Clarion Content

This weekend provided the perfect demonstration of why schools from mid-major conferences should never sniff the college football national championship game until there is a playoff¹. People say all the time that the so called mid-major football schools like Boise State and TCU have no idea how tough it would be to play a real conference schedule.



This weekend was ample demonstration. The bottom dwellers in powerhouse football conferences, like the SEC and the Big 12, provide an unprecedented degrees of difficulty for schools used to beating up on the little sisters of the poor in conference. Last year while whining about missing out on a BCS bowl, TCU beat New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado State and UNLV en route to winning the Mountain West Conference.

Yesterday in their first season in the Big 12, TCU got beat by Big 12 doormat, Iowa State. Just to give you some perspective, Iowa State is 27 up and 40 down since 2007, and hasn't had a coach finish with a winning record at the school since Earl Bruce, who's tenure ended in 1978. Yet in big time football conferences, everybody is trying to improve every year, and Iowa State has been getting incrementally better under Coach Paul Rhodes.

Hey TCU, this is what big boy football looks like. And Boise State, you are an even bigger joke who would struggle to finish .500 in the PAC-12, let alone the SEC. So please, be quiet and enjoy the Poinsettia Bowl.

We also have a remarkable note from the least of the "big time" football conferences, the ACC. Duke football is 5-1 overall, 2-0 in conference. You want to talk perennial football doldrums?!? Duke hasn't been 5-1 since this year's freshmen were a mere one and two years-old, 1994, when they were still coached by Steve Spurrier. As Mel Allen would say, "Now how about that?"


Notes
¹Where if they can earn their way in with victories, more power to them.

Labels: college football, NCAA, sports

The SEC can always be counted on to top itself, that is to say, when you think that you have seen just how slimy it get can get, the SEC is happy to demonstrate it can go lower still. So in off-season where March saw four Auburn football players charged with first degree robbery, in an incident where students in an off-campus house were robbed at gunpoint, the University of Georgia is angling to beat that standard.

The Auburn robbers included the leading tackler on the national title team. UGA can trump that however, because this week they demonstrated that they like players who are criminals while they are still star high school recruits. Over at Auburn and Alabama, you have to wait until you get into school to become a felon, not at Georgia.

Seven Georgia players were the victims of locker-room thefts of iPods, iPhones and other small electronic devices. Whodunnit? Allegedly, three top Georgia football recruits who stole the items during an open house event at the Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall. Because the value of the property stolen did not exceed $1,500 the recruits in question were only charged with misdemeanor theft, clearly, leaving Alabama and Auburn free to argue that they recruit guys that are harder than that...

As ESPN SEC blogger Chris Low notes, this likely will hardlly even slow the recruiting of these kids in the scum filled pond that is SEC football, "Talent usually wins out, even when a kid has a troubled past." So that even after word of this incident broke, two of the three recruits involved were invited by Nick Saban and Alabama to attend their Spring football game.

Labels: college football, Ethically questionable, NCAA, sports, Sports Economics

This coach is in the title game for a second year in a row...

There was a strange dichotomy in the two NCAA Final Four games played last night. In game one, there were two gritty, mid-major teams that few expected to be there. In game two, there were a couple of storied programs with long but sordid histories. It made for a strange rooting dynamic, in game one we felt sad that one of these gallant underdogs had to lose. In game two, we felt perturbed one of those cheaters was going to win.

Who do you root for one when on one bench is a coach who has had to vacate both of his previous two Final Four appearances and on the other side is a coach who the NCAA has cited for multiple violations, including lack of institutional control? Blech.

The narrative was undermined and we predict the television ratings reflect it.

Labels: college basketball, Ethically questionable, NCAA, Predictions, television

The ink was hardly dry on the Clarion Content's last critical post about Auburn football, four of their players were charged with armed robbery and kicked off the team, before HBO was airing a scandalous documentary about the university.

HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" aired an episode that included four former Auburn football players saying they were paid during their time at the school. Does this shock anyone? Is their any meaning left in the phrase institutional control when it comes to the state of Alabama, home of the last two college football national champions?

Labels: college football, Ethically questionable, NCAA

VCU and Alabama, enough said. It is time for 128.

Labels: college basketball, NCAA, sports, Sports Economics

Very legitimate...

Well, well, well we can hardly believe what we are reading on ESPN.com this morning. Four players from Auburn's football team were arrested for five counts of first-degree robbery, one count of first-degree burglary -- both of which are felonies -- and one count of third-degree theft. Reportedly, three men entered a house off-campus, displayed a gun and robbed the residents.

Their vehicle was stopped by police, a pistol and stolen property were recovered, and the four players were taken into custody. They are being held on $511,000 bail. Three of them were part of Auburn's 2010 recruiting class. The fourth was their leading tackler in the national championship game last year. All four have been kicked off the team.

Read more here.

Labels: college football, Ethically questionable, NCAA

We ran across an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that cited a wonderful little piece of investigative journalism by The Sports Business Journal. Did you know, dear readers, that twenty-three of the college bowls are ostensibly non-profit foundations? Nonprofit organizations like those that operate the bowls are not allowed under the federal tax code to give excessive salaries or perks could be seen as using charitable funds to enrich private individuals.

Yet The Sports Business Journal found that:

the Outback Bowl paid Jim McVay $808,032
the Sugar Bowl paid Paul Hoolahan $645,386
the Sugar Bowl also paid Jeff Hundley $398,023
the Chick-fil-A Bowl paid Gary Stokan $504,444
the Chick-fil-A Bowl also paid David Epps $210,013
the Cotton Bowl paid Rick Baker $419,873
the Alamo Bowl paid Derrick Fox $419,045
the Fiesta Bowl paid John Junker $415,118
the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl paid Gary Cavalli $377,475
the Orange Bowl paid Eric Poms $357,722

These bowls are all ostensibly non-profit organizations!

And the Obama administration just agreed to extend all these guys tax breaks.

The societal train has jumped the tracks.

Labels: college football, Ethically questionable, NCAA, Sports Economics

The internet digs some stuff up, and there is no surer check on power than freedom of information. In this case, something we had not seen before surfaced on the internet (via Twitter) and made us feel compelled to admit we may have gotten it wrong.

The Clarion Content has long defended Latrell Spreewell when it came to the choking of Coach P.J. Carlesimo. There were three primary reasons for this, one legitimate, the other two emotional. First the reasonable one; one of our editors spent significant time in Newark while and shortly after P.J. was coaching at Seton Hall. His reputation as a dick was widespread in the community, especially in the local service industry. He was said to be impolite and a poor tipper. Word was he screamed and cursed at his players; and if he was a jerk to the servers, well it was believable.

The second reason is that same editor attended Indiana University during the Bobby Knight era. Our editor has always believed and continues to believe that the Neil Reed, "Coach Knight Choked Me" incident was a bunch of bullshit. All the video evidence suggests Knight hardly touched the kid, who both later transferred and picked the most self-serving moment to make his much delayed complaint.

Third, that same editor was and is a Knicks fan, who delighted in Spreewell's play on the court.

Reason number three is ridiculous. Reason number two is irrelevant.

What surfaced on the internet to change our mind about the incident in general was a photograph of Carlesimo's neck after the incident. Knight barely touched crybaby Neil Reed, but this photo of Carlesimo's neck tells a much different story, about a much different level of violence, a level of violence that is unsupportable in response to verbal abuse.

If the photo is not a fake, there is no justification for the level of violence Spreewell obviously used. We always thought it was nowhere near this malevolent.

Labels: college basketball, Ethically questionable, NBA, NCAA, sports

It has long been the Clarion Content's contention that America hates the whistleblower. It is one of the tragedies inherent in capitalism. The whistleblower is viewed as a downer, a party-pooper, somebody who refuses to get with the program.

