Beyond The Broken Spectrum

It has been a big year in football, with some major shakeups going down this season. The Cowboys missed the playoffs and sent Pacman Jones walking with Owens possibly not too far behind. Miami went from being last to going to the playoffs with a quarterback that was released from the jets to make room for Brett Favre, who did not make the playoffs. The Lions managed to go win less this season and that number one draft pick is doomed to a failure of a team next year, gotta feel sorry him. Detroit sent their most talented receiver Williams to Dallas, where he didn’t perform and has been acting out ever since.

The Falcons rebounded this year with a new quarterback and have since left the Vick era. He’s due out sometime next summer, just in time for training camp. I’m thinking he will be picked up by some team in need of a quarterback, regardless of his prior actions. Tom Brady went down for the season in the first play of the first official game, karma I guess.

The Packers had a decent season for a rookie quarterback, I expect them to do much better next season. I honestly thought the Titans were going to the Super Bowl this year, they seemed unstoppable. The colts seem as if they may have fallen on hard times, next season will tell all about the future of this team without Dungy. The eagles looked great throughout the season and McNabb had a fire lit under his ass when he was benched during a game for poor performance. They completely annihilated Dallas there at the end, they deserved the win and I was making them a possible Super Bowl pick at the time.

The Cardinals have been playing good and hard all season long though, and it showed at the end. I’m picking the cards over the steelers and not necessarily because I know they are the better team, but more because I feel they deserve it and will earn it in a hard fought battle tonight. The cardinals have never been to the super bowl before, this will be their first trip, and generally first trips are not pleasant, but they’ve got some weapons in their passing game and have a good ground game as well. I’d like to look at one person here though, Kurt Warner. Did you know this is his second time starting for the cardinals?

Matt Leinart in all his glory came from USC and was hyped up from winning college championships. They threw him into the ring to compete the moment he stepped foot into the door of the cardinal’s locker room. Kurt Warner was the starting quarterback at the time, but was thrown to the back burner now that the team had acquired a young talented quarterback whom they thought could take them the distance. During his time as starter, he started modestly and slowly went downhill. I don’t know what it was, but Leinart just didn’t perform. I was delighted to see Warner back in the fray though.

After being benched for a new quarterback, Kurt Warner has since reclaimed his starting position and has taken the Cardinals to their first Super Bowl. You can’t do much better then that except to go out and win the big one and complete the season, and I think that’s just what he’ll do. Don’t get me wrong, the Steelers are good and have a great chance of winning tonight, but I’m not so sure Kurt will go down so easily, if at all.

Go Cardinals!

As reported by Rivals.com

Robert Marve found out this week he was never anything more than a mercenary, just a pair of swift legs with a strong arm brought to the University of Miami to win games. It’s how it is in most college football programs.

He once thought otherwise. It’s easy to get confused.

College football players are called “student athletes” after all. The NCAA spends tens of millions on a public relations campaign that stresses the games are a tool for kind-hearted coaches to take “kids” and mold them into “men” who then go “pro in something other than sports.”

Marve no doubt was told that by joining the Miami “family” he’d have numerous “father figures” on campus. He enrolled with high hopes.

It didn’t work out. After two years, one season and 11 starts he wanted to transfer. Miami coach Randy Shannon said he could but only before taking what is one of the NCAA’s most ethically empty traditions and putting it on steroids.

Schools commonly limit where a player can transfer, often to other schools within its league.

Shannon took it to the extreme. According to Marve, he was prohibited from transferring to 27 schools.

That included all 11 of the other teams in the ACC, all 12 in the SEC and four others in the state of Florida. Even lower-level programs such as Florida International apparently now terrify the Hurricanes.

Friday evening, after this column was originally posted, Miami softened its stance slightly and will now allow Marve to transfer on scholarship to any SEC school other than Florida, LSU and Tennessee. Miami alleges those schools were tampering with the player. The ACC and in-state ban stands though.

Marve hails from Tampa. His father Eugene has prostate cancer and while it’s not the stated reason for the transfer, Marve understandably wants to stay in the Southeast, if not in state.

This is always a shameful practice. Marve is just one of many players from many programs dealing with it. No university should ever, under any circumstance, be allowed to prohibit a player’s future due to competitive fears. Even if Miami’s tampering allegation is true – Marve has denied it to the Associated Press – the Hurricanes should take it up with the other schools, not the player. It has nothing to do with the other ACC or in-state schools, yet those bans remain.

The player should be allowed to transfer at full scholarship in conference, in state or across the street if they want.

Anything less isn’t just un-American, it’s an admission that winning is everything. There is no decent argument for this except fear of losing. This isn’t a non-compete clause for business execs, these are college students.

It’s wrong not just for the coach and athletic director who draw it up (in this case Shannon and Kirby Hocutt), but the conference commissioner (John Swofford) and NCAA president (Myles Brand) who allow it.

