EXTRA: Chicago-area’s true best team?

Suburban Naperville-based North Central College lost out Saturday on its chance to win a national title in men’s basketball, losing 52-44 to Amherst University – which now plays for the national title April 7 in Atlanta against Mary-Hardin Baylor College from Texas alongside the Division I tourney that will get all the public attention.

Although it should be noted that the Cardinals’ defense on Saturday managed to hold the Amherst defense to about 50 points – just one day after the Lord Jeffs managed to score 101 points in their victory over Cabrini College in Pennsylvania.

IT ALSO DOESN’T take away from the fact that North Central made it to the “Final Four” of the NCAA Division III tournament – which likely will make them the best-achieving college basketball program from Illinois for 2012-13.

I really doubt the Fighting Illini will make it much farther than their game Sunday against the University of Miami Hurricanes.

When was the last time any Chicago-area college did so well in a basketball tourney? There’s always that DePaul squad from 1979 that made it to the Final Four.

Or those North Park University basketball teams that between 1978 and 1987 won five national titles – including three in a row between 1978, 1979 and 1980. Which as far as I’m concerned is all the more reason to pay attention to the Division III athletic scene when considering college-level sports.

FOR THOSE OF you who are thinking I’m getting too worked up over small-college sports, think of it this way.

Would you really rather I get worked up over the thought of whether or not we should take Todd Stroger’s desires to serve as a commissioner on the Cook County Board that seriously?

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Ought to be more to sports fandom than guessing when doing basketball brackets

I’ll be the first to admit that much of the appeal of filling out brackets for the NCAA Division I tournament for men’s basketball is lost on me.

The baseball fan in me thinks it’s ridiculous that college basketball now drags well into the baseball season (which begins April 1, compared to the April 8 date on which we’ll finally be done with what is supposed to be “March” Madness).

THEN, THERE’S THE fact that I attended a college that played Division III athletics. Which means as far as I’m concerned, the men’s basketball tourney began weeks ago.

Friday wasn’t the day that many schools (including the University of Illinois, the closest to a local rooting interest unless you count Valparaiso University in Indiana – which already has lost) began play. It was actually the day that we got to see which schools made it to the Final Four.

Including the prospects of Naperville-based North Central College, which Friday night took on Vermont-based Middlebury College. A part of me thinks we ought to be paying just as much attention to the Cardinals’ basketball program which, we must admit, is likely to advance farther in the Division III tourney than the Fighting Illini will make it at the Division I level.

Realize how painful it was for me to write that last sentence. Because I’m an alumnus of Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, whose team got beat a week ago by those same Cardinals 83-73.

I’M STILL SHUDDERING in disgust at the beating my alma mater’s team took in the first half, putting them too far behind to catch up in the second half (although they did come close at times). A “Sweet Sixteen” appearance sounds nice. But an “Elite Eight” one would have been more soothing. Nothing that happens in the Division I tourney is going to mean as much to me.

Now for those people who are about to start sending me all kinds of e-mail messages telling me that the Division I programs are just so much superior and involve schools that people have actually heard of, I’d say that’s nonsense.

I really doubt that most of the people now so eagerly filling out tournament brackets had any clue who the Iona Gaels were – prior to their taking on Ohio State University Friday night.

Heck, I’ll even go so far as to say I’ll root for Iona College based in New Rochelle, N.Y. (a community many people probably only think of as the home of the fictional Petrie family – remember the Dick Van Dyke show?). Solidarity amongst small schools.

BUT SOMEHOW, I suspect that Harvard University’s victory over New Mexico earlier this week was the major upset for this first round. A Buckeyes loss would truly be the evidence that life as we know it is over.

Not that I’m all that interested.

Like I already wrote, MY school is already out of the running. And I just don’t get people who pretend to be interested in college athletics when they don’t have any rooting interest for the particular school – either by having attending it or living in a nearby community.

I look at the brackets that say James Madison is playing Indiana, and some people get worked up over the possibility that the Hoosiers are potentially the best in the nation. I just see nothing, whether the Hoosiers whomp on the Dukes of Harrisonburg, Va., or not leaves me cold.

LIKE I WROTE before, maybe I’m just a bit too eager for baseball to begin.

I got a kick out of learning that we’re far enough into spring that the Mexican League season actually began Friday with the Tabasco Olmecas playing the Red Eagles of Veracruz – with the rest of the league’s seasons opening Saturday.

Not that I’m all that intrigued by Mexican League baseball. But it means we’re moving closer and closer to that date when those Arizona and Florida training camps shutter themselves for the year, and the regular season gets underway.