We have another poignant, sad, story of a whistleblower who would not do what the program wanted her to do, specifically the State University of New York at Binghamton's basketball program wanted her to do. Change player's grades to make them eligible to compete. The New York Times reports that Sally Dear, an adjunct lecturer at the university, said the fallout of the scandal had deeply wounder her and continued to affect her. She has stated publicly that she received so much pressure to change her grading policy for basketball players that it bordered on harassment.

As the scandal has enveloped the university how has it played out?

The university paid a $1.2 million settlement to former basketball coach Kevin Broadus to resign. Broadus will receive $819,115 from the Binghamton athletic department and $380,884 from the general fund of the State University of New York. The payment exceeds the value of Broadus’s remaining contract and requires him to withdraw the racial discrimination lawsuit he filed in March and to relinquish his right to any other claims against the university.

Professor Dear? No million dollar payments to her for calling the basketball program on its cheating. Instead, she said in a recent telephone interview with the NY Times that she has not been assigned to teach classes next semester. Punished.

During Coach Broadus's brief tenure six players were dismissed from the team, including one who was busted selling crack. One player was allowed in consecutive semester's to take sixteen and then twelve credits of Physical Education, when the maximum in the second semester should have been two credits. The scandal forced the university's Provost to step down.

How does Professor Dear feel about all of this mess? She told the NY Times, "This is why people don’t blow the whistle. I understand. In my heart and in my gut and every fiber of my being I understand why people don’t blow the whistle, why people are afraid to tell the truth. My life has been a living hell since all this took place."

Labels: college basketball, corruption, Ethically questionable, NCAA

Coach Cal heads out on the recruiting trail

They are what we thought they were, as a famous football coach once intoned about an opponent. And the same is true of Kentucky basketball, they are what we thought they were. They are mercenaries to the core, Calipari and his crew of very likely already highly paid players. The University of Kentucky, a program with a long history of cheating and morally repugnant behavior once again showed its true colors yesterday.

Five Kentucky undergrads declared for the NBA draft, including four freshman. Articles covering the story never once mention the word degree. As if there was no expectation (correct) that any of these players were ever enrolled at the university with the intention of earning a degree. These were highly paid university employees unpaid serfs who brought the athletic department (but likely not the library) tons of money. Worse, not only is the institution degraded, which is hard to do in a place as unseemly as Kentucky, but the kids themselves were not well-served.

John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins will likely be high NBA draft picks. Patrick Patterson will probably be a tail end of the first round kid. But freshman guard Eric Bledsoe and freshman center Daniel Orton, pu-leeze? Bledsoe averaged 11.3 points a game, when defenses keyed so much on his back court mate that they barely guarded him. Orton hit for a token 3.4 points and 3.3 rebounds in the SEC!?! Coach Cal advised these kids to turn pro? Why? Does he have better one and dones coming and so that he is ready to send them on to the NBDL? Surely, it is not because they have done all the developing they can do. But at Kentucky the attitude is, who cares? Academics is a farce, the kids get used, the boosters get great seats and have a good time. All is well.

They are who we thought they were. Sleep tight Coach Cal, you're a real good guy.

Labels: college basketball, Ethically questionable, NCAA

Although the Clarion Content is tepidly in favor of expanding the NCAA basketball tournament, the best quote we have heard about whether or not to expand was actually from a voice opposed to expansion.

"Isn't this whole thing a window into society? We've diminished so many other things. We've diminished test scores. We've diminished admission policies. We diminish so much for reasons that are not accentuating excellence and performance."---Davidson Head Coach, Bob McKillop

Wonderful insight, coach. Yes, this thing is a window into society. It is another reason the Clarion Content has been toying with a theory we like to call, "Is America the new Soviets?" An equally fascinating trend, that is occurring at the same time as the one Coach McKillop pointed out, this faux-inflation that is really devaluing, is the belittling of second place: win or be considered a failure. Neither of these trends is healthy for American society. Sports is but the place where they are most evident. It is symbolic of a cultural erosion that is weakening American society.

