Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Ohio State Nailed with Sanctions - Whats Next for Tressell -



Ohio State could set the precedent for future program penalties


No sooner had the news trickled out Tuesday that the NCAA's Committee on Infractions had dealt Ohio State a one-year postseason ban for its booster- and tattoo-related infractions then people began asking the obvious next question(s).

What does this mean for Miami? Oregon? Penn State? North Carolina? Or any other school currently awaiting NCAA sentencing?

The literal answer is: Nothing. Because there are almost no guidelines that the Committee must follow in determining the severity of its penalties; nor is it bound by past precedent when comparing one school's infractions with another; and because its membership roster changes by year and even by case, its rulings are inherently inconsistent and thereby impossible to predict.

It's also why so many people -- particularly in Los Angeles -- expressed varying degrees of outrage over the Committee's final judgment on Ohio State. After last year's Draconian verdict in the Reggie Bush case, in which Paul Dee and Co. hammered USC with a two-year bowl ban and 30 docked scholarships due primarily to extra benefits bestowed on a single athlete, anything short of public executions for Gordon Gee and Gene Smith would inevitably be viewed as a slap on the wrist. Dee's term on the committee has since ended. When asked on a teleconference Tuesday about comparisons between the Ohio State and USC cases, SEC associate commissioner and committee member Greg Sankey noted his term had not even yet begun at that time. We'll never know exactly why Dee's committee came down so hard on USC, but the school's adversarial response likely played a big part. Whether or not that's fair is another matter entirely.

But what does this mean for Miami, Oregon, Penn State and North Carolina?

Well, it's possible the Ohio State case will replace USC as the new baseline for those cases. Personally, I think Tuesday's ruling was perfectly reasonable. Neither a one-year bowl nor nine docked scholarships will cripple the program, but preemptively rendering Urban Meyer's first team ineligible for the Big Ten title is no slap on the wrist, either. On top of the suspensions and coaching turmoil that doomed the Buckeyes to a 6-6 season this year, the program will have served two years in purgatory for the misdeeds of Jim Tressel, Terrelle Pryor and others.

While the NCAA loves to remind us that no two cases are the same, the Committee actually made two references in Tuesday's report that suggest otherwise. At one point, in discussing the "insider" status enjoyed by now-disassociated booster Bobby DiGeronimo (who paid several players $200 apiece for appearing at his charity event and hooked up some with unapproved short-term jobs), the report specifically references a 2003 case at Arkansas involving a similar figure. Later, the committee writes that they considered issuing a multi-year ban but refrained "after weighing the aggravating factors and the overall seriousness of the case in light of other recent major infractions cases where a multiple year postseason was imposed."

So they do look at past cases, then. And considering most of the same people that heard the Ohio State case will be hearing upcoming ones as well all current members' terms run through at least next September, some until 2013 or '14), surely they'll look at their own past rulings when issuing new ones, right?

Maybe, just maybe, we can take an educated stab at what they'll decide.

• North Carolina: If any program's fans should be shaking after Tuesday's ruling, it's the Tar Heels'. UNC went before the committee in October, and its verdict is expected shortly. When its Notice of Allegations came out this summer, fans hung their hopes for a lenient sentence on the following facts: 1) It avoided the dreaded Lack of Institutional Control charge, receiving Failure to Monitor instead; and 2) The school was proactive, suspending players itself as soon as allegations of misconduct arose prior to the 2010 season.

Well, Ohio State was also charged with Failure to Monitor. It self-reported every violation in Tuesday's report, preemptively fired Tressel, disassociated Pryor and DiGeronimo and self-imposed several penalties -- and still it got hit with a bowl ban. North Carolina should expect even worse, considering its case is wider in scope and involves two of the NCAA's biggest no-nos -- academic fraud and agent violations. I'd expect a two-year bowl ban and at least one docked scholarship for every player that received impermissible benefits or improper academic help.

• Miami: It could be a year or more before this investigation concludes. From the beginning, Miami's fate would depend less on rogue booster Nevin Shapiro's misdeeds and more on how much culpability, if any, the NCAA pegs on school employees. Yahoo!'s original report contends that several assistant coaches steered recruits to Shapiro, and that Shapiro nearly came to blows with the program's compliance director in 2007, which sure seems like a red flag.

If any or all prove true, Miami is likely looking at USC-level sanctions. Remember, the NCAA hung that school based almost entirely on its belief that running backs coach Todd McNair knew of ex-con Lloyd Lake's relationship with Bush and didn't stop it. Shaprio also fits closely the profile of DiGeronimo in terms of his access to the program. The committee faulted Ohio State for failing to more closely monitor DiGeronimo, and he's only accused of handing out a few hundred dollars to a handful of players, not eight years spent showering 72 athletes with benefits. And Miami, like Ohio State, is considered a repeat violator. There's no Jim Tressel smoking gun e-mail here that we know of, but if the NCAA determines even one staff member knew of Shapiro's activities and didn't do anything, Miami's penalties will go far beyond those of Ohio State's.

• Oregon: This one's impossible to predict because there is no known precedent for the Willie Lyles saga. The Committee will likely determine that Oregon's payments for his recruiting services were inappropriate given his relationship with the program. He will be deemed an unofficial booster, one that helped the program recruit players like Lache Seastrunk. But will it go so far as to say the school bought a recruit? I doubt it, but again, that's a guess.

Since it's a recruiting-related case, scholarship reductions for future classes wouldn't be surprising. But Oregon fans' biggest concern should be whether Chip Kelly or other staff members get hit with unethical conduct charges (and in turn, show-cause penalties like Tressel's). That would have more tangible consequences than a few docked scholarships.

• Penn State: Despite President Mark Emmert's tersely worded letter following the Jerry Sandusky grand jury report, I don't believe the NCAA will ever follow through with a formal investigation into the school's institutional control, nor should they. It's too slippery a slope. All the schools above violated or may have violated specific bylaws regarding recruiting, eligibility and amateurism, issues with a direct impact on a sport's "level playing field." The Penn State scandal involves issues of enormous societal magnitude but no impact whatsoever on actual athletic competitions.

Emmert's letter cited vague bylaws about unethical conduct (including the infamous 10.1 clause used against Tressel) in justifying a query, but if it's going to start investigating all manner of unethical conduct in athletic departments, it's going to have its hands full. Does a coach's DWI arrest like Missouri's Gary Pinkel merit a visit from investigators, too? What about the Kansas ticket-scalping scandal a couple years back that landed former athletic department employees in prison?

Some matters are better left for actual judges and juries. Their punishment options include far bigger deterrents than bowl bans and scholarship cuts.




What’s next for The Vest?

The on-field accomplishments are well-known and read exactly what you’d expect a future Hall of Famer’s résumé to look like.

A winning percentage of nearly .750 in a 25-year coaching career. Five national titles — four at Div. I-AA Youngstown State, one at Ohio State. Six official Big Ten titles. Dozens upon dozens of players who went on to some modicum of success in the NFL.

The off-field issues that enveloped Columbus over the past year, though, have come to define Jim Tressel‘s quarter century as a head coach.

The final NCAA sanctions on the OSU football program announced Tuesday included a five-year show-cause for the former Buckeyes coach, a punishment that would seemingly preclude him from landing another job at the collegiate level for the foreseeable future but may not have the teeth it was originally thought to possess. Regardless of how sharp the teeth on the show-cause may or may not be, it won’t change what an institution or an organization would be hiring: a man who lied to the NCAA — on at least four different occasions according to the final report on the Tat Five — and, perhaps more importantly, lied to and/or hid information pertaining to likely NCAA violations from his employer, leading directly to sanctions that will involve a one-year bowl ban and lost scholarships over the next three years.

Does that make him unhirable at the collegiate level? Not necessarily; right behind dollar signs come W’s in the eyes of an athletic program, and Tressel has proven to be one of the best coaches at the highest level of football when it comes to that all-important letter. Offer the promise of a winning football program, and coordinating a cover-up underneath your previous employer’s nose and lying to the governing body of collegiate athletics could be scrubbed enough to become palatable for a school desperate for football relevance.

That said, the 59-year-old Tressel knows, as one person close to the former coach put it Tuesday night, “he’s toxic at the collegiate level right now.” For the time being, Tressel is comfortable in his current job as a consultant with the Indianapolis Colts. Coaching, though, is in his blood. Will always be there, more than likely. And he wants back in it, at almost any level.

“I hope so,” Tressel said back in late August when asked if he’d like to coach again. “I’m taking it one day at a time.”

The collegiate toxicity Tressel speaks of privately will likely not go away for the foreseeable future, so the former coach has let it be known to those in and around NFL circles that he’s open to a position at the professional level. While a college coach at heart, and as he had turned down head-coaching overtures at the next level multiple times during his time with the Buckeyes, those around Tressel acknowledge that the NFL might be the most viable option in the here and now, if for nothing more than it allows the scandal to get smaller and smaller in the rear-view.

Regardless of what Tressel does in the future or where he does it, what exactly his legacy will ultimately be remains an open question.

Time and distance does an amazing job softening the rough edges of history. Over 30 years after his career ended in disgrace with one televised bowl punch, Woody Hayes is as beloved a figure in the state of Ohio as there’s ever been or will likely ever be.

The same will likely be said for the senatorial splendor of The Vest… down the road. After some time and distance have been placed between his inexplicable decision to make a conscious effort to launch a cover-up and whatever the final chapters of his life may hold.

Speaking for myself, I just want to know the “why” of the entire sordid mess. Why would Tressel take a situation that might’ve resulted in a handful of players sitting for a couple of games and cover it up? Why would he sabotage all that he had built in Columbus for something that, in and of itself, was relatively minor? Why would a man who had very publicly taken up permanent residence on the moral high ground climb down into the gutter over a few thousand dollars worth of impermissible benefits?

And maybe that’s just it. Maybe Tressel’s legacy is that we all knew a whole helluva lot more about him on the field than we did off of it.

As Tressel has made crystal clear, even great men make inexplicable decisions and inexcusable mistakes. Placing coaches atop a pedestal? There’s a lesson for all of us in that part of his legacy.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Being Babe Ruth's Daughter - Top 25 College Basketball Poll - Owners get a new “LeBron Rule” in NBA labor deal



Being Babe Ruth's Daughter
By Jane Leavy

Simply awesome! great read for any baseball fan and of course, Babe Ruth fan.

