By Pete Williams

When you have self-employed health insurance, with high deductibles, you take advantage of every free medical screening available.

That’s how I ended up at Tropicana Field at 7:30 this morning for the Tampa Bay Rays third-annual free prostate cancer exam in conjunction with the Moffitt Cancer Center.

There’s nothing funny about prostate cancer. Still, it’s odd to undergo a prostate exam at a big-league ballpark. I wrote about the experience last year, but this time it wasn’t quite as strange. When you’ve undergone one “digital rectal exam” at a ballpark, it becomes routine quickly.

The Rays streamlined the procedure this year. Instead of having 1,200 guys show up at once and stand in line in the concourse, they assigned us to one of three shifts. I took the early morning option. About 200 of us gathered at The Batter’s Eye Restaurant, the center field eatery with a view of the field.

There a Moffitt doctor went through a brief Powerpoint presentation on prostate cancer, standing at the same podium where I once saw Joe Maddon introduced as manager and Rocco Baldelli sign a long-term contract.

This being a baseball setting, there were plenty of statistics – and not pleasant ones. According to the American Cancer Society, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010. Men are more likely to receive such a diagnosis than women are to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully, prostate cancer treatment is 97 percent effective if diagnosed early.

After the presentation, I was one of the first in line for the exam. There was PSA bloodwork, followed by the DRE. They did it all in a bar, of all places, one I had not been in since it was used for postseason festivities in 2008. There were three curtained stalls and it was all over quickly. Each participant got two tickets to see the Rays against the Blue Jays next week.

I wouldn’t rank having a prostate exam as the most miserable experience I’ve endured at The Trop. After all, I covered Vince Naimoli and the Devil Rays and dealt with Pat Burrell.

After the exam, we exited around the Rays’ cigar bar. Among the stats we learned today is that prostate cancer is second only to lung cancer when it comes to cancer deaths among men.

I stepped outside The Trop with a band-aid on my arm and a fistful of paperwork. I noticed one of my fellow participants whip out a cigarette and a lighter.

At least he’s pro-active about prostate cancer.

By Pete Williams

In the last 10 days, I have attended the National Sports Collectors Convention (in Baltimore) and Star Wars Celebration V, the mother of all Star Wars conventions (in Orlando).

Talk about getting in touch with your inner geek. I began collecting baseball cards in 1977, the year Star Wars came out. That film now is referred to as “Star Wars: A New Hope, Episode 4” but most of us think of it as the first movie.

If someone had asked in 1990 which would be more popular in 2010 – Star Wars or baseball cards, nobody would have said Star Wars. The baseball card industry was booming.

Star Wars? George Lucas had not made a movie since Return of the Jedi seven years earlier and there was not even a rumor of further films.

Today? It’s no contest. Attending “The National” at the Baltimore Convention Center was just sad. Oh, there were hundreds of booths with vintage baseball cards and sports memorabilia, and dozens of stars on hand to sign for cash. (Willie Mays, $300)

There were some kids, but not many, which speaks volumes since children were admitted free. The crowd was 99 percent white, 95 percent male, and 90 percent over 35.

That makes sense. Nobody under 35 cares about baseball cards, which played a pivotal role in childhood development for those of us on the other end of that age bracket. I literally learned to read with baseball cards. They taught me how to alphabetize and put things in numerical order. I learned about geography, history (baseball anyway), weird ‘70s hairstyles and fashions, and the value of saving my allowance for something.

When I became a baseball writer after college in 1991, I had never seen teams such as the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays play in person or on television. But I was familiar with every player who had played for the teams since they debuted in 1977, the same year I began collecting.

With cable television and the Internet, kids have no need for baseball cards. It doesn’t help that the card companies, working in tandem with the sports leagues and their unions, have killed the industry by shamelessly and should-be-illegally marketing memorabilia as can’t-miss investments.

At the National, most guys – and they were nearly all guys – were searching for pre-1980 cards, no doubt still hanging on to a time when baseball cards – and baseball – mattered much more than they do today.

As for Star Wars, it’s never been more popular. At Star Wars Celebration V – the event takes place every two years – there were seminars, exhibits, R2D2 races, and Q&A sessions with George Lucas and Mark Hamill, but the real show was just walking the halls or the Orange County Convention Center watching fans, about half of which were in costume.

It was mostly male, but there were enough women going for the Natalie Portman Padme look – the tight white costume with a shredded midriff – to make things interesting. Some of the more daring ones were decked out in Princess Leia slave girl regalia. Leia herself was on hand signing autographs, but apparently Carrie Fisher is a little too eccentric to sit in a theater for a Q&A session.

The seminar I wanted to see – it was the following day – was with George Lucas’ licensing guy, the man responsible for the entire sports and entertainment licensing industry as we know it. How is this guy not more famous? Think about that. Before Star Wars action figures came along in 1977, the entire licensing industry consisted almost entirely of Topps baseball cards and maybe Barbie dolls.

Not only that, Lucas has managed to make his brand even more popular than it was in the late 1970s. Name one thing that was big from 1977-83 that’s even more popular today? Maybe the NFL or Nike, but that’s it.

Because of the animated “Clone Wars” series, Star Wars is bigger than ever. My sons, 7 and 5, know more Star Wars than I do. Walking the halls in Orlando, I had no idea who some of the characters were since they were from Clone Wars. But my little guys knew immediately.

