Posted: 03 Jan 2010 09:37 PM PST

Nobody's perfect. That's what the 2009 year in sports reminded us.

Perhaps we should have taken a lesson from the children's book "Everyone Poops" to make sense of the eventful year, which wasn't so much about remarkable performances by athletes as it was about the missteps of imperfect people.

These were 365 days that have proved how sports culture has become subject to the very same pitfalls of gossip and scandal as American pop culture.

Modern athletes' lives get the same TMZ inspection and scrutiny as that of Britney Spears. Their professionally crafted images get tested, their secrets revealed in everything from mainstream newspaper sports pages to checkout-line tabloid to the viral Internet.

In our news age of yanking all-too-human heroes off pedestals, nobody would protect the reputation of a Mickey Mantle who drank too much, a Wilt Chamberlain who rattled too many headboards and a Michael Jordan who went all-in too often. And that's why, in 2009, we bring to a close a sports year that, sadly, won't be most remembered so much for sports at all but enough scandal for an R-rated E!'s "True Hollywood Story."

There were men and women behaving badly. It had lying, cheating, hair-pulling, referee threatening, stock-option backdating, and SUV crashing. It held infidelity, divorce, drug abuse, domestic violence, murder, a prostitution ring and everything intended for mature audiences.

Outside a few feel-good championships by the most famous of franchises -- How 'bout them NBA champion Lakers! -- 2009 marked open season on athletes. Their lives on and off the playing field became fair game.

The year began with the emergence of photos featuring the star of the 2008 Beijing Olympics inhaling pot from a bong. It ended with the world's greatest golfer crashing his SUV into a tree and having to admit he was far from being the world's greatest husband.

In between, the disappointing news didn't stop.

• In January Michael Phelps' image took a (bong) hit when he was caught smoking marijuana. The winner of a record eight gold medals in Beijing was suspended for three months by USA Swimming.

• Major-league All-Star Alex Rodriguez admitted in February that he had used performance-enhancing drugs as a Texas Ranger for three years beginning in 2001. In 2003 he won his third consecutive home run title and the first of three Most Valuable Player awards.

• In May Dodgers slugger and True Blue revivalist Manny Ramirez was suspended 50 games for using a banned substance.

• Steve McNair, a former NFL Super Bowl quarterback and 2005 "Man of the Year" award winner for his off-the-field work, was found shot four times, twice in the head, in a Nashville condo on the Fourth of July weekend. Police said the husband and the father of four was a homicide victim in a murder-suicide committed by his mistress.

• In September Serena Williams, the world's top-ranked player, went temporarily insane after contesting a foot-fault call at the U.S. Open. Despite winning the 2009 Wimbledon and Australian Open titles, the American was fined $10,500 by the US Open tournament referee for her tirade, which included her threat to shove a fuzzy, yellow ball down the esophagus of a court official's throat.

• October was painful. Frank McCourt, the owner of the Dodgers, fired wife, Jamie, the club's chief executive, after she filed for divorce in the middle of the playoffs.

In other bad news that month, Andre Agassi, the former world No. 1 tennis player who retired in 2006 with eight Grand Slam singles titles, admitted that he used crystal methamphetamine in 1997 and used to wear a hairpiece. These revelations came in interviews promoting the Nov. 9 release of his autobiography, "Open."

• November was the worst -- but not for everyone. Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli was reinstated by the NHL as Ducks' owner and governor while awaiting sentencing for lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission about stock-option backdating at his company.

That same month New Mexico defender Elizabeth Lambert earned an indefinite suspension for her violent actions in a Mountain West Conference soccer semifinal. Video showed Lambert kicking, tackling, delivering a forearm shiver, tripping and jerking a BYU player to the ground by her pony tail.

Then at 2:25 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving, Tiger Woods, the world's No. 1 golfer and arguably the most popular athlete in the world, crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a tree and fire hydrant while fleeing his Central Florida home. His wife shattered a back window with a seven iron, and soon a parade of women, from cocktail waitresses to porn stars, claimed they had affairs with the golfer whose worst transgression until then had been yelling a photographers who made noise during his backswing.

Woods, the world's first $1 billion athlete, record-setting golfer and winner of four Masters suddenly saw his image, which had been as impeccably manicured as a green at Augusta, shattered. He admitted his "infidelity" and took an indefinite leave from golf to repair his marriage.

