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About LinkBacksThanks brotha! Had myself more than my share of beers, a whisky and a cigar thusfar. Screw taxes today, I'm on a drunken tear!
Thanks brotha! Had myself more than my share of beers, a whisky and a cigar thusfar. Screw taxes today, I'm on a drunken tear!
Winston Churchill:
"Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak."
"If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain."
I'm drowning in a pool of my own tears. And Guinness.
LMAO! I bet no one is ripping them now, LOL.Originally Posted by BearStuff
Drown your pain with one more on me.
I'm eagerly awaiting the Kentucky/UConn game tonight. That is going to be sweet, especially if the 'Cats win.
How can a boy from the Great State of Tennessee cheer for a team from Kentucky? That would be like a Badger fans pulling for Iowa.
Maybe these two should forfeit and the crown should go to the winner of VCU vs Butler.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketb...k_uconn_040111
Final Four tarnished by new UK, UConn probes
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports Apr 1, 9:13 pm EDT
HOUSTON – It’s Final Four Saturday and to ring in the action there are two new media investigations into NCAA violations, this time at Kentucky and Connecticut, one half of the Bond, Schoeneck and King subregional here.
Jim Calhoun's program could find itself in hot water again if the NCAA looks into new allegations.
(Mark Humphrey/AP)
The New York Times said that the NCAA could potentially reopen the UConn major infractions case involving one-time recruit Nate Miles after Miles told the paper that Huskies coach Jim Calhoun “knew” of illegal payments from a booster, that he twice received improper help on standardized tests and characterized a number of Calhoun’s statements to the NCAA as “lies”.
Meanwhile, FoxSports.com is reporting a former Kentucky and Memphis basketball staffer, Bilal Bately, made illegal phone calls to recruits, including former Wildcat DeMarcus Cousins. In his job, Bately was not permitted to call recruits. He left the program in 2009.
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While neither scandal is overwhelming in nature, together they represent more dings to an already banged up sport. The timing of their release serves as the latest drumbeat that college athletics are at a breaking point.
Already there are major allegations against the football programs of Auburn, Ohio State and Oregon, plus details of illegal activity and rampant fraud involving the BCS’s Fiesta Bowl. There was also this week’s report by ESPN that former LSU All-American Patrick Peterson was shopped as a high school recruit, which follows last fall’s case of Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton being shopped as a recruit. And it turns out Ohio State head football coach Jim Tressel knowingly used ineligible players for an entire season.
Now it’s more mud for UConn, which was already cited for eight major violations involving Miles, and more for Calhoun, who already must serve a three-game suspension next season for his actions. The program previously vacated its 1996 NCAA tournament for gifts from an agent to players.
And it’s more questions for a program run by UK coach John Calipari, who had his two previous trips to the Final Four (1996 at Massachusetts, 2008 at Memphis) vacated due to violations.
This is, in many ways, supposed to be the crowning weekend of college sports – its glamorous and popular men’s basketball tournament roaring to a conclusion. And with the inclusion of two underdog programs – Butler and VCU – there was a sense that a unique feel-good story could emerge.
Instead it’s more of the same – allegations and statements and denials and justifications. Everyone’s once again up in arms, trying to find a silver lining in another wave of dark clouds.
This is almost as bad as the BCS title game, which featured two schools now under investigation in a bowl run by a guy who may be headed for prison.
Yes, the quaint feeling of amateur athletics.
If you’re inclined, perhaps you watch Butler and VCU play and then turn off the television. The question is whether anyone in college athletics actually cares. There is little indication they do.
Cheating isn’t new; it just seems the curtain is being peeled back more often. This has always been an exercise in make-believe – everyone looking the other way and pretending its clean and knowing CBS will scrub its broadcasts of any negative talk. Jim Nantz, who will again call the Final Four on Saturday, is so professional he used to wear a 2004 UConn NCAA championship ring that the program presented him.
