When a politician plays the “integrity card” on a Rock Star coach on behalf of a school that hired Bob Huggins you know its time for Randall Patrick McMurphy to run for Governor of West “Oh Lordy” Virginia. …. Sofas are aburning and fingers are apointin’ and BobLee is laffin’ and takin’ notes. …. Sportin’ Life and Dickie V jockey for headlines and common sense is nowhere to be found.
I’m relying on the patron saint of goofy metaphors to bless me on this one. The Okeefeenokee swamp boy has fallen into that vat of molasses again and can only pray that God will give him a mouth to fit the occasion.
There were a dozen or so ickily disingenuous rock star coaches that could have slithered their way to Ann Arbor reading the regular “lie to dem boys” script. The yuck factor for rock star coaches had already sunk to new depths thanks to Bobby Petrino. We could have left it right there and declared this season The Worst Ever for lying two-faced whistle-tootin’ weasels ….. but someone forgot to tell RichRod and the rest of the cast at Dogpatch University in Morgantown.
First …. That nice little town in western North Carolina is MorganTON ….. this week’s designated collegiate sports embarrassment is taking place in Mo-Town …. MorganTOWN. Blair Ellis and his pals in MorganTON want to be sure you know the difference.
I have actually lived in West Virginia. I left an ex-wife, two cats and half a set of silver goblets back there over a quarter of a century ago. Like everywhere else I’ve lived, it had its good points and helped mold me into the mound of festering cynicism you see in front of you today. States are like families …. There’s parts to be proud of and show off and parts you keep chained up in the root cellar. West Virginia is a tad unusual in that it seems to flaunt its half-wits and genetic oops. When a state’s primary exports are black lung disease and Robert “Sheets” Byrd you just know its Lunatic Fringe is going to be something special.
EVERY school has its unsavories. Most, like UNC, pretend theirs don’t exist. Some like NCSU hope visitors manage to avoid theirs. Some like Duke give theirs a cutesy name. And then there’s West Virginia, which apparently just doesn’t know any better.
When a school hires Bob Huggins as a basketball coach and brags about it you keep your eye on’em because Abby Normal is their Homecoming Queen.
You know it was bothering West Virginia to see all the rampant idiocy running amuck in “big time college football” and not be getting its fair share of the shame. Well …. “the sleeping giant” of collegiate sports ignominity is on Center Stage. Kindly Ol’ Bill Friday’s Nightmare has begun.
BREAKING NEWS !!!! ….. Name three things that “self-described filmmaker” Reille Hunter has achieved that neither Steve Spurrier NOR Rick Majerus ever could.
- Reille has been linked in a “tabloid” rumor as being involved in an illicit relationship w/ “the apple-cheeked fraud from Robbins”.
- Reille is six months pregnant.
- Reille is actually living AT GOVERNORS CLUB.
I’m getting a whole lot better at this Guess What Rock Stars Will Do Next stuff than I should be. Maybe I’m rising to the high expectations that all of you have that no matter how off-the-freakin-chart all this goes …. You just know I’ll leave a bread crumb trail to guide you back to what passes for normalcy in 2007. When Rich Rodriquez drove to Toledo on Friday I had a notion that it wasn’t to have lunch with Corporal Max Klinger at Tony Pacco’s. It wasn’t.
Trust me. I’ve met Klinger and eaten at Pacco’s AND Loma Linda. One needs better reasons to go to Toledo in December….. The Maize & Blue were desperate. If RichRod turned’em down they were planning to hire Barry Saunders to find’em a brutha. I don’t mean “the Barry Saunders” that played football in nearby Detroit. I’m talking Ol’ Sportin’ Life at The N&O. We’ll get back to Bojangles Barry in a minute.
As you all know by now ….. RichRod did the official “Peter In The Garden” routine. He denied three times that he was leaving, then, of course, he left. “Lyin’ to dem boys” has replaced “win one for the Gipper” as the official BCS slogan. RichRod put a unique twist to his “dream job” speech. Standing in front of the ubiquitous Michigan logo banner. Rich tearfully announced how happy he was to LEAVE his “dream job” and come to Ann Arbor. Then someone hit the TILT button and it got crazy.
When a politician (the Guvnor of West Virginia) condemns a football coach for not keeping his word you just know to “keep your fork” because there’s gonna be a food fight. Governor Phoghorn Leghorn stopped just short of burning a sofa on the steps of the Governor’s double-wide in Charleston to suck up to the Mountaineer faithful who, by then, were threatening RichRod’s wife and family with bodily harm. But somehow I kept sensing “there’s more to come”. With all of NCAA Nation watching them, West Virginia wasn’t about to disappoint.
This whole Rock Star Coaching Circus crap is a relatively new “sport”. Every “next one” writes a new chapter in the How To manual for coaches, agents, ADs and University Administrators. If RichRod’s Ruse works it will become the norm for all hightailin’ Rock Stars yet to hightail. Nearbout anything bright and shiny will work to juice up a loonie mob.
Just a few years ago the drill was simple (1) swear on a stack of Bibles that you were staying …. Then (2) hop on the slimey booster’s G-3 idling on the tarmac and get the hell outta NoWhereVille. The soul-less rock stars then adopted the Robert Irsay ploy of pack up in the middle of the night and get out of Baltimore to protect your family ….. UNLESS, as is the case with many rock star coaches, you intend to ditch the now middle-aged mother of your children for the nubile baton-twirling skankette whose name ends in an “i”. In which case you leave the soon-to-be-ex wife to fend for herself against the enraged zombies at the school you just swore you would never leave.
Bobby Petrino put in a new wrinkle. He had a flunky put “I’m gone” memos in the Falcons lockers on top of his earlier “we are famileeee” memo.
