Posted on December 5th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
If tight end Fred Davis and left tackle Trent Williams were suspended solely for marijuana use during the lockout — when, technically, they weren’t NFL employees — outrage would be an appropriate reaction. How dare the league try to impose discipline on individuals it locked them out, telling them “thanks but no thanks” when they showed up for work?
However, the NFL players union cut a deal with the league that made actions during the lockout fair game. That doesn’t make sense, and Davis and Williams can blame union leadership for agreeing.
But they can blame themselves for a lack of discipline, commitment and self-control — even though they were locked out.
Davis and Williams reportedly failed two drug tests since the lockout ended, putting them in line for four-game suspensions that effectively will end their seasons. Reports indicate that each player has failed at least three tests since entering the league, Davis in 2008 and Williams last year.
Knowing they had prior offenses on their record, they should’ve refrained. The lockout wasn’t going to last forever, and the Redskins would be counting on them. They never should’ve risked a suspension — justified or not — which costs them money in the short-term (four game checks) and probably in the long run (their next contracts).
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Posted on December 2nd, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Major League Baseball loses to pro football on so many fronts — TV ratings, broadcast revenue, merchandise sales, etc. — that it can’t afford to miss any chance to one-up the NFL.
Especially not the 6-foot-9 opportunity knocking at the door.
Former Los Angeles Lakers great Magic Johnson, who after retirement transformed himself from an All-Star point guard to an all-star businessman, makes no secret of his interest in sports ownership. And he means a major portion, not the 4.5 percent stake of the Lakers he sold last year.
Those proceeds, plus the gain from selling his 105 Starbucks franchises a day later, gave him reportedly more than $100 million to play with in his pursuit of a sports franchise. When he was the first speaker at a February news conference on the naming rights for a proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles, he made his NFL intentions clear.
But Johnson isn’t one to limit his options, and he has plenty. So with the Los Angeles Dodgers going through bankruptcy court, he met with six different groups of potential bidders before teaming up with Stan Kasten, a former NBA/MLB team president, and Mark Walter, CEO of a financial-services firm that has more than $125 billion in assets under management.
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Posted on December 2nd, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
After the football games have ended and the leftovers have been stored comes Black Friday, which is supposed to be followed by another uber-shopping spree, Cyber Monday.
But the sports calendar got stuck in color-coded mode this year, resulting in a twist that dampened the holiday spirit in households across the country: Black Monday.
In the NHL, the Washington Capitals fired coach Bruce Boudreau while the Carolina Hurricanes fired coach Paul Maurice. That was nothing compared the clearance sale in college football, as Rick Neuheisel (UCLA), Dennis Erickson (Arizona State) and Ron Zook (Illinois) were discarded Monday.
Kansas got an early start by firing Turner Gill on Sunday. Washington State and the Jacksonville Jaguars straggled in late, jettisoning Paul Wulff and Jack Del Rio, respectively, on Tuesday. The Anaheim Ducks sensed the opportunity for an upgrade Wednesday and exchanged Randy Carlyle for the just-released Boudreau 2.0.
(For those whose Christmas wish list included a new football coach at Maryland, no. That would be too expensive given the athletic department’s current economic state and it would be too tacky, just one season after hiring the current coach. Sorry that the disappointment grew Wednesday when Washington State unwrapped a shiny new Mike Leach, exactly what the Terps needed as Ralph Friedgen’s replacement.)
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Posted on December 1st, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
In a perfect world, Justin Combs and his father, P. Diddy, would thank UCLA for offering a football scholarship and then instruct the school to use it on another player. Or Justin would accept the scholarship and Diddy would then make a humongous donation that covered the cost and then some.
Either way, the Combses are not obligated to turn down the offer just because they’re filthy rich.
Scholarships come in many different forms, including aid based on a student’s financial resources (i.e., parents’ income). But other scholarships are based on a student’s performance, be it in academics, the arts or athletics. Others still are based on any number of factors, from gender to ethnicity to religion and more.
In those latter instances, Tina Turner might ask: “What’s need got to do with it?”
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Posted on November 30th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
A patron behind me said aloud what most folks in the place surely were thinking — self included — as Rex Grossman leaned back and went long: “Why is he doing that?”
Yes, it was third-and-19 from midfield, but still. An underneath route with a little yardage after the catch was safer than going deep. We feared that “Rex Havoc” had another pick in him Sunday, which would’ve been his third, and we couldn’t escape visions of a defensive back cradling that bomb whenever it came down.
Surprise, surprise. For the second consecutive week Grossman was on target during a gotta-have-it drive in the fourth quarter.
