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The Illinois Athletic Director Ron Guenther found himself getting a little too riled up by the opening round Illinois-Virginia Tech game last week. He didn't do it in a private box or in his office. No, he did it near the action, specifically right next to the press box. Surprise, it became a story as Greg Doyel of CBS Sportsline.com was one of those seated closest to Guenther and detailed his behavior.

Guenther is a table-pounder, in good times and bad. Since there were very few good times Friday -- even when the Illini had a 10-point lead with less than 4 1/2 minutes to play, they looked awful -- Guenther did most of his pounding in anguish.

If only he left it at pounding. Alas, he did not. Guenther would on occasion rise and stare down an official, or rise and give coach Bruce Weber advice, generally something along the lines of, "Get Randle out of there!" And after one miserable play by Warren Carter -- which isn't nearly specific enough considering his vast array of miserable plays -- Guenther pounded the table, rose from his chair and screamed, "Warren -- you idiot!"

Screamed it, people.

Well, Guenther had to concede in a traditional denial/non-denial/apology what happened.

It's been about eight hours since the Gary Matthews news broke, so it's probably a decent idea to revisit the day's coverage - or lack thereof - regarding what should be a bombshell story.

In other words, as commenters have noted, there has been no explicit mention of Matthews' name at ESPN or any of the other major national news outlets. (Well, except us. No. 1 on Google News, baby!)

So why the hush-hush treatment? Matthews' name was given to the Seattle Post by confidential sources, but those sources seem credible. It's hard to imagine the PI running "Gary Matthews Maybe Buys Steroids" without a decent idea that the information about the investigation was verifiable.

Still, ESPN's story doesn't even give Matthews' name an "alleged" mention. Instead, they mention Jason Grimsley (no reputation harm to be done there) and refer to "sports figures," "athletes," and "celebs."

What gives? What are your thoughts on the situation? Is Matthews falsely accused? Is he receiving a lighter treatment from the national outlets than, say, Barry Bonds or Rafael Palmeiro or Mark McGwire has? What's the deal here?

One more interesting find: I've got to sort of feel bad for the San Bernandino County Sun, who yesterday ran a feature on Gary Matthews. Bad timing, huh? What's worse, the story led with Matthews' "preparation," the sort of preparation required to make that ridiculous diving catch he made last year. Eeesh.

When was the last time you said, even quietly to yourself, "You know, that was a really smart move by the NCAA."? Proactive, smart, thoughtful decision-making. Not words often used in discussing actions by the NCAA.

This is one of those times. The NCAA invited 20 members of the US Basketball Writers Association to come to Indy and pretend to be the NCAA Tournament selection committee for a day. They were given the same tools, resources and information that the committee has.

This was brilliant as at least 20 writers will now be very sympathetic and not complain nearly so much when the seedings are announced.

Take it from this wise guy: I have a new appreciation for the task. Thought I knew what it was like, and I actually had no idea.

We were given 10½ hours to do what the committee does in five days. Except it took us more than 12 hours, from Wednesday afternoon until early Thursday morning, with a short dinner break and a brief escape to watch the end of Duke-North Carolina.

When the going got bogged down, the NCAA staff helped seed many of the lower 45 teams -- and we still couldn't catch up.

That seemed to be the prevailing opinion of every article: this crap's really hard.

Now the only thing smarter, would be to round up 20 or so bloggers and fly them out to Indy for a crack at this.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News has a very good breakdown of the timeline of how they go through things. The whole thing even includes mock outcomes from the Conference tournaments.

Then they have their brackets (and here's a PDF version).

After the jump, the list of participating writers and their version of the events (if they've written one)

The Pro Football Writers Association has filed a complaint with the NFL, saying the Colts' decision to arrive in Miami on Monday night means writers won't have enough time to interview players and coaches and get their stories for the Tuesday papers filed on time.


Here's my suggestion to all the writers who won't get to interview Peyton Manning until Tuesday: Find something else to write about. The Super Bowl hype gets utterly ridiculous because all the writers ask all the athletes all the same questions. You should be glad you'll have one less day to contribute to that.

The primetime Broncos-Chiefs matchup is tomorrow, people. The quick turnaround leaves a lot of questions unanswered about last Sunday's loss to the Chargers, so I'm going to touch on some of the more pressing issues real quick before we turn our attention to the game tomorrow.

First, what's up with special teams? The Chargers' Michael Turner averaged 36+ yards on kickoff returns, and the short field made a big difference in the game. The Chargers' average starting field position on Sunday was the 33 yard line. Give the Chiefs that kind of field position, and its going to be even worse, which is why the media has been speculating that we might see more starters doing double-duty to shore up special teams - especially with Dante Hall returning punts.

Then there's the issue of Tom Nalen, who was just fined $25,000 for taking a "cheap shot" at Chargers' defensive lineman Igor Olshansky. Olshansky, meanwhile, was fined just $10,000 for punching Nalen in retaliation. All I'm going to say is that this is ridiculous - Yes, it was a spike play, but Nalen was just playing sound football, trying to block Olshansky if something happen and Plummer dropped the snap or something. Okay, Nalen went low - but last time I checked, trying to punch a player is a lot worse than trying to block someone, especially when the block literally didn't do anything. Olshansky wasn't injured, knocked to the ground or anything, so this fine is purely a reaction to the San Diego media, which has exploded this story as if Olshansky had been seriously injured on the play. Needless to say, the Broncos are furious, and Tom Nalen will be appealing this ridiculous sanction.

Dick Vermeil infamously said that Larry Johnson needed to "take the diapers off." Of course, Johnson did not respond kindly to that comment, but he quieted Vermeil by rushing for record yardage.

Herm Edwards took a different approach. As soon as he took over, he told LJ that he needed LJ to be a leader. LJ proclaimed it proudly, and it seemed, at last, that LJ had grown up.

Well, this year he is not rushing for record yardage. And now, we have more signs that LJ perhaps isn't ready to assume a leadership role. Debate all you want whether his hair-tackle of Troy Polamalu was dirty (and I'd note that Polamalu is perfectly okay with it), but his statements afterward were more disturbing: "If I got penalized, I hope it was for me hitting Ike Taylor in the face twice and not for pulling Troy's hair."

Okay, so at that point the Chiefs were down 31-0, and the game was as close to a lost cause as you can get at that point. Still, a leader cannot act that way, and he certainly cannot make that kind of statement to the media. LJ has never had a particularly great relationship with the media, and if his leadership is questioned, you have to think that the relationship will sour even more. LJ can no longer lean on record-breaking rushing numbers to silence his critics. He's going to have to learn that words sometimes can speak louder than actions.