New NCAA president Mark Emmert has paid lip service to scrubbing up his sports. He’s thrown out some lines about the need to do better but there’s been no interest in any real path to improvement.
John Calipari is making his third trip to the Final Four. His previous two were vacated.
(Eric Gay/AP)
He isn’t going law and order and expanding the overworked and understaffed NCAA enforcement group. He isn’t thinking big picture and discussing the need more control over things by the central office. He isn’t being bold and plotting a course for real reform of the amateurism rules that are outdated, unfair and simply aren’t being followed.
And he’s certainly showed no willingness to address the growing gap between the millions that coaches and ADs bask in and the zero dollars the players are paid.
Just this week the Fiesta Bowl released a scathing and stunning report detailing illegal campaign donations, rampant graft and the doling out of gifts, cruises and golf to athletic directors and conference officials in an effort to curry favor. The behavior on all sides is indefensible.
Emmert was so troubled by it that he said he didn’t bother to actually read the entire report – “I didn’t have that much time.” Ah, priorities.
College athletics is a gravy train for the suits and they’re quite content to fiddle along as it burns. Emmert arrogantly wouldn’t tell PBS this week how much he is being paid – even thought the figure will eventually be revealed on federal tax forms.
There is no one in charge right now. There is no one daring to question why they keep trying to jam the square peg of “amateurism” into the round hole of “capitalism.”
Everyone wants to stick their head in the sand and hope everything returns to Mayberry and scandal after scandal after John Junker strip joint bill just disappears.
“One could argue right now there are some serious assaults on [the] collegiate model,” Emmert said. “And the collegiate model requires all of us in the NCAA office, in higher education, everyone who is inside intercollegiate athletics, it requires that we work extremely hard to protect and defend that model.”
Or just keep pretending.
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. He is the co-author of the new book "Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series." Follow him on Twitter. Send Dan a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
Updated Apr 1, 9:13 pm EDT
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Paul, let me explain how this all happened. Back in 1992, I watched the Kentucky/Duke Elite Eight game. I will never forget the shot that Christian Laettner made at the buzzer to cost Kentucky a chance at playing Indiana in the first national semifinal game. That was my very first experience with watching Kentucky basketball. For once in their entire history, they were the underdogs, having scratched back from NCAA violations in the 1988-1989 season and the subsequent loss of two years of postseason play. Rick Pitino built Kentucky back up into the program it was when Adolph Rupp was there within a matter of three years. Duke, meanwhile, had been a national powerhouse since 1986, when Johnny Dawkins led the Blue Devils to the NCAA Championship Game against Louisville, a game that Louisville won. In 1993, Kentucky made it back to the Final Four for the first time since 1984 on the back of G Jamal Mashburn, but lost to the Fab Five Michigan team that would go on to have their 1992 and 1993 Final Four appearances vacated due to NCAA violations. I pulled for Kentucky to win in a sort of non-chalant fashion.
However, when I really became a fan of Kentucky was in 1996. Tennessee did well to win 10 games a season back then, and the AD at UT at the time, Doug Dickey, who was the former head football coach for the Vols back in the 1960s, was so far up the football program's ass that he didn't care to go out and get a good basketball coach until he hired Jerry Green away from Oregon in 1998. Meanwhile, Kentucky had arguably one of the most talented teams in the history of college basketball playing, and Rick Pitino pushed all the right buttons. His only losses of the season came in the pre-conference schedule against John Calipari's UMass Minutemen and in the SEC Tournament Championship Game against another Final Four team in Mississippi State. From the time of the SEC Tournament on, Kentucky steamrolled through the NCAA Tournament, eventually winning their sixth NCAA Championship over Syracuse in a close game. That championship game gave Kentucky sole possession of second place on the all-time list of most NCAA Championships won behind only UCLA, who were only success during the John Wooden year for any stretch of time. (I might also add that UCLA has not won as consistently over the many decades of competitive basketball as Kentucky has, and that had it not been for the years 1964-1975, when John Wooden led them to 10 NCAA Championships and 11 Final Fours, the program would have little to no notoriety. Kentucky national championships have ranged in years from 1934 through 1998 if one counts an eighth title that they won in that first season mentioned when they were awarded the Helms National Championship Trophy.) That was when I feel in love with Kentucky basketball. That love for the program only grew in 1997 and 1998 when the Wildcats made subsequent trips to the Final Four, both years making it to the NCAA Championship Game, including the NCAA Championship win 1998 in Tubby Smith's first season in Lexington.
