2015 Off Topic Celebrity Dead Pool

[Lorizael]

While rosters are more than copy/paste, you're spot on with the rest of it. A month is more than enough time. I have failed.

I will finish it. And there's not much else I can say that's not bull****.

With what we're paying you, you have no excuse. If you can't get the job done, we'll shrug and go watch TV.

[ColdWizard]

Television is bad for you. Read a book.

[-Jrabbit]

Thanks, CW. Looking frward to it.

[ColdWizard]

Rosters are up. I award Lori the Best Team Theme Award for 2015, which is worth 0 points at the end of the season, and all the bragging rights derived therefrom.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

CW and I have a hit already. Stuart Scott died on January 5th.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

And you'll need to take Luise Rayner off my team.

[-Jrabbit]

Can't believe I dropped Stuart Scott. I blame it on an ugly cut/paste accident.

[Lorizael]

Rosters are up. I award Lori the Best Team Theme Award for 2015, which is worth 0 points at the end of the season, and all the bragging rights derived therefrom.

Thank you, thank you. But the satisfaction of knowing that all those who would seek to steal my life energy will pay the ultimate price is reward enough for me.

[Uncle Sparky]

Peggy Charren, the founder of Action for Children's Television, dead at 86

http://www.therecord.com/whatson-sto...te-dies-at-86/

[Grandpa Troll]

