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BC's national-title run a credit to coach, attacking style
Born-to-teach professor pushes students to laugh, think
We can't keep paying for lengthy retirements

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BC's national-title run a credit to coach, attacking style

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 12:55 AM PDT

DETROIT -- Give the game puck to the coach after Boston College's 5-0 victory in the Frozen Four championship game against Wisconsin on Saturday night. BC's Jerry York may be as good as any skipper in the game at building a philosophy and sticking to it. After his team beat Miami (Ohio) on Thursday by a 7-1 score -- BC can boast to besting two powerhouses by a combined score of 12-1 -- each time with his team pulling away in decisive third periods. Cam Atkinson scored twice for the Eagles and John Muse made 20 saves, but really there was no Eagle out of step all night. They blocked shots, disrupted passing lanes, prevented rebounds and made not a single turnover that led to a point-blank scoring chance all night.

"Smart disciplined players," York said of his team. They've learned what it takes to win." In fact, his senior class finished its career with two national titles and a mark of 25-2 in tournament play. It was a stellar mark, considering the squad bounced back from failing to make the NCAA tournament in 2009 after its victory in 2008. In all, the senior class finished with 101 victories. After some indifferent play during the season, including a 3-5 stretch in December, the team finished the year with a 12-0-1 mark and trailed for all of 55 seconds over the last 13 games. For York, the victory marked the 33rd of his collegiate career in the NCAA tournament, the most of any coach in history. He's tied for third all-time in national titles with four, including his first one with Bowling Green in 1984. He has 850 career wins, second-most in NCAA history, in 38 seasons, including 16 at BC.

York traditionally builds teams with players that are well-suited for the college game: Skilled, quick, speedy, able to make big ice seem smaller. Many are not necessarily big. Think Brian Gionta, an undersized star at BC before he went on to surprise critics and become a successful sniper in the NHL. Earlier in the season, York brought together a line of shorter players who complemented each other's skills and formed one of the top lines in college hockey: Atkinson (5-foot-'8), Joe Whiney (5-6) and Brian Gibbons (5-8). "Everybody talks about their quickness," York says, "but our players are strong on their skates. They may be short in stature, but you can't underestimate their strength or their smarts."

The Eagles' first goal was a perfect example of both. On a power play midway through the first period, Joe Whitney sent a pass from the left point off the right boards to his brother, Steven. Repeating a play that worked earlier in the tournament, the younger brother then wound up for a point shot but instead fired a hard pass into the slot, where Ben Smith, nudged his way into open space, accepted the pass and fired a shot past Wisconsin goalie Scott Gudmandson, who was still moving to his right and not yet set for the shot. That strike at 12:57 held up until the third period when BC added four more goals, including two by Atkinson and one each for Chris Kreider and Matt Price.

Modernized Rivals

The game also wrote another chapter in the rivalry between York and Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves. More than three decades ago, When York was coaching at Clarkson, York tried to recruit him, but Eaves chose to attend Wisconsin instead and won a national title with the Badgers. Eaves' two sons, Ben and Patrick, went on to play for York at BC. Both coaches addressed the matter this week.

York: "I'm still mad at Michael for not coming to Clarkson. I was at Clarkson in the 70s and he was a high-scoring forward in the Ottawa area, and we recruited him pretty hard. He went to Wisconsin. It softened a little bit when I got the chance to coach Ben and Patrick. They were such great players for our team and for college hockey. I've noticed that a lot of the times, coaches' sons just understand the game better. Mike did a great job raising his two boys as far as hockey players and they're good people, too. So, I have more appreciation for Mike now that I did back in the 70s. He's done some amazing things with the Badgers. He's an awfully good coach."

Eaves (before the title game): "Well I'm going to use Patrick's response, which I think is brilliant. He said they're kind of in a win-win situation because they are going to win no matter what happens. Either their alma mater is going to win or their dad is going to win. I think that's a great answer, but it's tough to remember back that far. I was 17 and I came to Wisconsin in the springtime and didn't have a chance to see a game in the rink; but I just fell in love with the campus, and that's where I felt the most comfortable in my heart. I went with that feeling."

Spacious Living

The tournament, which took place in the Detroit Lions' home of Ford Field, was the first played in something larger than a traditional hockey arena and required more than a thousand feet of newly installed pipe to construct. The final drew 37,592 fans and 72,546 for the two days. At times the ice was noticeably choppy and the crowd noise seemed to get lost in the building's spacious confines. "The ice was the same for both teams," Eaves insisted diplomatically. "It bounced the same for them as it did for us."

