Tinker:
N'Awlins was shining like a American city similar to Paris France over in Europe. All aglitter, and sounding like the birthplace of the blues. Celebrating Super Bowl and Mardi Gras time, all in one moment. Then like a dagger in the night. All The bright Super Dome stadium lights went out. Talk about throwing cold water on everyone parade?
Alas, after a 35 minute delay. All returned to television fun and excitement, thrills and spills. A tight tension further developed. Because the San Francisco 49ers were making a strong comeback. Scoring over and over again to just about tie the final pro football game. With only a few minutes left to play. Then after some more tick of the final moments on the game clock ticked away. The final play was done. The Baltimore Ravens stood along, proud and tall. The one and only champion of pro football 2012.
After considering everything that I saw in the New Orleans Super Dome Super Bowl game. I truly had a great time. Watching all the different twist and turns of a real life Super Bowl pro football game in a great and story filled deep southern City. At the very mouth of the mighty Mississippi river. Wow, I had a ball!!!
--------------------------
Glenn Guilbeau
Cam Cameron: Firing 'brilliant move' - ESPN.com - Go
Cam Cameron says the Baltimore Ravens' decision to fire him as offensive coordinator was just what the team needed.
---------------------
http://www.shreveporttimes.
Robert Nkemdiche, nation's top recruit, mulls LSU, Ole Miss
Defensive end Robert Nkemdiche, the nation's top recruit, enjoyed his visit to LSU last weekend. / US Presswire
Defensive end Robert Nkemdiche, who is the top prospect in the country regardless of position according to Rivals.com and Scout.com, visited LSU over the weekend with his father and had quite the time.
Nkemdiche, who is from Grayson High in Loganville, Ga., happened to run into former LSU basketball great Shaquille O’Neal over the weekend at the very fancy Texas De Brazil steak restaurant in Perkins Rowe. Planning for such chance meetings are against NCAA recruiting rules.
“He ran into Shaq,” recruiting expert Michael Scarborough of Tigerbait.com/Rivals.com said.
LSU tailback Jeremy Hill was hosting Nkemdiche.
“They really hit it off,” Scarborough said.
If LSU’s luck holds out, it could sign Nkemdiche on Wednesday, which is national signing day. Nkemdiche is expected to announce at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday on ESPNU whether he is going to Ole Miss, where his brother Denzel starts at linebacker, or to LSU, which he has always liked very much. And his appreciation for LSU only grew deeper over the weekend.
“I’m told the visit was extraordinary,” Scarborough said. “The attention to detail of every aspect of Nkemdiche’s visit was close to flawless. The presentation that they had prepared was very well planned and thought out.”
Recruiting coordinator and running backs coach Frank Wilson, who is LSU’s ace recruiter, planned the weekend, Scarborough said.
“I was told that Frank Wilson kicked into a gear that no one had seen before,” he said.
Nkemdiche’s comments via his Twitter account concur with that assessment.
“LSU pushing man,” he said. “Getting hard now. LSU pulling out the facts.”
Still, though, Nkemdiche is expected by most to go where his mother wants him to go — Ole Miss, where he can play with his brother.
“But LSU has a puncher’s chance even though Ole Miss has an advantage due to his older brother being there and the fact that his mom did not make the trip,” Scarborough said.
LSU has 27 commitments going into signing day, and its class is ranked as high as No. 5 in the nation without Nkemdiche.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.
Richard Deitsch - MEDIA CIRCUS
CBS was forced to deal with an unexpected 34-minute delay when half the lights went out in the Superdome.
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Super Bowl XLVII
SI Articles
- KING: MMQB: Dramatic Super Bowl XLVII
- BANKS: Flacco stands alone; more Snaps
- BURKE: Best, worst from Super Bowl XLVII
- ROSENBERG: Ravens fulfill their destiny
- BANKS: Lewis flawed, but it doesn't matter
- TROTTER: Failed late drive dooms Niners
- DILLON: Ravens edge 49ers in late thriller
- DEITSCH: Evaluating the XLVII broadcast
- Power outage leads to a 34-minute delay
- 49ers' Harbaugh angry with late non-call
- Best, worst from this year's SB commercials
SI Video
SI Photos
Most viewers will likely describe the broadcast differently, a game that included a 34-minute power outage, a brutal performance by game analyst Phil Simms, and heroics from sideline reporters Steve Tasker and Solomon Wilcots, who anchored the CBS coverage at one point in the semi-darkness of the Superdome.
