Seattle Sportsnet

1:50 PM: 40 minutes ’til tip. Washington State has already lost to Arizona today, 66-56, so good news there. Stanford-UCLA currently playing on ABC and ABC HD (Dave Libbey on the officiating call). No HD for the Husky game, FSN standard def only.

One other note, to the gamblers out there: the line on the game is Washington +5.5, so if you have faith in your Dawgs today, head over to Sportsbook.com and put your money where your loyalty is. I’d take the Huskies straight up to win. Back in a bit.

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Just a reminder to all our readers: Join us this afternoon at 2:30 PM for a live, in-game, interactive blog on the UW-ASU game on FSN. It’s a lot of fun, and we can enjoy the horrible announcing together. Who loves you? Seattle Sportsnet loves you…but not in that way…unless you want it to be in that way, and then we’re willing to talk.

Here at Seattle Sportsnet we consider it our duty to provide you with public service announcements from time to time. Which is why we’re here to tell you about the digital television broadcast transition that will be taking in place in February. It seems like everyone else is trying to get the message across (“HEY DOOFUS, IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, YOUR OLD-ASS TV SET IS ABOUT TO STOP WORKING!”), so we’ll go ahead and join in the celebration.

Just a quick programming note regarding tomorrow’s UW-ASU men’s basketball game. Back by popular demand, we’ll be featuring an in-game, interactive live blog beginning at 2:30 PM in time for tipoff.

We debuted the live blog last Saturday when the Dawgs took on UCLA at home and it was a huge success (CLICK HERE to see that blog). We hope you’ll all tune in again and offer your insight and comments as we watch the game live on FSN.

Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary of State under George W. Bush, has surfaced as a possible candidate to replace Tom Hansen as Pac-10 commissioner later this year. Rice, the one-time provost at Stanford, claims to be a diehard football fan who maintains close ties with the conference and cites her dream job to be commissioner of the NFL (watch out, Roger Goodell).

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The Seattle Times is reporting that the Mariners, one day after signing five-time All-Star Mike Sweeney, are now interested in inking ex-New York Yankee outfielder Bobby Abreu to a deal.

Abreu, who will turn 35 before the season starts, is coming off a season in which he earned $16 million, batted .296, hit 20 home runs, and drove in 100 runs. The one-time Philadelphia Phillie and Houston Astro has been a consistent run producer during his 12 full seasons in the big leagues.

Following his solid ’08 campaign, Abreu was expected to earn somewhere in the $16-18 million range over the next three seasons with a new free agent contract. But after Major League Baseball became the latest casualty of America’s recession (save for the Yankees), Abreu has proven flexible in negotiating with interested teams. His agent, Peter Greenberg, has stated that at this point Abreu would be willing to accept a one-year deal, meaning the Mariners are now a prime candidate to land the left-handed power bat they so desperately seek.

Now some of you may be wondering why a rebuilding ballclub like the 2009 M’s are going after all these veterans. The answer is simple: the veterans the team has brought in or shown interest in are low-risk, high-reward guys. Which means that a cost-efficient investment like Sweeney or Abreu could go a long way in building this franchise to where it needs to be. Add to that the intrigue of some big names to put the butts in the seats, the veteran leadership in the clubhouse, and a face to slap on the schedules (because let’s face it, besides Ichiro, who the heck is gonna be on the schedules this year?) and you’ve got yourself some shrewd maneuvering by GM Jack Zduriencik. Abreu in ’09? I say yes, what the hell have we got to lose?

The Mariners announced today that they’ve signed first baseman/designated hitter Mike Sweeney to a minor league deal with an invitation to Spring Training. The 35-year-old Sweeney played last season with the Oakland A’s, but prior to that spent 13 seasons with the Kansas City Royals, where he was a five-time All-Star.

Sweeney, once an underrated hybrid slugger (meaning he could hit for both contact and power, think Edgar Martinez), has struggled with injuries over the course of his career, and has been especially hampered by leg problems in the past few years. Though he batted .286 with the A’s in 2008, Sweeney was limited to just 42 games and was released in September. In the past three seasons, Sweeney has amassed a total of 176 ballgames and has seen a precipitous drop in his playing ability and numbers.

Though many will likely hail this move as a good one by the ballclub, we need to take this signing with a significantly large gain of salt. Sweeney is very much on his last legs and has produced virtually zero power since 2005 (17 home runs combined from 2006-2008). He still carries the “first baseman” tag, but at this point is more of a DH than anything else. Expecting Sweeney to make the team out of Peoria is no guarantee, and if he can find his way to Safeco, it may be more as a clubhouse presence than anything else.

*Image courtesy NBC Sports.