Dean Smith UNC Tar Heels legendary coach

Former University of North Carolina head men’s basketball coach Dean Smith died Saturday evening in Chapel Hill. He was 83 years old.
“Coach Dean Smith passed away peacefully the evening of February 7 at his home in Chapel Hill, and surrounded by his wife and five children,” the Smith family said in a statement. “We are grateful for all the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate the continued respect for our privacy as arrangements are made available to the public. Thank you.”
Smith was the head coach of the Tar Heels from 1961 to 1997, retiring as the winningest coach in college basketball. He led the Tar Heels to national championships in 1982 and 1993, to 13 ACC Tournament titles, 11 Final Fours, and an NIT championship, and directed the United States Olympic Team to a gold medal at the 1976 Summer Games.
ESPN’s SportsCentury program selected Smith as one of the seven greatest coaches of the 20th Century with Red Auerbach, Bear Bryant, George Halas, Vince Lombardi, John McGraw and John Wooden.
In 36 seasons at UNC, Smith’s teams had a record of 879-254. He set the record for winning more games than any Division I men’s coach in history, surpassing Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp with his 877th victory over Colorado in the 1997 NCAA Tournament. He finished his career by leading UNC to the Final Four in four of his final seven seasons.
Under Smith, the Tar Heels won at least 20 games for 27 straight years and 30 of his final 31. No coach in history had ever produced that many consecutive 20-win seasons.
Carolina was ranked in the final Top 10 of both the Associated Press and coaches’ polls each year from 1981-89. Smith’s teams finished the season ranked No. 1 in at least one of the two major polls four times (1982, 1984, 1993 and 1994).
His teams were the dominant force in the ACC, posting a record of 364-136 in ACC regular-season play, a winning percentage of .728. The Tar Heels finished at least third in the ACC regular-season standings for 33 successive seasons. In that time, Carolina finished first 17 times, second 11 times and third five times.
His teams played in 11 Final Fours, second in number only to Wooden, who had 12. Smith’s teams made 23 consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament. In his last 31 years, Smith led the Tar Heels into the NCAA Tournament 27 times. Carolina reached the Sweet 16 of NCAA play each season from 1981-93. That 13-year streak is the second-longest in Tournament history to a 14-year stretch by UCLA from 1967 to 1980.
Sports Illustrated selected Smith as the Sportsman of the Year in 1997; he received the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the annual ESPY Awards.
In 2013, Smith received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an award that his wife, Linnea, accepted on his behalf from President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony.
Smith was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983 and is also a member of the the FIBA Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame and the College Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2006, he was named to the inaugural class of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame along with James Naismith, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell and John Wooden.
Smith also became the first recipient of the Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement, given by the University of North Carolina Committee on Teaching Awards for “a broader range of teaching beyond the classroom.”
Born February 28, 1931, in Emporia, Kan., Dean Edwards Smith grew up as the son of public school teachers. He graduated from Topeka High School in 1949 and went to the University of Kansas on an academic scholarship. He played varsity basketball and baseball and freshman football for the Jayhawks. He was a member of Jayhawk basketball teams that won the NCAA title in 1952 and finished second in 1953.
Smith was an assistant coach at Kansas to Phog Allen and Dick Harp, and served in the U.S. Air Force as a lieutenant. While in the service, he played and coached basketball in Germany. Smith served for three years as an assistant basketball coach under Bob Spear and one year each as head baseball and head golf coach at the United States Air Force Academy. In 1958, Frank McGuire hired him as an assistant coach at Carolina. Smith served as an assistant under McGuire for three years before McGuire resigned to become head coach of the NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors in the summer of 1961. At that time, Carolina Chancellor William Aycock tapped the 30-year-old Smith to become UNC’s head coach.
Smith shared his knowledge of the game with a talented group of assistants. Many of them went on to head coaching jobs, including Larry Brown, Roy Williams, John Lotz, Kenny Rosemond, Eddie Fogler, Randy Wiel and Bill Guthridge.
In Smith’s 36-year tenure, more than 50 of his players went on to play pro basketball in the NBA or ABA and more played in other professional leagues both in the United States and overseas.
Six of Smith’s players won rookie of the year awards in either the NBA or ABA, including Charles Scott, Robert McAdoo, Walter Davis, Phil Ford, Michael Jordan and Vince Carter. McAdoo and Jordan won MVP honors in the NBA and Billy Cunningham was the MVP in the ABA. Three of his players –Cunningham, James Worthy and Jordan – were named to the NBA’s Greatest 50 Players. Those three plus Larry Brown and McAdoo also are in the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Smith coached student-athletes who went on to become doctors, lawyers and businessmen. Better than 95 percent of his lettermen earned their degrees.
Smith retired as the winningest coach in the history of the NCAA Tournament with 65 victories. In 36 ACC Tournaments, he had a coaching record of 58-23, a winning percentage of .716.
Smith, who played for the legendary Phog Allen at Kansas in the early 1950s, is one of only two men to both play on and coach an NCAA championship team. Smith was a member of the Jayhawk squad that won college basketball’s top prize in 1952. Bob Knight is the other person to accomplish the feat.
After taking Carolina to the NCAA championship game in 1977, Smith was named National Coach of the Year by the NABC. He received similar honors from the U.S. Basketball Writers Association and Basketball Weekly in 1979 and from Medalist in 1982. He was named the Naismith National Coach of the Year in 1993 after leading the Tar Heels to the national crown.
In 1993, the Atlantic Coast Sportswriters Association named Smith the ACC Coach of the Year, an honor he received on seven other occasions as well—1967, 1968, 1971, 1976, 1977, 1979 and 1988.

[Grandpa Troll]

PGA Legend Billy Casper

AN DIEGO -- Billy Casper, one of the most prolific winners on the PGA Tour who was overshadowed at the height of his career by the "Big Three," died Saturday at his home in Utah. He was 83.

Bob Casper said his father died quickly and peacefully with wife Shirley at his bedside. They had been married 62 years. Casper passed out in the clubhouse at the Masters last year, had work on his heart and recovered from a bout of pneumonia over Thanksgiving. His son said Casper was going to cardio rehab for the past four months and was doing well until he started to feel badly in the past week.

More from ESPN.com
Even though Billy Casper might have been underrated in the eyes of the golfing public, his peers knew better, writes Bob Harig. Story

In any other era, Casper might have commanded more attention than he did.

