Sign it!
Sign this huge contract so we may pay you a fortune!

I’m not sure what will end first, this Dick-Rod-Not-Paying-His-Buyout thing or the Democratic Nomination process, but both have reached rarefied levels of stupidity. While Hillary Clinton is vowing to continue fighting, Dick Rod is claiming he was “coerced” into signing his West Virginia contract.

Former West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez says Gov. Joe Manchin and three members of the university’s board of governors pressured him into signing a new contract before the start of the 2007 season, even though it had a $4 million buyout clause he didn’t want.

Let’s take a look at the definition of “coerced.”

Main Entry: co·erce
Pronunciation: kO-’&rs
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): co·erced; co·erc·ing
Etymology: Middle English cohercen, from Anglo-French *cohercer Latin coercEre, from co- + arcEre to shut up, enclose — more at ARK
Date: 15th century
1 : to restrain or dominate by force
2 : to compel to an act or choice
3 : to achieve by force or threat

We’ll leave the first definition out of this. I assume Dick wasn’t restrained or dominated by force. That may be a leap, considering he was in West Virginia, but it’s a prospect I’d just rather ignore. So let’s go with 2 or 3. Dick was either compelled or threatened. To sign a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to do a job far less important to humanity than about 95% of the jobs that exist in the world.

Here’s how I figure this “coercion” probably went.

Governor Manchin: Sign this contract, Dick.

Dick: No!

Manchin: Do it, or else!

Dick: Or else what?

Manchin: Or else we wont pay you millions of dollars to do a job that, ultimately, falls incredibly low on the totem pole of global importance.

Dick: Well, it looks as though I’ve no choice in the matter!

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And given that most people haven’t met Chuck (except me), he’s talking to the majority of the fans/haters out there when he says this.  It’s an interesting interview, taken from a more personal angle than most. 

“And it’s probably the biggest, I don’t know if it bothered me the most, just the thing that I don’t understand the most, is all these people have an impression of you. They’ve never even met you. I mean, they’ve never even talked to you.”

In a way, I get it.  And I have to admit Charlie’s right:  people don’t KNOW him.  They haven’t met him, they don’t hang out, and they don’t get the full picture of who he is.  And I really agree that the public’s opinion should be much much less about WHO Charlie is, and much more about HOW he coaches.  Of course, some of that is intertwined, but it’s up to the fans and the public to delineate the difference.  The haters often focus on his weight problems, his jersey-ish style of speaking and scream, cry and whine foul.  FOUL they say! The ND fans are often close to, if not quite, as bad. 

But at the same time, Coach, that’s the nature of the beast.  You’re in a public job with a public jury, and so people will certainly form an opinion about you - and quickly.    I mean, I can pretty much tell you with utmost certainty that our President is a moron.  And I’ve never come close to meeting the guy. 

FYI:  The reporter is blind.

Point is, if Charlie does something illegal, or even shady, feel free to call him out.  But don’t hate the player, hate the game!

Yes, the way he says some things is less-than-sophisticated.  His mastery of PR is far from ‘there’ yet.  But that doesn’t make Charlie Weis a bad guy, it makes him a questionable public speaker.  Don’t pull the guy down as a person until you tell me he’s doing some Urban-esque type stuff.   At that point, anyone’s fair game.  But I don’t think you’ll ever see that kind of thing out of Charlie.   After all, he cares…

“I think that anyone that works with me will probably tell you that there probably isn’t anyone who’s more caring than me,” he said.

And that quote right there sums it up for Charlie, on both sides.  I do believe the guy cares about people.  From the stories and from my personal interaction with him, I believe that he really does care about his family, friends, players, and the fans.  But somehow, he manages to say it in a way that makes him sound like a pompous ass. 

But don’t crucify him for the jersey-ish, less-than-eloquent talk.   It’s the thought that counts, people!

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And that seems to be the first defense of Southern Cal: They can’t be held responsible when it was so obvious that OJ would do what he did. It’s an argument that’s nearly as stupid as the “everybody does it, so who cares” defense. In fact, both defenses are so stupid that I refuse to waste many keystrokes on them. If you truly believe one and/or the other, I invite you to direct your web browser elsewhere. You’re too stupid to read this site, and literacy coupled with intellects such as yours tend to lead to very sad movies on HBO about “death marches” in various geographies.

