Friday column: Changes likely? Not with cash on the table

There are real divisions in our society and in the world, and then there are made-up divisions that sometimes can match the real divisions in terms of passion.

Team sports are made-up divisions.

My team vs. your team; my city vs. your city; my school vs. your school; my colors vs. your colors.

Made-up. Silly. Infantile.

So why do made-up divisions exist? Two reasons:
1) In the form of athletic competition, such divisions often prove entertaining.

2) From such divisions there is money is to be made.
One of the ways it is made is the selling of alcohol at sporting events.

Big business.

And big trouble.

A 1999 study by the Harvard School of Public Health College concluded that 53 percent of sports fans usually binge when they drink.

Fueled by booze, fan behavior is often coarse and can turn criminal — witness Saturday’s shooting at Candlestick Park, reportedly sparked by a combination of alcohol and someone’s decision to wear a shirt that said “[Bleep] the 49ers.” Yes, the reported shooter was wearing a Raiders jersey.

Another man also was shot, and in an unrelated incident, a third man was savagely beaten in a bathroom.

Ironically, the victims were taken to the same hospital where Giants fan Bryan Stow tries to recover from a beating on opening day at Dodger Stadium, another incident apparently fueled by booze and someone’s dislike of the logo on someone else’s shirt.

Hey, take me out to the ball game!

On second thought, don’t.

I’ve played sports most of my life, and have had many wonderful moments watching sports. I am not against competition.

I am against the loss of perspective that leads to the poisoning of 130-year-old trees at Auburn, that leads to a beating in L.A., shootings in San Francisco and more fan thuggary than pro sports would like to admit.

I am against the loss of perspective that leads to universities selling their integrity for TV money and booster donations (hello, Miami and Nevin Shapiro).

Yes, I know, schools peddle their virtue for more than dollars — they do it also for the reflected glory of “their” team scoring more points than someone else’s team on a given day.

Pathetic, really.

But as in so many things, the bottom line is the bottom line.

While fans find made-up divisions entertaining, pro teams find them profitable — and more profitable with alcohol sales and alcohol sponsorship. Universities — many of which, incidentally, also sell booze in their stadiums and arenas — find that a winning football team can do more for student recruiting and for attracting alumni dollars than a lineup of top professors.

All of which means …

Despite all the hand-wringing about the corruption in Miami and the violence in L.A. and San Francisco, expect college corruption and fan violence both to continue.

Why?

Too much money to be made. And that’s not made up.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Somebody tell poor Al (OK, I will)

You have to feel for Al Golden.

He's the man took the Miami football coaching job without knowing about the bubbling NCAA investigation into truly mind-boggling allegations of corruption.

Before he took the reins of a program that might be line for the NCAA "death penalty," Golden sort of wishes he'd been told about the probe.

"Only if they knew," Golden said, being much more charitable than I think he'll be down the road. "If they knew this was percolating, I believe they did have a responsibility to tell me."

Trying to make lemonade out of lemons, he added, "But look, I'm happy here. My wife is happy here. We've got great kids on this team. We have commitments from 24 young men and their families that appreciate and share our core values moving forward."

Hate to break it to you, Al: You HAD commitments from 24 young men and their families. With the U looking to be on probation till, quite possibly, Kingdom Come, you can kiss those commitments goodbye.

A nugget from Andrew

After a while, you get a nose for these things.

So, as soon as I saw the deck head on the Los Angeles Times interview with Andrew Bynum, I sensed there would be gold in them thar words.

The 7-footer Lakers center last made news on the court when he viciously slammed his forearm into Lilliputian Mavericks guard J.J. Barea in Game 4 of Dallas’ sweep.

He last made news off the court by parking his BMW in two — count them, two — handicapped parking spaces at a Bristol Farms Market in Playa del Rey, then fleeing from a TV reporter wanting to ask him about it.

So when I saw a story with the headline “Andrew Bynum says Lakers 'need to come back ... ready to win' ” and with a deck that included, “He won't discuss disabled-parking reports,” it was time to go prospecting.

Didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for.

There, in the answer to a reporter’s first question, are the words, “It's about being accountable. Me included.”

Three questions later Bynum is asked, “What happened in that parking incident at the grocery store?”

And his answer: “I'm not talking about that.”

Beautiful.

Friday column: College corruption has a new face

So.

Nevin Shapiro, in prison for a 20-year stretch for devising a $930 million Ponzi scheme, tells Yahoo! Sports he provided “impermissible benefits” to 72 of the university’s football players and other “student-athletes” between 2002 and 2010.

Impermissible benefits? How would you define those, Nevin?

Well, according to The Associated Press’ account, Shapiro told Yahoo that he gave players “money, cars, yacht trips, jewelry, televisions and other gifts … Shapiro also claimed he paid for nightclub outings, sex parties, restaurant meals and in one case, an abortion for a woman impregnated by a player.”

Cash, sex parties, an abortion. Yes, I guess those qualify as impermissible. Talk about your full-service booster. Shapiro puts all previous D-I sugar daddies to shame.

Shapiro, all 5-foot-5 of him, apparently liked basking in the reflected glory of strapping 19-year-old athletes while they, feigning friendship, liked basking in the bling and the babes. But when Shapiro was sent to the big house, Hurricanes past and present suddenly developed memory issues.

Nevin who?

This rather specific form of amnesia led to the well-researched and well-documented Yahoo story, with Shapiro starring as The Informer.

Hell hath no fury like a jock sniffer scorned.

“I can tell you what I think is going to happen,” Shapiro told Miami television station WFOR from federal prison in Atlanta. “Death penalty.”

“Death penalty” is slang for the NCAA banning a school from competing in a sport for at least a year. The death penalty has been given only five times in the history of college sports; programs do not recover from it easily or quickly.

And Shapiro might be right.

The NCAA on Wednesday said it has been probing Shapiro’s reputed malefactions for five months and that, if true, the allegations demonstrate the need for “serious and fundamental change” in college sports.

You think?

The Yahoo story is worth going to not only for the blow-by-blow account of Miami’s utter corruption but for the photos than help illustrate it.

There’s Shapiro in a 2003 shot, one arm around Hurricane star tight end Kellen Winslow Jr., the other holding a large bottle of … well, it doesn’t look like lemonade, in Shapiro’s VIP section of Opium Garden nightclub.

There’s Shapiro on his yacht playing best friends forever with linebacker Jonathan Vilma and lineman William Joseph.

There’s Shapiro leaning into the frame of a 2008 photo with then-basketball head coach Frank Haith, one of seven Miami coaches Shapiro says were well acquainted with his illicit activities.

But the best photo of all is a snap taken during a 2008 basketball fundraiser.

Shapiro, fairly glowing with self-esteem, is speaking into a hand-held mic. On his right, a smiling Haith rests his hand on Shapiro’s shoulder. On Shapiro’s left is university President Donna Shalala, looking like a kid at Christmas who’s just been given a shiny, red bicycle.

She’s gleefully staring at a $50,000 check from Shapiro as though it can’t be real.
Guess what, Donna? In a way — since it reportedly came from Ponzi scheme funds — it wasn’t.

But the NCAA investigation, Donna, and the possibility of the death penalty — along with the likelihood of your suddenly developing a pressing need to spend more time with your family — are very real, indeed.

College corruption has a new face, one that will be hard to top.

Go, Canes.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

For old times' sake

Ah, teamwork

It’s nice, isn’t it, when football opponents can put away their differences and work together on a common cause.

Robbery, say.

Colorado’s Bryce Givens and Syracuse’s Jonathan Miller, former high school teammates, got together in Boulder to reminisce, catch up on old times, and reportedly commit a crime.

The victim told police he was confronted by two men at 3:30 a.m. in Boulder. Miller allegedly hit the victim in the face before the pair grabbed the man’s cellphone and cash. Givens and Miller were later arrested.

Givens, smart child that he is, already was on thin ice in Boulder because of a vandalism arrest. Now he’s on no ice — having been booted from the Buffaloes’ program.

No word yet from Syracuse on what will happen to Miller.

NCAA for you on Line 2

Uh-oh.

Just when you thought it was safe to bring out your scarlet and gray pom-poms …

When the NCAA said Ohio State wouldn’t be charged with lack of institutional control, the Buckeyes thought they were past the worst of Tressel-gate.

Now comes word that THE Ohio State has been informed that the NCAA is not through with OSU, and in fact is investigating other issues involving the football program.

Ohio State is yet to publicly disclose that fact, surprising considering how forthcoming the school was throughout the Tressel debacle …

Extenuating circumstances

Sure, it looked bad when Texas safety Christian Scott was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault with bodily injury.

And sure, the news that the alleged victim was a woman doesn't help his cause.

But it’s not nearly as bad as it looks.

Yes, as it turns out, the charges involve Scott pulling a woman out of a car and flinging her to the ground. But hey, it was a repo-woman, coming to take away his Caddy.

I mean, what’s a college senior suppose to do when someone comes to take away his ride?

