Showing posts with label basketball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basketball. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 02, 2016

To Title IX or not to Title IX, that is the #^#%!@& question

Click on the top-left speaker icon for audio, which is NSFW


At Louisiana State University, this will not get you arrested:
LSU students hurled obscenities, ice and objects during and immediately after the Tigers’ 77-75 loss in men’s basketball Saturday against No. 1-ranked Oklahoma.

Obscene chants directed at Oklahoma star shooting guard Buddy Hield rose from the packed student section on two or three occasions during the game. After the game, students booed and threw ice and towels as the Sooners left the court on a corner of the court at the end where the student section is located.

The actions drew denouncements from national media as well as LSU athletic director Joe Alleva.

“I am very disappointed with the language used by our students,” Alleva said Monday. “They should act with class and respect our opponents. Their language is embarrassing and motivates our opponent.”

A request for comment Monday morning from LSU President F. King Alexander did not immediately draw a response.

According to LSU police, there were no arrests or charges filed associated with behavior at Saturday's game.


AT LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY, exercising one's First Amendment right as a holy roller preacher to tell college students they're going to the lake of fire for their fornicatin', whoremongerin' ways sure as H-E-double-toothpicks will get you busted by campus cops -- or at least threatened with arrest. This at the now-ironically titled Free Speech Alley in front of the LSU Student Union.

The PC scofflaw here was an "intern" of Brother Jed Smock, who is no stranger to LSU -- or many other U.S. campuses. Jed and his wife, Sister Cindy Lassiter Smock, have been damning American college students to hell since I was an LSU student in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At least.

Back then, there was no question that Brother Jed and Sister Cindy had an absolute right to call us whores, whoremongers, fornicators, blasphemers or any other sort of wretch offensive to the Almighty's sensibilities.

Sister Cindy at LSU, early 1980s
Or at least those of Brother Jed and Sister Cindy's seriously fundamentalist brand of Christianity.

And that's OK. There was little doubt that many of us, in fact, were whores, whoremongers, fornicators, blasphemers and general offenders against right judgment and God's Word.

There also was little doubt that LSU students of my era gave as good as we got. In fact, Sister Cindy once whacked yours truly upside the head with her Bible for offending her as grievously as she offended me. Thirty-something years on, I can say with great confidence that I royally deserved it.

I did not, however, call the cops. Some precious little LSU snowflake, on the other hand, did just that the other week after a mean Mini Jed -- Brother Joshua -- offended her delicate sensibilities. Because he apparently said the most dangerous place in America today was in a black woman's womb, referencing the proportionally high incidence of abortion in the African-American community.

Judging by the response of campus police, the second most dangerous place in America today is Louisiana State University -- at least if you intend to loudly say impolite things while not in Tiger Stadium or the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. Within the safe confines of athletic venues, however, chant "F*** YOU, SABAN!" or "F*** YOU, BUDDY!" as loudly and as often as you like.

But for the LSU po-po, apparently, it's just gender- or race-referencing Bible-thumping in a "free speech" zone that's a no-no. Because of Title IX which, according to these constitutional lawyers in blue, trumps the First Amendment.


FRANKLY,  if I were in the preacher's shoes and the cop had told me something as ridiculous as that, I would have been tempted to reply with the Assembly Center version of what passes for "protected speech" at LSU. Which, of course, would have gotten me handcuffed as surely as Louisiana's state budget turns a bright red every spring.

To be clear, I don't much care for Brother Jed's brand of Christianity or his not-so-merry band's evangelistic tactics. I think they do more to retard than advance the Kingdom of God. I think they're obnoxious, self-righteous and theologically messed up in many ways.

I know that my opinion means less than nothing to them because, for one thing, I'm Catholic. And the more faithful of a Catholic I become, the more Jed, Cindy and Joshua would be convinced that I will burn in the LAKE . . . OF . . .  FIIIRRRRRRRE! 

But, again, that's OK. It's a free country -- well, at least if you're not at LSU or many other American universities. The First Amendment, which last I heard has not been trumped by a mere act of Congress, exists for those times when people really, really don't want to hear what you have to say.

Like this: The LSU administration is a bunch of f***ing hypocrites. (I trust the F-word makes this protected speech in the eyes of the Ol' War Skule.) You know, the kind who tolerate loutish students hurling vulgar abuse upon a black Oklahoma basketball star but want to lock up a street preacher for saying the womb has become a dangerous place for black babies.

And for non-vulgarly accusing students of being what they regularly present themselves as on national TV.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Joe Dean: Nothin' but net


Mr. String Music is dead.

But the legacy Joe Dean leaves behind as an LSU basketball great, Southeastern Conference hoops analyst on television who coined the famous phrase and, finally, longtime Tiger athletic director is, well . . . nothin' but net.

