- A few years ago, the NCAA had to figure out how to deal with the growing phenomenon of texting. It was a new medium for coaches to use in recruiting and because there were no rules in place to regulate it, coaches used texting as a means to get around the other restrictions that held them back from frequent contact with potential recruits. Some top-flight players received several texts a day, because the NCAA had no limit on how the number of messages coaches could send. To address the problem and to keep recruits from being stuck with massive cell phone bills, the NCAA banned text messaging in August 2007. Now the NCAA is facing a new menace in the recruiting game: Twitter. Yes, Twitter is so ubiquitous that coaches are using it to holler at would-be recruits. This week, the NCAA decreed direct messaging on Twitter permissible for coaches to use in contacting recruits. However, direct messaging on Twitter is viewed much the same way as email is and coaches can't publicly address recruits in their Twitter streams, how can they use the service to their advantage? It depends on what the coaches are tweeting and how they say it. For example, a guy like USC football coach Pete Carroll has some high-profile Hollywood friends because of his L.A. location. He can tweet about pals like Will Ferrell and in so doing, make himself seem cool to possible recruits. A recruit could see that tweet, respond with a direct message to Carroll and there you go, recruiting benefit gained. The process can also work in the other direction for coaches, allowing them to keep up with recruits through their Twitter accounts and their social-networking activities and know about the personalities, likes and dislikes of the guys they are recruiting. That would then allow them to tailor their tweets to appeal to specific recruits, another possible benefit. I still think there isn’t a person in this world interesting enough to need Twitter to keep everyone up to date on the minute-to-minute minutiae of their life, but that doesn’t mean some people won't find uses for it…….
- Is there anything people won't try to smuggle into this country? Whether it’s drugs, wine with snakes packed into the bottle or bootlegged movies and music, there is never a shortage of freaks desperate to sneak something across the border. That being said, a big shout to the two freaks from California who were recently caught attempting to smuggle Asian songbirds into the U.S. As one of the men was returning from a trip from Vietnam, he was stopped at customs and agents discovered 14 birds strapped to his legs. “Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at Los Angeles International Airport discovered the birds under the pants of Sony Dong. CBP agents inspected Dong and found bird feathers and droppings on his socks, as well as birds' tail feathers visible under his pants," said a CBP release. A subsequent search "discovered 14 live birds attached to two flat pieces of cloth that were wrapped around his calves." Yes, dude was traveling strapped…..with fowl. What he planned to do with them, I don’t know. Probably sell them, but I have to think right now is not the best market for illegal Vietnamese birds. The economy is down, people don’t have as much disposable income and I’d imagine that putting themselves on the wrong side of the law and spending large quantities of money on a bird that some dude shoved down his pants to fly across the Pacific just isn’t something people are lining up to do. Included among the 14 smuggled birds were four bul-buls, four magpie robins, and six shama thrush birds. These men apparently bought the birds for $50 and would resell them at more than triple that price. Hard to see how their foolproof plan failed, but this is the criminal element you’re dealing with and it invariably attracts those from the shallow end of the gene pool……
- Once again, kudos to the NBA league office for its stellar scheduling of the playoffs. This gripe comes in regards to the Game 7s in both the Orlando-Boston and L.A.-Houston series, which each played their sixth game Thursday and will now get right back to action….on Sunday. Way to capitalize on the interest built from the Game 6s played last night, NBA. Nothing keeps the interest going like waiting two days to play the next game. These teams are flying from Houston to Los Angeles and Orlando to Boston, not Houston to Saigon or Orlando to New Delhi. Of course, these two days with not a single NBA game do give us ample chance to speculate when Orlando coach Stan Ron Jeremy Van Gundy will go Master of Panic and cost his team Game 7. Yes. the Panic, er, Magic eeked out Game 6 at home after Van Jeremy stumbled into his best five-men lineup that he’d managed to use exactly zero times in the previous five games. But with as talented a roster as Van Jeremy has, winning an elimination game at home is no stunner. Even the M.O.P. can't ruin every possible win for his team. Oh, and these two days will also allow us another 48 hours to try and figure out whether the L.A. Lakers care enough to show up for Game 7. They didn’t bother to do so for about 95 percent of Game 4 and Game 6, but with their season on the line you’d have to expect that a 50-plus point effort from Kobe Bryant is in the offing. He’ll drag the lifeless bodies of Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom across the finish line if he has to (really, Bynum is actually lifeless at this point in the postseason, someone check his pulse), but no way the Black Mamba allows his team to lose this series to a Houston team without Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady or Dikembe Mutombo. Having said all of that, NBA commissioner David Stern needs to add fixing the postseason scheduling to his list of stated goals for the Association, which as of Wednesday included expanding the use of replay in games and improving security in arenas. Jump on the scheduling issue what you’re at it, D., because what you’re doing now isn’t working……..
