet Lew," one of the few Pearl Jam songs where Ament sang lead. As Ament explains it, he met Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1994 at a charity basketball game (Ament was on Abdul-Jabbar's team) and while Ament was looking forward to meeting his boyhood idol, he was disappointed when he felt that Abdul-Jabbar essentially ignored him. So Ament wrote "Sweet Lew" (referring to Abdul-Jabber's name when he first joined the NBA, Lew Alcindor) including pointed references to the rumor that Abdul-Jabbar had lost millions building hotels for tall people:

build him high, build him tall

and later...

tear 'em down, one and all 7'2" is a long way to fall sweet lew, how's the view? sweet lew, how could you?

Is there any truth to this rumor? Read on to find out...

Simply put, no.

Like pretty much every professional athlete that ever was, Hall of Fame Center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who has the record for the most total points scored in NBA history to go along with his record six regular season MVP Awards and his six NBA championships) wanted to invest his salary so that he could live comfortably on his earnings well after his playing career finished. When Abdul-Jabbar converted to Islam, his spiritual advisor, Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis, picked out Abdul-Jabbar's business manager - a Wall Street lawyer named Bob Owen. Owen was a conservative investor and while he did not make huge profits for Abdul-Jabbar, he did not lose any of Abdul-Jabbar's money. However, Owen died in 1980, leaving Abdul-Jabbar without a financial advisor.

Eventually, he signed on with Thomas M. Collins, who Abdul-Jabbar had met in the mid-70s at a tennis club. Collins was still fairly new at being an agent, but he had as clients Abdul-Jabbar's teammate, guard Lucius Allen and Abdul-Jabbar's general manager, Laker GM Bill Sharman, so Collins seemed as good of a bet as anyone. In 1980, Abdul-Jabbar signed with Collins, giving Collins tremendous freedom with how to spend Abdul-Jabbar's money.

During the early 1980s, Collins formed an investment group called All-Pro Enterprises Inc. with Abdul-Jabbar the most famous name involved, but also including such famous NBA Players as Ralph Sampson, Terry Cummings and Alex English (among others). The group spent most of its money on real estate. They bought the Balboa Inn in Los Angeles for $4.2 million, the Inn of Laguna in Los Angeles for $4 million, the Belmont Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama (I am unsure how much it cost), a $1.4 million Newport Beach restaurant and a $22 million Los Angeles health club. Here, by the way, is where the "building hotels for tall people" came into being. Presumably as part of the deal when they purchased the Balboa Inn (but possibly it was something done even before the group bought the hotel), one of the suites in the hotel was built especially for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, complete with nine-foot high doors.

Other investments of the group included a brand-new kind of exercise equipment called the Heavyrope (essentially a weighted jump rope), plus Abdul-Jabbar formed his own jazz music label called Skyline Records. The problem throughout this process was that Abdul-Jabbar was not being kept informed by Collins as to how much Collins was spending and what Collins was doing with the money. In an interview in 1985, Abdul-Jabbar even reflected on the high number of professional athletes who had been taken advantage of by their financial managers, stating, "[I]n the end, you've gotta trust someone." However, in the same interview, he also noted that, "Not only am I paying a lot closer attention to my finances, but I've tried to assume a lot more control over investment decisions." This brought great conflict in early 1986 when Abdul-Jabber lost all faith in Collins the more that he examined what was going on with the investments. In January of 1986, after an independent audit, Abdul-Jabbar was shocked to see what Collins was doing with his money. For instance, Abdul-Jabbar unknowingly had lent Sampson $575,000. As part of the various investments, any of the primary investors would be on the hook for a deal gone wrong. Abdul-Jabbar felt that he would be the one everyone would look to when the deals went bad, since he was the most famous of the group. When he made it clear that he wanted out, all the deals did, indeed, fall apart. English famously sued Abdul-Jabbar, serving him in the Lakers' locker room. Abdul-Jabbar counter-sued, with English being served while on the Denver bench. Collins (and the other players, also) felt that the deals were sound but that Abdul-Jabbar ruined them by panicking. Whatever the case may have been, Abdul-Jabbar sued Collins (and Collins' associates) for the $9 million he had lost plus additional damages (his full total sought in the suit was $50 million). The suit settled in late 1989. The terms of the deal were sealed, but it seems pretty clear that at the very least that Abdul-Jabbar got all of his investments back.

A problem for Abdul-Jabbar is that because of the lawsuit, he was unable to discuss the case and because of that, for years in the late 1980s people believed that he had lost all of his money (which was silly seeing as how he was still getting paid by the Lakers and he had a number of endorsement deals). He spoke about this annoyance in a 2011 interview with the Sporting News:

Abdul-Jabbar: I was very fortunate that I got my money back, but in the process between when people found out that something had gone wrong and when I got my money back, there was a non disclosure agreement, so I couldn’t talk about it. So everybody thought I lost all my money. Sporting News: That’s the way a lot of people remember it — that you were ruined financially. Abdul-Jabbar: And that didn’t happen.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated in 1987, Abdul-Jabbar had a great comment where he looked on the bright side of everything, "It's been a crash course in business school and I've paid steep tuition."

So there, we know where the "tall people hotel" part was extrapolated from, we know where the "lost all his money investing in hotels" story came from - we know the whole story, which means, of course, that the legend is...

STATUS: False.

 Thanks to Bruce Horovitz of the Los Angeles Times for his coverage of the situation when it originally went down, thanks to John Papanek for the great Sports Illustrated article on the subject and finally, thanks to Steve Greenberg of the Sporting News and Kareem Abdul-Jabber himself for the informative interview.

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Sports urban legends revealed archive

--Brian Cronin

Be sure to check out my website, Sports Legends Revealed, for more sports urban legends. I have archives of all the past urban legends featured on the site in the categories of: Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey and the Olympics. Also be sure to check out my Entertainment Legends Revealed for urban legends about the worlds of TV, Movies, Music and more! Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com. And please buy my book, "Was Superman a Spy? And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed! here.

What kind of year will Tiger Woods have in 2012? [Poll]

Tiger Woods is at Abu Dhabi this week, in good health and even better spirits as he kicks off his 2012 season.

Basically he's ready to kick some butt!

After enduring a rather miserable year for most of 2011, which included injuries and poor play, Woods appeared to turn things around with a strong final month or so, which concluded with a victory at the Chevron World Challenge, his first win in more than two years.

So can we expect more of the same from Woods now that he appears to have gotten over the hump? Is he back to the Woods that was a threat to run away with every event he entered, and quite often would do just that?

It was once seen as a given that he would eventually break Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major tournament victories. But the 36-year-old Woods has been stuck on 14 for quite some time now -- will he be any closer by the time this season is over?

How do you think he will do this year? Vote in the poll, then leave a comment explaining why you voted the way you did.

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Photo: Tiger Woods enjoys himself during the pro-am event at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club on Wednesday. Credit: Ross Kinnaird / Getty Images

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