... Another one bites the dust ...

So today the news came that Jim Tressel had resigned. I lead with this picture of him because, well, it's like he posed so that it could be used for this moment. A few months ago, when the news broke that Tressel would be suspended for two games (later five) due to NCAA violations, I wasn't surprised. In fact, nobody was surprised, short of the few friends I have who are Ohio State apologists. Even St. Tressel, it seems, wasn't beyond the shred of doubt in this day and age. Anyway, I loudly proclaimed to my Ohio State friends that this would undoubtedly lead to Tressel being dismissed, and I pointed to Tennessee's dismissal of Bruce Pearl as evidence. This prediction was dismissed by my friends, who said there was no way that Ohio State would part ways with Tressel, not after all the championships. And yet here we are, on Memorial Day, with those same Ohio State supporters now having to come to grips with Tressel's departure. How did we get here? What does this mean?

I'll answer that, but before I delve to deeply into my thoughts on this, a story. Close your eyes (well, you can't, because you can't read, but you get the picture) and imagine a warm fall day in Indiana's most lovely city: Bloomington. I wake up, shake out the cobwebs, and head over to a friends house. It's my sophomore year, and I live right across the street from our athletic complex, which includes our basketball arena (the legendary Assembly Hall) and our football arena (the significantly less legendary Memorial Stadium). We head over to Memorial stadium, where a friend has been inside for hours saving seats in the first row of the student section.

You see, Indiana University isn't exactly a football powerhouse. In fact, the only time that IU won the Big Ten title outright in Football was 1945. That was also the last time that the Chicago Cubs made it to the World Series. We also won a little skirmish called World War II that year. You get the picture. Anyway, because of this lack of football legacy, the student tickets to our games are cheap, and the seating is general admission. First come first serve. Normally, this means that you come late to the game and still end up with great seats about half way up the grandstand. But not on this morning. On this morning we needed to have a gung-ho friend save us a row of seats, right at the front. And the place was packed by the time we made our way across the street. You see, on this fall morning the number one team in the nation, THE Ohio State Buckeyes, were coming to Bloomington. And we were going to upset them. So we wanted prime seats, so we could rush the field and celebrate the biggest football win in the history of our beloved Indiana University.

Anyway, watch this video (22 seconds only, thank goodness) and you tell me if our fantasy became reality:



Fun Hoosier Fact: we take our football stadium pictures for our brochures when Ohio State comes to town. You know, because we have the same colors, so it makes us look like we pack the house. Needless to say, Ohio State stomped us. But I remember that day for a different reason. On that day a young wide receiver by the name of Ted Ginn Jr. was sitting on Ohio State's bench, as the game spun out of control (about one minute in, if memory serves me correctly). So, being the good natured sports fan you all know me to be, I began a friendly dialogue with Mr. Ginn Jr. It went a little something like this:

Me: Hey Ted, up here. (I pull two twenty dollar bills out of my wallet). I've got forty dollars here for you. Is that enough to get you to come to IU?

Ted Ginn Jr.: Mother****er, that's nowhere near enough to buy me. You *****s have no idea how much they pay me to play here.

At that point an Ohio State coach came over, pulled Mr. Ginn Jr. away, and my impromptu interview was ended. I laughed about it, and then laughed more when Ohio State played Florida in the national title game the next year and got stomped, but nonetheless I will never forget that moment. And I never failed to let my friends who root for Ohio State know about it. So, let's just say I wasn't too shocked that St. Tressel was caught up in something. And I also wasn't shocked that it lead to his ouster.

You see, Ohio State is doing what it has to in an attempt to not be slapped by the NCAA so hard that Woody Hayes entire family feels it. They know they are in trouble, and that decades of cheating is about to be uncovered, so they are throwing Tressel under the bus in an attempt to make the NCAA think, as many sports writers have already put it, that it is a "Jim Tressel problem" and not "an Ohio State problem." This last ditch effort works some times, and it will ultimately come down to how deep the NCAA wants to dig.

