What if Michael Phelps was black? What if Phelps was a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA's men's basketball team and was caught taking a hit off a glass lettuce burner?

Are we ready to be honest? Before you answer, name the last time a black athlete was pardoned in public for owning a scandalous photo similar to the one that Phelps recently cop'd to?

I'm not taking up 'The Cause' -- whatever that is -- because there are a ton of instances that offer no rhyme or reason for why they occur within our media's obsession with the instantaneous crucifixion and subsequent resurrection of the subjects pushed in front of our collective conscience in the same knee-jerk fashion most of us would like to push our in-laws out in front of rush hour traffic. Bill Clinton was crucified for banging a not-so-very-hot intern; George Bush was ignored for purposed war crimes. Go figure. Why do Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmerio get a virtual pass for their suspected roles in baseball's performance-enhancing scandal when compared to the outright vicious response Barry Bonds has elicited from media and fans? Please don't tell me it's just because he owns baseball's most famous mark, because to do so would be an outright admission you're living with your head in the sand.

That said, I find it somewhat amusing that Phelps gets a pass on this photo in the manner I've witnessed. In the Detroit Free Press Monday, the the Off Beat column penned by Krista Jahnke was titled "So Michael Phelps Is Human After All". Nationally-syndicated radioman Jim Rome was quoted as saying with a DUI on his slate already, he's not human, he's building a body of work. Today's edition of The Detroit News featured columnist Bob Wojnowski pleading for calm and reason in relation to the mistake Phelps made.

It makes me remember Detroit Southwestern High grad Jalen Rose being arrested during his first year at Michigan (1992-93) for playing video games in a Detroit house that doubled as a drug den. I was on the desk at The Ann Arbor News on the Saturday night a story came hurdling down the wire almost a year after the actual arrest just minutes before the morning edition's 1:00 am deadline. As you can imagine, we held production and made room for the story on the front page above the fold. We told ourselves we were being responsible journalists. Today I look back and cringe.

Rose wasn't smoking, wasn't selling and wasn't buying. He was playing video games, but he played a brash, in-your-face style of basketball. Rose played the 'City Game', and White America wasn't ready for Rose's style of talk-you-down, break-you-down, drive you down on your ass and shout you down the court while wearing shorts with a foot more material than any player in America. After Mick McCabe, the Detroit Free Press prep writer, discovered and published news of the October 4, 1992 arrest on March 9, 1993, six months after it happened, Rose was crucified for weeks and painted as a ghetto gangbanger. Fans and pundits alike called for his suspension. Wire services crackled with updates.

Phelps was inhaling from a glass stanchion the size of an exhaust pipe from a certified used Mini Cooper. He admitted to it. America's response? The mainstream media and sponsors alike call him human.

For the record, I have no problem with Phelps. I think the public backlash is punishment enough, and any prosecuting attorney willing to prosecute this as a criminal offense needs to just open a Facebook page like the rest of us if he really needs the attention that bad.

If nothing else, I hope you enjoy reading the paper in the morning all the more with eyes wide open.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries. Cameron's 2nd title, Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, is due in August this year!

I'm not usually one to point out mistakes because a) they happen and b) they can happen to me as much as they can happen to anyone. However, with all accommodations to karma already being made, this is a big deal.

Detroit Pershing lost yesterday -- twice! The state's No. 1 high school basketball team going down is a big deal in any state and in the rugged PSL, where only the top two teams in each division make the playoffs, Southeastern's win over the Doughboys makes for huge headlines.

But what was the score? The Detroit Free Press and writer Mike Horan published a score that didn't match The Detroit News article written by Rod Beard. The Freep had the score 78-75; The News reported a 77-76 tally. Usually the two papers do a pretty admirable job in getting the mountain's worth of prep scores in all sports correct, but this isn't just a game. This is the No. 1 team in the state losing.

Now honestly, the score thing isn't that big of a deal. Yes, accuracy matters, but both papers and their respective staffs are going through a massive downsizing and staffers are being asked to do a lot more with a whole lot less, like every other industry. And neither paper got the outcome of the game wrong: Southeastern won; Pershing lost.

Here's what's really sad to me. Of the approximately five million people in metro Detroit that don't live within the city proper, I would bet less than 1% have ever seen a PSL basketball team, much less a PSL game. The concerns over violence and safety can be real in the PSL but the availability of staff and officials is a bigger problem. Regardless, some of the very best prep basketball in all of the state gets missed because the games are played at 4p.m. and too many suburbanites are clueless about the city's high schools, where they're located, what's safe and what's not.