He won 51 times on the PGA Tour, putting him at No. 7 on the career list behind only Sam Snead, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Byron Nelson. His three major championships include the 1966 U.S. Open, one of golf's most remarkable comebacks. He rallied from a 7-shot deficit on the back nine at Olympic Club to tie Palmer, and he beat him in an 18-hole playoff.

Casper also won the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot and the 1970 Masters. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1978.

But he was overshadowed by the "Big Three" -- Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player, whose rivalry sparked a revival in golf in that era. Part of that was the marketing of Mark McCormack at IMG. Casper originally signed with IMG and then left.

"Billy Casper was one of the greatest family men -- be it inside the game of golf or out -- I have had the fortunate blessing to meet," Nicklaus said in a Facebook post Saturday night. "He had such a wonderful balance to his life. Golf was never the most important thing in Billy's life -- family was. There was always much more to Billy Casper than golf. But as a golfer, Billy was a fantastic player, and I don't think he gets enough credit for being one. I have said many times that during my career, when I looked up at a leaderboard, I wasn't just looking to see where a Palmer or a Player or a Trevino was. I was also checking to see where Billy Casper was.

Casper among golf's legends
Though overshadowed for most of his illustrious career by Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, three-time major champ Billy Casper ranks seventh in career PGA Tour wins with 51.

Player Tour wins
Sam Snead 82
Tiger Woods 79
Jack Nicklaus 73
Ben Hogan 64
Arnold Palmer 62
Byron Nelson 52
Billy Casper 51*
* 3 major wins
-- ESPN Stats & Information
"Billy had tremendous confidence. He just believed in himself. You knew when you played against Billy Casper, Billy would not beat himself. You want to talk about someone who could perform under pressure, if you wanted someone to get up and-down for you, Billy Casper was your man. I think it is fair to say that Billy was probably under-rated by those who didn't play against him. Those who did compete against him, knew how special he was."

From 1962 through 1970, Casper and Nicklaus won 33 times on the PGA Tour. Palmer won 30 times. According to Golf Digest, Casper's winning rate of 9.2 percent trails only Nicklaus (12 percent) and Woods (26 percent) of all golfers who began their careers after 1950. Casper was a genius with the short game, considered one of the best putters in golf.

He won his first PGA Tour event in the 1956 LaBatt Open over Jimmy Demaret, and Casper won at least once each season for 16 straight years, a streak surpassed only by Nicklaus and Palmer at 17.

But it was that U.S. Open title at Olympic that finally brought him acclaim, even at the expense of Palmer.

[+] EnlargeBilly Casper
Augusta National/Getty Images
Billy Casper, often obscured by the likes of Palmer, Nicklaus and Player, amassed three major championships and 51 PGA Tour wins.
"I watched Arnold play such magnificent golf on the front nine. I really felt that he was going to win the tournament," Casper said in 2012 at Olympic Club. "I had checked the scoreboard and I found that I was 2 shots ahead of Jack Nicklaus and Tony Lema, and so I wanted to finish second and informed Arnold of that. And he said, 'I'll try to do everything to help you.' "

More than golf, Casper was devoted to family. He had 11 children, six of them adopted, and became a Mormon just as his career was taking off.

"Everything became easier," Casper told Golf Digest in 2012. "I began to live much more for others, and my life fell into balance."

Casper was born June 24, 1931, in San Diego and began to caddie at San Diego Country Club. He was among the first of the great lineage of golfers in San Diego that included Gene Littler and Mickey Wright.

"Gene was so much better than me. I never beat him as a teenager," Casper told Golf Digest in the 2012 interview. "But I had a lot of inner confidence. I had such a tie with my eyes and my hands. I could look at a telephone pole 40 yards away, take out a 7-iron and hit it 10 times in a row. I had something special. And somehow, I really understood the game, all without having a lot of guidance."

Casper won the PGA Tour money title twice and was player of the year in 1966 and 1970. He won the Vardon Trophy for the lowest scoring average five times and still holds the American record in the Ryder Cup for most points. He played on eight teams and was the winning captain in 1969.