Labels: college basketball, Ethically questionable, NCAA, sports, Sports Economics

Need one more reason to root for Duke football? As a team the football squad has maintained a collective 3.0+ Grade Point Average in each of the last three semesters consecutively. This is not an Auburn situation where the kids are getting inflated grades from classes they don't attend. There are no fluff Parks and Recreation Management majors offered at Duke, unlike some large state institutions.

Count the Clarion Content in as a supporter.

Labels: college football, NCAA, sports

The NCAA denied the final appeal of former Indiana University and Oklahoma University basketball coach, Kelvin Scam-scum, err, Sampson. The sleazy ex-college coach was hit with five years of personal penalties for repeating at Indiana recruiting violations he had been previously punished for at Oklahoma. Sampson also lied to investigators about his misdeeds according the NCAA. Sampson is banned from coaching in the college ranks until at least 2013. Unfortunately, Sampson has slithered off to the NBA working on the coaching staff of the lowly Milwaukee Bucks.

Read more here.

Labels: college basketball, Ethically questionable, NBA, NCAA, sports

Lacrosse Nation Final Set...

The Cornell Big Red..................vs.................The Syracuse Orange

The Clarion Content admittedly has no love loss for the Duke Men's Lacrosse program. We root against the University of Virgina's team on more of a sports level. So, as far as we were concerned from the editorial desk here in Durham, we could not have been more pleased with the Men's lacrosse national semifinals last week.

The New York Times covering the story said that Syracuse, "crushed" Duke. But the story in their eyes was Cornell's Big Red, a team they said compared to a "a family station wagon" next to the Virginia Cavaliers, "sleek and powerful sports car." However, as it turned out "Cornell, a team noted for its conservative play and methodical pace, raced out of the gate and did not stop until it had stunned and humiliated the high-flying Cavaliers, 15-6."

As the Times had it,

"The two teams from upstate New York solidified the region’s reputation as the sport’s stronghold. With Le Moyne in the Division II final, facing C.W. Post; with Cortland in the Division III final, against Gettysburg; and with Onondaga Community College having already won the junior college title, the land of Genesee beer, Wegmans supermarkets and the Finger Lakes could also have all four men’s major lacrosse national titles."

Read the whole story here. We recommend it!

Labels: NCAA, sports

What happened to Jay Bilas? Was it just a year or two ago that the Clarion Content was in love with his professorial style? Musing about his future political career?

How did he become so annoying so fast?

We know we are not alone because we have had or heard more than two sports bar conversations making the same complaint. It might have something to do with the raising of his profile. After all three to five years ago he was a minor deity in the ESPN pantheon of sports analysts, far off on the edge of the page of the family tree. This weekend for the NCAA tournament he is paired with Dick Enberg, whose resume is longer than the Old Testament (which is about the era his career started.)

The Clarion Content is not sure if the fame is what is causing it, but Bilas's tone has become pedantic and lecturing. He is like listening to the atrocious Tim McCarver and Joe Buck. Bilas is frequently spouting cliches in too slow a voice with a tone that says 'I am bringing you revelation,' "You can't foul a jump shooter." Wow, Jay, you got any more new ones?

Labels: NCAA, sports, television

Point guard Johnny Flynn of Syracuse positively posterizes Mike Rosario of Rutgers.

First a sweet crossover out past the three point line, then a strong one-handed throwdown. Yowzer.


For the poster freeze-frame at 54 seconds...

Labels: college basketball, NCAA, sports

As the Clarion Content watched the Big 12's Oklahoma go down to defeat last night against Florida, we couldn't help but be reminded of this year's skewed Heisman trophy balloting. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow looked as good or better as Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford last night. The Clarion Content did not have a strong preference for one or the other of them as the Heisman winner. (We were more disappointed that Graham Harrell and Michael Crabtree weren't even invited to New York as finalists.)

