Posted on November 13th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
The grunt came from the back as a question was posed after Georgetown’s season-opening victory against Savannah State. Big John Thompson took umbrage at a reporter’s choice of words to describe Monday’s game, the last contest before Georgetown heads to Hawaii for the Maui Invitational.
“Tune-up?” former coach Thompson harrumphed, as the Hoyas’ current coach, John Thompson III, smirked in agreement. Guard Jason Clark was standing on the podium, and he gently corrected the reporter: “We have another game.”
That’s the proper approach, and it’s obviously been passed down with care, from Thompson the Elder to JT3 to the Hoyas’ senior captain. Still, unless UNC Greensboro unexpectedly offers more resistance than Savannah State provided in an 83-54 rout, Monday’s game indeed will be tantamount to a workout. Kansas next week will give us a better indication of where the young Hoyas stand.
Although first impressions aren’t always reliable for making long-term prognoses, there were several encouraging signs.
The most unexpected was senior center Henry Sims, who scored a career-high 19 points and tied career-highs with five assists and three blocks. That outburst caught Tigers coach Horace Broadnax off-guard, as Sims entered the season averaging 2.4 points and wasn’t part of Savannah State’s defensive game plan.
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Posted on November 12th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
North Carolina coach Roy Williams, Kentucky coach John Calipari and Ohio State coach Thad Matta owe a debt a gratitude to the NBA. Because without the ongoing labor dispute, the coaches likely would have less star power on their teams, currently ranked first, second and third, respectively.
Carolina sophomore Harrison Barnes was projected to be a top three pick, had he entered the draft last summer. Teammates John Henson, a junior, and Tyler Zeller, a senior, would have been first-round selections. The same is true for Kentucky sophomore Terrence Jones and Ohio State sophomore Jared Sullinger.
Barnes, Jones and Sullinger joined UConn’s Jeremy Lamb on the Associated Press preseason All-America team, marking the first time that four sophomores were selected. They’re among other prime-time players who decided that another season on campus was better than gambling on the NBA’s uncertainy.
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Posted on November 10th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
We’ll never forget that line last March, as the Ohio State football program was unraveling, when president E. Gordon Gee was asked about possibly firing Jim Tressel. “Are you kidding?” he said. “I’m just hopeful that the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”
Tressel was getting reverential treatment after a mere 10 years at Ohio State. But he would’ve been a peon at Penn State compared to the great and mighty Joe Paterno, who became the Nittany Lions’ coach when Lyndon B. Johnson was in the White House. JoePa acquired so much sovereignty over the ensuing four decades, he was nearly impossible to get rid of until the current child-abuse scandal swept him out.
Hero worship of virtually mythic coaches is a valid criticism of big-time college sports. It’s an example of the skewed priorities that help create the problems plaguing schools and athletic departments.
The reaction from some Paterno supporters and Penn State sycophants was disturbing, whether you call it a riot or unrest. Protesters flipped over a news van, tore down lampposts and threw rocks and cans, prompting police to respond with riot gear and tear gas.
Students at Indiana University were just as angry in 2000, but not quite as violent, when Bobby Knight was (finally) fired for boorish behavior during a 29-year run. Protesters knocked over light poles and burned effigies, including one of president Myles Brand near his on-campus home.
This isn’t to suggest that longtime, larger-than-life coaches are destined to go down in scandal-laced flames like Woody Hayes (23 years at Ohio State) or Lefty Driesell (17 years at Maryland). Dean Smith was known for running a clean program during his 36 years as men’s basketball coach at North Carolina and then left on his own accord. Frank Beamer has spent 25 seasons at the helm of Virginia Tech’s football program with nary a hint of trouble.
Like Beamer, Paterno also had steered clear of controversy, which is fairly remarkable for national powerhouse programs. But if the right combination of wrong circumstances comes up, no coach is bigger than his program or school.
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Posted on November 10th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
In the end, Joe Paterno lost his perspective and ignored the big picture.
He thought about himself when he should have thought about the school he’d worked for since 1950. About the hundreds of thousands of Penn State students — past, present and future. About the countless child-abuse victims and the message he could send them.
But Paterno didn’t do the right thing Wednesday as the scandal consumed Penn State and his future was debated in the media. Instead the 84-year-old Paterno stubbornly tried to ride out the storm and dictate the terms of his departure.
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Posted on November 9th, 2011
The President and the Coach
By DERON SNYDER
If Penn State coach Joe Paterno and Penn State president Graham Spanier are employed as you begin reading this column, they shouldn’t be by the time you’re finished. For anyone who disagrees, I suggest some additional reading material — the 23-page indictment against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.
Finding the document isn’t hard, though getting through it without your skin crawling and your blood boiling is impossible. Eight victims are listed, and undoubtedly there are more. A potential ninth victim, a man now in his 20s, came forward over the weekend.
