Showing posts with label NCAA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NCAA. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

A night at the ballpark

Went to tonight's second game of the College World Series championship here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska . . . where we saw a cute baby.













Oh, and the ball game, too.

 
And then we saw the cute baby with a cute hat. Mom may be just a little bit proud here.
And then we saw the little thunderhead that couldn't. They got the game in --  without a rain delay . . . or a drop of rain.

The wrong team won, alas, but there's always Game 3 tomorrow night.

Play ball!

Monday, June 20, 2016

Getting the picture in the Age of Terror


It's summer in Omaha. And with the beginning of summer comes the College World Series, a fine way to spend a sultry evening in late June.

Added to the mix, starting next week, will be the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials at the CenturyLink Center Omaha, just across the street from TD Ameritrade Park downtown.

The CWS is Omaha's signature event, one that has become part of this Midwestern city's very being. It has come to symbolize what we all love most about amateur sports and about America's national pastime.

IT'S THE PICTURE Omaha wants to present to the country, and the one America wants to present to the world. Here, three of these pictures belong together.

Three of these pictures are kind of the same. Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here?


Now, with apologies to Sesame Street, it's time to play our game.

Proceed.


SORRY for the blurriness of the picture that's not the same, the one immediately above. The sports Nazis of the NCAA won't let me bring my digital SLR with the long lenses into the stadium, and when you zoom in with an iPhone camera, you get what you get.

So let me tell you what you're seeing here. The Omaha policeman on the right is carrying what appears to be some permutation of an AR-15 -- an assault rifle. These officers are stationed right before you get to the ticket-takers, and you don't get more in plain sight than that.

It took me aback -- not that CWS security hasn't always been this heavy in our post-9/11 world, but that this year, in the era of ISIS and a week past Orlando, it seems to be more conspicuous  than ever. In your face, even.

I'm not faulting the local cops. I'm not questioning the security strategy. And I'm certainly not getting in the face of the cop with the military-grade firearm to get a better picture of his assault rifle. Besides, I look rather Mediterranean in this Age of Trump.

What I am saying is this is sad. Damned sad. It might be the right thing, but it is so, so wrong.

America's right-wing, gun-nut wingnuts don't want us to become just like those socialist "Euroweenies." Seen the security at the Euro soccer championships in France?

Looks to me like we just have.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Bo Pelini: Classy to the #@#%&*$! end


Is there any doubt Nebraska is well rid of ex-football coach Bo Pelini?

If you had any lingering misgivings about NU's firing of the underachieving coach, who just was named head gridiron guy at the Economically Depressed University of Misfit Jocks Youngstown State, this article in the Omaha World-Herald ought to dispel them.

The newspaper came across an audio recording of Pelini's final meeting with his former players Dec. 2, and he went out the door in the classiest of manners. Or not.
A guy like (Eichorst) who has no integrity, he doesn’t even understand what a core value is," Pelini told players. "And he hasn’t understood it from the day he got here. I saw it when I first met with the guy.

“To have core values means you have to be about something, you have to represent something, you have to have something that is important to you. He is a f------ lawyer who makes policies. That’s all he’s done since he’s been here is hire people and make policies to cover his own ass.”

The World-Herald on Wednesday listened to an audio tape of Pelini’s address that night. He spoke conversationally, rarely raising his voice. It’s a rare window into the mindset of a coach who increasingly felt besieged by his own administration and fan base.

During the tape, Pelini expresses gratitude, support and advice for players. The majority of the tape, however, reveals Pelini’s thoughts about Eichorst. In the first minute of his talk, he uses two vulgarities associated with female genitalia to describe his former boss.

“I didn't really have any relationship with the A.D.,” Pelini said. “The guy, you guys saw him (Sunday), the guy is a total p----. I mean, he is, and he's a total c---.”

The administration’s lack of support, Pelini told players, wore on him and his family.

“I said to (assistant coach Rick Kaczenski) at one point, I said this job is killing me. I said I don't want to die doing this job. I meant it. I was like, I don't want to have a heart attack on this job.”

Pelini was fired Nov. 30 and was due to receive a $7.9 million buyout, mitigated slightly by his next salary.

On Wednesday, Youngstown State announced Pelini as its head football coach. He’ll return to his hometown and work under President Jim Tressel, who led Youngstown State to four FCS national championships.

During his introductory press conference Wednesday in Ohio, Pelini called Tressel “a president who understands football, who’s going to support me, something I don’t know if I’ve ever had.”
YEAH, Jim Tressel is just the kind of guy who oozes integrity and understanding of how to conduct a college football program the right way.