In a Super Bowl first, CBS lost the feed to its broadcast booth when the power went out at the stadium at 8:37 p.m. ET after Baltimore defensive end Arthur Jones sacked San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick for a loss on second down with 13:22 left in the third quarter and Baltimore leading 28-6. Said Simms on the air at the time: "Good no-throw though by Colin Kaepernick. He is going to throw this down the middle to Vernon Davis. Watch. Boy, look at the safety. His anticip......"
And then he was gone, along with announcer Jim Nantz. The CBS cameras stayed on the field, then switched to Ravens coach John Harbaugh, then to a shot of a half-dark stadium, then back to Harbaugh and Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis, and finally to Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs. All viewers heard for about a full minute was the sound of the crowd singing. CBS then went to break, with households everywhere wondering what had just happened in the Big Easy.
When CBS returned to the broadcast, there was a graphic on screen that said "Stadium Power Outage" accompanied by Tasker, who reintroduced himself to America as the new host of the Super Bowl. "Welcome back to New Orleans," Tasker said. "This is Steve Tasker. Sideline reporter for Super Bowl 47." Tasker then told viewers that half of the power at the Superdome was out, and described the scene around the stadium. He explained that no one was hurt (though this was clearly a guess) before CBS went to another set of commercials. Tasker then came back and accurately predicted that the power outage would impact the Ravens' momentum. He passed the baton to Wilcots, who reported from the Ravens sideline. Both Tasker and Wilcots kept their reporting wits about them under improbable circumstances, and kept CBS from an alltime meltdown.
In an interview with SI.com late Sunday night, CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said his production truck had no communication with his announcers immediately after the outage. "Finally, we got Steve and Solomon up but we had no communication with Jim Nantz," McManus said. "Once we did get communication with Jim, he could not see any monitors. He could only hear us sporadically. It was a scramble to figure out what had happened and to do the best job covering it."
McManus said 11 of CBS' 62 cameras were working during the power outage (three cameras above the field and eight cameras on the ground) and they used what they had to show players on the field. The pregame crew hustled back to its on-field set, and James Brown, Bill Cowher, Dan Marino and Shannon Sharpe went into extended filler time. (Boomer Esiason was absent because he was serving as the analyst on radio broadcast for Dial Global). Cowher and Sharpe were very good here, with Sharpe hammering home that the momentum was going to favor the Niners after the break. Tasker and Wilcots continued to provide reporting, with Tasker remarkably revealing that he had told Niners coach Jim Harbaugh how long the delay would be while Wilcots said Ravens coach John Harbaugh had told him the same thing.
Where CBS needed to do a better job of was identifying for viewers what they were seeing during the power outage. For example, CBS never told viewers who John Harbaugh's wrath (a delight for lip readers) was directed at during the outage. (ESPN analyst Andrew Brandt on Twitter identified the man as Mike Kensil, the league vice president of football operations.) There was also no NFL official on the set to explain what had happened, which would have been invaluable information. McManus, who had a long sting as the head of CBS News, said the network passed all information it received from the NFL moments after it got it and that we "were trying to get information aggressively." Brown reported on air that a league spokesman (he gave no name) had said the power was returning and the league "was pleased with how the power was being ramped up."
In scramble mode, Brown eventually corrected how long the delay would be (his initial time of the delay was off) and CBS created a helpful real-time power outage clock. Tasker continued his excellent reporting and also echoed Sharpe that the delay would benefit San Francisco. Finally, Nantz and Simms came back on the air at 9:06 p.m., and play resumed four minutes later.
"I think under very, very difficult circumstances -- and remember we were trying to get all of our equipment back -- I think our guys did a very good job with limited information, and for a while, very limited production resources," McManus said. "I'm not sure what else physically we could have done. I thought our production team did an excellent job documenting what went on the field in a very good way."
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.
--------------------------
http://espn.go.com/blog/
College Football Nation Blog
Is there a direct correlation to highly ranked signees and wins in the SEC?
Well, you be the judge.
Over the past four years (2009-12), Alabama and Florida have tied for the most ESPN 150 prospects signed with 41 apiece. During that span, the Crimson Tide have won an SEC-high 49 games and three national championships.
The Gators, meanwhile, have won 10 fewer games (39) than the Crimson Tide and haven’t won any SEC or national titles during that span. In fact, they’ve been shut out of the SEC championship game the last three years.