The Routs Were On

The tournament marked the first time in Frozen Four history the semifinal and final games were all decided by five goals or more. On Thursday, Wisconsin defeated Rochester Institute of Technology, 8-1, and BC bounced Miami, 7-1, to reach Saturday's final.

Family Business

Wisconsin's Blake Geoffrion was named the Hobey Baker Award winner this weekend, emblematic of the top collegiate hockey player in the nation. The senior forward became the first Badger to win the award. He was named MVP of the West Regional earlier in the tournament. During the season, Geoffrion amassed 28 goals and 50 points in 39 games. He ranked tops in the nation with 15 power-play goals. He is second-round draft pick of the Predators. Geoffrion's hockey genes are impressive and the name is legendary in Montreal. His father, Danny, played three seasons in the NHL. His grandfather was hockey legend Bernie 'Boom Boom' Geoffrion, a Hall of Famer credited with originating the slapshot while with the Canadiens. His great-grandfather, Howie Morenz, became one of the game's first true superstars while playing in Montreal.

With Honors

Two Badgers earned first-team all-America honors this weekend, as junior defenseman Brendan Smith and Geoffrion won the honors. No Eagle was named to either the first or second team.

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Born-to-teach professor pushes students to laugh, think

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 01:24 AM PDT

Baltimore Sun, 501 N. Calvert Street, P.O. Box 1377, Baltimore, MD 21278

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We can't keep paying for lengthy retirements

Posted: 11 Apr 2010 02:28 AM PDT

A puzzle from Philosophy 101: If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? A puzzle from the prairie: If an earthquake occurs in Illinois and no one notices, is it really a seismic event?

Gov. Pat Quinn called it a "political earthquake" when the state's Legislature recently voted - 92-17 in the House and 48-6 in the Senate - to reform pensions for state employees. There is now a cap on the amount of earnings that can be used as the basis for calculating benefits. In some states, employees game the system by "spiking" their last year's earnings by accumulating vast amounts of overtime pay.

An even more important change - a harbinger of America's future - is that most new Illinois state government employees must work until age 67 in order to be eligible for full retirement benefits. Those already on the state payroll can still retire at 55 with full benefits.

The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961. Today, nearly half of Social Security recipients choose to begin getting benefits at 62. This is a grotesque perversion of a program that was never intended to subsidize retirees for a third to a half of their adult lives.

It also reflects the decadent dependence that the welfare state encourages: Because of the displacement of responsibility from the individual to government, 48 percent of workers over 55 have total savings and investments of less than $50,000.

Because most states' pension plans compute their present values - and minimize required current contributions - by assuming an unrealistic 8 percent annual return on investments, the cumulative funding gap of state pensions already may be $3 trillion, and certainly is rising.

For example, last Wednesday's New York Times contained this attention-seizing bulletin: "An independent analysis of California's three big pension funds has found a hidden shortfall of more than half a trillion dollars, several times the amount reported by the funds and more than six times the value of the state's outstanding bonds."

It is not news that California is America's home-grown Greece, but the condition of the three funds, which serve 2.6 million current and retired public employees, is going to exacerbate the state's decline by requiring significantly higher taxpayer contributions.

A recent debate on "Fox News Sunday" illustrated the differences between the few politicians who are, and the many who are not, willing to face facts. Marco Rubio, the former speaker of Florida's House of Representatives who is challenging Gov. Charles Crist for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, made news by stating the obvious.

Asked how the nation might address the projected $17.5 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities, Rubio said we should consider two changes for people 10 or more years from retirement. One would raise the retirement age. The other would alter the calculation of benefits: Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system's unfunded liabilities.

Neither idea startles any serious person. But Crist, with the reflex of the unreflective, rejected both and said he would fix Social Security by eliminating "waste" and "fraud," of which there is little. The system's problems are the result not of incompetent administration but of improvident promises made by Congress.

Synthetic indignation being the first refuge of political featherweights, Crist's campaign announced that he believes Rubio's suggestions are "cruel, unusual and unfair to seniors living on a fixed income." They are indeed unusual, because flinching from the facts of the coming entitlements crisis is the default position of all but a responsible few, such as Wisconsin's Rep. Paul Ryan, who has endorsed Rubio. What is ultimately cruel is Crist's unserious pretense that America faces only palatable choices, and that improvident promises can be fully funded with money currently lost to waste and fraud.

By the time the baby boomers have retired in 2030, the median age of the American population will be close to that of today's population of Florida, the retirees' haven that is Heaven's antechamber. The 38-year-old Rubio's responsible answer to a serious question gives the nation a glimpse of a rarity - a brave approach to the welfare state's inevitable politics of gerontocracy.

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Philosophy

Sunday, April 11, 2010