In one of the more peculiar stories of Superbowl media week, Steelers wideout Santonio Holmes announced to the world that as a child growing up in Florida, he used to sell drugs. Uhhh….

Citing the desire to prevent at-risk youths from committing the same mistakes he made during his adolescence, Holmes revealed the details of his former dealer lifestyle, a story he’d only told “three or four people about” before yesterday.

Holmes, who was cited for marijuana possession earlier this season, described how he avoided the pitfalls of pre-pubescent drug dealing that many kids fall into. He would head to school under the watchful eye of his mother, before skipping out in favor of the street corner. That’s how you do it, kids!

Mariners: The M’s made a trade yesterday, sending recently acquired righthander Aaron Heilman to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for middle infielder Ronny Cedeno and lefthanded pitcher Garrett Olson.

Heilman, acquired less than two months ago from the Mets as part of the J.J. Putz trade, was an expendable veteran arm with no defined role headed into Spring Training.

Cedeno, who turns 26 on Monday, is a former top prospect of the Cubs who has yet to reach expectations in the big leagues. A contact hitter with a good glove up the middle (think a younger, slightly more talented version of Willie Bloomquist), Cedeno batted .269 last season in 99 games, receiving playing time at shortstop and second base. For one stretch lasting from mid-April until the beginning of June, Cedeno kept his batting average above .300, peaking at a sizzling .391 on May 2nd. There was even some speculation in Chicago during this time that Cedeno would supplant either Ryan Theriot or Mike Fontenot as the starter at second or short. He’ll look to do that this season to the likes of Jose Lopez and Yuniesky Betancourt.

Olson, a former “sandwich” pick in the 2005 June amateur draft (#48 overall), is another ex-top prospect who has yet to completely pan out. A slender lefty who throws his fastball in the low-90′s, Olson relies on a big breaking curveball (think Barry Zito) to get batters out, and complements his one and two with a solid changeup. He started 26 games last year for the Baltimore Orioles, posting a 9-10 record with a 6.65 ERA. Olson will be given every chance to crack the M’s rotation and would likely be used in the pen if he failed to impress in Peoria.

Husky Basketball: The Dawgs are in Tucson today to take on the Arizona Wildcats later this evening. The unranked Wildcats are coming off a non-conference home victory Saturday over Houston. Though they’ve struggled this season, Arizona is always tough at home and historically presents matchup problems for an undersized Husky team.

Junior forward Chase Budinger, recipient of an uncalled for head stomping over the weekend, should be fired up and ready to ignite his team against a first-place Washington team looking to extend their lead over the rest of the Pac-10.

The game is scheduled for 5:30 PM and can be seen locally on Fox Sports, or heard live on 950 KJR AM.

*One programming note regarding the site: We won’t be having a Top 11 list this week amidst the scrutiny of a number of other issues going on in the world of sports. Check back next Thursday for the Top 11 on its usual day and time.

If you haven’t checked out our link list (left-hand sidebar, scroll down) you’re missing out on some of the best local and national sports coverage out there. Allow me to showcase some of our partners:

• Dawgman.com. A playground for Husky fans, filled with daily analysis, insider information, and the best University of Washington message board around.




• GOAL Seattle. One of the best resources for local sports happenings, with a spotlight on the Seattle Sounders. Also, take part in an interactive forum with other soccer fanatics and find out where games all over the region are taking place.




• Husky Digest. Jim Basnight brings Husky hoop fans an insider’s perspective on the goings-on at Hec Ed. With frequent updates, and exclusive content you can’t find anywhere else, HuskyDigest provides hardcore basketball fanatics a place to get their daily fix.




• Tri-Cities BRRB. An upstart blog where you can find out everything you need to know about basketball officiating from a college basketball referee. For those hoop fans who need to brush up on what the heck a double foul is.




• USS Mariner. The web’s best Seattle Mariners blog, bar none. Self-described “crazed fans” Dave Cameron, Conor Glassey, and Derek Zumsteg provide comprehensive analysis aboard the good ship Mariner.

*UPDATED: One other site I forgot to mention that has shown us a lot of respect so far, and that’s SeaTown Sports. The guys over at SeaTown keep a daily log of all the local sports news and went so far as to solicit our opinion on an end-of-2008 survey on the Sonics. Great analysis and loads of content. Check them out.

If you want to teach kids about the evil side effects of steroid usage, look no further than Kirk Radomski’s head. An oddly bulbous half-square, half-orb, Radomski’s noggin should be featured in its own infomercial with the message “Don’t do steroids…or you’ll look like this guy.”

Let’s take a look back at a happier time, the 1980′s to be precise, when Kirk Radomski still had a regular-size melon. Here he is with Dwight Gooden:

Note the lineage of the face, the narrowing of the chin, all regular features of your average face.

