Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

THUMBS UP

Bobby Knight for speaking openly, honestly and directly about integrity in college basketball with his rather pointed comments about Kentucky coach John Calipari. Maybe if more coaches had the spine to speak openly about this type of behavior, we wouldn't have the cesspool of conduct that exists today.

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Northwestern University for their grit and fight in the Outback Bowl in Tampa versus Auburn University. One of the most entertaining bowl games of the season. NU is another school that does it right academically and still competes well on the football field. Came up a little short at the end, but it was great to see them mixing it up with the big boys.

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Tim Tebow's college football finale. Fitting way for him to go out and even more of an interesting resume enhancer for his future foray into the NFL. Kudos to Brian Billick for pointing out how strange it is that people would root against him to succeed. Maybe all the jealousy is because he takes a little bit of media attention away from other fine role models such as Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and the like? Perhaps.




THUMB DOWN

Texas Tech's football program.

We have either on of the following elements at play here, if not some sort of toxic stew of all elements blended together.

1) an old-school, out of control coach overstepping his bounds by dictating medical procedure to his athletic training staff to discipline a player he disliked.

2) a prima-dona player with a hyper-involved, little league parent gone wild.

3) a school with buyers remorse over being taken to the cleaners in recent contract negotiations who no longer wants to honor said agreement.

See y'all in court numb nuts.

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Washington Wizards Gilbert Arenas and some other guy I never really heard of carrying, storing and now reportedly brandishing weapons in the locker room.

Now, I seem to recall Plaxico Burress losing his job, let's see how the NBA smooths this one over. Of course, these guys won't have a preening, posturing mayor pushing the so-called Justice system to turn the screw tighter. And these guys won't have to worry about witnesses, because I'm sure there won't be any bitches doing any snitching and junk. Not that there should be any bitches in an NBA locker room, but you know what I'm saying?

Gives whole new meaning to the chatter you hear about a guy being a good "locker room presence". Now you have to know if a guy has a reputation for packing, or if he'll pull his piece and start capping half your team in the ass.

Oh and WTF were we gambling on that allegedly brought on the Gunfight at the Not-OK Corral? Anything to see here?

NBA Basketball, It's FAN-tastic!!!

The Black Eye of Notre Dame continues

NOTRE DAME'S BLACK EYE

Here's the quandary Notre Dame finds itself in as far as the football program. The decision is not about bringing in another football coach to turn around the football fortunes.

According to current Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick

“it is critical to this program and to its place in this University and college football that we compete at the highest level, that we compete for National Championships.”

However, the elite academic standards and the image of Notre Dame as one of the last bastions of the "true" student-athlete formula in collegiate athletics is one of the albatrosses around any Notre Dame football coach's neck.

Charlie Weis succeeded in spades in one of those key areas but failed in another.

Swarbrick has lauded Weis for his love of the University and his players as well as his ability to bring in elite student athletes. He has acknowledged that Weis did win a national championship at Notre Dame because the Irish finished first in graduation success rate this year.

So which objective is most important Notre Dame? Actions speak louder than words.

I'm not sure they can continue to cling tightly to both objectives and succeed at both in the current environment. My fear is that they will end up like Indiana post-Bobby Knight. That program clung to its "we run a clean program, our basketball players go to class, graduate and don't embarrass the program". And that was fine as long as Knight was competing for national championships as well. Once the Hoosiers were no longer a Top 25 team, other issues arose and the emphasis was placed on winning. This begat Kelvin Sampson and the rest as they say is history. The Hoosiers no longer have their "clean program" mantra to cling to anymore.


The list of desirable potential candidates to replace Charlie Weis gets smaller every day. I'm not sure that this is one of the most "coveted" jobs in college football anymore. It is losing luster, just as the Indiana basketball job did recently.