Only at a Star Wars convention can you call out for your son Luke and have four kids turn around, along with adults either nodding or rolling their eyes.

There were plenty of Generation X parents with their kids and it was tough to tell who was having more fun. My guys couldn’t walk 10 feet without being greeted by Stormtroopers, Boba Fetts, and Mace Windus.

At “The National,” I saw few father-son combinations and that’s not surprising. I’ve tried to get my kids into baseball and trading cards but they’re just not interested.

They’re more into Star Wars.

By Pete Williams

For the last few years, SportsBusiness Daily and SportsBusiness Journal have asked top sports personalities for their thoughts, ideas, aspirations and likes. Since they won’t be calling me, I’ve posted my own. If you’re at all a sports fan, it’s worth taking the survey.

What I like in an insight: Fearlessness

An influential person in my career: John Glennon

An out-of-the-box idea: Silent Night (no walk-up music, between-innings emcees, and piped-in stadium crap at minor league baseball games)

A business deal: NASCAR standing up to FOX and moving races back to the afternoons. Why can’t Bud Selig and Roger Goodell follow NASCAR’s lead?

A sports facility: Dunedin Stadium

A sports event: ACC basketball tournament

A strategy: Focus on the product on the field not value-added entertainment nonsense

A hire: Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay Rays

A brand: Costco, Chipotle, Southwest Airlines, Rita’s Ice, Bill’s BBQ

A trend: Participation in running events and triathlon way up, sports attendance down. No coincidence.

An innovation: ESPN Deportes….It’s the only way I can stomach ESPN – and my Spanish is getting better.

A story that bears watching: Continued decline in interest in pro sports

An idea or invention I wish I had thought of: Fathead…I had the Manute Bol growth poster in my room for years!

A fantasy job: Pro triathlete

What I like:

About my job: very few meetings

Sports: The enlightened, multi-layered world view of athletes, agents, owners, and sports executives.

Sports business: How no other industry gives so little but expects so much of its customers and the public.

Sports media: The mute button.

Sports technology: Anything by Garmin

The future (or direction) of sports business: Launch of niche sports leagues and the decline of the Big Four, mirroring the demise of newspapers and television at the expense of the Internet.

Sports fans: What P.T. Barnum said.

What I would like to change:

One – just one – healthy food option at a stadium concession stand.
Bring back twi-night doubleheaders.
No commercials of any sort played at stadiums.

That the inventor of Stadium Click-Effects and other “in-game entertainment systems” be tied to a large hill of fireants.

No walk-up music.
That parents not allow their children to ask for autographs. Within a generation, this tired trend (only a century old) would be dead.

Agents may not be quoted or interviewed on air by any media outlet.

If you call a news conference, you must take questions. Otherwise just film it, post it online and don’t waste my time.

If you own a sports team and take public money for your sports venue, which is to say all owners, you must face the media once a month.

No music recorded before 2000 played at sports venues. Nobody will miss “Glory Days,” “Centerfield,” and “YMCA.”

Sax player B.K. Jackson is permanent national anthem performer at all major events.

Change in what I do: Faster swim times.

See: Kids admitted free to all NFL and MLB preseason exhibitions. If NASCAR can let children into qualifying events and everything but Sprint Cup races, NFL and MLB can do the same for its non-events.

See more of in sports: Mastery of the basketball fundamentals. A 6-2 guard shooting 40 percent would be out of the NBA 25 years ago. These days he’s an All-Star.

See more of in sports business: Mike Veeck and his disciples.

See less of in sports business: Sports radio and self-serving, meaningless rankings of powerful people.

Eliminate: All-Star games, pre-game shows, sideline reporters, and magnet schedules touted as “giveaways.”

What I don’t like in general: Bad manners

Pet peeve: Crowd shots and especially booth shots. Let me watch the freakin’ game!

In sports: It’s impossible to take kids to games. Too noisy, too many drunks, and too many distractions. Sports teams try to sell everything but the game to fans and then wonder why kids have no interest in the sport.

In business: Lines. Don’t make me wait to spend money on your product.

About sports fans: People who complain about the cost of beer at sports events.

What I like in people: Showing up.

That would surprise those who know me: I’m an open book.

Above all else: Time with family

Heroes: Mom, Dad

Players: Dale Murphy, Arthur Ashe

Coaches/Managers: Bobby Cox, Tony Dungy, Terry Holland, Bruce Arena

Teams: The 1980s Washington Bullets, 1977-78 Richmond Braves

City: Tampa Bay (entire market)

Memento: Cork I caught in self-defense off bottle of champagne popped by Francisco Cabrera in Braves clubhouse following Game 7 of 1992 NLCS. If only it were authenticated.

Time of year (because): October – baseball postseason and best month of college football weather

Music: Male vocalists with testosterone (or at least nicotine) voices: Bob Seger, George Thorogood, Bruce Springsteen, John Hiatt.

Books: Stephen King’s “On Writing,” “Born to Run,” “Veeck as in Wreck”

Authors: Tim Dorsey, Carl Hiaasen

Magazines: Competitor, Wired, Sports Illustrated

Web sites: SlowTwitch.com, CorePerformance.com, WSJ.com, ESPN.com

Gadgets: Polar heart rate monitor

Chores: Power washing

Hobbies: Triathlon

Trips: Eurailing after high school

Movies: “Office Space,” “Braveheart,” “The Patriot,” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”

TV: True Blood

Concerts: George Thorogood in small venues

Artist: Jim Warren

Food: Chipotle

Dessert: Rita’s Ice

Drink: Spicy Rivanna from Burnley Vineyards near Charlottesville

Scent: Freshly-opened packs of 1970s Topps baseball cards

Vacation spot: Sandbridge Beach

Cars: Convertibles.