April 1, with the Kansas City Royals in Chicago and the Cubs taking a trip to Pittsburgh to play the Pirates – it sounds more intriguing to me than a tourney involving out-of-state schools that will still be a week away from completion.

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Beavers jury got a free lunch out of it

Let’s be honest. Now-guilty Cook County Commissioner William Beavers is 100 percent accurate when he says all the gambling he did at area casinos isn’t a crime.

BEAVERS: Ray Charles?!?

“There’s no law against what I did. There’s no law against gambling with campaign funds,” Beavers told reporter-types at the Dirksen Building right after a jury spent as little time as possible in reaching a “guilty” verdict against him on the various counts of tax evasion that he faced.

SERIOUSLY, THAT JURY was fed lunch and didn’t start deliberating until about 1:30 p.m., with a verdict coming in plenty of time for the evening newscasts.

But back to Beavers, who is true enough in what he said.

But the law does require that political people who convert their campaign cash into personal use acknowledge it as income, which means letting the Internal Revenue Service have a share of the proceeds as well.

That is the offense for which Beavers was found guilty, and likely will have to serve a bit of prison time. Although at age 78, it can be argued that any prison sentence has the potential to be a life sentence.

NOT THAT I think many people care about that fact these days. Because the prosecutorial tactic was to dirty Beavers up to the point where a jury would want to put him away, and would use whatever charge it was presented with in order to do so.

Hence, we get the image of a guy who is a degenerate gambler. Although his defense attorneys on Thursday tried presenting the image of a guy with a gambling problem.

As though he ought to be sent to sessions of Gamblers Anonymous, rather than some time at the Oxford Correctional Center in Wisconsin, or whichever facility in the Bureau of Prisons system they wind up deciding to use to incarcerate the one-time cop and alderman-turned-county commissioner from the city’s Southeast Side and surrounding suburbs.

If it reads like I’m not convinced that Bill Beavers is anything resembling Public Enemy Number One, you’d be correct.

PERSONALLY, I FIND much about casino gambling to be absurd, and I don’t get the appeal of playing games of chance that strike me as being nothing more than tossing one’s money into the equivalent of a trash can for someone else to empty out and get rich off of.

But it seems Beavers was a regular at the Horseshoe Casino just over the state line in Hammond, Ind. Because he was a regular who lost a lot of money (all regulars invariably do), he got the VIP treatment that entitled him to the free meals and tickets to entertainment – all so that he’d go back to the slot machines and lose even more money.

Evidence presented during the trial indicated that Beavers lost $477,000 playing slot machines during a three-year period.

Excuse me for thinking that the real “crime” against society is being perpetrated by the casino operators who can sucker someone into their facilities to be able to lose that much money.

I’D HATE TO see what happens to the people who don’t have a campaign fund to tap into who let their losses get above their means.

Not that I’m implying that we all should get a campaign fund for such use. Beavers is guilty of a bookkeeping offense. For that, his political reputation is besmirched permanently.

 

Although at his age, I can’t help but have the same feeling I had when one-time 10^th Ward Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak faced the possibility of prison – his political accomplishments were in the past. What more did anyone seriously expect him to do?

A political vacancy, if you live in the grey blotch

Beavers will move on, and soon we’ll have to go through the process of replacing him on the Cook County Board.

NOT THAT I have a clue who’s going to get the post. But it has me wondering if it could somehow be a consolation prize for some of the Democratic Party losers of the special primary election for a replacement for Jesse Jackson, Jr.

Beavers’ district is entirely within the Congressional district. Yet another vacancy for a political aspirant in need of a post.

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Castrating “the Hog?”

Looking at the Cook County Board when they met Wednesday was almost like watching a kid with a missing tooth – the gap in his or her smile is notable.

Commissioner William Beavers' empty seat and desk at the County Building. Not that he was any more vocal at the Federal Building. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Because that front-row seat where Commissioner William Beavers usually sits was empty – creating a gap both in appearance and in volume. He wasn’t on hand to badger his colleagues every time they did something he thought was wrong.

BEAVERS, OF COURSE, was missing because he had to be at the Dirksen Building – the U.S. District courthouse in Chicago where he is on trial these days on charges that he cheated the federal government of income tax revenue.

It was long expected, largely because he kept shooting his mouth off, that Beavers would eventually take the witness stand and testify on his own behalf and go on the attack against everybody he thinks is out to get him these days.

Yet in the end, it didn’t happen!

Beavers let it be known Wednesday in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge James Zagel that he would not testify in his own case.