Naming is a privilege of reason and the province of bullies. We name to tame and to maim; to honor the great, the dead, and ourselves. Whom we name and whom we don't (G-d) is an expression of awe, aspiration, and affection. We named home teams after scary animals (Lions, Tigers, and Bears) until high concept trumped anthropomorphism (Heat, Jazz, Soul, Wild). Some scholars attribute the decline in nicknaming to the evolutionary process that turned folk heroes into entrepreneurs. The truth is: George Herman Ruth, the namely-est guy ever, exhausted our supply of hyperbole.
He was the Babe, the Bam, the Big Bam, and the Great (and Bulby) Bambino (or Slambino); the Barnstorming Babe, the Bazoo of Bang, the Behemoth of Biff and Bust; Blunderbuss, and the Modern Beowulf. He was the Caliph and Colossus of Clout and Club, the Circuit Smasher and Goliath of Grand Slam, Homeric Herman and Herman the Great. He was the High Priest of Swat, and before that the Infant of Swategy. Also: the Kid of Crash, King of Clout/Diamonds/Swing, and, until Roger Maris, Hank Aaron, and the steroid marauders came along, the Home Run King. He was the Maharajah/Mauler of Mash, the Mauling Menace, Mauling Monarch, Mauling Mastodon, as well as the Mastodonic Mauler, Bulky Monarch, and Monarch of Swatdom; the Prince of Pounders, Rajah of Rap, Sachem of Slug, and Sultan of Swat; Terrible Titan, Whazir of Wham, Wali of Wallop, Wizard of Whack. And, not to be outdone, Damon Runyon added: "Diamond-Studded Ball-Buster."
The priests at St. Mary's Industrial School, the Xaverian reform school on the outskirts of Baltimore to which he was consigned at age 7, called him George. The parents who didn't visit called him Little George. The boys incarcerated along with him called him Nigger Lips. The Red Sox called him the Big Baboon and sometimes Tarzan, a name he liked until he found out what it meant. The Yankees called him Jidge.
Julia Ruth Stevens, his sole surviving daughter, calls him Daddy. Odd as it is to hear a nonagenarian refer to a man 60 years gone as Daddy, it is also a tender reminder of the limits of hyperbole, how grandiose honorifics obscure the messy, telling details of an interior life.
To others he is a brand, an archetype, a lodestar. His shape is ingrained in our DNA. His name recognition, 96 percent, is higher than any living athlete. (His Q score, a measure of how much the people who know him like him, is 32 percent compared to 13 percent for today's average major leaguer.) And yet, as well-known as he is, the most essential biographical fact of his life, one that demands revisiting what we thought we knew, one that Julia assumed everybody knew, remained unknown.
Julia Ruth Stevens has seen 95 baseball seasons come and go. The most recent World Series held little interest for her. Daddy's teams weren't in it. Yes, she heard about Albert Pujols' Ruthian exploits in Game 3 of the 2011 World Series — three home runs that called to mind the Babe's performances in 1926 and 1928 against the St. Louis Cardinals — but she was not overly impressed. "My mother always used to say, when one of Daddy's records was broken, 'Well, Lindbergh was the first one to fly the ocean, but nobody else you ever heard of seemed to get any attention.'"
She divides her time between North Conway, N.H., where she spends five months each year, and Sun City, Ariz. I met her on the screen porch of her modest New England home, where the athletic trophies belong to her son and the single photo of her father is a framed copy of an original. She wore a pale, paisley chemise dress, a strand of pearls, coral lipstick that complemented the tint of her hair, and a rock on her ring finger that was once Daddy's tie tack. She is a lady.
Macular degeneration has robbed her of much of her vision but little of her long-term memory and none of her sense of humor. A bum hip with a titanium rod had forced the cancellation of a planned visit to the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. The occasion? "Oh, anything," she said merrily.
Of course — she is Babe Ruth's daughter.
Babe Ruth didn't become her father until 18 months after he married her mother, Claire, on April 17, 1929, Opening Day of the baseball season. Julia was 12 years old. She had spent the night at a girlfriend's house and learned the news from a wet newspaper she saw on the sidewalk outside her school. "Babe Ruth Weds."
"I said, 'What are they talking about?' When I got home, they could tell by my face I knew what happened. I think they said, 'Well, you must have expected that this was going to happen.'"
The expectation was grounded in tragedy — the death that January of Ruth's first wife, Helen Woodford. Though they had been separated for years and she, too, had formed another liaison, Ruth's Catholic faith made divorce impossible. "She was living with a dentist," Julia said. "She burned to death in a house fire."
The wedding took place three months and six days later, and a half hour earlier than the time announced to reporters by Ruth's agent, Christy Walsh. Babe and Helen's daughter, who was living in a parochial school under an assumed name, was not told about the wedding or her mother's death until months later.
A wedding breakfast was held at the 11-room apartment being readied for the newly blended family. The rain that had dampened the headlines also forced the cancellation of Opening Day, allowing the uninhibited celebration to continue. As one guest noted: "The 18th Amendment did not apply."
The next day at the stadium, Babe hit a first-inning home run and blew a kiss to Claire as he crossed the plate.
Julia didn't call him Daddy right away. "No, I continued to call him Babe," she said. "Mother said to Dorothy, 'You're going to have to teach your sister to call him Daddy.' So it was Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, and it has been ever since."
Claire Hodgson, born Clara Mae Merritt, was the daughter of a prominent Georgia attorney who had once represented Ty Cobb. She was still a teenager when she married Frank Hodgson, a gentleman caller nearly twice her age. "My grandmother didn't like him," Julia said. "She went off to marry him and left her schoolbooks behind the door as if she was going to school. She and my biological father went off to get married, and then she went off to school. That afternoon, he came to pick her up and my grandmother said, 'Frank Hodgson, I told you I never wanted to see you again around this house.'
"He said, 'M'am, I came to pick up my wife.'
"That stopped my grandmother."
Claire was 16 when Julia was born in 1916. "He was alright up until I was born," she said. "I came along and he started spending his nights at the Elks club. She said, 'I've had enough of this.'"
She went to see a sympathetic elder, Uncle Joe, who was well disposed to her marital plight. "I think he was an uncle of mother's husband who was very fond of mother and thought she was getting a bum break from her husband," she said. "She said, 'I'm going to leave Frank and go to New York. Will you give me the money to go there?'
"He gave her $100 and said, 'Good luck.'"
Claire would later describe herself as a model and a three-or-four-line actress. Her daughter says, "Mother was a dish. She came to New York and lived with some girlfriends. Someone suggested she try Howard Chandler Christy" — the bon vivant illustrator with an eye for dishy dames. "So she went to the door with me. She was carrying me. He said, 'Good god, don't tell me it's another one of mine.'
"She told him she just wanted a job. He said, 'Well, come right in and let me take a look at you.'
"He used her as a model. She had a friend who was on the stage, and she told her, 'They're having a casting call tomorrow, why don't you go and see if they can use you?'
"She went to the casting call, and they picked her for the chorus line. Some people have said she was with the Ziegfeld Follies. Mother was very petite. The Ziegfeld girls were big girls. She worked for the Shuberts in New York City. The show went to Washington, D.C., for an out-of-town run. The star of the show was Barton. He and his wife, Kitty, took her under their wing. She was so young, so innocent, probably 18. He said one day, 'Do you like baseball?'

"She said yes, and he took her to a game. He knew Daddy. He came over and said, 'I want to introduce you to Clara Mae Merritt.'

"She went to [calling herself] Claire after a while. Daddy said, 'I'm having some people over. Why don't you come over?'

"She said, 'I have a show.'

"He said, 'Come after the show. It'll still be going on.'

"She said, 'I will if I can bring my girlfriend.'

"She went to the party. After, he said, 'May I call on you in New York?'

"She thought about it and said, 'You may.'"