Now we have They Did Too, We Did Not, You Did Too Pissing Contest which I personally consider a masterful strategy.
Even football coaches are smart enough to know that ADs and University Presidents are about as popular as Secretarys of Defense and sitting Vice Presidents. The average goggle-eyed spittle spewing loonie HATES ADs and University Presidents. Every goggle-eyed spittle spewing loonies, that has a job, hates his job because it is simply another glaring failure on his curriculum vitae rap sheet. The one job EVERY loonie craves is being AD at his school of choice. Hating the current AD might somehow result in that happening. It never has but one never knows. So RichRod and his lawyer come up with this whizbang strategy to “blame the university muckety mucks”.
The concept of nerdy academic bureaucrats NOT doing something is hardly a stretch for most observers. That bureaucrats ever DID do something would be incredulous.
America woke up to two glaring headlines on Tuesday morning ……
(1) RichRod Claims WVU Administrators Are Lying Weasels and
(2) Britney Spears’ 16 y/o Sister Is Pregnant. (There is no link, at this time, to Apple Cheeks.)
Talk about a double barrel shot to the solar plexus. Yet another skanky tramp in Kenwood Louisiana. Say it ain’t so.
Did those spineless WVU admins “lie” to RichRod? Who knows? Who cares? Those spineless lyin’ admins have about as much chance of a fair trial as Barry Saunders has of being Grand Dragon of a Derm’s Klan Klavern.
Every pancake, regardless of how thin, has two sides and so does Rock Star RichRod vs Spineless Lyin’ Administrators. But it’s so much more fun to blame nerdy nebbishes. Who got the wedgie in PE …. The QB or the nerd ….. no contest.
Unless his name is Ron Wellman (or Norwood Teague) NO ONE ever believes an Athletics Director. They are like Democratic Presidential candidates without a CNN in their backpocket. The only administrators with lower approval ratings than a major college AD are University Chancellor/Prezs. Only Harry Reid could truly appreciate what it’s like to have Fred Rogers throw you out of the Neighborhood. IRS agents and clumsy dentists are more popular. By just putting out the possibility that “those spineless bureaucrats lied to me” and that’s why I HAD TO LEAVE gives RichRod enough wiggle room to clean out his locker without a police escort.
Meanwhile around the Tar Hell Nation, loonies are muttering “that idiot Baddour finally did something right” by paying Butch’s ransom. Now “that idiot Baddour” better build Butch all that stadium bling bling he wants or poor poor misled Butch might HAVE TO LEAVE too ….. Build Dickie Build !!! ….. but where’s the $150 LARGE to pay for it? Never mind that Dickie ,….. just START BUILDING before ANOTHER 5-STAR Blue Chipper turns us down. …… by golly!
Apparently UNC lost some 5-Star nasty boy this week and in his “grab the cap out of the bag” show he actually said “Carolina does not have enuff stadium bling bling …. I’m going to South Beach”. Maybe it would be better to forget the stadium bling and just replace all the ugly hippie wimmen in Carrboro with Super Models !!! All in favor ……..
The latest favorite phrase “the $6,000,000 buy-out clause” is now officially even more meaningless than it was a week ago. “They lied” beats “buy-out” in the court of loonie opinion. When Coach Rock Star gets antsy he can always find some uncrossed “t” or undotted “i” and claim he was LIED TO. The fact that ADs and University Prezs earned their much-maligned reputations for general incompetence by quite often being incompetent will make Coach Rock Star’s ruse all the more credible.
So you’re saying WOW …. The Rock Star coaches are nothing but blow-dried lying mercenaries. The administrators are clueless klutzes. Whatta we gonna do BobLee? I know not what course others may take ….. but I’m not writing a check for $150,000,000. That’s a start.
It’s rare that two guys as universally unpopular as Barry Saunders and Dick Vitale are above-the-fold on the same day. It happened Tuesday.
Dick, who I don’t hate, has lesions on his vocal chords and must have surgery immediately. Doctors hope he is well and back to work by February. Across America, loonies are muttering “I don’t really hope he dies but if he does he deserves to because he hates my team ….” Rough crowd! Dick Vitale doesn’t “hate” anybody. If Dick has a hangable vice it is that in his rush to praise every coach in America he overlooks the quite horrid bad guys like Tarkanian, Huggins, Sampson et al. Dick does college BB a disservice by never discussing its glaring shortcomings. As far as hating a performer’s public persona …. I don’t like Oprah.
Barry Saunders, as I must remind you, is a black columnist for the N&O. He was hired because he is Black and he is really good at pissing off the white folks among N&O readers. Yesterday he wrote a column calling Duke and Joe Alleva all sorts of Barry-esque smart uppity black columnist names for not hiring a Black coach …. Specifically for not hiring Rod Broadway. Saunders’ argument had some merit and the issue bears thought but Barry, as always, is more interested in being the smart-ass black columnist than in making any worthwhile contribution to the community.
Barry Saunders their smart-ass black columnist notwithstanding …. The John Drescher Era as Editor of The N&O continues to score high marks. In his Sunday editorial column John rose to a level of journalistic integrity that his predecessor, Melanie Sill, was incapable of. John admitted that the N&O jumped the gun on the Nifong Mess without waiting for “facts” to interfere with how the N&O “hoped” it happened.
BobLee gives out kudos to Erskine Bowles and to the Editor of the N&O ….. and who says pigs aren’t flying to Hell to ice skate?
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Juan Antonio Samaranch & Lord Killanin were notorious IOC fops.
In a not so surprising move, the Washington Redskins are finally dropping their ethno-controversial team name. The “Redskins” will become The Washington Seans in yet another bit of uber-tribute to slain DB Sean Taylor. Plan to also rename the city Sean DC have been submitted for approval.
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