[Grandpa Troll]

The oldest living survivor from the USS Arizona Retired Lt. Cmdr. Joe Langdell

Yesterday, Retired Lt. Cmdr. Joe Langdell, the oldest living survivor from the USS Arizona, passed away at the age of 100.

Thank you Joe for your service to our country. Joe requested that his ashes be interred with his fellow shipmates inside the USS Arizona, which will take place on December 7th.

Please join me in offering a prayer for Retired Lt. Cmdr. Joe Langdell, for his loved ones, and for all the men and women who have risked and given their lives to preserve and protect freedom throughout the world. May God bless them all.

[Grandpa Troll]

College Basketball Loses a Controversial but All-Time Great in Jerry Tarkanian

With Wednesday's death of Jerry Tarkanian, announced by his son, Danny, college basketball lost one of its greatest coaches.

The second half of that statement is no longer met with derision and skepticism. Tarkanian's legacy, at one time, was tarnished by three players in a hot tub, the NCAA constantly on his heels, and thus, a perception that he didn't always play by the rules.

Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. But later in his life, folks in the game started to appreciate Tarkanian for what he was able to accomplish. In 2013, he was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame, and UNLV put up a statue of Tarkanian in front of the Thomas & Mack Center with his trademark towel in his mouth. It didn't hurt the perception of him when he received a $2.5 million harassment settlement from the NCAA in 1998.

It also doesn't hurt when his accomplishments are put in perspective.

Tarkanian's Runnin' Rebels won more games in a 10-year period (from 1983 to 1992) than any team ever. Those 307 wins are more than Bob Knight's Hoosiers. More than Mike Krzyzewski's Blue Devils. More than Dean Smith's Tar Heels. More than John Wooden's Bruins or Adolph Rupp's Wildcats or Phog Allen's Jayhawks.

You could say that was at least partly the result of college basketball teams starting to play more games in the 1980s, but that record hasn't been bested since, and teams are playing even more games these days.

You could say "Tark the Shark" feasted on the Big West. But his record in March was just as stellar.

He coached the Rebels to four Final Fours and to a national title in 1990. That was the only team outside of the power-six conferences to win the title until Connecticut won in 2014.

The next season, with the NCAA turning up the heat on its investigation of his program, the Rebels entered the NCAA tournament undefeated. No team had been able to accomplish that until Wichita State did so in 2014.

The Runnin' Rebels were so close to finishing off that perfect season.

The undisputed best team in America, UNLV made it to the Final Four, where it would face Duke a year after beating the Blue Devils in the national championship game by 30 points, a margin that remains the largest in title-game history.

Only this time, the game was close. Point guard Greg Anthony fouled out with 3:51 left on a borderline charge call, and Duke finished on an 8-3 run to win by two.


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That team is not only considered the greatest to not win the title—the 1991 Runnin' Rebels are in the conversation for greatest college team ever.

"Even though this sounds like blasphemy, they were the best team," Jay Bilas, a Duke assistant that year, told Andy Glockner of Sports Illustrated. "The best team doesn't always win in college basketball and the NCAA tournament. But that was the best team. They had proven it all year long."

"We played some tough teams, and we played them on the road, and we just killed everybody," Tarkanian told Glockner in 2010. "All year long, I was telling our guys how tough the games would be, and then we'd go out and blow them away."

The run may have continued if Tarkanian had not been pressured into resigning after a picture emerged in May of 1991 of UNLV players David Butler, Anderson Hunt and Moses Scurry in a hot tub with convicted sporting-event fixer Richard Perry. It was never proved that those Rebels engaged in any such activity, but the damage was done, and Tarkanian ultimately vacated his position.

He coached one more season at UNLV in 1991-92, and his final team, which wasn't allowed to play in the NCAA tournament because of NCAA sanctions, finished 26-2.