WHAT A LETDOWN!!!

This particular criminal trial that purports to be the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Chicago political corruption is really so deadly dull. The only thing that was going to make it interesting was the sight and sound of Beavers trying to stir things up.

Let’s not forget that this was the guy who proclaimed his prosecutors to be “capons” (a castrated male chicken, for those of who you didn’t know). He’s also the guy who once described himself as the “hog with the big nuts” – as a way of proclaiming himself to be all-powerful.

Yet on Wednesday, it would appear the hog is the one who has been castrated. He piped down. He didn’t do or say anything that would have dug himself into a deeper hole.

THIS MOMENT WILL be an important one to remember, because I don’t doubt that Beavers will insist on recalling his story as having stood up to the “G-men” with their “Gestapo-like tactics” (his words, not mine) and taken the toughest shot they could dish out.

He’ll try to forget how when he had the chance to fight back and throw a couple of verbal and legal punches, he became meek. I suspect Pepe LePew could have whomped the “Hog” on this day.

The problem is that there really isn’t a defense that can be offered in this particular case. Beavers’ attorneys (who probably deserve combat pay for the struggle they had to go through to get their client to shut up!) wound up having only one person testify on his behalf – a financial expert who talked about how open to interpretation the federal tax laws truly are.

Meaning that anyone who claims that it’s a mere “yes” or “no” answer that Beavers is a tax cheat is someone who is taking a hardline approach that likely is being influenced by a personal dislike for the county commissioner, former alderman and one-time Chicago cop.

WAY TOO MUCH of the testimony in this particular case centered around the amount of time that Beavers spent gambling at casinos. Prosecutors tried to build up the image of a politico literally gambling away the peoples’ money when he used cash from his personal campaign fund to cover his financial losses.

Although if he had acknowledged the use of the cash and reported it as income early on, instead of amending his tax returns at a later date, it could have been construed as legitimate.

Yet most people are glossing over that element of the case. They just want to think of Beavers as a degenerate gambler of sorts – and put him away accordingly.

So when you think about it, what could Beavers really say? He gambled. He lost. That’s all most people are going to want to hear before they proclaim him “guilty.”

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EXTRA: Legalese vs. English

PRECKWINKLE: Legalese translator?

The Cook County Board gave its approval Wednesday to a measure that will have county government spend just over $3 million to have access to Lexis/Nexis for the next three years – with options to renew for two more years.

Lexis/Nexis, of course, is the computer database that provides so much detailed information. For those of you wiseacres who are going to claim the county could use the Internet for free, keep in mind that Lexis/Nexis provides access to credible information – rather than the babble that pollutes too many websites.

IN DESCRIBING THE need for the access by the court system, the state’s attorney, the public defender’s office and the county sheriff, county Commissioner John Daley, D-Chicago, described the need for “legal research” by those entities.

To which county board President Toni Preckwinkle retorted, “You mean a substitution for law books?!?”

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A tradeoff: Blue Demons for Cubs? That might be Rosemont’s unreal dream

DePaul University is back in the sports news these days, and not because the Blue Demons basketball program is anywhere near good enough to play in the NCAA tourney.

ALLSTATE ARENA: May soon be history

For it seems that the university informed the people at the United Center this week that they’re not interested in playing the men’s basketball games in the arena used by the Chicago Bulls, or any kind of auxiliary facility that would double as a training facility for the NBA franchise.

THE BLUE DEMONS, it seems, want to focus their attention on building an arena near the McCormick Place convention center – which would put them on the South Side right on the lakefront.

Which would also make some sort of deal with city government officials necessary as to how to fit an arena into the convention hall-and-hotel complex without making a complete mess of things.

That adds to the sports-related negotations taking place these days for city officials – who these days are devoting some time to trying to figure out how to do a renovation of the nearly century-old ballpark at Clark and Addison streets used by the Chicago Cubs.

A wrench was tossed into those negotiations by suburban Rosemont officials, where Comcast Sports News reported that village President Brad Stephens is willing to offer the Cubs a 25-acre parcel of land within his municipality.

TWENTY FIVE ACRES is much larger than the square block that contains the grandstand and playing field that the Cubs now use for their ballgames.

Stephens also indicates a certain flexibility to pretty much let the Cubs have control of what gets built on those 25 acres – compared to the negotations in Chicago where city officials are determined to prevent an expanded Wrigley Field from devastating the character of the few blocks of the Lake View neighborhood known as “Wrigleyville.”