The other defense that I keep encountering on the internet, on the radio waves, and at the lunch counter goes something like this: The world has signaled that graduating players and keeping their noses clean comes a distant second to winning, and so Southern Cal and Tim Floydd should not be held accountable. It’s too hard to monitor these players and build a winning team at the same time.

And while the argument nearly follows some semblance of logic, it shares a common trait with the previous 2 defenses in that it’s patently false. It may be very, very hard as administrators and coaches to do everything by the letter of the NCAA law (and the local, state, and federal laws), ensure that the players keep their noses clean, and win, but, frankly, what the hell else are we paying these people for?

These coaches and administrators are paid a ton of money to do all of the things I just mentioned, not most of them. It’s why we positively freaked out at Kevin White when he uttered the famous “Sunday to Friday” comment. We don’t pay coaches millions of dollars to “do all the right things” OR win. We pay them to do it all! And we pay them well! And besides, how much are we really needing to pay them to motivate them to go about trying to win? Aren’t they coaches? Isn’t it inherent within their chosen profession to want to win anyway? Isn’t the compensation entirely designed to entice the coaches to win (something they want to do) while navigating the waters of legal and NCAA codes?

Is the argument by those who would defend Southern Cal that the coaches and administrators aren’t paid enough to keep tabs on their players and make sure the players are on the up-and-up? How about Southern Cal’s NCAA Compliance Officer? Why does that person even bother having a job at all if not to be a thorn in the side of Southern Cal student athletes? Does Southern Cal even have a Compliance Officer? I’m just assuming they do, but considering this and the Reggie Bush thing, maybe they don’t.

All this ranting aside, I want to be clear that I don’t like the idea of giving Southern Cal the “death penalty” at this point. Both the OJ Mayo and Reggie Bush issues seem only to involve agents who want to represent the athletes once they turn pro rather than boosters looking to entice talent to their schools. And Southern Cal, as far as I’m aware, isn’t on probation for committing any similar NCAA violations. But I do support a real, live, actual NCAA investigation with some teeth, and some form of punishment that wont leave Southern Cal bloggers breathing a collective sigh of relief. Forfeiture of TV revenues might be a good start. A few lost scholarships could be a good step.

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Yeah, I never thought it would happen either.  But Brian at Mgoblog said something intelligent.  Well-written.  Human, even.  And I agreed with it.   Take it in, accept it, believe that it’s possible even t hough Michigan (sucks!) sucks.  But there it is.

Brian was shooting down all the arguments against a playoff system one by one, and one of the arguments against the playoff is that it ruins watching college football week in and week out.  I always thought this was moronic, for many reasons, and Brian actually touched on a few of them without sounding like an idiot.  For that, he gets a pat on the head and a ‘keep it up kid’ from HLS.   Substitute “Michigan (sucks!)” for “Notre Dame” in the following paragraph and I’d stand by it, no doubt: 

If the only reason you watch college football is because of the incredibly minute chance Oregon State-Cincinnati has any impact whatsoever on the national title race, I don’t know what to tell you. I watch college football because in the stands 80 to 100 thousand people live and die on every play, because I hate Miami, Notre Dame, Ohio State, USC, and most of the SEC, because it is a brief three-month burst of bands and silly songs and real, honest-to-God traditions and stadiums named after states or dead men and punch-you-in-the-eye rivalries in a sea of sports chintz.

The reason so many of us watch so much college football is that, as mentioned, there is hardly any of it and it is all great.

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Example:  Michael Floyd’s dedication to getting an education, Dayne Crist’s SERIOUS volunteering work.

Anti-example:  The UF Gators Program

Case in Point:  Jamar Hornsby.

EDSBS has the story at the link, written well and funnier than anything I can write, so I won’t repeat it all here.  I’ll just give the summary and draw the (admittedly self-serving bc I hate Urban Meyer) conclusion.

Jamar’s teammate and his girlfriend die too young in a terrible motorcycle accident.  The day after their death, Jamar helps clean out his deceased teammate’s apartment.  (nice guy, right?)  In the process, Jamar ganks his teammate’s girlfriend’s credit card.  Jamar goes on a 6-month-long shopping spree using the girl’s card. (not nice guy, right?)

