West Virginia's Joe Alexander had a phenomenal game today, scoring a career-high 34 points and leading West Virginia to a 78-72 victory over UConn in the Big East tournament. Here's how ESPN's studio analysts discussed Alexander:
Analyst Tom Brennan said, "He's turning into Larry Bird right in front of us."
Doug Gottlieb replied, "When it's West Virginia, you don't say Larry Bird, you say Jerry West."
When Brennan pointed out that Alexander is closer in size to Bird than he is to West, Gottlieb said, "He's nothing like Bird," and then paused and said, "He's nothing like Jerry West, either."
So, according to Gottlieb, Alexander is nothing like either Larry Bird or Jerry West, and yet those are the two players the ESPN analysts just compared him to. Any guesses as to why?
Obviously, it's because Alexander, Bird and West are all white. It's a strange thing about sports announcing that broadcasters almost always compare athletes to other athletes of the same skin color or ethnic background. Even if Alexander is "nothing like" Bird or West, I have a feeling this isn't the last time he'll be compared to them.
Shelley Smith of ESPN.com is reporting that the University of Connecticut women's basketball team committed a recruiting violation by taking Maya Moore on a tour of ESPN.
The violation was brought to the NCAA's attention by UConn's arch rival, Tennessee, and Tennessee's conference, the SEC. Moore was heavily recruited by both schools and is now a star freshman at UConn.
ESPN acknowledges that it agreed to UConn's request to give Moore and her mother a tour. ESPN's headquarters in Bristol are located approximately 45 miles from UConn's campus. ESPN released a statement today saying, "To avoid future incidents, our tour policy will now prohibit high school athletes from receiving tours at the request of a college or university athletic official."
The tour was considered an impermissible benefit, although UConn says it did not receive any NCAA penalty for it. Tennessee had previously accused former UConn players of giving Moore car rides in violation of NCAA rules; the NCAA dismissed those accusations.
It's no secret that UConn coach Geno Auriemma and Tennessee coach Pat Summitt hate each other, and it's safe to say this won't do anything to change that. But it will add another layer of intrigue if UConn and Tennessee play each other in the NCAA Tournament.
As FanHouse's Charles Rich noted yesterday, Louisville head coach Rick Pitino changed suits at halftime of his team's game against Georgetown, and it worked: The Cardinals went from trailing 31-23 to winning 59-51. ESPN's Erin Andrews made the wardrobe change the focal point of her post-game interview:
"My suit was fine, I just spilled Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke all over it at halftime," Pitino said.
After the jump, ESPN makes even more of an issue out of the wardrobe change.
Long before we had to hear Bill Raftery talk about player's onions or that the team was playing man-to-man or that someone's puppies where moving as he hit a shot with a kiss ... we had "send it in Jerome!"
Pitt's Jerome Lane shattered a backboard on a dunk against Providence on January 25th, 1988 ... twenty years ago. The dunk got Raftery animated and he shouted the now famous "send it in Jerome". I was 12 when this happened and remembered ESPN's SportsCenter replaying it over and over and over again. I was amazed that someone could break a backboard that didn't have a nickname like 'Chocolate Thunder'.
By the way, Sean Miller is the one that passed the ball to Lane. Miller is now the head coach of Xavier.
To Raft, who will still see all over our college basketball games ... here's to you! To Jerome Lane, wherever you are, here's to you!
Last month the Big East website moved from being hosted by CSTV to JumpTV. This was part of its new deal with JumpTV to produce the Big East's new multiplatform broadband environment. The offerings include.
-- A branded broadband video channel (http://www.BIGEAST.tv), which will offer annual, monthly and seasonal championship packages along with game-of-the-week football contests -- An official photo store -- An official mobile store including mobile alerts -- Online auctions
Of course, the broadband offerings are actually quite limited on BigEast.tv. Oh, sure you can get field hockey, swimming and soccer, but is anyone really going to pay the $79.95 annual subscription fee for that and being able to watch the weekly conference propaganda show on a computer?
The thing people will want is the football and (especially) the basketball content. Well, that is a little trickier.
