Hamstring strain could sideline Urlacher for season

The Bears have to brace themselves for the possibility of Brian Urlacher missing at least the rest of the regular season.

Multiple sources told the Tribune that Urlacher won't play for the next three games at a minimum after suffering a Grade 2 right hamstring strain during Sunday's 23-17 overtime loss to the Seahawks. An MRI confirmed the severity of Urlacher's injury.

Nick Roach is expected to make his fourth career start at middle linebacker Sunday in place of Urlacher, with Geno Hayes expected to take Roach's usual strong-side linebacker spot.

The Bears (8-4) have four more regular-season games, starting with Sunday's division matchup against the Vikings in Minnesota. Urlacher hopes to recover in time for the playoffs, which start with wild-card weekend games Jan. 5-6.

If the playoffs started today, the Bears would be the fifth seed against the fourth-seeded and NFC East-leading Giants (7-5). To remain in playoff contention, the Bears need to win at least two of their final four games against the Vikings (6-6), Packers (8-4), Cardinals (4-8), and Lions (4-8).

Urlacher's return in a month, however, might be a long shot considering the severity of the injury.

Gus Gialamas, an orthopedic surgeon from Sea View Orthopedic Medical Group in San Clemente, Calif., said a Grade 2 hamstring typically takes four to six weeks of recovery.

"Grade 2 means it's not a complete rupture, but it's a partial rupture,'' Gialamas said. "It takes a while -- maybe a week to 10 days -- for the inflammation to stop. That muscle then has to heal, and then you have a lot of physical therapy for strengthening and stretching. The goal is to avoid as much scar tissue in the hamstring as possible.

"I'm thinking he would be lucky to come back in four weeks, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was longer than that. It's just a tough injury.''

When reached by the Tribune, Urlacher declined to discuss the injury or his playing status. He initially felt a "pop'' while chasing Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson near the sideline during overtime. Urlacher pulled himself from the game before the final play.

He told WFLD-Ch. 32 this injury isn't as serious as a similar one in preseason of 2004 with which he missed seven games.

"I did that on the first day of training camp and that MRI showed more damaged back then than it did this time," he said.

The eight-time Pro Bowler entered the 2012 season recovering from a serious knee injury. He sprained the medial collateral ligament and partially sprained the posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during last year's season finale against the Vikings.

Despite sitting out some practices to rest his knee, Urlacher started the first 12 games.

The Bears are 7-15 without Urlacher since he entered the league in 2000.

"He's the leader of our defense,'' defensive tackle Henry Melton said Tuesday. "He's a huge locker room guy. We love having him around. He's what Chicago Bears football is all about.''

Nevertheless, Melton expressed confidence in Roach.

"Nick has been rotating (at middle linebacker in practice) just in case measures called for it,'' Melton said. "It's not going to be the same without Brian, of course. But Nick can get the job done.''

The 34-year-old Urlacher has a base salary of $7.5 million in this, the final year of his contract. He expressed a desire to play at least two more seasons, depending on his health. His says his knee feels better than ever after multiple procedures. Now, it's a matter of how long the hamstring strain lingers.

General manager Phil Emery wouldn't commit to re-signing Urlacher and said any contract offers would be based on performance.

Could Urlacher have played his last game with the Bears?

"I do not think that's going to happen,'' he told Ch. 32. "But, if it does, I have had a really good and long career so I would be sad, but I would not be crushed."

Urlacher has made a statement this season with a team-leading 88 tackles, one interception return for a touchdown, three forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries. He was named the NFC's Defensive Player of the Week following his Week 9 performance against the Titans.

The club re-signed Dom DeCicco to the 53-man roster to take Urlacher's spot, bringing him back three months after he was released with an injury settlement (groin).

DeCicco was second on the team with 17 special-teams tackles as an undrafted free agent from Pitt a year ago. He did play middle linebacker during training camp when Urlacher was sidelined with his knee issue.

vxmcclure@tribune.com

Twitter @vxmcclure23

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‘Dr. Phil”s stolen classic Chevy recovered

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles police say they’ve recovered a stolen 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible that belongs to talk-show host Phil McGraw.

Detective Jess Corral said Tuesday that investigators recovered McGraw’s classic car, along with 13 others, after law enforcement began targeting auto theft rings.