Repeat - He stole a credit card from a dead girl the day after she died.  A dead girl that was his teammate’s girlfriend.

 Our friend Jamar has had issues in the past as well, per ESPN.com:

Hornsby, who has played the last two seasons mostly on special teams, has had two prior off-field problems during his Florida career. He was cited in April 2007 on misdemeanor criminal mischief charges when he caused $750 damage to a car by throwing a man onto the vehicle’s hood during a fight. He also was suspended from playing in last year’s game against Georgia for selling his tickets to the game, a violation of NCAA rules.

Hey everybody, this is what Charlie meant when he said hoodlums and thugs.  Get over it, because it’s real.

Quality Student-Athletes.   Quality People.   That’s University of Florida Football for you.

Looks like Tim Tebow is going to be visiting his teammate in the pen sometime soon.  At least he has the practice.  Maybe he can save the whole team, the whole program, while he’s at it.  

I doubt it.

HT: DTK in the shiz-out biz-ox.  For this, I promise not to bash Michigan (sucks!) for a week.

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The Roundup:

• It takes a while for the guy to make his point, but when he does, it’s a lousy one. When the guys that don’t get it start to really get uppity about sports bloggers, you know their time is coming to an end.
• Apparently there’s a doctorate in Bitch and Moan available at Michigan (sucks!)
• My turn to whine: Hey, SBNation.com, when you went and “upgraded” all of the blogs on your network, including the fine Rakes of Mallow, did you have to unleash every post ever made by one of your bloggers into my RSS reader all over again? By the way, nice job making your blogs all look like e-commerce sites with a side of blog.
• There’s so little going on in the CFB world right now, I can’t even keep this theme up, so screw it.
• John Cooper: HAHA!
• SMQ wants to know what makes someone “consistent.” If he’s talking about “consistently great,” then, speaking for myself, I dunno. I suppose it’s just a gift from God to all of you.

Well, that roundup sucked. We need the season preview magazines to come out now. Phil Steele, where are you?

Here’s a fun fact from Phil to get us through this rough patch: Notre Dame plays just 6 teams in 2008 that had winning records in 2007. And those opponents combined for a winning percentage of just 51%. Wooooo!

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NOTRE DAME, Ind. - In the second to be announced of a series of “off-site” Fighting Irish football games, Notre Dame and Arizona State will square off on Oct. 5, 2013, at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Notre Dame football will begin the series of off-site games in 2009 (versus Washington State in San Antonio) and play one game per season at locations in Texas, Florida, and in other cities.

The Irish and Sun Devils will be meeting for the first time since 1999. Notre Dame defeated Arizona State in Sun Devil Stadium in ‘98 (28-9) and again in Notre Dame Stadium in ‘99 (a 48-17 Irish victory).

The game will be played at the Cowboys’ new facility that is currently under construction and will open in the summer of 2009. With a capacity of 80,000 fans, it will be home to Super Bowl XLV following the 2011 NFL season, as well as the annual AT&T Cotton Bowl.

That’s right, in his infinite wisdom, Dr. White scheduled this game to be in Dallas, TX rather than Tempe, AZ.

First of all, flying into Phoenix is a vastly more pleasurable experience than flying into the ghetto that is DFW. The only experience worse than flying into DFW is flying into a mountain.

Secondly, it means playing a college football game without any of the college football ambiance. This will feel as much like a college football game as Pam Anderson feels real.

And thirdly, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of being in Tempe, on the campus of ASU, you know darn well why it’s a tremendous disappointment that we will not be in Tempe, on the campus of ASU. It’s just so darn… perky.

No. We’re not talking about the architecture.

Sigh.

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It’s around :50 seconds. And I love that Charlie hath no love for the skunkbears. It’s quite pleasing.

Otherwise, this video is fun in a midwestern-overzealous-kinda-creepy-with-bad-filming-skills-but-tons-of-ND-love kind of way. Just FYI - if Blair Witch or that lame lizard movie made you vomit in the theater, avoid this video.

You can’t doubt the ND love, and the skills at overlaying Rudy music to homemade video. No, you can’t doubt that.

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Blue and Gold sat down with Trevor to discuss ND and last season, and it’s a solid read. 