It was May 1923, a month after Ruth inaugurated Yankee Stadium with its first ever home run. His bat sold in 2004 for $1.265 million. With it he declared his intentions for the new year and the new digs — "Some ball yard," Babe said. The previous season, the Yankees' last as squatters in the Polo Grounds, had ended with ignominy. Ruth was suspended four times and batted .118 in the World Series. Claire Hodgson, the new woman in his life, would be widely credited with instilling discipline that no lawyer, manager, beer baron, or commissioner had been able to impose. Julia guffawed at the legal circumlocutions inserted (by hand) in Ruth's 1922 contract, which I saw at the home of a collector in Florida.
"It is understood and agreed by and between the parties hereto that … the player shall at all times during the terms of this contract and through the years 1922, 1923 and 1924, and through the years 1925 and 1926 if this contract is renewed for such years, refrain and abstain entirely from the use of intoxicating liquors and that he shall not during the training and playing season in each year stay up later than 1 o'clock A.M. on any day without the permission and consent of the club's manager, and it is understood and agreed that if at any time during the period of this contract, whether in the playing season or not, the player shall indulge in intoxicating liquors or be guilty of any actions of misbehavior which may render him unfit to perform the services to be performed by him hereunder, the club may cancel and terminate the contract and retain as the property of the club, any sums of money withheld from the player's salary as above provided."
In the margin, Ruth smartly initialed his consent: GHR.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Julia said.
Along with fiscal restraint, Claire brought "baggage" — "Her mother, two uncles, and me," Julia said.
The intact family he had never had was completed on October 30, 1930, when he adopted Julia and Claire adopted Dorothy. "Probably he would have liked to have some kids," Julia said. "I don't think Mother wanted any more. Marrying him at her age in 1929, I don't think she wanted to be tied down."
She doesn't remember the day she met Babe Ruth. He was for her, perhaps for all of us, a priori. "It seems like he'd always been there."
Her son, Tom Stevens, a civil engineer visiting between contracting stints abroad, offered a gentle nudge — "He gave you a watch" — and Julia brightened. "A watch to me was something extraordinary. He loved roughhousing. Next thing I knew the crystal was broken. He said, 'Don't worry, I'll get you another one.'
"He was such a great guy. To adopt me! I developed a strep throat when I was 21. The doctor said, 'She needs a blood transfusion.' We were side by side on gurneys while he gave me a blood transfusion."
He used her grandmother's sewing machine to make her a bedspread for summer camp at Camp Shanewis on Crystal Lake in Barton, Vt. "It was floral, a blue background with flowers on it. He said, 'Don't tell anyone I made that.'"
It was the only time she ever saw him employ a needle and thread. Babe Ruth did not sew on his own buttons. Carloni, the tailor, did that.
Sometimes for breakfast he fixed one-eyed eggs. Sometimes he cooked up a batch of barbecue sauce to take along on hunting trips for barbecued venison. Her grandson, Brent, tried The Babe's recipe once. "It didn't taste good at all," she said.
The domestication of the Babe was never complete, but he was a strict father with very definite ideas about how to raise a daughter. "I had to be home by midnight, or else — even after I was in my 20s," Julia said.
Ruth's birth date was uncertain, off by a year and a day, a fact he didn't learn until he applied for a passport in 1934. He misspelled his mother's maiden name in his authorized biography and couldn't remember it when he and Claire applied for a marriage license. He said he had an older brother, John, who "died before he was any use to me." His late sister, Mamie, said George Jr. was the oldest.
The attention granted him as firstborn dissipated in short order as Kate Ruth, a diminutive woman, gave birth to seven more children in less than six years, including two sets of twins — only Babe and Mamie survived infancy. His barkeep father didn't give him the time of day because he didn't have the time of day to give. "His parents were first generation in this country," his granddaughter Donna said. "He was brought up on the Baltimore waterfront with all these dying kids — they ought to make a movie about that!"
Family life was itinerant at best and violent at worst. Various accounts describe physical abuse by both parents. "Daddy used to whip him something terrible," Mamie once said.
George Ruth operated a saloon on Camden Street from 1906 to 1912 in what is now short center field at Oriole Park. "When I wasn't living over it I was living in it," Ruth once said.
When the stadium was built in the neighborhood then called Pigtown, the State of Maryland hired an archeological firm to excavate the bar's foundation. With Mamie's help they located the family privy and a portion of the chamber pot.
Left to his own devices, George Jr. roamed the waterfront dodging truant officers, hurling stolen tomatoes through plate glass windows, chewing tobacco, dipping into his father's till, and emptying the glasses left behind by his patrons. "In those days, they tolerated a kid in a saloon but not truancy," Donna said.
In 1902, the State of Maryland outlawed child labor for minors 12 years of age and younger and mandated compulsory education for all children 5 to 16 years of age. That spring, a city magistrate declared him "incorrigible or vicious" and committed him to the St. Mary's Industrial School, founded by the archbishop in 1866 to care for orphans, paupers, and others "beyond the control" of their parents.
Today's language for unmanageable boys is a diagnostic code: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Donna believes her grandfather had ADHD, which she saw in her late brother. A conversation with a family friend, Juanita Jennings, fueled her suspicions. "She described the social life, showing up at 11 p.m. for dinner parties, the round-the-clock partying," Donna said. "He slept a couple of hours a night, and a couple of hours was good."
Tom Stevens' wife, Anita, a special-education teacher, concurs. "I think they could wear women out," Anita said of the Ruth men. "Kate must have been very tired."
On Friday the 13th, 1902, George Ruth and his 7-year-old son boarded the Wilkens Avenue trolley and rode it to the end of the line. There was another reason beyond rambunctiousness and the newly enacted truancy laws for his incarceration at St. Mary's. "His mother and father separated," Julia said. "He stayed with his father until he couldn't control him anymore and sent him off to St. Mary's."
That was news to Tom — as it was to curators at the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore. "It was never mentioned," she said. "It must have been a blow to him to have his mother and sister go off and leave him, and his daddy put him in St. Mary's and hardly ever came to visit him."
She never heard him speak about his mother. As is the case so often with the unspoken, Julia assumed everybody knew. Donna, Dorothy's daughter from her first marriage, knew. "Mamie told me they were divorced," she said.
Neither she nor Julia knows exactly when or why Kate left. "I guess she didn't see enough of her husband," Julia said. "She took Mamie and went to live with her mother."
Donna suggested another possibility. "There's no way to know if that was her choice. When she said she was leaving, maybe the father said, 'You can take her but not him.'"
Either way, the effect on even the most incorrigible 7-year-old boy would have been the same. Parental abandonment would be the defining biographical fact of his or any childhood. It is the lens that clarifies; the mystery that explains. "It shaped his life," Donna said. "Heartbreaking, isn't it?"
Viewed through this darkened filter, the first line of his as-told-to autobiography takes on a different hue: "I was a bad kid."
Little wonder he authorized Bob Considine to write: "I think my mother hated me."
An idealized version of family life and his arrival at St. Mary's appeared in a 1920 first-person essay ghostwritten by the usually unsentimental Westbrook Pegler. It begins with Ruth crying himself to sleep his first night in the newly electrified dormitory. "I could see the family gathered about the table for supper and my chair empty, and I was wondering whether they missed me as much as I missed them. I looked up from my pillow in the darkness there, to see a great six-foot-six man standing over me. He said it in a whisper because he knew that one kid would be sensitive about having the others know him to be homesick …
"'What's the matter, Babe?' Brother Matthias whispered.
"I don't remember having been called Babe before that. Perhaps that's where the name originated."
Brother Matthias, the prefect of Discipline, was large enough that the door to his small sleeping quarters had to be rehung in order to accommodate the extra length of his bed. He commanded respect on and off the baseball field. But this is the first time he has been credited with divining the most famous of baseball nicknames. (Credit usually devolves to an unnamed teammate when Ruth joined the Baltimore Orioles and was dubbed Jack Dunn's baby.)
"Anyway, he told me he was coach of the ball club and advised me to come out and try for a place on the team," the United News Service feature continued. "I knew I was going to like this kindly, understanding big friend. But I couldn't foresee, of course, that he was going to coach me along into the big leagues and make the home run champion."
Ruth spent 12 years of his life in and out of St. Mary's, a Victorian institution in attitude as well as architecture. For generations of Baltimore's Catholic schoolboys, St. Mary's was a threat. Behave, or else you'll get sent where the Babe went when he was bad. "He did say one time that St. Mary's was his salvation," Julia said. "Left on his own with his father he would have ended up in jail. It was not the greatest place to be, but a good place for him."
Punishment was corporeal, and the diet would have been familiar to Oliver Twist. Lots of gruel, and two hot dogs on Saturday, which, Donna said, could account for her grandfather's well-documented appetite for ballpark franks. He told Julia one night over dinner that he was "never really hungry at St. Mary's but never really full either."
The boys called him "Nigger Lips" or "Nigger" or just plain "Nig," a crude acknowledgement of his thick lips and wide nose. "Between his looks, and being called 'Nigger Lips,' none of it could have been easy," Donna said. "He was gangly. He looked different from anyone else."
Visits home were often brief and ended badly. Parole became infrequent and visitors were few — one Sunday a month. "I guess I'm too big and ugly for anyone to come see me," he told his classmate Louis "Fats" Leisman, who published a pamphlet in 1956 called "I Was With Babe Ruth at St. Mary's."
Julia takes umbrage at that description. "He really wasn't ugly," she said. "I can remember when he was going to a Newspaper Guild ball or something like that he'd get all dressed up in a tux and his high silk hat, and mother and Dorothy and I would stand at the front door to say good-bye to him and he'd say, 'Am I a handsome fella or not?'"
Mamie recalled making monthly visits with her mother. Julia said: "I don't think Kate ever came to visit. He was allowed out to go to her funeral."
Kate Ruth died at age 38 on August 11, 1912. She was living with her sister. No mention of her husband is made in the death notice. The official cause of death: exhaustion. Also, she had lung disease. Kate was buried on August 14 in her parents' plot at Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery on Belair Road in Baltimore. "I was summoned home from school too late to be with her," Ruth wrote for the United News Service in 1920.
Her grave was unmarked until 2008 when it was discovered by Paul Harris, a Baltimore attorney and author whose father had played sandlot baseball with and against Ruth. "I woke up one night, and it just hit me: No one has visited her grave since 1912," Harris told the Baltimore Sun in 2008. The Babe Ruth Museum contributed $1,200 toward a headstone. "Shame on the Babe," Harris wrote in his account of Ruth's early years, Babe Ruth, the Dark Side.
The Xaverian brothers attended to his soul and gave him a calling. They taught him how to make a shirt — he would always have an appreciation for a well-turned collar. According to a dissertation about St. Mary's written by Notre Dame Ph.D. candidate Cyril Witte in 1955: " … The classroom was of slight interest to him, but his boundless energy found release and healthy application in the shops and on the playing field. When he had completed the eighth grade he spent full time working with the maintenance crew, in the tailor shop, and in the shirt factory. In the last named, he willingly spent time doing work in excess of his quota, thereby earning a sizeable sum. Naturally competitive and impetuous he was always in some kind of mischief, rarely returning to the dormitory in the evening with a whole shirt …"
The brothers imposed order on energy, channeling its abundance into baseball. In 1909, St. Mary's fielded 28 uniformed baseball teams; one game attracted 3,000 spectators. Ruth went missing the week before the first biggest game of his life, a contest between the good lads of Mount St. Joseph College, a private Xaverian school, and St. Mary's inmates. He returned in time to pitch a 6-0 shutout before a crowd that included Jack Dunn, owner of the Baltimore Orioles. On September 20, 1913, the St. Mary's Saturday Evening Star reported: "Ruth, one of the 'stars' star slabmen allowed but one hit, that being a two base hit. He also struck out twenty-two and issued but one pass. During that same game he hit safely four times."
By 1913, the Brothers had begun allowing Ruth to play for local amateur and semipro teams on weekends. They also allowed him to transfer to another Xaverian institution in town where students were granted more freedom in preparation for life on the outside. That experiment lasted about two months. "He appeared in the school yard in a gray suit and a black baseball cap, head down. … He did not seem to hear the voices of the three or four hundred boys who were screaming, 'Welcome back, Nigger Lips!'"
Leisman became an unlikely figure in the Cold War persecution of American Communists when he testified on behalf of Alger Hiss during his trial on charges of perjury stemming from his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The government discredited Leisman, saying he had "in the past used aliases, has been twice convicted, is a heavy drinker, and in general is irresponsible." His recollections of Ruth's life at St. Mary's have never been disputed.
One Sunday, Ruth told Leisman — perhaps to cheer him up because he, too, had no visitors — that he hadn't seen his father in 10 years. From the time of his mother's death until February 27, 1914, when Jack Dunn fetched him to play for the Baltimore Orioles and became his legal guardian, Ruth received no visitors. "Obviously, Daddy never held it against his father, because as soon as he had money to buy his father a bar he did," Julia said. "He even went and helped out."
The only known photograph of father and son was taken at the saloon Ruth purchased for Ruth, the elder during the winter of 1915-1916. "It's now the Goddess strip club," Tom said.
The bar is decked out for the holidays. Christmas balls and tinsel dangle from the tin ceiling, the festive effect augmented by the reflection on the bar behind which Babe and his father stand. A gleaming punch bowl and empty glasses await the evening crowd. There is only one patron, a black waiter, a barman, and a dog perched on a wooden chair near a raw bar.
Although father and son are identically attired — striped shirts, black vests, unblemished aprons tied about their waists — accentuating the familial similarity, they stand apart. The father, grim, unsmiling, unused to being photographed unlike his burgeoning son, dominates the foreground, a lit cigar burning between the index and middle fingers of his left hand. A dead, stuffed animal, teeth bared, is mounted on the wall behind his head. The photo was sold at auction in 1998 for $14,914.
"He was not one to hold a grudge," Julia said of Babe. "He was sorry his father died the way he did, trying to stop a fight outside the bar."
On Saturday afternoon, August 24, 1918, Ruth beat the St. Louis Browns 3-1 at Fenway Park. While he was scattering five hits in Boston, an altercation between two of his father's new brothers-in-law, relations of his second wife, began in the bar. That evening, George Ruth Sr. followed one of the combatants outside to the curb. Blows were exchanged; one found his left temple, causing George Ruth Sr. to hit his head against the sidewalk. He died the next day at University Hospital. An inquest exonerated his brother-in-law, ruling that he had acted in self-defense.
George Ruth Sr. was buried in Loudon Park National Cemetery, less than a mile from St. Mary's Industrial School, beneath an impressive granite stone identifying him as "Beloved husband of Martha E."
His father's death severed any umbilical connection to Baltimore and the unhappy child he had been there. The racial epithets — and rumors about Ruth's ethnicity — would follow him throughout his major league career. After the Giants swept the Yankees in the 1922 World Series, Ruth stormed into the opposing locker room and confronted the loudest of his tormenters, Johnny Rawlings. "You can call me a dick and you can call me a cocksucker," Ruth said, according to biographer Robert Creamer. "Just don't get personal."
Race was a subtext in the one-month suspension handed down by baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis that spring after Ruth's unsanctioned offseason barnstorming tour, which included games against Negro League teams. In 1934, he would invite Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, part owner of the New York Black Yankees, into the Yankee clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, making him the first black guest to cross that threshold. Robinson would be an honorary pallbearer at The Babe's funeral. "Joe Louis invited him up to his training camp in the Catskills to thank him for what he did for racial relations," Julia said.
But St. Mary's and Brother Matthias remained recipients of his largesse. He bought "Big Matt" automobiles and raised funds to help rebuild the school when it was gutted by fire.
Today, the field on which Babe Ruth became Babe Ruth sits abandoned, its future in jeopardy, as Richard Sandomir reported last year in the New York Times. Cardinal Gibbons High School, which occupied the site after St. Mary's closed in 1950, was shuttered at the end of the 2010 academic year. The Archdiocese allowed a group of parents and alumni to open the gym one day last winter for a charity basketball game to raise money for the children of a deceased coach. The heat was not turned on.
The only remaining evidence of The Babe is a tile mosaic hanging above the counter in the abandoned snack bar. There he stands, at home plate, in Yankee gray, his pinstriped body corkscrewed in the aftermath of contact — bat on shoulder, chin up, gazing at the flight of an unseen ball.
"I'm as proud of it as any Harvard man is proud of his school, and to get crude for a moment, I will be happy to bop anybody on the beezer who speaks ill of it," Ruth told Considine.
Julia was 33 years old and living in New Hampshire with her first husband when her father died in August 1948. As the daily deathwatch bulletins grew grimmer, she came to New York to be with her mother, who was staying at a hotel near the hospital. "On good days, he'd sign these little cards and give them to the nurse and say, 'Take these down and give 'em to the kids,'" Julia said. "He was always thinking about other kids, probably because he didn't have much of a childhood. There were always seven or eight under his window. Those were the last signatures."
She saw him last on August 15, the day before his death. "A fella called and said, 'I think you'd better get over here.' I'm trying to remember if he even knew us. He had so much medicine, I don't think so."
He died of pneumonia secondary to nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a cancer that was not accurately diagnosed until his autopsy. He was treated with radiation and surgery that, for a time, left him unable to swallow, necessitating a feeding tube, and was among the first Americans to receive an early form of chemotherapy — now standard treatment.
His death was an undeclared day of national mourning. So many New Yorkers wanted to pay their respects that his body was brought to Yankee Stadium to lie in state. She had never seen anything like it — nor had the Stadium. The august rotunda was prepared for him as for a head of state. Pete Sheehy, the devoted clubhouse man, scrubbed the floor on his hands and knees.

