Weekly Sporties

-On Monday the NCAA dropped the hammer on Penn State for "lack of institutional control" regarding their handling of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Among the penalties are $60 million in fines which will be given to charities benefiting victims of sexual abuse, a four-year bowl ban and loss of scholarships for those same four years (which kind of makes the bowl ban redundant). The penalties were pretty unprecedented, but in some minds they didn't go far enough, because Penn State is still playing football. There were some people who wanted the NCAA to institute the so-called "Death Penalty" and shut the program down for a couple of years. Whether you think they should have done that or not is a separate issue - all we're dealing with here is that I would like to ask is that going forward we stop suggesting that as an option because if the NCAA didn't do it here, they are never going to do it again. If you watch the "Pony Express" documentary about the one and only time a program was given the death penalty, everyone made it clear that in the aftermath the NCAA thought it was too harsh and never wanted to use it again. Not to mention, with the way schools sign contracts to play one another and TV deal are structured around those games, I don't even think it could be done. It would create more problems for schools which weren't involved in any shenanigans than it would for the team which is suspended. The NCAA obviously like to have the specter of the death penalty to keep programs in line, but I think this makes it fairly clear it will never actually get used, so let's stop pretending it's a possibility.

-I could also use a little less grandstanding by the NCAA regarding these penalties, because while they stood up there and claimed these measures were designed to send a message to every school that football shouldn't be bigger than academics or preparing kids for the future, they also declared that any Penn State player who wished to transfer could do so without having to sit out the normally required year. That year of being ineligible to play was designed to keep coaches from poaching off other rosters and by removing it they basically declared Penn State open for college football's version of free agency. Within a couple days opposing coaches were hanging out in Penn State's parking lot, trying to talk to players. And while coaches from Wisconsin and Northwestern has said they have no plans to actively try and recruit players away from Penn State, other schools don't seem to have a problem with it. For example, USC is supposedly going hard after Penn State's best player, running back Silas Redd. (Considering USC just completed its own bowl ban for the same lack of institutional control, let's all step back and appreciate the irony.) So, the NCAA may want to take the moral high ground here, but in the same breath they also put the emphasis right back on the field of play. Not only that, but they made it slightly worse because now the bidding war for these players, normally done in back rooms, is taking place for everyone to see. If the NCAA really wanted to take the focus away from football this sure was a funny way of showing it.

-Taking the (increasingly) short jump to pro football, the Patriots reported for training camp this week. And while there may be one or two veterans who aren't in shape or ready to play, for the most part it is all quiet up in Foxboro. In fact, you could make the case that the biggest news of the week was the revelation that wide receiver Wes Welker got a hair transplant during the offseason and is so pleased with the results that he plans to do commercials for the doctor in the future. Now, obviously Welker is not the first athlete to get hair transplants nor is he the most vocal about it. However, the difference is that most of the athletes who have done commercials for products like this in the past, such as Wade Boggs, waited until after they had retired. The reason is quite simple: they knew the opposing crowds were going to be searching for anything they could to use to get under their skin with creative heckling and saw no reason to help them by providing material. By announcing this now, Welker is in for a long year of balding jokes. But, if he can live with it than I don't see what the problem is. I know that Patriot fans are willing to overlook stuff like this as long as the team is winning. (Don't forget, for a few years our quarterback played with hair long enough it could have been braided and no one said a peep.) Not to mention, the team and Welker are reportedly far apart on a contract extension, so Wes could probably use some extra cash wherever he can get it. And thanks to this hair transplant, think of all the money he will save on hats!

-A couple days ago Carolina Panthers Pro Bowl center Ryan Kalil took out a full-page ad in the Charlotte Observer in which he guaranteed that not only would the Panthers be going to the Super Bowl this year, they were going to win it. This caused quite stir when it came out, but I don't really understand why. First off, you have to like his enthusiasm and it is warranted. Any outside observer would tell you there is a lot to like about the Panthers this year. Cam Newton set all kinds of records in his first year in the league and that was without the benefit of a full training camp, so expecting him to be even better this coming season is not out of the question. Everyone seems to think Carolina is a team on the rise. (Though maybe not that much of a rise. The flip side of that coin is now the league has a year of tape to learn how to defend against Newton.) Secondly, I never understand why people are surprised when players expect to have a good season. To me it is never news when a player or coach guarantees a good year - the news would be if a player had a press conference to declare he thought the team was going to stink. The only troublesome part of this to me was the revelation that Kalil took out this ad with his own money and without telling anyone in the Panthers organization. If I were a Panthers fan (not just related to one), the fact that the team's center is the one with the lofty expectations would concern me, but the fact he didn't want to run it passed anyone first would make me downright nervous. Just what kind of marketing department do they have over there? I'm left to wonder if all the previous promotional items were along the lines of "Panthers Football: Be Realistic!" or "9 and 7 is still technically winning season!" Don't be afraid of greatness, guys.

