Is the NCAA a Non-profit organization?

According to reports Alabama recently offered Miami Dolphins head coach, Nick Saban,  the head football coaching job.  Reports in a Miami  paper said that Saban was offered a contract worth $5 million a year and a $7 million bonus just for signing his name.  I can’t think of any non-profit organizations who pay anyone on their payroll near a million a year, much less $7 million for coming to work for them.   With coaches salaries sky-rocketting in both basketball and football the NCAA is going to have some larger problems if they don’t come up with some sort of solution to overpaying coaches. 

When first informed of the blogging assignment I wasn’t to happy, but thought it would be an easy task to take care of every week.  But in the end I have actually grown to enjoy blogging.  Each week I would spend a great amount of time finding articles or stories that I found enteresting enough to write about.  This assignment by far gave me a different outlook into the sporting industry.  I felt that rather than just having an opinion on a topic in the sporting industry, blogging made me attempt to find more info on my opinion to back it up.  I always thought that blogging was mostly just a waste of time, but now that I have my own page to blog on it may become something that I do with more frequency.  And I’m sure that writing my opinion on sporting events will be very beneficial to me at a later part of my life, wether I go into marketing, sports information, or communications,  how you choose and how succesful you are with getting actoss your message is vastly important.  That is the main thing that I feel I have accomplished from this assignment. 

Vick Factor

When the Falcons swapped first round picks in 2001 with the San Diego Chargers, most thought that moving up to the #1 pick from #5 was a great move.  Everyone knew that they planned on taking Virginia Tech quaterback Michael Vick who had only started 20 games in college, but made such unbeleivable runs that many felt he was going to revolutionize the position.  The Chargers moved down to 5 with the trade and also picked up some extra picks.  To bad for them that they got stuck with some lesser hyped running back, named Ladamian Tomlinson (LT), who this season set a record for fastest to reach 100 TD’s.  Not to bad, and ever since he was drafted #5 overall he has led the Chargers in rushing every season.  Mike Vick may be undefendable and make unbelievable runs, but i’m sure that he hasn’t made close to as many spectacular runs as LT has.  LT is also 7-9 with 6 td’s passing in his career and he’s on pace right now to easily break the single season TD record.  And the most important thing in any sport is W-L’s.  Since the 2001 NFL Draft took place the Chargers are 47-44(9-2 this season, largely because of LT) and the Falcons are one game under .500 at 45-46 (5-6 this season, Vick inability to pass isn’t the only problem, but it doesn’t make them any better).

FSU

For a team that isn’t even bowl eligible yet Florida State is sure receiving a ton of press on the week of the biggest non-bowl game that I can remember in the 24 years of my life. Saturday they will play against Western Michigan for their sixth win to make them bowl eligible to continue a streak that started in ‘82. But that’s not the biggest news coming out of Seminole nation this week. Offensive coordinator Jeff Bowden, and son of head coach Bobby Bowden, has announced his plans to resign at the end of the season which leads to more distractions that the team doesn’t need. He apologized for the distraction, but I’m sure the $537,000 buyout doesn’t distract him much. The early talk is that Valdosta State head coach Chris Hatcher is the leading candidate to take over the job next season. He has had 68-10 record in his six years at Valdosta which is a .870% win percentage, which is tops in the nation at any level. Since his arrival at Valdosta the offense has been potent and has also won a Division II national championship. His resume is very deep including stints at Kentucky (coaching Tim Coach) and UCF. With this experience and the potential of heading up the FSU offense next season it could be said that he might be the leading candidate to overtake Bowden when he decides to step down or is booted after having a few more seasons like this one.

There’s No Crying in Basketball

Through the first 51 games of the 06-07 NBA season there have been 122 technical fouls compared to 66 through 50 games last season.  This has led to the players union director Billy Hunter asking David Stern to have the officials lighten up.  The reasoning is that every ‘tech’ a player receives he is fined and Hunter is claiming that this is an unfair labor practice.  Once again the NBA has a problem with it’s character.  Instead of the players responding to the referees trigger finger when it comes to calling technical fouls by calming down their emotions, they would rather whine about it.   Players are saying that it restricts their emotions on the court, but I don’t remember Jordan throwing the ball off the bottom of the goal after the opposing team scores a meaningless basket in the second quarter.  The NBA already has enough character issues to deal with on and off the court and every time that David Stern attempts to improve the image of the NBA he has to put up a fight.  The NBA is digging itself into a deep hole with its problems and the dress code and more technical fouls are going to be the cure unless the players are on-board, which it might be awhile before this group is on-board for any type of help.