Remember that Tressel is the guy whose football program at Ohio State had gone rogue under his leadership. Remember, too, that Tressel is the guy who withheld what he knew about an improper-benefits scandal involving Buckeye players and a shady tattoo shop from his own administration and then lied to NCAA investigators. From ESPN at the time:
Former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, who was forced to resign in May, committed the ultimate sin for a college coach when he withheld information about the scandal from OSU officials and NCAA investigators. In fact, according to the NCAA's infractions report released Tuesday, Tressel had four opportunities to reveal his knowledge of the scandal to the NCAA, but never once told the truth.

The NCAA also didn't buy Tressel's excuses for remaining silent. Before Tressel was forced to resign, he said he didn't reveal that former OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor and other players were trading memorabilia for tattoos and cash because the tattoo-shop owner, Edward Rife, was under investigation for drug dealing. Tressel said he didn't want to jeopardize the federal investigation and feared for the safety of his players.

"The committee found [Tressel's reasoning] not to be credible," the report said. "The former head coach's inaction on four different occasions was in the committee's view, a deliberate effort to conceal the situation from the institution and the NCAA in order to preserve the eligibility of the aforementioned student-athletes, several of whom were key contributors to the team's highly successful 12-1 season in 2010."

SEC associate commissioner Greg Sankey, who serves on the NCAA's infractions committee, called Tressel's conduct "very serious and, frankly, very disappointing."

Now Meyer and the rest of the Buckeyes get to pay for Tressel's sins.

As part of its punishment, the NCAA made it nearly impossible for Tressel to become a college coach again. The NCAA hit Tressel with a five-year show-cause penalty until December 2016, under which any school that wants to hire him must submit a report to the NCAA detailing why it needs to employ him and how it would monitor him to ensure he doesn't break its rules again. Any school hiring Tressel during the five-year period would be subject to more severe sanctions if he cheats again.

Even if a school hires Tressel, he will be suspended for the first five regular-season games when he returns, as well as any postseason contests.
YEAH, Pelini's kind of guy is a man the NCAA doesn't trust to coach college football . . . but apparently is just the kind of guy to run Youngstown State. And Bo Pelini apparently is just the kind of guy a man who can't be trusted to coach college ball thinks ought to be coaching at Youngstown State.

Gotcha. It seems the birds of a feather have flocked together.


Jim Tressel's guy is a grown man with obvious anger issues who goes before a bunch of 18-22 year-old kids -- most of whom stiil have to be at NU. play for the Huskers and presumably stay in the good graces of their athletic director -- then speaks about that AD in the most vulgar and demeaning manner. "Oversharing" hardly begins to cover Pelini's actions in that meeting.

With a bunch of college kids.


For whom he set himself up as a role model.

Role model? Bat-s*** crazy cult leader, perhaps. Role model, no. Unless, of course, you expand the definition of "role model" to include being a hell of an example of how not to conduct oneself.



 
Pelini's not-so-greatest hits: EXCEPTIONALLY NSFW

I GUESS in Youngstown, role models do their damnedest to poison the well for the poor saps who have to clean up their overwrought messes. The Huskers' new football coach, Mike Riley, has his work cut out for him, it would seem.

And so do those Nebraska football players who thought Pelini was just the kind of man they wanted to be someday. Breaking up is hard to do, but for these poor guys, growing up is going to be even harder with a role model like their former coach.

Bo Pelini is not what Nebraska football has, by and large, been about. May it never be again.

In firing this underachieving hothead -- the Freudian concept of the human Id personified -- Shawn Eichorst has done not only Nebraska football a great favor but done a great favor to the entire state of Nebraska as well. If that makes the man a P-word and a C-word, those are labels he should wear with pride.

Pelini is Ohio's problem now. Thanks be to God . . . and Eichorst.

Saturday, January 04, 2014

Rammer jammer crazy hammer,
psychotic break, Alabama!


The world would be a better place if we could take all the Alabama fans and lock them in a domed stadium with, say, all the Texas fans for a football game, then let Darwin take his course.

With emphasis on "lock them in." 

 
UPDATE: It's just as awesome with the raw sound! As one YouTube commenter said before going off the rails (Hey! It's the YouTube comments section!), "Gumps gonna be Gumps!"

Monday, December 02, 2013

I second that emotion (No, not Pelini's)


I've been an LSU fan for as long as I can remember. I've been a Nebraska fan for more than 30 years.

My allegiance to both schools is unquestioned, and the only time I'm not bleeding purple and gold is when I'm bleeding scarlet and cream. I mean, I married a Nebraska grad. We were engaged at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln . . . at Husker football picture day.

