Thursday, June 10, 2010
SCHADENFREUDE VS. CLUELESSNESS: More amusing sports news: USC's sanctions (including a two-year bowl ban, loss of scholarships, forfeiture games, and, I'm inferring, loss of a national championship) for paying lack of institutional control involving Reggie Bush and OJ Mayo (plus, uh, violations of rules involving women's tennis), or Michael Jordan's Hitler mustache?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The USC story may lack the visual comedy of the MJ story, but as it's USC getting whacked....
ReplyDeleteI love how USC is like "we admit these violations occurred, but the penalty is too severe." To repeat myself (which I always do), they should have thought about that when they successfully agitated for the same penalties for lesser misconduct when it was the Huskies on the receiving end.
ReplyDeleteI like how in the Jordan story, the author says
ReplyDeleteMake no mistake, Michael Jordan is not the first man in history to shave his facial hair into a “Hitler-type” shape. Charlie Chaplain is just one such famous person who has sported a “Hitler Stache.”
as if, you know, one of these people wasn't well-known way before the other.
I think my favorite part is how they bend over backwards to not say the words "Reggie Bush" in there. And USC has got to be thanking its lucky stars they didn't get the TV penalty that was "seriously contemplated."
ReplyDeleteAnother person who shaved his mustache into the Hitler mustache shape before Hitler ruined it: Hitler.
ReplyDeleteThat may be because of laws about student confidentiality. I do wish they had identified the assistant coach who was contacted about getting Bush to honor his commitment to an agency (I'm inferring from context that it wasn't Sarkisian, but I'd certainly like to be sure, as a Washington fan). Also interesting that this doesn't mention the issues relating to that basketball player who seemed set to commit to USC, but who USC then ditched when people started asking why the family of a very poor kid from the South suddenly moved into a nice house in Beverly Hills or West LA for his senior year of high school.
ReplyDeleteI'm going with Jordan's Chaplin-stache. The USC sanctions are just a shoe we've been waiting five months to see drop.
ReplyDeleteHow long does Lane Kiffin stick around now? What a lovely Thursday this has turned out to be.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a great hatred for USC -- and with the Pac-10 getting screwed up, it's likely to no longer be the biggest source of this sort of embarrassment -- but that Lane Kiffin will now be completely hamstrung by these rules is just delightful.
ReplyDeleteI have no dog in this hunt, but Aaron Rodgers' tweet about this today was delightful.
ReplyDeleteIs there a scienter question with a hitler-stache or is it a res ipsa situation?
ReplyDeleteThe upper-lip-soul-patchy thing Jordan had going on isn't something I'd defend as a strong aesthetic choice, but I note that the traditional lower-lip patch was also in place.
Query if that makes it less hitlery.
Further query whether 'hitlery' is an adjective.
If an adjective, query whether it is more or less offensive than Jordan's facial hair (under either a negligence or strict liability regime).
I'll happily defer to any gereral concensus on these points, but as a bearded fellow I'm interested in a benefit-of-the-doubt baseline for facial hair configurations that are adopted without first doing historical analysis.
It was funny, and I don't want the truth to get in the way of a good story, but it looks like Bush's ineligibility (and the vacated wins) would begin in December '04, too late for it to affect that year's Pac-10 race. '05 was all year, though.
ReplyDelete<span>Make no mistake, Michael Jordan is not the first man in history to shave his facial hair into a “Hitler-type” shape. Charlie Chaplain is just one such famous person who has sported a “Hitler Stache.” </span>
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying contemplating whether there's actually a "Charlie Chaplain" who defiantly grew his Hitler Stache in honor of Charlie Chaplin.
Also, because I think you'd all want to know, a woman who graduated from my high school a year or so behind me married someone whose last name is Hitler. And she took his name. [Yes she did!] As my high school alumni magazine rarely fails to remind me, seemingly in every issue's Alumni Notes.
Let the poaching begin! Via ESPN:
ReplyDeleteJuniors and seniors to-be on the USC Trojans' football team, hit with a two-year postseason ban among other punishments, will be allowed to transfer to other FBS programs without having to sit out a season, the NCAA clarified to ESPN on Friday.
"The second school would have to submit a waiver asking to waive the year in residence, but NCAA rules allow for this waiver to be granted if a student-athlete's first school has a postseason ban in their sport," NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said in an e-mail to ESPN's Joe Schad.
The rule does not apply to freshman who have signed national letters of intent, however. But schools with an interest in a USC junior or senior are allowed to initiate contact with the player, Osburn said.
I think that assistant coach is Todd McNair. He sounds like a pretty sketchy dude.
ReplyDelete