Now let’s examine the ’90′s version of Kirk Radomski. The once-girlish frame is gone, replaced by a freakishly disproportionate number of muscles. In addition, the head has changed shape, evolving from your standard oval to a Transformer-like rectangle. Nice tan, by the way. Ladies, he’s available.

Finally we have Kirk Radomski, 2009. Combining both human and robot elements, Radomski’s cranium defies the laws of nature and seems to explode from the cheeks outward. His eyes, once normally aligned in the center of his dome, now appear beady and shoved together. From the nose up, we see Shrek. From the nose down, a chipmunk storing nuts for the winter. To top it all off, the once muscle-infested body now more closely resembles a beer keg.

See kids, drugs are bad. Especially steroids. They’ll make your family jewels shrink and turn you into an ugly Shrekbot Wiimunk. Nobody wants that. Just say no.

*Photos courtesy ESPN.com.

This is worth its own post. The good people at Officiating.com have picked up on our Dave Libbey article and are incensed that we would harangue The Great Dave Libbey. Their forum has turned into a veritable Seattle Sportsnet hatefest: http://forum.officiating.com/showthread.php?t=51243.

Personally, I don’t understand it. I can understand supporting a fellow official, but these guys apparently kneel at the altar of TGDL. No matter what logic, video evidence, or written evidence of Libbey’s transgressions they’re provided, they refuse to see the light.

For those of you who have questioned the pettiness of officials over the years, good news: these folks have resorted to personal attacks on my character and the website to express their displeasure with the harsh words directed at Libbey. All those times you chanted “Take his whistle,” “Bull-shit,” or “Worst refs ever,” there’s a good chance they heard you, took that venom home, bottled it up, and unleashed it in a message board.

One further note: for all the affection they show TGDL, they still can’t spell his name right. I’m not too sure “Dave Libby” would be pleased with their efforts.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching 7-foot centers from Senegal get embarrassed playing in the NBA. I guess it’s the passionate hatred I have for Mouhamed Sene in me. Anyways, here’s Senegal product Cheikh Samb–a journeyman center after three years in the league–getting posterized by none other than Brandon Roy in Monday night’s matchup between Portland and the L.A. Clippers.

Side note: Ran into Rich King, the ex-Sonics center who made our list of the Top 11 Seattle draft busts, in Bellevue yesterday. The dude is in pretty good shape and looks like he could still make a decent NBA player. Couldn’t do much worse than Cheikh Samb, I imagine.

Superbowl week got you down? That’s why we’re here, to lift your spirits and make life worthwhile once again. Stick with us and come Sunday you’ll be in full Party Mode, ready to watch the lesser of two evils emerge as the best team in the NFL. With most Seattleites having zero vested rooting interest in either Pittsburgh or Arizona, we’ve come up with a list of things we all want to see happen during the Big Game.

2. Anquan Boldin box Ben Roethlisberger in the Battle of Reconstructed Faces. Roethlisberger (or BRo, as I call him) chiseled off his old mug in 2007 following a motorcycle accident. Boldin was defaced in a game earlier this season, following a vicious helmet-to-helmet collision in the end zone. Together, they’ll square off in the Fight of the Century to determine once and for all who looks weirder now than they did before!

5. Kurt Warner announce he’s gay. Not only will he do it, but he’ll do it with style. After scoring on a one-yard TD run early in the first quarter, Warner will celebrate by running to the goalpost, reaching under the padding and removing a rainbow flag. Then, he’ll run to the sideline and have a teammate awaiting his arrival with a big jacket that says “Kurt Warner: Gay 2009, HOF 20??” on the back, a la Chad Ocho Cinco Johnson. At that point, he’ll display his rainbow flag and run over to the sidelines where his wife, Brenda, will be waiting. In a not-so-surprising development, Brenda (FYI, who happens to be a lot better looking than she once was) will remove her wig and breast implants, revealing that she is and always has been Brendan Warner.

Kurt and Brendan Warner.

6. Larry Fitzgerald retire from football. The Cardinals have just won the Superbowl and Fitzgerald is handed a mic on the makeshift podium at midfield. He then issues this brief statement: “I just want to take this opportunity to announce that I’m retiring from the game of football. Also, I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Thank you.” Defensive backs around the league fund the going-away party, and Fitzgerald takes off on an intellectual quest of some sort around the globe, never to be seen or heard from again. He leaves football at the top of his game, and carves a Barry Sanders-esque mythical legend. The Seahawks go on to reclaim the division title in ’09 by sweeping Arizona. All is right with the world.

• Over 50 years of age.