'Nuff said.

There's only one thing about this Nebraska-fan thing. Now we're in the Big Ten. We're supposed to hate our "rival," Iowa. Yet I'm finding myself in the amen corner of . . . a Hawkeye football blogger, Adam Jacobi.

When the dude is right, the dude is right. And Jacobi nails it here on Black Heart, Gold Pants:
Then there's the remarkable stay of execution Bo Pelini got from AD Shawn Eichorst. The consensus, myself included, was that Peiini had coached his last game in Lincoln by the time the smoke cleared from his press conference. His team played terribly, he swiped his hat at a referee's face, he sniped at a sideline reporter at the half and he called an admittedly sketchy penalty "chicken shit" and dared his boss to fire him.

Eichorst did no such thing, instead publicly casting his support for his hot-tempered head coach. It's eminently possible that if Nebraska biffs its bowl game, the brass takes a renewed look around and sees a five-loss team with the most high-maintenance coach in the Big Ten (if not the nation) and decides it's not worth it. Rich Rodriguez's team laid down in its Gator Bowl appearance and Michigan axed him for it, so it's plausible. But it wouldn't make much sense, since if Eichorst wants to fire him, he could have done it right now without a problem.

Either way, Pelini's just been done the most impressive favor we've seen from an athletic director in quite some time, and if this quiets the hounds in Lincoln for a while so be it. Coaches get fired too often in this zero-sum game anyway. It's just, I've never seen a man so ready to be fired. It's amazing he didn't throw the microphones at the presser back at the reporters.

I'd be so sick of that crap if he were my school's head coach. I don't know how Nebraska fans even tolerate it. I know he's not like this every week (or really at all since 2010) but that's just embarrassing behavior from someone who's supposed to be one of the faces of a major university.
YES, yes, a million times yes! And there lies the rub.

Most Husker fans -- beaten down by a decade of incompetence and burned by then-AD Steve Pederson's firing of a 9-3 coach, Frank Solich, and his ushering in of the disastrous Bill Callahan reign of gridiron error -- will forgive Pelini anything short of first-degree murder or the forcible rape of Herbie Husker. Some even think his Incredible Hulk shtick is somehow admirable, because "he's passionate."

Well, Woody Hayes was "passionate" when he punched a Clemson linebacker, Charlie Bauman, toward the end of the 1978 Gator Bowl. He also was a hell of a lot better head coach than Bo Pelini.


PELINI'S ANTICS during and after Friday's Nebraska-Iowa "Heroes Game" was just half a psychotic break short of what got the Woodster, the Buckeyes' greatest coach ever, canned the very next day after 28 years at Ohio State and five national championships. I guess Bo just wasn't "passionate" enough, alas.





AFTER BEING half an inch from being taken off the field in handcuffs, Pelini then dared his boss to can him. Wow.


And then . . . and then . . . in one of the most stunning examples of cheap grace ever, he didn't get fired. Double wow. 

Then again, I guess a press release offering a cheap apology is all you need to get cheap grace -- particularly when it would cost a not-so-cheap $7.6 million to buy out the "penitent's" contract. Note to Husker AD Shawn Eichorst: Put your lawyer pants on and tweak the "for cause" language in all future contracts.

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to predict that Pelini's cheap grace from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will pay a dividend of more cheap displays from Mr. Accountability and more costly public-relations black eyes for a school and an entire state.

Yeah, Husker fans love them some "passion." Let's hope they don't get thrown by that wild horse.


If they -- if we -- do, better change the Nebraska fight song to Warren Zevon's "Lawyers, Guns and Money." Because the chickenshit will have just hit the fan.

Videos of the year: The SEC edition


1) There was a 109-yard runback in a Big Ten game once. I think it involved a bad batch of bratwurst and a distant restroom at Camp Randall Stadium.

2) SEC, baby! SEC!

3) "Rammer jammer, yellow hammer, go to hell, Alabama!"

4) You have to begrudgingly hand it to Nick Saban for his professionalism and good sportsmanship. If that had been Nebraska's Bo Pelini instead of the Alabama coach on the wrong end of that wild finish, right now we'd be rearguing the whole deal about "Should crazy people be allowed to have automatic weapons . . . even if they make $3 million a year and we say 'passionate guy' instead of 'psychotic break'?"
 

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Talk about the penalty box. . . .


I know there's some truth in the one-liner "I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out," but isn't it assuming the worst to play your games at the county jail? I mean, really.