-Early in the week Seattle Mariners superstar Ichiro Suzuki was traded to the New York Yankees in exchange for some minor league players. Naturally, ESPN was all abuzz with the news, because Ichiro has been one of the biggest names in the game for the last decade. The only problem is that his game hasn't lived up to his name for many years now. However, that didn't stop analysts from dissecting this trade from every angle for several hours. Now, I can't totally blame them - this is a big-name player going to one of the most famous franchises on the planet. Also, it is possible that Ichiro's lackluster play has been a direct result of being mired in a losing situation. He certainly wouldn't be the first guy to see his career get rejuvenated by playing for the Yankees. Still, this got me thinking about how athletes, but especially baseball players, seem to be allowed to coast off their past accomplishments for a lot longer than they probably should. I think the main reason ESPN got their knickers in a twist is that people actually know the principle player involved in this trade, whereas more often than not baseball trades involve a lot of names people don't know, because they are prospects for the future. It isn't until they have made it big in the majors that people remember they were once part of a deal for a bigger name. Last week I mentioned that Bud Selig wanted to protect the sanctity of baseball uniforms by not allowing teams to sell advertisements on them, feeling as though certain jerseys were too special, no matter who was wearing them. Well, if all this buzz over a guy hitting .260 does nothing else, it should remind Selig that every once in a while the name on the back can be just as important as the one on the front.

-Last night the NBA released its schedule for the upcoming year. This made me think about how in the last few years people have made a bigger and bigger deal out of schedule release day and I don't know why. You can marginally understand it with football, because there are only 16 games and people need to know if they have any prime-time games to schedule around. But, the NBA had a countdown going to their schedule release, which just confused me because there might not be a more meaningless regular season than the NBA. I could tell you right now which 16 teams were going to make the playoffs and, barring some kind of landscape-shifting injury, I would probably be right about 14 of them, so why does the order in which they play one another honestly matter? I guess some people care about the Christmas Day lineup, but considering I don't like that the NBA plays on Christmas I am not one of them. Honestly, there are only a handful of games to get genuinely excited about during the months of November - May and the rest of the time they are surrounded by mostly mundane contests, so why should I get excited about being able to see when the Celtics are playing the Suns, a team which is not a rival of any kind? Give me a couple weeks notice, tops. On top of that, the games don't start for another three and a half months, which is way too much time to get me excited. I don't even like movie trailers if the films they are promoting aren't coming out for more than two weeks. Wake me when the teams get to training camp, then I will start looking at when the games will be played.

-So, the 2012 London Olympics are starting tonight (which is why we're doing the Sporties a day early, just in case you were wondering), but the games are already over for one member of the Greek contingent. Triple jumper Voula Papachristou was left at home after she sent out a racist tweet concerning the number of African immigrants in her home country. You can argue whether the penalty fit the crime some other time but to me the bigger issue is that once again, we are reminded that Twitter should really only be left in the hands of professionals (there is also a conspiracy theory that she was suspended for backing the wrong political party, which is why athletes should never discuss politics either). Honestly, I have yet to hear one positive story about something an athlete said through social media. Usually it is something terrible or offensive, which is quickly deleted and followed by the standard defense of "That wasn't me - my account was hacked!" There is really nothing to be gained from these athletes being on Twitter and especially not this close to the Games. This woman probably trained her entire life for this moment and now she has basically wasted all that time. Admittedly, she probably wasn't a favorite to win a medal, but her odds were much better a week ago than they are now. All her hard work down the drain because of an attempt to be funny. Maybe next Olympics she'll know to keep her thoughts to herself until after the race. The good news is that she has another four years to figure out a way to really nail that punchline.