• Male (meaning no boobs, unless you up and decide to forgo other criteria and book Charlie Weis, Bill Parcells, or the lead singer of Rascal Flatts).




• Non-ethnic (meaning no big physical features that could possibly elude clothing).




• Heterosexual (meaning no Clay Aiken, no Lance Bass, no Elton John, no George Michael, and no Michael McDonald).

None of this.

8. Tim Hightower get mauled by a lion. Okay, this is more of a personal matter involving me and Hightower, but it’s worth noting. Hightower is the Cardinals number two running back and a perennial underachiever since about midseason. Over the course of the 2008 fantasy season, I picked the bastard up off waivers three separate times (meaning I had dropped him twice in between) in hopes of snaring lightning in a bottle. For a few weeks, the strategy worked. Hightower started the year as a goal-line back, taking touchdowns away from Edgerrin James. Then, with James’ struggles, Hightower emerged as the starter. That’s when everything went dark. Hightower laid an egg the remainder of the year, then crapped all over my fantasy team, the Compton Honkies. Sure, the Honkies finished the season second overall, but the drop in morale likely cost us the championship (I take my fantasy seriously). Ultimately, I was forced to send Hightower to the waiver wire a third time when the season was complete. It’s a keeper league, so the move had repercussions, but in the end I just wasn’t willing to give Hightower another chance.

9. A sinkhole swallow up both teams during the game. What better way to get revenge on two of our rivals then to witness the earth devour them, coaches and all, during the Superbowl? Short of every player tearing his ACL and being forced to sit out the ’09 season, this would be sweet, sweet justice for Hawks fans everywhere. Forced to pick a winner between two teams you would hate to see come out on top, your dilemma is resolved now that they’ve completely disappeared into the Land of the Lost. It’s a celebration!

Two years have passed since the Washington men’s basketball team was last ranked in a national poll. That all came to an end yesterday as the Dawgs earned the number 23 spot in the AP Top 25 rankings. Unfortunately, they were left off the USA Today/Coaches Poll, but if nothing else it gives them something to shoot for.

Dave Libbey has no soul. I’m convinced of this. Don’t ask me why I’m convinced, I have no reasoning, but if you know who Dave Libbey is, there’s a good chance you might just agree with me.

For those of you who don’t know Libbey, he’s a college basketball referee that makes his home on the West Coast. Libbey has been an official since the early-1980′s, and over the years has worked his way up to a certain level of prominence in the world of NCAA hoops.

If you’re a hardcore Pac-10 basketball fan, you know Dave Libbey, and you subsequently hate Dave Libbey. Amongst his peers, Libbey may be viewed as a savvy veteran of the profession, but to fans and purists everywhere he’s more of a villain than anything else.

When it comes to college basketball, it’s all about Dave Libbey. If Dave Libbey is on the call, then Dave Libbey WILL BE the main attraction. You may not think that’s the case going in, but by the end of the game you’ll know it’s the truth. Libbey maintains an iron-fisted grip over his three-man officiating team and overrules anything and everything his minions attempt to do. You see a charge? Dave Libbey sees a block. You want traveling? Dave Libbey sees dribbling. For some refs, there may be such a thing as a no-call situation. For Dave Libbey, every situation requires his influence.

Dave Libbey is always right.

If you watched the Washington-UCLA game on Saturday, you witnessed Dave Libbey at his best. There were technical fouls, blatantly missed calls, questionably called calls, and even a sign in the Dawg Pack that read “Welcome to the Libbey show.” The billboard in his honor apparently brought out the best in Libbey, as he walked over to the students before the game, blew kisses, and thanked them for spelling his name correctly. As one fan put it, it was little more than “disturbing.”

On message boards around the nation, Libbey is trashed and lambasted by college basketball fans on a seemingly daily basis. However, I did find one message board where the man, the myth, the legend was praised. The forum on Officiating.com is a Dave Libbey lovefest. One user, under the handle “Stripes,” offered this praise of Libbey’s work: “I have been to Dave’s camp held at UCSD. I thought it was excellent. Dave is a great teacher and motivator. At the time I was a JV official…” And we’ll stop you right there. You were a JV official.

Just the fact that Libbey is as well-known as he is, is an indictment on his job and his personality. Officiating is a profession based on anonymity. The less people recognize you, the better. If fans can leave a game never knowing you existed, then that likely means you did a great job. Apparently Dave Libbey doesn’t play by these rules. He thrives on the attention, and he loves to be in control. He goes out of his way to chastise players, talk to coaches, exchange barbs (not necessarily in a friendly manner) with fans, and showcase his douchebag personality every chance he gets. Dave Libbey may be good for officiating, but he ruins the game of basketball.

*For stats on Libbey’s work, click here.