Yes, I realize having your penalty box be maximum security has its benefits -- chief among them savings in transportation costs and crowd control -- but we must remember these are college kids, not hardened NHL types. Couldn't the University of Nebraska at Omaha at least play hockey at a halfway house or something?

I'm surprised no one has pointed out to playing home games at the "clink" no doubt will be an ongoing public relations disaster for the university and the state. Frankly, it puzzles me that other schools agree to play inside a maximum-security corrections facility.

What? What about a missing hyphen?

It should read "C-Link," as in the CenturyLink Center downtown? That's very different, then.

Never mind.

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Brent Musberger: Dirty old man


All that needs to be said about Brent Musberger's dirty-old-man faux pas during ESPN's coverage of the Alabama-Notre Dame game last night was said by a friend on Facebook this afternoon:
So THIS is what it took for ESPN to finally apologize for Brent Musburger?
Musberger is just silly and superficial, not to mention ignorant. Gals who look like A.J. McCarron's Miss Alabama girlfriend are a dime a dozen in the SEC. And I'm assuming you don't have to be a national-championship college quarterback to snare one.

If that's what you go for.


Me, I think tons of women are stunningly attractive. Much of that comes from the inside, not from a beauty spa or something. Not that that's dawned on Brett and Kirk Herbstreit, who are idiots. Did I mention that?

I'd trust their judgment a little bit more if they had made their pronouncement after talking to Katherine Webb for 20 minutes. Is what I'm saying.

Monday, January 07, 2013

Rammer jammer, y'all!


As a loyal Tiger, I normally don't use this sort of language on this here blog, but there's an exception to every rule.

The exception is that Alabama is kind of like the brother you can't stand, but you're gonna back him up anyhow, 'cause he's family. Especially against Notre Dame. I hate Notre Dame.

And you know what else? "Touchdown Jesus" isn't signaling a touchdown -- he's motioning for those sanctimonious, insufferable Irish to put a frickin' lid on it!

So, for those and more good reasons that I'll come up with later, here goes:

Rammer Jammer, Yellowhammer, give 'em hell, Alabama!


 ***

UPDATE: Alabama 42, Lucky Charms 14.

Hey, Irish! Hey, Irish! Hey, Irish! 'Bama just beat the hell out of you! Rammer Jammer, Yellowhammer, give 'em hell, Alabama!

That is all.

The Saban hate resumes tomorrow. The Irish hate continues 24/7 on this Revolution 21 station.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Mad Hatter don't care


Honey Badger takes what he wants.

In the end, a source says, that's why LSU football Coach Les Miles did what he had to. To get to the point . . . why do you think they call it dope?

And when that's the problem (allegedly), and when the star Tiger defensive back already had a suspension on his permanent record for synthetic marijuana, Mad Hatter don't care. Tyrann Mathieu's off the team, national-championship consequences be damned.

Some things are more important than college football . Miles knows that, and that's why you ultimately have to love the guy. He's putting his own multimillion-dollar butt on the line to make the point that rules are rules -- and it's not the first time the Mad Hatter's done it.


ASK Ryan Perriloux . . . him and legions of LSU fans who spent several years apoplectic about the quarterback chaos that principled hammer drop set in motion.

Verily, there is no stupider creature than an under-25 male. Double that for certain big-time college jocks, amo
ng whom Matthieu now stands as Exhibit A.

Here's what the New Orleans Times-Picayune is reporting:
The Honey Badger's days at LSU are done. The Tiger's All American cornerback and Heisman finalist Tyrann Mathieu has been dismissed from the team because of a failed drug test, a source close to Mathieu said Friday.

LSU Coach Les Miles made the announcement of the dismissal at a hastily called noon press conference, but he would not elaborate on the nature of the infraction.

"This is a very difficult day for our team," Miles said. "We lose a quality person, teammate and contributor to the program. However, with that being said, we have a standard that our players are held to and when that standard is not met, there are consequences.

"It's hard because we all love Tyrann. We will do what we can as coaches, teammates, and friends to get him on a path where he can have success. We are going to miss him."


(snip)

Miles declined to elaborate what the violation was other than team and school policies. He said he felt Mathieu still had a chance to rectify the matter personally.

"We have a simple policy here of behavior," Miles said. "Consequences are pretty (well) spelled out and defined. We did what we could do but Tyrann is no longer on our team. He violated team policies.

"For Ty, it's an opportunity for him to redirect. He's still got a bright future. I think he can reeally accomplish all the goals he set for himself. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be doable."
DOING the right thing is its own reward. The Tigers' infamously insane fan base might have to keep repeating that one this season.

It's a nostrum that's as true as it is facile, but that doesn't always make it any easier to swallow -- particularly if your priorities aren't as apparently in order as Miles' seem to be.

