Arguably, Wichita already did its duty by the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame several years ago, investing $1.7 million in bonds to ready the former Abilene attraction’s current Old Town building. Nevertheless, the city now appears to have no choice but to cover the struggling hall’s $97,600 rent, which the City Council is expected to do Tuesday. Clearly, neither the city’s help nor the $250,000 allotted by the state Legislature last year has been enough to stabilize the Hall of Fame and assure its future. The hall is a nice asset for Wichita and Old Town, but it’s the state’s baby, having been created by the state in 1961 and affirmed as a state agency in 2000. If the hall is to survive, either the state or the state’s sports fans need to pay its way.
Wichita Wingnuts manager Kash Beauchamp (in photo) clearly put the new franchise on the map last week with his armpit- and shoe-assisted tantrum, which has been all over the national media (including YouTube) and prompted a richly deserved four-game suspension by the American Association. It’s hard to say what is worse — Beauchamp’s show of disrespect for the umpire and his unapologetic milking of the subsequent media attention, or the crowd’s delighted reaction. Sad to see America’s pastime tainted by behavior straight out of professional wrestling.
Congratulations to the Wichita State University baseball team. Not only did it win its NCAA regional Sunday, it did so in dramatic fashion — with a grand slam in the 10th inning against top-seeded Oklahoma State. The Shockers now advance to the super regional, which it might host if Florida State loses tonight in its regional. WSU is playing well at the right time, with strong pitching and timely hitting. Go, Shockers.
Danica Patrick has received lots of attention as a woman race-car driver in a male-dominated sport — but she’s been dogged by questions of whether she can win a big race. She put those questions to rest Sunday, crossing the finish line in the Japan 300 to become the first woman to win an Indy car race.
“This reaches outside racing,†Patrick said. “This is about finding something you love to do, and following through with it.â€
That’s a message every young girl needs to hear.
Congratulations to the Wichita State University men’s and women’s bowling teams for their fantastic seasons. The men’s team won its eighth national championship, advancing through the losers’ bracket to defeat Nevada-Las Vegas in the finals Saturday. The women’s team finished second, which is great but also a disappointment for a team hoping to defend last year’s title and earn its ninth championship. If the women had won, it would have been the first time since 1994 that men’s and women’s teams from the same school won the national titles. And who won them in 1994? WSU, of course.
The raucous protests over China hosting the Olympics and the torch relay debacle have several observers raising an interesting idea:
Why not return to the practice of simply having the torch travel from Greece to the host country?
Better yet, why not have a permanent home for the Olympics in Greece, which is after all the ancient inspiration of the modern Olympic Games?
This might help protect the integrity of the games by returning the spotlight to sports, instead of politics and nationalism.
Monday was a big night for Kansans, and especially Lawrence residents — so big that the University of Kansas gave its students the next day off. But Lawrence public schools didn’t cancel classes, and 2,134 of the district’s 10,000 students missed school that day, compared with 790 absences on average on recent Tuesdays.
Hillary Clinton is urging President Bush to boycott the Olympic Games’ opening ceremonies to protest China’s invasion of Tibet and human rights abuses. Bush has left open the possibility that he might not attend. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown already have made that decision (though Brown’s office says he’ll attend the closing ceremony).
Though there’s a significant difference between a president skipping an Olympics ceremony and a country boycotting an entire Games, boycotts should be viewed with skepticism generally. Why make the Games the place to take a stand on human rights?
President Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the 1980 games in the Soviet Union was grossly unfair to the hundreds of U.S. athletes who had trained for years for the event. And it didn’t have much of an impact, beyond punishing our athletes and encouraging a tit-for-tat response (the Soviets boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles games).
There are better ways to call attention to a country’s human rights record and hold its leaders accountable, through economic sanctions and other tools.
Poor Roy Williams just can’t win. Five years on, some University of Kansas fans can’t find it in their hearts to forgive him for leaving KU basketball for North Carolina — not even after KU’s drubbing of North Carolina in the Final Four game. Now some North Carolina fans are howling mad at Williams for his gracious gesture of wearing a KU logo sticker on his shirt during Kansas’ championship game Monday against Memphis. Williams’ critics need to cut him some slack.
Few were surprised this week to see Wichita State University lose its talented athletic director, Jim Schaus, to Ohio University. Schaus was a go-getter when he came to WSU — just the bold, enthusiastic leader the university needed to make the necessary tough decisions about hiring, firing, old Levitt Arena, football and more. Especially once the renovated and renamed Koch Arena opened in 2003 and Mark Turgeon’s Shockers made the Sweet 16 in 2006, it seemed a question of time before Schaus would depart. His legacy will be his clear vision and great expectations for WSU sports.
