As reported on SI.com, this week, University of Kentucky Head Basketball Coach John Calipari made headlines suggesting that changes be made in NCAA rules. That’s not a surprise since he has a more-than-vested interest in the change he is calling for. Calipari went on a rant against the age-limit rule in an interview on WKJK in Louisville, ”I’m the one guy out there saying, ‘We’ve gotta change this somehow. We’ve gotta encourage these kids to stay two years.’ But the NCAA’s gotta do some stuff.”
There is no question that the “one and done” situation where players play one year of college ball then turn pro needs to be addressed, but in this case, Calipari doesn’t say that it’s the NBA, whose age limit that was designed to keep players from coming straight into the league from high school that is the culprit for this situation. You can’t force a kid to stay in school; not even the almighty NCAA can do that.
But Calipari takes it a step further – he is playing the “play the leave-the-NCAA card.” Calipari continued “and if they don’t do it, we need to separate from them. I’m not afraid to say it. Look, they’ve embarrassed me.”
Yes, the NCAA has “embarrassed Calipari, mostly because Calipari has run two college basketball programs straight into NCAA sanctions, as the coach himself has moved on, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. He was coach at the University of Massachusetts but magically left for the head job with the NBA New Jersey Nets before the NCAA could level sanctions against UMass.
After getting fired by the Nets, Calipari led Memphis to a Final Four appearance with a young man named Derrick Rose. Allegations of fraudulent test taking and other serious violations plagued the program after Rose turned pro, and Calipari was off again, landing this time at Kentucky where he probably doesn’t need to cheat (but I wouldn’t bet on it).
So, while the concern is understandable, once again, Calipari is complaining about something that impacts his team, his winning percentages, and ultimately his multimillion dollar paycheck. He doesn’t care about the kids, or the fact that many of them don’t want to go to college, they just want to go pro as quickly as possible, but David Stern keeps them from doing that.
All in all, I think that John Calipari is a fine basketball coach for X’s and O’s, and he can recruit. But he will do anything to win including break NCAA rules and run for the hills before they can catch him. So, I wouldn’t be surprised that he advocated leaving the NCAA – that way, he wouldn’t have to follow any rules at all.

University of Michigan Head Football Coach Brady Hoke might not have been a big fan of Notre Dame before, but he won’t be on any Christmas card lists from South Bend after this week.
Hoke reportedly told the Michigan Sports Commission Annual Luncheon that ND was “chickening out” of playing the Wolverines in their annual football game. Hoke supposedly said “The Notre Dame game, that rivalry, which they’re chickening out of. They’re still gonna play Michigan State, they’re gonna play Purdue, but they don’t want to play Michigan. I don’t know how they made that decision … I really do … But anyway, that’s a great national rivalry game. It’s a great game.”
Good question; why is ND pulling out of playing Michigan while keeping Michigan State and Purdue? It can’t be money because Michigan regularly fills The Big House in Ann Arbor with over 109,000 fans, and they travel well, since it isn’t far to get to South Bend if there are any tickets left. And the game is a big moneymaker for ABC/ESPN.
Maybe it’s because Michigan is regularly good and has beaten ND fairly regularly except last season, which MSU and Purdue have up-and-down programs – good one year, not so good the next, and ND has had good success against them. Nah, they’re not trying to fill the schedule with easier games to help keep them national championship contenders (pretenders?) until bowl season when they play a really good team who beats the snot out of them, are they?
If you needed another reason to hate Notre Dame and all they stand for, here’s another one. Cowards!

I know that multiple players and their families have sued the NFL saying that the league knew or should have known that playing the sport is bad for your health especially after the discovery of CTE. Now the family of a deceased hockey player is suing the NHL, and while I feel for them, like the football suit, I there’s one part of the suit I don’t think they can win.
The family of Derek Boogaard has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the National Hockey League, claiming the league is responsible for the brain damage the player suffered during six seasons as an “enforcer” and for his addiction to painkillers. Boogaard died of an accidental drug overdose on May 13, 2011 in Minneapolis after a battle with addiction to painkillers prescribed by a team of NHL doctors, according to the lawsuit filed here in Cook County, Illinois. The suit says that a post-mortem examination revealed Boogaard suffered from CTE.
Boogaard was an enforcer for the Minnesota Wild and he finished his career with the New York Rangers. Boogaard played in 277 regular season games and tallying three goals and 13 assists to go along with 589 penalty minutes with the Wild and Rangers.
Like the NFL lawsuit, it’s hard for me to see how they can win. CTE has been recognized only recently, in the past 7 years or so, and it can only be detected by autopsy after death. How any sports league can “predict” the existence of a disease before it is even discovered is dubious?
Plus, I hate to say it, but these young men want to play. They want the rewards that go with being a professional athlete. Agreed, being an NHL enforcer is probably one of the worst ways to make a living – being nervous before every game, scouting who you might have to fight, not being on the ice for much other than physical brutality. Fortunately, the role of enforcers is changing; fights aren’t as common, and the league is spending money on trying to protect the brains of the players better (is it enough money we won’t question here).
The league may have a bigger issue with the prescriptions reportedly given to Boogaard. According to the suit, in the 2008-2009 season, Boogaard was given 1,021 pills by NHL team doctors and dentists. The lawsuit alleges that in a two-week period, Boogaard was given 150 pills of oxycodone, and took Boogaard took up to ten pills a day.
If this is proven, the league, the teams and the doctors might be in serious trouble.