Geaux Tigers.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Well, duh!

Yeah. Um hmm.

It's confession time for Rick Reilly. If confessing the obvious is a confession at all.

Yeah, him and the entire American sports "journalism" establishment. Him and whoever is behind the team "features" aired during game-day broadcasts.

"Forgive us, Father, for we've fed the beast, constructing inspiring "narratives" out of -- if not whole cloth -- at least out of the fertile imaginations of university sports-information directors and PR staffs."

The acclaimed sportswriter came clean on
ESPN.com about a week and a half ago, right after the Freeh Report set the record straight about what "doing things the right way" really meant at Penn State.

Whoopie.

What a fool I was.

In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.

It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.

"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.

"What's hagiography?" I asked.

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."

Jealous egghead, I figured.

What an idiot I was.
THESE TWO THINGS are clear, and always have been whenever we didn't have our fingers in our ears while screaming "Neener! Neener! Cancelcancelcancel!"

One, we like to hear what we want to hear. Two, the big business of major-college athletics loves lies almost as well as it does money -- lies grease the skids for "narrative" and narrative is what sells a product nowadays. Things can get ugly when reporters don't stick to the official narrative, which almost always causes them to fall back into line.

In other words,
"What you media are doing is dangerous."

Sunday, July 22, 2012

'Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld!'
('These Atrocities: Your Fault!')


Ever been on a plantation tour in the South and heard all about the lost glories of the Old South -- that idyllic life the planter class enjoyed prior to the martial unpleasantness that brought it all to naught?

Were you amazed at how little you hear on some of these tours about the slaves upon whose backs was built this life of privilege and beauty for the few . . . the proud . . . the wealthy and white?

Ever turned on the TV and seen one of those stories about post-Soviet life in Russia, where you always see some raggedy protest by old pensioners with hammer-and-sickle flags and pictures of Lenin and Stalin, lamenting the passing of the dictatorship of the proletariat and all its attendant glories?

Were you amazed at how the gulags and captive nations never quite fit into the narrative of nostalgia for Soviet greatness?

Yeah. Me, too.


THIS
REMINDS me of all that. And the warped, warped culture of idolatry and denial surrounding Penn State football and pervading State College, Pa., needs to follow the Old South and the Soviet Union into the ash bin of history.
Cloresa Turner drove to central Pennsylvania from Virginia to see the statue of veteran Penn State football coach Joe Paterno.

When she arrived in State College on Sunday and saw that it was gone from its place outside the university stadium, she clasped her hand over her mouth.

"He's done so much for this university. It's sad," said Turner, of Martinsville, Va. "To wipe it all away is like he meant nothing."

Construction vehicles and police arrived shortly after dawn Sunday, barricading the street and sidewalks near the statue, erecting a chain-link fence and then concealing the 7-foot-tall statue with a blue tarp. Workers used jackhammers to free the statue and a forklift to lower it onto a flat-bed truck that rolled into a stadium garage bay as some of the 100 to 150 students and other onlookers chanted, "We are Penn State."


(snip)

The Paterno family issued a statement saying the statue's removal "does not serve the victims of Jerry Sandusky's horrible crimes or help heal the Penn State community." The family, which has vowed its own investigation, called the report by former FBI director Louis Freeh the "incomplete and unofficial" equivalent of a charging document by a prosecutor and said the only way to help the victims "is to uncover the full truth."
NO, THEY'RE not s****ing you.

It's not an act for the tourists like proud faux Confederates re-enacting Pickett's Charge
or drunken Kappa Alphas getting their Ashley Wilkes on in hopes of making some Southern belle swoon like Scarlett. This is the kind of true-believer devotion to Baal that gave us the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws, because Reconstruction wasn't thorough enough and didn't last nearly long enough.

"Look away, look away, look away . . ." JoePa fans.
Some who came out to watch the statue's removal were angry that it had been done with so little notice that many missed it - "It was under cloak of darkness," said Diane Byerly, 63, of Harrisburg - and worried that stiff sanctions from the NCAA would punish the innocent while possibly destroying businesses that rely on the commerce from the tens of thousands who flood State College on game days.

"I think there's ways you can punish the parties involved without affecting all of State College," said Richard Hill, a 1967 graduate from West Chester.

Chris Stathes, 40, a lifelong Penn State football fan who has a daughter at the school and manages two State College breakfast eateries, said shutting down the program would devastate area businesses.

"Football season, that's our moment. From the time we open our doors in the morning until kickoff, there's a line out the door," he said.