“Poor Daddy, he looked so awful. I hated to think of all those people going by and seeing him like that. I didn't like the viewing. I did look at him. Yes, I did. He looked so old, so sad." — Julia Ruth Stevens

Throngs of mourners ringed the stadium, tens of thousands of people in attire suitable for an afternoon game. The line was so long the Yankees had to extend the hours of the viewing. For Julia, it brought to mind the mob that besieged Frank E. Campbell's funeral parlor on Broadway in 1926 after the death of Rudolph Valentino, when traffic was snarled, 75 mourners were injured, and two women committed suicide.
No one died mourning The Babe. "There was no pushing or shoving," Julia said. "It was all very quiet and sedate. Orderly."
Julia and her first husband and her mother arrived through the press gate. She doesn't remember much about that day. "It's almost like I was sleepwalking through it," she said. "It was bare. Absolutely bare. There were flowers. There was light."
Three New York City patrolmen stood sentinel along with urns of gladiolas and a 6-foot crucifix. The open casket, positioned between pillars adorned with a jaunty Yankee top hat, lay 100 feet from home plate. It was made from African mahogany and lined with eggshell-colored velvet; a huge spray of flowers from Dorothy adorned its lower half.
"Poor Daddy, he looked so awful. I hated to think of all those people going by and seeing him like that. I didn't like the viewing. I did look at him. Yes, I did. He looked so old, so sad."
He was 53 years old.
Most of his personal baseball effects went directly to Cooperstown. She remembers the day officials from the Hall of Fame came calling. Claire kept them waiting while she searched the apartment for a few items to keep. "Just a minute, just a minute," Julia remembers her mother calling. "I'll be right there in a minute."
Claire saved a loving cup trophy and a few bats stowed in a duffel bag in a closet. Tom remembers trying to hoist one of them as a boy. "I had to choke up almost to the trademark," he said.
Claire would keep her title as baseball's Most Famous Widow until her death in 1976, attending important occasions at the Stadium, including the night Roger Maris broke the Babe's record when, Julia says, "She might have shed a tear."
"Mother would never have given up the name of Mrs. Babe Ruth," Julia said. "She would never have married again. She was Mrs. Babe Ruth 'til the day she died, just like Eleanor was Mrs. Lou Gehrig to the day she died."
He will be Daddy until the day she dies, which she is not planning to do anytime soon. She made her last public appearance at Fenway Park in May, making the honorary first heave on the occasion of the Cubs' first visit since her Daddy pitched the Red Sox to the 1918 World Championship. The Red Sox are her team. They have been very good to her — tickets are always available for The Babe's daughter.
She also threw out the first pitch at the last game played at the old Yankee Stadium in 2009. She has no interest in visiting the new joint. It is not the House That Ruth Built.





Syracuse still on top of Top 25; OSU comes in second

Syracuse is on top of The Associated Press' college basketball poll for a second week and UNLV and Virginia are newcomers to the Top 25.
The Orange (11-0) received 53 first-place votes Monday from the 64-member national media panel. The next six places remained the same from last week: Ohio State, Kentucky, Louisville, North Carolina, Baylor and Duke. Ohio State had five first-place votes, while Kentucky had four and Louisville two.
Connecticut, Missouri and Marquette all move up one place to round out the top 10.
UNLV, out of the poll the last two weeks, and Virginia, which was last in the rankings for one week early in 2007-08, move in, replacing Texas A&M, which was No. 22; Alabama, which was 23rd; and Vanderbilt, which was tied for 25th.
Xavier, which lost 64-42 to Oral Roberts on Sunday to fall from the undefeated ranks, dropped from No. 8 to 14th. The Musketeers played without three starters who were suspended for their part in the brawl against Cincinnati the previous weekend.




Owners get a new “LeBron Rule” in NBA labor deal

There was a whole lot about the NBA lockout that was really about LeBron James. About who has the power, the owners or players.
But some things are more specific than others. Like this note from the Sports Business Journal (via Eye on Basketball).
NBA players are now prohibited from holding an ownership stake in a player-management firm or from acting as National Basketball Players Association-certified agents under a provision in the league’s new collective-bargaining agreement.
The provision was something NBA owners asked for and players agreed to as one of the so-called B-list items, terms that were collectively bargained after the NBPA re-formed as a union, according to a union source.
This is very directly aimed at LeBron James and his marketing arm LRMR, the marketing firm he and his buddies founded, which last year merged with the Fenway Sports Group. Neither LRMR nor Fenway represent any players in terms of negotiations — they are marketing arms, not agents — but that line is kind of blurred for players now (agents help set up marketing deals all the time) so the owners decided to try and rein it in.
And we have a “LeBron James rule” that tries to limit players power and potential income, something that comes at the request of the owners. Sounds about right.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Noah Spence commits to Ohio State - Irving Impresses Cav Fans - Ohio State Names Herron Team MVP, Captain