Quote: “Choose Your Next Words Carefully.” (King Leonidas – also Jim Leavitt)

By Pete Williams

I was sad to learn about the death of Manute Bol over the weekend at the age of 47. It’s tough to use the words “sad” and “Manute Bol” in the same sentence because the man brought so much joy.

Given the humanitarian work he performed after his NBA career in his native Sudan, it seems trivial to ponder the impact he had in professional basketball. But for those of us who suffered through the miserable decade of 1980s Washington Bullets basketball, an era that continues to the present day, Manute Bol was a welcome relief.

He stood 7-foot-6 with a wingspan that seemed longer. During his rookie season of 1985-86, he blocked an NBA record 396 shots. There was one game against the Milwaukee Bucks that season where he blocked something like 18 shots. On one possession, he blocked three or four Bucks’ shots. (He had not figured out how to deflect a shot toward one of his own teammates.) I can still see Don Nelson, the Bucks coach at the time, pulling his hair out as he stomped along the sidelines.

Manute Bol was unstoppable that season. Mel Proctor was the TV announcer for the Bullets at the time. I’ve never heard a more excited play-by-play guy than Mel during Manute’s first few games.

Moncrief drives the lane…BLOCKED BY BOL!…kicked out to Terry Cummings, short jumper…BLOCKED BY BOL!!…Mokeski down low – NO! BLOCKED BY BOLLLLL!

Bol was the tallest man ever to play in the NBA at the time, which became more evident two years later when the Bullets drafted Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues, at 5-foot-3 the shortest ever.

The Bullets, then as now as the Wizards, were a notoriously cheap, horribly run franchise. But they had the greatest sports giveaway ever: the Manute Bol growth poster.

Kids could measure their growth against Bol, but the poster was more than that. It was 12 feet high and about six feet wide. It pictured a life-sized image of Bol with his arms stretched out, standing below a backboard. I tacked one up in my room, somehow without assistance. Since the ceiling was just eight feet high, I folded the poster where wall met ceiling and tacked the backboard to the ceiling. (I can’t believe I can’t find a picture of this poster online.)

I kicked myself a few years ago when the people at Fathead came up with their life-sized wall decals of sports figures. After looking at the Manute poster on my wall (and ceiling) throughout high school, why didn’t I think of that?

It might seem intimidating having a life-size image of a giant Dinka tribesman posted in the middle of your bedroom. Actually, it always made me smile.

By Pete Williams

Ken Griffey Jr. apparently can’t stay awake long enough to make it through a Seattle Mariners game. According to reports, he has sleep issues and often naps in the Mariners clubhouse.

Last week, according to a report by respected Mariners writer Larry LaRue in the Tacoma News Tribune, Griffey was sleeping in the clubhouse during the game when the Mariners were looking for him to pinch hit.

The man once known as Junior or “The Kid” is 40, after all, and apparently that’s enough reason to act like an old man. Just ask new grandfather Brett Favre, also 40, who has been retiring and unretiring for three years.

As someone three days older than Favre and six weeks older than Junior, I used to root for those two to keep playing as long as they wanted. As long as my contemporaries (and elders like Jamie Moyer) keep playing, I won’t feel old.

But the more I watch Favre and Griffey, the more I look in the mirror and ask, “Do I look as old as those guys?”

Favre still has good hair, though he started going gray in his mid-30s. He also had to kick alcohol and an addiction to Vicodin, and has endured two decades of getting slammed into the ground by angry defensive lineman. Fair enough.

But what’s Junior’s excuse? We used to applaud Griffey for being perhaps the only slugger in baseball we were absolutely positive had never used performance-enhancing drugs. Junior is such an old school guy that he has no off-season conditioning program, barely works out.

And that’s the problem. Over the last decade, Griffey has morphed into his father, with the same thick, almost pear-shaped body. Since turning 31 in November of 2000, he’s rarely been healthy, reaching 500 at-bats just once. He missed most of the 2002, ’03, and ’04 seasons with injuries and has played in 140 games just twice since the 2000 season.

Our view of baseball and drugs has become so warped that we applaud Griffey for this. If he had taken steroids and HGH like everyone else, the argument goes, he would have hit another 200 home runs. Instead, he’s played clean and for that he gets a pass.

Nobody ever suggests that Griffey squandered his talent and genes. After all, he still hit 630 home runs. Only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays hit more without the use of chemicals.

But 438 of Griffey’s home runs came before George W. Bush took office. What if he had committed himself to the type of brutal off-season workouts endured by guys like Carl Crawford and Roy Halladay? It’s too early to say how they’ll hold up in their mid 30s, of course, but we only have to look at Griffey to see what happens when you do nothing.

Griffey is no different than players from his father’s generation, where outfielders contributed little after the age of 31. But even without PEDs, guys should be able to play longer today based on modern core conditioning programs.

Look at it this way: Griffey and I both graduated high school in 1987. He was the best high school baseball player in the country. I was one of the worst, but my high school program was so lousy I earned two varsity letters as an outfielder.