McGraw is known as television’s “Dr. Phil. His car was stolen from the RODZ shop in Burbank in August, and was found with minor damage.

The car is worth at least $ 80,000.

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Sign Language Researchers Broaden Science Lexicon

Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.

For deaf students, this game of scientific Password has long been the daily classroom and laboratory experience. Words like “organism” and “photosynthesis” — to say nothing of more obscure and harder-to-spell terms — have no single widely accepted equivalent in sign language. This means that deaf students and their teachers and interpreters must improvise, making it that much harder for the students to excel in science and pursue careers in it.

“Often times, it would involve a lot of finger-spelling and a lot of improvisation,” said Matthew Schwerin, a physicist with the Food and Drug Administration who is deaf, of his years in school. “For the majority of scientific terms,” Mr. Schwerin and his interpreter for the day would “try to find a correct sign for the term, and if nothing was pre-existing, we would come up with a sign that was agreeable with both parties.”

Now thanks to the Internet — particularly the boom in online video — resources for deaf students seeking science-related signs are easier to find and share. Crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, enabling people who are deaf to coalesce around signs for commonly used terms.

This year, one of those resources, the Scottish Sensory Centre’s British Sign Language Glossary Project, added 116 new signs for physics and engineering terms, including signs for “light-year,”  (hold one hand up and spread the fingers downward for “light,” then bring both hands together in front of your chest and slowly move them apart for “year”), “mass” and “X-ray” (form an X with your index fingers, then, with the index finger on the right hand, point outward). 

The signs were developed by a team of researchers at the center, a division of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland that develops learning tools for students with visual and auditory impairments. The researchers spent more than a year soliciting ideas from deaf science workers, circulating lists of potential signs and ultimately gathering for “an intense weekend” of final voting, said Audrey Cameron, science adviser for the project. (Dr. Cameron is also deaf, and like all non-hearing people interviewed for this article, answered questions via e-mail.)

Whether the Scottish Sensory Centre’s signs will take hold among its audience remains to be seen. “Some will be adopted, and some will probably never be accepted,” Dr. Cameron said. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

Ideally, the standardization of signs will make it easier for deaf students to keep pace with their hearing classmates during lectures. “I can only choose to look at one thing at a time,” said Mr. Schwerin of the F.D.A., recalling his science education, “and it often meant choosing between the interpreter, the blackboard/screen/material, or taking notes. It was like, pick one, and lose out on the others.”

The problem doesn’t end at graduation. In fact, it only intensifies as new discoveries add unfamiliar terms to the scientific lexicon. “I’ve had numerous meetings where I couldn’t participate properly because the interpreters were not able to understand the jargon and they did not know any scientific signs,” Dr. Cameron said.

One general complaint about efforts to standardize signs for technical terms is the idea that, much like spoken language, sign language should be allowed to develop organically rather than be dictated from above.

“Signs that are developed naturally — i.e., that are tested and refined in everyday conversation — are more likely to be accepted quickly by the community,” said Derek Braun, director of the molecular genetics laboratory at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., which he said was the first biological laboratory designed and administered by deaf scientists.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the ASL-STEM Forum.  It was developed by researchers at the University of Washington, not Gallaudet University.  Researchers at Gallaudet and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology work with the University of Washington to provide content and help the forum grow.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of a correction with this article misstated the name of an institute that works on the ASL-STEM Forum. It is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology not the National Institute for the Deaf. 

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South Loop residents oppose DePaul arena

The prospect of a DePaul University men's basketball arena being constructed on land just north of McCormick Place is drawing strong opposition from the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, a South Loop residents' organization, according to a letter released Tuesday.
 
A survey of 700 neighbors of the site, conducted by the community group, found more than 70 percent oppose construction of a Blue Demons arena there, Tina Feldstein, president of the organization, stated in the letter.
 
An arena would not fit within the residential and historic character of the area and could put two landmark structures, the Harriet F. Rees House and the American Book Co. building, at risk, the letter stated. It would also add to traffic congestion and potential rowdiness in an area already overburdened when conventions are in progress at McCormick Place or major events, including Chicago Bears games, are taking place at Soldier Field, Feldstein said in an interview.
 