Catching up on one from last week, Last week’s call by umpire Angel Hernandez and his crew failing to reverse an obvious home run by A’s infielder Adam Rosales is even worse because they couldn’t even get it righ using video review.
Even Major League Baseball admitted the mistake: executive vice president Joe Torre said an “improper call” was made in the ninth inning of last Wednesday’s game between the Indians and Athletics. Unfortunately for the A’s the disputed call will stand (the Indians won 4-3).
Here’s the story: with two outs in the ninth, Rosales hit a ball to left that appeared to clear the 19-foot-high outfield wall and strike a railing. A’s manager Bob Melvin asked Hernandez and his crew to review the hit, and three umpires left the field to view replays in a designated area near their dressing room. After a lengthy delay, the umpires returned to the field and instructed Rosales to stay at second, a decision that shocked the A’s, the Indians, 14,000 fans in attendance at Progressive Field and people watching on television.
That is part of the culture of baseball umpires – they can be petty tyrants on the field because they make the calls. Since there’s no immediate fallout, and baseball rarely penalizes the umpires, the umpires have carte blanche to do as they will, and they can eject anyone who disagrees. Players, managers, coaches, even fans can be ejected on the work of an umpire.
Many umpires do a very good job, and some of them don’t take big egos out on the field with them. But to all whole profession – if you’re going to have such huge egos, you’d better make the right calls.

I admit that I worry about the Indignant Daughters. They are both very beautiful and are very “girl-ly,” and I have made only half joking comments about building a moat and stocking it with piranha and building gun turrets on all four corners of the Indignant Abode as they get closer to dating age. It’s stories like this one from last week that make me feel this way.
According to a report issued as a result of an investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, members of the University of Montana football team were treated as “gods” and were “allowed to get away with anything,” including sexual assault, members of the university community.
The University of Montana cooperated with the probes starting in May 2012. Two agreements with the university require the campus police force, found to have discriminated against women students, to work with an independent monitor to ensure proper responses to rape and sexual harassment allegations in the future, and order university officials to revise policies.
The investigation found that six football players were accused of aiding, attempting or committing sexual assault from spring 2009 to spring 2012 and that three of the players weren’t prosecuted through the campus judicial system for more than a year after their coach was notified that the victim had filed a complaint with the Missoula Police Department.
The Justice Department said one officer appeared to have relied on “unwarranted gender-based assumptions and stereotypes” when investigating an alleged incident. Two campus police officers responding to a different sexual assault report used the term “regretted sex,” according to the report. Students and community activists described the officers’ responses as “incompetent” and said they were “not well-trained,” the report said.
Women reporting sexual assault were exposed to initial police interviews that could “discourage women from reporting sexual assaults,” the Justice Department found.
“Women reported to us that being interviewed by [campus police] officers was emotionally difficult because they were simultaneously interviewed by multiple officers, because they were asked very personal questions without warning and without explanation of the questions’ relevance to the investigation, and because the officers’ emphasis on the personal burdens involved in seeking criminal justice heightened their fears,” the report said. One advocate said the process was “painful” for victims.
While Montana is not in one of the major conferences, the school has dominated the Big Sky Conference, appearing in eight of the last nine Division I (new name for small conferences) championship game although it has never won a national championship.
But as long as they were playing at a high level, the players knew they could get away with it protected by the “good ‘ole boys” on the campus police. It’s disgusting.

The word fan is short for fanatic, which is what sports fans are – rooting on their teams with their entire being. They see calls through their passion; they cheer their teams; they boo the opposition. I know because anyone whose seen me at a Northwestern football game or Blackhawks game knows that I’m anything nut impartial or quiet. It’s part of the make-up of a sports nut, but it can go too far (and I have at times, I admit).
Then there’s Filomena Tobias, the Miami Heat fan who gave Joakim Noah the middle finger salute that has gone viral and led to a search to find out who she is. Turns out, she is the widow of former CNBC commentator Seth Tobias. Now that she has been identified, the plot thickens.
It turns out that Seth Tobias’ family filed a civil law suit in 2007, and according to the brothers’ lawsuit, Filomena Tobias caused her husband “to ingest one or more controlled substances that induced loss of consciousness and capacity to breathe.” They further claimed that she had caused him “to enter the swimming pool at their residence after his ingestion of controlled substances and in his stuporous and helpless condition he was asphyxiated and died.”
Tobias’s best friend, Patrick Bransome, said in a statement to the police that he had not seen Tobias go in a pool or swim in years. In early 2008, ABC News reported that Filomena had been cleared of any suspicion by police. They also had more details on the family’s civil suit. Much of the brothers’ case relies on the word of William Ash, a convicted felon and former assistant to Tobias, who police said has worked as a gay prostitute. Ash told authorities he had a recording of Filomena confessing to murdering her husband. Ash has been arrested 11 times and is a known associate of Heidi Fleiss, the so-called “Hollywood Madam.” In December, police said they had reviewed the alleged recording and did not find it substantial, but were waiting on the medical examiner’s report before classifying the death a homicide.
And who was the toned, yelling man sitting next to Ms. Tobias in the infamous picture? He is a VP of a Wealth Management firm in Atlanta. She’s his fiancé.
Of course, the media reached her daughter Victoria Racanati and she said the her mother is ”embarrassed, but she is being a good sport. She was having fun just like any other fan. All she has to say is that people need to get a life.”
If you’re flipping the bird to a nearly 7 foot professional athlete close enough that he could grab you and beat the hell out of you, it looks like you need to get a life. Or maybe, she has too much of one?