• In December came the death of Cincinatti wide receiver Chris Henry, who suffered head trauma after falling out of the back of a truck driven by his fiancee in the middle of a domestic dispute. Henry had tried to right his life after a litany of legal problems.

Hardly any sports figure was safe from scrutiny or suspicion in 2009. Even one man behind the New England mascot, "Pat the Patriot" got nabbed for his involvement in a Rhode Island prostitution ring.

Whatever happened to perfection in sports being solely about sweeps, shutouts, 300 bowling games, 4-for-4 batting nights and triple-double basketball games. Oh, those days are gone, just like the Indianapolis Colts' undefeated season.

Teams don't always win. Athletes can be too good to be true. Sports, our escape from the hardships of life, can sometimes fail us.

USC football had a down year, ending a dominant seven-season run of Pac-10 titles, major-bowl appearances and top-five final rankings. Even star running back Joe McKnight is being investigated for driving too nice an SUV.

UCLA basketball, which made three NCAA Final Fours in the past five seasons, has opened this transition season with a 5-7 record, its worst start since 1945-46. The Bruins' sole returning starter, forward Nikola Dragovic, hasn't shown up on the court, but he is due to appear in court, having been arrested for the second time in as many seasons on an assault-related charge.

Hmmm. Fortunately there were the storied franchises that added to their trophy cases without too much controversy: The Lakers won their fourth NBA title of the decade, the high-priced New York Yankees bought the 27th World Series crown in their club history and the Steelers claimed a record sixth Super Bowl victory.

Jimmie Johnson rounded his way to an unprecedented fourth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, and Roger Federer finally got a French Open title, the elusive fourth in his career grand slam collection. And he won his sixth Wimbledon title by outlasting American Andy Roddick in a thrilling, record-long grand slam final that included a 30-game, 95-minute fifth set.

That must've been exhausting, much like recalling the dirty laundry list that was the 2009 year in sports.

It was the year in which sports heroes weren't as they appeared to be. Despite their seemingly superhuman sports feats, they proved to be people who have flaws just like everyone else.

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OFF THE RECORD - Deccan Herald

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 11:03 PM PST

JP in Congress pantheon!

JP remembered in a Congress do! Sounds unbelievable?

But it did happen, and, not during an ordinary event, but on the occasion of laying the foundation stone for the party's new headquarters that is to be named after Indira Gandhi, who had faced the toughest challenge from JP and his Total Revolution in the 1970s.

And the person who almost put JP on the Congress pantheon is no ordinary party activist either — Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit. And she did it in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Sheila was delivering the vote of thanks at the Congress' 125th Foundation Day function at Kotla Road on December 28.

After thanking Dr Singh, Sonia and other luminaries, the Delhi chief minister startled all when she also expressed her gratitude to 'Jai Prakash Narayan Ji'. But she soon realised her mistake. She then made it clear that she had in fact wanted to refer to Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief Jai Prakash Agarwal, who was also on the podium.

As the audience broke into laughter; Sheila smilingly said: "I had to make you laugh also. Isn't it?"

Anirban Bhaumik, New Delhi

In Jharkhand, anything goes

It seems, everything is fair in Jharkhand politics. For, unexpected has virtually become a norm here. Known to be ideologically poles apart, they were at each other's loggerhead and, numerically, occupied the centre-stage of politics by emerging the largest blocks after the state's creation and then in its maiden assembly elections in 2005.

The largest pre-poll block NDA (BJP: 30, JD-U: 6) in opposition benches, second, third and fourth largest parties (JMM: 17, Congress: 9 and RJD: 7) supporting the government from outside and an Independent at the helm. No kidding, Madhu Koda has his name in the Limca Book of Records for heading a government by an Independent for the longest span in India.

Quite glaringly, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) stumbled upon one of the country's largest scam involving an individual in which former CM Madhu Koda is alleged to have acquired disproportionate assets worth about Rs 2,000 crore.

But what appears to be a saga of foes turning friends graciously, now the JMM-headed government has been installed with its arch rival BJP and AJSU now following a coalition 'dharma'.

There is no end to surprises in the new state. On December 30, Soren was sworn in as the seventh chief minister of Jharkhand, formed only nine years ago. The average survival rate of a government here has been just 16 months.

Sandeep Bhaskar, Ranchi

Britney mania

Did Britney Spears spend New Year in God's Own Country? None knows whether the rumours had any substance. From the feel of it and the troubles that the cops, scribes and TV crews took for two days running to 2010, the item girl may not have made it.
Over two dozen camera-wielding paparazzi had descended on Alappuzha, the seat of backwater tourism, to catch a glimpse of Britney after a new agency reported that she might celebrate New Year in a houseboat there.