- The Warren (Mich.) police may not be laughing, but I am. They may feel that some intrepid citizen punking them with a 911 call about a cougar on the prowl and sending 10 officers to apprehend what turned out to be a large toy car is infuriating, irresponsible and idiotic, and while it may be those things, it’s also freaking hilarious. “It's huge; it's like a 150-pound cat,” the caller told the operator. That’s what she said….just kidding. Approximately 10 officers arrived at Bates Park on 14 Mile Road east of Van Dyke and saw what looked like a big cat in an old cement drainpipe. "And I went back behind there and shined a light there -- and it's in there," said the caller. So of course the officers did what officers love to do any time they have the chance: Tase somebody, or in this case something. Police hit the cat with a Taser blast, but it turned out to be nothing more than a toy. Police Commissioner William Dwyer said officials now believe the incident was a prank (ya think?), but he said his department could not take any chances since it was near a playground. "We did what we had to do. We want to keep the city safe," said Dwyer. Safe from large stuffed cougars, no doubt. I have no tolerance for listening to Dwyer whine about how the prank cost the city more than $1,000 in wasted police hours between the response from 10 officers and the paperwork they had to file. Hopefully the prankster isn’t caught and was smart enough to place the call from a pay phone where no one saw them, because I’d love to see this person get away with this hilarious punking of the police without having to pay the city back for the wasted police officers and face 90 days probation. Sure, you can argue that some other citizens of Warren may have been unable to receive police assistance during this time because 10 officers were out taking down a toy cougar, but I’ve yet to hear any reports of such problems. For anyone who has ever met a law enforcement officer who was a total dick (which would be all of us), this is a nice bit of karma coming back to bite The Man in the ass…….
- Take heed everyone, because this is how you should treat your friendly neighborhood hookers. Too often, people treat hookers like crap and aren’t nearly nice enough to them. The public by and large needs to be kinder to these skanks. No, I’m not talking about everyone trying to be considerate lovers and kiss the hookers (yeah, I’m looking right at you, Vince “Sham Wow” Shlomi). No, I’m saying more people should take the lead of Brunswick, Ga. business owner Jessie Johnson. Johnson just can’t stand the frequent site of prostitutes roaming the streets of his town, so he’s decided to do something kind for them. Johnson and his brother, who own Otto Johnson Motor Company, have made an offer to buy a bus ticket for any prostitute to get out of town. As long as the hooker promises not to return to Brunswick, Johnson will pay for them to leave. The Johnson’s aren’t the only ones who are tired of seeing prostitutes walk the road near the intersection of Norwich and L streets night and day. The line was crossed for the Johnson's when prostitutes began propositioning their customers. “If they get put in jail for prostitution and they want to get out of town, we will buy them a bus ticket as long as they promise they won’t come back and mess up our little town here,” Jessie Johnson said. “Send them to Las Vegas. It's legal out there, you know. If they want to be a prostitute, go where prostitution is legal. Get the drugs and the prostitution off our streets. This is the only thing we can think that is actually getting some attention.” The main problem with the give-a-hooker-a-bus-ticket approach is that there is nothing to prevent the hookers from coming back to Brunswick. Sure, the Johnson’s are making these women verbally commit to going away and staying away, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the word of a hooker is probably not the most reliable thing in the world. You can count on a prostitute for some things, but being truthful and having integrity isn’t one of them. That being said, I do appreciate someone trying to do something nice for practitioners of the world’s oldest profession…..
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