--noun
1. an animal or other organism that feeds on dead organic matter.
2. a person who searches through and collects items from discarded material.
3. a street cleaner.
4. Chemistry . a chemical that consumes or renders inactive the impurities in a mixture.
See also: John Calipari and Jim Calhoun
Origin: 1996 Final Four; Massachussetts; 2008 Final Four; Memphis, Tennessee; Ongoing use both formal and colloquial in Hartford, Connecticut.
In other words, my thoughts on the 2011 Final Four can be found here.
10 comments:
Come to think of it...I think Rick Pitino and Bruce Pearl may also qualify.
April 2, 2011 at 11:55 AMWhy not throw Ol' Roy in there as well? And yes, I'm bringing up his time at Kansas.
April 3, 2011 at 1:33 AMokay, correction: let's add every division 1 coach.
April 3, 2011 at 8:54 AMLangston: I'm assuming you're bringing up the ticket scandal. One thing that separates Roy from most of the guys above is his graduation rate. I'm a big believer that the priorities of a program can be tied to that stat, if only loosely.
I'm bringing up Deshawn Stevenson's SAT score, the gifts and cash given to graduating players, and the ticket scalping scandal. A high graduation rate is great and all, but they've been flawed for so long that you can't really judge a coach for a bad one either.
April 3, 2011 at 11:42 AMWell, if that's the route we want to go, then Coach K needs to be added too for the Maggette ordeal.
April 3, 2011 at 12:26 PMalso, I'm not saying grad rates are a magic bullet or anything of the sort, but they do indicate to a certain degree how a program views its athletes, especially when looking at the rates for those who have no shot at the nba.
April 3, 2011 at 12:27 PMMaybe we should just judge coaches on the Jim Harrick/Pete Carroll/Kelvin Sampson scale of cheating. If it's not anywhere near some of the shit they pulled, it's not cheating but instead rule bending (as long as they self-report the violations). If it's comparable, they're dirty scavengers.
April 3, 2011 at 1:03 PMi think we should also clarify that coaches alone are not to blame. boosters, college presidents, parents, etc are as well. but uconn and uk playing each other in a final 4, plus jim tressel and ohio st in football, just brings all of this to a head where there is something obviously wrong with college athletics and the ncaa is a rotting corpse, which allows for scavengers to pick at the crumbs of the body.
April 3, 2011 at 5:45 PMfor me, the gray area of student-athlete just needs to go away. i think my guilt as an educator would be less if they were just athletes and the colleges paid them. then i would not look at a statistic such as two thirds of pro athletes going bankrupt after they leave the sport as some sort of verdict on how sports and academia failed to build well-rounded individuals.
i would like to think that an education would be pay enough, but i've seen kids with no talent forced through a system, so it's not surprising at all that kids with talent at something would be given some sort of golden ticket.
anyway, whether or not coaches are guilty of cheating or just turning a blind eye, playing two wrongs make a right just makes all of us sound like Auburn and Alabama fans.
I think paying players would be way to complicated to implement and would never work. Coaches and programs would still find ways to cheat even if players were paid.
April 4, 2011 at 2:56 AMRuss: It would definitely have to be pay for performance. (joking)
April 4, 2011 at 9:06 PMPost a Comment