Forget the fact that no confirmation was forthcoming from any quarter, the paparazzi brigade still scoured the backwaters and the numerous resorts that dot the area for the pop icon, but with no luck. Excitement grew when a VIP houseboat, with five star facilities like swimming pool, surfaced in the backwaters. Despite the driver of the boat denying there was any VVIP on board, the scribes refused to stop tailing it. Finally, it was only when the boat berthed and the passengers left that it began to dawn on them that they may have been taken for a ride by some smart alec.

R Gopakumar, Thiru'puram

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Packaged Goods - dmnews.com

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 09:08 PM PST

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It’s always the end of the world as we know it - Deccan Herald

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 11:03 PM PST

It seems so distant, 1999. Bill Clinton had survived impeachment, his popularity hardly dented, Sept 11 was just another date and music fans were enjoying a young singer named Britney Spears.

But there was a particular unease in the air. The so-called Y2K problem, the inability of computers to read dates beyond 1999 threatened to turn Jan 1, 2000, into a nightmare. The issue had first been noticed by programmers in the 1950s, but had been ignored. As the turn of the century loomed, though, it seemed that humankind faced a litany of horrors.

Haywire navigation controls might cause aircraft to fall from the skies. Electricity grids, water systems and telephone networks would be knocked out, while nuclear power plants would be subject to meltdown. Savings and pension accounts would be wiped out in a general bank failure. A cascade of breakdowns in communication and commerce would create vast shortages of food and medicine, which would, in turn, produce riots, lawlessness and social collapse. Even worse, ICBMs might rise from their silos unbidden, spreading death across the globe.

Y2K problems would not be limited to mainframe computers that governed the information systems of the modern world, but were going to affect millions of tiny computer chips found everywhere. Thanks to these wonky microprocessors, elevators would die, GPS devices would stop working and dishwashers would dry the food onto the plates before trying to rinse it off. Even ordinary cars might spontaneously accelerate to fatal, uncontrollable speeds, with brakes failing to respond.

The Y2K catastrophe was promoted with increasing shrillness toward century's end: headlines proclaimed a 'computer time bomb' or 'a date with disaster'. Among the most reviled of the Y2K deniers was Bill Gates, who not only declared that Microsoft's PCs would take the date turnover in stride, but had the audacity to blame those who 'love to tell tales of fear' for the worldwide anxiety.

The Rev Jerry Falwell suggested that Y2K would be the confirmation of Christian prophecy, "God's instrument to shake this nation, to humble this nation." The Y2K crisis might incite a worldwide revival that would lead to "the rapture of the church." Along with many survivalists, Falwell advised stocking up on food and guns.

So the scene was set in New Zealand for midnight on Dec 31, 1999. We are just west of the dateline, and thus would be the first to experience not only popping Champagne corks and fireworks, but the Y2K catastrophe, if any. As clocks hit midnight, Champagne and skyrockets were the only explosions of interest, since telephones, ATMs, cars, computers and airplanes worked just fine. The head of the government's Y2K Readiness Commission declared victory: "New Zealand's investment in planning and preparation has paid off."

Confident that our millions were well spent, we waited for news of the calamities sure to hit countries that had ignored Y2K. Asia, a Deutsche Bank official had predicted, was going to be 'burnt toast' on New Year's Day — not just the lesser-developed areas of Vietnam and China, but South Korea, which by 1999 was a highly computer-dependent society. South Korea, one computer expert told me, had a national telephone system similar to British Telecom's. But where the British had wisely sunk millions of pounds into Y2K remediation, South Korea had done next to nothing.

No change

However, exactly 10 years ago, as the date change moved on through the Far East, India, Russia, West Asia and Europe, it became apparent that it made little difference whether you lived in Britain, which at great expense had revamped many of its computer systems, or the lackadaisical Ukraine, which had ignored the issue. With minor glitches that would have gone unnoticed any other day of the week, the world kept ticking on.

By the time midnight reached the United States, where upward of $100 billion had been spent on Y2K fixes, there was little anxiety. Indeed, the general health of American information systems, fixed and not, became clearer in the new year. The Small Business Administration calculated that 1.5 million businesses had undertaken no Y2K remediation. On Jan 3, it received about 40 phone calls from businesses that had experienced minor faults, like cash registers that misread the year '2000' as '1900'.