Philip Frum, 24, who works on research projects for Penn State, said he hoped the statue would be erected elsewhere, such as at a nearby Penn State sports museum.

"This statue was a symbol of all the good things he's done for the university,"
Frum said. Any NCAA penalty that shuts down the football program "will be just as bad as taking down the statue," he said.
LinkOH . . . I hope it's much, much worse.

A culture that throws its children into the flaming pyre for the sake of Baal -- also known as "our peculiar institution," "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and big-time college football -- deserves every bit of divine wrath it calls down upon itself. It needs to be obliterated for the sake of the world . . . and for the sake of those under its thrall.

In Germany after World War II, we had a name for a similar effort. "Denazification," we called it.

Today, let the "de-Paternofication" of the Pennsylvania State University begin.


UPDATE: The Philadelphia Daily News just posted this story. Good grief.

Where is the Red Army when you really need it? What's next, tales of Penn State faithful barricaded in their man caves with the little woman, a 9 mm Luger and a couple of cyanide capsules?

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Bowing down before the Nittany Lion


Let's get one thing straight right now.

The entire sport, culture and establishment of American college football is not worth the innocence of a single child.

Fans, coaches and administrators at Penn State thought -- and likely still think -- otherwise. That is why Jerry Sandusky was allowed to keep on raping young boys for years and years after pretty much every coach and administrator at the university knew he was the worst sort of degenerate -- the felonious pinnacle of pedophilic perversion.

If the man were in Texas, he easily would fall under the banner of "needs killin'."

Anywhere else, I would hope that, at a minimum, not one person would think that the son of a bitch should ever again see the light of day. It's a no-brainer.

Let me amend that. It's a no-brainer everywhere but State College, Pa. In State College, Pa., the former defensive coordinator of the Nittany Lions was allowed to befriend, groom and sodomize underprivileged and at-risk boys for at least 13 years after people at Penn State first realized there was a problem --
and a big one -- with Jerry Sandusky.

THIS WAS all in the name of preserving the good name of Penn State football. Of preserving the big, big business of Penn State football.

Ultimately, the indifference and the cover-up caught up with Coach Joe Paterno, President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley and senior vice president for finance and business Gary Schultz. And when the university board of trustees fired Paterno, effectively closing the stable door after all the horses had made a run for it, thousands of Penn State students responded by rioting in downtown State College.

And it was out of fear of the mob that the board balked at reneging on the lucrative "go away quietly" package it had negotiated (as all hell was beginning to break loose) with Paterno -- who now, after the Grim Reaper caught up with him, too, stands before the highest court of all. Turns out that people don't take it well when their false gods and warped culture come under attack, no matter how justly.

SO NOW the NCAA gets the ball on downs. And in this interview Monday night with PBS talk host Tavis Smiley, NCAA President Mark Emmert refused to rule out the "death penalty" for Nittany Lion football.
Emmert said he's "never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of just overall conduct and behavior inside a university." He added, "What the appropriate penalties are, if there are determinations of violations, we'll have to decide."

The last time the NCAA shut down a football program with the so-called "death penalty" was in the 1980s, when SMU was forced to drop the sport because of extra benefits violations.

"This is completely different than an impermissible benefits scandal like [what] happened at SMU, or anything else we've dealt with," Emmert explained. "This is as systemic a cultural problem as it is a football problem. There have been people that said this wasn't a football scandal.

"Well, it was more than a football scandal, much more than a football scandal. It was that but much more. And we'll have to figure out exactly what the right penalties are. I don't know that past precedent makes particularly good sense in this case, because it's really an unprecedented problem."

OR, AS ONE
sports-law expert put it last week, “Let’s face it, a football coach raped kids and he did so facilitated allegedly by another football coach and athletic officials, and some of the crimes occurred in the Penn State showers. I think that’s sufficient nexus to the team.”

Given that, I was glad to hear the death penalty for Penn State is on the table. God willing, it soon will be off of the table and into effect.

As a rule, false gods need to be sent packing. When the worship of college football and the corruption of the big money made off of it leads to university officials tolerating child sexual abuse by someone associated with the football program -- as the by-then retired Sandusky obviously still was -- that particular false god needs to be killed, its graven image melted down and the ground it once stood upon plied with salt.

I DON'T give a damn that people will lose their jobs. I don't give a damn that motels and hotels in State College will lose money. I don't give a damn that players will have to scramble to find new teams.

No job, no business and no full-ride scholarship for any "student athlete" -- and the fact I felt compelled to put that in quotes is part and parcel of the corrupting influence of this particular false god in all too many cases -- is worth the innocence of a single child.