But the bigger issue is this: you can't compete in division one major collegiate athletics without doing this. Look at Jim Calapari. The man has had to vacate final four appearances at UMass and Memphis ... the two schools he coached at before Kentucky. It won't shock me in the least if last year's final four appearance by Kentucky is vacated before the decade is up (in fact, it will shock me if it isn't vacated). Calapari is a crook; everyone knows this. But Calapari is a smart crook, and doesn't get caught. And so people keep giving him millions to cheat, because that cheating makes the school tens of millions. Tressel got caught, and so he had to go. This is the deal with the devil you make: you do what everyone else is doing, and you get glory for it if you slide by, and if you get caught ... maybe you're lucky like Calipari, and maybe you have to fall on the sword like Jim Tressel.

But in the big picture, this stuff has been going on for decades at least. Alumni boosters pay players big money, and then they come and play basketball or football for the school. The SEC is the best at it, but it happens at all levels of major (read basketball and football) college sports. The question has become much the same as steroids in baseball. It's not if you will be shocked if someone gets caught, it's who would shock you the most if they got caught. This change in culture is why Indiana University, after being a basketball powerhouse, became an also-ran. Bobby Knight was a lot of things, but cheating wasn't in him. He played by the rules, and so by the 1990s he lost most of the top in state recruits to other schools, because he wouldn't pay to play. IU's trustees finally got tired of losing the right way, and so they brought in Kelvin Sampson ... and the school is still paying for it. Sampson wasn't slick like Calipari, even though he wasn't nearly as corrupt. He was just not smart about it.

So, among active coaches, who would shock me if they got caught? The list is really short, but if I had to combine the sports it would look something like this:

1. Coach K
2. Coach K
3. Coach K

You get the picture? Among major schools, only Duke would shock me, and that's because somehow Coach K manages to win with lesser talent, in a way that football also-ran Notre Dame can't seem to do. I'm 93% sure that Butler will retroactively win last year's NCAA Men's Basketball championship after UConn has to vacate the title for violations under Calhoun (another creep), but who knows. Like Randy Moss said, "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."

And like Randy Moss said:

Why I Couldn't Be A Sports Analyst

Check out this video ... I hate to admit it, but this is what 90% of my "sports debates" would look like if I had to debate issues with people like this. I, of course, side with Skip ... mostly out of agreement regarding LeBron. Either way, this is entertaining. Are these two actually going to fight? Thanks for all this silly debating Mr. Pippen.

A Perspective On Obama and Palestine

Sorry to keep dropping links on you, but this is an interesting perspective on Obama's recent actions vis a vi Palestine. It's not too long; check it out.

Look closely...

I got some flak for my "Obama and Bush are strikingly similar" comments a few posts back. I'll pass this link along to show you the thoughts of a professor who I took a class with in Bloomington, but nonetheless I'd encourage you to look at Bush's Medicare Part D, then look at Obamacare, and tell me the difference. This blog post not only seconds that, but it also shows how conspiracy theorists can and will jump all over this crap. Gotta love silly conspiracy theorists... as well as the people the suck in.

Thoughts on Eternity

I've been reading Rob Bell's new book, entitled "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived." It's a book which attempts to ask one of the biggest questions of humanity: who goes to heaven, who goes to hell, and why? I'm reading this book because Bell stirred up quite the controversy by basically arguing that everyone goes to heaven, but that heaven can seem like hell to those who don't like the way heaven operates. For those of you who know me, I can't pass up a good controversy, and so I had to delve into Bell's work. But there's a second layer: I love debating, theorizing on, and meditating on eternity. And so, with that in mind, here are some preliminary thoughts on the subject.


