Well, it's a start

We give both Oregon schools a lot of grief, hereabouts... from their continual inflow of Nike money that still hasn't bought a national championship, to the reminders that the Beavers are the otherOTHER OSU, to the uniforms from hell... You'd never know my wife was from there.

But, I will give credit to the state of Oregon, who are considering a version of the "Rooney Rule" for any future head coaching hires.

It was originally aimed at football coaches, but a House committee expanded it to include all sports as well as athletic directors, Greenlick said.

It would require universities to interview at least one minority in each hiring process. The state's Board of Higher Education would enforce the legislation, but the bill specifies no penalties.

The bill easily passed the House. Should it be approved by the Senate and signed by the governor, Oregon would become the first state with such a requirement.

Good timing, too... we've talked about this before, and have even implied that there may be other ways to levy pressure at the national level. Seems that there's at least some investigation into the foundational purpose of College Sports which may help impact this discussion. A report from the Congressional Budget Office implies,

I-A athletic departments get 60% to 80% of their revenue from activities that can be described as commercial.

CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, left, writes: "The high share of commercial revenue for some sports programs raises the questions of whether those programs have become side businesses for schools and, if they have, whether the same preferential tax preferences should apply to them as to schools in general."

With all the discussion about a playoff and monopolies and such, it may be an interesting summer in the world of higher education and sports.

Lots and lots of fricking smoke

Not to be insensitive to our friends in Santa Barbara...

It's not just Yahoo! Sports that's covering the U$C situation... CBS' Dennis Dodd weighs in on the NCAA's investigation into both the basketball and football programs:

This is bad stuff. The USC football team won national championships in 2003 and '04 and has finished in the top four every other year from 2002-08. Accusations like the ones against Bush -- made on the record, by the way, by a former friend of Bush -- call into question the entire dynasty. If the Trojans couldn't be bothered to sniff out the cheating that helped keep Bush on campus, what else happened inside Pete Carroll's program?

In Carroll's defense, he hasn't been accused of any of this cheating. He has shown unbelievably bad judgment, once pranking his team by pretending that LenDale White jumped off a nearby building and also allowing notorious alum O.J. Simpson to attend practice. So he has made light of suicide and homicide. But Carroll hasn't done this. He hasn't been accused, on the record, of paying off a player. That's the worst, and the dumbest, kind of cheating imaginable -- and that's what Tim Floyd is said to have done.

Add it up, and you have a brutal accusation against the USC basketball coach and damning accusations against the biggest USC football star in years. The NCAA's response, after opening separate investigations into both programs, has been to roll them into a single, program-wide look at USC athletics. The NCAA is looking for the dreaded "lack of institutional control," and the NCAA is going to find it.

This is cartoon stuff, the massive, two-sport improprieties being investigated at USC. This is Todd Bozeman meets Bobby Bowden. This is one coach being accused of outright cheating, and another coach being accused of not knowing, or wanting to know, the cheating happening with his players.

This is the most scandalous athletic program of this era. And that's saying something. So the question to ask right now is not this one: Who should be fired at USC?

The question is this:

Who shouldn't?

Yes, it's time to start thinking about the worst. The investigation into USC football (and basketball) took another ugly turn this week when Yahoo! Sports reported hoops coach Tim Floyd might have greased the palm of an O.J. Mayo runner.

The headlines scream Floyd. The drumbeats are foreshadowing disaster for the school's franchise sport. The NCAA recently lumped both cases together, making Troy a one-stop shop for the infractions committee. So when you think Floyd, think football, too.

You wonder when it will be time for the BCS fathers to consider ripping that 2004 national championship. If the allegations are true, Bush was competing while ineligible during the 2005 Orange Bowl, won by the Trojans 55-19 over Oklahoma. If the NCAA forfeits (or vacates) victories, it isn't going to stop at the regular season. But when it comes to bowls, all it can do is take away the wins, because I-A football is the only sport for which the NCAA doesn't stage a championship.

The NCAA already has put one of its toughest investigators, a bulldog named Rich Johanningmeier, on the USC cases. Johanningmeier started in 1986, has been sued (in the messy Alabama case) and, at least in some corners, is feared.

"Some of those guys if they find a locked door, they just go on home," said a coach whose program came close to the death penalty in a case headed by Johanningmeier. "This guy goes to the next door."

The case has the smell of lack of institutional control. That's an NCAA violation that is both major and cryptic. The association can go different directions in dropping the hammer. The vibe coming from the football side has long been that Bush was a rogue agent, acting on his own by taking cash, a house for his parents and bad advice from would-be agents.

It's getting to the point where it might not matter whether coaches knew of Bush's cash grab. The NCAA might determine USC should have known, that it had to keep better tabs on one of your best players. Remember when Dwayne Jarrett was getting sweetheart deal on his rent while living with Matt Leinart?

"I think USC has them a problem," the same coach said.

Bush's case has been lingering for three years in and out of the spotlight. The latest report gave us an idea of what the NCAA is thinking.

Hmmm...

Too Two Grand

Today, Thursday May 14 2009, marks two thousand days since MACh1gAAn has beaten THE Ohio State University in football.

Two thousand days. Perspective:

That's enough time for a poplar seed to grow into a 30-foot tree, enough time for the Cavaliers to win 316 games (including playoffs), and enough time for 12 season finales of "Survivor" (counting next Sunday night's).

When Michigan last beat Ohio State, Barack Obama was a state senator, YouTube was more than a year away from being born.

Emmitt Smith was still doing his thing (albeit not as well) in the League, Terrelle Pryor was two years away from his driver’s license, the Curse of the Bambino was haunting the Red Sox and the Expos were still playing in Montreal.

The Burj Dubai, now easily the world’s tallest building (and growing), was nothing more than a blueprint, Martha Stewart still had a clean record and Saddam Hussein was not only still alive, but still on the loose. There was no Facebook, YouTube or Ubuntu and Evan Williams of Twitter was still preoccupied with a little project called Blogger.

Marlon Brando, Ronald Reagan, Rick James, Rodney Dangerfield, Hunter S. Thompson, Rosa Parks and Richard Pryor were all still gracing the earth and swine flu sounded like a punchline for a fat joke.

According to folks, this billboard has been put up in the Detroit area for today only.

which is only fair, since this one is up year round:

Again, this makes perfect sense...

ESPN and Yahoo! Sports are reporting that there's more smoke around the U$C "lack of institutional control" fire.

Continuing the OJ Mayo saga, seems that U$C Coach Tim Floyd may have paid a "handler"$1000 to obtain this student athlete's services with the Trojans.

On top of the ongoing Reggie Bu$h and friends investigation, this seems to be a pattern.

So, the NCAA responds by, you guessed it, penalizing the University of South Alabama's men's tennis team.

The payments in question are only $12,000, so it seems that U$C got the better deal. Well, except for the $200,000 plus that Reggie's family received.

Updating

Yeah, it's slow in the world of college football. State Penn is "keepin' it real", and MACh1gAAn still sucks, but other than that...

So, here's an update about an earlier post. Yeah, it's a video... it's the off season, give me a break.