Today I’m a better athlete than Junior. Seven years ago I began writing “Core Performance” books with Mark Verstegen, who has trained numerous MLB players, including Crawford, Evan Longoria, Chase Utley and Dustin Pedroia. Three years ago, I took up triathlon. I have an arthritic right ankle stemming from a high school basketball injury, but the Core program has helped me improve the mobility and stability of the ankle to where it’s not an issue.

Several years ago, I had my V02 max tested at Verstegen’s Athletes’ Performance training center. My numbers were better than Crawford’s. Admittedly, I’m an endurance athlete and Crawford’s specialty is anaerobic activity, sprinting from first to third.

Still, by one measuring stick this 40-year-old sportswriter is a superior athlete than 28-year-old Carl Crawford, perhaps the best athlete in baseball.

Imagine what a program like Verstegen’s could have done for Griffey. Yes, he’ll still go down as one of the all-time greats, a first-ballot Hall of Famer who has earned $150 million on the field and millions more in endorsements.

Maybe if things had not come so easy to him early in his career, he would have committed himself more to his career longevity. He could have gone down as the greatest ever, perhaps even leading a team to the World Series.

With $150 million in the bank, I’d sleep well at night. But if Junior is having sleep issues, perhaps it comes from wondering what might have been.

By Pete Williams

Fifteen years ago this past Saturday, I published my first book. I would have missed the anniversary were it not for an email I received Monday from a college student in the Washington, D.C. area working on a project examining the sports card industry.

He had read my book CARD SHARKS: How Upper Deck Turned a Child’s Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business, which chronicled Upper Deck’s meteoric rise in the late 1980s. The book also revealed, through my interviews with many former and then-current employees, Upper Deck’s unethical practice of reprinting its cards that had become valuable on the secondary market.

In the last two years, Upper Deck has imploded, losing many of its licenses to produce trading cards from sports leagues and/or their players associations and dealing with several lawsuits. While the company’s downfall could be attributed in part to management – head guy Richard McWilliam has been at the helm for two decades – it’s more a sign of the times. Kids haven’t collected cards for years, a result of the high-tech world we live in but also the strategy of card manufacturers and sports leagues of shamelessly promoting cards and memorabilia as can’t-miss investments.

This Q&A – for a sports management paper to be named later – serves as an appropriate 15th-anniversary interview for Card Sharks.

Q. Have you bought a pack of cards in the past year? The past six months? Past month? Past week?

A. I have not collected in many years. The one exception is I bought four boxes of never-opened, 1998 Fleer Ultra in November for $2 a box at a “garage sale” being held at the Toronto Blue Jays spring training complex in Dunedin, Fla., not far from where I live. I bought them for my kids for Christmas and the experience – chronicled in this blog – pretty much sums up the card industry.

Q. Have you played the new card game Adrenalyn by Panini? What about Topps Attax?

A. I have not. Clever concepts, I suppose, but after two decades of shamelessly marketing your product to adults as a can’t-miss investment, there’s no way you can dust off the 1970s collectibles marketing strategy and expect it to work. You’ve lost a generation of kids, if not two. They’re more interested in Silly Bandz. Next year it will be something else, but not cards.

Q. Do you think card companies are doing the right thing by re-focusing on kids?

A. I suppose, but I don’t see how it can work. For people of my age – Generation X – cards played a different role. I literally learned to read with baseball cards. They taught me math/stats and geography. I learned to alphabetize and put things in numerical order. I learned to save money for cards as they were priced reasonably at 30 cents a pack of 15-18 cards. Even adjusting for inflation and better printing technologies, there’s no way cards should cost more than $1.50 for a pack of 10 cards. Instead, it’s $3 or $4 for six to eight cards. What kid can afford that?

With no cable TV – my parents refused to subscribe – baseball cards were how I followed the game, along with through magazines and the daily newspaper. Those roles have been replaced by cable television and the Internet.

I have two young sons, and while they’re interested in many things that were big in the 1970s and early ‘80s – Star Wars, Legos, Scooby Doo, and the band KISS to name a few – they show no interest in cards.

Q. Do you think sports leagues are doing the right thing by granting exclusive trading card licenses? What do you think are the pros/cons?

A. They have no choice. When card companies are unable to produce enough licensing revenue, the leagues will pull the plug, as they have. If they still were producing the revenue, they would continue to license countless card manufacturers. Sports leagues and their enablers – card companies, dealers, hobby magazines, etc. – have so watered down the word “exclusive” that it’s meaningless whenever used in this industry.

Q. Are there any hobby shops left in Florida? If not, where do you get your cards/memorabilia?

A. Again, I don’t collect, though every so often I’ll take my sons into a card store to show them what things were like when I was their age. We have a few stores left here in the Sunshine State, though like everywhere else they’re increasingly difficult to find.

Q. You wrote a book, Card Sharks, in which you criticize Upper Deck’s business practices. Are you surprised, now 15 years after writing that book and 21 years since UD was founded, that UD now only has one major league license, the NHL? (well two if you count MLS)

A. First, thanks for recognizing the 15th anniversary, which was Saturday. I’d like to clarify your question. I interviewed more than 150 people for that book, including dozens of former (and then-current) employees, officials from all four major sports leagues, and others involved in the industry. They painted a picture, along with thousands of pages of court documents, of a company that had reprinted its cards and engaged in business practices considered unethical in that industry. I didn’t criticize Upper Deck as one would in a magazine column or blog; I reported a story based on many, many sources.

