Monthly Archives: May 2021

Geno Auriemma wants Accountability

Posted on by
Geno Auriemma

The Transfer Portal

The NCAA changed their Transfer Portal rule last year and Geno Auriemma, head coach of the perennial women’s college basketball powerhouse University of Connecticut, doesn’t like it.

Prior to this season, if a player wanted to move from one school to another, she or he had to sit out an entire season of play. This is an extraordinary punishment considering the athletic lives of such players are very short and earning potential for even a single season is millions of dollars.

Why Geno is Angry

Geno Auriemma is mad because some of the players he recruited left and their ability to continue to do so is now significantly easier. Geno Auriemma has some telling quotes in the story.

In regards to an athlete leaving a program he says, A lot of these kids are delusional. They have so many voices in their ear.

I suppose you know better what the athlete should do? You should be in charge of the decision instead of them, their parents? Can you get any more condescending?

There’s something wrong with the entitlement that happens to exist today, and there’s something wrong with this idea of student-athlete welfare, that everything should be done to accommodate the student-athlete with no regard whatsoever to the coaches who work their ass off to recruit these kids in the first place, work with them, help them get better, make them the player that they are, and then they up and leave with no consequences whatsoever.

Entitlement? Look in the mirror Geno Auriemma. Look in the mirror. You work hard? So do those kids. How often do coaches up and leave for a new contract at a different school without consequences? Leaving the athletes they recruited behind? What’s good for you isn’t good for anyone else?

Those kids have people whispering in their ears? So do you! The people who pay you millions of dollars to coach, the apparel companies that pay your school to have those kids wear their jerseys. What do those kids get paid for all of this? You are the best one to look out for their interests? No, you are the best one to look out for your own interests and the same goes for them.

If we as coaches just call a kid in and say, ‘Look, I thought you’d be a lot better than this, so I’m taking away your scholarship’, we would get crucified.

That’s exactly the way it was until the NCAA changed the rules thanks to a plethora of lawsuits. In the past Geno Auriemma could simply take away a scholarship for exactly that reason but I didn’t hear him up in arms talking about entitlement back then, about the horrors of such a practice.

Conclusion

Kids sometimes make bad decisions; I don’t deny it. Some will want to transfer when it might well be best to stay at the original school. That being said, I don’t want some sanctimonious adult telling young athletes what to do while, at the same time, taking millions of dollars to further the coach’s career. Talk about conflict of interest.

Geno Auriemma is way out of line.

Tom Liberman

Joe West does Tony LaRussa a Solid

Posted on by
Joe West

The Situation

Umpire Joe West, owner of the Major League record for most games umpired, decided to confiscate St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Giovanny Gallegos’s hat. There is a rule against pitchers using foreign substances and West wants to pretend he simply enforced that rule.

Major League announced at the beginning of the season they planned to crack down on such foreign substances. As of yet, despite record no-hitters, out of control spin rates, and many, many sightings of such material on gloves, hats, forearms, and everywhere else, this is first time we’ve seen a player’s equipment confiscated.

What Really Happened

Joe West and Tony LaRussa go way back. They are long-time associates and LaRussa’s team, the White Sox, were on the verge of sweeping the Cardinals whom LaRussa managed for many years. In the first two games of the series the White Sox pretty much led the entire game. In this third game the Cardinals were a run ahead when Joe West suddenly had his moral epiphany.

Joe West hoped to do his friend a solid by rattling Gallegos before he started pitching. It’s that simple. I’m certainly not suggesting Gallegos didn’t have a foreign substance on his hat. I’m saying every pitcher in the series did exactly the same thing and Joe West chose the most opportune moment to intervene on behalf of his friend.

Joe West now takes the morally repugnant stance that he attempted to do Gallegos a favor by not immediately ejecting the pitcher from the game. Ha. If Joe West had an ounce of moral integrity, a teaspoon of personal responsibility, he’d get up on the podium, announce he made a terrible error in judgment, retire from the game, and not speak again until he publishes his memoirs, which will remain silent on this particular subject.

Conclusion

I want to be clear that I’m of the opinion Gallegos likely had a foreign substance on his hat, probably suntan lotion, rosin, and who knows what else. I’m just saying that he isn’t doing anything different than almost every other pitcher in major league baseball. Joe West along with all the other umpires well know it.

It’s the timing of this incident that galls me. It’s clear to me it was an attempt to influence the game by the umpire and that’s a serious problem.