If you want to know the measure of the man, this anecdote from former LSU football coach Gerry DiNardo, now a Big Ten Network personality, pretty much sums it up. From The (Baton Rouge) Advocate:
Dean was a likeable and affectionate man, someone who bonded with subordinates and developed young up-and-comers. He always had time to talk, Dinardo said, even when the coach would walk into Dean’s office sweat-soaked after a long run.

“I’d go for long jogs and it was always hot and I’d be soaking wet and I’d go up to his office to talk about what I had thought about on my run,” said Dinardo, LSU football coach from 1995-99.

“I was soaking wet so I never could sit on his furniture. I’d sit on his floor and he’d lean back laughing because I’d have all of this I was thinking I was about to tell him. Sometimes, I was out of line, I was wrong, irrational, emotional, but he just sat there and listened.”

Dinardo was fired during the 1999 season. He met with Dean and then-LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert in the school’s alumni center, a way to dodge reporters, Dinardo said.

“Mark fired me and I stood up and Joe stood up and we told each other we loved each other and we hugged and I walked out,” Dinardo said. “Joe didn’t have to do that. This was a new chancellor. Why did Joe put himself at risk there? That was my last memory of Joe as my boss.”

Dinardo returned to Baton Rouge to visit his son, an LSU student, over the summer. The two had breakfast with Dean.

“Joe started out as my boss,” Dinardo said. “We winded up being great friends. He always had time for me.”

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Television's nitwit in the woodpile


It's always 1959 somewhere and this week, that would be Bristol, Conn.

At the testosterone-fueled home of
ESPN, boys will be boys, sports will be sports and Harvard-educated Chinese-American basketball players will be "Chinks," as this account in the Long Island Press demonstrates:
So after the Knicks disappointing loss to the 7-23 Hornets, an offensive headline appeared on ESPN’s mobile site that read “Chink In The Armor.”

It was the first loss the Knicks suffered since coach Mike D’Antoni inserted Jeremy Lin into the starting rotation.

The headline went up with a story just after 2 a.m. on Saturday and was on the site for nearly 40 minutes.

But fans and other readers caught site of the headline and the reaction led to ESPN issuing this apology:

“Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.”
ON WHAT PLANET would someone think he could get away with that? Would think it was even clever? Would be so dumb as to not realize that -- in this context -- the usually benign phrase "chink in the armor" is anything but?

On what planet?

On this planet:

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

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I predict tomorrow's Post



I'm not much of a psychic friend, but I think I can predict the cover of tomorrow's New York Post, given the National Enquirer's spilling of the beans about the racy stuff inside Joe McGinniss' new tell-all biography on bodacious tea-party babe Sarah Palin.

Here's what the Miami Herald has come up with thus far:

A new book about tea party darling Sarah Palin has a salacious revelation about her sex life involving a well-known Miami sports star.

According to The National Enquirer, which obtained an advance copy of a book about Palin by investigative writer Joe McGinniss — Palin and former Miami Heat player Glen Rice had a one-night tryst back in 1987.

At the time, the former Alaska governor, now 47, was single, just out of college and working as a sports reporter at Anchorage TV station KTUU.

Rice, 44, who lives in Coral Gables, was a promising junior basketball player at the University of Michigan.

Their encounter occurred while Rice was in Anchorage attending a basketball tournament and Palin apparently covered the event. Months later, in 1988, Palin eloped with her high school sweetheart Todd Palin. The two are still married.

Quoting from the book, the tabloid said that at the time, the 23-year-old Palin had a “fetish” about black men.

WHO THE HELL needs to pay for The Playboy Channel when we have saucy, smokin' hot right-wing firebrands and a lifetime of Blazing Saddles jokes floating around our heads?

Film at 11. Then again, maybe not.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Terrible grace vs. just terrible


This week, you can't open the sports section without reading about the star-crossed relationships of 20-year-old college students and 50-something coaches.

In Baton Rouge, among the stately oaks and broad magnolias, police hauled in four LSU football players Tuesday for questioning about a bar brawl that left four men battered and bruised -- one of them with cracked vertebrae. Two of the players, including Tiger starting quarterback Jordan Jefferson, weren't even old enough to have a legal beer at the time.

The cops say somebody's going to face charges -- maybe even felony battery charges. The question now is who. Jefferson?

Some substitute who throws better punches than blocks? Some other among the 20 or so Tigers at the appropriately named bar -- Shady's -- Thursday night?


Po-po ain't done questioning the thirsty Tigers yet, according to
The Advocate:

The names of the men injured in the fight were not released. However, White said, the man who was knocked unconscious and suffered contusions to his head, nose and hands is a Marine.

White said four LSU football players implicated in the incident gave their statements to police Tuesday at State Police headquarters and gave investigators the names of at least a dozen witnesses.

