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ASU hopes rest on the deserter in the desert

December 23, 2011 By 1 Comment
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Think there are enough bowls? The watered-down college football postseason is rife with mediocrity, as a parade of mismatched six-win teams from schools whose athletic departments can't give tickets away are awarded the privilege of playing one last game on a national stage to remind us why their seasons should have ended a month ago. The pretender du jour was the Arizona State Sun Devils, whose 6-6 regular-season record and 4-5 showing in the Pac-12 got head coach Dennis Erickson whacked. Too bad for him he had to stay on long enough to watch his team get dismantled by Boise State 56-24 in Thursday night's MAACO Bowl Las Vegas. Having finally been put out of its misery by a superior Bronco team, Arizona State will now attempt to get its football program back on solid footing under the leadership of Todd Graham, a man whose track record indicates he uses a very loose interpretation … [Read more...]

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Paterno failed Penn State, had to go

November 9, 2011 By 1 Comment
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In a year when college football scandals have made headlines with alarming regularity, the human tragedy that has enveloped the program at Penn State is the mother of them all. Joe Paterno's 46-year tenure as the head coach of the Nittany Lions is over. He issued a statement Wednesday saying he intends to retire at the end of the season, the culmination of a sordid sex scandal involving longtime defensive coordinator and assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky, who played for Penn State in the early 1960s and returned as a coach from 1969 until his retirement in 1999, was arrested Saturday and charged with sexually abusing eight boys across a 15-year period. There are 40 counts of felony sex abuse in the indictment against Sandusky, who maintains his innocence. Paterno, 84, is the winningest coach in college football history and has long been viewed as an iconic figure in the … [Read more...]

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Longhorns short-circuit Pac-12 expansion

September 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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There's a touch of irony in the news Tuesday that four schools from the Big 12 athletic conference will not be joining the Pac-12 any time soon. The deal killer was the University of Texas, which said it wouldn't be open to sharing revenues from its new television channel The Longhorn Network with the other members of the Pac-12. Texas and Oklahoma—which currently fields the top-ranked college football team in the nation—were among the schools being eyed by the conference. It was the Big 12 that allowed Texas to create the channel in the first place to keep the university in the conference. Now, by virtue of its rejection of the Pac-12's revenue-sharing policy, Texas will stay in the Big 12—at least for now. The future of the Big 12 has been in question since Colorado and Nebraska bolted the conference last year, cutting the number of schools to 10. Had the Pac-12 been … [Read more...]

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Rogue or conduit, Shapiro had too much rope

August 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
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As the NCAA continues its investigation of the University of Miami, the evidence continues to suggest disgraced booster Nevin Shapiro was deeply entangled in the inner workings of the school's athletic department. In an unrelated story examining former Arkansas football coach Houston Nutt’s use of his university-issued cell phone, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette—using information gathered through the Freedom of Information Act—revealed Shapiro spoke with Nutt in December 2006 about the vacant Miami head coaching position, even though Shapiro was not a member of UM's search committee. Shapiro, 42, is serving a 20-year prison sentence in New Jersey for running a $930 million Ponzi scheme. He recently told Yahoo! Sports he gave money, gifts and other benefits to at least 72 UM  athletes from 2002 to 2010, including 12 current members of the football team. Nutt called Shapiro … [Read more...]

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NCAA probe brings dark cloud over Miami

August 18, 2011 By 4 Comments
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Nevin Shapiro is a convicted cheat who took other people's money and used it to portray a lavish lifestyle unbefitting of his diminutive stature as a person (he's 5-feet-5) and human being. Along the way he apparently entranced a coterie of awestruck student-athletes whose school now stands on the precipice of being hit with some of the harshest sanctions an athletic program can endure. Shapiro, 42, is serving a 20-year prison sentence in New Jersey for running a $930 million Ponzi scheme. In an extensive interview with Yahoo! Sports, he claimed he gave money, gifts and other benefits including prostitutes, cars and yachting excursions to at least 72 University of Miami athletes from 2002 to 2010, including 12 current members (10 potential starters) of the football team. UM now finds itself squarely in the scope of the NCAA, which acknowledged it's been investigating the … [Read more...]