To boot, the score is inconsistent, and while that means a copy editor at one or both of the papers is fretting, it also adds fuel to the fire that drives so many Detroiters. I'm oft-reminded of the opinion that only the suburbs get the wheat while the city gets the chaff. Of course it's not true but that idea gains ground when stuff like this happens.

I've refereed dozens of PSL football and basketball games without a problem. Further, I refereed the Southeastern - Pershing game last year at Pershing so I know it was a hell of a game yesterday. And I can tell you outside of Cass Tech and Renaissance, Southeastern's gym is as nice as they come to watch a game.

It's too bad so few get to see the best the PSL has to offer, and if anyone knows the correct score, can you help a brother out?

~T.C. Cameron is writing Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due August of 2009 from Arcadia Publishing.

Yesterday's historic announcement by the joint-management team of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press has garnered the attention of nationally-known editorial boards, chat rooms and Internet-news gathering sites.

First is the bold masthead regarding Detroit's historic decision found at Editor&Publisher.com, one of the nation's most trusted media-on-media coverage sites. Also pushing these links was MediaBistro.com, who slotted Detroit's news just below Oprah Winfrey's decision to guide her production company, Harpo Productions, away from ABC to HBO for a broader spectrum of programming opportunities.

There's even a piece that features the well-reasoned opinions of former Freep Editor/publisher Heath Meriwether, who now lives in New York and works as a writing coach.

James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times chimes in with a healthy bit of disdain for why the papers in Detroit would cut off their most loyal readers at the expense of those who read it for free online.

Also of interest is the many respected media market analysts who openly question if the cuts are deep enough, something many of us with firsthand knowledge of Detroit's horrific business climate have speculated about in local forums for some time.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available from Arcadia Publishing at major and not-so-major retailers nationwide.

Detroit's on it's way to being a two-paper town without a paper to be found.

Detroit's daily newspapers undertook the bold move Tuesday. To hear them tell it, it's the brave act. However, they didn't do it to lead the way, but rather to crawl out from under the piano of financial and structural overhead that so many other publishers and managing editors would like to do. Detroit's dailies will only be delivered in-home three days a week and the online edition will no longer be free.

That's just a start. If the paper's joint-management team had its' way, the presses and the delivery would all go away. It's a sad truth in Detroit, a town that labor built, because the large overhead is now largely obsolete. There's paper to buy from monstrous mills, and that production cost is no longer a thrill. There's manpower for staffing and benefits to be paid. There's editorial boards and advertising dollars to be made.

There's delivery to mailboxes and the coffee house's deep pockets. The problem is, by the time the paper is here, the next day's news is near. And the cash flow inward no longer matches the cash going out.

Get the point? Detroit's joint-operations management is starting the ebb away from paper and towards exclusive online production. The Detroit Free Press reported an 85% jump in online hits this year as compared to last, if reporter M.L. Elrick's numbers are true as reported by a local Detroit television station two days ago.

I haven't purchased the paper is several years, because the Internet is always on and I don't have to leave the house, much less open the door. I say go the distance, with apologies to Kevin Costner, and finish the job. Go online for good and make it a cash cow.

The Oakland Press got the jump on Detroit's dailies in the prep sports genre with the alpha launch of MIPrepZone and the large family of blogs found at BlogCentral last year. The large network of neighborhood apers, opinions and blogs gives the Oakland Press a longer, more substantial reach beyond what our competition could compete with in an immediate sense.

The buggy whip was popular in it's day, too, but the car changed everything and the automobile grew. We're on a new cusp of society-altering change. Papers have long been running two editions too many. It's one or the other, and online is winning, so why delay the inevitable as the paper keeps thinning.

I say rock out the Internet; put that paper down. Metro Detroit's leading the way to a paperless crown.

Detroit's two major daily newspapers became the first major newspapers in America to curb daily delivery to three days a week.

The paper will be delivered for home-based subscription on Thursday, Friday and Sundays only starting sometime early in the new year as the combined management of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press aim to curb overall payroll by 9% before the end of the first quarter of '09.

