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First there was Grover Cleveland. (And yes, damn straight I’m opening this column with a Grover Cleveland reference.) Then there was the German Military of the early to mid 20^th Century. Later there was Ali, followed by Jordan. O.J. led the charge on the criminal front while David Chase took up the torch in the world of television. And today we have Rourke, Downey Jr., and Stallone.

What do all of these venerated icons have in common? They all stood at the peak of their games, the height of their powers only to walk away from it all, take some time off, and then return to their former glory with a vengeance.

Today there stands a new name among these icons: Pagels.

Where was I all these weeks? Hostage in Nicaragua? Withering away on my death bed? Relocating under the witness protection program? Nah, mostly lying on my couch watching SportsCenter.

I’m not going to make any excuses for my two-month absence (other than my 18 hours of classes, final exams, transferring to new school, and getting a summer job of course.) But I’m trying to regain my former glory of biweekly columns.

The problem is that I set a precedent too high for myself. All of my posts were over 3,000 words. Every time I thought of cranking out another mega-column, I succumbed to watching another episode of Mad Men. I felt like Brett Favre weighing the pros of going through an entire NFL training camp, regular season, and playoff schedule again. I just couldn’t do it.

But then I remembered how Favre beat the system.

Instead of showing up to grueling team workouts in May, flying out to sweltering hot summer training camp, and grunting through the meaningless exhibition games, why not just stay at home in Mississippi and play pickup games of football in Wrangler jeans along with a bizarre cult of 21 other Wrangler-clad woodsmen? Why not just roll into camp a few weeks before the season opener and take the starting job?

That got me thinking, why should I have to crank out Tolstoyian length columns every week? Why can’t I shoot baskets all day in my backyard with my vintage KG Timberwolves ball, watch the Rangers game, and then crap out a shortened post for my web site?

Last night’s debauchery against Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was just the event that prompted me to come out of my hibernation and write on something I’ve been so adamant about with friends recently.

The way we umpire sports is inherently flawed. While millions of other jobs across the globe are being lost to machines, refs and umpires continue on working out-of-date jobs every day of the week. There’s a reason we don’t have elevator operators or gas station attendants any more. Their jobs have become automated, and society as a whole is better for it.

What if murder courts were only allowed to view the security camera footage one time in each trial? What if the jury had to make an immediate ruling to sentence the defendant to death or let him walk free within seconds of viewing the video? There’s a reason they take the time to review things and consult others. So they can make the right decision!

Now I’m not suggesting we banish all umpires to Elba and have Skynet run the games, but there has to be a better way of running things. Do you know how chaotic it is in the middle of the field during an NFL game? Imagine trying to see if the center snapped the ball before the play clock ran out, if the offensive tackle didn’t false start, if the defense was situated in a legal formation, if the quarterback stayed in the pocket, and if the cornerback interfered with the receiver past the five yard non-interference zone….all while trying to avoid being manhandled by 22 200lb+ behemoths.

There’s a reason they have a booth in football, but why are only 1% of the calls made from the person who has the best view of the field?

I’m tired of sitting on my couch watching sports where a blown call is instantaneously replayed on the screen. But I’m also tired of watching referees huddle over near a small closed-circuit television screen watching the replay for over five minutes. The last thing we need is to make these games longer.

We live in the 21^st century! The fans should not have the ability to know the call long before the refs, but it simply seems this is how sports are run these days. As Obama’s newly appointed Secretary of Sport, I’ve come up with two very basic ways to fix this issue.

The Robotic Refs Plan

• Have machines make 80% of the calls by placing chips in the balls and players’ cleats, and planting readers on the bases, sidelines, and goalposts. This would make rudimentary ball/strike, goal/no goal calls (unlike Sex Panther cologne) 100% accurate 100% of the time.
• Keep two refs on the field to make all the bizarre rulings that are too complicated for machines to judge.
• There also need to be refs on field simply to maintain order. There’s much more to being a ref than just making calls. They have to manage the game, give the ball to the right people at the right times, tell players where to go in certain situations, and break up fights. (Actually scratch that last one. Fights should never be broken up.)