The most ESPN 150 prospects any SEC school has signed in one year going back to 2009 was Florida in 2010 when the Gators signed 17 ESPN 150 prospects.
For perspective, that’s more than eight SEC schools -- Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt -- have managed to ink in each of their last four signing classes.
Every SEC school has signed at least one ESPN 150 prospect over the past four years, although Kentucky and Vanderbilt have both been limited to one each. The Wildcats’ only ESPN 150 signee during that period was quarterback Morgan Newton in 2009, while the Commodores signed running back Brian Kimbrow last year.
The school doing the least with the most over the last four years has been Tennessee. The Vols have signed 20 ESPN 150 prospects since 2009, which is tied for the fifth most in the SEC. However, the Vols are just 23-27 during that stretch (9-23 in the SEC) and have suffered through three straight losing seasons.
Tennessee signed six ESPN 150 prospects in 2009, Lane Kiffin’s only signing class in Knoxville. But four of those players (Jerod Askew, Janzen Jackson, Darren Myles, Jr., and Nu’Keese Richardson) were kicked off the team, and the other two (Bryce Brown and David Oku) wound up transferring out of the program.
The school doing the most with the least has been South Carolina. The Gamecocks have signed 13 ESPN 150 prospects since 2009, which is seventh in the league. But the Gamecocks have the third-best record over the last four years (38-15) behind only Alabama and LSU. They’re also one of two teams in the league (along with Alabama) to have won 11 or more games each of the last two seasons.
As the Head Ball Coach himself would say, somebody’s coaching ‘em up in Columbia.
Arkansas, prior to its collapse this past season, had managed a nice run despite not reeling in very many highly ranked signees under former coach Bobby Petrino. The Hogs won 11 games in 2011 and 10 games in 2010, including a trip to the Sugar Bowl, and signed just five ESPN 150 prospects between 2009-12.
Below is a breakdown of how many ESPN 150 signees each SEC school has signed over the past four years along with each school’s overall and SEC record during that span. We’ve also included Missouri and Texas A&M even though they’ve just played one season in the SEC.
Of the Aggies’ nine ESPN 150 prospects signed over the past four years, five came last year in Kevin Sumlin’s first signing class.
One other interesting nugget is South Carolina is the only team to have played in the SEC championship game over the past four years that hasn't signed at least 20 ESPN 150 prospects during that span.
Here’s a closer look:
- Alabama: 41 ESPN 150 signees, 49-5 (.907), 27-5 SEC
- Florida: 41 ESPN 150 signees, 39-14 (.736), 22-10 SEC
- LSU: 28 ESPN 150 signees, 43-10 (.811), 25-7 SEC
- Georgia: 26 ESPN 150 signees, 36-18 (.667), 21-11 SEC
- Auburn: 20 ESPN 150 signees, 33-19 (.635), 15-17 SEC
- Tennessee: 20 ESPN 150 signees, 23-27 (.460), 9-23 SEC
- South Carolina: 13 ESPN 150 signees, 38-15 (.717), 20-12 SEC
- Texas A&M: 9 ESPN 150 signees, 33-19 (.635)
- Ole Miss: 6 ESPN 150 signees, 22-28 (.440), 8-24 SEC
- Arkansas: 5 ESPN 150 signees, 33-18 (.647), 17-13 SEC
- Mississippi State: 4 ESPN 150 signees, 29-22 (.569), 13-17 SEC
- Missouri: 3 ESPN 150 signees, 31-20 (.608)
- Kentucky: 1 ESPN 150 signee, 20-30 (.400), 7-25 SEC
- Vanderbilt: 1 ESPN 150 signee, 19-31 (.380), 8-24 SEC
http://espnmediazone.com/us/
Press Release
Posted by Gracie Blackburn17 Top Recruits Set to Announce on ESPNU National Signing Day
PRINT VERSIONFILED IN: College Football, High School TAGGED: National Signing DayESPN has expanded the ESPNU National Signing Day Special to more than 11 hours to accommodate a record number of on-air commitments, including the No.1 recruit Robert Nkemdiche. Seventeen players in the ESPN 150 will announce their college decision live on the show which will now begin at 7:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Feb. 6. The special will also be available on WatchESPN and ESPN3, in addition to being simulcast on ESPN from 3:30-4 p.m. and live look-ins from SportsCenter throughout the day.
