Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh is still playing the victim card in his failed attempt to buy a share of the St. Louis Rams. Rather than own up to his past racial comments, he blames his partners’ decision to drop him on the media’s contempt for conservatives (which, apparently, doesn’t extend to all the other NFL owners who are conservatives). Limbaugh wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary that claims of racism are “being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us.” He even likened criticism he received to attempts to smear Clarence Thomas when he was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court. “These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society,” Limbaugh wrote.
Given all the times Rush Limbaugh has dragged out old quotes to demagogue liberals, it’s rich that he is so upset about being sacked in his effort to buy the St. Louis Rams over racial comments he has made over the years. “This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative,” he said Wednesday on his radio show. “Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we’re going to have.”
Barack Obama far outraised John McCain among individual donors last year. Yet college football and NFL head coaches (and their wives) favored McCain and the GOP in their giving far more than Obama and the Democrats. “Could it be that football coaches, just by the nature of the job, are more comfortable on the right end of the political spectrum?” asked the Wall Street Journal’s Steve Kornacki. Former University of Nebraska coach and former GOP congressman Tom Osborne (in photo) drew a link between conservative principles and what it takes to rise to become a head football coach. “I think that background — adherence to discipline, sometimes sacrifice, loyalty to core values — those things tend to have people move in that direction,” Osborne said. He also joked, “I’m sure many who are more liberal would say it’s because they got hit in the head too much.”
College football should have a playoff system. But is this really an issue for Congress? Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, held a antitrust subcommittee hearing this week on the fairness of the Bowl Championship Series. He is still upset that the undefeated University of Utah wasn’t selected for this past season’s BCS national championship game. Hatch complained that smaller conference schools are unfairly excluded, but the University of Nebraska’s chancellor responded: “There realistically is something Utah could do. They could play the schedule Nebraska played.”
Undocumented payments. A questionable $500,000 loan. A bank account unreviewed by the university controller that was used to make more than $1 million in payments a year. These and other revelations in the Kansas Board of Regents’ audit of Kansas State University suggest, at best, that oversight of KSU’s athletic department needed to be tighter in recent years. As our editorial today concludes: “Winning sports teams are important to the state universities, boosting fundraising and recruitment as well as school spirit. But if an athletic department behaves unethically or worse, the taint spreads across and beyond campus, and starts to erode public trust in what is a public institution.”
The athletic corporations at the state’s big universities have long lacked transparency. The Kansas Legislature had to pass the “Lew Perkins law” in 2005 — named after the University of Kansas’ athletic director — to force them to disclose compensation agreements. But Kansas State University’s athletic corporation was so secretive that even K-State’s president and attorneys didn’t know about an agreement to pay former football coach Ron Prince (in photo) an additional $3.2 million to buy out his contract. K-State is suing to break the agreement, and it forced former athletic director Bob Krause, who made the deal, to resign from his current position at the university. But K-State, KU and Wichita State University need to make their athletic corporations more transparent. The combination of big budgets and little public scrutiny invites problems.
Congratulations to the men’s and women’s bowling teams at Wichita State University for both winning the United States Bowling Congress Intercollegiate Team Championships — the ninth national title for each program. It was the second consecutive national title for the men, while the women won their third title in five seasons. Is there any college program in the nation that dominates a sport more than WSU’s bowling teams?
The Wall Street Journal tried to calculate whether millionaire college basketball coaches are earning their money. It ranked each coach based on his salary compared with his school’s Ratings Percentage Index — or the team’s winning percentage against the difficulty of its schedule. The paper arbitrarily based its Elite Coach Value Score on how much the coaches are being paid for each point their schools’ RPI is above 50. The University of Kansas had a three-year RPI index of 65.2, the fourth highest. But coach Bill Self’s $3 million guaranteed salary gave him a coach-value ranking of 20th. The coach with the highest value ranking was Bruce Pearl of Tennessee. North Carolina coach Roy Williams was No. 8.
“Understandably, parents worry that their kids will emulate their idol, but the problem isn’t Phelps, who is in fact an adult. The problem is our laws — and our lies,” columnist Kathleen Parker wrote about swimmer Michael Phelps being photographed inhaling pot from a bong. Parker argues that “it’s time to recognize that all drugs are not equal — and change the laws accordingly.”
I hope Bill Snyder has success coaching football again at Kansas State University. But he and the university are taking a big risk. Snyder is putting his legacy and the fans’ good will on the line in coming back to coach. And K-State is betting that the 69-year-old will be able to turn the football program around once more. Snyder’s final two seasons as head coach weren’t successful. Will he do better now?
A computer hacker has uncovered online what he says are official Chinese documents that prove that Chinese gymnast He Kixen, the gold medalist in the uneven bars, is indeed underage, as many people suspect. Chinese birth records seem to show that she is 14 — not the minimum age of 16 required to compete.
The International Olympic Committee said Friday that it has ordered an investigation of He to clear up “discrepancies” and put an end to the controversy.
Meanwhile, IOC president Jacques Rogge went out of his way Thursday to criticize Jamaican sprint superstar Usain Bolt for his showboating after winning the 100 meter dash.
Nonsense. Bolt played by the rules and earned the right to celebrate his historic achievement. The question is, do He and other Chinese gymnasts deserve their medals?
Why haven’t there been any protests during the Olympics in the government-approved protest areas at three Beijing parks? Simple: As of Wednesday, the Chinese government hadn’t granted a single permit to protest. And it sentenced two elderly Chinese women to a year of labor re-education after they wouldn’t stop trying to get a permit, the Washington Post reported. So much for openness.
Coach Bill Self’s new contract with the University of Kansas — $30 million over 10 years — is nothing short of jaw-dropping.
I know the arguments: Sports programs pull in millions of dollars for the university. The coach’s salary is partly paid with private money, endorsements, etc. And Self delivered a national championship last year for KU — itself worth millions of dollars for the school. The university wants to keep him.
All the same — the idea of college basketball coaches making CEO salaries strikes me as ridiculous. Especially when heads of medical schools, top professors and other faculty make far less.
Where does it stop? Anybody else think our higher education priorities are out of whack?
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.