The Instantaneous Walkie-Talkie (NOT FIVE MINUTE PHONE CONVERSATION) Booth Plan

• Keep all of the normal umpires/referees on the field/court/ice. As far as making call is concerned, yes a robot would be far more accurate, but as I said before there’s much more to being a ref than simply making calls.
• Have someone in the booth watching the game on TV with a walkie-talkie connected directly to the umpires on the field. If the umpires blow a call, the man in the booth can immediately radio down within seconds that the player was out of bounds or safe at first, etc.

I don’t understand why no sport has installed this already. Why have the umpires walk behind some concealed curtain to spend an eternity determining a call when we can have someone in the booth just radio down any corrections within seconds?

It’s a shame that Galarraga had to have his perfect game ruined by a single, late bad call, but it’s more of a shame that first base umpire Jim Joyce has to work in such a flawed system and forever be known as “the guy who blew that pitcher’s perfect game.” Like Buckner’s blunder and Norwood’s “wide right,” Joyce – who has put in over two decades of reliable MLB service – always be associated with one play on one night in Detroit no matter what he does for the rest of his life.

For the baseball purists who say the way things are run should never change, I have one question for you: how many umpires can you actually name other than Don Denkinger and now Jim Joyce? We only notice umpires who blow major calls, just as we only notice waiters who drop plates or pilots who crash airplanes. Are you seriously telling me that fixing a mistake would ruin the game?

Was the runner out by a step last night? Yeah, but it’s not his fault that baseball has installed such a ridiculous system of making calls. Detroit fans shouldn’t be calling for Joyce’s head, but rather commissioner Bud Selig’s.

But Selig isn’t the only person who has failed recently. This column has yet again reached page four on my computer…

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As the summer looms, the one of the most anticipated free agent signings in sports history will occur. There are tons of offers on the table, but in the end, only one will land the big one:

Which professional athlete will Kim Kardashian sign with after her split with Reggie Bush?

No, just kidding. (But not really. Reggie said that he couldn’t handle the media spotlight of dating someone like Kim Kardashian…. You were the starting running back for the Super Bowl champions Reggie! I know that’s pretty obscure. I mean, only about 1.2 billion people actually watched the game. Personally, I think Reggie was just afraid of not being #1 – not in media attention though. I mean, at Kardashian family reunions, would he even be the best athlete? I could see Bruce Jenner getting picked before him in a pickup basketball game. The guy’s a gold medal Olympian.)

Getting back to topic though, as anyone who has ever watched more than thirty seconds of ESPN probably knows, LeBron James is an unrestricted free agent after this season, and any team is eligible to land the greatest basketball talent since Jordan.

With cap space and market size restrictions, there are actually only seven teams left in the LeBron sweepstakes though: New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Dallas, New Jersey, and the LA Clippers.

Yes, you read those last two teams correctly. New Jersey is getting a new stadium in downtown Brooklyn and the Clips just fired Mike Dunleavy as GM, opening up the opportunity for LeBron to craft any team he wants in the second-largest market in the country.

Sorry smaller-market teams. Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, and Sacramento simply just don’t scream “media mogul. ” Also my apologies go to Detroit. I know you cleared all of your cap space for 2010, but the biggest free agent you’re going to land this summer is probably Oleksiy Pecherov.

LeBron’s Goals

Everyone likes to compare LeBron and Kobe, especially the creators of the Nike puppet campaign. The biggest difference between two isn’t their game, but their aspirations off the court.

Kobe Bryant wants to be the best basketball player of all time. Hands down. He knows all the milestones: Jordan’s six titles, Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points, Marko Jaric’s five sexual assault charges. All of these are in reach. At the end of the day, Kobe really doesn’t care what others think about him, though. He avoids interviews like they’re murder mystery parties at O.J. Simpson’s house. Kobe just wants to be the greatest athlete who ever set foot on a basketball court.

LeBron, on the other hand, has a completely different mindset. He doesn’t necessarily want to be the greatest player of all time, simply the most popular. Much like Jordan was the global icon of his time, LeBron wants to be a household name not just in America, but around the world.

Why do you think the Cavs allowed a Chinese conglomerate to purchase a part of the team last year? Why do you think LeBron is almost fluent in Mandarin? It’s not so he can watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without the subtitles.

The Yao Ming experience has proved that China is the next great frontier for the NBA, and LeBron is leading the charge into the Forbidden City.

