Terence Moore Posts

Nearly a decade ago, I took my first and only trip to the center of the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, Miss., and I lived to tell about it.

It wasn't fun.

The place is called The Grove, where tailgaters join others before Mississippi football games to hear a concert from The Pride of the South Marching Band. With various versions of "Dixie " blaring, Confederate flags waving and "yahoos" echoing through the willow oaks, the whole thing ranks among the most appalling things I've seen as a sports journalist who happens to be darker than a KKK hood.

ATLANTA -- Either Dr. Phil or Charles Barkley once said, if you wish to advance in life, you must start with the image in the mirror. So the Atlanta Hawks will continue to scare people the rest of this NBA season. That's because they know exactly what they are, and they know exactly what they are not.

Here's what the Hawks are: Pretty good.

Actually, the Hawks are better than that. I'll explain more in a moment, but let's start with what the Hawks aren't: Elite.

"We're in the conversation for sure, but we're not satisfied with what we've done so far, because we still have a ways to go," said Hawks guard Jamal Crawford, telling the truth about his suddenly potent team that has surged into a three-way tie with the Orlando Magic and Phoenix Suns for the NBA's best record at 11-3.

CINCINNATI -- Go ahead. Combine Florida, Alabama, Texas and TCU, the only four teams ahead of Cincinnati in the BCS standings. Now throw in the rest of the programs throughout college football, and it still won't matter.

You won't find a collection of teams -- let alone one individually -- with more riveting stories than those surrounding Cincinnati. Come to think of it, the 2009 Bearcats have the best set of storylines of all-time for a season. Despite a wretched existence during their 123 years of playing football at a place more noted for the guy who designed the Golden Gate Bridge and Oscar Robertson, the Bearcats are in the national championship discussion with a 10-0 record out of nowhere.

That's the best of those stories.

CINCINNATI -- Now you can add frequently bad actor Larry Johnson to a Cincinnati Bengals locker room already noted for drama.

Yeah, this makes sense.

It actually does, but only to a point.

Starting running back Cedric Benson has an aching hip flexor, and since nobody worth mentioning wanted to sign Johnson, he came this week as a cheap insurance policy for the Bengals. It's just that you have this little thing in sports called "chemistry," and Benson didn't exactly suggest after practice on Wednesday that he would celebrate Johnson's arrival by baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

It's that silly time of year again. There are so many significant teams among the big boys of college football, but there are just two slots on Jan. 7 in Pasadena, Calif., for that title game of the Bowl Championship Series. So the voice of the older Jim Mora is screaming in my subconscious.

Playoffs, playoffs?

We don't need playoffs in this situation.

The toughest fight in Mike Tyson's life never involved the likes of Buster Douglas, Evander Holyfield or Lennox Lewis.

It involved Tyson versus Tyson.

As for Tyson's second toughest fight, it continues, and it will never end. It involves Tyson versus many in society who just won't leave the guy alone.

The gold diggers. The mindless instigators -- you know, those into poking grizzlies with sticks. Oh, and the paparazzi. In fact, one of its members was the primary cause of the latest Mike Tyson Thing this week at Los Angeles International Airport. Tyson exploded (surprise, surprise) after the photographer tried to snap pictures of this famously temperamental former heavyweight boxing champion with his wife and his 10-month-old daughter.

The dog ate my homework.

The check is in the mail.

"I'm not going to Notre Dame. Ever."

Unless you believe something along the lines that the folks at Touchdown Jesus will spray paint the Golden Dome, Urban Meyer will become the next head football coach for the Fighting Irish. Sometime.

It's going to happen, all right. Meyer will end his brilliant stint with the Florida Gators for a return to South Bend, Ind., where he left his heart as a Notre Dame assistant coach from 1996 to 2000. It's going to happen, because unless you haven't been paying attention, Meyer keeps saying how much he covets the Notre Dame job. He said so emphatically during a radio show on a South Florida station in December 2008. He also wrote as much two summers ago in his authorized biography.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- The universally popular bashing of Isiah Thomas is justified, but only to a point. Whatever the case, it continued on Monday night at the Dean E. Smith Center, where it was mostly harmless and often humorous.

Ailing mothers have a tendency to soften hard souls.

So, for the first time since just shy of forever, Thomas walked into a basketball arena as somebody that many wished to hug instead of choke. That's because hours before he made his debut as a college basketball coach for Florida International University against North Carolina (yes, that North Carolina), Mary Thomas was in a Chicago hospital preparing to have her 86-year-old heart repaired.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Even before the start of both events during the past two days to celebrate the seven inductees into this year's Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame, everybody hoped. Everybody prayed. In fact, everybody who bleeds Hoosier red meant no harm, but they wanted Bob Knight to do the wrong thing.

Instead, Knight did the right thing.

He stayed away. And, yes, I know these aren't the same folks who used that myth nine years ago to get rid of the greatest college basketball coach ever.

NEW YORK -- Oh, it was a loaded question, all right. The guy that I expected to answer was Bud Selig, whose role as baseball commissioner expands beyond the new sacred walls in the Bronx that feature the plaques of Yankee greats.

I asked the question anyway.

Given the mystique of pinstripes, television ratings that soar toward the farthest black hole at the sight of the interlocking "NY" in white against blue caps, baseball rock stars Derek Jeter, A-Rod, Mariano Rivera and the rest -- I mean, doesn't it help the entire game whenever the Yankees win it all?

Well, it does. Nobody cares about the Tampa Bay Rays in October or November, for instance, except those with too much time on their hands around the Skyview Bridge over the Gulf of Mexico. The world is dominated by Yankee lovers, Yankee haters and few in-between, and everybody knows it.