Why I Despise College Football on Thursday Night (and Wednesday, and Friday)
September 26, 2008
Each college season, be it football or basketball, I belabor the point that somehow, collegiate athletes allow themselves to fall prey to the glow of the rankings and mostly, the glow of the media. Thursday night the talent-rich #1 USC Trojans were upset 27-21 by a lowly 1-2 - now 2-2 - Oregon State team. Jacquizz Rogers a 5′6″ 160 pound true freshman running back led the way for the Beavers and lit up the massive USC defenders rushing for 186 yards on 37 carries.It was an upset that sent shockwaves through the country. Suddenly, Georgia, Oklahoma, LSU, Missouri, Penn State, Wisconsin, Texas, and even BYU are thinking national championship.
And happily presiding over the unthinkable OSU win?
ESPN, the mythmakers and heartbreakers.
Just recently the Worldwide Leader began running commercials featuring Trojans head coach Pete Carroll. Daily on ESPN talk shows the pundits from the network swore USC would go undefeated in the regular season without so much as a whimper from their opponents.
Yet on Thursday night in Corvallis, Oregon the Trojans failed to play up tpo their potential. Despite the warnings from Carroll, despite having 10 full days to prepare for their Pac 10 conference opener, USC was soundly beaten by a team that will thank its lucky stars if it wins six games this season.
Notes: On the Obamas New Yorker Cover; Raffa, Manuel Beltran, Lance and Dr. Fuentes; Matt Jones’ Daddy Gets in the Act; Brett Favre; Lute Olson on 1-and-Done’s; Mauricia Grant Mention
July 14, 2008
So what’s been happening lately?
Scoop Jackson mentioned Mauricia Grant in a meaningful fashion - a first for MSM - on ESPN’s First and 10 segment of its First Take morning show.
Claps for Scoop, boo for the WWL for bitching up in its coverage - lack of - of the lawsuit.
High school basketball point guard phenom Brandon Jennings chose Europe instead of the University of Arizona. Lute Olson reacted by saying he would never again recruit a potential “one-and-done” player.
Hey Lute, maybe Brandon looked down the list of your point guards who have performed well in the NBA and found that list severely lacking. Mike Bibby is the only one I can recall and Jason Terry is a tiny combo guard who cannot lead a team consistently from the PG spot. In fact, all the ‘Zona point guards were/are of the score first variety, right Jason, Mike, Damon, Salim…. Miles Simon, anyone?
Brett Fav-ray has dominated the sporting news so much that he had a personal space on ESPN’s news crawl last week. The “Cherished One” has apparently decided that the pull of the locker room and its camaraderie and the sights and sounds and smells of the NFL, plus his name in lights after leading yet another touchdown drive are just too much for him to stay away from the game.
The Black Sportswriter – A Shameful Story: (On Bonnie Bernstein and Much More)
July 7, 2008
I recently wrote an article-commentary concerning ESPN’s Bonnie Bernstein and her quote from the June 25 Mike and Mike in the Morning show. The piece was apparently so incendiary that Ms. Bernstein emailed me. Her lengthy letter provided me with some valuable insights into how she views herself in relation to the world around her. I feel her email was sent with the confidence that its contents would not be explicitly disseminated in any public forum. Due to her missive and the comments of others in response to my piece on her Mike and Mike-made comments, I feel it is necessary and important for me inform some readers of my writings, particularly those who might have passed by just to read the Bernstein piece, of my positions regarding sports and sports-related topics as they pertain to the socio-cultural and socio-political climate in America.
However, to achieve this goal I will, in part, use Bernstein’s comments on Mike and Mike and her email to me as an outline for the following writing.
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I, like other black sports journalists, write about sport as a black man. More importantly though, I write about sports as a black man in a white United States of America. Though there are black men in editorial positions and most, if not all of them know of my writings, I am as unwanted at their tables as I am white editors and the publications they represent.
It is in this maddening and sorry milieu where I ply what I truly feel is an art: a series of stylistic choices by which I communicate my worldview as it pertains to sports, to others.
Kelvin Sampson: Recruit Found to Have Lied to Investigators, but NCAA Continues with All Charges
June 6, 2008
The Indianapolis Star is breathlessly reporting that former Indiana basketball head coach Kelvin Sampson knowingly violated NCAA rules regarding the phoning of potential high school basketball recruits. However, Dana O’Neil of ESPN reports a different side to this story.
Here’s what Mark Alesia of the Star reports:
Kelvin Sampson’s director of basketball operations at Indiana University told the NCAA that the coach and his staff had to have known they were breaking telephone recruiting sanctions.
Ten other people — seven recruits, two mothers of recruits and one coach — directly implicated Sampson and former assistant coach Rob Senderoff in interviews with the NCAA.
