- Let’s not be hasty and have a quick trigger finger when it comes to releasing recruits from their national letters of intent, Washington State University football program. Let’s stop and think about what kind of dangerous precedent you’re setting when you dismiss a recruit such as Calvin Schmidtke of Lakes High in Tacoma just because he’s been cited 11 times in the past 18 months, seven of the violations were related to traffic stops and has also faced alcohol- and drug-related charges. Schmidtke has confirmed WSU's action, saying, “I understand the situation they're in. I knew for a couple of weeks [it was a possibility]. Obviously, what happened wasn't pleasant. But I really think it's going to make me stronger.” What’s going to make you stronger? That back-breaking eleventh citation? What is it about this particular occurrence that’s going to get through to you where the first ten didn’t? I know that you’ve finally reached the point where your scholarship offer has been ripped from you, but that possibility didn’t occur to you after any of your first ten run-ins with the cops? Bro, I don’t care if you threw for 2,724 yards and 37 touchdowns last season and were named co-player of the year for your league. These aren’t just simple, routine citations either. When at least a few of your charges of either drug- or alcohol-related, that’s going to be a problem, especially the drug charges. How exactly do you not figure out somewhere in the midst of those first two or three citations that you need to clean up your act? And how the heck are you still allowed to play football in high school with all of that going on? Most people are getting a clue somewhere during those first 3-4 citations and making some changes, but not my man Cal Schmidtke.
New WSU coach Paul Wulff issued the standard boilerplate statement on the Schmidtke matter that read in part, “We feel this is in the best interest of both Washington State University and Calvin. We wish him well with his future endeavors.” Thanks for that, coach, very heartfelt. Enjoy playing at some obscure Division 1-AA school, Cal.
- So now it’s unacceptable to buy tickets for your favorite college football team’s games using campaign funds and resell them for a profit? Since when? So what if people contribute money to your campaign to ostensibly get you elected to the state legislature where you can serve them and your state by being a key part of the legislative process and you reward them by using their contribution to buy football tickets that you sell online and keep the profits of for yourself? State Rep. John Widowfield, R-Cuyahoga Falls (Ohio) gets where I’m coming from because he’s the one who engineered this brilliant scheme. Rep. Widowfield (a badass name, by the way) decided that he wanted to use campaign funds to purchase some Ohio State football tickets. That would be a solid option in and of itself, breaking off a slice from your campaign budget so you could take yourself and your wife to the big game. But when you compound that by turning around and selling those tickets at an online ticket auction site, then pocketing the money from that sale….pure genius, By pure genius, of course, I mean one of the single dumbest things you could do as an elected official. I say that because now, instead of keeping his seat in the state legislature and progressing toward bigger and better things in the political world, Rep. Widowfield has been forced to resign his legislative seat and could face investigation and punishment by the Legislative Inspector General for the state of Ohio. Solid play by you, Widowield, solid play. I know that OSU football tickets are hard to come by and that you probably made a tidy profit selling yours, but I sincerely doubt that the money you made was worth throwing away your political career.
- Is there anything more ridiculous than the National Spelling Bee on television? I’m not against having the event; it has its purpose and it’s a great chance for kids who probably aren’t going to become star athletes or even remotely cool in their lifetime to get recognition and compete. That being said, it has to be one of the worst events to televise in the history of television. First, you have these dorky kids with their thick glasses, some of the older boys sporting pathetic pube mustaches and the girls looking geeky in their own special way. Then you have a competition where the spellers come up to the microphone one at a time, which is where the real train wreck begins. The judges give them their word and the kids spend nearly all of their allotted two and a half minutes asking the same five damn questions over and over. “Can you pronounce the word again?” is the first one. “Can you use the word in a sentence?” is next. Then comes, “What is the language of origin?” and after that, are there any alternate pronunciations, followed by “Are there any alternate pronunciations?” And these kids don’t just ask each question once. When they don’t know a word and are clearly stalling for time, they’ll ask some of the questions multiple times. It’s painful, it’s sad and it’s not good TV. You see their families perched on the edge of their seats in the audience, acting like their child spelling this one word right is what the fate of the world depends on. Then comes the awkward wait while the judges get ready to ding the bell when the word is spelled incorrectly, followed by a crushed kid trudging off stage in defeat. So congrats to 13-year-old Sameer Mishra of West Lafayette, Ind. for winning this year’s bee and to all the other children who competed, but do them and us a favor next year and keep them off of network and cable television.