WSU president Don Beggs’ choice to succeed Schaus, government relations director Eric Sexton, came as a surprise. But Sexton’s record at WSU, extensive work in the community and dedication to WSU and Wichita are all impressive. Even if Sexton wasn’t the obvious replacement for Schaus, he could prove the right one.
Still marveling over Mario Chalmers’ miracle shot? Kansas City Star editorial cartoonist Lee Judge took it to the next logical step.
Never mind that Hillary Clinton didn’t win Kansas’ Democratic primary. She saw herself in Kansas’ come-from-behind win of the NCAA Championship. “A few of you were up late watching that game last night,” she told a gathering of the Communications Workers of America in Washington, D.C. “Great comeback, right? My kind of outcome.” To the union members, she added: “You know what it’s like to be told to go away, to quit. I know a little something about that, too.” Meanwhile, Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback have introduced a Senate resolution hailing the Jayhawks’ win. “This is a great day for KU and the state of Kansas. Rock Chalk Jayhawk,” Roberts said on the Senate floor.
If the Olympic torch relay is any indication, China faces a political firestorm as host of the 2008 Summer Games. The torch relay carriers were confronted by protesters in London Sunday and in Paris Monday, where police had to extinguish the flame several times to safeguard it from crowds protesting China’s invasion of Tibet and its human rights abuses.
China hopes the Olympics will burnish its rising stature as a world power, but the games already are turning into a public relations nightmare for China by showcasing the country’s human rights abuses.
True, the games should be about sports, but they’re also unavoidably wrapped up in global politics and prestige.
China is richly deserving of the protests.
Watch a video produced by The Eagle Opinion staff that has fun with the animosity some KU fans still feel toward former Jayhawk coach Roy Williams. Here is a sample of the lyrics (sung to tune of the Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Niceâ€):
I’m not ready to make nice
To that two-timing Williams
I’m still mad as hell
At that dirty Chapel-Hillian.
Well, at least the Legislature isn’t spending all its time on the Holcomb coal-plant issue. This week, the House debated a bill to encourage the Kansas State High School Activities Association to use KU’s Memorial Stadium and K-State’s Bill Snyder Family Stadium for state championship high school football games, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. Fortunately, the measure failed on its second vote, though only by 55-68. Supporter state Rep. Arlen Siegfreid, R-Olathe, said that playing at the stadiums would “create a wonderful lifetime experience for young people.†But the association noted that it’s less expensive and more convenient to play at smaller venues across the state. The main questions are: How is this the Legislature’s business? Doesn’t it have real problems to resolve?
To prove itself worthy of hosting the Olympics, China would lay off the human rights abuses and otherwise behave itself, or so the thinking went. But as the August games approach, the Chinese government seems intent on proving itself unworthy — violently cracking down on protests in Tibet and elsewhere, denouncing the Dalai Lama as “the devil,†censoring media and threatening to ban live television broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics. Other difficult issues have cropped up, too, including foul air, toxic toys, tensions over Taiwan and China’s support for the government of Sudan. A boycott seems an overreaction, but neither does it suffice for President Bush to argue, as his spokeswoman did last week, that the Olympics “should be about the athletes and not necessarily about politics.â€
Good for the Kansas State High School Activities Association for approving two proposals this week to prevent discrimination against sports officials. The proposals were in response to the recent refusal of St. Mary’s Academy near Topeka to allow a female official to work a boys’ basketball game, because the school didn’t want a woman to be in a position of authority over boys. Member schools are now required to accept qualified officials regardless of race, gender or any other factor that could be construed as discriminatory, Associated Press reported.
Kansas is getting another p.r. hit with the story circulating the national news and blogs this week about a private high school northwest of Topeka that wouldn’t allow a female referee to officiate a boys’ game because the school doesn’t allow women to be in authority over men. The Kansas State High School Activities Association is investigating the report and may prohibit St. Mary’s Academy from playing other teams in the association (though the small school typically only plays a couple of association schools each season).
For those interested, the New York Times has a photo slide show of the amazing play near the end of the Super Bowl when New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning somehow avoided getting sacked and then floated a long pass that receiver David Tyree caught by pinning the ball on top of his helmet. I didn’t really care who won the game, though I was pulling for the underdog Giants.