"Everyday things change, basically they stay the same." ~ Dave Matthews Band

Just in case you missed the rapture, it happened on May 21st, 2011. Or now I hear it's supposed to be in October. People are always fascinated with the end of times, and this fascination has enabled people to join cults, give their money away, and convince themselves that they know when the end is coming. At the core, Bells book is about explaining what will happen, not when, but it's the same basic concept: where are we going? Think about how much differently you'd live your life if you knew for certain what would happen after you've passed on. If you knew that there was an eternity, and that to get to it you had to do A, B, and C ... well, I'd bet that you change up a few things. If you knew that after this life there was nothing, then you'd probably go in a different direction. You're only human, and when we know something is going to happen we have a tendency to behave very differently than we do when we suspect that something is going to happen.

Case in point: what if I told you that there were going to be police officers looking for people speeding randomly all along the interstate highway you were going to be on. I'd guess you'd probably stick pretty closely to the speed limit, if not a tad bit under it. Conversely, if I told you that there were no police officers at all on the highway you'd probably speed to the limit of your comfort: 15, 20, 30 miles over the speed limit. But when you take to the road you don't really know if there will be officers or not. As such, you typically set the cruise at whatever speed you're willing to risk (for me it's about 5MPH over the speed limit), and you go along your merry way.

Most human's deal with the question of eternity in much the same way. We know what we believe, and we set our cruise at whatever speed we're willing to risk. I don't know a person who lives a totally devote life, and I know many who live far less than a devote life. Myself included. But we all have limits we push, and above which we feel like we are running to much of a risk. It's calculated, and it's not what we are "supposed to do." That's why Bell attempts to answer this greatest of all questions in the way he does. In part.

Another part of this question is the feeling a Christian gets when we think of a really great friend, lover, or family member who is not Christian, but is probably a better person than we are. Are they going to hell? If so, why would we want to go to heaven? Bell's answer brings you comfort, if you believe him, because it says that those people will be there too, simply because God is that great. The atheists, the agnostics, the Muslims, the Jews, the Buddhists ... everyone. This isn't that far from an argument I've articulated through the years: namely, that God is great enough that he can take different routes (faiths, etc) to reach a variety of people. He created us to be individuals, and to find our way to him in our individual ways.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure what comes after death. None of us are. Not even Rob Bell. But we all have our theories. The issue with Bell's book is that he presents opinion as fact. I present my opinion as opinion. He's far more educated than I'll ever be on theological issues, but I think he crossed a line that is tough to step over. The afterlife, and the eternity that does or does not come with it, is a touchy subject. Everyone has a deep seated belief inside of them, and when you challenge those beliefs you are stepping into dangerous territory. That's where Bell strode.

As far as death, I've been thinking about it quite a bit more recently as I've been in a class about dealing with it. I was asked to answer a number of questions about my beliefs and experiences on death, and then I was asked to reflect on it. Here's what I came up with:

"I find death to be the greatest question in life, and as such these questions tend to make me think big picture. I’ve always been a person who finds comfort in the enormity of existence. I think of the universe, expansive as it is, and remind myself that if all life were wiped off the Earth tomorrow it wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme. But I also think of the purpose of mankind, and of the greater goal which I believe we are all striving towards. Carl Sagan once spoke about Earth as a pale blue dot, basing this statement on the most long distance shot of Earth ever taken, by the Voyager spacecraft as it looked back on the solar system for the last time. Sagan mused that all of human history, all the joy, the life, and the death took place on that tiny grain of sand in the infinite abyss that is the universe. Sagan’s point was that we should cherish this life, and be humbled by the scope of existence. Similarly, the husband and wife philosopher team of William and Ariel Durant wrote about the purpose of life in the epilogue to their eleven volume work “The Story of Civilization,” which was aptly entitled “The Lessons of History.” Talking of progress, the duo stated that if religion was removed from the equation, the undeniable purpose of life was to learn as much as you could, building on the knowledge and work of those who came before you, so that the next generation could build on your history to move forward. In answering the self inventories for this class these perspectives came to mind, because death is an uncomfortable subject, even for those who embrace its’ approach."

In the end, none of us know what to expect. That's part of the mystery of life, and it's why we are best served by cherishing each moment and moving through life as if each moment is our last.