However, last night's more or less equal performances from the two top vote getters in the Heisman race highlighted just how illegitimate that voting was. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow received the most first place votes, 750+. We felt it fair to vote Bradford, Tebow, Colt McCoy of Texas or Graham Harrell of Texas Tech number one. What was ridiculous was that Tebow left off of 154 ballots, almost all of the from them southwest region. What you didn't think Tebow was even in the top three best players in the country? Really? Or was it (more likely) that you were just trying to fix the outcome for your favorite son? Didn't work last night! Florida handled the Oklahoma offense, which had been lighting up the scoreboard on the Big 12's little sisters of the poor defenses. Last night Bradford & co. ran into a buzz saw. 14 points? What happened to 60 a game?

Well, at least the rest of the conference held up there end of the bargain, right? What's that you say, Texas barely got by Big 10 runner-up Ohio State with help of a very questionable final drive spot? Oklahoma State got thumped by the 3rd place PAC-10 team? And the conference finished with only the 6th best record of BCS conferences in bowl games?

Yeah, Big 12 honks, you may have fixed the Heisman voting, but you got exposed on the field. Say what's Jason White up to these days anyway? Whatever it is, we see Sam Bradford working along side of him soon.

Making Heisman voters ballots public would help solve this problem.

Labels: college football, Ethically questionable, NCAA, sports

Good thing the BCS isn't a farcical joke. It sure would be annoying if college football fans had to sit through a season of fierce and exciting regular season battles only to watch it end in exhibition games and a beauty pageant vote. Thank goodness we get to decide on the field whether one loss USC, one loss Florida, one loss Oklahoma, one loss Texas or undefeated Utah is the better team, cause imagine how illegitimate it would be if voters just had to guess who was better without the teams actually playing. That would suck...oh wait.

Two further BCS thoughts.

One is a significant and entrenched power that supports keeping the current bowl system the way it is, gambling. The elephant in the room that the NCAA would never speak of has huge incentives to keep the current system. Where else are the books and Vegas gonna get this kind of huge action during the dull days of December, regular season basketball? Hockey? Don't kid yourselves, the fact that Vegas, and in rest of the country, the mob get millions of dollars in action bet on craptastic games like a Wake Forest-Navy rematch in the Eagle Bank Bowl is one of the big reasons business as usual hasn't changed. These folks have powerful lobbyists and are one of the constituencies that even president-elect Obama will have trouble overcoming to create a college football playoff. (If you watch these games, you know there are quite a few that don't sell out. It is not the money they're making off of ticket sales that keeps the bowls going.)

Two is how much crummier have the television options for the bowl games gotten. Used to be five, six bowls a day on New Year's Day, so if one game was awful or a blowout at least there were other places to turn for college football. Not so anymore. As greed has ruled the roost, the games have been spread out over more and more days, so when you get a stinker of a Rose Bowl, like this year, where the entire second half was garbage time watching USC, who had won the second quarter alone 24-0, trying to run out the clock, there was nowhere to turn. No other college football game was on!!! Same thing with a somnambulant Orange Bowl, while Virginia Tech and Cincinnati played a dullsville 10-7 first half, in the good old days there would have been another game to surf to, but not anymore. So guess what BCS honks? Here at the Clarion Content offices we surfed away from your boring exhibition game, and we never came back.

Labels: college football, NCAA, sports

bonus points if you can identify this helmet

Here at the Clarion Content we don't understand why they had Oklahoma play Oklahoma State on Saturday. Couldn't they just have gotten a few computers and a bunch of experts together and voted on who was better? After all according to the BCS (read: BS) isn't that the better way to decide which team is superior?

We have no love loss for Texas. Over the years we have come around to a point of view which would argue that college football is a useless joke. There is no reason to watch save for two things, rooting for a school one has personal loyalty to, and scouting who is going to be good in the NFL. (A league where the champion is decided on the field.)