 A few things I noted:

•  Trevor wasn’t a captain.  That’s funny.  I’ve known since it was announced that Trevor wasn’t a captain last year.  But, as the year went on, and even after it was over, I always thought of him as one.  It must’ve been that he emerged as such a leader, by example, that I just came to think that he had a “C” somewhere hidden on that jersey.

• Trevor on “why” last season happened:  “We just had so many young guys trying to do things they weren’t really capable of doing yet…just a big gap in recruiting we had. It was so big. Not many other schools suffer things like that with just a depleted senior and really junior class too. You just don’t have players from those classes coming out to contribute to the team that we had in previous years. I think that big lack of just people and bodies really hurt us, those two classes were just so small. We called on a lot of guys that didn’t have a lot of experience. They’re going to be great players some day but putting the whole season on their shoulders was something they probably weren’t ready for. It’s just a different team dynamic you get with so few seniors and juniors. It’s like there’s a whole group of people that aren’t there, that were always there on every other team I’ve been on. I think that the freshmen and the younger guys, they could kind of relate to us, but not as good as a sophomore to a junior, or a junior to a senior. And our team didn’t have that. We had so few guys in the middle there that were making plays on the field.”

Nothing shocking there, but it’s interesting to hear it from a player’s perspective.

Good luck in the NFL Trevor.   You deserve a long and successful career.

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Ooh! Look! A graph!

What does it mean?

Absolutely nothing!

But to the NCAA, an organization that does absolutely nothing useful to any segment of humanity, it means…

The NCAA’s Academic Performance Program (APP) is creating positive behavioral change among Division I institutions, according to new four-year data released May 6.

The multi-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) data – with four years of data collection available for the first time – show upward trends in several categories, especially from 2005-06 to 2006-07. The overall APR, which measures student-athlete performance based on eligibility and retention, rose slightly, with increases in both eligibility and retention and a decrease in the number of student-athletes leaving school while academically ineligible.

Um. Okay. So how is the APR calculated?

Each Division I sports team receives an APR. An APR of 925 roughly projects to
a 60 percent graduation success rate. To calculate the APR, every student-athlete
is tracked by eligibility and retention, the two most reliable factors in predicting
graduation. Those who do well in the classroom and stay in school earn two
points. Those who pass but do not return to school earn one point. If a studentathlete
fails academically and leaves school, their team loses two points. If a
student-athlete returns to school later and graduates, the school earns one bonus
point. The team’s APR is calculated by dividing the total points earned in a year by
the total points possible.

So the “perfect score” is 1000, and yet, in an Academic Progress Report, a 60% graduation rate translates, roughly to a 925? 925 over 1000 is 92.5. Why use a 1000 point benchmark? Is there really a need for the granularity of 1000 units of whatever the heck the APR is measuring? What the heck is this thing measuring?

By the way, that 925 is the “benchmark” score. Any program falling under that score is subject to “contemporaneous penalties.”

For fun, I took the APR numbers of teams on this year’s ND Football schedule and compared them to the latest published GSR (graduation success rates) of each school respectively. Now, maybe the most recently published GSR numbers aren’t the GSR numbers the NCAA used to calculate APR, but if they aren’t, then why not?

As you can see, Michigan State fell dangerously close to falling below the benchmark. SDSU was the only team not to get a score in the lofty 900s on ND’s schedule (again, why are we playing SDSU?). Purdue scored a 920, but aren’t listed under the NCAA’s list of programs that will be receiving penalties. I’m sure there’s an explanation. It’s probably got to do with “momentum” or something, which will probably play a role in the fact that MSU got a “passing” grade even though they’re sporting a GSR of 43. Maybe it’s because, if these programs fall below the benchmark, they can, essentially, promise to do better next year, and get a reprieve. I used to promise I’d do better next year all the time, but did that ever stop me from getting fired? Never mind. Didn’t the NCAA just say a GSR of 60 roughly translated to a 925? So confusing. But like I said, maybe the GSR numbers are old, and MSU made an improvement of 17 points in the GSR this past year. Maybe.

Ultimately, the APR is a freaking joke. There’s more smoothing out of blemishes here than at your average junior high. So tomorrow, when you hear on the radio about how things are getting better, and programs you’d expect to get penalized aren’t, just remember that MSU is sporting a freaking 43 GSR and not getting penalized either.

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