Don't get me wrong. I still root on for the Vols whenever they play. It's just that the program isn't committed to winning on a consistent basis, and hasn't been since the Ray Mears era, which ended with the Ernie Grunfeld/Bernard King teams of the late '70s. Tennessee has won 9 SEC regular season championships and 4 conference tournaments, but they have never appeared in a single Final Four, not once. In-state rival Memphis has appeared in three Final Fours, with two of those being appearances in the NCAA Championship Game (1973, when Bill Walton raped them for something like 44 points, and in 2008, when the Tigers choked at the free throw line against Kansas when they were clearly the better team and should have beaten the Jayhawks. Their other Final Four was in 1985, when 8th seeded Villanova shocked Georgetown in the NCAA Championship Game), and prior to 2009, UT had never even made it past the Sweet 16. Kentucky, on the other hand, is always competitive, and this recent 13 year stretch that the school went without a Final Four appearance was the longest in the program's storied history.
In all, Kentucky has appeared in 14 Final Fours, won 7 NCAA Championships, and is the winningest program in college basketball history in terms of both total victories (2,052) and winning percentage (.760). The Wildcats have just brought in their third consecutive number one recruiting class, and they are expected to return several key members of this year's squad to play next year with the this crop of "diaper dandies" Calipari is bringing in.
As far as the NCAA probe into the phone calls that employee on Calipari's Memphis and Kentucky staffs is concerned, as long as Calipari did not lie or tells the truth about what he knows, I see no reason to believe that the NCAA will levy major sanctions on the basketball program. The article says that he left the program in 2009, and I have to believe that he was probably forced out by Calipari if he left before SEC play began.
But anyway, that is my story of how I fell in love with Kentucky basketball. My relatives on my mother's side of the family are all from North Carolina, and they think that I should cheer for the Tar Heels. My great-uncle down in Cleveland, TN, even gave me hell because I was not going to cheer for North Carolina to defeat Kentucky in the Elite Eight. Fat chance of that ever happening!
Last edited by Dagan81; 04-03-2011 at 05:21 AM.
Ah hell, VCU's cinderella season comes to an end. Sorry JD I was really pulling for them to make the final. UConn vs Butler in the final.
It was heartbreaking to see Kentucky lose to f*cking UConn. There are four universities in the nation I dislike, and UConn is one of them. They are as follows:
1) Florida, because they have ruined so many of Tennessee's seasons even back during the Phillip Fulmer years when the Vols were consistently ranked in the Top 10 and competing for SEC and National Championships. Tennessee used to own the Gators until Steve Spurrier, a Tennessee native, arrived from Duke University as the head coach at Florida. What he did was turn the program into a national juggarnaut, winning or sharing 6 SEC Championships and a national title in 1996. Peyton Manning used to physically get ill every year when he would suit up to play Florida, for he was 0-4 against the Gators in his collegiate career at Tennessee. While Tennessee did beat Spurrier in 1990, 1992, 1998 (the year Tennessee won the first BCS National Championship Game), and 2001, they lost to them in 1991 in a controversial game in which Ron Zook, a former UT assistant under then-head coach Johnny Majors, delivered plays from the playbook to Spurrier and it led to Spurrier's first win over the Vols, as well as in the 1993-1997, 1999, and 2000, in which all but the 1994, 1995 and 1997 affairs were determined by seven points or less. At least since 2006, UT has owned them at men's basketball save for this season, but Florida has even appeared in 4 Final Fours over the past 17 season and have won 2 NCAA Championships, while the Vols are poised to receive some sort of punishment by the NCAA for illegal activities by former head coach Bruce Pearl.