World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party

This is what most college football fans have come to known the week long celebration in Jacksonville before the UGA and University of Florida annual meeting.  That is until both school presidents decided that this gives their respective institutions a bad name and that it is causing many drinking related accidents among students.  So what do they supose that it is called.  The World’s Largest Outdoor Picnic or The Worlds Biggest Outdoor non-Alcholic Party(sponsored by O’Douls).  The point is that even with the station broadcasting the game not calling it the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Pary” most people still do.  ESPN and other stations running highlights of the game still referred to it by its old name that is sure to be around long after both school presidents are forgotten. 

Growing MLB trend

Do you remember the in the movie “Major League 2″ when the players show up to the field one day and the outfield wall is covered in ads for plumbers, electricians, and local eating establishments?  The players felt as if they had been sent back down to the minors.  Unfortunatley for them it doesn’t seem like MLB is to far from that.  I guess it started with Sportscenter anchors saying, “He goes shopping at the gap” when a player would hit the ball to the right or left center field gap.  That spurred The Gap (clothing store) to place their ads up on the walls in what baseball fans called the gap.  Now the trend has taken over baseball with countless amounts of businesses being represented.  Its not just the walls that are being taken away from.  Scoreboards, pitch counts, big screens, and the only real reason it seemed that the Atlanta Braves put up the screen that circles around the stadium is so that they could benefit from more advertising dollars.  Hopefully soon we’ll see an end to the madness, but so far the dollars are beating out the purity of the game at the major league level. 

Miami Football

Once again the University of Miami football team has, dropped the ball.  This being the first time since I can remember that the ‘Canes aren’t in the top 25 should be the perfect time for this storied college program to rebuild its reputation. To bad that they put football games ahead of educating their student athletes between right and wrong on the football field but more importantly in society.  The ‘Canes should have paid attention to the actions taken by the Florida International University officials.  The school has announced that two players will be dismissed from the team, but i Maybe some of the 13 U0fM players deserve only the one game suspension dealt out by the ACC commish, but swinging a helmet and running around stomping players that are already on the ground is grounds for dismissal from the team.

USA not #1

At the end of last month the United States Ryder Cup team lost their for the third straight time and 5 of the last 6 competitions.  Some aren’t suprised with the results even though we are home to Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.  But we should be upset.  It would appear that in almost every sport we are producing some of the greatest ’stars’ in the sports, but not any winning teams.  Our basketball team is probably the best example of this drop-off.  Coming in third in the FIBA Mens World Championship behind Greece and Spain after finishing third in the 2004 Olympics.  After winning the gold in the 2000 Olympics our record over the past 14 Olympics was 109-2.  Thats not just a drop-off its more of a collapse.  And in America’s favorite pastime the trend continues.  Not even advancing to the semi’s in the 1st World Baseball Classic.  I’m not saying that we should have won this event, but the LEAST we could have done was to beat Canada.  This is a problem and maybe we should begin entering the champions of each respective league into this competetions.  Teams like the Patriots and White Sox who have a team first mentality instead of star studded teams who are only worried about their own playing time.

Notre Dame/PSL?s

Next season Notre Dame will sell 5,000 season tickets to fans, which will mark the first season in 30 years.  The main reason for this change is the more than $40 million in repairs to their “sacred” football field.  Once again its all about money in college football though as besides the $413 it costs for season tickets this season, buyers will have to pay an annual fee of $2,000 for sideline seats, $1,500 for seats in the corners, and $1,250 for end zone seats.  And thats per seat.  If they just set a flat rate at $1,250 for all 5,000 seats then that would give them $6.25 million before even selling the actual tickets.  Guess the football team and boosters can stop having car washes and bake sales on campus to help raise funds for the needy football team.