What's that saying about people repeating history if they don't learn from history? We may be looking at that situation about now. When Doug Williams left Grambling last year, the school named Melvin Spears as the interim coach and now as the head coach. Now he has to produce evidence this week that he has not fudged his résumé by claiming a Masters' Degree from Northern Arizona that the school says they never gave him. The putative Masters' Degree is in “Administrative Leadership” and it reportedly requires 36 credits of study. Spears claims now that he completed the work but never got the degree. I wonder if Coach Spears ever heard of Coach O'Leary?
Last week, I mentioned that a football player at Florida International had been involved in a campus robbery and had a gun and fired the gun and so was in deep trouble with the law. Sorry, but the story is worse than that. It seems that he pistol-whipped someone in the robbery attempt and then when the victim tried to drive away, he shot out one of the windows in the car. So the charges include attempted murder, armed robbery, weapons possession, and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. But it gets worse. He had two teammates with him at the time and those two teammates face a cumulative six charges – all felonies – for their actions. And two other suspects still remained at large meaning that they have not been named so we don't know if they too were football players. The Athletic Director said, “We're extremely disappointed.” Hello? Disappointed? Is that all?
Villanova's men's basketball team is on two years probation for “recruiting and benefits violations” but will not lose scholarships nor will they be banned from postseason play. That is a slap on the wrist if ever there was one. One of the numerous and repeated violations noted in the investigation was “improper contact with prospective players at the home of coach, Jay Wright”. In a statement, Wright said that he and his staff “acted ethically and with the correct intentions”. And somehow, with all that ethical behavior and proper intentions, he managed to violate an NCAA rule in his own home. What am I missing here?
Florida A&M obviously did not want to see Florida International hogging all the publicity in the area of wrongdoing by minor athletic programs in the state of Florida. Florida A&M recently self-reported 196 separate violations of NCAA rules most of which have to do with playing scholar-athletes who should have been declared academically ineligible. FAMU discovered that 117 athletes in 14 different sports were “improperly certified for their academic progress”. Fifty-one of those athletes were football players. The NCAA hounds are on the case and penalties are expected soon.
Last week, I noted that sanity seemed to be prevalent in the world of hockey because in light of the NHL impending work stoppage, there had been no movement to create the Women's Hockey Organization. I stand corrected. A women's professional hockey league is organizing and will be called the Women's Western Hockey League and it will have teams in Minneapolis and Edmonton according to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. Just a guess here, but if you eliminate the friends and families of players and coaches, you might be able to fit the rest of the average game attendance on one of those sailboats that you can rent for a weekend.
I ran across an item that said that Marion Jones ran her fastest 100 meters in 1998. She also ran her fastest 200 meters in 1998 and achieved her longest jump in 1998. If that is correct, she should ask BALCO for a refund on that check that was written to them; their nutritional products are not doing her any good. In the US Olympic Trials yesterday , Jones finished seventh in the long jump preliminaries but managed to make it into the final round of competition.
The reputation of English soccer hooligans is well known and seemingly well deserved. Recently a young lady, Felicity Thorpe, at the ripe old age of 15 became the youngest woman to be taken to court and banned from attending soccer matches in England and/or Wales for six years. She was part of a riot that ensued after Portsmouth beat Southampton in a game earlier this year. She was seen on video throwing rocks at police who were trying to quell the riot. Thorpe admitted her actions (she was all of 14 at the time) and was sentenced to eight months in “an institution for young offenders”. This is a pretty rough start to life for someone named Felicity; imagine if her parents had named her Beelzebub…
Speaking of soccer, the Copa America is being contested at the moment. Don't worry, I'm not going to break down the match-ups here or recommend taking Grenada with the points against Belize. But something caught my eye in one of the reports on this tournament. Venezuela was eliminated after a tie with Bolivia; it will not move onto the next round of play – whatever that is. Venezuela is not a traditional power in this tournament. It's last victory in a Copa America tournament game was in 1967. Now there is a losing streak.
Tomorrow is a “dark day” in terms of sporting action. Baseball has nothing going as teams reassemble after the All-Star break. The NFL, NBA and NHL are not in season or in training camps. NASCAR is a weekend sport; same with the PGA and the LPGA. So there is a window of opportunity here for minor sports to put some games on TV and maybe draw some new viewers because there's no real competition. The WUSA will only manage to play two games tomorrow but you have to give them credit for figuring out to play them at night so they might actually reach a television audience even if it is only accidentally. The geniuses at the WNBA will also play two games tomorrow and both will be in the afternoon. Honestly, do you have to take an IQ test to work for the WNBA? If you score too high, are you disqualified?
Finally, here is a comment from Mike Bianchi in the Orlando Sentinel. I think it will demonstrate that there are some other folks on the planet besides me who sometimes run out of their supply of the milk of human kindness:
-
“The New York Times is pulling its dreadful computer ranking out of the awful Bowl Championship Series rating system. This is like taking the carrot-raisin salad off a dinner plate that already includes liver and onions, Brussels sprouts and poached eggplant. Does it really matter?”
= Archives = Pros = Scores = Contact =