It speaks to the widespread lack of courage and leadership in college athletics. Anyone with any of it would take one look at the practice and end it. Naturally no one says a word.

You can only expect so much out of a football coach, these guys are trained to be ruthless. They’re so gone they don’t even recognize the problem. Worse is that Brand and Swofford, the adults that should know better, aren’t tough enough to explain it to them.

For the NCAA it’s completely dishonest. The organization and its individual programs enjoy tax-free status and thus beat the federal government out of billions annually. This is just amateur sports, they argue, nothing more than an extracurricular activity.

You never see a school prohibit someone on a theatre scholarship from transferring though.

Shannon deserves special scorn and extra analysis by potential Hurricane recruits because of the outrageous breadth of the provisions. Not that you can be a little bit pregnant, but banning Marve from so many schools takes this practice to a new level of Machiavellian behavior.

More than personally punishing Marve, what Shannon is really trying to do is intimidate his other players – dare to leave and I’ll bury you.

The reason Marve, or any player from any school, wants to transfer doesn’t matter. It never should.

It doesn’t matter who’s right or who’s wrong. It doesn’t matter if Marve had off-field issues or was a model citizen. It doesn’t matter if Marve is just being impulsive or if Shannon drove him out. It doesn’t matter if this is about football, school or offensive coordinators. It doesn’t matter if Marve woke up one day and decided he never wanted to see a palm tree again.

If he wants to transfer he should be able to transfer. Anywhere he wants, no questions asked. Football programs take recruits based on frivolous things such as favorite colors. They can’t reasonably expect deeper if they want to go. Besides, Marve already has to sit out one season as punishment.

Marve’s high school coach says Miami won’t get any more players from his powerhouse program. Eugene Marve says every recruit should take a long look at what Shannon is really about.

And they should. Clearly at Miami you’re a piece of meat. If you’re going to go there you better hope and pray it works out. If not, they might try to bully you off to the other end of the country.

Recruits should also ask every other school pursuing them what would happen under similar circumstances, however. If told they can leave at will, they should get it in writing. While Miami’s case is extreme, there are plenty of rival coaches watching to see if such broad limitations are the wave of the future. A tradition that was wrong from day one might wind up worse than ever.

These “teacher-coaches” are a lot alike.

So are athletic directors, conference commissioners and NCAA executives. They’re too craven to do the right thing, if they’re even still capable of recognizing it.

I have always said that the BCS is horrible and should be done away with, and a playoff system should be instituted based on wins just like the NFL. With this new system, a new schedule format should be made to ensure balanced schedules for everyone.

The proof here, is that all season long, Kansas never made it to #1 while being undefeated, which was up until last week. Hawaii hasn’t made it past #12 while being undefeated and starting ranked at #24, but two unranked teams have risen all the way to the #2 spot. Right now if the BCS were to be the best system, Hawaii would be ranked #1 and Kansas #2, and provided that they both win this coming week, they should be playing one another for the championship. However, neither team has a chance at even getting to the championship game.

Hopefully after this season, some major revamping will be done to the system to account for the wrongs committed against these two teams. I doubt that will happen though, because when the president of the BCS was asked for his comment on the situation, all he would say is that it was all very surprising. So I guess we shouldn’t get our hopes up, he doesn’t seemed too concerned about the situation.

In an e-mail, a staffer who works for committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., noted an “unusual need for whomever attending the Nascar event at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina to be vaccinated against hepatitis A and B,” as well as “the more normal things _ tetanus, diphtheria, and of course, seasonal influenza.”

This little comment from a democrat has caused an uproar with nascar fans, and I don’t blame them in the least bit. The elitists in Washington these days seem to only be good at accomplishing nothing of overly importance and are devoting their time to making sure that their aides don’t contract any diseases from the god-awful middle class, because we all know that a bunch of dumb rednecks don’t know anything about hygiene.

Bennie Thompson is a racist and elitist and should be removed from office for making such comments. I would hope that during his re-election that he is voted a resounding no.

This is just another example of Liberal Elitist “Progressives” looking down on the rest of us, like the gods looking down from Olympus on the rest of us mere mortals. They know how to run our own lives better than we do, how to spend our own money better than we know how to spend it ourselves, and they certainly do know how to look down their noses at the rest us. Typical Washington insiders – completely out of touch with reality.

Taken directly from the Fox News website http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297119,00.html

A rookie on the Yankee’s team was having an autograph session and a 10 year old kid wearing a Red Sox jersey came up to him and asked for an autograph. Well he got a little more then he bargained for, and I personally thought it was hilarious. Click on the link and read the article and look at the picture. While I’m sure most Red Sox fans are going to agree with the boy’s mother, most of you will be laughing and saying it was all in good fun.

People take things way too seriously these days.