The nation’s most highly touted recruit, defensive end Nkemdiche will kick-off the day’s wall-to-wall coverage by choosing either Florida, LSU or Ole Miss during the first half-hour. Five undecided players in the Top 10 – No.2, No. 4, No. 5 and No. 6 – will also announce live during ESPNU’s National Signing Day coverage. In addition to interviewing the undecided recruits live, ESPNU will also speak with some of the nation’s elite committed players, like No. 2 Carl Lawson, on how they made their decision.
The following ESPN 150 players are expected to announce their college decision on ESPNU (within the hour listed; times subject to change):
Time (ET)
|
Player
|
Final Schools
|
| 7:30 a.m. | No. 1 Robert Nkemdiche (DE) | Florida, LSU, Ole Miss |
| 9 a.m. | No. 6 Matthew Thomas (OLB) | Alabama, FSU, Georgia, Miami, USC |
| No. 144 Denver Kirkland (OT) | Arkansas, FSU | |
| No. 5 Laremy Tunsil (OT) | Alabama, FSU, Georgia, Ole Miss | |
| No. 13 Montravius Adams (DT) | Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Georgia | |
| 10 a.m. | No. 50 Vonn Bell (Safety) | Alabama, Ohio State, Tennessee |
| No. 107 Jordan Cunningham (WR) | Miami, Stanford, Vanderbilt | |
| No. 24 Antonio Conner (Safety) | Alabama, Ole Miss | |
| 11 a.m. | No. 47 Stacy Coley (WR) | FSU, Miami, Ole Miss, South Florida |
| No. 4 Mackensie Alexander (CB) | Auburn, Clemson, Mississippi State, Texas A&M | |
| Noon | No. 26 Dee Liner (DT) | Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, LSU |
| No. 99 Quinton Powell (OLB) | Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, USC | |
| No. 143 Asiantii Woulard (QB-DT) | Kentucky, NC State, UCLA, South Florida | |
| 1 p.m. | No. 135 Keith Bryant | FSU, Miami, South Carolina |
| 2 p.m. | No. 138 Jermaine Grace | Louisville, Miami, Tennessee |
| 3 p.m. | No 32 Alvin Kamara (RB) | Alabama, Georgia |
| 4 p.m. | No. 125 Tyrone Crowder (OG) | Clemson, Georgia |
ESPNU will be embedded at 13 of the nation’s top college teams all day interviewing coaches, and providing up-to-the-minute news on each team’s freshman class as the commitments are faxed in. The election-style coverage will be highlighted with a real time recruiting side-panel through all 11 hours, including commercials, with the latest news. ESPN’s RecruitingNation.com will also have reporters at high school announcements and in-depth analysis on its 14 team dedicated nation sites.
In addition to the extensive lineup of live reports, Rece Davis and Dari Nowkhah will again host the network’s all-day studio coverage from Charlotte, N.C. They will be joined by ESPN’s national recruiting director Tom Luginbill and recruiting analyst Craig Haubert, along with college football analysts Mike Bellotti and Rod Gilmore, plus special guest analysts Gene Chizik, former Auburn head coach, and Derek Dooley, former Tennessee head coach.
Additional details on ESPN’s National Signing Day Coverage plans here.
--------------------------
Nkemdiche tweets positive messages about LSU visit
LSU clearly made a strong impression on the nation’s
No. 1 prospect during his official visit this weekend.
The question remains is it strong enough to convince Robert Nkemdiche to sign with the Tigers on Wednesday?
Nkemdiche (6-foot-5, 265 pounds), the highly lauded and highly sought defensive end from Logansville (Ga.) Grayson, tweeted several positive messages about his visit to Baton Rouge. He was accompanied by his father and his Grayson teammate, cornerback David Kamara.
Among Nkemdiche’s notes:
“I love coach (Frank)
Wilson !!”, a reference to LSU’s recruiting coordinator.
“Me and my dog brick Haley I like this guy!”, a reference to LSU defensive line coach Brick Haley.
“@LSUBossLady shout out to miss Sharon love her !!!!”, referring to Sharon Lewis, LSU’s assistant athletic director for football recruiting and alumni relations.
And, perhaps most encouraging to Tigers fans, “LSU pushing man !!!! Getting hard now !” and “LSU pulling out da facts !!!”.
Nkemdiche has long been considered a strong lean to Ole Miss, where his brother Denzel plays linebacker.
Nkemdiche is scheduled to announce his college choice at 6:35 a.m. CST Wednesday, the first day of the national signing period, on ESPNU.
Elsewhere, there were reports that LSU defensive end commitment Frank Herron of Memphis (Tenn.) Central took an official visit over weekend to Texas. Herron is still considered a solid LSU commitment, however.
Meanwhile, LSU commitment Ethan Pocic, an offensive lineman from Lemont, Ill., has been named to the 2013 Parade All-America team as a first-team selection. Pocic is an early enrollee at LSU and will take part in spring practice.
Two other LSU early enrollees — wide receiver John Diarse of Neville and quarterback Hayden Rettig of Los Angeles Cathedral — made Parade’s honorable mention list.
-------------------------
http://www.cbssports.com/
CBS sports
Who's running the NCAA anyway? Doesn't seem to be the schools
By Dennis Dodd | Senior College Football Columnist
Ellen Staurowsky has to watch her back.
The sports management professor at Drexel University is a go-to source for an NCAA critique. She is versed, knowledgeable and -- most important for the question of the moment in college athletics -- loud. Not so much in the audible sense but in common sense.
If you want to ask Staurowsky the question -- is the NCAA broken? -- you'd better be prepared to listen.
"I don't know how many people have sent me notes and made jokes about how I'm going to have to travel with bodyguards," she said. "I keep looking at people saying, 'This is my point.'" Staurowsky is louder than most but certainly more insightful than many when it comes to the NCAA. The latest body blow to the amateur athletic model in her world came last month during something called the Forum for the Scholarly Study of Intercollegiate Athletics. What had been a reasoned discussion of multi-disciplinary research of college sports had its funding taken away by the NCAA.
"It was done at the buffet line," Staurowsky said.
There's where she claims NCAA CEO Jim Isch had informed forum president Dave Wiggins that funding was being cut off.
"There we are at the last supper," Staurowsky
added. "Jim comes up to Dave and says, 'Oh, by the way I'm going
to announce the forum is no longer going to be funded.'"
The chicken parmesan never tasted so bland. The forum had been a reasoned debate on the intercollegiate issues of the day as they applied to college athletics. The forum was little known and we shouldn't have cared. But lumped in with the current climate, its elimination gathered headlines everywhere from academic journals to the sports pages. Its members saw the end of their gathering as an attack on NCAA dissent.
What used to be a measured discussion of the amateur athletic model has become something closer to a war of words. For the first time publicly, the NCAA is reviewing its enforcement process in the middle of the high-profile Miami infractions case. Lawsuits against the NCAA abound. One of the association's most positive outreaches -- the Student-Athlete Assistance Fund -- came under fire last week.
Are more like Staurowsky speaking out because of the mounting public relations disasters or is there a fundamental crack in the NCAA's foundation? Or is it both?
"I really think it is broken," Staurowsky said. "That has implications for the NCAA, for colleges and universities and really the entire college sports higher education community."
The discussion rising out of the public, media and membership in light of the Miami case is that the NCAA has reached a tipping point. As a powerful tax-exempt, non-profit organization that furthers the educational mission through athletics, the current perception is that NCAA does little more than put on a heck of a basketball tournament. It can be argued that little else about the organization gathers it such positive publicity.
There is worry that the power distributed among 1,055 member universities is increasingly centered in the hands of a few. One source with knowledge of the process cited the power of senior management that includes Isch, NCAA president Mark Emmert and general counsel Donald Remy.
Emmert's reform movement has moved at a quick pace, too quick for some. The Penn State decision, for example. There is some push back on pending legislation.
The NCAA does a lot of good that you don't know about, or choose not to not to know about. The revenue from that basketball tournament funds the needs of schools and players across the nation. But along with the IRS and BCS, the NCAA's initials are among the most notorious on the American landscape.
The IRS isn't going anywhere. The BCS is in the process of changing its name for the playoff era in 2014. The commissioners are settling on something simple and different, just nothing that can be manipulated into the initials "BS."
The NCAA?
"I'd get rid of the NCAA," said powerful attorney Alan Milstein, who once represented Maurice Clarett at the height of his scandal involving Ohio State. "I believe the NCAA is an anti-trust conspiracy. I think the schools can handle themselves."
Heads are nodding across America. An organization that is supposed to be run by those 1,055 schools is increasingly viewed as a monolithic entity. Some form of separation of schools from that monolith -- whether real or perceived -- seems to be inevitable.
In the next few weeks the BCS commissioners will open an office in Dallas that will house the machinations of that college football playoff that begins with the 2014 season. Think about it: An office that will basically represent the interests of the top 68 football-playing schools in the country hasn't happened since Chuck Neinas ran the College Football Association.