Upper Deck, like the rest of the industry, tried unsuccessfully to evolve with the changing times. The bottom line is that Americans no longer collect anything like they did in the 1970s and ‘80s. Look at any collectible that was popular during that time – beer cans, coins, Lionel trains, Hummel figurines, Coca-Cola memorabilia – and you’ll find as much if not a steeper decline in interest.

I definitely would not count MLS as a major card license and I’m not sure I would count the NHL either. Love both sports, but they’re off the radar in this country when it comes to collectors.

Q. What do you think are the prospects for companies that don’t have a league license? (i.e. Upper Deck in baseball) Do you think collectors will be attracted to a product without team logos/league marks? If you were UD, how would you market your baseball product?

A. There is precedent. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, the Major League Baseball Players Association employed Mike Schechter and Associates (MSA) as its licensing agent. MSA licensed player images to dozens of food manufacturers, who included cards of players with their food products. This being pre-Photoshop, the logos were airbrushed. The cards looked kind of cheesy to begin with – Kraft’s Heavy Hitters! – and the obvious airbrushing made them look even worse. Still, the cards were popular since they were produced during the heyday of the sports card industry. That environment doesn’t exist today.

For 20 years there has been a modest niche market for draft-pick sets picturing players in street clothes or college uniforms. I imagine Upper Deck could go in that direction, but it would not be the same as having the MLB license to go with its MLBPA license.

Q. Do you still believe you should not get into the hobby with the primary purpose of making money?

A. I have never believed people should get into sports memorabilia with any intention – primary, secondary or otherwise – of making money. I felt that way in 1981 (as a kid), in 1991 (as a young journalist during the industry’s peak), and certainly today. Like many markets, the people who made money in sports memorabilia did so accidentally. They held onto cards/memorabilia from the 1950s or before that they or a relative collected and when the market boomed in the early 1980s, they saw the benefit. It’s no different than people who owned homes in Silicon Valley or certain beach communities for decades and cashed out before 2008. They never intended to make a fortune on real estate; they just happened to live there. Yes, some card dealers did well in 1989-91 speculating on new cases of Upper Deck products, along with those of other companies. This was the industry equivalent of the 1998-2000 stock market. But those card prices were less legitimate than late ‘90s stock prices. When everything produced after 1975 is worthless, as it is today, there can be no doubt that “investing” in sports memorabilia is foolish.

For instance, if you buy $10,000 in some company’s stock today and it’s worth $10,000 next week, you can get your $10,000 back online in two minutes (minus a modest trading commission). If you purchase a piece of memorabilia for $10,000, it might take months for you to unload it and there’s no guarantee you’ll get anything close to your purchase price.

The MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann, who is an avid collector and one of the leading authorities on the industry – I remember reading his columns in hobby magazines when I was 12 and he was 22 – gave me a great quote on this topic for a story I wrote several years ago. He said, “Acquire nothing you would not be delighted to keep for the rest of your life and never make a profit from.”

Q. What do you see are the biggest challenges/opportunities for the hobby moving forward? Do you think the hobby has a future? (i.e. long-term in 15-20 years?)

A. I don’t think the hobby has much of a future because interest in sports has peaked. Will the NBA ever be as big as it was in the early 1990s? Will Major League Baseball ever be as popular as it was in the late 1990s Steroid Era? Will the NHL ever recover from canceling the 2004-05 season? It doesn’t look that way.

Talk to people from the millennial generation (born after 1980) and you’ll sense little interest in professional sports. They’ll go to a game every so often if it’s a big event and perceived as the thing to do, which is why the NFL with its limited schedule will survive no matter how poorly it treats its fans with higher ticket prices, later start times, condoning drunken behavior in the stands, etc.

The Generation X crowd, which grew up huge sports fans, has drifted away because of the fast-paced technological society in which we live. We don’t have time to go to sports events and even if we did, it’s too expensive to take our spouse and kids. As recently as 1994, I had 12th row, center court season tickets, with parking included, to see the Washington Bullets for $26.75 per ticket, per game. Given the product and the arena, you still could argue I overpaid, but sports tickets have far, far outpaced inflation over the last 15 years.

My kids probably will not grow up professional sports fans, even though they’ve been to dozens of Tampa Bay Rays games and Florida State League contests. It’s a different world now and professional sports play less of a role. (Interestingly, they’re big NASCAR fans, in part because of the movie “Cars.” NASCAR gets it. They let you bring in food and non-alcoholic drinks. Kids get in free to the non-Sprint Cup events, such as the Nationwide Series and preliminaries. This might not sound like much, but let me know when MLB or the NFL discounts their meaningless exhibition games for kids. Best of all, NASCAR stood up to FOX and moved most start times back to 1 p.m. Eastern where kids – and working adults – can actually watch. Let’s see the MLB and the NFL take that stand.)

I’ve spent my career as a sports journalist. Working in that environment there’s a tendency to believe, as most sports fans do, that sports plays a bigger role in our society than it does. But the collectibles industry merely reflects the waning interest in sports.