The list of candidates:

John Gruden - he would rather stay in the booth, thanks.
Urban Meyer - no thanks, Florida works for me.
Bob Stoops - why would he leave Okalahoma?
TCU coach Gary Patterson - just signed an extension, thanks.
Boise State's Chris Peterson - seems very comfortable on the smurf turf, maybe he sees what happened to his predecessors leap for the greener pastures.

All the other NFL long shots including Tony Dungy, Bill Cowher and Brian Billick have given the golden domers the cold shoulder.

That leaves Cincinnati's Brian Kelly, UNC's Butch Davis and Stanford's Jim Harbaugh as the remaining names deemed worthy enough to take over. But are any of these guys better coaches than Weis or Willingham or even Bob Davie for that matter?

Certainly one of these guys could be playing coy publicly and footsie privately, no doubt. But given the recent history of the last three coaches at Notre Dame spanning the last twelve years, I'm not sure what we are seeing is more the exodus you see coming from a burning building than effective contract negotiations.

Let's review:

Ty Willingham came in to save the program after the George O'Leary debacle with credentials forged at Stanford. It was thought that he could succeed under ND's academic environment because he succeeded at Stanford. After a fast start, he faded to a 5-7 and 6-5 record and was ousted. Did he get a quick hook? Absolutely. Was it about race? Doubtful, more likely about color. The color of money. They were concerned about falling ratings and the loss of their exclusive contract. By the way, Willingham has not exactly been a rousing success at Washington (a combined 11-37 in four years since leaving Notre Dame with an 0-12 2008 record).

Ty was 21-15 at Notre Dame, a .583 winning percentage. About the same as his predecessor Bob Davie (35-25 for the same .583 percentage)

The Notre Dame wanderlust for a big name like Urban Meyer and then Charlie Weis may have had as much to do with Willingham's quick hook as anything. Meyer is the guy they have been salivating over since he burst onto the national scene at Utah. Once he settled at Florida instead of coming to Notre Dame, the administration was caught with a coach twisting in the wind in Willingham.

It's interesting to note that Weis combined record of 35-27, a .565 winning percentage is comparable to both Willingham and Davie. This indicates to me that unfortunately for both Notre Dame and maybe college football as well, the obvious conclusion is "you are what your record says you are."

This is over a decade of results from the Davie era through Weis and the chase to be #1 in the polls continues. Three different coaches, all successful coaches prior to coming to Notre Dame, and the results are about the same. How does that definition of insanity go...doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

I'm not sure why any high profile candidate would want to risk the damage to his resume that a stint at Notre Dame might bring.

It's romantic to cling to the projected Notre Dame image as being a place where winning on the field is no more important than the integrity off it. But the administration has spent lots of time talking that image talk, they need to demonstrate that they can walk the walk.

Which quality will Notre Dame cling to and which will be set aside -- FAME or INTEGRITY?

The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out. - Proverbs 10:9 INTEGRITY

Maybe Touchdown Jesus can save them.

Hi, Beemer. ~;::::::;( )">

NCAA BRACKETOLOGY - PART III

I'm hopelessly out of the money on both of my brackets uh, our brackets, and so I'm on a desperate search for cover bets to make back the money quick.



At the moment I'm considering the over/under on the length of time it takes Bobby Knight to choke the living shit out of of one his new ESPN "colleagues". Now I'm confident that fellow coaches Digger Phelps and Dicky V. are safe. He'd never go postal on those guys. Even Jay Bilas appears safe, but only by the grace of Knight's respect for Coach K.







Oh please God, if you could possibly arrange it, even though I think Rece Davis is pushing his luck a little bit and is certainly a viable candidate, please, please, please God let it be freaking Doug Gottlieb. Please, it's just so right, he stole while he was at Notre Dame, under the shadows of Touchdown Jesus. And he has Eddie Musters' hairline for God's sake. Oops, sorry about that one.







If you could arrange for Rece to have a case of strep throat, or laryngitis or whatever it takes.



Then you'll have to arrange for ESPN management to be stupid enough to consider putting Gottleib and Knight in the same studio.



What, that's not such a stretch, God?