"(Then-UNLV president Robert) Maxson didn’t like the fact that the hero on campus was Jerry Tarkanian," Sig Rogich, an adviser to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and longtime UNLV supporter, told Sean DeFrank of Vegas Seven. "And I can understand some of that as an academic, but I didn’t think it was enough to get rid of him. And it ruined our program. We would have had a dynasty. We could have won four or five national championships, and the NCAA knew it."

Tarkanian won because he had an ability to find talent. It didn't matter where that talent came from. Many of his best players, like Larry Johnson, were junior-college transfers. And he was able to get those guys to buy into playing together, playing fast and playing like the world was against them. Oftentimes, the world was.

"Tark just kept telling us, 'You need to stick together. They don’t want us to win a championship. They’re going to do anything they can to break us down and get us unfocused. The NCAA really wants me, but they're trying to take it out on all of you,'" Anderson Hunt, a starting guard from 1988-91, told DeFrank.

Eric Risberg/Associated Press
To say that all of Tarkanian's motivation was to get back at the NCAA would be a mistake. He was in it because he loved coaching basketball. He started his coaching career at the high school and junior college levels, winning four straight California JUCO championships before getting his first Division I job at Long Beach State in 1968.

He started his back-and-forth with the NCAA at Long Beach, where he had a local newspaper column and didn't shy away from going after the organization. The program, like UNLV, went on probation after he left but won like never before while he was there.

Tark went 122-20 and made four straight NCAA tournaments in five seasons at Long Beach, and he is still the school's all-time winningest coach.

Tarkanian was convinced in 1973 to come to UNLV, a school that had only been a Division I program for four years. The Runnin' Rebels became the greatest show in town and a national power. They built the 18,500-seat Thomas & Mack Center in 1983 because of Tarkanian's success. The pregame fireworks and theatrics would be mimicked across the country, and the rich and famous sat courtside in what became known as "Gucci Row."

Tarkanian returned to the sidelines for seven more years at Fresno State, and he won there, too. He made two NCAA tournaments and added six 20-plus-win seasons with the Bulldogs.

But Tark's heart was always in Vegas. And out in front of the Thomas & Mack Center is where Tark will forever live. Towel in his mouth.

Forever loved in Vegas. Forever one of the game's all-time greats.

[Grandpa Troll]

CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, 1941-2015

NEW YORK -- Bob Simon, the longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent and legendary CBS News foreign reporter died suddenly Wednesday night in a car accident in New York City.

The award-winning newsman was 73.

"Bob Simon was a giant of broadcast journalism, and a dear friend to everyone in the CBS News family. We are all shocked by this tragic, sudden loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bob's extended family and especially with our colleague Tanya Simon," said CBS News President David Rhodes.

"It's a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News," 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager said in a statement. "It is such a tragedy made worse because we lost him in a car accident, a man who has escaped more difficult situations than almost any journalist in modern times.

bob-simon-2.jpg
Bob Simon, correspondent for 60 Minutes and CBS News.
John Paul Filo/CBS

"Bob was a reporter's reporter. He was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable," Fager said. "There is no one else like Bob Simon. All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes will miss him very much."

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Life and times of a foreign correspondent

Simon was riding in the backseat of a livery cab around 6:45 p.m. Wednesday on New York City's West Side Highway when the car rear-ended another vehicle and crashed into barriers separating north- and southbound traffic, the New York Police Department said in a statement. Unconscious with head and torso injuries, Simon was transported to St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital where he died. The livery cab driver was taken to another hospital with injuries to his arms and legs. Police were investigating but made no arrests.

Over a 47-year career at CBS News, Simon earned more than 40 major awards, including 27 Emmys, believed to be the most ever earned for a field reporter and four Peabody Awards.