Not that we need further reports to conclude that Sandusky is a monster who was enabled by Paterno, Spanier and two former school officials who have been charged with perjury and failure to report suspected sexual abuse.
Victim 2 and Victim 8 are enough to seal the deal.
They should be the impetus for a new era at Penn State, starting with a new football coach and school president. The current office-holders should have resigned by now, on principle alone if common decency wasn’t enough.
From Page 21, detailing alleged events involving Victim 8: “In the fall of 2000, a janitor named James “Jim” Calhoun observed Sandusky in the showers of the Lasch Building with a young boy pinned up against the wall, performing oral sex on the boy. He immediately made known to other janitorial staff what he had witnessed.”
From Page 6, detailing alleged events from March 1, 2002: “As the graduate assistant put the sneakers in his locker, he looked into the shower. He was a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky.”
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Posted on November 9th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
The disgust generated by Penn State’s swirling child-abuse scandal rose another level Tuesday night when Joe Paterno — smiling and laughing — emerged from his house to address a raucous crowd that was chanting his name.
“We want Joe! We want Joe! We want Joe!”
How about wanting justice for the alleged victims of Paterno’s longtime assistant, Jerry Sandusky? How about wanting Paterno to explain why he never followed up on a 2002 report that Sandusky raped a 10-year-old boy in the football team’s showers? How about wanting the Board of Trustees to hold Paterno and school President Graham Spanier accountable for their failure to act and protect future victims?
If that crowd chooses to believe that Paterno did no wrong, swell. If it believes that Spanier and other school officials acted appropriately, fine. If it believes that Sandusky is innocent until proven guilty, OK.
But a grand jury indictment lists eight victims who testified about being abused. A potential ninth victim came forward over the weekend, and there’s a report that the number of victims has swelled to almost 20.
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Posted on November 4th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
There’s only one fight that every boxing fan wants to see, and it’s not Floyd Mayweather Jr. against fill-in-the-blank. It’s Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao, a bout that would pit the world’s two top pound-for-pound boxers.
Unfortunately, the Mayweather camp’s recent announcement of a date for his next fight merely intimated that Pacquiao would be the opponent. “We’re looking to make the biggest fight possible, and everyone knows what that fight is: the little fella,” Mayweather adviser Leonard Ellerbe told ESPN.com.
Yes, everyone knows what that fight is. But not everyone believes that Mayweather really wants to make that fight. A few days before the announcement, Pacquiao promoter Bob Arum said that the fight will never happen because Mayweather knows he’d be knocked out. Arum made the comment during media day for Pacquiao’s Nov. 12 bout against Juan Manuel Marquez.
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Posted on November 4th, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Bobby Mitchell paused and stared ahead for several seconds. Moderator Maury Povich had just posed a loaded question to the NFL Hall of Famer who integrated the Washington Redskins in 1962 and later served as the team’s assistant general manager for 20 years.
How come he never landed a top spot?
Several more seconds passed as Mitchell wrestled with his thoughts before finally giving an answer. “I never accepted the premise that I didn’t get the GM job because I’m black,” he said Wednesday night during the sixth annual Shirley Povich Symposium at the University of Maryland.
“From the start, I was handling all five departments in the front office,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know if anyone has ever done that. But this is a business. You have to be liked and you have to be wanted.”
Then he broke the tension with some levity: “I had the greatest job of anyone in football, because GMs get fired!”
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Posted on November 2nd, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
After he was selected with the No. 2 pick in the 2010 NFL draft, Ndamukong Suh didn’t waste time making his mark. Suh — whose full name is pronounced “En-dom-ah-ken Soo” — won multiple Rookie of the Year awards and All-Pro honors and was selected to play in the Pro Bowl.
But he has also gained a reputation for being a “dirty player,” although opinions vary on the label’s accuracy in his case. The issue has grown so fuzzy that Sports Illustrated this year changed the name of its annual poll on the “NFL’s Dirtiest Players” to the “NFL’s Meanest Players,” and Suh came in third. He has been fined three times for rough hits on quarterbacks since last season, and he has been drawn three personal foul penalties in eight games this year.
Suh finally had enough after the Atlanta Falcons accused him of taunting an injured player and the NFL billed Detroit’s next game as “Good vs. Evil,” featuring a picture of Denver’s Tim Tebow and Suh.
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Posted on November 2nd, 2011
By DERON SNYDER
Once again, it’s time to check off some items on my “TIDU List” – Things I Don’t Understand:
• Why the heat on Mike Shanahan has risen since Sunday.
Folks are aghast at the Redskins’ three-game losing streak and butt-ugly shutout against Buffalo. The 3-1 start is a distant memory, but Shanahan has instilled a professional atmosphere and upgraded the roster (though not enough). Coaches on five-year deals deserve an evaluation period longer than 23 games.
But since bad personnel decisions were his undoing in Denver, maybe someone else should handle those duties.
• How Kyle Shanahan can reclaim his label of ‘budding guru.’
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