There are a lot of options he can take this summer. LeBron can stick with his current team and try to maintain his legacy with one city, or he can move to a bigger market outside of Cleveland. One of the more entertaining – and incredibly improbably – ideas I had was this:

The “F*** it. I’m going to win a championship EVERY year” strategy

What if LeBron just decided “you know what, Bill Russell’s 11 rings is good and all, but I want to absolutely blow that out of the water.” You can’t expect a team to stay as dominant at the top as long as the Celtics of the 1960s though. He’d have to switch teams a few times in order to make sure his team stays at the top. So what if he just signed 1-year contracts every season for the rest of his career?

Wouldn’t this be incredibly captivating? Every summer, LeBron could dramatically choose which team had the best 4-man roster that he could fit into. You could even make it into a Bachelorette-style reality show. Have LeBron stay at a mansion with all 30 NBA general managers trying to court him. He could eliminate one GM each week until the dramatic season finale when he signs with his new team. Tell me you wouldn’t watch this.

Unfortunately, The LeBronchlorette doesn’t look like it’s coming to ABC anytime soon, and it seems that GMs will simply have to woo him with market shares and piles of cash. My only question is this:

Why should the contract money have anything to do with his decision?

Sure, Cleveland can offer the largest contract since they currently own his rights. Dallas could offer the most money down the road because there isn’t any income tax in Texas. (Hooray for fiscal conservatism!) New York has the largest cap space available. But the guy already made over $300 million in contracts and endorsements. Why should he care about another $3-4 million that one team can offer him over another?

It’s a well-known fact that the top athletes make most of their money not from salaries or winnings, but from endorsements. Tiger Woods makes over (or at least “made over”) over $80 million a year from endorsements compared to only about $10 million in tournament winnings. LeBron’s deal with Nike is no different. His initial seven-year Nike contract that he signed out of high school was worth over $100 million with bonuses. Compare that to his current $60 million NBA contract.

With all that money, the guy could literally purchase the Milwaukee Bucks if he wanted. It’s ludicrous to think he could pick one team over another simply due to contract offers. Doesn’t he realize that the bulk of his earnings are based on endorsement deals – which themselves are basically a measure of how popular he is?

Put is this way: if LeBron wins a championship, his popularity skyrockets, bringing in millions in endorsements. If he wins in a major media market like New York or Chicago, he’s even more of a global icon. With this train of thought, wouldn’t it actually make sense for him to sign for LESS money?

Taking up a smaller portion of the salary cap could bring in other major free agents like Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, or even Dwayne Wade to his new team. Imagine a LeBron-Wade-Bosh nucleus running the Knicks next year. Wouldn’t they win the next seven NBA championships? Wouldn’t they rule over the media capital of the world? Wouldn’t that make them the most famous team in all of sports? Now that Wade has signed with Nike, wouldn’t all three of them also make hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements in the coming decade?

If I were LeBron, I would literally sign for free. (Unfortunately this isn’t possible, so he’d have to settle for the veteran’s minimum.) Still, it absolutely makes sense. Peyton Manning did it with the Colts, and they won the Super Bowl the next year. Why can’t LeBron take less in the NBA?

I simply don’t understand why money is suddenly a big issue. In this 2007 interview with Fortune, he said, “I know I can go out and sign a lot of endorsements and get checks. Money is not the issue.” Why is it now? I understand the economy has gone down the tubes, but I don’t think he was a major stockholder in Lehman Brothers.

The Other Contract

One of the most underrated stories this offseason isn’t LeBron’s expiring NBA contract, but his $100 Nike contract that also happens to end this summer. This where his business managers really need to make the push for the big bucks. A $20 million NBA contract will look like pocket change next to his new $150 million+ Nike contract.

He’s already hinted at the fact that he’s almost certainly going to sign with the athletic conglomerate, and his new deal will surly be the most lucrative in sports history.

LeBron has a major decision this summer: signing for the maximum amount, screwing over his team’s financial flexibility, and maybe winning 2-3 championships, or eschewing his salary for immortality. Not only would he become the most famous athlete of all time, but he would eventually make more money in the long run by signing for less now.

Everyone is talking about LeBron’s new contract this summer. They’re just focusing on the wrong one.

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