Dr. Daryl Gross, Syracuse University's Director of Athletics, describes the proposal as merely a "concept," but its ramifications transcend idle discourse.
Late Thursday afternoon The Daily Orange -- Syracuse's daily student-edited newspaper -- broke the story that a private development firm has approached the University with plans for a new football stadium. The information was procured through an anonymous source, yet Dr. Gross confirmed the proposal through a written statement to the newspaper:
"Recently a private developer approached the University and expressed interest in conducting a feasibility study related to an idea they had for a new privately-financed athletic stadium," Gross wrote in a statement to The D.O. "Private developers frequently approach the University with ideas and we indicated to this developer that they could conduct a feasibility study at their own cost.
"It is very premature to consider this a University project, as this is simply a concept that has been advanced by a developer. We expect that the developer will discuss the results of their feasibility study with us once it has been completed."
The consequences and questions surrounding this proposal are significant. Notably:
As a loyal Pitt alum, I keep waiting for the athletic department to finally give up the ghost on the "Panther Head" logo (along with the boring and bland navy and gold and just go back to the old colors, along with the script "PITT" but that's a different rant). The Panther Head logo introduced back in the mid-90s (on the left) was accurately described this way:
...the panther-head thing on the helmet looks like Beowulf's Grendel as drawn by the troubled comic book fan at the back of the class.
The only good news is that this thing has been relegated to a "secondary" logo in the last two years. The present, primary logo is a block-lettered "PITT." The bad news is that they are still trying with a new style of the Panther Head as shown on the right as the secondary logo.
As expected, the Pitt message boards are less than impressed with the new logo. Since I didn't like the old Panther Head that much, it's hard for me to get too worked up over the newer version of a secondary logo I would like to ignore. About the only good thing to write about it, is that it is less detailed in contrasting colors which made the older version look like an unidentifiable blob when shrunk too small or viewed from a distance. Then again, that might be the bug in the new design rather than the feature. UPDATE:The picture of the new logo came via Panther Rants blog. Apologies for the lack of credit.
While the Atlantic Coast Conference recently awarded its 12 schools an average of $10.85 million for the tax year ending June 30, 2006, the Big East awarded its eight full members an average of $5,842,599.
The Big East average has fallen for the last three years. For the July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2004, reporting period, when Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College were still members, the average was $6,794,029.
After the ACC's raid, six Big East schools (including BC, but not Tech nor Miami) received full football-basketball share averages of $6,445,968. ... Overall, the Big East's total revenue went from $74,800,951 in 2003-04 to $62,641,685 in '04-05 to $75,411,511 in '05-06. So over the tumultuous three-year period, the league's revenue increased - but only $610,560 in a healthy sports atmosphere.
Some of the fluctuation, though, had to do with television and radio rights fees earned by the league. In 2003-04, the Big East made $25,910,626 in fees. In '04-05, after the defections, it dropped to $15,349,543 before rebounding to $19,225,441 this past reporting period.
There was never any doubt that for the first few years after the revised Big East, that the football revenues from TV would be down. The first year after everything that happened was simply about trying to remain part of the BCS coalition.
It could be argued that only a few of the football schools took significant revenue hits in the first couple of years. Half the football schools were coming into a new conference.
The NCAA released its Academic Progress Reports (APR) for every school and the teams for each sport. A total of 6110 teams are included. You can view each school's individual report (they are in PDF). The APR is supposed to be a rolling 4-year average, but the NCAA isn't at that point. This is only the third year so there are adjustments and leeway given to some teams. The grace period is granted only if they are showing that they are closing on meeting the magic number of 925 by the time the 4th year is reached. (The APR records started being kept in the 2003-04 school year.)
If a team is at 900 or so, they won't be getting penalized immediately. The penalties can range from warning letters, practice restrictions, lack of access to postseason competition, restricted membership and loss of scholarships for the teams that don't meet performance standards. Already, teams across various collegiate sports have been penalized with scholarship losses.
The BCS schools for football and basketball, generally are in good shape. Only a few programs are facing scholarship reductions. Many are close or have been warned, but scholarship reductions are rather limited. Some of the notable teams penalized after this latest report:
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