Big-time college sports is a lot like the weather, the Mets and big oil spills — everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it.
As heard on 1050-AM, Wednesday, ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd interviewed the newly named coach of the newly scandalized USC football program, Lane Kiffin — a fellow who, at just 35 years old, already is known as a frequent traveler with too much luggage.
Cowherd unapologetically asked Kiffin some tough questions, which was good to hear, given how ESPN is in the unfortunate habit of producing commercials co-starring its on-air people with big-namers they’re supposed to cover.
At one point, Kiffin lamented that the NCAA has stripped USC of many football scholarships:
“We’re down to 71, from 85.”
Down to 71? Each team can play just 11 men at a time, yet 71 scholarships represent a severe sanction? After all, 85 is the NCAA’s limit. You can seize a foreign embassy and East Bristol, Conn., with fewer people.
In just those few seconds, one could surmise all one has to know about big-time college athletics: that a college or university — an institute that ostensibly serves society as a center of higher academic learning — has determined that football players will be the most highly coveted and indulged enrollees, which makes for economic and academic fraud of the most self-evident kind. Eighty-five scholarships! To real college students — those who can’t pass, tackle, or block but would welcome and well-use a college education — that represents roughly $15 million in scholarships.
If one were to take this preseason’s AP Top 25 and apply federal racketeering statutes to all of the listed schools, how many could beat the rap? How many of them successfully could defend the charge that the school — ostensibly erected and standing in noble service to the highest levels of education — doesn’t simultaneously serve as a false front for a football and/or basketball team?
Under advice of counsel, 25 college presidents might be forced to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights, then clam up. None of these schools’ charters claims that winning ballgames is a primary goal and obligation, so why has it become one?
Eighty-five scholarships multiplied by 120 Division I football schools? That’s a maximum of 10,200 college scholarships — to play football.
And now, with many more crimes, often violent, being committed by those recruited to campus for the sole purpose of winning ballgames, how long before law firms begin to specialize in successfully suing the pants and shirts off of these schools for allowing legit students to become victims of perpetrators who had no good scholastic reason to be enrolled, let alone be awarded a full scholarship? That’s coming. And very soon.
A full scholarship Seton Hall basketball recruit, Robert Mitchell, in June confessed to robbing eight students at gunpoint. His accomplice was Kelly Whitney, who was recruited from Chicago to play basketball. In 2006, Whitney left Seton Hall with no degree but with his playing eligibility expired. Get the picture?
ESPN may have dumped Favre for LeBron
Espn, early Wednesday, yanked an unflattering piece about LeBron James from its website. ESPN curiously claimed that the author didn’t properly identify himself to James and friends while apparently monitoring their act in Vegas.
It’s looking more and more as if ESPN is preparing to dump Brett Favre, nearly 41, for a younger man, James, 25, ESPN sources tell ESPN sources.
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Gary Cohen, on SNY yesterday, made with an imitation of Tim McCarver, circa 1986, complaining in his Memphis accent that Darryl Strawberry was playing too deep. Keith Hernandez recalled that McCarver would infuriate Strawberry. Incidentally, no one was more eager to illustrate Hernandez as the thinking man’s first baseman than was McCarver.
* Another worn-out goofy word or expression heard from sportscasters and written by sportswriters — yet one that neither you nor they speak in regular conversation — is “campaign,” as in, “He hit .278 in his rookie campaign.” There are a host of others, including “a host of others.”
* MLB Network keeps unexpectedly throwing live baseball at us. Yesterday, Braves-Nationals, followed by Marlins-Giants, then Dodgers-Padres, with Vin Scully.
The first, on DC’s MASN, included a chat with Nats’ shortstop Mike Morse, who told of celebrating in a Florida restaurant on the day he was drafted, when Alex Rodriguez walked in. Morse nervously introduced himself. Later, Rodriguez quietly picked up the check for Morse’s entire table.
Seriously, ‘Assassin’ good guy?
This overnight, post-mortem revisionism is gonna be the death of us all. Now we’re being told that Jack Tatum, dead this week at 61, actually was a real good guy. Fine. But then why only after crippling Darryl Stingley — even if the extreme hit (in an exhibition game!) was intended but the result was not — did Tatum make sure to avoid him? Why, years later, did he still choose to be known by his delightful nickname, “The Assassin”?
Does the NFL Network ever come up with any fresher or better ideas? It has hired Daryl “Moose” Johnston, who will remain a Fox in-game analyst, to work its studio. Johnston had a lot of promise when he began with Fox, but he talked himself out of it.
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John Branca, former chair of the New York State Athletic Commission, Westchester Assemblyman, a broadcaster of high-school sports on WVOX Radio and an older brother of Ralph Branca, died last week in Florida, at 86. John was one of 17 Branca brothers and sisters.
John Sterling getting on ump Mike Reilly for missing a call is like BP exec Tony Hayward ripping a prep chef for too much oil in his salad dressing.
SNY studio anchor Jeane’ Coakley yesterday morning reported that Jason Bay “for the second straight night was out of the Mets’ lineup with a mild concussion” kinda takes the “mild” out of the mix, doesn’t it?
MSG has Thierry Henry’s first MLS game, tomorrow, 8:30 p.m., Red Bulls at Houston.
You like stats? Joba Chamberlain is fourth in the majors with 20 holds. Not bad, for a 5.86 ERA.
It rained during the Yanks’ “Umbrella Day” on July 20, and it rained yesterday, during the Mets’ Umbrella Day. Whattya say we cancel Asteroid Night?