The 50-yard touchdown to Anthony Armstrong with 6:18 left against Seattle wasn’t as dramatic as the 4-yard fade to Donte Stallworth with 14 seconds left against Dallas. But the latter merely forced overtime in what became the sixth consecutive loss; Armstrong’s emergence from witness protection produced the go-ahead score in the streak-snapping victory.
With it came shouts of joy and sighs of relief. Both had been scarce since Oct. 2, when the Redskins beat St. Louis and improved to 3-1, lamenting a late-game collapse at Dallas that kept them from a perfect record.
Going 1-6 in your past seven games is nothing to brag about. But the Seattle game was one of two left — Minnesota is the other — that looked fairly winnable. The Redskins easily could have flown across the country and fallen flat coming off the emotional overtime defeat a week earlier against the Cowboys.
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Posted on November 29th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Syracuse University fired assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine on Sunday, ending his 35-year run at the school.
But that’s the least of his problems.
Fine was placed on administrative leave two weeks ago after ESPN reported allegations that he sexually abused a pair of former ball boys. Coach Jim Boheim and former Syracuse players such as Rony Seikaly rushed to Fine’s defense, suggesting that accusers Bobby Davis and Mark Long — now adults — were lying in hopes of a financial reward.
Fine issued a statement, claiming that the charges are “patently false in every aspect.”
Apparently not. Boheim, Seikaly and everyone else who denigrated the accusers need to apologize. Because Fine’s wife, Laurie Fine, essentially confessed her husband’s acts in a secretly taped phone call nine years ago.
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Posted on November 25th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
It appears that Ndamukong Suh’s meeting last month with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell didn’t do any good.
Suh – whose full name is pronounced “En-dom-ah-ken Soo”– initiated the sitdown in response to his growing reputation as a dirty player. The second-year defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions wanted league officials to give him a better idea of what he’s doing wrong, having been fined three times for rough hits on quarterbacks since last season.
At the time, he had drawn three personal foul penalties in eight games this year. Now, after the Lions’ annual Thanksgiving Day game, the tally is four personal fouls through 11 games.
Perhaps “stomping on an opponent” was never mentioned in discussions. They can bring it up next time (likely very soon), because that’s what Suh did in Detroit’s 27-14 loss against Green Bay.
Suh was penalized and ejected after the altercation, in which replays show him repeatedly pushing Green Bay lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith’s head to the ground and then kicking him.
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Posted on November 25th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
After the USA won a gold medal last month in women’s team fencing at the Pan American games, there was little chance of mistaking which one on the podium was Ibtihaj Muhammad.
She was the one on the left, next to the two blondes.
Muhammad is accustomed to sticking out in a sport that’s dominated largely in the United States by Caucasian athletes. From her brown skin to her traditional Muslim headscarf to her uniform with “Muhammad” across the back, the 25-year-old New Jersey native is impossible to miss.
And if she’s good enough, she’ll be even more noticeable next year in London at the Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Committee doesn’t track athletes according to religion, but fencing officials believe Muhammad would be the first practicing Muslim woman to represent the U.S.
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Posted on November 24th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
The NBA lockout is hurting a lot of “little people” right now, from ushers and vendors to bartenders and waiters to bellhops and drivers.
But if the labor dispute continues much longer, some tall people might be hurting, too.
It could happen next week when the “Homecoming Tour” tips off in Akron, Ohio. Or during the “Obama Classic” on Dec. 12. Or another of the myriad charity/exhibition/pickup games NBA players have staged since summer.
I’m concerned about some participants in the fundraiser for President Obama’s re-election campaign. Among the confirmed players are Magic Johnson, Doc Rivers, Patrick Ewing and Dikembe Mutombo.
Maybe they’ve forgotten, but the NBA used to stage an old-timers game during All-Star weekend. It’s no longer part of the festivities (replaced by the Rookie Challenge) and for good reason: Retired All-Stars David Thompson and Norm Nixon suffered major injuries during the 1992 Legends Classic, a ruptured patella tendon and a ruptured quadricep tendon, respectively.
Thompson at 37 and Nixon at 36 were the youngest players in the game.
The aforementioned geriatrics will be the oldest players in Obama’s fundraiser.
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Posted on November 24th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Tom Williams must be a pretty smart guy, having climbed the ranks to become Yale’s first black football coach and the Ivy League’s second. According to the school’s website, he graduated from Stanford with honors and later earned a master’s degree there.
But the bio also says he was a “Rhodes Scholar candidate,” and that line is now under review.
The claim, from Williams’ résumé, isn’t new. But it became newsworthy last week when Yale quarterback Patrick Witt chose to play in “the Game” — Harvard versus Yale — instead of flying to Atlanta for his Rhodes finalist’s interview. Numerous news stories referred to Williams as a former Rhodes finalist who skipped his interview to attend a minicamp with the San Francisco 49ers.
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