Locker Room

The coaching rivalry between Jim Calhoun and Jim O'Brien dates back to when they came into the Big East together in 1986. The first official function was at a league get-together on a Florida beach. "It seems like 100 years ago," Calhoun said last week.There were 25 games played between Calhoun's Huskies teams and O'Brien's teams at Boston College over 11 seasons. Connecticut won 22 of them, including the last 18 before O'Brien left for Ohio State last season."We should be the big underdog, it's 9,000-to-1 that you keep doing that," Calhoun said.

In a peacekeeping move, the Blast will forgo its normal route from the playing area for Saturday's game against Cleveland at 7: 30 at Baltimore Arena.Instead, the Blast will take the back stairs, letting the Crunch have the main entrance from the playing area to the locker rooms, in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the conflicts that have marred the past two meetings.The decision comes in the wake of the Crunch's perceived behavior after a 15-10 Cleveland win the last time the teams met, on Dec. 4.Blast coach Kevin Healey said many of the Crunch players taunted the Blast players as they headed to their locker room, prompting a minor skirmish between the teams.

The Cleveland Crunch yesterday requested that the National Professional Soccer League investigate an altercation that broke out between the Crunch and Blast after Saturday's game at Baltimore Arena.Paul Luchowsky, director of league operations, said the NSPL would look into the situation. He sent a letter to Blast coach Kevin Healey yesterday requesting his side of what happened after having received Crunch coach Bruce Miller's version.Healey said the teams were leaving the field after the Crunch's 19-11 win when backup Crunch defender Troy Dusosky got into a verbal confrontation with some of the Blast players outside Cleveland's locker room.

Former Green Bay defensive lineman Reggie White didn't have a great 1998 in terms of his public pronouncements, and 1999 isn't starting out particularly great either, what with a poorly timed diatribe against female reporters in the locker room.A portion of White's forthcoming book "Fighting the Good Fight" regarding his disdain for the presence of reporters of the opposite sex in locker rooms, was excerpted in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal, and it was almost as noxious as the anti-gay, anti-Hispanic, anti-Native American spew he put forth before a meeting of the Wisconsin legislature.

New coach. New system. New attitude. That describes this season for Howard's scoring and rebounding leader, and one of the league's most exciting players, Jabraille "Boo" Jackson.A year ago, Jackson was thrown off the team by coach Kevin Broadus with five games still to play, after Jackson bumped a player who had thrown an elbow at him, and then immediately left the bench on his own to go to the locker room."I thought the elbow was thrown on purpose, and I went to the locker room to get water," Jackson said.

You've heard the tired, old sports cliche, "We had our backs against the wall." Southern-Anne Arundel's team found out first-hand just what it means yesterday from their coach, Linda Kilpatrick, at Poly in Baltimore.Down 31-29 after a lackluster first half, it was into the locker room, behind closed doors, to face Kilpatrick, who had smoke coming out her ears. To put it lightly, the Dawgs returned to the court inspired.Final score: Southern 70, Poly 49.The win meant back-to-back Class 2A East region titles for the Dawgs and the 11th in Kilpatrick's 21 years.

There is no doubt that left tackle Jonathan Ogden is the most talented player on the Ravens' offensive line. But the consensus in the team's locker room is that right guard Jeff Blackshear deserved Ogden-like recognition among the fans, players and coaches who decided on this year's Pro Bowl team.At 6 feet 6, 323 pounds, Blackshear cuts an imposing figure. He has become known for his no-flash, bruising style of punishing defensive linemen and linebackers. His toughness and consistency may be his biggest assets.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- It's a morning right off a Department of Tourism brochure. Opening before us, under a dazzling blue sky, is a perfectly manicured fairway ringed by tall trees and ivory-colored bunkers and, somewhere off in the distance is a green so smooth and pure they say it was carved in golf heaven.This is the first tee at Bulle Rock, the new world-class 18-hole course designed by the legendary Pete Dye on 275 lush acres hard by the Chesapeake Bay, in the northeast corner of Maryland.

The Ravens may have violated league policy by only opening their locker room to the media for interviews once this week, according to an NFL spokesman.The Ravens announced Tuesday that the team was closing the majority of practices to the media over the next three days and the media would be barred from the locker room except for a 30-minute session before today's practice. Usually, the locker room is open before and after each workout on Wednesday and Thursday and after Friday practices.

CINCINNATI -- For the first time this season, there actually were jokes being told in the Ravens' locker room after a game.Team vice president David Modell was going around shaking hands, reserve Ben Cavil was bragging about how well his fellow offensive linemen played, and defensive tackle Tony Siragusa had become a comedian."