The papers, managed under the umbrella of a joint operating agreement (JOA) since 1989 that pared each paper's holiday and weekend responsibilities in half, opened an 11 a.m. news conference with a paper-produced video that highlighted the paper's first 200 years as an innovative pioneer in the media industry. Self-plaudits included the first women's section, first paper-owned radio station, first Sunday paper and first paper-owned plane.

However, the overriding message was the admission that the digital age has made traditional paper production a dinosaur. With costs spiraling upward for manpower, availability of paper, and energy costs for materials, production and delivery, the newspapers are highly-motivated to pioneer the answers to what plagues the newspaper industry nationwide.

The JOA management also announced the online editions, free for the past several years, will be available for $12 a month. The $144-per-year subscription cost is aimed at saving both papers in terms of content, platform and brand.

This morning Detroit Free Press preps writer Mick McCabe grabbed the attention of every official in the metro Detroit area, and probably many statewide, too.

McCabe wrote about the standard to bear for a game official to be assigned the tournament finals, including the way an official receives a rating, a lack of accountability if an official makes a mistake and finally, why the best officials aren't always on the biggest games because the state has a five-year respite rule for officials between finals' assignments.

A great read and a good snapshot of the officiating culture in the MHSAA footprint, except for one missing point, a large point of contention if you ask me and many others, and it has to do with why officials who work the finals can't receive the same assignment for another five seasons.

The five-year respite rule is in place because the same officials from the same zones got the same championship assignments for years and years and years under former leadership. Why did that happen? One, there was no such rule to prohibit the practice. Second, every officiating association is asked to submit a list of 10 names for the annual, championship tournaments. Many years the favorite sons of the power brokers in these associations were penned in at the expense of other deserving officials, sometimes under an erase-and-replace scenario. I know -- it's happened to me and many others.

That's politics, to make it short and sweet. Give MHSAA Associate Director Mark Uyl and the MHSAA credit for trying to share the playoff experience by expanding the field of qualified officials. This motivates more officials to work harder to polish their craft and helps extinguish the belief that the playoffs are an exclusive club for a select few officials. McCabe points out a handful of mistakes in last week's games as evidence that this policy is misguided. That's a fair complaint. There's a few growing pains, but expanding the pool of qualified playoff officials won't come without a few bumps and bruises. No one wants to see a mistake impact a game, and no athletic director wants to have that mistake happen in their school's game, but how do you expand that pool and expect perfection? Something's got to give.

I used to wonder how I can work three sports collegiately, one at the Division-I level, and not get past the quarterfinal in every state tournament since I became eligible except one. Then I got a good look at the nomination process, and the truth is, being a good politician goes a lot further than being a good official. I'm not saying good officials don't get good assignments, but I am saying I'm not the first official to feel this way. On the other hand, it's always easy to feel slighted because every good official feels they're not moving up the ladder the way they should. I've made some mistakes in my officiating career, so I'm humble enough to be thankful for what I have been assigned and not lament what I haven't been assigned.

McCabe points out a fairly accurate number of flaws in the ratings system but there's a caveat to the coaches' ratings that was overlooked. A lot of officials pass on the right call, the tough call and sometimes, the call that is both of those things to keep a good rating in tact. That's not wrong, that's simply playing by the rules. That McCabe has never seen a flagged waved off all year could be a possible example of this. Most qualified officials know some coaches don't know the rules or don't recognize all the indicators of a good official, so they protect themselves from a bad rating from the coaches. That's simply insulating yourself from a bad mark from those who have the most influence.

Is that any different than any other workplace culture in America? No.

The MHSAA represents the schools, so ultimately, it's the schools that are comfortable with these decisions. The flaws in the ratings system that McCabe illustrated are correct. Trust me when I say the schools, the MHSAA, the coaches and officials across the state know the rating system is flawed when it comes to giving an accurate picture of an official's true acumen. But there's little resource to offer anything else at the high school level. It's not a perfect world.

I think the MHSAA is doing the right thing, slowly but surely, in expanding the pool of qualified officials. It will take some time. The officials will make some mistakes. The MHSAA will make an assignment or two they regret. Mistakes will happen. There's some conflict-of-interest issues and some repetitive assignment issues to still be ironed out. It takes a long time to change long-held beliefs and cultures. Be patient.

The MHSAA and the schools they represent can't expect their best officials to be able to officiate forever. Officiating isn't a growth industry and the MHSAA is doing what they can to change that, so you can't expect progress without a few mistakes.