"We're not against vibrant development, which hotel and retail would bring," Feldstein said. And the group would support an arena at an alternate site on the Near South Side, she said.
 
The letter was written in support of an alternate plan for the so-called "Olde Prairie" blocks, which is being put forward in bankruptcy court by developers Pam Gleichman, Karl Norberg and Gunnar Falk. Their plan calls for hotel and retail development on property directly north of the McCormick Place administrative offices and West Building on Cermak Road.
 
If they lose control of the property, it is expected to go up for auction, making it possible for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency that owns McCormick Place, or other parties to make a run at it.
 
DePaul is weighing several sites, including property near McCormick Place and the United Center on the Near West Side. As well, the Allstate Arena in Rosemont is fighting to retain the team.
 
The neighborhood's opposition adds to resistance by Ald. Robert Fioretti, whose 2nd Ward includes McCormick Place.
 "That is not a place to put an arena -- far away from the school," he said. "I think there are traffic issues related, and it would be a bad deal for taxpayers in these economic times."

Fioretti noted such a project likely would require public subsidy.
 
The Olde Prairie blocks have not been officially designated as a potential site for a DePaul arena, but Fioretti said it is his understanding that they are being seriously considered.
 
Jim Reilly, chief executive officer of the exposition authority, known as McPier, has publicly acknowledged that there have been talks with DePaul. A spokeswoman on Tuesday said it would be premature to comment further at this point.

A DePaul spokesperson could not be reached for immediate comment.
 
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he would like DePaul to bring men's basketball back to the city. A spokesman declined comment beyond that.
 kbergen@tribune.com | Twitter @kathy_bergen

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NIU fans pumped for Orange Bowl

As trash-talkers grumbled Monday about Northern Illinois University being selected to play in the Orange Bowl, alumni and fans in the Chicago area had one thing to say:

Go Huskies.

"Everybody's entitled to their opinion," said Joseph Matty, executive director and CEO of the Northern Illinois University Alumni Association. "Our football team did what we needed to do. We played by the rules and we won games."

Less than 24 hours after the historic news that NIU would become the first team from the Mid-American Conference to earn a berth in one of college football's most prestigious bowl games, Huskie Pride was on full display.

By midday, a steady line had formed at NIU's Convocation Center, where students could sign up for free Orange Bowl tickets issued by the college.

The Northern Star, the campus newspaper, devoted its entire front page to the story with the exuberant headline: "How Do You Like Them Oranges?"

On Facebook, NIU graduates congratulated the team and each other. Several alumni association travel packages — from $769 to $2,049 — are being offered to Miami on New Year's Day, where the Huskies will face the Florida State Seminoles.

"It's really exciting my senior year seeing all this happen, to see this frenzy is awesome," said Jason Conklin, a senior marketing major from Round Lake Beach. "Hopefully this exposure will get more people to our games and get more national attention."

With 165,000 alumni in the Chicago area and another 60,000 living elsewhere in the country, NIU has demonstrated impressive school spirit at five smaller bowl games since 2005, and officials are expecting even bigger crowds Jan. 1, Matty said.

The alumni group expects to sell 1,000 tickets to a pregame reception in Miami and will dispatch staff to eight other cities across the U.S. for additional game "watch parties."

Matty added that the athletic success has been a boon for more than just sports fans at NIU. Five bowl appearances in the past seven years have led to an influx of support that allowed for the construction of two new facilities: the Yordon Center and the Chessick Practice Center.

"What it does is it reaffirms everybody's belief that they received a quality education," Matty said. "This is just an opportunity to show the excellence at NIU."

NIU's invitation to the Orange Bowl came as a surprise to some critics, who questioned how the BCS Bowl selection process allowed a lesser-known school to beat out more prestigious teams.

ESPN commentators blasted the selection minutes after it was announced Sunday evening, and sports radio continued the debate Monday.

The naysayers only made Glen Brin, of Long Grove, feel even prouder as he drove to work with an NIU flag hanging out his car window. Passing drivers honked their horns in support, he said.

Brin, who met his wife, Darlene, at NIU before graduating in 1979, follows NIU football religiously on TV, radio and, at least once a year, in person. He and his wife have a framed photograph of a historic building on campus hanging in the family room. They carry NIU credit cards in their wallets.