Tom Liberman

High School Basketball NIBC Cash Grab

Posted on by
NIBC

The Situation

A group of six of the best high school basketball teams in the country are forming their own league. The National Interscholastic Basketball Conference. They will play a regular season, special events, and a post-season tournament.

The organization will add two more teams before league play begins this year and there are certainly plans to expand further in the coming years.

Why is this being done? Let me quote Rashid Ghazi a partner at Paragon Marketing Group who will serve as commissioner of the NIBC. The NIBC represents a tremendous platform that combines elite-level basketball with excellent academics in a real campus setting. These six schools have outstanding histories and helped develop countless young men to achieve their dreams of excelling in both college and professional basketball.

Ha, I say. Ha, I repeat for emphasis. It’s a cash grab.

My Problem with the NIBC

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against a nice cash grab. The fact six powerhouse high school basketball programs are forming the NIBC to make money doesn’t bother me at all. Good for them. I recently wrote how elite teams in all leagues win virtually every championship. Largely because of enormous financial advantages over their less well-off counterparts.

What bothers me in this situation is the players and their families will make nothing. Not only will they make nothing but the laws of the United States of America make it essentially illegal for them to make money from their efforts.

These are the kids performing on the court and yet it is the leagues, the league offices, the venues, the officials, certainly commissioner Ghazi. Almost everyone but the kids will take all the money. It’s actually against the law to pay the athletes and let them continue to play in the league. Once any athlete accepts payment, she or he is a professional and barred from amateur sport thanks to insane rules upheld by judges in this supposedly free country.

It’s no far-fetched leap to see an eventual television contract for the league, shady associations with college recruiters tied to college coaches, and any other corruption that comes when this much money is involved.

Conclusion

The NIBC is nothing more than extension of the amoral NCAA which exploits its workforce while making billions of dollars. It’s not right for the NCAA and it’s not right for the NIBC.

How long before we see Crack Baby Athletic Association? My disgust is immeasurable.

Tom Liberman

Woke Sexual Assault on The Nevers

Posted on by
Woke Sexual Assault

What Happened

Our drunken protagonist, Amalia, walks up onto the stage, grabs the lute player’s instrument and kisses him violently while grabbing his genitalia with her free hand and violently stroking him. Yep, that’s sexual assault.

She then breaks the presumably expensive musical instrument over the head of another patron who had the temerity to ask for kiss. That’s theft and destruction of property. Earlier, Amalia proffered a kiss in exchange for a pint of beer, several of which we witnessed her guzzling down with gusto. You see, she made an offer and the man, perfectly reasonably, asked if it was still available. Of course, he wasn’t as physically attractive as the lute player so he deserved to get smashed with an instrument and violently punched for this transgression.

Amalia performed her woke sexual assault on the lute player because she assumed it was welcome as he made eye contact with her from the stage and smiled. Clearly a signal he wanted a woke sexual assault.

The fact an executive producer for The Nevers, Joss Whedon, is under considerably scrutiny for equally vile behavior seems all part and parcel for a world in which understanding and tolerance are preached by all sides but only shown to those who are in lockstep agreement.

This is not Anti-Woke Incel Propaganda

I’m sorry to break the bad news to you Incel maniacs. Just because it’s horribly wrong for Amalia to grope and assault the lute player doesn’t absolve you. If it’s wrong for Amalia, it’s wrong for you.

I consider myself woke in that I know transgenders, people of color, women, religious minorities, and various other groups face tremendous discrimination and violence in this world and this country. Deny it all you want, it happens, it is happening, and you are responsible for this environment.

The woke agenda is absolutely right. It’s the woke playbook imitating those it condemns which bothers me.

A Personal Interlude

There is something in human nature that seems to turn horrors inflicted on themselves into doing the same to others. I played sports. In sports there is hazing. I witnessed bizarre pseudo-sexual violence committed by older athletes on younger athletes more than once.

The absolute glee on the faces of those committing the assaults stays with me to this day. It is almost certain the offender was the victim just a few short years earlier.

Conclusion

Respect for others means respect for those with whom you disagree and dislike. It doesn’t mean respect for your circle of friends who sit around blaming everyone else for the world’s problems while slapping themselves on the backs and advocating for atrocities. You sicken me as much as does Amalia with her woke sexual assault.

All this being said, There is a great deal of hope for humanity. I think we are making progress. I think we will get to a good place, someday.

It doesn’t help when those advocating for change are happy to glorify violence and assault on those they despise. Yes, I’m talking to you, all of you.

Tom Liberman