The person who fired illegally from a pickup truck into a field of goose decoys last month, killing a young hunter, doesn’t deserve to be called a hunter. He’s a poacher. A Topeka man was charged this week in the case, including for involuntary manslaughter, a felony.
This tragic story underscores the importance of observing game laws, which not only help preserve our state’s wildlife resources but also protect other hunters. Fortunately, the vast majority of hunters are safe afield and follow the law. As Eagle outdoors writer Michael Pearce recently observed, hunting is a safe sport. “Kansas sportsmen annually log more than 3 million days afield,†he wrote. “In that vast amount of time they average less than 20 nonfatal accidents and less than one fatality per year.â€
Those accidents are largely caused by people who don’t observe basic gun safety rules.
Thursday’s Orange Bowl between the KU Jayhawks and Virginia Tech Hokies put Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (in photo) in a tough spot: He grew up in Overland Park but holds a job that requires cheering for Virginia teams. He worked it out, though. “I root for the Jayhawks in basketball. I’ve never been a KU football fan,†he told the Washington Post. The KU victory left Kaine owing Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius a ham. If the Hokies had won, Kaine could be asking Sebelius now: Where’s the beef?
Congratulations to the Kansas Jayhawks for proving the doubters wrong and winning the Orange Bowl Thursday night. Many people questioned how good the team was because of its weak nonconference schedule and mediocre Big 12 opponents. But the Hawks proved they belong in a BCS bowl by defeating No. 5 Virginia Tech, 24-21, in a game KU led the entire way.
Of course, what made the 12-1 season so special was that KU wasn’t supposed to be any good this year, as is normally the case. As one fan told The Eagle Thursday, “KU, good in football? That doesn’t even make sense.”
It does now.
Last week’s Mitchell Report on steroid use in Major League Baseball told us what we already know: Athletes want to be the best, and many will do what it takes to make that happen, even if it means cheating.
While we’re conducting a steroids witch-hunt, do we also call into question exceptional athletes who, like Tiger Woods, undergo surgeries to improve eyesight, even beyond 20-20 vision? The better question: Would most people still be as excited about these sports if the participants were not so superhuman?
Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote, “We, the paying customers, don’t want normal-size athletes with normal abilities. We want to see supermen and superwomen performing super feats, and we’re willing to pay these gladiators a fortune. Why should they disappoint us? Why should we expect them to?â€
Posted by Kristin Mehler
Barry Bonds doesn’t deserve to bear all the weight of scrutiny and sanctions for steroid abuse in pro baseball. The long-awaited Mitchell report on steroid use among Major League Baseball players released Thursday named plenty of other big-name stars, most notably pitching legend Roger Clemens, whose mound performance showed "remarkable improvement" after he used the drug, according to the report.
That’s why steroids hurt — they work. Players who go by the rules rightly feel that doped athletes have an unfair advantage.
As the report shows, Bonds had plenty of company. Maybe the entire Steroids Era in baseball deserves an asterisk.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
As the Missouri-Kansas rivalry plays out in an epic football game Saturday, most Americans — and perhaps some Kansans — won’t realize it also goes deep into the nation’s history of abolition. Kansas’ anti-slavery border warriors even gave KU a name for its mascot, the Jayhawkers. The fear and loathing go way back but fit the mood this week, as the Wall Street Journal found, describing a Tigers fan wearing a University of Missouri football jersey with the name “Quantrill†(named for William Quantrill, whose 1863 guerrilla raid on Lawrence left 150 dead), then a University of Kansas shirt featuring an image of John Brown and the words “Kansas: Keeping America safe from Missouri since 1854.â€
There is room for argument about the better football team, but picking the better state history is no contest (even though the bloody incursions went both ways). We’re with Heather Knox, a KU alumna and accountant in Kansas City, Mo., who told the Journal: “They’re the slave state. We’re the free state. Look who won out in the end.â€
Posted by Rhonda Holman
Arguably, Wichita already did its duty by the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame several years ago, investing $1.7 million in bonds to ready the former Abilene attraction’s current Old Town building. Nevertheless, the city now appears to have no choice but to cover the struggling hall’s $97,600 rent, which the City Council is expected to do Tuesday. Clearly, neither the city’s help nor the $250,000 allotted by the state Legislature last year has been enough to stabilize the Hall of Fame and assure its future. The hall is a nice asset for Wichita and Old Town, but it’s the state’s baby, having been created by the state in 1961 and affirmed as a state agency in 2000. If the hall is to survive, either the state or the state’s sports fans need to pay its way.