"There's no way I'm missing this," Brin said of the Orange Bowl. "To be in the stands in one of the five major bowls, with the first MAC team in the history of the conference, is just tremendous."

An official pep rally is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Convocation Center.

Bruce Jones, a former NIU swimmer, remembered attending football games in the late 1980s, when the Huskies had losing records and the stadium was half-empty. Back then, he would cringe when the Huskies competed against bigger schools such as the University of Wisconsin or University of Iowa and suffered crushing defeats.

"It was just demoralizing. Administrators said it's part of the way of attracting more attention … and we were like, this is never going to work, we're just getting crushed," Jones said.

So although Jones was vacationing in Hawaii when NIU's Orange Bowl invitation was announced, it didn't stop him from sending gloating Facebook messages and making plans for another getaway in a few weeks, this time to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens.

"It's kind of like vindication," Jones said.

Even NIU mascot Victor E. Huskie appeared proud as he accompanied Larry Gautier, a member of the Miami-based Orange Bowl Football Committee, around campus Monday.

"(NIU's appearance) is great, and at the end of the day Northern Illinois did what they had to do and they earned it," Gautier said.

Wearing an Orange Bowl blazer, Gautier was there to drum up interest in the game. But he didn't have to walk far before exchanging high-fives with Morgan Stockdale, a junior physical education major from Chicago who said she was Orange Bowl-bound.

Stockdale wore a hat and sweatshirt she acquired at Friday's Mid-American Conference championship game in Detroit.

"It's a big boost," she said. "It's going to get us (NIU) out there, and more people will want to come out for everything."

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‘The Daily’ doomed by dull content and isolation

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It was too expensive. It lacked editorial focus. And for a digital publication, it was strangely cut off from the Internet. That’s the obituary being written in real time through posts, tweets and online chats about The Daily, the first-of-its-kind iPad newspaper that is being shut down this month.

Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp. said Monday that The Daily will publish its final issue on Dec. 15, less than two years after its January 2011 launch. The app has already been removed from Apple’s iTunes, where it once received lukewarm ratings.

The Daily had roughly 100,000 subscribers who paid either 99 cents a week or $ 40 a year for its daily download of journalism tailored for touch screens. But that wasn’t enough to sustain some 100 employees and millions of dollars in losses since its launch. At the time of its debut, News Corp. said The Daily’s operating costs would amount to about half a million dollars a week, or around $ 26 million a year.

When News Corp. launched The Daily, it was touted as a bold experiment in new media. The company hired top-name journalists from other publications, such as the New York Post’s former Page Six editor, Richard Johnson, and said it poured $ 30 million into the newspaper’s launch. Now, the company is acknowledging that The Daily no longer has a place at News Corp., which is being split in two to separate its publishing enterprises from its TV and movie businesses.

Murdoch said in a statement that News Corp. “could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term.” Some employees are being hired in other parts of the company.

Critics say The Daily’s day-to-day mix of news, opinion and info-graphics wasn’t that different from content available for free on the Internet. And despite a high-profile launch that drew lots of media attention, the publication failed to build a distinctive brand. There was no ad campaign touting its coverage and stories weren’t accessible to non-subscribers, so it didn’t benefit from buzz that comes from social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Trevor Butterworth, who wrote a weekly column for The Daily called “The Information Society,” says the disconnect between the app and the broader Internet curtailed its reach. He was laid off in July when the publication shrank from 170 workers to about 120. As part of the purge, The Daily cut its dedicated opinion section and dropped sports coverage in favor of using a feed from its News Corp. sister outfit, Fox Sports.

“Stories weren’t widely shared or widely known,” says Butterworth. “It felt like I was writing into the void.”

When it launched, The Daily was meant to take advantage of the explosion of tablet computer sales, and the notion that people generally read on them in the morning or evening, like a magazine.

But each issue came in a giant file — sometimes 1 gigabyte large — and took 10 or 15 minutes to download over a broadband connection, which is unheard of for news apps, says Matt Haughey, the founder of MetaFilter.com, one of the first community blogs on the Internet.

Because the stories weren’t linkable, The Daily didn’t benefit from new Internet traffic that would have come from content aggregators like Flipboard and Tumblr.

