Former Sen. George Mitchell plans to let his brothers hear about winning NCAA’s ‘Teddy’ Award

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George Mitchell honored with NCAA’s ‘Teddy’ Award

ATLANTA — George Mitchell finally has an answer to his older brother’s bragging rights for the family’s biggest athletic honor.

Mitchell, the former Senate Majority Leader and now President Obama’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, was presented the 2010 Theodore Roosevelt Award on Friday night at the honors celebration of the annual NCAA convention.

The “Teddy” is the NCAA’s top honor to an individual and recognizes outstanding accomplishment by a distinguished citizen who was a letter-winner in college.

Mitchell played basketball for four years at Bowdoin College but says he wasn’t the best athlete in his family.

“The truth is I wasn’t a very good player,” said Mitchell, who acknowledged having “a couple pretty good games which I remember very clearly but no one else will.

“I had three older brothers who were great athletes and outstanding basketball players. They spent the rest of our lives ripping me, so it’s nice to win this award and I’m going to send them a video of the event.”

Mitchell said his personal highlight was watching one of his brothers, Johnny, being named MVP on the only Maine high school basketball team to win the six-state New England championship.

“I remember that very distinctly,” Mitchell said. “It was a real highlight.”

Mitchell, 76, is best known to most sports fans for his 409-page “Mitchell Report” on performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball. The 2007 report implicated seven MVPs and 31 All-Stars.

The fallout from the report is ongoing. This week, former St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire gave a tearful admission that he used steroids for a decade, including when he hit a then-record 70 homers in 1998.

When asked if McGwire’s statement surprised him, Mitchell said Friday “It did not.”

“I made no comment on it,” Mitchell said. “I noted in my report I attempted to speak with Mark McGwire, and through his attorney he declined to speak with me or to answer questions that I would send, and I accepted that. He was under no obligation to speak with me and in fact few players did.”

Mitchell said he believes baseball commissioner Bud Selig “didn’t get enough credit for asking me to conduct the investigation and supporting my efforts in it.”

“In no other sport has the head of the sport requested and supported an independent inquiry of which he had no control of whatsoever and then implement in its entirety those recommendations he had the authority to implement,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell called his current role as special envoy “very difficult” and said he is looking forward to retirement.

“When Secretary of State (Hillary) Clinton and President Obama asked me to take this position, I got a lot of advice,” he said. “No one said it would be easy. Everyone said it would be difficult, as it has proven to be. But we are persisting in our efforts to achieve the vision which President Obama set out shortly after taking office of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.”

The 2007 Bluffton baseball team, which had five players die in a bus crash in Atlanta, received the NCAA’s Inspiration Award.

Bluffton coach James Grandey visited the site of the crash on Friday morning.

“We were able to get out and walk along the scene,” Grandey said. “It’s unfathomable, really, what happened.”

Grandey was in an Atlanta hospital for about two weeks after having almost every bone in his face broken, among other injuries. He said his players “inspired me to get better.”

An Inspiration Award also was presented to Lt. Col. Gregory D. Gadson, a former starter on the Army football team who had both of his legs amputated after his vehicle was struck by an explosive device in Iraq in 2007.

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow was one of the “Top Eight” honorees of senior student-athletes.

“I don’t know if it was a regular college experience, but it truly was a blessing,” said Tebow of his four years at Florida.

Also honored were Duke golfer Amanda Blumenherst, Georgia gymnast Courtney Kupets, Pittsburg State runner Venessa Lee, Michigan State hockey goalie Jeff Lerg, Wheaton College basketball player Kent Raymond, Alabama softball player Brittany Rogers and Arizona State track and field standout Sarah Stevens.

Six former student-athletes won Silver Anniversary Awards, including three former football stars: Auburn’s Gregg Carr, Southern Cal’s Jack Del Rio and Boston College’s Doug Flutie. The Silver Anniversary winners also included California track and field star Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Hawaii swimmer and water polo star Maureen O’Toole-Purcell and Florida golfer Deb Richard.

Capt. Richard Phillips of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Roxana Saberi of Concordia College won Valor Awards. Phillips was rescued after his commercial cargo ship was hijacked by pirates on April 8, 2009.

Saberi, a dual American-Iranian citizen who had been working as a freelance journalist in Tehran, was released from an Iranian prison in May after almost five months in captivity.