NCAA Football Ncaa Basketball Campus

It didn't get a lot of notice, but the NCAA took over the National Letter of Intent (NLI) program a couple days ago. Prior to that, the NLI was administered by the Collegiate Commissioners Association and the Southeastern Conference. Now the program will be handled by the NCAA Eligibility Center, and they will answer questions and investigate any issues regarding a NLI.

Never heard of the Eligibility Center? That's because it's fairly new.

The Center will have responsibility for initial eligibility and amateurism functions currently performed at the Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse managed by the ACT.

The NCAA Clearinghouse is not going away (for now), but it seems it won't have quite the same immediate impact on determining initial eligibility. There is some speculation that the NCAA control could lead to an early signing period in football, as there is in basketball and other sports. I'm not really sure how NCAA control would lead to that.

This seems mainly to be about the NCAA assuming more direct control over the recruiting process. Or at least the backroom paperwork.

The NCAA has consolidated both the formal commitment by the student-athlete to the school and the determination of eligibility under one NCAA operated and controlled division. There are no announced changes, and procedures for submitting the NLI by the schools appears unchanged for now.

Oklahoma State linebacker Alex Odiari Odiari was cited for being in a bar underage, possessing a fake ID and most disturbing violating a protective order obtained by his ex-girlfriend.

Odiari's ex-girlfriend obtained an emergency protection order on July 5 to protect her from Odiari after she claimed Odiari had shown violent tendencies during a previous "dating relationship."

To obtain the EPO, the woman claimed Odiari in the past had thrown her against a wall and repeatedly grabbed and shoved her.

The woman also stated during the relationship he made several threats and said he would kill her and the next guy she dated if they broke up.

Odiari showed up at the same bar she was and appeared to have initiated some contact with her while there. That led to a call to the police.

This is part of a bad summer for Oklahoma State athletics,alcohol, and local bars. This is, though, the first football player to get in trouble. Perhaps Odiari thought he was part of the basketball team:

• Senior Guard, and co-Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, Marcus Dove charged with a DUI, reportedly blows a 0.23 on the breathalyzer when pulled over and suspended indefinitely on July 17.
• Guard Obi Muonelo arrested for underage drinking in a local bar on June 23.
• Yet another guard, Terrel Harris was arrested for having a fake ID while trying to enter a bar in April.

It's not like things don't get dull enough for players in the offseason stuck just taking summer classes in Stillwater. Now they have to do it sober.

The National Athletic Trainers Association recently released a report discussing sickle cell issues. Although they only "suggest but don't recommend" screening, they apparently are looking for increased awareness to sickle cell related issues as several young athletes have died from the condition in recent years.

The sickle cell gene is inherited. NATA says it is most common in people (including one in 12 African-Americans) originating from malarial regions and that "over the millennia, carrying one sickle cell gene fended off death from malaria."

Sickle cell trait differs from the disease sickle cell anemia, in which two sickle cell genes are present.

"It's typically a benign condition ... outside of an intense, sustained physical activity," said Scott Anderson, head athletic trainer at the University of Oklahoma and co-chair of NATA's sickle cell task force.

I think college football and basketball counts as a sustained physical activity. The good news is that according to the AP story, 64% of colleges responded to a survey saying they screen for sickle cell traits. Neither the NCAA or NATA appear to feel alarmed about the issue, although voluntary universal screening by member institutions would be a wise move assuming the costs aren't prohibitive.

I'm not much for the NCAA mandating things to schools and am not urging their energies here. However, this seems like a common-sense preventative health issue to make athletes aware that they may have a condition that could cause harm under physical strain. It would behoove schools to at least be aware of this and consider screening if they haven't already.

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.

Whatever is actually happening in the Toledo point shaving scandal is unclear with charges dropped (for now). It has renewed interest in point shaving and the college games.

Some Las Vegas sports gambling experts are suspicious of the Toledo football team's performance in the '05 season. Lopsided betting to one side or the other of a line changes the point spread - and raises questions in the gambling community.

During that season, the lines moved by two points or more on seven games, says RJ Bell, president of Pregame.com. Each time, the bettors driving the changes won. "The odds of that happening randomly are 128-1 ... which tells me these guys knew something."

The "betting patterns" on Toledo during the 2005 season became so suspicious that Nevada's State Gaming Control Board investigated two games, chief enforcement officer Jerry Markling says. After concluding there were no violations by state casinos, the board closed its investigation in December 2005.