Knowing our computers is difficult enough. Harder still is to know ourselves, including our inner demons. From today's perspective, the Y2K fiasco seems to be less about technology than about a morbid fascination with end-of-the-world scenarios. This ought to strike us as strange. The cold war was fading in 1999, we were witnessing a worldwide growth in wealth and standards of living, and Islamic terrorism was not yet seen as a serious global threat. It should have been a year of golden weather, a time for the human race to relax and look toward a brighter, more peaceful future. Instead, with computers as a flimsy pretext, many seemed to take pleasure in frightening themselves to death over a coming calamity.

Religions from Zoroastrianism to Judaism to Christianity to UFO cults have been built around notions of sin and the world's end. The Y2K threat resonated with those ideas. Suppose it turned out that a couple of zeros inadvertently left off old computer codes brought crashing down the very civilisation computers helped to create. Cosmic justice!

Apocalyptic scenarios are a diversion from real problems — poverty, terrorism, broken financial systems — needing intelligent attention. Even something as down-to-earth as the swine-flu scare has seemed at moments to be less about testing our health care system and its emergency readiness than about the fate of a diseased civilisation drowning in its own fluids. We wallow in the idea that one day everything might change in, as St Paul put it, the 'twinkling of an eye' — that a calamity might prove to be the longed-for transformation. But turning practical problems into cosmic cataclysms takes us further away from actual solutions.

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Pepsi abandons Super Bowl in favor of CRM - dmnews.com

Posted: 03 Jan 2010 09:01 PM PST

Britney Spears, Cindy Crawford and Ozzy Osborne all have appeared in Pepsi Super Bowl ads. But this year, the soft drink brand is breaking tradition, opting for a digital CRM program to drive a two-way discussion with consumers instead of a splashy, Super Bowl spot for its flagship soft drink.

The strategy shift means Pepsi will inject $20 million into its cause-related Refresh Project that helps people improve their communities through a variety of projects funded by the marketer. PepsiCo will officially launch a Web site, RefreshEverything.com, on January 13. On it, consumers can list projects that can improve communities, such as feeding the hungry or teaching people to read. Consumers can vote on the site beginning February 1 on projects they think should receive a share of the money. They will be asked to contribute their e-mail addresses for e-mail alerts on the project.

However, Nicole Bradley, spokesperson for PepsiCo, tells DMNews the primary goal is to create a two-way dialogue with loyal and prospective customers, rather than build an e-mail database for marketing.

"The Super Bowl broadcast can be an amazing stage for broadcasters, and [PepsiCo subsidiary] Frito Lay will be there in a big way," she says. "But our beverage brands' marketing strategy in 2010 [is] less about a singular event and more about a movement. We are always looking to further develop our two-way conversation with consumers."

The CRM campaign asks consumers to suggest ways that Pepsi can get involved in social causes. Bradley added that the company has made no decision on marketing for the 2011 Super Bowl and beyond.

With the effort, PepsiCo is taking its marketing initiatives to where its target audience is already spending much of its time, says Tracy Tuten, associate professor of marketing at East Carolina University.

"Pepsi has always positioned itself as being about the youth market of America, and young people now are inundated with social media," she says. "They are also increasingly involved in sustainability and the greater good and all of those issues. "Pepsi is making a big statement that they want to be about all of those things that their target [audience] is about."

Tuten adds that Pepsi's e-mail address collection could also be used to create a standalone social networking community.

The move marks the first time in 23 years that the NFL's championship game will not have an ad promoting Pepsi. PepsiCo spent $33 million advertising Pepsi, Gatorade and Cheetos during 2009's Super Bowl XLIII, according to an Associated Press report. TNS Media Intelligence, which measures advertising spending, reported that PepsiCo spent $142.8 million on 10 Super Bowl ads from 1999 to 2008 for its brands, ranking the company second only to Anheuser-Busch during that period.

The economy is compelling other brands to take a break from Super Bowl advertising. For the second straight year, FedEx will not advertise during the game, during which spots will reportedly cost nearly $3 million.

For PepsiCo, the decision to shift some of its marketing spend to a digital engagement project may have come down to measuring marketing effectiveness during the tough economy, says Dean DiBiase, chairman of RebootPartners.com and the former CEO of TNS Media.

"Digital advertising is going to have a better ROI for [Pepsi]," he says. "It just seems like it's a better fit for what they are doing in the real world than putting money into the Super Bowl."

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