I speak regularly to classes from kindergarten through college and I sense little interest in big-time sports – and I live in a market that has three major sports franchises, along with baseball spring training and, until recently, Tim Tebow.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, after years of fleecing fans and claiming a season-ticket waiting list of 100,000-plus, now have plenty of seats available and they’ve discounted to as little as $35 per game — $25 for kids. It’s too late. Kids have grown up focused on other things.

Forget the card industry. That’s what should concern anyone running a sports league or franchise.

Q. Is Florida really THAT much better than Arlington, VA???

Yes. It’s like the metaphor of the frog and the boiling water. Whenever I go back to Northern Virginia, with its insufferable traffic and unpredictable, gridlocked winters, I ask my friends why they stay. I guess there’s something to be said for working for the U.S. government.

By Pete Williams

NOTE: In the year leading up to the 2005 NFL Draft, I followed the process from the perspectives of NFL teams, scouts, college programs, agents, and the players themselves. The result was my book THE DRAFT: A Year inside the NFL’s Search for Talent, which came out in 2006. The 2005 draft was a trainwreck on many levels. For all of the talk we’ll hear this weekend about blue-chip prospects and can’t-miss talent, the NFL Draft is at best a crap shoot. This is a story I wrote that appears in The Sporting News’ 2010 NFL Draft preview magazine.

THE DRAFT FROM HELL

It’s not quite the disaster that the 1986 NBA Draft turned out to be, but the 2005 NFL version looks like it will go down in pro sports history as one fo the most cursed of all time.

By Pete Williams

Five years ago, the San Francisco 49ers were thrilled to take quarterback Alex Smith with the No.1 overall pick in the draft. The Minnesota Vikings, with two first-round selections, thought they had a pair of solid building blocks in wide receiver Troy Williamson (seventh) and defensive end Erasmus James (18th).

The Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers respectively thought Ronnie Brown and Cadillac Williams, who shared time in the Auburn backfield, could each handle the workload of a featured back.

Braylon Edwards, Cedric Benson, Adam “Pacman” Jones, Antrel Rolle, Carlos Rogers and Mike Williams were viewed as future stars worthy of top-10 picks.

Edwards, Brown, Smith and Cadillac Williams have shown flashes of their draft-day potential. Even Benson, a bust in Chicago, looks to have rejuvenated his career in Cincinnati. But not one player selected among that 2005 group has become an established NFL star.

Every draft has its busts, but it’s difficult to find a draft without at least one perennial Pro Bowler among the first 10 selections.

“The biggest misperception people have about the draft is that you have a comparable talent pool every year,” says Charley Casserly, an NFL analyst for CBS and a former NFL general manager. “This was not considered a good draft at the time.”

Many NFL executives believe three seasons must pass before it’s fair to grade a draft or a player. That’s the period necessary for some players to learn complex playbooks or, if nothing else, outlast aging veterans. After five seasons, it’s unlikely a player is going to suddenly emerge or make vast improvement.

Though nobody is yet comparing the 2005 NFL Draft to the drug-infested 1986 NBA Draft that featured Len Bias, Chris Washburn, William Bedford, and Roy Tarpley among the top seven picks, it is replete with high-profile stories of unfulfilled potential, character issues and tragedy.

Pacman Jones, selected sixth by Tennessee, became the poster boy for the NFL’s epidemic of off-field misbehavior. The twice-arrested Matt Jones, the star of the 2005 NFL Scouting Combine, was a bust in Jacksonville after being selected 21st by the Jaguars.

Mike Williams and Maurice Clarett, who had unsuccessfully challenged the NFL’s early-entry rule, are now out of football. Clarett, taken by Denver with the last pick in the third round, is serving a seven-year prison term after a plea bargain on robbery and concealed weapons charges.

Williams, once rated at the top of ESPN analyst Mel Kiper Jr.’s pre-draft “bigboard,” ate himself out of the league, catching just 44 passes for three teams while at one point ballooning to 270 pounds.

“Williams was one of my worst evaluations ever,” Kiper wrote on ESPN.com. “I thought he was the best player in the 2005 draft.”

The 2005 draft also featured David Pollack (No. 17, Cincinnati) and Buffalo third-rounder Kevin Everett, both of whom suffered career-ending injuries. Those stories, while sad, are not as tragic as the deaths of Darrent Williams (second-round, Denver), Chris Henry (third round, Cincinnati), and Jonathan Goddard (sixth-round, Detroit).

Goddard, who died in a motorcycle accident in 2008 while playing in the Arena Football League, was part of a Detroit draft that produced little for then-general manager Matt Millen, though he was hardly the only front office boss to whiff in 2005.

The Vikings used the seventh overall pick they received from the Raiders in the Randy Moss trade for South Carolina wideout Troy Williamson, who struggled with drops and was later traded to Jacksonville for a sixth-round pick. James recorded just five sacks in an injury-plagued career with the Vikings and Redskins.

“You’re not going to draft well every year,” says Gil Brandt, the former longtime Dallas Cowboys personnel director. “But a bad draft or two can set you back for years.”

Though the top of the 2005 draft produced little, plenty of talent emerged later. DeMarcus Ware, Shawne Merriman, and Jammal Brown were taken with the 11th through 13th picks. Aaron Rodgers (No.24) and Roddy White (No.27) have been late bloomers.

The last three picks of the first round – Pittsburgh tight end Heath Miller, Philadelphia defensive tackle Mike Patterson and New England guard Logan Mankins – have been three of the draft’s best picks.