“They ignored the obvious, which was the Web,” Haughey says. Although many people are foregoing buying a laptop for the lightweight convenience of a tablet, the day hasn’t arrived yet when all online access will come through apps rather than the Web. “Maybe in five or 10 years, the Web will be less important,” he says. “For now it seems like they were missing out.”

It may also have been a problem that News Corp. launched The Daily from scratch into an environment where readers tend to gravitate toward trusted sources and established brands. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, 84 percent of mobile device users said a news app’s brand was a major factor in deciding whether to download it.

One of the intangible challenges The Daily had was standing out in a sea of online journalism, both paid and free. Some national newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, have carved out a niche with informed coverage of sometimes complex topics and have gained paying digital subscribers by limiting the number of free articles they offer online.

Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today and about 80 other newspapers, has succeeded in raising circulation revenue at local papers by putting up so-called online “pay walls,” taking advantage of the fact that there are few alternative sources of coverage for certain communities.

Without a unique coverage niche or a local monopoly, The Daily was caught between two worlds.

By being digital-only, the publication didn’t have a defined coverage area. It was “in competition with everybody and everything,” says Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. Yet it failed to carve out its own niche in that larger universe, he says.

“Its lack of editorial focus played a role,” Benton notes. “It was sort of a pleasant, middle-brow, slightly tabloidy mix of news and features. And there’s lots of that available for free online. I would imagine if ‘The Daily’ were starting again now, they would invest more in establishing their brand identity early on.”

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LeBron James wins Sports Illustrated annual award

(Reuters) – LeBron James of the Miami Heat was named as Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year for 2012, the U.S. magazine announced on Monday.

In an outstanding year, the 27-year-old James won his first NBA championship, his third league Most Valuable Player (MVP) award, was named MVP of the NBA finals and a won gold medal with the United States at the London Olympics.

He became just the sixth basketballer to win the award, which began in 1954. The most recent was his team-mate Dwyane Wade in 2006.

Two years ago, James became a hate figure for many American sports fans after he announced his decision to sign for Miami live on television after his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers had expired.

He was booed at courts across the NBA and received intense criticism for his performance as Miami lost the 2011 NBA finals to the Dallas Mavericks.

“Did I think an award like this was possible two years ago? ‘No, I did not,” James said in an interview with the magazine.

“I thought I would be helping a lot of kids and raise $ 3 million by going on TV and saying, ‘Hey, I want to play for the Miami Heat.’ But it affected far more people than I imagined.

“I know it wasn’t on the level of an injury or an addiction, but it was something I had to recover from. I had to become a better person, a better player, a better father, a better friend, a better mentor and a better leader. I’ve changed, and I think people have started to understand who I really am.”

Previous winners of the award include swimmer Michael Phelps (2008), cyclist Lance Armstrong (2002) and golfer Tiger Woods (2000) while the first award was given to British athlete Roger Bannister in 1954 after he became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.

(Reporting By Simon Evans; Editing by Julian Linden)

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Global Update: GlaxoSmithKline Tops Access to Medicines Index

Sang Tan/Associated Press

GlaxoSmithKline hung on to its perennial top spot in the new Access to Medicines Index released last week, but its competitors are closing in.

Every two years, the index ranks the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies based on how readily they get medicines they hold patents on to the world’s poor, how much research they do on tropical diseases, how ethically they conduct clinical trials in poor countries, and similar issues.

Johnson & Johnson shot up to second place, while AstraZeneca fell to 16th from 7th. AstraZeneca has had major management shake-ups. It did not do less, but the industry is improving so rapidly that others outscored it, the report said.

The index was greeted with skepticism by some drugmakers when it was introduced in 2008. But now 19 of the 20 companies have a board member or subcommittee tracking how well they do at what the index measures, said David Sampson, the chief author.

The one exception was a Japanese company. As before, Japanese drugmakers ranked at or near the index’s bottom, and European companies clustered near the top. Generic companies — most of them Indian — that export to poor countries are ranked separately.

Johnson & Johnson moved up because it created an access team, disclosed more and bought Crucell, a vaccine company.

The foundation that creates the index now has enough money to continue for five more years, said its founder, Wim Leereveld, a former pharmaceutical executive.