ESPN is stupider than even you could imagine? HAHAHA. Wow, that's saying something because you've seen everything.



No, no I believe you. In fact, it doesn't surprise me at all.



And no, I haven't forgot about the Giants and the Super Bowl, but really I didn't ask for that and it did kinda fit in with your campaign against evil. What, you have me down for a prayer received by your staff right before the David Tyree catch? And another one right before the Plaxico Burress TD catch to put the Giants ahead? Well yeah, I remember those now, sure but...oh all right, I guess those count too.



















OK, I promise I won't ask you to do anything for the Cubs. They can wait another century or so, right?



OK, so I have the under on Knight to choke the living shit out of a colleague.



The next one have my eye on is the over/under on Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl falling from grace as the result of a sexual scandal of some kind.



IF HE LAYS ONE MORE HAND ON ERIN ANDREWS HE'S GOING DOWN:

This one is like taking candy from a baby.



Yeah, yeah put me down for the under on that one as well. Well, that should do it. I ought to be able to recover my money in no time.

March Madness - Good Luck with your Brackets

A good opening day for Team Slavik, 13 for 16 games. Duke kills me as usual, this time by losing. Because, I had VCU as an upset and talked myself out of it by thinking too much. I thought, no way is Duke going down in the first round. Like I tell some of my players, "don't think, you're hurting the team".

Heard Bobby Knight go off on a number of subjects before being sent home.
1) Officials working NCAA games too much. "First of all, I don't think there's an official in the world capable of working six days a week". He proposes a three day a week max and geographic limits, more instructional time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm one of the brethren, but he's right. I don't think I could physically handle six days a week at my level. And officials discuss this amongst themselves and agree with the message, but on this topic, I'm betting we'll consider the messenger and thus we will proceed to disregard the message. That would be a mistake. Knight's right.

2) Knight commented on the NCAA-NBA one year rule requirement. The so-called, one-and-done rule. He believes players should be required to take 12 credit hours per semester before going to the pros. Not a bad suggestion, to have student-athletes at least give the appearance of being students.

Again, of course, due to the messenger, the message gets somehow mangled and lost. Perfect example, I'm listening to one of the local sports talk shows and up and coming ESPN basketball analyst Stephan Bardo roasted Knight for his comments about this subject. He opined that Knight didn't recruit the caliber of player (like Greg Oden and Kevin Durant) so he somehow shouldn't be concerned about the subject. Never mind that his program has to compete against others that do (that whole level playing field subject). If he had stopped there, he would have sounded ignorant enough for me, but most of his audience probably would not have been the wiser, but he further states that Knight has no standing commenting on coaches being responsible for kids going to class. And people wonder why I rail against the media so much!

This may have been one of the more ignorant statements about a subject, by a speaker who is being paid to be knowledgeable about said subject, as I have heard in quite some time. And of course, neither of the interviewers seemed willing to stop the impending train wreck.

Does Mr. Bardo not know that Knight (regardless of anything else you may hold against him) has one of the best reputations for having kids go to class and graduate in college basketball?
His comrades in arms should have at least tried to pull him out of it, maybe with the hand they weren't using for the group-jerk they must have been having. He-he-he we're bashing media-hater Bobby Knight again.

Congratulations Stephen Bardo, you'll probably go far in your industry, since you were willing to pick up a stick and publicly batter Bobby Knight. Next time, try to add some level of intelligence or understanding of the issues to your arguments. Thanks.


I felt the same way when I heard Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman interview Pete Rose, when Pete contradicted the Dowd Report and his prior comments by saying he bet on the Reds to win every night. Keith at least stepped in and offered that Pete was adding fuel to the fire so to speak, but it seems so obvious that Rose is saying whatever he feels will garner sympathy and gain acceptance back into baseball regardless of what the "evidence" shows.

Still I get the feeling when listening to garbage like this, that these guys revel in publicly teasing a dog if it would help their ratings or Q factor.

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR BRACKETS.