I just listened to an old Vince Lombardi speech on the Internet. Lombardi is addressing the Green Bay Packers in the locker room moments before they take the field against the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl II. Gradually he works himself into a lather. Then he builds to the red-meat conclusion. "You gotta go out there like a bunch of tigers!" he shouts. "Just hit, just run, just block and just tackle! ... There's nothing out there you haven't faced a number of times! Right?"

At 6 feet 9, 340 pounds, Jared Gaither is the largest man in a locker room full of enormous men. This distinction isn't foreign to the 23-year-old left tackle from White Plains, considering that he has been the biggest player in virtually every room he has ever been in for as long as he can remember. But part of what's remarkable when you stand next to Gaither this season is the sensation that he is noticeably bigger than a year ago. Not taller, of course - he's already the tallest player in the NFL - but thicker, with shoulders the size of pot roasts and a chest that protrudes from his body like the front end of a Cadillac Escalade.

I think the president should invite Erin Andrews to the White House for a beer. But if Mr. Obama wants to include the creepy peeping Tom who videotaped the ESPN reporter naked through a hole in her hotel room wall, plus all the clowns at Fox, CBS and the New York Post who televised the video or ran still pictures taken from it, he is going to need more than a picnic table on the White House lawn. It seems to me that if the president of the United States is now refereeing community racial dust-ups, we ought to be able to count on him to step in when the national media and the world of sports demonstrate - 30 years after the courts granted women sports reporters equal status - that they haven't learned a thing.

Gonzaga's rowdy celebration spilled into the locker room, where the team watched a replay of freshman Demetri Goodson's game-winner and got to cheer again and again. Goodson streaked downcourt and made a short, running bank shot with 0.9 of a second left, lifting the fourth-seeded Bulldogs over Western Kentucky, 83-81, last night in the second round of the NCAA tournament in Portland, Ore. Gonzaga (28-5) advanced to the South Regional semifinals to play top seed North Carolina on Friday in Memphis, Tenn.

In the locker room after the AFC championship game, Rex Ryan stood misty-eyed and reflective as he spoke to reporters about his 10 years with the Ravens. On the plane home from Pittsburgh, he went from seat to seat, player to player, memory to memory. That was Ryan's emotional goodbye to the players he has come to love, to the defense he has diligently pushed to new heights the past four years as coordinator. The feeling in the locker room and on the plane was mutual and just as emotional.

DAVIE, FLA. - The Easter egg colors left no doubt it was a different locker room. But that was the only telltale sign. If you closed your eyes - and forgot about the Florida reporters who can still wear golf shorts in January - you might as well have been in Owings Mills. Here's what the linebacker said, "Before the first game started, it was only us 53 guys on this team who thought we could win, thought we could go to the playoffs, thought we could win a single game this season." Ray Lewis?

Some days, it's hard not to marvel at Willis McGahee. He can cut. He's slippery. He makes your eyes shake out of their sockets. Sometimes, you simply can't believe what has taken place in front of you. If only we were talking about McGahee's feet instead of his lips. In an interview this week with Sporting News Radio, McGahee seemed to imply Ravens coaches were at fault for his lack of production this season. McGahee said he "tried to be someone else's running back this year, and it didn't work out."

As you know, Maryland is in the midst of a multiyear renovation at Byrd Stadium that is to include: Tyser Tower, with its 64 suites; adding about 8,000 seats to the west end zone in a later phase, bringing stadium capacity to about 60,000; lowering the field and putting in FieldTurf; and upgrading the locker room. What else needs to be changed/revamped/added to improve the fan experience at Byrd? (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/terpsblog)

When Cam Cameron's past caught up with his present this week, the Ravens' offensive coordinator was content to let it pass without complaint. Nine months after he was fired as head coach of the Dolphins, Cameron returns to Miami on Sunday. The mere thought of that reunion revived bad memories and bitter accusations in South Florida. On Wednesday, the Dolphins took turns berating their former boss. Spurred by an innocuous comment from Ravens coach John Harbaugh, several players who remain from last season's 1-15 Miami team attacked Cameron's leadership, if not his character.

Filled with the blush of youth, Marshal Yanda took the dare, stepped into the middle of the group and got tasered with a stun gun. Not once, not twice, but three times. And he stayed upright. "I took it for three, four seconds, just stepped out and said, 'Yeah, it hurts a little bit, but it ain't that bad,' " the Ravens guard recalled. "I let them do it to me a couple more times just to make it worth the money." It happened a year ago at the end of training camp. In what passes as humor behind closed doors for a football team, players anted up a $600 payoff for any player willing to take the taser treatment.