As I wrote before, the suspicions were noticed by legal sportsbooks. They have important interests in stopping any point shaving. They take the financial hit if the money gets too lopsided.

College sports are logically the only reliable target for any sports fix. The money made in professional sports by the athletes (who are in a position to impact the game) is just too huge to be worth the risk of being paid to shave points or throw a game. College "amateurs," though, are more likely to have a price since they don't get paid, or can be put in a compromising situation with greater ease. (Even if collegiate sports paid some stipend, the odds are it wouldn't be enough.)

This is what inevitably leads to the argument of "banning" gambling on college sports. The dupe to suggest that in this article is Justin Wolfers, assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. The idea is stupid, because it would only ban legal gambling on college sports in the country. Forgetting that most of the sports gambling in the US is illegal bookmaking. It also wouldn't shut down all the off-shore or out of the country sports books. The gambler who is (allegedly) involved in the Toledo point shaving scandal was placing the bets in Canada.

Point shaving is going to rear its ugly head in college athletics periodically, simply because there are always people who will try to cheat a system. And there are always those who have a price.

Previously at Fanhouse:
This is Why Legal Gambling Helps
Point Shaving at Toledo

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:

Several memorials have been made around campus so I decided that today I would visit some of them and do some personal mourning. My dad flew in around midnight yesterday and stayed with me all day today so I thought it'd be best if we went by ourselves. We first went to the VT logo staked against a tree on the drillfield, shown on the right here.

I walked right up to it at first, but it was like jumping straight into hot water. Realizing I was going to have to ease myself in I stepped back 10 feet or so to look at the site as a whole. Many were gathered around either signing the multiple pieces dedicated to those lost or silently paying respects. Eventually I approached a second time and began reading what people had written. Some of the most heart-wrenching words I have ever read were hitting me by the minute. Most were students and families briefly reminiscing over favorite moments together, inside jokes, and their favorite activities.

NASCAR has received permission from Virginia Tech University to display the school's logo on race cars for the next three weeks, in a tribute to the victims of this week's shootings at the Blacksburg, Va. campus.

Chairman Brian France:

"Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims, their family members, their friends – and the entire Virginia Tech community. We wanted to make a simple, but strong, gesture of remembrance. We are grateful the university gave us clearance to display their logo."

The logo will be displayed against a black background on the "B-post" – the area just to the right of the driver's side window net – of cars competing in NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series and NASCAR Busch Series events at Phoenix International Raceway (Friday and Saturday), Talladega Superspeedway (April 28-29) and Richmond International Raceway (May 4-5).

Additionally, trucks competing in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event April 28 at Kansas Speedway also will display the logo.

First and foremost I want to thank everyone for the myriad of support that has been submitted in the comments section of my two previous posts this morning and last night. It blows me away how many people from so many different colleges have sent their best from campus. Even more people have related on a more personal level and it really does help hearing so much from you guys. I'm starting to realize how big of a deal this is for everyone in this entire country and not just our humble town.

Today marked the first day of public mourning for many at Virginia Tech and I was in attendance for both ceremonies.

The convocation turned into a terrific showing of Hokie spirit, as the 10,000-seat basketball arena was filled to capacity, including seats covering the parquet. The rest of us were directed to Lane Stadium to watch on the big screen. (See my photos.) Governor Kaine and President Bush both gave terrific speeches and were very well received, but the cap of the evening came from Nikki Giovanni, who is a professor at Virginia Tech. She ended strongly:

"We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies! We will prevail, we will prevail! We are Virginia Tech!"

Watch video of Giovanni's speech:

Just a month ago, March Madness swept through the NASCAR garage and had crew members, including 1998 Virginia Tech Graduate Darian Grubb, championing their alma maters and reminiscing about their college days.

Grubb:

"We had a lot of phone calls and emails going around when Virginia Tech beat Duke and UNC this year in basketball and always with football. We've always had a pretty strong following in the garage. It's amazing how many Hokies are actually in the garage when you get to know them.

"There's a lot of people in the garage that went to Tech one year before I did or one year after that I never knew because it's such a big campus and there's so many people there. But it's a tight-knit community once you find a fellow Hokie and you have a lot to talk about because everybody enjoys their experience that they have at Virginia Tech and it's something that they cherish and would love to go back and relive."

Yesterday's experiences won't be ones that any VT alum will want to relive: