Sean Miller at a game next season.

It might be time for Pac-12 men’s basketball coordinator of officials Ed Rush to do the noble thing and retire. After all, he’s north of 70 and officiating basketball games is a younger man’s job these days. Especially when this specific old man is apparently offering other refs $5,000 to make sure certain coaches are ejected. At least that’s what Rush is being accused of in a new report by Jeff Goodman of CBS Sports.

According to anonymous Pac-12 basketball officials, Rush has a personal vendetta against Arizona Wildcats coach Sean Miller, enough so that he attempted to bribe and “bully” his fellow officials.

Rush, according to a source within the Pac-12 officiating group, told a group of referees on the Thursday of the Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas that he would give them $5,000 or a trip to Cancun if they either “rang him up” or “ran him,” meaning hit Miller with a technical or toss him out of the game. Rush then reiterated during a Friday morning meeting, according to one referee in attendance, that officials should take similar action against Miller if he did anything on Friday in the Pac-12 semifinals against UCLA.

“He was emphatic about not dealing with him (Miller),” the ref told CBSSports.com. “He made that perfectly clear.”

In that meeting was referee Michael Irving, who called a technical on Miller in the Pac-12 semifinals later that evening. Miller swore that he never directed any profanities at the officiating crew, but he earned the T and a $25,000 fine for confronting an official after the Cats lost to UCLA by 2 points.

As a result, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott brushed Rush’s $5,000 bounty off as a joke and slapped him on the wrist. Because if we know anything to be true, it’s that simply telling a guy to stop being mean to someone will certainly make him stop. Clearly, Arizona basketball fans have nothing to worry about next season. Right, giraffe?

Meanwhile, this is also bad news for the NBA, because up until 2003 Rush was the league’s director of officiating, and there are plenty of fans out there who still haven’t moved on from the Tim Donaghy scandal. While Donaghy’s “indiscretions” took place in 2006 and 2007, there are people who think that the problem goes way back and even still exists to this day. Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t still have videos like this popping up every week.

In conclusion, Ed Rush is about 15 years late for his appointment with a 4:30 dinner and the weekend shuffleboard tournament at Shady Pines.

The Arizona Wildcats defeated the South Carolina Gamecocks 4-1 last night to complete a sweep and win the program’s fourth NCAA baseball title in school history. Coach Andy Lopez and the Wildcats put on a hell of a show to win his second College World Series in 20 years; in fact, this one comes on the 20th anniversary of his first, when he was the unknown coach of the even more unknown Pepperdine Wave.

But enough about all that awesome, inspirational baseball stuff, there were also morons in Omaha last night. Seven morons, to be precise, and I could even go as far as to call them knuckleheads. That’s the kind of foul mood these no-gooders have put me in. At one point during the game, these Douche-Bagnificent 7 (trademark pending) rushed the field and caused a delay in the game as security had to wrangle them up.

As you can see above, one ambitious girl even got herself a handful of some Wildcat ass. And knowing baseball players as well as I do, I can only hope that he farted on her hand. That would have been the mature thing to do.

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It’s time to flush the good will and fan song benefit-of-the-doubt earned by Ashkon’s “Niners In Paris” down the toilet, because the worst kind of guy who does things on the Internet (the bald, bearded guy wearing sunglasses on his webcam) has created “The Gronk Song – An Original for Rob Gronkowski”. It … basically destroys fan songs forever. And possibly rap music. And possibly white people. And uh, possibly people.

In a greater context, sure, there have been worse fan songs on YouTube and fat kids doing Ke$ha covers about hockey is objectively worse, but there’s something special about this video’s unique mix of bad rhyming, New England rabbel-rousing and full-on virgin-or-close-to-it perspectives on women.

Example:

Shopping for him must be hard to do,
’cause he wears a massive size-16 shoe.
He went to college in Arizona,
calls Bibi Jones when he gets a Gronk boner!

…but I guess if you like the Patriots and enjoy America’s constant attempts at being the next Free Credit Report Dot Com Band, you’ll like this. Just don’t let anyone hear you listening to it (or do, and tell them it’s a terrible new They Might Be Giants CD).

[h/t The Big Leadq]

Here’s another highlight from this weekend you may have missed if you don’t watch SportsCenter, as I don’t.  I’m not proud of that or anything, I’ve just gotten so used to absorbing sports through the Internet that a highlights show on TV takes way too long to get to whatever information I want to know.  What do you mean, after the commercial? I can’t wait that long!

Anyway.  Houston’s Aubrey Coleman casually walked on Chase Budinger’s face after Budinger took a charge near midcourt.  Coleman earned a flagrant foul and was ejected, while Arizona rallied from a 12-point deficit before winning in overtime.  The lesson being, don’t walk on anyone’s face.  Not for free, anyway.  You can make good money doing that.  You just have to find the right Craigslist ads.

[The Dagger]

>Bet the over for awkward pauses in conversation

Saturday’s Las Vegas Bowl will pit Arizona (7-5) versus BYU (10-2) in a clash of collegiate cultures, with the sun-drenched party culture of U of A going up against the Mormons and all their weird unsexy underwear and chaste do-goodery.  Big thanks to Every Day Should Be Saturday, which found this promotional photo of the team’s coaches; nothing quite says “awkward” like the BYU logo in the same photo as Vegas showgirls.

And, as if the idea of flocks of Mormons awkwardly looking at the floor as they walk through the lobbies of hotel/casinos isn’t wonderful enough: German icon, proud Wildcat dad, and hamburger enthusiast David Hasselhoff will sing the National Anthem before the game.

Hasselhoff, Mormons, and Vegas.  It blows my mind that this is an actual, real-life event, and not a TV pilot or the basis for an episode of CSI.  Seriously, a Mormon’s gonna end up dead just as Hoff walks off the field in an attention-grabbing cameo.  Then David Caruso shows up as an expert from Miami and says, “Looks like one saint just became more latter day than he wanted to be.” YEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

David Hasselhoff fired up the student section at the Arizona game this weekend, apparently because his daughter is an undergrad there. Because really, what undergrad daughter DOESN’T want her dad to come with her to the game? On a scale of one to drunken hamburger, this is slightly more embarrassing than “cameo in the Knight Rider remake.”

Notice the uncomfortable silence after he yells, “We’re all virgins!” while talking about Wildcat football games. You almost get the feeling that some of those girls may have been to an Arizona home game before.

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