So this was pretty inevitable. After all, there’s nothing more petty and absurd than the jealousies of in-state college athletics. With Florida Gulf Coast University and Dunk City stealing all of the thunder of the state’s second and third tier basketball programs by becoming the first ever 15 seed to advance to the Sweet 16 at the NCAA Tournament, schools like Florida International University have to work a lot harder to get our attention, so naturally the first step was, “HEY EVERYONE! LOOK AT OUR NEW COURT!”
As you can see above, FIU wants to remind everyone that the Golden Panthers play in Miami. That’s where the real beaches are, not at stupid FGCU, where the students pretend that a giant lake is their beach. Just how beachy is Miami? The Panthers have a beach on their new basketball court. But it doesn’t stop there, bottle poppers. No sir, FIU wants to give you the full Miami red carpet, velvet rope experience, so they’re adding some very special courtside seats.
Ware showed up on ‘Late Show With David Letterman’ to share the Top Ten Things Going Through Kevin Ware’s Mind at this Moment, and as you can see, yes, “ouch” was one of them. If you want to know what was ACTUALLY going through his head at that moment, type AAAAAHHHHHH and copy paste it 1,000 times. Note: this is also what was going through MY head at that moment.
You know how LeBron James is always playing that worn out routine of “Maybe I should be in the Slam Dunk Contest this year…” and us basketball fans are like, “Please, oh, please LeBron, would ya do that, King? Would ya?” and he’s like, “Wellllllllllllll maybe if someone paid me a million dollars…” and then you and I pull out our pockets and fight over who gets to eat this packet of ketchup? Well, we don’t need LeBron anymore, because we’ve got –
Doug Anderson.
Who?
WHO?
WHO???
WHAT???
Your State Farm College Slam Dunk Champion is what. The University of Detroit senior forward shocked and AWWWWWWW YEAH’d his way on to some scout lists with one ridiculously sick reverse 360 dunk last night in Atlanta.
With the unexpected rise of the Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles in this year’s NCAA Tournament, it wasn’t much of a surprise that bigger schools with more prominent men’s basketball programs would come sniffing around coach Andy Enfield. After all, that’s the nature of the sports beast. If you’re a little dog like FGCU, no measure of momentary success and national prominence is going to keep you in the conversation when a much bigger, wealthier dog like the University of Southern California comes calling, with its gorgeous campus and national spotlight. Oh yeah, and its giant bags of money.
“USC is one of the best basketball jobs in the country,” Enfield said. “I’ve been familiar with USC for many years. I’ve been doing this a long time. When I met (USC athletic director) Pat Haden, his vision was the same as mine.
Yeah, I’m sure that stings a little, and some people feel bad for FGCU. To them I say, “Don’t.” This is sports, sports are a business and business is business. After guys like Shaka Smart and Brad Stevens, Enfield was going to be a pretty sexy name to bigger programs looking to turn things around. So don’t be upset with Enfield for being a traitor or something over-the-top like that. Wish him well and hope that a new guy comes in and continues what he started this year.
What FGCU fans can be upset about, and the subject of this week’s BEEF THURSDAYS installment, is that USC straight up tried to steal the Eagles’ Dunk City moniker. As you can see above, USC helped itself to Dunk City as recently as yesterday. Fortunately, the Trojans since doubled back and removed it. But still, that’s not cool, Trojans. Not cool at all.
If you frequent FilmDrunk (and you do, obviously), you’re familiar with the outstanding hype and mildly-enjoyable execution of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, the story of what happens when you ask James Franco and a bunch of girls from the Disney Channel to remake Kids without telling them what Kids is about. It gave us months of gratuitous Selena Gomez crotch shots, discussions about MTV Riff Raff and totally reasonable character posters.
Finally, as if given to me by the Lord himself, there is a sports-themed Spring Breakers parody.
Here’s Final Fourers, the gritty reimagining that replaces Spring Break with the NCAA Tournament, replaces beautiful Disney teens with comedians, and replaces James Franco with … well, I’m pretty sure that’s still James Franco. The highly anticipated trailer is after the jump. I can’t wait until the red band version, where they can show Kevin Ware’s leg being broken.
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.