- It’s about f’ing time. Flopping has become an epidemic at all levels of basketball, with players substituting falling down like they’ve been shot in place of actually playing good defense and stopping their opponent with superior skills. The trend has even made its way to the offensive side of the ball, where guys act like they’ve been hit with a sledgehammer every time a defensive player so much as breathes on them, all in an attempt to lure officials into calling a foul that will send them to the free-throw line. It’s cheap, it’s gutless, it’s weasel-y and it’s definitely not basketball, but starting next season, it will be something that the NBA is looking to stamp out. The NBA announced to its teams this week at its annual pre-draft camp that fines will be imposed on players starting next season for clear cases of “flopping.” The league office has yet to determine exact fine amounts for offending floppers and how fines might escalate for repeat offenders, but those are just small details with the decision to crack down on these losers having been made. The process will reportedly hinge on in-game arena observers and video reviewers who will be instructed to report instances of theatrical flopping for potential punishment as part of postgame reports on officiating and other matters. NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Stu Jackson spoke about the new policy Wednesday night saying: “What was clearly expressed to the committee is that we would begin imposing fines next season for the most egregious type of flops. When players are taking a dive, for lack of a better term.” This is a fantastic idea, one that could be supplemented with a penalty system that suspends players who are serial floppers in the same way that players who accrue significant numbers of technical fouls during a season. Hotheads who can’t avoid technical fouls are fined and suspended once they reach certain limits, just like serial floppers need to be. Don’t believe me? Just as Detroit Pistons forward Rasheed Wallace, himself a regular violator of the technical foul policy, about flopping in his team’s Eastern Conference Finals series against Boston. “All that bull(bleep)-ass calls they had out there. With Mike [Callahan] and Kenny [Mauer] -- you've all seen that (bleep),” Wallace said. “You saw them calls. The cats are flopping all over the floor and they're calling that (bleep). That (bleep) ain't basketball out there. It's all (bleeping) entertainment. You all should know that (bleep). It's all (bleeping) entertainment.” Well said, ‘Sheed…….
- Way to keep your eyes on the prize, Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera is the starting shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, a team that is currently leading the American League Central and exceeding what was expected of them this season. He’s batting .242 and is one of the better shortstops in the AL, but playing on a winning team and hitting for a high average clearly aren’t his primary concerns - not when Cabrera is calling up to the press box during games to argue with the official scorer to argue about errors being charged to him. That’s right, rather than doing everything in his power to make sure that his team wins games, Cabrera is diverting time, energy and focus to trying to protect his own stats while games are going on. He’s not waiting until afterward to go and confront the official scorer for charging him with errors on plays that Cabrera feels were base hits, he’s picking up the dugout phone during games and having it out right then and there. It happened Sunday during a home against divisional rival Cleveland and it happened earlier in the season at Toronto. While his teammates are ostensibly focused on the score of the game, getting the other team out and scoring runs to help their squad win, Cabrera is more concerned with his fielding percentage taking a hit. Never mind that his team won the games in which he was arguing scoring decisions, he wants those errors changed to hits. Furthermore, he’s pissed that White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen isn't the one berating the official scorer for calling those plays errors. "If it happens again, I will call again," Cabrera whined. “I don't have to do it with other teams because they always had my back.” The funny thing is that on that one small point, Cabrera is accurate. If Guillen has a problem with Cabrera, he needs to talk to him directly instead of going through the media. That being said, Orlando, your manager is right in what he said even if he chose the wrong channel to send the message through. Your insistence on arguing with the official scorer over statistical decisions during games instead of focusing all of your efforts on helping your team win does reek of selfishness. If you can prove to me that you getting an error taken away and having it changed into a hit after the play has already happened and the inning is over helps your team win, then and only then will I concede that you’re right. Until then, I’m going to agree with Guillen when he says, “I'm not going to say we're going to have a problem, but I don't think it looks good to his teammates for him to worry about his numbers. I know I never did that.” Suck it up, keep your mouth shut (at least during games) and worry about winning games rather than boosting your fielding percentage, Orlando. Plus, you could always stop making errors and that would alleviate much of the problem…..
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