Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed last night’s first installment of the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 and our Dummy’s Guide to sounding somewhat intelligent in the company of people who watch more college basketball than you. I went 2-for-4 with my picks from last night, as Syracuse and Florida won their games and Cincinnati and Michigan State really took massive horse dumps in their respective matchups. But I also technically rode the fence on each game enough that I can say I was 4-for-4.

What can I say, I’m an expert.

We’re back at it tonight, and I know it’s a Friday and all, but I’ll still be live chatting the action up from the handy dandy portable intelligent telephone. I’ll be at the Orlando Magic game, per the usual, which will make it all more fun. Make your predictions, quips and witticisms in the comments and there will be free t-shirts and possibly other surprises to be given out.

Admit it, you’re excited.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pretend you’re a writer. It’s easy, I do it everyday. Writing is your dream. Imagine that you’ve worked on your writing your entire life, and just before you’ve gotten that big break, someone swoops in and snatches it out from under you. That would be painful, right? But hey, there are a lot of writers in the world, so it’s tough to make it. Now imagine that you do the most specific thing in the f**king universe. Imagine that you’re a sculptor who has spent four years sculpting a big ass Larry Bird to put in front of the Hulman Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. You’ve worked tirelessly for nearly half a decade to raise money and get every wispy bristle of that Larry Bird college mustache just right. Chances are you are the only person in Terre Haute sculpting a big Larry Bird to stand outside of the arena.

Only, you aren’t.

You find out somebody is donating all the money you’ll need to reach your dreams, with one stipulation: you can’t be a part of it. The want their own guy to sculpt the statue. And they tell you by E-MAIL. God, could you imagine? You picked the most random dream of all time and somebody STILL one-upped you. How could that feel? Well, ask Vigo County sculptor Bill Wolfe.

“It knocked me for a loop,” Wolfe said Wednesday. “I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ It was devastating after all the years working on this.”

C’mon Bill, you live in Vigo County, you should’ve stuck to painting Carpathians. Be sure to read the full article at TribStar.com, especially for the awful, gutwrenching e-mail.

“In closing, I want you to know that I appreciate you meeting with me and discussing this project. I appreciate you letting me borrow your replica statue to help promote the idea of Larry Legend Foundation. I also appreciate the fact that you know this project is long overdue, and at the end of the day ‘money talks,’ and we have now reached our goal of getting a statue for Larry on campus,” the email states.

All it needs is a “see ya, suckerrrrr” at the bottom. Thankfully Wolfe is already an accomplished sculptor with statues all around town, so he’s sure to bounce back. I hear he’s working on a statue of Magic Johnson right now, but can’t get the proper financial aids.

Some Indiana University students recently produced an anything-but-modest rap song to promote school spirit for the current NCAA basketball season, and I’ll give it an A for effort, but other than that… hooray, more white kids rapping. Call me a hater or whathaveyou, but I think we’ve about exhausted the college rap song genre. It’s just getting old, but college sports reggaeton… that’s the future!

Look, I’m not trying to come off as the crotchety old white man here, but if I hear one more college team remix of Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow”, I’m going to throw out my autographed Snow poster and start listening to country music. Seriously, did you hear Tom Hanks’ son’s version for Northwestern? It’s not fun anymore, if it ever was at all. And I’m not trying to pick on Indiana here – congrats, you have an awesome history – but my school has a rap song, too, so I’ve suffered enough.

Video after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

The basketball team at Indiana has finally found a way to win more games–apparently through bribing the officials. The Hoosiers “welcomed” Division II Ferris State on Monday night. And welcome they did; Ferris led by nine with two minutes to play in regulation, and that’s when the trouble started.

After IU tied it, Ferris State’s Kenny Brown found an open seam to the basket and it looked like he might score a layup for the win. But Oladipo elevated from behind and blocked the shot with 1.4 seconds remaining.

“I got a little stuck on the screen up top and he kind of crossed me over and then he had a wide open lane,” Oladipo said. “But that was just a hustle play. You can never quit on a play. And I saw that he was going to use his left hand. Mo Creek slowed him down a little bit and luckily I got there to make the block.”

But the scrappy Bulldogs weren’t through in regulation. On the inbounds play, Jerrell Sanders seemingly hit a 17-footer at the buzzer over Jeremiah Rivers, but an official review determined the shot had left his hand after time had expired. –Indy Star.

Indiana would win in OT. Of course they would. But did this “review” at the end of regulation involve, you know, visual imagery? Because here’s the screencap from It’s Always Sunny In Detriot and…yep, there’s 0.4 seconds left and that ball is out of Sanders’s hands. So why is the red light on the backboard on? I know Indiana doesn’t honor daylight savings time, but come on. More bad calls from Sunny D.

Myles Brand, the NCAA president who made headlines in 2000 for firing Bobby Knight while president of Indiana University, succumbed to pancreatic cancer today. He was 67.

Brand shepherded into the common parlance of the NCAA a system of academic accountability for teams called the Academic Progress Rate. He backed his belief in sports as an agent of broader social change by advocating for an NCAA policy against Native American mascots.

Yet his pragmatic nature allowed for exceptions and compromise in both cases. As he often reminded people, the NCAA president has a bully pulpit, not the power of a czar.via.

So the real Myles Brand legacy will be that of a guy that fired Bobby Knight and killed Chief Illiniwek, since tracking academics in Division I sports is almost pointless. And that damn Y instead of an I in his first name. But yeah, sad.

I know what you’re thinking, “Great, more news from the Hoosier State.” But Indiana University was finally handed its punishment after this whole Kelvin Sampson debacle. Nine months after Sampson was forced to resign as men’s head basketball coach, Indiana accepted a punishment of three years’ probation from the NCAA, which acknowledged leniency based on the fact that their program is pretty much in shambles right now. From The Sporting News, via The Sporting Blog, via The Amazing Sport-nicolor Dreamcoat.

“It’s bittersweet,” said current Indiana coach Tom Crean, with the team in Hawaii. “We didn’t want to lose postseason, scholarships or television. Thank God we didn’t lose any of those so we can continue to move the program without the what-ifs.”

It’s the first time since 1960 that the school has been found guilty of a major infraction in any sport.

The probation comes in addition to sanctions IU already has imposed.

Only two players from last season’s team remain. The others were kicked off, transferred, graduated or left early for the NBA. The team has just nine scholarship players instead of the 13 allowed after giving up scholarships because of the NCAA investigation and poor academic scores.

Sampson himself will face NCAA recruiting restrictions through 2013, in the event he’s hired by another school. And if that school needs an amateur gynocologist to serve their female student body, they can call me anytime after 10 pm. I keep funny business hours, you see.