So what if he was behind on payments? He’s a college football player — he shouldn’t have to make payments at all …

Friday column: High road not always that elevated

It’s OK to stomp out of camp because you’re unhappy with your contract.

It’s not OK to dissemble about why you left and then throw a reporter under the bus because you haven’t got the stones to handle whatever criticism may come your way.

Cortland Finnegan, a top-tier cornerback, may have a beef over what he’s being paid — I don’t know. Pro football being the brutal spectacle it is, I don’t have a problem with players doing whatever they need to do to get top dollar.

But after walking out of Tennessee’s training camp last week, Finnegan, instead of manning up about the reason, took to Twitter to say:

“My absence had nothing to do with a holdout [but was a] personal matter that Titan officials were aware of.”

He then took after Tennessean beat writer Jim Wyatt, who had indicated Finnegan’s absence was caused, indeed, by cash considerations.

“Who and where did this all stem from,” Finnegan tweeted. “Let me guess a tweet and then Wyatt jumped to conclusions with no real story.”

What’s that old line? “Whenever someone says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

To his credit, this week Finnegan admitted the obvious and apologized not only to his teammates and the organization but also to Wyatt.

That showed a little class.

Speaking of a little class — very little — we have Tiger Woods’ ex.

No, no, not ex-wife — ex-caddie, though Steve Williams, in fact, reacted to his recent firing like the proverbial woman scorned.

Williams not only publicly ripped Woods for the move, he brought up Woods’ embarrassing sex scandal, stressing how the caddie had stayed the course with the suddenly disgraced golfer.

“I’m not disappointed in the fact that I got fired,” Williams keened, “but I’m just disappointed in the timing of it, given the fact about how loyal I have been to him. And that loyalty obviously didn’t mean much to him.”

Williams, who in his days with Woods often resembled a braying donkey, was in rare form Sunday when his new employer, Adam Scott, won the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational.

In the post-tournament interview, Williams called Scott’s victory “the most satisfying win of my career,” used the word “I” more than two dozen times and rarely referred to Scott, the man who’d actually swung the clubs.

The next day, Williams allowed that he was “bit over the top.”

Right, and Monday’s Dow Jones average was a tad off.

Woods, in a Wednesday interview, was restrained, acknowledging that Williams had been intemperate, but saying, “Adam has been a friend of mine, and same with Stevie. I sent Stevie a nice text after completion … congratulating him on his win.”

Good for Woods for taking the high road, but then taking a higher road than Steve Williams is really not all that difficult to do.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

Maybe there's a cream ...

Recommended reading: Tracee Hamilton's Washington Post column on the latest trouble Alex Rodriguez has managed to get himself into — no, not steroids again, but high-stakes gambling, against which he'd been warned. Writes Hamilton: All baseball can do is suspend Rodriguez, "because let’s face it: They can’t make him smarter. If only someone could come up with an injection for that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/alex-rodriguez-usually-bluffing-rarely-a-safe-bet/2011/08/04/gIQA2V0MuI_story.html

Oh, and a Red Ryder BB gun ...

From the Washington Post:

Roger Clemens wants charges dropped, no new trial

"Attorneys for former All-Star pitcher Roger Clemens asked a federal judge in Washington to dismiss charges that the Major League baseball legend lied to Congress about using steroids and asked the court to prevent prosecutors from trying him again after his first trial ended in a mistrial this month."

I'm guessing Clemens would also like a personal apology for anyone who ever doubted him, a unanimous, first-ballot entry into the baseball Hall of Fame and milk and cookies for life.

Just asking

They say, “set a thief to catch a thief?”

But do you set a coach with a drinking problem to rehabilitate a player with a drinking problem?

You do, if you’re South Carolina.

Tuesday, head coach Steve Spurrier reinstated quarterback Stephen Garcia, recently suspended for the fifth time in his Gamecock career. Most incidents have involved alcohol.

Watching over Garcia will be quarterbacks coach G.A. Magus.

If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because of Magus’ recen
t arrest for allegedly urinating in the street outside a Greenville, S.C. bar.

According to the police report, Mangus was urinating on the curb and roadway. When officers questioned Mangus, he appeared "unsteady on his feet and he had a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from his person.”

The report said that Mangus’ eyes were dilated and glazed over, his speech was slurred and “he was uncooperative in proving straight answers.”

He was scheduled to appear in court Aug. 26. Like Garcia, Magus had been suspended. Like Garcia, on Tuesday, he was welcomed back to the fold.

“We insist that those in the athletics department who work with our student-athletes on a daily basis are held to a higher standard of conduct,” athletic director Eric Hyman.