Even then, Neinas was more of a one-man band running the CFA out of the old Big Eight office more than 30 years ago. This new space will be a symbol of those schools in a small way separating themselves from the rest of college football.
The commissioners have shaped the conference landscape based on football, a sport the NCAA has little control over. The association sets play, practice and recruiting rules. It has ceded some control over the bowl landscape to the commissioners.
Commissioners and presidents have huddled around the warm fire of TV revenue. Schools won their freedom to televise their games in a Supreme Court showdown with the NCAA in 1984. Even then, few could have foreseen conferences aligning themselves to the whim of TV networks.
Conferences used to be about like-minded, geographically compatible schools. Now it's clear that whoever has the most high-profile toys wins. If a few Baylors, Vanderbilts and Boston Colleges have to be taken in along the way, so be it.
The land rush for TV dollars starts with the most powerful: Any conference that has Texas and Oklahoma is worth saving. That's why we have the Big 12. The Big Ten grabbed brand name Nebraska to fit in its conference with Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. There was a massive tug-of-war over newbie Boise State which has been good all the way back to 2006.
The power of big-time football continues to grow. Conference realignment has gotten so ridiculous that the same market forces that allowed the Big 12 to form in 1996 were picking it apart last fall. That's why Neinas was hired to save it as interim commissioner.
So shy couldn't those 68 or so teams break off and establish their own division? It will have already happened in theory if super-conferences form. No one said they couldn't all keep playing in the NCAA tournament.
That way the football schools could form their own rules. The NCAA's enforcement process is under fire everywhere from Penn State to USC to Miami. The inconsistent application of rules is astounding. One former enforcement official told me the NCAA once dropped eight major allegations against a school when it was discovered that a player -- a source -- was paid $20 for lunch by an interviewer working for the NCAA.
Meanwhile, at USC and Miami, the NCAA used information from convicted felons.
Members can't figure out the habits of the enforcement process even as Emmert tries to make it sleeker. There still remains the fundamental dichotomy of members investigating members.
"How do you have an organization that is promoting the schools and trying to make it all look good also be the hammer?" a former high-level college administrator said.
That person suggested taxing the television dollars -- the playoff alone is worth $500 million per year -- to fund a form of sports council that would have oversight over college athletics. That would at least separate the image of brother overseeing brother.
There are some inside the NCAA wondering why there is even an external review of the enforcement process in the Miami case. No laws were broken. At worst, it was an ethical breach in a case that looked airtight from the beginning given Yahoo! Sports' reporting.
Meanwhile, Penn State football has been burned to the ground after what some think was a flimsy application of the rules amid the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
The struggle to maintain the amateur ideal goes on. You want to know how powerful television is? It basically led to the NCAA creating the enforcement division in 1952. That was the same time the NCAA grabbed hold of those TV rights. Since then, the chase for those TV dollars has led to periodic cheating.
Back when Neinas was running the CFA, it signed an exclusive deal with NBC in the early 1980s. The old NCAA Council actually threatened to expel any school that participated in the deal. That simply couldn't happen today. The NCAA no longer has the power thanks to that Supreme Court decision.
Staurowsky favors at least a separation between the more academically pure Division III and everyone else. She also favors paying players. That's not such a radical thought if you consider Emmert basically supports the same thing.
But it is on that concept that the membership has separated. Last year, schools overrode Emmert's initiative to pay players $2,000 a year. Some schools just couldn't afford it. There were too many holes in the proposition. What about baseball players who receive only partial scholarships? What about minor sports that contribute nothing to the coffers that will be used to pay players?
Sure, Ohio State can afford it, but Ohio University (for example) might have to forego pay raises and/or a new weight room. Opponents see the stipend as another division between the haves and have-nots. Recent legislation has reflected there is a fundamental difference between the likes of Texas and Texas Southern. Guess what? They are not equals.
Why are we calling them players in the first place? Good question. Since 1950s, the NCAA has hard-wired into our minds that they are "student-athletes."
"We crafted the term," former NCAA executive director Walter Byers wrote in his landmark 1995 book, "Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes."
The term has served the association well. A Fort Lewis (Colo.) A&M player died of a head injury back in the 1950s. During litigation it was determined that his family was not due workman's compensation because the school "was not in the football business," according to the Colorado Supreme Court.
We have forgotten it's been 18 years since Byers laid bare what he perceived as the NCAA's hypocrisy. That was from the man who once ruled college sports with an iron fist.