AAAAHHHHH!

Crazy people are coming to Iowa! Look out!


(click on the link to find out more. I'm curious what everyone's thoughts are on this, so feel free to chime in.)

Game Five: The Mini Live Blog

Coming from you at the start of the fourth quarter of game five. Bulls lead 62 to 57.

10:35PM - Coach Thibs says the Bulls have to "play smart without fouling." I'm pretty sure the only way they could do that at this point is by pulling all their players off the court. They called a foul on Noah earlier for sneezing in LeBron's general direction.

10:37PM - If you didn't see the final four minutes of the third quarter, you should go back and watch. The officials were actively trying to throw the game for Miami. 1919 Black Sox style. The flagrant on Boozer was a terrible call, the next foul on Deng should have been a moving screen on Miami, the foul on Noah was awful, and the technical on Gibson was for less than LeBron does after every single play. Even Reggie Miller agrees. This is Lakers - Kings 2002 stuff. Is Tim Donaghy actually officiating this game? I can't believe the officials have ripped the Bulls off four straight games. On the bright side, the Bulls are somehow winning again, all while playing five on eight.

10:40PM - Just talked to a friend on the phone; we are collectively wondering when we're just going to have to stop watching sports. Is the joy of winning worth the pain, frustration, and risk of stroke related death that sit on the other side of the ledger? I used to articulate a pretty convincing argument (for me) about it being worth it, but anymore I don't know. I do know that I'm actually beginning to appreciate the Cubs lowering my expectations to nothing within a week of this season. After living through the Bears, now the Bulls, I don't think I could take the Cubs being relevant this year. My heart needs a break.

10:42PM - Rose brings the ball up, Bulls leading by eight. Kurt Thomas finally playing ... foul on the Heat not called. It's amazing to me that every time LeBron and Wade get bumped it's a foul, but when Rose gets hit it's not. James dropped his shoulder into Kurt Thomas, knocks him over, and Thomas is called for the foul. These officials have been worth about 15 points to Miami thus far, no joke. Somebody needs to have a federal investigation into this. Are we sure that David Stern isn't into the mob for about $5 million? These officials are working really hard to throw this game.

10:45PM - If you're Chicago you've got to go back to the pick and pop with Thomas. It's working. Wade hits a shot to cut the lead to six. Honestly, if the officials were calling this game even somewhat even the Bulls would be up by 25. What happened in the first three games was typical NBA deciding who was going to win by calling the game differently for each team; what is happening in this game is flagrantly illegal. Somewhere, Joe Jackson is nodding in agreement. He's seen a performance like this before.

10:48PM - Deng back in the game with seven minutes to go ... with five fouls, two of which were legitimate. Brewer with a huge shot. I like him quite a bit. LeBron is flopping so frequently that even Vlade Divac would blush. I don't think Reggie even flopped this much. I have to admit that I'm very confused why we have seen so little of Kurt Thomas this series. He's tough, he's smart, and he's thick. Tonight he's playing exceptionally. I've been asking for him since the officiating changed in game two. I'm glad Thibs listened (finally). Still, he's done a good job coaching this year, his rookie year. When the officials turn against you it's essential to have a tough vet who can help hold your team steady. Thomas is the only one on our team.

10:51PM - Bulls back up by ten, and ... Miami literally just tackled Ronnie Brewer, and no foul was called. Wade complains after he misses a wide open layup. No technical for that? This is embarassing for the NBA how one sided these officials are calling this. If congress could investigate steroid use in baseball they sure as hell can investigate this.

10:53PM - Finally a real foul on the Bulls; Rose hacks James but stops him from making the shot. Smart foul. LeBron keeps making his foul shots. He's certainly improved in that regard. 32 free throws made in a row. Even if Chicago holds on to this I can't imagine the league letting them have a prayer in game six. Stern might actually hit Rose in the knee with a crowbar the way this has been going. HUGE THREE by Ronnie Brewer after Rose gets fouled, but doesn't get the call. Hypocrisy, thy name is NBA officials.