Those three teams drafted late in ’05 because of their ‘04 success, which has continued under coaching and front-office staffs that have stayed mostly intact. That lends credence to the theory that players who remain under the same schemes and coaching philosophies are more likely to last.

It’s tough to maintain that continuity, of course. Only eight head coaches and 10 general managers hold the same job they had in 2005.

“Continuity matters,” says Falcons president Rich McKay, who also was the team’s general manager in 2005. “If you bring in a new set of coordinators, I guarantee that within three years you’ll have nothing left from the previous regime.”

The 2005 draft illustrates how it might be more appropriate to judge a class as a whole rather than the impact of its top-10 picks. The class of 2005 included second-rounders Lofa Tatupu and Vincent Jackson, third-round pick Frank Gore, and fourth-rounders Marion Barber and Brandon Jacobs.

Of the six players from that draft to reach the Pro Bowl following the 2009 season, only Ware, Mankins, and Rodgers were first-round selections. Green Bay safety Nick Collins was drafted late in the second round, the Eagles’ Trent Cole in the fifth, and Dallas nose tackle Jay Ratliff in the seventh.

Then again, six Pro Bowlers is a small contingent for a recent draft.

Casserly admits that his 2005 draft with the Texans – headlined by No.16 overall pick Travis Johnson – was not very good. The following year, he used the first overall pick on Mario Williams instead of Reggie Bush or Vince Young and selected DeMeco Ryans in the second round.

Both Williams and Ryans are established stars after four seasons.

“It’s not like teams suddenly forgot how to approach the draft in 2005,” Casserly says. “Some years are better than others. We knew 2005 wasn’t as rich in talent and that’s proven to be the case.”

By Pete Williams

Riley: In good PR hands

I’ve dealt with hundreds of public relations people over the years, both as a journalist looking to land credentials/interviews and as an author seeking publicity. Some PR people are very good, some not so good. It’s a tough gig and a difficult one to do well.

Then there are those who have a sixth sense for matching stories/clients and media outlets.

In 1992, I had just started writing a column on sports memorabilia for USA Today Baseball Weekly. One morning, a publicist phoned and asked if I wanted to interview one of his clients, an up-and-coming comedian who had a collection of celebrity-signed baseballs.

The column was new, I needed material, and the comic would be in town the following week.

“Sure,” I said, “but…who is Jeff Foxworthy?”

I spent a memorable morning at a dive DC hotel coffee shop talking baseball with Foxworthy. His career soon took off, no doubt helped by the tireless efforts of a publicist who explored every last angle for promoting his client’s career.

The publicist’s name was Jeff Abraham. It’s not an unusual one, but I have a photographic memory when it comes to names. It’s probably from collecting baseball cards as a kid. If only I could monetize this talent.

Last week I received an e-mail from Forbes Riley, who is well known in the infomercial and Home Shopping world. She’s the creator of a new fitness gadget called “The Spin Gym” and wanted to know if she could appear on my radio show “The Fitness Buff.” We’re both in the Tampa Bay area, so this connection was not unusual. We exchanged some dates and times and hopefully our schedules will match soon.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a Los Angeles publicist wanting to know if I’d be interested in having his new client (Forbes Riley) on the radio show. He had Googled fitness radio shows and stumbled upon my program, unaware that Forbes already had contacted me.

The publicist? Jeff Abraham.

It was the first time our paths had crossed in 18 years. The Fitness Buff Show is four years old and we’ve developed a nice little following. Still, we’re not exactly mainstream media.

Jeff and I caught up on the phone yesterday. He’s still representing comics; he worked with George Carlin for 11 years up until Carlin’s death.

If Jeff Abraham is tirelessly chasing down every possible promotional angle for Forbes Riley, well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if a few years from now she’s as famous as Jeff Foxworthy.

Lots of Yankee merchandise still available

By Pete Williams

I’m a huge Costco fan. I spend much of my money there. I’ve purchased my laptop and Blackberry there, a lot of my clothes. Most of our food comes from Costco, along with a lot of our furniture, gas, tires, and household items.

I love the business model: sell premium merchandise at affordable prices. Costco pays its employees well – with full benefits – and keeps its profit margins low. It does twice the sales of Sam’s Club with half the stores, as well it should. Sam’s Club is just Wal-Mart with a cover charge.

Costco is everything that Sam’s/Wal-Mart is not, which is why Wall Street hates Costco. It doesn’t matter. Costco stock moves up slowly but steadily, even in the Great Recession.

Everything you need to know about the Costco demographic can be summed up in this sentence: Costco is the nation’s biggest seller of wine and the fourth-biggest book seller.

Costco has an uncanny knack for putting the right products in front of customers. It constantly rotates merchandise, creating a treasure hunt effect. This being the start of baseball season, my Clearwater, Fla., Costco has had a table of Tampa Bay Rays gear for the last month or so. Many of the shirts, not surprisingly, have a No.3 and “Longoria” on the back.

That’s why I was stunned last night to see half the table now devoted to New York Yankees gear. Granted, the Yankees are headquartered just across the water in Tampa. But this Costco is less than a mile from the Philadelphia Phillies spring training site. (The Phillies have trained in Clearwater since 1947.)

Obviously the Yankees have a huge presence in Tampa, where the Steinbrenner family has lived forever and where the Yankees have trained since 1996. The Yankees are forever encroaching on the Rays by broadcasting their games on local radio.