That amateur ideal -- maybe even the NCAA itself -- hangs in the balance.
"I think we've been on a trajectory to combust for a while and we've been picking up momentum," Staurowsky said. "The strain of having to sustain these fictions is showing on the face of college sports right now."
Meanwhile, a veteran sports management professor from a Philadelphia-based, academically diverse school watches her back -- while a monolith watches over college sports.
-------------------------The sports management professor at Drexel University is a go-to source for an NCAA critique. She is versed, knowledgeable and -- most important for the question of the moment in college athletics -- loud. Not so much in the audible sense but in common sense.
If you want to ask Staurowsky the question -- is the NCAA broken? -- you'd better be prepared to listen.
"I don't know how many people have sent me notes and made jokes about how I'm going to have to travel with bodyguards," she said. "I keep looking at people saying, 'This is my point.'" Staurowsky is louder than most but certainly more insightful than many when it comes to the NCAA. The latest body blow to the amateur athletic model in her world came last month during something called the Forum for the Scholarly Study of Intercollegiate Athletics. What had been a reasoned discussion of multi-disciplinary research of college sports had its funding taken away by the NCAA.
"It was done at the buffet line," Staurowsky said.
There's where she claims NCAA CEO Jim Isch had informed forum president Dave Wiggins that funding was being cut off.
| More on college football |
| Related links |
| More college football coverage |
|
The chicken parmesan never tasted so bland. The forum had been a reasoned debate on the intercollegiate issues of the day as they applied to college athletics. The forum was little known and we shouldn't have cared. But lumped in with the current climate, its elimination gathered headlines everywhere from academic journals to the sports pages. Its members saw the end of their gathering as an attack on NCAA dissent.
What used to be a measured discussion of the amateur athletic model has become something closer to a war of words. For the first time publicly, the NCAA is reviewing its enforcement process in the middle of the high-profile Miami infractions case. Lawsuits against the NCAA abound. One of the association's most positive outreaches -- the Student-Athlete Assistance Fund -- came under fire last week.
Are more like Staurowsky speaking out because of the mounting public relations disasters or is there a fundamental crack in the NCAA's foundation? Or is it both?
"I really think it is broken," Staurowsky said. "That has implications for the NCAA, for colleges and universities and really the entire college sports higher education community."
The discussion rising out of the public, media and membership in light of the Miami case is that the NCAA has reached a tipping point. As a powerful tax-exempt, non-profit organization that furthers the educational mission through athletics, the current perception is that NCAA does little more than put on a heck of a basketball tournament. It can be argued that little else about the organization gathers it such positive publicity.
There is worry that the power distributed among 1,055 member universities is increasingly centered in the hands of a few. One source with knowledge of the process cited the power of senior management that includes Isch, NCAA president Mark Emmert and general counsel Donald Remy.
Emmert's reform movement has moved at a quick pace, too quick for some. The Penn State decision, for example. There is some push back on pending legislation.
The NCAA does a lot of good that you don't know about, or choose not to not to know about. The revenue from that basketball tournament funds the needs of schools and players across the nation. But along with the IRS and BCS, the NCAA's initials are among the most notorious on the American landscape.
The IRS isn't going anywhere. The BCS is in the process of changing its name for the playoff era in 2014. The commissioners are settling on something simple and different, just nothing that can be manipulated into the initials "BS."
The NCAA?
"I'd get rid of the NCAA," said powerful attorney Alan Milstein, who once represented Maurice Clarett at the height of his scandal involving Ohio State. "I believe the NCAA is an anti-trust conspiracy. I think the schools can handle themselves."
Heads are nodding across America. An organization that is supposed to be run by those 1,055 schools is increasingly viewed as a monolithic entity. Some form of separation of schools from that monolith -- whether real or perceived -- seems to be inevitable.
In the next few weeks the BCS commissioners will open an office in Dallas that will house the machinations of that college football playoff that begins with the 2014 season. Think about it: An office that will basically represent the interests of the top 68 football-playing schools in the country hasn't happened since Chuck Neinas ran the College Football Association.
Even then, Neinas was more of a one-man band running the CFA out of the old Big Eight office more than 30 years ago. This new space will be a symbol of those schools in a small way separating themselves from the rest of college football.
The commissioners have shaped the conference landscape based on football, a sport the NCAA has little control over. The association sets play, practice and recruiting rules. It has ceded some control over the bowl landscape to the commissioners.