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Heat is on Groupon's Andrew Mason

In June 2011, Groupon Inc. Chief Executive Andrew Mason took the stage at a conference hosted by influential technology blog AllThingsD.

When co-executive editor Kara Swisher asked him whether an initial public offering was coming soon, he shot her what she later dubbed his "death stare."

The audience laughed and broke into applause.

The tone was decidedly more subdued last week, when Mason found himself at another tech industry confab, fielding questions from Business Insider's Henry Blodget, this time about whether Groupon's directors were going to fire him at their meeting the next day. AllThingsD had reported a day earlier, citing anonymous sources, that Groupon's board of directors was considering replacing Mason with a more experienced CEO to lead the Chicago-based daily deal company's turnaround.

The contrast between those two appearances underscores the swift and dramatic tumble of Mason's standing in tech and business circles within a few years. The young founder and CEO graced the cover of Forbes in 2010 and was named Ernst & Young's National Entrepreneur of the Year in the "emerging" category a year later.

Those accolades are a far cry from the cloud hanging over Mason, 32, and the company he launched four years ago. The leak to AllThingsD appeared to be deliberately timed to embarrass the executive, forcing him to field questions about his own competence at a scheduled appearance. This public hint of internal strife has fueled speculation around Mason's fate even as other public tech companies, such as Facebook and social game-maker Zynga, have also seen their stock prices drop since their IPOs.

Groupon's board met Thursday and took no action on the CEO's job, with company spokesman Paul Taaffe saying the board and management were "working together with their heads down to achieve Groupon's objectives."

Markets, however, seemed unconvinced. Groupon's beleaguered stock closed slightly higher Thursday but dropped 8.7 percent to $4.14 Friday. Shares debuted at $20 in November 2011.

Investors "want experience in leadership," said Raman Chadha, a clinical professor at DePaul University and co-founder of the Junto Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership, a training program for startup founders. "And as a result, where Andrew's background was cool and sexy — and maybe even bordering on amusing — when Groupon was a pure startup, that's in the mindset of those of us who are observers and supporters … and fellow entrepreneurs. I think in the minds of the investor community and Wall Street, (it's different) because now the company has a lot more to lose. And if it's going to fall, it's going to fall really hard and really far."

For Chadha, Mason's unconventional pedigree as a music major-turned-startup-founder was part of the appealing, media-friendly story of Groupon's origin. The company was launched as recession-weary consumers were eager for deals, and it achieved rapid growth while earning a reputation for antics like decorating a conference room in the style of a fictional, possibly deranged tenant of Groupon's headquarters who had lived there before the startup moved into the offices.

The scrutiny of Groupon was tremendous given the "high-flying" nature of the company, said David Larcker, a corporate governance expert at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

"You have a founder as CEO," he said. "He's the public face of the company. He has set the culture. All of that stuff."

That culture, driven in large part by Mason, turned from a lovable quirk to a major liability as the company ran into controversy over its poorly received Super Bowl ads in February 2011 and a series of missteps in the run-up to its IPO. Then, within months of its public debut, it disclosed an accounting flaw that forced it to restate financial results.

The larger question surrounding Groupon is the long-term viability of its basic business model. The company has been expanding offerings beyond its core daily deals, which have seen growth rates tail off. It's also dealing with a recession in the key European market as well as continued competition in the U.S.

But the biggest challenge facing Mason now is probably his own performance, or rather the perception that he isn't up to the task of running the global, publicly traded business worth billions that he founded but that now needs a turnaround. The stock is down 80 percent from its IPO price.

"It's an oft-told, oft-expected story that the genius entrepreneur steps aside when he or she succeeds at building a company big enough to need an experienced CEO," said Erik Gordon, a business professor at the University of Michigan.

The example Gordon and others cite is Google, which flourished after its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin made way for a more seasoned executive in Eric Schmidt.

"The Google guys did it, and the results were spectacular," Gordon said.

Chadha said many startups tend to become more corporate in outlook, and less quirky, as they grow, because they bring in experienced executives from large companies that may have difficulty adapting to an entrepreneurial culture or reject it outright as not professional enough.