10:56PM - While we go to commercial, text time!

- "maybe (the officials) just can't stand the sight of tears" (because, you know, if Miami loses they cry ... their coach told us)
- "This is unbelievable" (after the Noah foul/Gibson technical pu pu platter of calls)
- "The officials are actively trying to throw this game"
- "This is ridiculous. Even Reggie Miller said they have to start calling it on the Heat as well. That technical was complete bull****."
- "I guess bribing the officials is a step up from buying a ring on Ebay."

10:59PM - Brewer is playing great ... and I've got news for you: watch the replay of the Brewer foul on James. He didn't touch him; LeBron acted and got the call. He deserves an academy award. That is now two fouls he's drawn by faking contact. He's Reggie Miller 2.0 in the playing like a girl department. Somewhere, Michael Jordan is nodding.

11:01PM - Ronnie Brewer and Kurt Thomas ... amazing how strong, tough players can help. Wade with a tough shot, and he's warming up. That's not good. Rose back the other way ... and the turnover. Wade hits a layup and gets a foul call on yet another phantom foul. How is that a foul? Every single time Rose does that it isn't a foul. Thank God Wade and James are missing a few free throws now. Bulls are not getting good looks at the hoop, and James hits a three to cut the lead to five. Back to the foul that sent Wade to the line: you can't call that foul. That is how the league threw the NBA finals to Miami back in 2005 (I think) when they beat Dallas. I'm not going to look the year up, but if you do look up the free throw disparities. Actually, screw it, I'll look it up. It was 2006. This year's free throw disparity has been nearly as bad. Just this March Phil Jackson even said the free throw disparity was the league paying Mark Cuban back.

11:06PM - A HUGE PHANTOM FOUL on Rose giving Wade a four point play to cut the lead to three. Amazing job by the officials this game. They have literally given up trying to pretend they are impartial. Bosh just shoved Gibson in the back, which wasn't called, leading to a James three. No foul when Rose drove to the hoop on the previous play either. James and Wade (and probably Bosh) have been getting that call every time since game one. This is criminal.

11:08PM - Well, sports fans, here we are. One minute left, tied game, as the officials have managed to cut a 13 point lead to nothing. Using my Charles Barkley voice, "this officiating is turible." ROSE IS FOULED AND IT'S NOT CALLED. This is a joke. James pushes off on Brewer, no call, and hits the shot. Miami does nothing wrong I guess. Next text!

- "Cuban's going to have to dig deep in his pockets if he wants to buy the refs from Miami."

11:11PM - James shoves Rose to actually get a foul called. I'm so confused by how this game has gone down the stretch. I honestly don't know that there is any game I've ever watched, including L.A. - Portland, L.A. - Sacramento, and Miami - Dallas, has ever been this stupid. Rose misses the free throw. Even we can't save ourselves. Not that it mattered. After watching this game there is one thing for sure: there is no way in hell that the league was going to let Miami lose this series.

11:13PM - My head is literally spinning. This is on par with the way Bears - Colts felt as Lovie showed his incompetence, and Cubs - Marlins when Dusty did the same. The Bulls grab the Heat with 22 seconds left; the officials don't blow the whistle until 16.8 seconds. The literally won't call the foul when we ARE TRYING TO FOUL. We should have just tackled LeBron and taken out his leg. Heat win. Congrats to the officials, and the biggest crook of them all, David Stern.

I was hoping that I was going to be able to avoid having to do this already, but:

"Help us Dirk Nowitski. You're our only hope."

If Miami beats Dallas I think I'm going to give up all professional sports. On the bright side, great job by Chicago for keeping their composure even while they were being screwed out of this series. I guess that David Stern decided they hadn't paid their dues yet, but they kept their cool. Here's to hoping that the NBA locks out their players next year. Congrats Mr. Stern: right after winning me back for the first time since 1998, I'm back out on your crooked product. Needless to say, it's going to be tough to get to sleep tonight.