The four players — senior quarterback Jordan Jefferson, 20; freshman wide receiver Jarvis Landry, 18; sophomore offensive tackle Chris Davenport, 21; and sophomore linebacker Josh Johns, 21 — met with police for about two hours, the chief said.

“They were quite gracious,” White said of the players. “They gave their statements willingly.”

Police spokesman Sgt. Don Stone said investigators will interview the witnesses the football players told them about.

“It’s possible we will talk to more football players,” he said. “Names were mentioned today (Tuesday).”

Stone said interviewing the additional witnesses could extend the police investigation five, possibly 10 days.

“This investigation is far from over,” he said. “We are still on a fact-finding mission.”

However, Stone added, based on facts investigators already have gathered, “there is a good chance that when the investigation is over arrests will be made” and that people could be booked with simple battery and second-degree battery.

Second-degree battery is a felony offense that carries a maximum five-year prison sentence upon conviction while simple battery is a misdemeanor.

LSU'S COACH, Les Miles, says he'll take action beyond extra running for the team as the situation sorts itself out. He won't say what, because LSU football coaches have their priorities -- like not tipping off No. 3 Oregon (Sept. 3, Cowboys Stadium) about personnel or the game plan.

The cynical among us are tempted to just chalk this up as "college sports today." Another typical day in the big-money, big-entitlement, BMOC world of 20-year-old jocks and their 50-something coaches.

Tempted. Tempted until another story presents itself -- one of a 50-something coach and her 20-year-old son.

This one comes out of Knoxville, Tenn., just a few hundred miles northeast of the underage beer and parking-lot brawls of Baton Rouge. Torn from the pages of
The Washington Post, it's Sally Jenkins' account of a women's basketball program, a devastating diagnosis, terrible grace and the unshakable bond between a mother and a son.

YOU WANT to know why Pat Summitt, leader of the Lady Vols the past 37 years, has won more games than any coach of either sex, anywhere? Here's a clue:

Last Thursday, Summitt, Barnett, and her 20-year-old son Tyler, who is a junior at the University of Tennessee, met with Chancellor Jimmy Cheek and Athletic Director Joan Cronan to inform them of her condition. Barnett warned Summitt that contractually school administrators had the right to remove her as head coach immediately. Instead, Cheek and Cronan listened to Summitt’s disclosure with tears streaming down their faces.

“You are now and will always be our coach,” Cheek told her. With the blessing of her university, she will continue to work for as long as she is able.

“Life is an unknown and none of us has a crystal ball,” Cronan says. “But I do have a record to go on. I know what Pat stands for: excellence, strength, honesty, and courage.”

To Barnett, Pat’s fight is characteristic; her determination to keep working, and also to act as a spokeswoman for Alzheimer’s, is not incompatible with the values she has always preached as a coach.

“If you go back to her speeches, and her discussions with players through the years, you see several things,” Barnett says. “One is absolute dedication. Two is an unwillingness ever to give up. And three is an absolute commitment to honesty. And in this challenge that she’s facing, she is displaying the exact traits that she’s always taught. . . .Pat is going to run this race to the very end.”

(snip)

It wasn’t until August that the reality of her condition hit home. “There was a pretty long denial period,” Tyler says. “At first she was like, ‘I’m fine.’ ”

When the blow finally fell, it was heavy. Summitt had always been the caregiver: Friends, family and former players struggling physically or emotionally have always come to her house for comfort, a hot meal and soothing advice in that honeyed southern voice. “I want to go see Pat,” is a common refrain. It wasn’t easy to reverse the role, and to admit that she would need care.

In September 2006, not long after the death of her father, she separated from R.B. Summitt, her husband of 26 years. Some months later, she found herself immobilized by physical pain, and was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Summitt rarely betrayed in public the toll of that disease, but there were occasions, before it was successfully controlled by medication, when her son had to help her put her socks on.

In between those traumas she suffered a shoulder separation — from fighting a raccoon — and was hospitalized twice, once for cellulitis, and once for dehydration and exhaustion. Still, for all of that, she managed to lead the Lady Vols to consecutive national championships in 2007 and 2008.

Through it all, there has always been a sense of centeredness in Summitt. She is like a marble pillar, ramrod straight, that seems to have stood for a thousand years, while everything around it falls.

“Everyone has always wanted to know what Pat’s really like,” DeMoss said. “The word I’ve always used is ‘resolve.’ Pat has more resolve than any one I’ve ever known. She has a deep, deep inner strength.”

But now she will need a different kind of counterintuitive strength. Surrender and acceptance have never come naturally to her, nor has admitting vulnerability. She has trouble even uttering the word Alzheimer’s. But she’s learning.