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Golden age of football coming to The U

July 21, 2011 By 1 Comment
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Howard Schnellenberger put the University of Miami football program back on the map in the early 1980s by doing something so basic it was genius. He made sure the best recruits in South Florida stayed home. It didn't hurt that Schnellenberger had years of football cred having coached alongside legends like Paul "Bear" Bryant and Don Shula and owning a national championship and two Super Bowl rings. It also wasn't a bad idea to leave a calling card at a recruit's home — in Schnellenberger's case it was his trademark pipe, of which he needed several. Once Butch Davis left in 2000 to return to the NFL, Miami's local recruiting success began to tail off. Randy Shannon's teams the past four years failed to win the ACC or go to a BCS bowl and he was let go after the 2010 season. As it turns out, Shannon wasn't the recruiting force in South Florida one would have expected. After all … [Read more...]

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Many victims in OSU’s fall from gridiron grace

July 15, 2011 By 1 Comment
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One would like to believe the legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes would have been appalled by the way Jim Tressel ran his old program. The deceit and hypocrisy Tressel nurtured during his reign apparently went on for years while school officials were either left in the dark or looked the other way. Now the Buckeyes face some of the harshest NCAA sanctions imaginable. And if all that's not bad enough, there's the unfortunate sidebar about Kirk Herbstreit, one of the most identifiable OSU alumni, who had to leave the state after years of harassment by some of the program's most over-the-top loyalists. First Tressel. We learned Friday that in an evaluation of his job performance dating back as far as 2005-06, he was told by then-athletic director Andy Geiger he rated "unacceptable" for how he was self-reporting NCAA violations. Notice the timeline here. This is five … [Read more...]

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USC stripped of ’05 BCS title; who’s next?

June 7, 2011 By 2 Comments
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Now that the BCS has obliterated USC's 2004-05 season as a result of a host of NCAA violations, most notably star running back Reggis Bush receiving improper extra benefits, what school will be next to incur the governing body's wrath? ESPN.com columnist Mark Kreidler has a column out today that says USC's fall from grace may just be the first in a line of rather significant college football programs that includes Oklahoma, Auburn and, last but definitely not least, Ohio State and its still-unfolding morass of illegalities and lies. … [Read more...]

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Alberts ‘leading candidate’ for Nebraska Omaha AD job

April 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

The must-read college football blog The Wiz of Odds is carrying a report that broadcaster Trev Alberts is one of four finalists for the athletic director's position at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Alberts, 38, is scheduled to be on the campus today and Wednesday for interviews and meetings, according to the Omaha World-Herald, which is now pegging the former Nebraska All-American as a leading candidate. Fired by ESPN in 2005 for refusing to report to work — Alberts claimed at the time he felt he was being "marginalized" by the network — he went on to become a commentator for CSTV and was a color analyst for CBS telecasts of Southeastern Conference games and the NFL on Westwood One. Alberts began his TV career with CNN. … [Read more...]

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Polk award for Seattle Times UW expose

February 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Journalists Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry of The Seattle Times are this year's recipients of the George Polk Award for Sports Reporting for their four-part series "Victory and Ruins," which chronicled what the newspaper called "a disturbing level of criminal conduct and hooliganism" by members of the University of Washington Huskies football team that won the 2001 Rose Bowl. According to the report published last year, at least a dozen members of the 2000 UW team were arrested that season or charged with a crime that carried possible jail time. At least a dozen others were in trouble with the law in other seasons. The series was based on documents that were largely unavailable eight years ago when coach Rick Neuheisel's team went 11-1 and finished the season ranked No. 3. Armstrong and Perry wrote Neuheisel and athletic director Barbara Hedges "accepted most of {the behavior}, … [Read more...]

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