At a time when colleges can’t afford to teach or heat the dorms, NCAA Division I basketball and football programs continue to give racketeering a bad name.
By 2007, Binghamton, taxpayer-supported New York State U., had made it clear that it wanted to play big-time college basketball, and by the way it has to be played — by hook or by crook.
So it brought in Georgetown assistant Kevin Broadus to coach. Binghamton got everything it bargained for — Broadus’s team became a big winner, school record-breakers, NCAA tournament-qualifiers, but especially Binghamton got trouble.
Broadus recruited — from here, there and everywhere — bad risks, discards from other by-hook-or-by-crook programs. Broadus, too, seemed a high-risk hire. He was suspended for one Binghamton game because of a physical hassle with an Albany assistant.
Recruits were arrested — one for selling crack. Professors claimed to have been “bullied” to give players passing grades while others claimed players were enrolled in bogus courses. Binghamton had gone big-time, all right.
Pressure mounted on the school’s administration for accountability. Players were tossed; Broadus was let go.
Last week, Broadus agreed to $1.2 million settlement with the SUNY school. That’s his fee to go away. The agreement stipulates that he withdraw his racial discrimination lawsuit, Broadus having claimed his dismissal was based on his race, which is black, which leaves unexplained his hiring.
But D-I coaches often make more being fired for running crooked programs than they do when they’re hired to run crooked programs.
Down here, Rutgers, once New Jersey’s proudest state-funded academic institution, a few years ago decided that football comes first. RU played and lost two nights ago — a Wednesday night, a “school night” — for ESPN, at the University of South Florida.
RU was in large part defeated by Mo Plancher, who ran for 135 yards and is described as “a sixth-year senior.” But good running backs often average more yards per carry than credits per semester.
And given that Rutgers, while canceling all scheduled teacher pay raises, academic hires and cutting its budget 15 percent, now is annually loaded with expensive football recruits from Florida, Wednesday’s game might’ve been North Florida at South Florida.
Still, coach Greg Schiano, at roughly $2 million per plus tens of thousands in yearly perks, was flanked by two uniformed N.J. State Troopers, who traveled down to the game to protect the coach from pickpockets, gnats and nuclear attack.
Ahh, that sweet smell of colleges putting local taxpayer money to good use!
Hey Jets: Now’s not the time for useless siren
A friend, retired from the NYPD after years working security details for top NYC officials and their guests, has a question for the folks who run the Jets on game day:
“Are you nuts?
“Two days after terror acts aimed at U.S. cities was all over the news, again — this stuff about Yemen — the Jets sounded a loud, long warning siren during Sunday’s game, just for fun, just for noise. [It was done at least twice, once for 35 seconds.]
“People outside that stadium and plenty inside must’ve been scared out of their skin. I heard it at home, on TV, and I was sure something bad was up; I got the chills. It’s an emergency siren! I was waiting for the TV guys to say what’s going on.
“There’s no good time for a false alarm, but did the Jets have any idea what was going on all week? God forbid something happens for real, if there’s a real emergency; thousands will think the siren’s the intro for Fireman Ed.”
* The populist media indignation in response to Texas Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg’s scold of Yankees fans’ behavior is easy to explain, tough to indulge.
So all those devoted Yankees fans who vowed never again to take their kids or wife or girlfriend to a Red Sox-Yankees game because of all those drunken fights and vulgar chants were making it all up?
Meantime, Hal Steinbrenner’s reminders, vis-a-vis Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, that “We’re running a business” were amusing.
What kind of businessman slaps (or allows) ridiculous ticket prices on hundreds of up-front, in-view seats in a new park then watches them remain empty and unsold through two successful seasons and two postseasons?
McCarver saw big Series HR beforehand
FOX’S Tim McCarver, Game 5, nailed it just before Edgar Renteria’s three-run homer in a 3-1, Series-clinching final. McCarver said Texas should walk Renteria and instead deal with Aaron Rowand, a lesser threat. McCarver made a bunch of such spooky-good pre-pitch calls this season.
* Among those running for UNICEF in the NYC Marathon on Sunday will be Danielle Rosenberg, wife of Sid Rosenberg, of radio fame and infamy. Given her husband’s near-distant play calling — he would go long when it was time to take a knee — it’s surprising that Danielle is Sid’s first and only wife.
“Nineteen years and two kids,” said Sid, who will be up from Florida to host on WFAN tomorrow from 1-4 p.m. “She is a saint. I’ve put her through a lot.”
* With live coverage of Wednesday’s World Series parade in San Francisco, MLB Network completed a baseball season during which it daily and nightly tried its best by trying to present something different or by trying to do better presenting the same. Mostly, MLB Network succeeded. Credit starts at the top, with CEO Tony Petitti.
And there’s more coming. Dec. 15, for example, a panel — Bob Costas, Bill Mazeroski, Dick Groat and Bobby Richardson — will be attached to the recently found Game 7 telecast of the Yankees-Pirates 1960 World Series.
* Now that Linda McMahon lost, the WWE can revert to producing kid-targeting sleaze. Some figured the WWE’s TV shows went PG the last few months because the McMahons’ consciences bothered them.
* Ya know how there are enormously talented and highly paid athletes who have such a poor grip on matters that you can predict, five years after they’re through, that you’ll read that they’ve lost their homes to foreclosures and their cars have been repossessed? Randy Moss.