“We sat down and had a good talk, and realized that the only reason we even made it this far, was that we had each other,” Tyler says. “It started with her father passing away, and then the divorce, and the arthritis, and then the Alzheimer’s, and each of those things, I don’t know how anyone could go through them alone. So we figured out that as much as we wanted to be Superman and Wonder Woman, and take care of things alone, we needed each other.”



MEANTIME, down on the bayou, the LSU players' high-powered yet pro-bono attorney, Nathan Fisher, says his clients are "scared to death" and that they "cried in this meeting -- they are scared to death."

Did you get the picture that they're scared to death? Do you get the picture that I'm strangely unmoved, considering?

Would that Pat Summitt might have the sad satisfaction of knowing why she's facing a sentence impervious to the best efforts of the best lawyer money can't buy. Or, thus far, to the best efforts of the best doctors that money can.

And would that a 20-year-old kid at the University of Tennessee had nothing worse to worry about than the prospect of a jail time and the wasting of a collegiate football career.

Lord, have mercy.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Head-case nation


I wish to associate myself with Mitch Albom's remarks in the
Detroit Free Press:
Note to journalism students. When we celebrate investigative reporting, it's for issues like war crimes, nursing home scandals or police corruption. It's not to report that LeBron James has opened a Twitter account.

But that was a "major" headline Wednesday. And James' first Tweet was Hello World, the Real King James is in the Building "Finally."

Honestly, who calls himself "King"?

Which brings me back to the man himself, who, after a few years of relative humility, now seems, at 25, to be stepping onto some assumed throne atop the world, like that "Airbender" kid, as if the rest of the planet naturally should step aside.

Excuse me if I turn my back. I no longer care less where LeBron James plays. I'm sick of the whole story. The number of supposedly respectable people tripping over themselves to hand him $100 million should make all of them and many of us ashamed.

In a country where people are out of work or out in the streets, LeBron's basketball home was never important. But spilling money on his head is downright insulting.

(snip)

Still, the final cherry on this ego sundae is the televised event tonight, an hour-long ESPN special at 9 o'clock (an hour?) in which James will announce who wins the right to wrap its money around his arrogance.

Only in America could we keep inventing reality TV that fantastically outshames the previous low mark. A prime-time event? To announce a free-agent signing? And don't point out that some proceeds go to charity. You want to give to charity, quietly write a check. Don't get a network to do it for you so it gets to pump its shows and you get to shower yourself in international coverage -- while calling it philanthropy.

The NBA has embarrassed itself here. The media have embarrassed themselves. And a guy who calls himself "King" may be beyond embarrassment, which is truly embarrassing.

Friday, January 01, 2010

Return of the Washington Bullets


Word on the grapevine is that the National Basketball Association is going to a new championship format this year.

Best-of-seven drive-by shootings.

I jest. I think.

FORTUNATELY for The Associated Press, however, its writers and editors don't have to make any of this s*** up. Because they couldn't.
Washington Wizards teammates Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton reportedly drew guns on each other during a locker-room argument over a gambling debt.

Law enforcement is investigating the presence of weapons in the locker room, and the league is not taking action now.

The Wizards said Friday they are cooperating with authorities and the NBA and “take this situation and the ongoing investigation very seriously.” The team had no further comment.

Arenas, a three-time All Star, tweeted Friday about the developments.

“i wake up this morning and seen i was the new JOHN WAYNE. ... Media is too funny,” he wrote.

About 2½ hours later, his tweet was more straightforward: “i understand this is serious..but if u ever met me you know i dont do serious things im a goof ball this story today dont sound goofy to me.”
The investigation into possible firearms in the locker room at the Verizon Center revealed the alleged Dec. 21 dispute between Arenas and Crittenton, Yahoo! Sports reported Friday, citing unidentified sources.
IS THERE anymore reason for any sports fan to take the NBA seriously? It's Rollerball with hoops and nets. It's a work-release program for athletically inclined offenders.

It's where college pimp-daddies send their top-flight talent when they've wrung all the cash they can out of "students" who write sentences like "i wake up this morning and seen i was the new JOHN WAYNE."

Oh, it's also a sign of cultural apocalypse. But that's not important now, is it?

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

A tale of two Kentuckies

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy



It's a hard-knock life. Unless you're a big-time athletic program.

Then you get to tell a nation in the middle of the worst hard times since the Great Depression. . . . Well, let's just say you get to rub big money and f***ed-up priorities in folks' faces.

We act like life is a game and a game is life. No, and hell no.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Why try harder?


It's a bad thing when you have to put a story on your web site acknowledging, in the lede, that you just got scooped by . . . everybody. On a story that you should own.

IT'S A WORSE THING that the next most pertinent thing you can think of -- as you work your way down the "inverted pyramid" of newswriting -- would be "The coach is a WHAT?!?"

Way to go, Advocate! Why try harder when your audience is used to mediocrity?