Is not getting blasted and not urinating in public really considered a “higher standard” at South Carolina?

Friday column: Integrity questions? Heaven forbid ...

It’s an unfortunate but illuminating choice of words.

“No one likes a cloud of accusations and questions about integrity,” new Pacific 12 commissioner Larry Scott said at the conference’s recent media day. “That’s not the Pac-12 brand.”

Use of brand, of course, suggests the word commodity — that, after all, is what you brand — which would refer not only to the competition college football sells but also to the people who do the competing, the players.

In college sports, branding and selling are what matters, in spite of the NCAA’s mission statement, which in part burbles that the organization’s purpose is to “integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.”

The educational experience of the student-athlete is not paramount in any of the NCAA’s member institutions. Winning (and making money) is. And to win, you need a superior commodity, which is why, it appears, the University of Oregon paid talent scout Willie Lyles $25,000 to deliver running back Lache Seastrunk — to whom Lyles had close ties — to Eugene.

Unfortunately for Oregon, paying for players is a rules violation, which is why once word of the transaction got out, the Ducks coaching staff quickly contacted Lyles, asking for some actual scouting material — player evaluations and game tape — that would justify the 25 large.

Again, unfortunately for the Ducks, what Lyles hurriedly put together included useless and outdated material that, once released, made Oregon coach Chip Kelly an object of ridicule — and investigation.

Which is why Kelly recently was peppered with questions about the scandal, questions he said he wasn’t at liberty to answer — much to his chagrin.

“I’d love to talk about it,” he said. “There are a lot of answers I’d love to make sure we get out there.”

Sure, Chip, you’d just love to answer questions about your apparent duplicity. Well, good news, my friend! The NCAA is coming to Eugene, and you’ll get all the opportunity to talk you could possibly want.

The NCAA is also heading to Baton Rouge, La., home of the LSU Tigers, who also paid money to Lyles for services not rendered.

Yes, there were “scouting reports” that came from Lyles. Unfortunately for head coach Les Miles, they were of the same caliber as those sent to Eugene — worthless.

Asked for specifics about the material, Herb Vincent, LSU senior associate athletic director, said, “I do not have this information and cannot provide this information at this time.”

But you’d love to provide it, wouldn’t you, Herb?

Cutting through the … uh, bunkum … it looks as though both Oregon and LSU paid Lyles to try to deliver players to their institutions of higher learning.

Which is why it’s particularly appropriate that the first big game of the first big Saturday of the season features none other than, yes, the Ducks and Tigers, on national TV.

Call it the Willie Lyles Bowl.

That would be proper branding.

Fair comment

Now, I like Tim Tebow. From my perspective, in fact, what’s not to like?

But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be touched by honest criticism of his game.

LeBron James feels differently, tweeting of ESPN analyst Merril Hoge’s recent negative analysis of Tebow’s abilities:

“Listened to Merril Hoge today on SC and he was just blasting Tebow. The man hasn't even play a full season and its only his 2nd year in. Guys get on that TV and act like they was all WORLD when they played. How bout encouraging him and wishing him the best instead of hating!!"

Here’s what Hoge said on SportsCenter:

"(Tebow) is awful as far as accuracy goes and what's kind of even more disturbing, he's probably worse moving and running around with the football and throwing than he is from the pocket. Can you get better there? A little bit. If everything is perfect, the pocket, your feet are good, all your fundamentals come into place, the coverage is what you want it, you can be successful. But that doesn't happen at the National Football League. Rarely does that happen."

Newsflash for LeBron: As a fellow athlete, if you want to encourage Tebow, good for you. If a fan wants to encourage Tebow, good for him or her.
But encouragement isn’t Hoge’s job — analysis is.

Dept. of What the …?

Darius Miles is an NBA bust, a high-schooler taken third in the in 2000 draft by the Clippers (need we say more?). In eight years he bounced around with four teams, averaging 10 points and 5 rebounds a game.

He had his moments of acting like a child, most notably during the 2004-05 season when he insulted Portland coach Mo Cheeks with a racial epithet (Cheeks and Miles are shown above), and in 2009 when he was arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana and driving on a suspended license.

But it wasn’t until this week Miles, 29, did something truly stupid.
According to authorities, Miles tried to bring a firearm through security at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

A loaded firearm.

It was unclear if the weapon was found in his carry-on luggage or if Miles was carrying it on his person.

The St. Louis County prosecutor's office will review the case and decide whether charges will be filed.

I’m guessing the answer will be yes.