Lastly, Florida is in the midst of a run of six consecutive wins against UT in football, which, like the men's basketball program, is under NCAA investigations for illegal activities under former head coach and total son of a bitch Lane Kiffin.
2) Alabama, because they are Tennessee's traditional rival in football. In the history of the Southeastern Conference, no two teams have won more games than Alabama and Tennessee, and they combine for 42 conference titles if one counts the two programs' being members of the Southern Conference back in the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s (Alabama with 26, Tennessee with 16). Alabama is the all-time leader in national championships with 13, while the Vols have won or shared 6 national titles. It is also important to note that from 1971 through 1981, the Crimson Tide won 11 straight meetings against the Vols, while going 8-1 against UT between 1986 and 1994. The Tide currently are in the midst of a four game winning streak against Tennessee.
3) Michigan, because from 1987-1997, the Wolverines defeated Ohio State in football nine times in eleven seasons. The Michigan/Ohio State rivalry goes back to end of the 19th Century, and the Wolverines won the first 19 meetings against OSU before the Buckeyes defeated Michigan in 1919, the year Ohio State won its first Big Ten Championship. Michigan traditionally had its way with OSU until Woody Hayes was hired as head coach. Hayes finished his career 15-11-2 against the Wolverines. The rivalry turned a bit one sided during the 1950s and most of the 1960s in Ohio State's favor, until the university hired a little known head coach from Miami University in Ohio by the name of Glenn "Bo" Schembechler, who turned the rivalry and the race for the Big Ten championship into a two team race for the better part of 18 seasons, including from 1969-1977, when the winner of "The Game" earned the Big Ten's automatic berth to play in the Rose Bowl. From 1976-1997, Michigan largely dominated Ohio State, particularly in the years that were mentioned above. Since the firing of former Ohio State coach John Cooper (who is an alumnus at my old high school) and the hiring of Jim Tressel, Ohio State has dominated the rivalry in a fashion that the Buckeyes have never done so before, even under the great Woody Hayes. Currently, the rivalry has hit a lull with Michigan struggling to field competitive teams, while Ohio State is under NCAA investigation because Jim Tressel failed to report to the university what he knew about the selling of personal memorabilia by five OSU players as well as lying about those players' violations to the NCAA.
...and lastly...
4) Connecticut, because their women's basketball program is the only program in the history of women's college basketball to completely dominate the Tennessee Lady Vols in the NCAA Tournament. With an NCAA Championship this season, the Lady Huskies will win a record-tying 8th NCAA title, thus sharing the record held by the Lady Vols. Geno Auriemma, UConn women's basketball, also infuriated UT women's basketball coach Pat Summitt so much that she now refuses to play his team during the regular season. Now, what was once the greatest rivalry in all of women's college basketball can only commence in the NCAA Tournament because of this decision.
Connecticut men's basketball is not a program that I have disliked for very long, only in the wake of their recent NCAA violations probe into players receiving improper benefits and head coach Jim Calhoun lying about what he knows. Had Kentucky, who has never beaten UConn before in men's basketball, lost to any other program other then the Huskies, I might not have minded as much. As it sets, Kentucky might have lost to a team who cheated to get some of its players. Ultimately, if the NCAA rules that UConn did, in fact, cheat, and Jim Calhoun turns out to have lied, Calhoun might not only lose his job, but the entire run to the Final Four by the team will be wiped out of the record books, and Kentucky will have incurred a wasted loss to a team that never should have beaten them in the first place.
All together on UConn basketball: in 2004, both the men's and women's basketball programs won NCAA Championships. It is highly likely that will happen again this season. I will be pulling for Stanford and Butler to win the NCAA Championships in their respective divisions.
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