by Timothy Weisberg | Dec 12, 2010 | Blog
The cloud of controversy left Auburn, Ala. and officially traveled to the Downtown Athletic Club in the Big Apple. Cam Newton won his Heisman Trophy in a landslide. That landslide a simple microcosm for the direction the NCAA Infractions Committee went when they declared Newton to be eligible despite the pay-for-play scheme.
So while the United States found the constitutionality in legal segregation (the infamous “separate but equal”), the NCAA found that shopping a player to respective universities is constitutional under the NCAA’s flawed perception of the role of agents and boosters.
But Hey. Newton didn’t know about it, and so Newton created a new law, where the apple really does fall that far from the tree, or the landslide really does fall down in the face of controversy.
The Heisman Trophy Mission Statement’s first sentence states the following: “The Heisman Memorial Trophy annually recognizes the outstanding college football player whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity.”
Newton may have created Newton’s laws to eligibility, but one thing he never exemplified was integrity.
How can you give an award that specifically says it recognizes an athlete who “best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity?”
So Auburn is going to the National Championship and coach Gene Chizik gets his incentives checks.
But the last person to win the Heisman so single-handedly and with the most first-place votes? Wouldn’t you know it, Reggie Bush.
Yes there is a pattern here and one that leads Newton down a similar path. Let the foreshadowing begin.
The investigation is still ongoing and pending. So my advise to the Heisman Trophy Committee: be prepared to play the role of an Indian giver, because in a few years that Heisman Trophy is coming back.
Just like Reggie Bush, when Newton is no longer playing at the college level, people will begin to realize how absurd it was to believe an athlete with a criminal background could be completely oblivious to their own father’s pay-for-play scheme.
And the best part was that the Heisman Committee invited Cecil Newton to the ceremony. So much for “limited” involvement with the university.
The legality for cheating officially has its foot in the door. The question is: how far will it venture into the dark room of the unknown.
The NCAA will find out soon enough that opening a door to the parallel universe isn’t what it is all cracked up to be.
by Timothy Weisberg | Dec 3, 2010 | Blog
Cam Newton may have created his own law because apparently the apple really doesn’t fall that far from the tree.
On Dec. 1, the NCAA ruled the Auburn quarterback and Heisman frontrunner Cam Newton clear to play despite the pay-for-play scheme involving his father, Cecil Newton.
The allegations first came to light when it was alleged Newton used his son for $180,000 in order to get his national letter-of-intent signature from schools recruiting him, most notably Mississippi State.
The NCAA has thus far found that Cecil and a middleman (most likely a booster or someone working with recruiting agency) responsible for the pay-for-play scheme, and thus no proof that Cam Newton was involved or even knew of the scheme.
Okay NCAA, so you’re telling me that as long as the athlete doesn’t know he’s being shopped like a prized piece of jewelry at an auction from Tiffany’s, it is acceptable?
What the NCAA just ruled is implying that future violations can only be invited, and that boosters can officially shop around highly-recruited athletes as long as the athlete does not know it is occurring.
What the NCAA is saying is that there is a legality in cheating, and that there is justification for the promotion and the price-tagging of players to interested parties.
The ruling dumbfounds me, and should be proud to acknowledge that they have reached a ruling as embarrassing as the “separate but equal” doctrine in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case.
That case upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation, and the NCAA infractions committee just upheld the justification for placing price tags on student-athletes.
“The conduct of Cam Newton’s father and the involved individual is unacceptable and has no place in the SEC or in intercollegiate athletics,” SEC commissioner Mike Slive said Wednesday.
Really? You didn’t need the Hardy Boys to figure that one out. The fact Slive would even consider making a statement like that is appalling, yet he also does not hesitate to say that “there’s not enough clarity.”
The apple fell from the tree but came to a dead stop once it hit the ground. So Newton didn’t defy the law of gravity, but it sure seems like he found a loophole the size of the depleted ozone layer to get out of this worst-case scenario.
The NCAA had the opportunity to rightfully declare Newton ineligible, but instead shot out blanks. They came to a gun fight with knives.
So get ready for the NCAA to tolerate many more pay-for-play operations in the near future. The Plessy v. Ferguson case was not reversed for almost 60 years.
How long will it take the NCAA to reverse this decision and reestablish a proper precedent for the ethics of recruiting?
by Timothy Weisberg | Nov 29, 2010 | Blog
The most storied rivalry in all of college football, USC vs. UCLA, is not even worthy of a prime time spot. The match-up features the battle to be bowl-less, with a 7-5 Trojans team on probation and a 4-7 Bruins team that is no longer bowl eligible.