Ohio State Names Herron Team MVP, Captain
By Brandon Castel

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Boom Herron played in only six games for the Buckeyes this season, but that did not stop the senior tailback from picking up major post-season accolades Sunday.
In front of more than 400 friends, family, players and team staff, Herron was named Ohio State’s 2011 team Most Valuable Player at the annual football team banquet in the Archie Griffin Ballroom at the Ohio Union.
Herron was also named one of Ohio State’s four permanent captains for the 2011 season, along with senior linebacker Andrew Sweat, junior defensive lineman John Simon and senior center Michael Brewster.
“This is the first year that I’ve counted the most valuable player votes and it was close in a lot of different areas,” Ohio State’s interim head coach Luke Fickell said in a statement.
“But Herron, the winner of our team MVP award, was an unbelievable example of how to handle adverse situations on and off the field. He was an example to us all.”
After leading the Buckeyes in rushing last season with 1,155 yards and 16 touchdowns, Heron was suspended the first five games of the 2011 season for his involvement in the tattoos-for-memorabilia scandal.
He was suspended an additional game by the NCAA for the overpayment he received from now-dissociated booster Bobby DiGeronimo, but returned to run for 596 yards and three touchdowns over the final six games of the season.
The Buckeyes won their first three games with Herron back in the lineup, including a 33-29 upset of Wisconsin in Columbus. Herron ran for 160 in that game, but Ohio State slumped with a three-game losing streak to close out the season.
The fact Herron was selected both as a captain and the team MVP says a lot about the way he is viewed inside Ohio State’s locker room and within the program itself.
“Playing at Ohio State has been a dream come true, and it has truly been an honor,” Herron said.
“All the memories and relationships I’ve built here are amazing. I want to thank my teammates for just being great teammates.”
It was a rough season for everyone at Ohio State, but maybe most of all for Brewster and Sweat, who had to shoulder a lot of the pressure and responsibility that would normally be spread out through a senior class.
“It is an honor that my teammates have selected me to be a captain,” Brewster said.
“I wish things could have gone better. But not one day went by where guys had their heads down. We always found a way to get things done.”
Fickell elected not to name season captains at the beginning of the year, instead asking every player on the team to assume a leadership role. The captains rotated each week throughout the season, which allowed Herron and Mike Adams to serve as game captains late in the year after they returned from their suspensions.
Brewster led the team with eight games where he served as a captain, including six of the last seven. Sweat was second on the team with seven games, while Tyler Moeller served as captain for six games. Simon was only a captain for four games during the regular season, but the history books will list him as one of Ohio State’s four captains for 2011, along with Herron, who served as a captain in four of his six games this season.

Past MVP Award Winners:

2001: Jonathan Wells
2002: Craig Krenzel & Chris Gamble
2003: Michael Jenkins
2004: Mike Nugent
2005: A.J. Hawk
2006: Troy Smith
2007: Beanie Wells
2008: Beanie Wells
2009: Kurt Coleman
2010: Dane Sanzenbacher

2011 Award Winners

Team MVP: Dan Herron (2010 Dane Sanzenbacher)

Archie Griffin Award (Outstanding Offensive Player): Braxton Miller (2010 Terrelle Pryor)

Bill Willis Award (Outstanding Defensive Player): John Simon (2010 Cam Heyward)

Bo Rein Award (Most Inspirational): Nate Ebner (2010 Sanzenbacher)

Jim Marshall Warrior Award: Tyler Moeller (Brandon Saine & Aaron Gant)

First-Year Offensive Player: Braxton Miller (2010 Corey Brown)

First-Year Defensive Player: Bradley Roby (2010 Johnathan Hankins)

Rex Kern Award (Outstanding Offensive Back): Zach Boren (2010 Boom Herron)

Paul Warfield Award (Outstanding WR): Corey Brown (2010 Sanzenbacher)

Jim Parker Award (Outstanding Offensive Lineman): Michael Brewster and Mike Adams (2010 Justin Boren & Bryant Browning)

Ike Kelley Award (Special Teams Standout): Nate Ebner (2010 Jake McQuaide)

Randy Gradishar Award (Outstanding LB): Andrew Sweat (2010 Brian Rolle & Ross Homan)

Arnie Chonko (Outstanding DB): C.J. Barnett (2010 Chimdi Chekwa & Jermale Hines)

Jack Stephenson Award (Outstanding Defensive Lineman): Johnathan Hankins (2010 Dexter Larimore)

John Galbreath Award (Academic Success): Chris Maxwell

Agonis Club Rick Meyer Award: Ryan Shazier (15 tackles vs. Penn State)







Noah Spence commits to Ohio State
For the last several months, Noah Spence's plan was to make an announcement at the Under Armour All-American Game. And up until three weeks ago, Ohio State wasn't going to be one of the hats on the table.
On Sunday, during an official visit to Ohio State, though, Spence, a five-star defensive end ranked No. 4 overall nationally, committed to the Buckeyes -- the program's third ESPNU 150 commit in just a week.
"It just felt right -- the family atmosphere, the great coaches," Spence said shortly after leaving the Ohio State campus. "The players want to win and the coaches want to win, and they're trying to build something that I want to be a part of. ...
"I wanted to get it out the way. It felt right, so, you know, why not?"
Before the season, Spence (Harrisburg, Pa./Bishop McDevitt) named a top seven, and Ohio State wasn't on the list. Penn State was the favorite to land him, but the child sex-abuse scandal at the university jumbled Spence's leaderboard as new teams began to enter the fold.
Still, Ohio State didn't become a factor until Urban Meyer was named coach on Nov. 28, and Meyer got in touch with Spence shortly after he was hired. Spence had never visited Ohio State before this weekend.
"I wasn't really into them a lot," Spence said. "As I got to learn about the staff and what they're trying to do and how close it is to my home, it felt like a fit."
Throughout his recruitment, Spence maintained whichever school he chose had to feel like a second home; Spence is one of nine sons to Greg and Helen Spence. During his official visit, Spence said it was the non-football discussions with the Buckeyes staff that sold him.
"Everyone was talking about their own families and everything like regular people," Spence said. "Everything wasn't about football. That made me feel comfortable. ...
"It wasn't so much what (the coaches) were saying. It was the players who pretty much matched with what the coaches were saying. It wasn't like it was fake or anything."
As with ESPNU 150 defensive lineman Se'Von Pittman and Tommy Schutt, who committed Dec. 12, the Buckeyes staff alleviated any fears Spence had about looming NCAA sanctions.
"We believe everything will work out fine," Greg Spence said. "There won't be any long-term repercussions."
From the beginning, Spence was never a fan of the recruiting process and routinely avoided calls from college coaches during his senior season, and he said he is relieved the process has come to a close as he doesn't believe he will make any other visits.
"I can see where I'm going to be at for the next four years," Spence said. "I'll always have my family at McDevitt, but now I'll be building a new family and help a new family out."
Spence is the Buckeyes' first five-star commitment and 19th overall. Since Nov. 17, the Buckeyes have landed four ESPNU 150 prospects, beginning with Adolphus Washington and ending this week with Pittman, Schutt and Spence.



Irving Impresses Cav Fans

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Kyrie Irving made a strong impression on Cleveland fans during the Cavaliers' free scrimmage at Quicken Loans Arena on Sunday.
Irving received the loudest ovation during player introductions and the No. 1 overall draft pick from Duke was cheered throughout the scrimmage.
"It was a great feeling to be out there," he said. "When I pulled up into the parking garage, a lot of nerves were going. It was a lot of fun to finally play at the Q and be out there with my teammates."
Cleveland fans are counting on Irving to be the centerpiece in the Cavaliers' rebuilding project after the departure of LeBron James. Cleveland won 19 games last season.
Irving, whose Gold team defeated the Wine team 67-57 in the scrimmage that lasted three quarters, quickly provided a couple of highlights. Less than a minute into the game, he threw an alley-oop pass to Omri Casspi for a dunk. He then drove past Ramon Sessions and scored on a left-handed layup.
Irving added two more alley-oop passes that resulted in dunks and picked off a pass at midcourt and drove in for a dunk of his own. He finished with 14 points, nine assists, six rebounds and five turnovers in 31 minutes.
"I'm focused on getting better every day," Irving said. "I'm trying to fit into this team as best as I can. That's the most important thing right now."
Three of Irving's assists were on alley-oop passes, which brought the crowd to its feet.
"I've been doing those lob passes ever since I can remember, even in the eighth grade when no one could dunk," he said. "I've been practicing that my whole life. I don't think there's an art to it. It's a basketball play."
Cleveland coach Byron Scott hasn't committed to Irving as his starting point guard in the season opener against Toronto on Dec. 26. Irving came off the bench in Friday's preseason opener against Detroit and scored 21 points in 27 minutes.
The door for Irving to start opened last week when the Cavaliers waived Baron Davis under the NBA's new amnesty rule. The Cavaliers host the Pistons in the final preseason game Tuesday. Scott has said he won't make his decision until the opener, but Irving is expected to start.
Tristan Thompson, the No. 4 pick in the draft, scored 12 points and had six rebounds in 26 minutes.

NOTES: Casspi, who had been sidelined with a sore knee, scored nine points in 17 minutes. He's expected to be the starting small forward. ... Former Cavaliers C Zydrunas Ilgauskas was in attendance. He retired after playing last season with Miami. Ilgauskas would like to stay in basketball in some capacity. "I'm not sure what I'm going to do," he said. "It's been a long time since I've been home at this time of the year. This is kind of new to me." ... G Manny Harris (foot) will likely be out for two weeks. ... The Cavaliers waived F's Kyle Goldcamp and Tyrell Biggs.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Barry Bonds case moves toward end - 2011 College Football AP All-American Teams - Paul Greatful to be with the Clippers