Penn State football can go to hell. And all the people who fed the monster, who bowed before the false god that it became, need to spend a few years of quality time with the Real One, making amends and doing penance.

I don't know whether or not Jerry Sandusky "needs killin'." But Penn State football sure as hell does.

Just do it.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Flukes of CWS universe didn't get Big Ten memo


The baseball cards are marked.

The deck is stacked.

The fix is in.

The playing field tilts to the south. Or the South, as the case may be.

So how in the world does anybody expect the Big Ten to have a chance in hell of making the College World Series? Everybody knows Northern schools don't have a chance.

And in this June 2 story in the Omaha World-Herald, league coaches wonder why they shouldn't just take their gloves and . . . play in the summer and fall. Say to hell with the CWS and the whole crooked, Southern-fried, put-up deal that is college baseball:
Nebraska is now playing in a conference convinced that college baseball’s rules and structure prevent the Big Ten from fairly competing for the national spotlight.

The league-wide frustration has grown to the point that the conference’s most seasoned and respected voice, Minnesota’s John Anderson, is suggesting the Big Ten (and other northern schools) secede and form a new league that plays deeper into the summer.

Purdue’s having a milestone year, yet Boilermakers coach Doug Schreiber is still in full support of his own proposal to play a portion of the season in the fall. Most — if not all — league coaches want the NCAA to return to a true regional bracket for postseason play.

Radical? Yes. But the way Big Ten coaches see it, their squads are being forced to swing the bat with one arm, while everyone down south gets to use both.

“The current system that we have, we’ve learned, doesn’t produce the equity that it could,” Anderson said. “Part of the reason, people don’t want to change. The sport’s making money, there’s TV, growth, attendance — which kind of masks the problem.”


The problem is climate, and a mid-February season start date (still too early up north). It’s travel burdens (fiscal and physical). It’s academic concerns (Big Ten squads can miss no more than eight class days). It’s the NCAA tournament selection process and the overvalued RPI. It’s an investment in facilities (the Big Ten’s made recent strides), thus a lack of attendance and interest. It’s oversigning rules that Big Ten schools must abide by that most conferences don’t have; before finalizing annual rosters, the Big Ten allows its teams to commit one extra scholarship to no more than two players.

During multiple World-Herald interviews with several Big Ten coaches over the past month, the league veterans each presented this warning: Play baseball in this conference and you’ll be staring at an impassable uphill trek to the sport’s summit.
WITH THIS in mind -- this laundry list of injustice heaped upon the poor, beleaguered and put-upon Big Ten baseball programs . . . these disrespected Nanooks of the North in spikes -- we welcome to the 2012 College World Series a couple of schools from obviously tropical climes.

So, a subarctic Omaha greeting goes out to CWS contestants the Seawolves of New York's Stony Brook University and the Golden Flashes of Ohio's Kent State University. (NB: Kent is in the subtropical part of Ohio; Columbus, home of Big Ten member Ohio State, is in the tundra.)

On the other hand, though, maybe it's not the weather.

And maybe it's not a giant NCAA baseball-rigging scandal concocted by a nefarious cartel of Southern universities.

Maybe it's something else, Big Ten. Maybe, just maybe . . . it's you.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

College in the ruins

Xavier’s mission is to educate. Our essential activity is the interaction of students and faculty in an educational experience characterized by critical thinking and articulate expression with specific attention given to ethical issues and values.

Xavier is a Catholic institution in the Jesuit tradition, an urban university firmly rooted in the principles and conviction of the Judeo-Christian tradition and in the best ideals of American heritage.

Xavier is an educational community dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, to the orderly discussion of issues confronting society; and, as would befit an American institution grounded in the humanities and sciences, Xavier is committed unreservedly to open and free inquiry.

-- Xavier University mission statement

The University of Cincinnati serves the people of Ohio, the nation, and the world as a premier, public, urban research university dedicated to undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, experience-based learning, and research. We are committed to excellence and diversity in our students, faculty, staff, and all of our activities. We provide an inclusive environment where innovation and freedom of intellectual inquiry flourish. Through scholarship, service, partnerships, and leadership, we create opportunity, develop educated and engaged citizens, enhance the economy and enrich our university, city, state and global community.

-- University of Cincinnati mission statement

Monday, June 27, 2011

Ghost in the machine


There's a ghost at the College World Series.

That is, apart from all the phantom home runs still flying out of the ballyard and into some fifth dimension amid this brave new era where real baseballs -- the ones made of leather, twine, rubber and cork -- tend to stay well within the outfield walls of Omaha's brand-new TD Ameritrade Park.