A legacy has been left behind, and the city of Los Angeles is still holding out for a hero. The Pete Carroll Era replaced with a sketchy but confident Lane Kiffin, and another coach whose job is in jeopardy with Rick Neuheisel.
USC has dominated the rivalry over recent years, but the rivalry is more outdated than a VCR. Auburn-Alabama, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, among others, are the DVR and the blue-ray of rivalries in this video analogy.
The Bruins were given the perfect opportunity to shine with a guaranteed absence of the Trojans football program, but did not prevail, while Neuheisel desperately searches for answers in his third year, and quite possibly his last.
Whether its from probation or a stagnant football program searching for an identity, the rivalry has become so absolete, much more meaningless, and better yet, not airing on a major network. The game airs at 10:30 p.m. eastern standard time, so you can count east coast viewers out.
What was once prime time is now dead into night time.
Not even the biggest iron supplement could cure an anemic Bruins offense, and the Trojans have about as much of a chance to make it to a bowl game as the 1-11 San Jose State Spartans.
Like print journalism, the battle for the gauntlet has become a dying breed, so do not be surprised to see only the most faithful Bruin/Trojan fans pack their way into the Rose Bowl, or sit at home watching it live on Fox Sports Net Prime Ticket.
The irony of it all is that its airing on “prime ticket.” The rivalry is definitely far from its prime, yet not even in the twilight.
Instead, the UCLA-USC rivalry is into the dead of night.
Let the battle for nothing begin. A battle for none of the marbles.
by Timothy Weisberg | Nov 29, 2010 | Blog
The offer has been put on the table, but either someone has burned the contract offer, misplaced it, or Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is neglecting the Yankees 3-year, 45 million dollar offer that is patiently waiting on the Yankees GM Brian Cashman’s desk.
Jeter is a symbolic icon of the New York Yankees, and has been with the franchise since the baby-faced New Jersey native stepped his way up to the big leagues in 1995.
But coming off an expired 10-year, 189 million dollar contract, his future in pin stripes is looking much more bleak and transparent, as the Yankees offer currently collects dust.
Cashman is not quite living up to his name, refusing to budge on the offer he has given the 36-year-old. Jeter made 21 million in 2010, and is taking a pay cut after showing signs of his age.
He was down in nearly every offensive statistical category, and even appeared to have less spunk defensively.
Jeter is a cultural icon in the Bronx and acts as a symbol for the organization no other Yankee can currently hold. He is what Lou Gherig, Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio stood for during their tenure in early Yankees history.
But they weren’t paid like these athletes are now, and Jeter needs a dose of some “reality potion”; he needs a sip of it to stop his ego from getting in motion.
Jeter’s ego is extraterrestrial; it’s simply out of this world. So while Jeter is light years away from getting his ego in check (the ego he has is over is head and outside the Milky Way Galaxy), what he needs is a reality check.
Because in reality, baseball is a business and they do not pay you for your image, they pay you to play baseball. Derek Jeter isn’t patented or copyrighted to Derek Jeter so you might as well not act like it is.
But for Jeter, he believes he can play another seven years, until he is almost 43, and wants a long-term contract in the nine-figure ballpark.
Yes, Alex Rodriguez was signed to a 10-year, 275 million dollar deal that pays him 27 million a year until he is 42, but that was then and this is now.
The Yankees are already offering Jeter double what he would be payed by every other team, so the sooner Jeter can get his ego in check, the faster the deal can get finalized.
The longer he holds out, the more tarnished his image becomes. In the end, he’s just a baseball player.
Baseball is a business, and Cashman decided to carry a big stick and swat away any “big-money” offer for the seasoned veteran, assuming we of course believe 15 million is measly pay.
If the Yankees want to make any attempt at reaching an agreement, they should come up with the great compromise. No, they won’t count Jeter as three-fifths a person, but what they should do is make the rest of the deal strictly performance-based as a way to motivate him to get the deal finalized.
Jeter gets his money, but he has to earn it. 45 million guaranteed and another 20 million performance based: games played, batting average, number of hits, etc. So the Yankees risk paying him the money, but at the same time Jeter has to earn what he is asking for.
The great compromise. Call it controversial, but if Jeter ever wants to wear pin stripes again, he also needs to make a compromise.
Unfortunately for Jeter, he isn’t ever going to be on a one-way street with the Yankees organization. It’s a two-way street and will go both ways.
by Timothy Weisberg | Nov 28, 2010 | Blog
Nelly’s sixth studio album was supposed to be an attempt to revitalize the recently crippled music career of the persona that is Cornell Hayes, Jr.