Paul Greatful to be with the Clippers
did you ever think you would hear that statement out of anyones mouth?
LOS ANGELES - Chris Paul endured two weeks of sleepless nights, stressful days and at least one imploded trade before he found a new home with the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Pacific Ocean looked awfully peaceful to the superstar point guard on Thursday when he finally left the New Orleans Hornets for life on the West Coast, and now CP3 can't wait to start turning Staples Center's longtime second-class citizens into the greatest show in Hollywood.
The Clippers' bold new acquisition spent the day at their Playa Vista training complex, trying on his new No. 3 jersey after meeting with Blake Griffin and the rest of the players who can't wait to catch the four-time All-Star's passes.
"This is not my day, by the way. This is the Clippers' day," Paul told an overflowing media crowd. "This is a humbling experience, and I'm so grateful and thankful to be here."
A day earlier, the Clippers acquired Paul in a four-player trade with the Hornets, outmaneuvering the Lakers and several other suitors for the player widely considered the NBA's best point guard. Paul, who averaged 18.7 points and 9.8 assists last season, realizes his move is a stunning endorsement of the long-struggling Clippers, who have been overshadowed by the 16-time champions for three decades in Southern California.
"I believe in this organization," Paul said. "I believe in the players here, and I want to win. I want to win now. I'm so tired of doing everything else. I want to play."
What Paul doesn't know about the Clippers doesn't appear to hurt him. He repeatedly referred to the Clippers' history as a selling point as he joined a 41-year-old franchise with no championships, no division titles, one winning season in the past 19 years and just one playoff series victory since 1976.
Yet Paul represents the Clippers' shining future, not that dingy past. Even better for their long-suffering fans, Paul already realizes what side he's taking in this painfully one-sided crosstown rivalry, and he's ready to mix it up with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and whoever is left on the Lakers' roster when they finally resolve a profoundly messy offseason.
Paul repeatedly refused to talk about the Lakers' squashed trade for him — even refusing to say the Lakers' name.
"The other team has won championships, and it's about winning, but I think Blake has done an unbelievable job changing that (perception)," said Paul, who almost singlehandedly put a first-round playoff scare into the Lakers last spring with the Hornets. "You can't take anything away from him about how he has changed the culture here in L.A. I'm coming here to join and be a part of it, and hopefully we can grow together as basketball players and continue to change everything. That's what we play for."
Griffin is sad to lose teammates Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman and Al-Farouq Aminu in the deal, but the Rookie of the Year is looking forward to lining up with Paul and fellow newcomers Caron Butler and Chauncey Billups, called "my big brother" by Paul.
Griffin's first words about Paul's arrival — "Lob city!" he said gleefully to fellow high-flying teammate DeAndre Jordan on Wednesday — have already become a Twitter trending topic and a T-shirt in Los Angeles.
"We've got a lot or work to do," Griffin said. "The target has shifted a little bit, but the only thing I'm going to promise is that you're going to get our best every night. And when you hear 'The Clippers,' it's not going to be a joke anymore. I can guarantee you that."
Paul has been intrigued by Griffin since they teamed up for the Western Conference last year at the All-Star game at Staples. He knows fans are already salivating at the prospect of Paul's passes finding the acrobatic Griffin for all varieties of vicious dunks.
"That's something that's not going to happen overnight either," Paul said. "I've got to find the right height. It's like Blake plays on a goal that's lower than 10 foot or something. I'm excited for the opportunity to not only help him grow, but for him to help me to get to the next level."
The Clippers clearly were proud of their own audacity, which surprised many who have only known this franchise for pinching pennies and providing minimal support to a long history of talented players. Clippers vice president of basketball operations Neil Olshey credited owner Donald Sterling and Paul's agent, Leon Rose, for pushing through a trade that stalled at numerous points thanks to the Hornets' ownership by the NBA.
The Clippers have been determined to change their culture ever since Olshey and coach Vinny Del Negro took over last year, and Paul's arrival is a massive step in that direction.
"The perception here is not the reality, as you guys can see," Olshey said, noting the Clippers' recent improvements, including their gorgeous training complex and their enviable mix of talent and cap room. "Going forward, all that ends, and it's just about the future from now on."
Paul has told the Clippers he'll exercise his player option for next season, keeping him alongside Griffin, Jordan and their supporting cast for at least two years. The Clippers' brain trust is confident they'll win enough in that stretch to persuade the club's core players to stick together — but they'll get to work in earnest on that job Friday in Paul's first full practice with his new team.
"He's not just coming here to jump on a lily pad," Olshey said. "He's coming here to be a long-term face of this franchise. He wanted to know there were going to be pieces here around him. ... His commitment to wanting to be here is what inspired me to not give up. When it got to the point where both our goals met late (Wednesday) afternoon, we just got in a room and got on with Mr. Sterling and said, 'If we're going to take this quantum leap as a franchise, it's going to have to be with a superstar, and that's Chris.'"






Barry Bonds case moves toward end
By Mark Fainaru-Wada
ESPN.com
SAN FRANCISCO -- When Barry Bonds goes before a federal judge Friday to be sentenced for obstructing justice -- more than eight years after he testified before a grand jury -- it finally will mark the close of the seemingly endless BALCO steroids saga.
Well, maybe.
ESPN.com's Mark Fainaru-Wada will tweet live from the courtroom during the Barry Bonds sentencing. Follow along with our up-to-the-minute Twitter coverage.
Bonds, in fact, still can appeal his April 13 felony conviction, regardless of the sentence imposed by Judge Susan Illston when baseball's home run king appears in her courtroom Friday.
As well, the government technically remains able to re-file charges on three deadlocked counts stemming from Bonds' perjury and obstruction of justice trial this past spring. However, that seems unlikely given the amount of time, money, energy and even public disdain it has taken prosecutors to get to this point.
So basically this is the end, and for baseball, it has to have seemed like an eternity. Much has happened in -- and to -- the sport since Bonds spent three hours testifying at the Phillip Burton Federal Building on the afternoon of Dec. 3, 2003. From there, he became the central figure in a case that ultimately ushered performance-enhancing drugs into the consciousness of baseball fans from Fenway Park to Dodger Stadium. To recap, in part:

• Twelve MVPs have been implicated in the use of PEDs, the most recent being this year's National League award winner, Ryan Braun. (The Brewers' four-time All-Star outfielder has professed his innocence and is fighting a positive test that could result in a 50-game suspension.)

• Two Congressional hearings played out before national television audiences -- the first exposing Mark McGwire's record-breaking 1998 season as tainted, the second leaving seven-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens facing charges he lied before Congress.

• The sport has ratcheted up its testing policy three times now, to the point it legitimately can claim the best anti-doping program in professional sports. (Of course, that's a hollow claim to many anti-doping experts, who believe cheaters remain well ahead of testers and who lament that baseball's policy, like the NFL's, has virtually no transparency.)

• The Mitchell report stands as a historical document, naming more than 80 players as possible drug cheats.

The players implicated or accused in the PED swirl over the past decade represent a startling list: McGwire, Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, Manny Ramirez, Ken Caminiti, Jose Canseco, Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, Miguel Tejada, Rick Ankiel, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Gary Sheffield, Eric Gagne, Troy Glaus, David Justice, David Ortiz, Andy Pettitte, Mo Vaughn, and many more.
Bonds, though, remains the be-all, end-all in the narrative, a polarizing figure who transformed himself through chemistry from a clear Hall of Famer into one of the greatest players of all time, beginning around the turn of the century.
He emerged as the all-time home run leader, even as his legacy was crumbling amid the revelations of his steroid use. And it only became more complicated for him in November 2007 when prosecutors filed perjury and obstruction of justice charges, alleging Bonds had lied repeatedly about his steroid use during his 2003 testimony before the BALCO grand jury.
The Bonds perjury case finally went to trial in March, lasted 12 days and ended with a whimper -- the jury deadlocked on three counts that he lied to the grand jury about his use of steroids and human growth hormone and about whether he had ever been injected by anyone other than one of his doctors.
The jury did convict on the obstruction of justice charge, suggesting Bonds' often rambling and off-topic responses were part of an effort to mislead the grand jury investigation. Specifically, they cited a response to a question about whether he had ever received from his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, "anything that required a syringe to inject yourself with?"
Bonds offered a 235-word response that described the parameters of his friendship with Anderson, how he grew up as a "celebrity child, not just in baseball but by my own instincts," and the fact that "I have been married to a woman five years, known her 17 years, and I don't even know what's in her purse."
For that, now comes his judgment day. (Another will come one year from now when Bonds' name appears for the first time on a Hall of Fame ballot.) Friday almost certainly will bring one of two outcomes for Bonds: prison or probation with some home confinement.
The sentencing guidelines for his crime call for 15 to 21 months of imprisonment, according to court records. However, those same records suggest that the probation officer who wrote the pre-sentencing report (PSR) recommended no prison time for Bonds. The PSR calls for a "downward departure" from the guidelines because of four factors, including Bonds' philanthropic efforts.
"Most of Mr. Bonds' charitable and civic contributions, financial and otherwise, have taken place away from the public eye," wrote his attorneys. The lawyers also said the PSR suggested the conviction was an "aberration when taken in the context of his entire life."
Prosecutors, meanwhile, maintain Bonds should get 15 months in prison for his "calculated plan to obfuscate and distract the grand jury from its role in getting to the truth in the BALCO inquiry. … Bonds' pervasive efforts to testify falsely, to mislead the grand jury, to dodge questions, and to simply refuse to answer questions in the grand jury makes his conduct worthy of a significant jail sentence."
Judge Illston, though, will have the final word, and if her sentencing history is any indication, Bonds is unlikely to serve any prison time. Stemming from BALCO, Illston has heard four other similar, false-statement cases and has ordered no prison time in any of them. In the case of Marion Jones, the former Olympic queen was sentenced by a New York judge to six months in prison, but that was because she also was found guilty of lying to federal agents investigating a check-kiting scheme.
In the three other cases -- former NFL lineman Dana Stubblefield, former Olympic cyclist Tammy Thomas and track coach Trevor Graham -- Illston rejected prosecutors' requests for prison time. Stubblefield received two years' probation; Graham got a year of home confinement and five years' probation; and Thomas was given six months' home confinement along with five years' probation.
Thomas had been found guilty both of making false statements and obstructing justice, but Illston sent a message that seemed to portend well for Bonds when she denied prosecutors' attempts to send Thomas to prison for 30 months. In the BALCO case, Illston noted that the so-called mastermind of the operation, Victor Conte, got just four months in prison and four months of home confinement; Anderson, Bonds' trainer, got three months' prison, three of home confinement; and two other men were given straight probation.
"The drug dealers in this case, which are like, like the pushers in my view, who started this, got sentences much different than the sentence that's urged for Ms. Thomas," Illston said at Thomas' sentencing hearing in April 2008. "… I think it would be inconsistent with my obligations in sentencing to impose a sentence, for example, 10 times longer than Mr. Conte's sentence."
But whatever Illston decides, one thing appears clear: The BALCO investigation -- a federal probe that started with a tip to law enforcement in the summer of 2002 and emerged into one of the biggest sports scandals in history -- is finally about to end.