Commissioners and presidents have huddled around the warm fire of TV revenue. Schools won their freedom to televise their games in a Supreme Court showdown with the NCAA in 1984. Even then, few could have foreseen conferences aligning themselves to the whim of TV networks.
Conferences used to be about like-minded, geographically compatible schools. Now it's clear that whoever has the most high-profile toys wins. If a few Baylors, Vanderbilts and Boston Colleges have to be taken in along the way, so be it.
The land rush for TV dollars starts with the most powerful: Any conference that has Texas and Oklahoma is worth saving. That's why we have the Big 12. The Big Ten grabbed brand name Nebraska to fit in its conference with Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. There was a massive tug-of-war over newbie Boise State which has been good all the way back to 2006.
The power of big-time football continues to grow. Conference realignment has gotten so ridiculous that the same market forces that allowed the Big 12 to form in 1996 were picking it apart last fall. That's why Neinas was hired to save it as interim commissioner.
So shy couldn't those 68 or so teams break off and establish their own division? It will have already happened in theory if super-conferences form. No one said they couldn't all keep playing in the NCAA tournament.
That way the football schools could form their own rules. The NCAA's enforcement process is under fire everywhere from Penn State to USC to Miami. The inconsistent application of rules is astounding. One former enforcement official told me the NCAA once dropped eight major allegations against a school when it was discovered that a player -- a source -- was paid $20 for lunch by an interviewer working for the NCAA.
Meanwhile, at USC and Miami, the NCAA used information from convicted felons.
Members can't figure out the habits of the enforcement process even as Emmert tries to make it sleeker. There still remains the fundamental dichotomy of members investigating members.
"How do you have an organization that is promoting the schools and trying to make it all look good also be the hammer?" a former high-level college administrator said.
That person suggested taxing the television dollars -- the playoff alone is worth $500 million per year -- to fund a form of sports council that would have oversight over college athletics. That would at least separate the image of brother overseeing brother.
There are some inside the NCAA wondering why there is even an external review of the enforcement process in the Miami case. No laws were broken. At worst, it was an ethical breach in a case that looked airtight from the beginning given Yahoo! Sports' reporting.
Meanwhile, Penn State football has been burned to the ground after what some think was a flimsy application of the rules amid the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
The struggle to maintain the amateur ideal goes on. You want to know how powerful television is? It basically led to the NCAA creating the enforcement division in 1952. That was the same time the NCAA grabbed hold of those TV rights. Since then, the chase for those TV dollars has led to periodic cheating.
Back when Neinas was running the CFA, it signed an exclusive deal with NBC in the early 1980s. The old NCAA Council actually threatened to expel any school that participated in the deal. That simply couldn't happen today. The NCAA no longer has the power thanks to that Supreme Court decision.
Staurowsky favors at least a separation between the more academically pure Division III and everyone else. She also favors paying players. That's not such a radical thought if you consider Emmert basically supports the same thing.
But it is on that concept that the membership has separated. Last year, schools overrode Emmert's initiative to pay players $2,000 a year. Some schools just couldn't afford it. There were too many holes in the proposition. What about baseball players who receive only partial scholarships? What about minor sports that contribute nothing to the coffers that will be used to pay players?
Sure, Ohio State can afford it, but Ohio University (for example) might have to forego pay raises and/or a new weight room. Opponents see the stipend as another division between the haves and have-nots. Recent legislation has reflected there is a fundamental difference between the likes of Texas and Texas Southern. Guess what? They are not equals.
Why are we calling them players in the first place? Good question. Since 1950s, the NCAA has hard-wired into our minds that they are "student-athletes."
"We crafted the term," former NCAA executive director Walter Byers wrote in his landmark 1995 book, "Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes."
The term has served the association well. A Fort Lewis (Colo.) A&M player died of a head injury back in the 1950s. During litigation it was determined that his family was not due workman's compensation because the school "was not in the football business," according to the Colorado Supreme Court.
We have forgotten it's been 18 years since Byers laid bare what he perceived as the NCAA's hypocrisy. That was from the man who once ruled college sports with an iron fist.
That amateur ideal -- maybe even the NCAA itself -- hangs in the balance.
"I think we've been on a trajectory to combust for a while and we've been picking up momentum," Staurowsky said. "The strain of having to sustain these fictions is showing on the face of college sports right now."
Meanwhile, a veteran sports management professor from a Philadelphia-based, academically diverse school watches her back -- while a monolith watches over college sports.
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LSU Football - Geaux Tigers!!!
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