The information was part of the NCAA enforcement staff’s “case summary” in advance of IU’s hearing June 13 before the committee on infractions. Dated May 29 and released Thursday after a public records request by The Indianapolis Star, the summary contains evidence the NCAA enforcement staff plans to use….
The 96-page summary includes an excerpt of an interview with Jerry Green, former director of basketball operations, to whom Sampson delegated responsibility for monitoring recruiting.
O.J. Mayo #4: Recruiting Wars Ain’t Nothin’ But a Modern-Day Slavery Thang
May 29, 2008
As I pulled into the small media parking area looking for a space I saw something that made me feel uneasy. I was at this small east coast university to finish a story on the burgeoning rivalry between two small college basketball programs looking to separate themselves from the other schools in their conference and join the carousel of “big-time” college hoops programs in perception and notoriety.
The two universities found themselves fighting for the same recruits they felt were necessary to allow them to compete with bigger schools. This particular season’s recruiting battle centered around four players. The school for which I was a beat reporter signed one of those recruits while their rival signed the other three which automatically made them heavy favorites to win not only their conference and conference tournament but perhaps a game or two in the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament.
I got out of my car and walked toward the sight that perturbed me so when I pulled into the lot. There in a row were five late-model sports cars of different makes.
OJ Mayo #3: U.S. Culture and the One-and-Done Rule
May 22, 2008
Google “one-and-done rule” and the search results are, well, hilarious. Everybody and their mother are touching on it. A blogger claims that myriad problems created O.J. Mayo. A mainstream columnist blames the NCAA for a, having players for one year is better than not having them at all, philosophy. Another columnist casts doubts on the rule and claims it is under scrutiny by the NCAA while NBA Commissioner David Stern defends his rule.
And on and on they go until the spin behind the pieces disintegrates as they become mired in mind-numbing exercises in futility.
If we are to believe Louis Johnson, Rodney Guillory approached O.J. Mayo when Mayo was 14 (he’d already played two years of varsity ball by that time) and over the next six years gave money and gifts to the combo-guard to the tune of a paltry $30,000 while allegedly hoarding somewhere between $170,000 and $220,000 supplied to him by Calvin Andrews of the sports agency, Bill Duffy and Associates.
However, cutting through the maze of “what if” and “they shouldn’t” and “he’s selfish” when it comes to Mayo, is one simple and very, very important fact:
NCAA - Myles Brand - Adds Race to Mayo Mix
May 13, 2008
Reactions of this sort are rarely for the best. In an unprecedented action the NCAA today announced that is taking three of its staff devoted to investigations and using them to solely oversee and report on problems they perceive in the recruiting of basketball players in an environment that association President Myles Brand contends is, “more difficult than some of the others, certainly on the recruiting side.”
“We have to have enough knowledge and sufficient networks … to successfully investigate these cases. “That’s why we think it’s better to have a few people, some of our leading investigators, who are focused in their efforts.”
To translate, Brand is saying that the behind-the-scenes machinations in recruiting athletes in college basketball are more problematic than in its primary cash cow, football.
O. J. Mayo Report 2: Investigation, the ESPN Way
May 13, 2008
Chapter 2 of Marc Isenberg’s book, Money Players: A Guide to Success in Sports, Business & Life for the Current and Future Pro Athletes, is titled, “College Rules!”
The initial words of the chapter are these from sports agent Richard Woods:
“As soon as you have given player money you have corrupted the relationship… it’s [now] a creditor-debtor relationship.”
The very next words are from Tim McGee a former football player:
There’s a 100% chance you’ll be offered money.
O. J. Mayo: A First Report on the Money Trailing Behind the Collegiate Star
May 12, 2008
(This will be the first report of many dealing with O.J. Mayo and the allegations that he received gifts and money in violation of NCAA rules.)
The announcement of the results of a four month investigation were televised Sunday, May 11. The announcement of the results of a four month investigation televised Sunday, May 11 were presaged by a cryptic statement within in a May 2, 2006 MSNBC.com article:
I wanted to meet a college player who I really enjoyed watching this year. So I asked a friend of mine, who is a very powerful man in the game, to introduce me to him. And he said, “I’d like to help but I can’t.” And when I asked why. He said, “You are three years and $500,000 short.”
Johnny Dawkins Hired to Replace Trent Johnson at Stanford
April 26, 2008
In a surprise move, Stanford hired longtime Duke assistant Johnny Dawkins as its men’s basketball team’s head coach. Dawkins, 44, succeeds Trent Johnson.
Dawkins, thought to be the likely successor to Mike Krzyzewski, had spent his entire coaching career at his alma mater where he was an all-American guard:
And here are some thoughts on Dawkins’ hiring by noted longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Ray Ratto:
If you are small-minded enough to look for reasons to dislike Johnny Dawkins’ hiring as the new Stanford men’s basketball coach, here are two: Quin Snyder and Tommy Amaker.