2011 College Football AP All-American Teams

NEW YORK -- LSU's Tyrann Mathieu and Morris Claiborne became the first cornerback teammates to lock down spots on the AP All-America team.
Mathieu, a Heisman Trophy finalist, and Claiborne were joined on the All-America team by Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III of Baylor and finalists Montee Ball of Wisconsin and Trent Richardson of Alabama.
ESPN.com's All-America team includes four players from Alabama, three from LSU and two each from Oklahoma State, Stanford and Georgia. Blog
Heisman runner-up Andrew Luck from Stanford was the second-team quarterback.
The team released Wednesday was selected by a panel of 16 AP poll voters.
The second-ranked Crimson Tide had the most first-teamers with four. Richardson was joined by tackle Barrett Jones, linebacker Dont'a Hightower and safety Mark Barron. Tide linebackers Courtney Upshaw and cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick also made the second team, giving Alabama the most players selected overall.
The LSU duo was joined on the first team by Tigers punter Brad Wing. LSU guard Will Blackwell was a second-team selection and defensive end Sam Montgomery made the third team.
The top-ranked Tigers will play SEC West rival Alabama on Jan. 9 in New Orleans for the BCS title.
Since the AP began selecting both an offensive and defensive team in 1964, no team had put a pair of cornerbacks on the first team. Of course, few teams have had two cornerbacks as talented as Mathieu and Claiborne.
Mathieu, also known as Honey Badger, has been a mayhem-maker for LSU on defense and special teams. He forced five fumbles, intercepted two passes and scored four touchdowns -- two on punt returns, two on fumble returns. The 5-foot-9, 180-pound sophomore also had 71 tackles and was versatile enough to be moved around the defense at times.
Claiborne is a prototypical shutdown corner. The 6-1 junior made six interceptions and averaged 29 yards per return, with a touchdown.
"We have one of the best defenses in the country," Mathieu said. "We've got a lot of NFL talent in our secondary, and our defense as a whole."
The talented tandem was a major reason why LSU (13-0) heads to the BCS national championship game against Alabama with a pass defense ranked third in opponents' efficiency, ninth in yards allowed per game and second in fewest touchdown passes allowed.
No. 3 Oklahoma State also had five selections on the three teams, including wide receiver Justin Blackmon, one of two players to be selected to the first team for the second straight season. Blackmon caught 113 passes for 1,336 yards and 15 touchdowns.
Boston College linebacker Luke Kuechly, the nation's leading tackler at 15.9 per game, is the other two-time All-American on this year's team.
Griffin, who is second in the nation in total offense at 396 yards per game, won the Heisman on Saturday, beating out preseason favorite Luck, who was a second-team All-American for the second straight year.
Richardson was third in the Heisman voting and Ball, who is one touchdown away from tying Barry Sanders' single-season record of 39, was fourth.
Mathieu finished fifth in the Heisman voting and USC quarterback Matt Barkley, a third-team All-America, was sixth.
Barkley's favorite target, sophomore receiver Robert Woods, was a first-team AP All-America selection, along with USC tackle Matt Kalil also on the first team.
Clemson also had two players on the first-team, with tight end Dwayne Allen and freshman Sammy Watkins, selected as an all-purpose player.
Watkins and Wing were the only freshman picked to any of the three teams.
The rest of the first-team line had Stanford's David DeCastro and Wisconsin's Kevin Zeitler at guard and Michigan's David Molk at center.
Groza Award winner Randy Bullock of Texas A&M was the All-American kicker.
On defense, three Big Ten defensive linemen made the All-America team: 300-pound tackles Devon Still from Penn State and Jerel Worthy from Michigan State, along with Illinois end Whitney Mercilus, who leads the nation with 14½ sacks.
South Carolina's Melvin Ingram was the other defensive end. Georgia had two defensive All-Americans in safety Baccari Rambo and linebacker Jarvis Jones.
Seven of the 11 All-America defensive players were from the Southeastern Conference, befitting its reputation as the best league in the nation.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Meyer's Coaching Staff - Cavaliers amnesty Baron Davis - Sullinger has double-double as Ohio St. cruises


Sullinger has double-double as Ohio St. cruises

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Everyone was pleased with how All-America forward Jared Sullinger played in his first game back after missing two because of back spasms.
Everybody but Sullinger, that is.
Deshaun Thomas scored 23 points and No. 2 Ohio State welcomed back Sullinger in an 82-58 victory over South Carolina Upstate on Wednesday night.
"I was terrible tonight," he said with a laugh after collecting a workmanlike 12 points and 10 rebounds in 33 minutes. "I was tired. Taking two weeks off is a killer."
The 6-foot-9 sophomore wasn't cleared to play until earlier Wednesday. He had missed the Buckeyes' win over Texas-Pan American and Saturday's 78-67 loss at No. 13 Kansas.
Coach Thad Matta said Sullinger played just about the way he expected.
"I thought he did a pretty decent job," Matta said. "He hadn't played since the Duke game (an 85-63 rout on Nov. 29). To get him out there and get him moving, he knew he was going to be rusty and probably a little bit winded. But now that gives him some confidence to get back (to where he was) and to go to work."
Sullinger received polite applause when he entered the game at the 14:37 mark of the first half. He took his time getting into the pace of the game.
"Sullinger looked like all really good players," Spartans coach Eddie Payne said. "He had quiet production. He had 12 and 10 and didn't seem like he did a whole lot."
It was Sullinger who suggested to Matta that he not start.
"That was actually my decision," Sullinger said. "Evan (Ravenel) worked so hard these past two weeks and I really didn't practice even yesterday. It's kind of unfair to Evan. He deserved to start. So I told Coach Matta, `Start Evan tonight and have me come off the bench."'
Torrey Craig had 20 points for Upstate (6-5), playing its third game in a monthlong, seven-game road swing. The Spartans, in their fifth season of Division I competition, and are 0-20 against teams from the six major conferences.
The win was Ohio State's 31st straight at home, the second-longest streak ever at the school behind only the 50 in a row from 1959-64 while Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek and Gary Bradds were the stars.
William Buford added 14 points for the Buckeyes.
After the Spartans scored the first four points of the second half to cut the deficit to 37-31, the Buckeyes pulled away.
Sullinger, who played the last 14:37 of the first half and the first 7:20 of the second and a couple of minutes late, hit two free throws and Lenzelle Smith Jr. made a drive down the heart of the lane. After a basket by Upstate, Ohio State scored on its next three possessions - a dunk by Sullinger, Thomas off a long pass from Smith and Aaron Craft on left-handed layup off a baseline drive.
That made it 47-36 and the lead never dropped below nine points again.
"I felt I played really well," Thomas said. "It's a learning process. I'm just trying to get better as a player."
It was Upstate which set the pace for most of the first half, playing sticky defense at one end and patiently distributing the ball at the other.
The Spartans led 21-17, scoring 16 of 21 points after Sullinger entered the game.
But order was restored late in the half.
From a tie at 26, the Buckeyes sprinted to an 11-2 run to finish the half.
Sullinger, who finished the half with eight points and five rebounds, started it with an uncontested dunk off a quick pass from Buford before Thomas hit a half-hook off an offensive rebound. After Adrian Rodgers hit a perimeter jumper for the Spartans, Buford poured in a 3 from the right wing. Sullinger hit two free throws in the final seconds and after a turnover by Rodgers, Sam Thompson tossed a long pass to Ravenel for a dunk with 3 seconds left.
Thompson also had a stunning blocked shot during the surge, running down Ty Greene on a breakaway to swat the ball away.
Suddenly, the crowd of 13,552 was breathing a lot easier.
"We played 18 1-2 good minutes in the first half and then after that the experienced talent and coaching scheme and their team really hurt us," Payne said.






Source: Everett Withers to join Ohio St.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- North Carolina coach Everett Withers has been hired as an assistant by Urban Meyer and Ohio State, a source close to the hiring told ESPN's Joe Schad.
For now, Withers still plans to coach the Tar Heels in the Independence Bowl.
Withers said Wednesday he's "disappointed" that he isn't the permanent choice to lead the UNC football program. But he said coaches "learn to move on fast."
North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham interviewed Withers before hiring Larry Fedora from Southern Mississippi. That leaves Withers and his staff to prepare for the Dec. 26 game against Missouri in the AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl knowing it's their last at UNC.
Withers took over when the school fired Butch Davis before the season amid an NCAA investigation into the program. Withers led the Tar Heels (7-5) to a fourth straight bowl game.




Cavaliers amnesty Baron Davis
The Cleveland Cavaliers have decided to waive Baron Davis through the league's amnesty clause.
The Cavaliers announced Wednesday night that they're releasing Davis in advance of Friday's amnesty deadline after exploring both trade and buyout possibilities with the former All-Star.
Rougly $27 million of the nearly $30 million left on Davis' contract is guaranteed. The Cavs would still have to pay Davis all that money if they send him away, but the amnesty clause in the new labor agreement -- unlike the 2005 version -- give teams salary cap relief as well as tax relief on a player released via amnesty.
"We would like to thank Baron for his contributions to the team during his time in Cleveland," general manager Chris Grant said in a statement. "He has been an absolute professional since the day he joined the Cavs and we now wish him the best in the future."
Once he's formally released, Davis will first be made available to teams with salary cap space in a waiver auction. That's the mechanism which allowed the Los Angeles Clippers to put in a winning blind bid of just over $2 million for Chauncey Billups after Billups was released by the New York Knicks via amnesty.
But the immediate priority for Davis is getting healthy. A back injury has kept Davis off the floor since training camps opened last week and has sidelined him indefinitely.
Davis' agent, Todd Ramasar, told ESPNNewYork.com's Ian Begley that "Baron is out a minimum of 8-10 weeks if there's no setbacks in his physical therapy."
If he clears waivers 48 hours after his release, Davis, 32, will then have the right to proceed to free agency and pick his next team.
Sources with knowledge of Davis' thinking told ESPN.com in early November that the former UCLA star's hometown Los Angeles Lakers and the Knicks are the two teams he's always dreamed of playing for. Davis also still has a good relationship with the Charlotte community, Bobcats coach Paul Silas and Bobcats assistant coach Stephen Silas, factors which would likewise make the Bobcats an option if owner Michael Jordan is interested.
The Cavs weighed whether to keep Davis for one more season and try to play him alongside No. 1 overall pick Kyrie Irving. Cleveland coach Byron Scott, who had Davis in New Orleans, had also spoken optimistically of the idea that Irving and Davis could function well together in the same backcourt.
Yet the overriding sentiment within the organization calls for handing the keys of the franchise to Irving right away. With Ramon Sessions on the books in Cleveland for two more seasons at a cap-friendly salary and Daniel Gibson coming off his best season, letting Davis go now eases a potential backcourt logjam.
The recently re-signed Anthony Parker, furthermore, is also expected to play a lot of shooting guard for Cleveland to free up minutes at small forward for the newly acquired Omri Casspi.
Davis arrived in Cleveland in February in a trade-deadline deal for Mo Williams that was clinched by the Clippers' willingness to include their first overall pick in the June draft unprotected. That pick became Irving

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Sidney Crosby out indefinitely - Ohio State Football Recruiting - NFL Standings


Sidney Crosby out indefinitely

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby is out indefinitely with concussion-like symptoms.
Crosby said Monday he noticed a recurrence of the problems that sidelined him for more than 10 months earlier this year following a 3-1 loss to Boston last week.
Crosby sat out Pittsburgh's two-game road trip to Philadelphia and New York as a precaution but said he's noticed familiar symptoms during light workouts over the weekend.
The 24-year-old former MVP said there is no timetable for his return but he will definitely not play on Tuesday against Detroit.
Crosby has 12 points in eight games this season, but hasn't scored a goal since netting two in his season debut on Nov. 23 against the Islanders.
Crosby called the setback beyond frustrating but stressed it was important to be safe.




