Sampson Has Head Shaved.

Kelvin Sampson is no longer head basketball coach at Indiana University. The school gives him $750,000 to go quietly. Blood-Hush Money. That's some lesson for the undergrads. Lie, cheat and steal, then, get 3/4 of a million to go away. Who says crime doesn't pay? Or at least, NCAA violation-type crime.

Some world in which I get to raise my four kids. You get paid hundreds of thousands to leave a job where you get to watch kids play a game and receive a huge salary in the first place. Instead of leaving with remorse and shame, you take your king's ransom and sit on your ass until ESPN comes calling and offers you a lot of money to talk about watching kids play a game. Stay in school and don't use drugs.

How do you instill in your own children that being honest and doing the right thing are the honorable qualities to possess? All you see is people cutting corners and working the angles to get that money. I just keep on keepin' on. It's a daily mantra around this house,"get the grades and be a good person." Follow the ultimate commandment, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." That statement guides my every decision. At least, I think about that during the decision-making process. You know what the right thing is to do, so do it. I say this to my kids over and over. I hope it sinks in. I hope they are good people. I hope they can take care of themselves someday. As Red says in Shawshank, "I hope."

From my dismal view on the world to my dismal view of NFL football in Chicago. I am keeping the tickets for another season. I do enjoy a couple games with the girls and my good, tall and slender friend, Kevin. The Bears have decided not to give Bernard Berrian $7.8 million under the franchise tag. That's fine. You don't overpay for non-#1 receivers. BB is no number 1 receiver. The money should be spent on Lance Briggs. Let's go get him boys. His play speaks for itself. He is an elite OLB who thrives in this scheme. He is worth the big contract.

The Bears should rebuild the O-line by going younger. Do not overspend for an older free agent OL. Especially a guard, aka Alan Faneca. I don't understand the desire to sign a grizzled veteran that is refused the big salary by his present team. Maybe that team knows something about the guy. The free agents du jour will be old and overpriced. We have got that already. Our GM has dumped some dead weight salary already. Let's avoid stocking up on some more. The Bears have to call it what it is, major offensive rebuilding. There are tackles and receivers in this draft. Go get some "need" players. And keep dumping that dead weight.

That brings me to the scouting combine. The annual NFL SAT test. It is the most ridiculous waste of time in sports. A player can prepare for this test in a Stanley Kaplan-athletic preparation course. You know which drills will be required ahead of time. In essence, you have the questions that are on the test. The players are trained to perform those tests for months. Then, teams evaluate the performance on the tests. The flaw: none of these tests have anything to do with playing FOOTBALL.

Every year some teams will draft a player in a very high slot based on his results of the running and jumping performed at the combine even though the player did nothing, and I mean nothing, on the college football field. Inevitably, those players get money that they richly don't deserve and become busts. Other players who can flat out play the game will be devalued, drafted later than they should be, and will be subsequently underpaid because they don't run around the cones fast enough. Those players come into the league with a huge chip on their shoulder, having something to prove. Because they are very good FOOTBALL players already, they crack the starting lineup as rookies, perform well throughout their career and spend the second week of every February in Hawaii. Poi for everyone. Mahalo!

I think its warm there. MMMM, warm.