We all have them, certain unanticipated moments that grab, stick, then, for better or worse, are always back there, ready to tap you on the shoulder or slap you in the head.
Years ago, by complete accident (I had misread the gym’s schedule), I attended a girl’s high-school basketball game. There were, oh, 100 kids and parents seated in the rollaway bleachers.
Within seconds, the central nervous system was under attack. Harsh, ignorant words were being shouted at the refs, just a few feet away, by both parents and kids seated beside them.
As the girls were about to shoot free throws, they heard shrieks and hollers in small group efforts to distract them. At one point, a parent dispatched his son, maybe 12, to stand beneath the basket and holler and stamp his feet just as the kids on the other team shot.
Every time a girl missed, that kid jumped for joy. He was jubilant. So was his proud father.
I left with a bad case of the “ateds” — infuriated, agitated, nauseated. And every once in a while, something cues that memory.
Saturday, Rutgers football coach Kyle Flood, in one of his last public acts before he was sacked, was seen on the Big Ten Network in a taped close-up after Maryland, down 31-20 (although the Terrapins went on to win) missed a 29-yard field goal.
Flood was seen in a crouch, and then, as the kick was waved no good, he sprang into the air, pumping a fist in jubilation as if he had witnessed something grand, something better than benefitting from a kid kicker’s misfortune. It seemed a cheap source of delight, but joy to his world.
While we wouldn’t expect Flood to root for the other team, to so outwardly exalt over a missed field goal brought to instant recall that girls high-school game, adults and kids rejoicing when kids missed free throws.
But, class dismissed, especially in colleges that make deals with the big-time sports devil.
Although it now seems ancient history, in 2010, Rutgers hired a basketball coach, Mike Rice, in large part because he acted like a madman while coaching Robert Morris. And won a lot of games.
In 2013, Rutgers fired Rice because it “discovered” that in large part he acted like a madman. And lost a lot of games.
Three months ago, with eight current and former football recruits arrested for a pile of terrorizing on- and near-campus felonies, and Flood caught playing footsie with a prof to sustain a player’s eligibility, the big issue was the program’s integrity.
But we knew then, as we know now, that integrity is a fleeting, bogus issue — otherwise the same big-time sports colleges wouldn’t suffer from the same integrity issues year after year after year.
Thirty-five years ago, Arizona State football coach Darryl Rogers spoke the greatest sustaining truth about big-time college sports: “They’ll fire you for losing before they’ll fire you for cheating.”
Hey, the Basketball Hall of Fame is lousy with college coaches who cheated.
Winning dissolves issues of cleanliness. And Rutgers football — involuntarily funded by New Jersey taxpayers — wasn’t winning. With football leading the way, Rutgers athletics last year operated at a nation-leading $36 million deficit.
Shucks, and many of us can recall Rutgers when it was a college — and great one — before it decided to front a big-time football team.
Get a load of Rutgers President Robert Barchi explaining the firings of Flood and athletic director Julie Hermann, totaling about $2.5 million in buyouts:
“This is a particular point in time and one makes the decisions on a multiplicity of factors and this happens to be a confluence of one of those directional lines, if you will.”
Mike Mayock and Moose Johnston couldn’t have said it better together!
Anyway, new AD, Patrick Hobbs, who recently oversaw that squeaky clean Seton Hall basketball program, including the hiring of a top recruit’s high school coach (What a coincidence!), already intends to construct a state-of-the-art basketball facility, one that will better entice promising young (and not so young) players from all over the world to “sign” with Rutgers.
Of course, said Hobbs, money will be needed.
There was a recent connection between the schools’ basketball programs.
In July, Fuquan Edwin, who played four years at Seton Hall, and Myles Mack, who played three years at Rutgers — they were high-school teammates — were arrested together within a prostitution sting.
Anyway, somewhere there’s a kid about to take a foul shot. Let’s get busy.
It’s all heading down-Hill quickly
The perfect storm: Although too late for many, Monday’s Ravens-Browns game ended on a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown by the Ravens’ (formerly the Giants’) Will Hill, former Florida, Urban Meyer-recruited, full-scholarship student-athlete, three-years college-matriculated, twice-arrested, twice NFL drug-suspended.
Afterwards, ESPN’s Lisa Salters spoke with Hill: “At what point, really, did you think, ‘I can get to the end zone’?”
Hill: “As soon as I picked it up.”
Salters: “Come on, there were a lot of jerseys there in front of you.”
Hill: “What does that mean? Don’t care ’bout no jerseys. All I was seein’ was touchdown.”
College men. Say good night, Gracie.
Dropping the ‘Mike’ on every bad lock
A Tuesday caller to Mike Francesa busted his chops over his Lost Tapes Lock: Dallas at home over Carolina on Thanksgiving Day (the Panthers won, 33-14).
Naturally, the only one left who takes Francesa seriously is Francesa, so he defiantly said he put no greater emphasis on that pick than any other. “I made ’em all exactly the same.”
Enter website RN’s Funhouse, which tracks Francesa’s frequent revisionism (lies). It included tape of Francesa’s tout of Dallas because: “I’ve been looking at this game for a month. I basically picked this game a month ago, to be honest with ya. I’ve been saying it for weeks.”