Simon's five-decade career took him through most major overseas conflicts spanning from the late 1960s to the present. He joined CBS News in 1967 as a New York-based reporter and assignment editor, covering campus unrest and inner city riots. Simon also worked in CBS News' Tel Aviv bureau from 1977-81, and worked in Washington D.C. as the network's State Department correspondent.

simon-vietnam.jpg
Bob Simon reports during the Vietnam War.
CBS News

But Simon's career in war reporting was extensive, beginning in Vietnam. While based in Saigon from 1971-72, his reports on the war -- and particularly the Hanoi 1972 spring offensive -- won an Overseas Press Club award award for the Best Radio Spot News for coverage of the end of the conflict. Simon was there for the end of the conflict and was aboard one of the last helicopters out of Saigon in 1975.

He also reported on the violence in Northern Ireland in from 1969-71 and also from war zones in Portugal, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia and American military actions in Grenada, Somalia and Haiti.

Simon was named CBS News' chief Middle East correspondent in 1987, and became the leading broadcast journalist in the region, working in Tel Aviv for more than 20 years.

During the early days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Simon was imprisoned and tortured by the Iraqi army along with three CBS News colleagues. He later chronicled the experience in a book, "Forty Days."

"...This was the most searing experience of my life," Simon told the Los Angeles Times. "...I wrote about it because I needed to write about it."

In 1996, he won one more OPC Award, a Peabody Award and two Emmy Awards for coverage of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. CBS News received an RTNDA Overall Excellence in Television Award in 1996 largely because of Simon's reporting from war-torn Sarajevo.

Play Video
Saving the Children

Moving into the 21st century, he was able to get two major interviews for 60 Minutes, including the first Western interview with extremist Iraqi cleric Muqtada al Sadr, and another with his Shiite Muslim rival, the Ayatollah al-Hakim, who was killed shortly after the interview.

Simon also lent his skills to CBS's Olympics coverage. For the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, he reported on the failed attempt of Israel's secret intelligence organization, the Mossad, to avenge the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, for which he won an Emmy.

For the coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he gave a 30-minute report on Louis Zamperini, an American Olympian who survived as a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese during World War II. The story won him a Sports Emmy.

simon-studio.jpg
Bob Simon records a voice-over script for 60 Minutes.
Matt Richman

Simon's most-recent piece for 60 Minutes aired last weekend, his conversation with Ava DuVernay, the director of the Academy Award-nominated film "Selma." He was working on a story for Sunday's broadcast with his daughter, Tanya, a 60 Minutes producer, about the Ebola virus and the search for a cure.

Simon was born on May 29, 1941, in the Bronx, N.Y., and was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 1962 with a degree in history. He served as an American Foreign Service officer (1964-67). He was a Fulbright scholar in France and a Woodrow Wilson scholar.

Simon is survived by his wife, Françoise, and their daughter, Tanya, her husband, Dr. Evan Garfein, and his grandson Jack, described by Fager and Rhodes as "the joy of his life, pictures of whom adorned his office."

[Uncle Sparky]

Pioneering Toronto Star baseball writer and author Alison Gordon dead at 72

http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseba...ead-at-72.html

Before she took over the Blue Jays’ beat for the Toronto Star in 1979, Alison Gordon was a highly regarded humorist and comedy writer, talents she eventually discovered would serve her well as she chronicled the daily grind of a fledgling ball club.

“You had to have a sense of humour to cover the Blue Jays,” she told the Star in 1984, “at least in the first few years.”

As Major League Baseball’s first female beat writer, Gordon also needed a thick skin, and she had that, too.

“She was relentless,” said Lloyd Moseby, who played for the Jays throughout the 1980s. “A lot of women that are in the profession right now should be very thankful for what Alison did and what she went through. She took a beating from the guys. She was a pioneer for sure.”

Long celebrated as a trailblazer for women sportswriters, Gordon died Thursday morning at Toronto East General Hospital.

She was 72...

After penning a memoir of her five years covering the Jays, Gordon turned her attention to crafting baseball-themed murder mysteries — with titles like Dead Pull Hitter and Safe at Home — all featuring the heroine Kate Henry, a sports writer and amateur sleuth...