No, it seems to me the ghost haunting the College World Series this year -- haunting baseball's new digs in the River City -- is baseball's old digs in the River City. That old stadium perched atop a hill in south Omaha.

Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium.


OVER AND OVER, its specter appears out of nowhere. The Ghost of Rosenblatt Past horns into casual conversations in the new park.

Into announcers' remarks on ESPN.

Over and over into the pages of the Omaha World-Herald's sports section.

It even interrupts your regularly scheduled video-screen programming.

And even though the new digs compare more than favorably with the old in every way, the ancient, cobbled-together haunt still haunts our hearts and our memories. I wonder whether TD Ameritrade -- shiny and new and sexy in every way . . . all made up with a long future to go -- feels like its competing with an old flame.

I wonder whether that's any easier to take when the old flame is a ghost.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and gamma rays


The missus and I spent a wonderful Sunday night with friends at the College World Series.

The series' new home, TD Ameritrade Park, is beautiful. Awesome, even. And the downtown Omaha setting is a grand slam.

The night was wonderful, the company better, and the game between South Carolina and Texas A&M was a nail-biter. A late-spring night at the CWS always has a little bit of everything -- like the game itself (above).
And daddies and their babies.

And wacky team mascots. This is Cocky from South Carolina.

And, of course, wireless combination radiation and multigas detectors. Because it's dangerous out there.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

George Jefferson and the Big Lie


LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson won't be movin' on up to Phi Beta Kappa.

Unfortunately for the university's media-relations types, however, he moved on up to
ESPN -- an event they touted to the world:
LSU senior quarterback Jordan Jefferson will spend Thursday at the ESPN Headquarters in Bristol, Conn., appearing on various ESPN shows and platforms throughout the day as part of the network's "car wash."

The ESPN "car wash" for Jefferson gets underway at 9:50 a.m. CT with an appearance on ESPN First Take, which will air on ESPN News. Jefferson will also participate in the network's social and digital media platforms, including an appearance for ESPN Rise Magazine's official website.

"I am excited about representing our team with this opportunity," said Jefferson Tuesday morning. "We had a great spring and we have worked very hard this offseason as a team. I can't wait until camp starts and the start of my senior year. I know our fans are just as excited with the season right around the corner."

After lunch in the ESPN cafeteria and an opportunity to visit with ESPN personalities, Jefferson will conduct an ESPN.com chat at noon CT followed by a live interview on the Scott Van Pelt ESPN Radio show at 12:45 p.m. CT. The "SVP show" also airs tape delayed on ESPNU at 2 p.m. CT. To access the ESPN.com chat, visit www.espn.com/sportsnation/chats.
HOW DO YOU screw up the answer to that question? Easy. By not having a clue about fourth-grade American history.

You get spotted the last name. You see the powdered wig. And you come up with George Jefferson of TV fame?

No, you don't. Even an LSU football player knows George Jefferson was black.

In this case, I'll bet, what you come up with is "Thomas Washington, George Jefferson . . . whatever."

That some Americans surely are that confused about the Founding Fathers and the origins of our country is tragic -- both for civics' sake and theirs -- but not surprising. That some Americans are that confused and on scholarship to an American university when scores of less-confused young people no longer can hope to afford a college education is a crime.

It also is a contradiction that American colleges and universities have ignored for decades, all for the sake of athletic glory and the almighty dollar. It's a contradiction we ignore, despite the injustices at its heart, for the sake of the bread-and-circuses segment of the American economy.

We perpetuate the Big Lie because of all we have built upon its foundation -- giant stadiums, a TV-sports money machine and de facto developmental leagues for the NFL, NBA and MLB. There's big money in the Big Lie.

And not such a Big Future -- at least anymore -- in being a former LSU quarterback in the National Football League. JaMarcus Russell, anyone?


AS CLOSE AS we get to acknowledging the Big Lie is the cynical wink we give when forced to utter the words "student athlete." And that right there is a massive injustice to the many student athletes who fit the bill -- and bear the stereotype for all those who pretend to learn while we pretend they're college material . . . or even aspire to be.

I'm not here to run athletics out of American colleges -- not that I could even if I wanted to. What I am here for is to ask you, as you polish off another damn bag of chips watching all the "student athletes" get the ESPN "car wash" treatment, to give a fleeting thought to the Big Lie.

And to say a prayer for all those non-athletes who do recognize Thomas Jefferson as they slave away for Abraham Lincolns while too many "student athletes" are otherwise occupied getting Benjamin Franklin handshakes.

Benjamin Franklin . . . now that's a Founding Father a college quarterback can appreciate.