- Division II sports are a different animal than major-college athletics, with substantially less money involved and much tighter budgets for team and programs. That’s doubly true for lesser, more peripheral sports - sports like track and field, softball, wrestling, etc. However, no matter how tight scholarship money is and how tough it is for your players to afford their college education, coaches really can't be giving players money for tuition and books. There’s a term for that, and it’s not “lending a helping hand.” That term would be “NCAA rules violation” and the result of said violation is being felt by D-2 school Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. Former LU softball coach Thomas Macera gave two players a combined $3,188.61 to pay for tuition and books in 2005, the NCAA said in its report. As a result, Lynn University's 2005 Division II softball national championship will be vacated. The Knights' 54 wins from 2005 will be erased but their losses will remain, NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said Tuesday. Their opponents’ records will not be affected. This whole situation is further proof that corruption and fraudulent behavior isn't just limited to the upper-echelon, Division I programs. There are shady characters at all levels of sports, college and even high school.
- It’s more than a little suspicious that Barry Bonds has now been scratched from the starting lineup for the all three games of the San Francisco Giants’ series in Chicago against the Cubs. Citing sore and tired legs, Bonds has told manager Bruce Bochy that he couldn’t play in any of the games, a move that has to be engendering all sorts of positive, warm and fuzzy feelings from his teammates. Bonds did deign to pinch hit in the eighth inning of the second game of the series, but it’s pretty obvious what he’s up to. He wants to break the career home run record at home in ‘Frisco so he won't be booed mercilessly and heckled nonstop as he would be if he broke the record on the road. Thus, he’s sitting out road games and claiming it’s due to problems with his legs. Good one, Bar-roid. Either that or he’s in a down month due to cycling off whatever type of steroids he’s currently taking and is waiting for the next round of ‘roids to kick in. Regardless, he needs to stop throwing around laundry carts and having temper tantrums when he doesn’t play well and stop letting down his team in order to ensure optimum conditions for himself when he finally breaks the home run record. You suck Bar-roid, and everyone outside of San Francisco hates your lying, cheating, surly ass.
- Would someone please tell Jon Lovitz that it’s not nice to beat up girls? Honestly, I know that every last person who’s ever had to bear witness to the spectacularly awful spectacle that is Andy Dick wants to kick the living sh*t out of the guy, but Lovitz going medieval on Dick’s candy ass at an L.A. club over the weekend put all of that pent up rage into action. Looking at the doughy, unconditioned physique of Lovitz you wouldn’t guess him to be a brawler, but he administered a total beatdown to Dick that included smashing Dick’s head on the bar several times. There has been ill will between the two actors for years, dating back to their Saturday Night Live ties and Lovitz being added to replace Phil Hartman on the sitcom NewsRadio that Dick appeared on. Lovitz apparently blames Dick for introducing Hartman’s wife Brynn to cocaine five months before she killed her husband and then shot herself. Also, Dick decided a few months back that not thinking before speaking was a wise choice and had the utterly poor taste to place a “Phil Hartman hex” on Lovitz, saying, “You’re the next one to die.” Classy, Andy, verrrrrry classy. Come to think of it, you got off easy with one isolated bar beating, so if I were you I’d keep my mouth shut and move on.
- This week’s Whiny B*tch of the Week award goes to………Yi Jianlian! Congratulations, Yi, for being the most spoiled, overrated and ungrateful piece of crap in all of the world this week. In case you missed it, Yi and his posse are continuing to insist that he won't comply with the same rules that all NBA draft picks are expected to comply with and go to the team that actually drafted them. No, Yi keeps insisting (as if he has any say in the matter) that he won't play for the Milwaukee Bucks and wants a trade. Now, Yi’s Chinese team is involving itself in the mix. Guangdong Tigers chief, Chen Haitao, lied and said, “This is not -- as media reports have said -- because Milwaukee, as a city with very few Chinese people, is not good for Yi's commercial development,” Chen said. “Rather we want to find a team suitable for Yi's growth. That's the root of the problem,” he added. Hey Chen, buddy, I have bad news for you. There is no “we” here. You’re not part of the equation. When your boy Yi decided to come to the NBA, you ceased to matter in the equation. The NBA doesn’t want or need your input on where the best place for Yi is. The NBA has its own rules and system and your attempts to circumvent that are total bullshit. You need to know your role and shut your mouth, pal. I continue to urge the Bucks to stand strong and to kindly extend a middle finger right in Yi’s face. Heck, they should even hold a press conference and state unequivocally, “Yi is not going to be traded, ever. If he ever wants to play in the NBA, he will do so with the Milwaukee Bucks. We hold his right and we will not relinquish them. His options are to play for us or not play in the NBA, ever.” Screw you and your crew, Yi, you’re the biggest freaking ingrate crybaby in sports.
- In an announcement that will only serve to fuel arguments of ‘roid rage as a cause of the grisly double murder/suicide involving WWE wrestler Christ Benoit, his wife and young son, authorities announced yesterday that Benoit's body contained 10 times the normal level of testosterone, as well as amounts of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and the painkiller hydrocodone. They were also careful to say that there is no evidence that the phenomenon known as ‘roid rage played any part in the killings, but you know that anyone who wants to argue that it was a factor will gloss over that and trumpet these findings as evidence of their rightness. All I’ll say is that having that much testosterone and other drugs in your system can't be good, no matter what the situation, and the realization that this is probably true for a large number of pro wrestlers is incredibly unsettling. There’s been a creepy cloud hanging over the WWE since this incident, and either the federal government or someone else with authority needs to step in and mandate that the WWE stop encouraging or promoting steroid use among its wrestlers, because that’s undoubtedly what’s happen, overtly or not. Those in power need to make sure that the Benoit incident is the last of its kind, not the first in a series of sad tragedies……….
No comments:
Post a Comment