Cubs want to make this decades-old postcard obsolete

Rosemont, of course, is the home of the arena once known as the Horizon that has been the home of Blue Demons basketball for the past three decades. Which makes some people wonder if this is merely an attention-grabbing stunt by Rosemont to try to stay in the sports game, should the Blue Demons really return to Chicago.

Somehow, I just don’t see either option under consideration as being in the best interests of the athletic teams/programs involved.

I COMPREHEND WHY the Blue Demons basketball would want to return to the city – DePaul University is a Lincoln Park neighborhood-based school. The theory is that playing in a city-based arena would bolster interest amongst the student body and make it easier for them to actually attend games.

But the area around McCormick Place isn’t exactly convenient to the DePaul campus. I could just as easily see students ignore the Blue Demons games played there just as much as they ignore the ones being played in Rosemont.

There might not turn out to be any real benefit whatsoever for DePaul – except to remind us of how far Blue Demons basketball has declined, to the point that nobody even thinks of them when it comes time for the NCAA Division I tournament that began this week.

As for the Cubs, the thought of playing in a suburban-based stadium merely reminds people of the thoughts of late Mayor Richard J. Daley when the Chicago Bears seriously thought of moving to the northwest suburbs back in the early 1970s.

DALEY, THE ELDER, said they’d lose the city name, and would have to become the “Arlington Heights Bears.” No matter how unrealistic that thought was, it would be felt by many, and would be a blow to the ball club’s image.

The “Rosemont Cubs” probably won’t ever happen. Too much of what makes the Cubs financially viable despite their pitiful record and lack of accomplishments over so many decades is tied into the building and the way it fits into Lake View.

Which may be the key factor for the Cubs to keep in mind as they negotiate with city officials and those dreaded rooftop owners on Waveland and Sheffield avenues.

The team may well need them more than the local residents need all those suburban crowds flooding into the neighborhood 81 days a year.

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One more time!

Wolf Lake on the city's far Southeast corner will not be as drab and dreary as it did earlier this month once springtime weather arrives. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

It’s the last day of winter, and perhaps we should reflect a bit on what could be the weirdest weather spiel I can recall.

We went for so long without any notable snowfall that it was likely we would set some sort of record that would NEVER be topped. Or should I say reduced?

YET I COULDN’T help but notice a Weather Channel broadcast recently that did a special segment about the Chicago winter, which when all is said and done will come in at about average in terms of the amount of snow we got.

Because once it started snowing in late January, it started coming down at heavier-than-usual rates. We even got the heaviest snowfall in two years with that last storm we were hit with just over a week ago – the one that dumped just over 9 inches officially, but gave certain parts of the metropolitan area more than a foot in one shot.

It seems that our snowfall total for this winter is about 1 ½ inches less than the average for a Chicago winter, according to the Weather Channel (yes, I’m inclined to watch those national weather forecasts in the early morning hours when I’m still trying to wrest myself from sleep).

A typical Chicago winter usually has one intense storm, and some steady snowfall all throughout the season so that we’re perpetually aware of the fact that we live in the Midwestern U.S.

IT’S AT THE point where I know that winter is over and spring has arrived when the landscape around me is no longer a slushy, muddy off-white of snow that has been driven through so many times and is instead the drab brown of dead grass that has yet to return to life.

That bright green is the real sign that winter is over – not the mere fact that the calendar on Wednesday will tell us that spring has officially arrived.

So what should we think on this final official day of winter (although I won’t be the least bit surprised if we get one last snow-fall along the shores of southwestern Lake Michigan)?

Personally, the cold temperatures of winter don’t bother me. It’s the slop of the snow and its potential for creating hazards (due to some people who persist in trying to whiz right through it while driving) that gets to me – and makes me grateful that we’re at least at the offend end-point of winter.

BUT I’M THANKFUL to realize that we really didn’t have it all that bad. Like I already wrote, we got hit with that one 9-inch storm – which I remember as the day I was lucky enough to be able to do some work from home.

It was one of those times that I experienced the “joys” of a freelance writer – being able to set work hours to my convenience.

By the next day, public works crews all across the Chicago area by-and-large had the streets cleared. Life resumed.

We didn’t get anything close to resembling the storm of Feb. 2, 2011 – the one that dumped nearly two feet of snow in one shot and actually turned Lake Shore Drive into a parking lot.

A LOT THAT people eventually had to return to with a shovel in order to dig out their cars.

But it is the split in the winter season that will be memorable – the fact that we went through December and the bulk of January with hardly any snow, and a February and early March in which the entity that is Mother Nature (no Chiffon jokes, please) seemed determined to make up for her early-season slacking off.

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