Known by his studio name Nelly, he was one of the most successful rap artists during the early 2000s beginning with Country Grammar in 2000 and followed by Nellyville in 2002.
The “sophomore album curse” did not apply to Nelly, but the third time proved to be the charm with his disasterous Sweat/Suit album that literally threw his career down a stairway to hell.
Nelly 5.0 dropped on Nov. 12, and its success appaears to be “just a dream.” His revamped rap career is just a dream. What he pulled out was the purest of garbage that not even the smelliest hobo would come in contact with.
If you enjoy autotune, commercialized radio songs and catchy dance tunes exclusively used for suburban nightclubs, Nelly 5.0 is the album for you!
The songs sound more like techno gone bad, and something you would here more of at Burning Man than from a man who is supposed to represent hip-hop. Is his new genre RAVE?
Rap was predicated on lyricism, but Nelly used 5.0 as a way to brag about how many bottles he can pop in VIP, hooking up with a girl in a relationship, you know the standard degrading of women that perpetuates the stereotypes of hip-hop.
So join in on the hoe-down, but this isn’t square dancing. What’s in store is 14 or 15 bucks that would be better spent on a Justin Bieber album; because his music is actually better to dance to.
Songs like “Long Gone” featuring Chris Brown and “Gone” featuring Kelly Rowland only stand as a microcosm for Nelly’s career in music: well…long gone.
His collaboration with T.I. on “She’s So Fly” is about as bland as overcooked pot roast, and “Move that Body” turns autotune into “death” tune.
When you start coming out with songs called “1000 stacks,” you know his career is about as spoiled as week-old potatoes.
Why not one million stacks? What should be counted is the amount of minutes one would be wasting listening to another gimmicky dance album.
One star out of five for this laugher. The one star is simply a sympathy point for Nelly, who is a talented and innovative artist, yet has sunken under the music industries low standards of music.
5.0 puts the “rap” in crap. Focus more on entrepreneurial endeavors, because music has officially come second for Nelly, and even his real name (Cornell) puts my school’s name to shame.
Not even worth listening to for free off Youtube. The Red Cross is always in need of some money.
Who’s ready for some hip-hop rave music? Whoever raised your hand please put it down
by Timothy Weisberg | Nov 22, 2010 | Blog
Someone just exploded excrement all over the giant fan that is the Minnesota Vikings Monday afternoon. So when times got hard and…hits the fan, the Vikings decided to fire Brad Childress, ending his tumultuous tenure with the Vikings.
The move is not unexpected, but what is unexpected is how the Vikings season has gone for the worst. The Vikings went from a historic run to the NFC Championship and one field goal away from a Super Bowl a season ago game to complete pretenders, who at 3-7 look to be stuck in the whirlpool of elimination.
The Vikings not only hit rock bottom, they hit the Great Barrier Reef with a thud so hard even Brett Favre bounced twice, and Childress four times.
Teddy Roosevelt famously said one should “speak softly but carry a big stick.”
The now former Vikings coach was surely soft-spoken, but didn’t carry much more of a stick than a toothpick.
There was no Moses parting the Red Sea, and no burning bush that could guide Childress and the Vikings in the right direction.
Come to think of it, a flight to Mississippi was probably the worst thing kicker Ryan Longwell and crew could have done.
Favre is having one of the worst seasons of his career, battered and scarred with bruises, cuts and wounds that no life-size band aid can stop.
The bleeding began early, and the Vikings proved to be hemophiliacs.
Childress had about as much control over Favre and his team as a blind man behind the wheel.
Shattered hopes, broken dreams, the Vikings got rid of a weak and powerless leader. Like Dallas, the Vikings owners could not wait for the dreadful season to continue under their coach’s guidance, canning them, but not the kind of canning that preserves your fruits and vegetables.
Rather, they were thrown away like yesterday’s trash, and Childress is no longer the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. Childress joins the other 9.6 percent of the U.S. population without a job.
So in comes offensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, left to pick up the pieces of a puzzle more scrambled than your morning eggs.
They say that when you hit rock bottom, you can’t go anywhere but up.
At 3-7, it yet remains to be seen whether they will be able to defy the law of gravity and climb up off the bottom, or like a scared and frightened ostrich, stick their head in the sand.
A chilly ending in a currently fitting cold Minneapolis. As Eminem said, this is “as cold as the cold wind blows, when it snows and its 20 below…”
Even Charles Dickens is having a hard time comprehending how this can ever be a tale of two cities.