Prep sports is ultimately about doing your best, working hard to improve yourself and your team and being a good representative of your community. The MHSAA's officiating platform has to be allowed to expand under the same guidelines.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due August 2009 from Arcadia Publishing

For as long as anyone can remember in Oakland County, there's been few communities that represented the county's bedrock better than Ferndale. Its' small but distinctive footprint from Eight Mile to I-696 (formerly known as Ten Mile Road) has been witness to tremendous change, both good and bad and good again in the past 60 years, but the one constant has been Ferndale High School.

Could it be that is about to change? Will the 2008-2009 school year be remembered as the final season Ferndale High competes in Oakland County? Today the Detroit Free Press reported that Ferndale High School is considering leaving the Oakland Activities Association (OAA) for a possible reformation of the defunct Northwest Suburban League, which folded in 1992 in the shadows of the Mega League's inception in 1993.

Ferndale Athletic Director Shaun Butler told me today nothing could be further from the truth.

"While it's true we're always looking for options to serve our student-athletes, we're very happy with the OAA right now and have no plans on leaving," Bulter said.

So how did Ferndale become one of the schools mentioned as possible deserters?

"In today's economic conditions, especially with the cost and time as it relates to travel in educational athletics, everyone's considering options. What really changed for us was Waterford's schools leaving the OAA," Bulter explained. "While I hated to see them go from a competition standpoint, because they were very competitive with us, it means I don't have to travel out to Waterford Kettering on a Tuesday afternoon. Going that far was a hard sell in educational athletics from a resource standpoint."

How long has Ferndale been part of the Oakland County landscape? Consider the school's football team, which regularly opened with Royal Oak High (later Royal Oak Dondero) for nearly 40 years. The Eagles played a huge league game with Royal Oak Kimball (now Royal Oak High) for nearly as long, and how many SMA championships were decided between the Southfield Blue Jays and Ferndale's Eagles? Finally, the school's grudge match with the neighboring Vikings of Hazel Park High is entering a 8th decade, with the Vikings holding a 37-33 margin in 70 games.

The Eagles were part of the old Eastern Michigan League (EML) until 1964 and are charter members of both the Southeastern Michigan Association (1964-1993) and the OAA (1994-present). The Eagles also played an annual home-and-home game with Pontiac High (now Pontiac Central) that alternated between Wisner Stadium and Ferndale's stadium, now called Gus Hanson Field, pictured above.

"A lot of scuttlebutt was discussed when the northern Oakland County schools started coming into the OAA, but rest assured, we're not leaving the OAA," said Butler.

Today the Detroit Free Press reported that the Mega League, a 28-member high school league domiciled in Wayne County, is about to crumble. The paper reported eight schools will leave the Mega and form a new league, tentatively called the Downriver League, in early May, and another six schools seem poised to leave the Mega just as quickly to reform the Northwest Suburban League.

The charter Northwest Suburban League existed from 1963-1984 and included Oakland County schools Birmingham Groves, North Farmington High and Oak Park High. It also housed the first Class A football champion, 1975's Livonia Franklin Patriots. After a dormant 1985, the NSL reformed in 1986 until it folded in the shadows of the Mega.

The eight schools rumored to form the yet-to-confirmed Downriver League? Allen Park, Southgate, Woodhaven, Trenton, Gibraltar Carlson, Wyandotte and Taylor rivals Truman and Kennedy. The six schools contemplating leaving for the reformed NSL are Garden City, Dearborn Edsel Ford and competing rivals Crestwood and Annapolis from Dearborn Heights and Redford's Thurston and Union high schools.

That doesn't seem to include Ferndale. While not toney like the Bloomfields and Birmingham, Ferndale is distinct and unique without glitzy clubs and posh restaurants. It's got a little bit of grit and some strong flair of it's own. It's an Oakland County renaissance story. On the preps scene, Ferndale is still a long-standing competitor in many sports. Their football, basketball and baseball tradition remains strong and the school annually hosts one of the more well-attended boys' basketball quarterfinals.

Thankfully, we're not talking about another Michigan institution pulling up stakes. Ferndale's Eagles are staying put right where they belong.

~ T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit’s High School Football Rivalries, due August 25, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing.

(Photo of Gus Hanson courtesy of The Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, Michigan)