That said, we are pulling for Missouri in the Big 12 championship game (strongly) and Florida in the SEC championship game (tepidly.) We are hoping for the maximum amount of chaos to expose the system for the fraud it is. Missouri and Florida victories would leave 8 teams with a legitimate claim to a spot in the national championship game.

in no particular order
1 loss Florida
1 loss USC
1 loss Texas Tech
1 loss Texas
1 loss Alabama
1 loss Penn State
undefeated Utah
undefeated Boise State

Excellent. In that scenario the voters and 'puters definitely take Florida and then it is the proverbial coin toss between Texas and USC. Incidentally, a coin toss seems an equally, or perhaps even more fair method to adjudicate things than the status quo. Rocheambeau anyone?

One other college football note, how's this for the difference between the Texas Tech Red Raiders two best players. Superb wideout Michael Crabtree sprained his ankle in the first quarter and returned to the sidelines of Tech's game against Baylor in his street clothes to watch. Heisman Trophy candidate, quarterback Graham Harrell, broke his left hand in nine places in the second quarter, at halftime he had the training staff "tape it up" and he returned to lead the second half comeback victory over the Baylor Bears. The next day Harrell had four hours of surgery and nine plates inserted in his hand. Crabtree took a couple of Tylenol (allegedly.)

Labels: college football, NCAA, sports

Oregon State University is playing the University of Oregon today for the right to compete in this year's Rose Bowl against the Big Ten champion, Penn State. It is a game that has traditionally been called "The Civil War." Oregon State has played in the Rose Bowl twice since Pearl Harbor, once in 1965 and once in 1942. The 1942 game was the only Rose Bowl ever held outside of California. It was played in Durham, NC. Despite the obvious tie-in there to the Clarion Content, it was not that portion of the story that caught our attention.

The 1942 Rose Bowl was played in Durham in part because of war-related concerns about holding the game in California. The Japanese government had declared war on the United States only months earlier. An article in the Los Angeles Times we spotted earlier this month told a tragically fascinating story about that 1942 Oregon State Rose Bowl team. Jack Yoshihara, a Japanese American was a sophomore reserve on Oregon State's football team, as well as a wrestler. According the story the LA Times recounts, one drizzly day during practice for the 1942 Rose Bowl, two FBI men in overcoats showed up at the Beavers practice field. They spoke with the coach and escorted Jack Yoshihara from the field.

Oregon State went on to upset Duke in the '42 Rose Bowl. Many of the players on both teams went on to serve in the war, Jack Yoshihara was denied the right to enlist in the Army and was sent to the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho. Oregon State awarded Yoshihara a Rose Bowl ring in 1985 and an honary degree last June. Yoshihara who lives in Edmonds, Washington after retiring from the refrigeration business he ran in Portland, Oregon is still a loyal Beavers supporter and fan. For years, he attended all their home games. According to the LA Times whatever the outcome of "The Civil War" this year, health concerns will prevent Yoshihara from attending the Rose Bowl. In 1942 Japanese-Americans were not permitted to travel more 35 miles from home, so he listed to that game on the radio, while German-American teammates were allowed to participate. He never played organized football again.

Amazingly, Jack Yoshihara's is not the only strange but true story from the 1942 Rose Bowl. The LA Times reports that, "During the Battle of the Bulge, Stan Czech, a tackle for that Beavers team, was sharing food and coffee with another soldier in a foxhole. After a few minutes of conversation, he realized it was Wallace Wade, the Duke coach. Charlie Haynes, Duke's backup quarterback, and Frank Parker, an Oregon State tackle, became platoon leaders in different companies. During the Arno Valley campaign in Italy, Parker came across a severely wounded Haynes and carried him to a farmhouse, where medics saved his life."

A reminder to all of us basking in the glow of Thanksgiving to be truly grateful. It is only a game, but the Clarion Content will be rooting for the Beavers from Oregon State to win and hopefully shine an even brighter light on Jack Yoshihara's story.

Labels: college football, Ethically questionable, NCAA, sports