"I think that's where Google is very different," Chadha said. "(The company) sought out entrepreneurial, startup types — people that became part of their management team." That free-form element of Google's culture comes out in such things as the Google doodles — the offbeat tributes to notable anniversaries or famous people that pop up on the main search page.

Mason has acknowledged areas where Groupon needs to improve and has hired senior executives with experience at more mature tech companies. That hasn't always worked either. Margo Georgiadis, who came from Google as chief operating officer, returned to that company after five months.

Whether there's still room for Mason on the top management team remains to be seen. He was direct in his interview last week with Blodget, offering a minimum of jokes as he focused on discussing the job he and others at Groupon must accomplish.

"I care far more about the success of the business than I care about my role as CEO," he said.

A year ago, when he spoke to author Frank Sennett for his book "Groupon's Biggest Deal Ever," Mason was unapologetic about his management style.

"You only live once, and all I'm doing is being myself," he told Sennett. "I think a normal CEO is trying to appear in some way that's not actually them. That's probably not what they're like."

In the same book, former President and Chief Operating Officer Rob Solomon offered this blunt assessment of his ex-boss: "Andrew at thirty-five and forty is going to hate Andrew at twenty-nine and thirty; I guarantee it."

Melissa Harris and Bloomberg News contributed.

wawong@tribune.com

Twitter @VelocityWong

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Orange Bowl bid, new coach cap wild weekend for NIU

It was an incredible weekend for the Northern Illinois football program.

A 44-37 double-overtime victory over Kent State in the Mid-American Conference championship game kicked off the exhilaration Friday night at Ford Field in Detroit. That was followed by the announcement on Saturday that Dave Doeren had accepted the coaching position at North Carolina State.

On Sunday came the historic news that the Huskies were bound for Miami on New Year's Day to face Florida State in the Orange Bowl, becoming the first team from the MAC to earn a berth in a BCS bowl game.

"We're 12-1," NIU quarterback Jordan Lynch told ESPN. "We faced tons of adversity this year. We won tons of games. … We definitely deserve to be in there."

Capping things off, the school announced Sunday night the head coaching vacancy had been filled by promoting offensive coordinator Rod Carey.

"It has been crazy; it has been nuts. That's the only way to explain it," said Carey, who agreed to a five-year contract. "But it has been good. All of that has been wonderful … and what a privilege for our kids to go to the Orange Bowl. They were so excited they could barely stand up."

While some college observers vehemently argued that NIU didn't belong in the game, Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher told reporters in Tallahassee that he had no such qualms.

"You don't get in this game unless you're a good football team," Fisher said. "It's easy for talking heads to say that (NIU doesn't belong). They've earned the right to be here, they've earned the right to have this opportunity.

"We know we're going to get an inspired opponent, an opponent that's going to be ready to prove something."

NIU now has its third coach in three years. Jerry Kill left after the 2010 season to take the head coaching job at Minnesota. Doeren was 23-4 in just two seasons on the DeKalb campus. NIU athletic director Jeff Compher is hoping for a smooth transition from Doeren to Carey.

"That's why they did what they did in such a short amount of time," Carey said. "Because I have been here and they want the transition to be as seamless as it can be.

"I don't have any reason today to sit here and say that I want to go somewhere else. Listen, I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and I went to high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Joe Novak (former NIU head coach) was the defensive coordinator at Indiana when I played there. So my ties and my knowing about NIU have gone back a long time. And I have wanted to be at this place for a lot of different times in my career. And I finally got here and now this has happened. I don't know why I would want to go anywhere else."

It is not yet clear how many other members of the NIU coaching staff will join Doeren at N.C. State.

"It will be a challenge; I don't know how it will all play out," Carey said. "But I do know that this staff just won back-to-back MAC championships. And as far as I am concerned, it's the finest staff I've worked with. So I would love to coach with all of these guys for a long time."

This year, Carey helped mold an offensive line of five new starters that helped Lynch become one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks in the nation. Carey transitioned into the role of offensive coordinator after the first game of the season when Mike Dunbar had to step away from that role while battling a serious illness.

"Mike Dunbar is one of the most high-character people and unbelievable people I have ever been around," Carey said. I have learned more from that man … he and coach Doeren I have learned more from."

fmitchell@tribune.com

Twitter@kicker34

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