Petey...you're such a turd!

Here's a quote from Pete Carroll (courtesy of Dr. Saturday) that will make you shake your head and flash one of those incredulous little smiles:

Smarter than the average bear. Let'sgrab
the goodies and skee-daddle... to Seattle.

"[The NCAA has] to do what they do. They figure out how the thing is supposed to work," Carroll said in the interview. "I don't agree with much of any of it. It's unfortunate that kids, years and years after, are punished for what the NCAA is dealing with from years and years before. That's the most unfortunate thing ... kids that were in junior high at the time, or in grade school, are paying the price for it."


Where does one begin to fashion a response to Petey's moral (amoral?) observation?  He was in charge in Trojanland when all the dirty deeds took place.  Petey is certainly a smarter-than-the-average-bear kind of guy, so inferring that his flight to the Seahawks was simply fortuitous timing is a rather challenging leap of faith.  He cashed a lot of checks along the way, and those haven't been recalled.  So, PC has the dough, the new gig, a comfortable comfort zone between himself and the scandal...all's well for Pete Carroll, USC be damned (ok, so there is some redemption here, as Everybody Hates Lane Kiffin is the beneficiary of all this drek).

The guy always covered for us, so he's got that going for him.

OK...see ya

Big news!  Not.

Terrelle Pryor announced that he will skip his final season at Ohio State.  What's that I hear, wailing and gnashing of teeth?  Hardly.  More like a collective "oh", the kind you utter when your old auntie tells you that her neighbor, Estelle, passed away.  Didn't know her, but it's too bad anyway.

Ohio State script, shades of gray since 1936.

Pryor was ultrahyped as a recruit to OSU.  He did well, delivered some very exciting performances, though I have trouble getting really excited about Ohio State, ever, unless I have a financial interest in their results.  The insurmountable obstacle that faces guys like Pryor is that unless they are performing at a superhuman pace every game-and in every public moment of  their personal lives, too, they have no chance to ever live up to the hype.  Nobody can do that.

Pryor was going to be gone for the first five of fall anyway, the punishment for selling some of his stuff.  The crime that took down Coach Tressel and now Pryor (and probably more to come) wasn't much of a crime, in my opinion.  He sold some of his stuff.  HIS stuff.  So what?  Players who commit real crimes, actions that are against the law as opposed to against the rules, they can ride out their problems and come back and join the team, rah-rah for the team, as long as they are properly publicly humble.  

Pryor hustled for a few bucks, selling stuff that had been given to him.  Probably would have been ok if he'd done something actually illegal, gone to court, received supervision and then apologized to everybody.

Which brings up my big question: outside of Columbus, does this really matter?

Start Time

It's the start of the summer stagnation.  The temperatures are rising.  The baseball teams are withering.  Hoop dreams have run out of gas, and the only ice at the United Center is going into overpriced drinks at concerts.  Where do we look for inspiration?

Football, baby, football.

With the niffle spending its resources on labor law instead of training camp, college football, our passion, stands alone, awaiting the spotlight.  Jim Tressel is outside looking in (probably soon to be joined by his former boss at THE Ohio State University), Nebraska is gearing up to be the 12th member of the Big10, USC just lost its national championship...things are starting to perk.

Old Soldier Field, hosting ski jumping in 1954.  They
did a lot of unusual stuff in the old stadium.  If you
ever had to use the restrooms during a Bears game,
you know just how unusual it could get.

The news item of the day is that the Big10 selected Indianapolis as the site of the newly minted Big10 Championship game.  The reasons for selecting Indianapolis are pretty compelling.  Indoor stadium (not my personal choice), relatively central location for the conference members (yeah, Chicago would have been more central, but there's no major league facility, hah, take that,Soldier Field with no roof  and perenial sod problems), and no chance of accusations of favoritism (the University of Indiana and Purdue are not going to be in the title game within this generation).  Indy also hosts the Big10 basketball championships and handles the 300,000 visitors for the 500 pretty well each year, so there's a proven track record.

The Big10 was born in Chicago in 1896.  The Big10's main office is in Park Ridge, IL, near O'Hare Airport. The Big10's biggest media center is Chicago.  The Big10's new marquee championship is going to Indianapolis, and weird Soldier Field is the reason.

Too bad.