All the way back when I wrote for The Sportswriters on TV, I wrote about the incredible hubris of baseball umpires NBA referees, and to a lesser extent, NHL officials. The reason: arguments aren’t one sided, and it has always appeared that baseball arguments were caused/accentuated by the umpire.
My prime case was the spitting incident of Roberto Alomar. If you remember, Alomar got into an altercation with home plate umpire John Hirshbeck and spit on him. This is not acceptable behavior by any means, and Alomar was suspended, had his name sullied, and probably had to wait a year to enter the Hall of Fame in punishment. But this was not typical behavior; in fact, Alomar had been known as a model player on the field. Looking at the videotape, Alomar didn’t even say anything until the umpire said something to him.
In the NBA, referees bragged of “teaching players a lesson” on the court, going out of their way to call or not call fouls on particular players who they didn’t like or felt disrespected them. While never proven through interviews, there has long been a perception that NHL officials like Kerry Frazier and Andy van Hellemond had vendettas against certain players and teams.
The issue had been dormant for a long time, certainly in baseball after the umpires were fired en masse when they went out on strike against the owners. In addition, with the league monitoring pitches and balls and strikes, suddenly umpires’ calls were reviewed, and got fined and suspended. However, it looks like the divas on the field are being challeneged and their bad behavior is being recognized.
In a game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals last Sunday afternoon, Bryce Harper, one of the biggest young stars in baseball, checked his swing on a pitch from Wandy Rodriguez. Home plate umpire Bob Davidson asked for help from third base umpire John Hirschbeck, who has a history with players on teams managed by Davey Johnson, and certainly has had run ins with players (see above).
Hirschbeck called Harper out on strikes. The Nationals outfielder disagreed and voiced his displeasure with the call. Hirschbeck didn’t waste time in throwing up his arms to let Harper know that he wasn’t going to take any guff. After a few more seconds of Harper talking and tossing his helmet down, Hirschbeck decided that he wanted to toss the 20-year-old out of the game just to send a message.
And if that sounds like an exaggeration, here is what Hirschbeck told the Washington Post after the game: “I didn’t like that he put his hands up with the bat. That’s kind of what I yelled at him. He continued and threw his bat. I kind of pointed like, ‘That’s equipment.’ And then, he still continued and slammed his helmet down. That’s when I ejected him. I was actually just being nice. Even the hands up in the air is showing me up, to me. I could have ejected him right then. I was nice enough to leave him in the game…”
This follows an incident between Tampa Bay Rays pitcher David Price and umpire Tom Hallion one week ago. Price appeared to have struck out White Sox outfielder Dewayne Wise with a pitch that caught the outside corner for strike three. He didn’t get the call, and Price’s body language showed he was upset by it. According to Price, he was walking off the field after the seventh inning of what was then a 3-3 game when Hallion with no provocation “yells at me to throw the ball over the f-ing plate.” Price (and many other Rays players) claim Hallion unnecessarily dropped the “F-bomb” at Price. When informed of Price’s assertion, Hallion said “I’ll come right out bluntly and say he’s a liar,” Hallion said, voice raised. “I’m denying what he said I said, pretty strongly. … I’m just telling you, he’s lying. It’s plain and simple.” Price wasn’t finished, responding that Hallion was the one lying, and pointed to the reaction of his teammates including the unlikely ejection of normally mild-mannered Jeremy Hellickson as proof.
Price said “I don’t know what he thinks he (Hallion) heard, you can ask anybody that was sitting in the dugout and they all erupted as they should have when you hear an umpire speak to a player that way. Something has to be done about that, and that’s why I told you guys (the media).
Being an official is a tough unsung job. The best officials do their jobs with no fanfare; in fact, the best are renowned for not bringing attention to themselves. For some reason, baseball umpires have been the worst. Why should you worry about a players or manager “showing you up?” As I’ve said a billion times: NO ONE buys a ticket to watch the umpires. Do your job – do the best to call the game impartially and other than that, stay out of the way. Famous referees like Ed Hockuli is famous for his calls and his massive muscles, but you can’t say that he takes his fame that seriously and doesn’t bring his ego on the field. In fact, he was very upset for some time after he and his crew made a bad call in a game.
That is what makes a good umpire/official/referee. Leave your egos in the locker room, and if you don’t the leagues should fire you.