But if there’s one demographic that doesn’t get Costco…it’s New Yorkers. As much as New Yorkers love to think of themselves as hip and up-to-speed on everything, they’re generally clueless when it comes to Costco, even though they have stores in Brooklyn, Queens, and most recently in East Harlem. Loading up an SUV or minivan on a weekend afternoon just isn’t part of the New Yorker culture.

A book editor friend of mine, a middle-aged lifelong New Yorker, recently told me how she made her first trip to a Costco in a tone of voice that suggested she had visited her first farm.

You hear a lot of New York accents in the Tampa Bay area, but not in the Clearwater Costco. That’s probably no coincidence. As with most seasonal merchandise, the Yankees gear will disappear in a month, along with most of the Rays stuff.

I’m guessing the Rays stuff will sell better, as it should. The Phillies would have sold better than the Yankees gear. It’s too bad some Costco buyer is as clueless as magazine editors and television executives who still think the tired Yankees story is what best appeals nationally.

The few young people that follow baseball are more interested in Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford, Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard.

C’mon Costco, you’re better than this.

April 2, 2010

By Pete Williams

I missed the Winter Olympics.

I missed the Academy Awards

I missed March Madness.

I missed the various half-confessions of Tiger Woods, the latest debates and passage of health care reform, and anything else that has appeared on television since February 17.

Actually, I didn’t miss anything. That’s why my wife thought it was lame of me to give up television for Lent; I don’t watch much anyway.

I have not watched a network television program regularly since the first season of Survivor in 2000. I have not seen a single episode of American Idol, Lost, Dancing with the Stars, 24, or most anything else that has debuted in the last decade.

I’ve enjoyed several series on HBO, especially Six Feet Under, Rome, and Band of Brothers. But with True Blood on hiatus until mid-June, I knew I wouldn’t miss anything there, though I did have the DVR set to record The Pacific.

I was inspired to give up TV for Lent because we’ve had an ongoing struggle trying to find a phone/TV/Internet provider we like. At one point, we considered cutting the cord and going with our cell phones, over-the-air television, and stealing the Internet signal from one or both of our next-door neighbors. I wanted to see if I could live without.

In the end, we decided that was unrealistic.

Our neighbors’ Internet signals are just too weak.

By then, I felt committed to a no-TV Lent and forged ahead. It’s a challenge to go 43 days without watching a single minute of television. I had to turn off the eye-level TVs in the locker room at my gym whenever I entered. (In the main room, it’s easy to ignore the endless loop of stale ‘80s music videos.)

I stayed out of sports bars, barely entered our family room, and did not touch the TV in my home office.

It helped that I was on the road in Orlando for March covering the Atlanta Braves for Fox Sports South. (Oddly enough I twice appeared on Braves broadcasts.)

My biggest concern was how I’d deal with spending so much time in baseball clubhouses and press boxes, where there are televisions everywhere. Thankfully, there are no TVs in the Braves clubhouse and I stood with my back to the one in manager Bobby Cox’s office during his post-game media chats.

Unlike the regular season, where writers routinely glance at press box monitors to view replays, nothing in a spring training game is that important. Plus, most spring games aren’t televised anyway.

I grew up in a home where my parents refused to get cable TV, but I still watched a fair amount of network programming. I can recite dialogue with any of the 200-plus episodes of M*A*S*H, for instance.

But gradually my viewing has diminished to almost nothing. Maybe it came with having kids or taking up triathlon. Maybe it came with the lack of quality programming. Maybe it came with Disney hijacking ESPN and making it unwatchable. Maybe it came with the transition of television from news and entertainment to talking heads yelling about politics and sports.

For whatever reason, I barely watch TV and I’m not alone. I have several friends who do not even own televisions, people in their early 30s. Buster Olney, the terrific ESPN baseball writer, grew up on a farm in Vermont without television and still managed to follow baseball religiously. I had TV in the Virginia suburbs, but mostly followed sports through newspapers, magazines, and baseball cards.

As someone whose living depends partially on following sports, I wondered if I could pull it off for 43 days. But because of the non-stop chatter surrounding sports, you need not watch the games themselves anymore to follow along. In 2008, I did not watch a minute of the NFL season until the Super Bowl and still felt like I could keep up with 20 minutes of daily online reading. (Heck, millions of people watch six hours of NFL every Sunday but are too drunk to remember any of it.)

In October, I was on a cruise ship during the World Series. I thought I’d be like Jack Nicholson in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” itching to watch the Fall Classic. But even though the Yankees/Phillies series was on in our cabin and all over the ship, I barely watched it. There were more interesting things to do.

Without TV for the last six weeks, I got through my magazines more quickly. I read my Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day and I remain on pace to reach my goal of reading 52 books this year.

I was able to stay mostly on track with my triathlon training even while dealing with the grind of baseball beat reporting. Mostly, though, I felt more focused and it transcended into other areas. I didn’t check the Blackberry as much, kept the radio in the car off more, went to no movies, watched no videos online other than the Braves-related material I posted for Fox Sports South.com, and just felt better overall.

It’s probably just a coincidence, but several cool projects came my way during this period.

My Lenten television fast will end Easter Sunday, in time for the NCAA basketball championship and Opening Day on Monday. I could even watch Tiger’s latest confession, were I so inclined.

I feel like I could go another 43 days, though not right now.

Maybe the next time Lent rolls around.