Colin McEnroe Show: We Want Our Sports To 'Be Better'
Scandals on and off the field have put a dark cloud over sports.
Is football so inherently violent and dangerous that we shouldn't love it as much as we want to? Can it be made safer and still be football?
Is it time to forgive Michael Vick for running dogfights? Is it time to admit there is fatal characterological disorder in Brett Farve? Is there reason to hope that more women's college basketball will be able to compete with UConn and make things more interesting? Is there any common sense running through the rules about recruiting and paying college athletes? What rules should apply when an opposing coach suddenly has access to a team's list of plays?
These are just a few of the issues hashed and rehashed in an average week of sports coverage. There's a fascinating tension between our belief that sports can be a better place than the rest of life and our understanding that it usually, for some reason, isn't.
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Is it time to forgive
Is it time to forgive Michael Vick for running dogfights? Well, if I am going to decide this issue, I think this is not the time to forgive him because of the dogfighting scandal he have done. this makes me feel pity for the animals that he was used. If only the animals can speak, they will say that, Vick is excluded in the humane society for he have no right to abuse those living creature that Gos has created.
Uconn nutmegers
Yes, Jacquie Fernandes was from C t- but she was a walk on who then earned a scholarship. small distinction. i just meant Buck was the first Connecticut native recruited to play there since Maria Conlon. I think that's right someone will correct me if its not.
E-mail #2 from Karl
Re: Geno should "throw back some of his recruits."
Please bring up the idea of lowering the number of womens' college basketball scholarships. Geno Auriemma, among others, had been on record a few years ago for wanting to lower that number. (I don't know his current views, or if the NCAA is doing anything on the subject. It's not something which gets a lot of press.)
But Geno realizes that elite players are gravitating towards the top programs such as UConn, Tennessee, Stanford, North Carolina, Duke, Baylor and Maryland, and that's not good for the game. He doesn't want to do it unilaterally, but that someone with that kind of recruiting power wishes to give some of it back is not to be discounted.
PS In-state players for UConn? Jackie Fernandez was from in-state, I think, and she's more recent than ten years ago.
E-mail from Karl
Samarie Walker and Stefanie Dolson, two freshmen so new I haven't memorized their numbers, got a baptism by fire playing the most unique force in the women's game, before Thanksgiving. They did pretty well given the situation.
Griner, however, has much to recommend her besides her height. She's the exact opposite of that old story:
Tall kid: I can't shoot.
Coach: We can teach you to shoot.
Tall kid: I can't rebound.
Coach: We can teach you to rebound.
This continues until the exasperated coach finally says, "We can teach you everything except how to be 6'8"!"
Will UConn and Baylor meet again at the Final Four, will Griner stay at Baylor all four years, and do elite women basketballers carry insurance the way men in the college game do?
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