Tommy Schutt switches to Ohio State
Defensive tackle and ESPNU 150 recruit Tommy Schutt decommitted from Penn State and opted instead for Ohio State on Monday, according to Glenbard West High School (Ill.) coach Chad Hetlet.
Schutt was Penn State's top-ranked Class of 2012 recruit. He changed his commitment after visiting Ohio State over the weekend.
"I think he's extremely happy," Hetlet said. "He came back yesterday from his trip to Ohio State, and he was very impressed with coach Urban Meyer and what his vision was for the program and where he sees Tommy fitting in."
Hetlet said Schutt notified Penn State co-defensive coordinator Larry Johnson of his decision on Monday morning. Johnson had recruited Schutt.
"As far as the environment for Tommy, he had to make a move," Hetlet said. "Coach Johnson was disappointed, but he's a professional and a good man."
Schutt, who is 6-foot-3 and 305 pounds, had 14 sacks, 19 tackles for loss, 19 batted balls and one interception this season for Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, Ill.
He was the ESPNChicago.com Defensive Player of the Year.
Schutt endured a number of trials during his recruitment. He was ready to commit to Notre Dame this summer, but on the day he was going to verbal he had his offer rescinded because the Irish completed their class. He had been committed to Penn State since August.
"I think he handled it like a champion," Hetlet said. "A lot of different things -- how they went down -- just dealing with a big recruitment from the time he was a sophomore really was a lot on the young man. To go through the recruiting process, what the game is today, college recruiting is bizarre. Nothing is what it seems to be sometimes. I'm just glad he's landed where he's really, really happy."
Schutt is the second ESPNU 150 recruit Penn State has lost in the past two months. Offensive lineman Joey O'Connor, who is ranked 105th, decommitted on Nov. 10.
Ohio State now has 17 recruits in the Class of 2012.



Waiver Whips Up Wolverine Whining At Record Pace
By Tony Gerdeman

Way back on December 1st, our own Brandon Castel wrote about the NCAA waiver that Ohio State applied for, and was granted, giving the university the ability to have Urban Meyer hit the recruiting trail immediately.
What the waiver from the Subcommittee on Legislative Relief allows is for Meyer to count as one of the ten allowable coaches who are permitted to recruit. At the same time, one of the outgoing coaches who used to recruit is no longer allowed to do so.
"These are the parameters: We won’t go over 10 people who are coaching and we won’t go over 10 people who are recruiting, and we’re still limited to seven recruiters off campus at any given time," said Chris Rogers, Ohio State's Assistant Athletic Director for Compliance.
It was a perfect explanation, people moved on, and that's where we thought the story ended. Then, more than a week after Castel's story, the AP did a story of their own regarding the waiver, and suddenly the "controversy" went national.
To be more geographically correct, the controversy went northerly, all the way up to the state of Michigan.
Asked for comment, Big Ten Coach of the Year Brady Hoke responded, "It's different. That would be my reaction. I've never heard of it. Is that an advantage? Yeah, I think so."

But is it really?
Let's speak clearly here—the waiver isn't the advantage, Urban Meyer is the advantage.
Meyer isn't doing any actual coaching, he is merely recruiting—just like every other head coach should be allowed to do. Just because he's good at it doesn't mean the rule is unfair.
Right now, Ohio State is seeing a buzz unlike anything they have ever seen before in recruiting, and it's not because of some waiver granted by a gaggle of suits in Indianapolis.
This seems to be one of those simple things that is hard for some people to grasp or understand. Take Michigan Athletic Director Dave Brandon, for instance.
In an email to the Associated Press, Brandon stated that he just couldn't wrap his mind around this waiver situation.
"It allows more coaching resources to work on the two primary responsibilities of any staff—coaching and recruiting. I am struggling to understand how this relates to the 'level playing field' the NCAA claims it is always working to create."
Brandon can be forgiven as he has only been an athletic director for less than two years. He can't be expected to understand all of the rules that would benefit his athletic programs, can he?
This after all is the same guy that slow-played Jim Harbaugh and subsequently lost him to the NFL. Sometimes things can take a little bit of time to register for him.
Heck, he could have applied for the waiver himself had he fired Rich Rodriguez in November rather than waiting until after the bowl game to do so. But even then, that would mean he would have had to know about the waiver, which he probably did not.
Once he gets a few years under him, however, he'll have a better understanding of what's available to him. After all, experience is the greatest teacher that we can have. Just look at Gene Smith. This wasn't the first time he had used the waiver.

Plenty of Examples
Illinois is also requesting the waiver, which is actually fairly common given the situation. NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn echoed that sentiment in an email to the Associated Press.
"The NCAA has certainly received similar waiver requests prior to the bowl season from universities that have recently experienced coaching staff changes. When granted, these waivers are temporary, typically lasting through the bowl game, and only provide relief from maximum number of coaches allowed to be employed by the school. To prevent competitive advantage, the university still cannot exceed the number of coaches allowed to recruit at any one time and the amount of coaches allowed on the sidelines remains the same."
It was probably missed last year as well when Miami went through the same thing. It's understandable that nobody thought to be outraged. After all, Miami's not Ohio State.
UCLA also plans to use the waiver. I am waiting to hear Pat Haden's outrage screamed from the hood far and wide.

And the Wolverines?
Throughout all of this, the most vocal opponents of this common rule have been Michigan men (and women), all proudly professing their ignorance of long-standing rules.
The ultimate gotcha in the whinery would be if Michigan had filed for the same waiver when Rich Rodriguez was hired in December of 2007. Requests to the University of Michigan for that information have remained unanswered, and my extensive Googling has yielded nothing in terms of any waiver requested by the University of Michigan.
While we just don't know if Michigan requested the same waiver that they are inconsolable about now, we should probably be inclined to believe that they did, because if they didn't, then it would seem to me that the Wolverines had too many coaches recruiting.
It was well-documented that the news of Rodriguez's hiring was broken by Terrelle Pryor as he spoke to various recruiting sites advising them that he had spoken to Rodriguez prior to any official announcement. As we know, only ten Michigan coaches can be recruiting at any one time.
Pryor wasn't the only recruit contacted, though. There was also offensive line recruit Dann O'Neill. Were there more? What do you think?
So, either Michigan had a waiver, or Michigan was committing NCAA violations by having more than the NCAA-permitted number of coaches recruiting. Given the fact that Rodriguez put Michigan on probation, either of these two options are resoundingly plausible.

Waiver Wonder
If you really want to get upset about this whole waiver situation, point your anger at the likes of Texas and Maryland. Why? In January of 2010, the NCAA passed a rule that "coaches in waiting" were bound to the same type of recruiting rules that head coaches were.
Assistant coaches are permitted more recruiting freedom than head coaches, and the NCAA didn't like that "coaches in waiting" were essentially head coaches with assistant coach freedom, so they implemented a rule holding coaches in waiting to head coach standards.
This rule affected only Texas and Maryland. Texas had already tabbed Will Muschamp to be their next head coach, and Maryland had done the same with James Franklin. Texas and Maryland then filed a waiver request to the Subcommittee for Legislative Relief asking to be allowed to continue having their future head coach recruit like an assistant.
The NCAA agreed and gave both schools a one-year waiver to not follow the very rule that they had only months ago implemented to combat the very advantage that Texas and Maryland were enjoying.
Nobody got upset over that? Why doesn't Michigan Nation lose sleep thinking about that one?
Oh, that's right, it doesn't involve Ohio State.
On the upside, thanks to The Waiver, Michigan Men are once again being educated by the Ohio State University.
Here's hoping they finally put that education to good use for a change.



NFL Standings as of December 13, 2011


National Football Conference

NFC EAST W L T
NY Giants 7 6 0
Dallas 7 6 0
Philadelphia 5 8 0
Washington 4 9 0

NFC NORTH W L T
z - Green Bay 13 0 0
Detroit 8 5 0
Chicago 7 6 0
Minnesota 2 11 0

NFC SOUTH W L T
x - New Orleans 10 3 0
Atlanta 8 5 0
Carolina 4 9 0
Tampa Bay 4 9 0

NFC WEST W L T
z - San Francisco 10 3 0
Seattle 6 7 0
Arizona 6 7 0
St. Louis 2 11 0



American Football Conference

AFC EAST W L T
New England 10 3 0
NY Jets 8 5 0
Buffalo 5 8 0
Miami 4 9 0

AFC NORTH W L T
Baltimore 10 3 0
Pittsburgh 10 3 0
Cincinnati 7 6 0
Cleveland 4 9 0

AFC SOUTH W L T
z - Houston 10 3 0
Tennessee 7 6 0
Jacksonville 4 9 0
Indianapolis 0 13 0

AFC WEST W L T
Denver 8 5 0 .
Oakland 7 6 0
San Diego 6 7 0
Kansas City