Weekly Sporties

-The biggest news in college sports this week came when Notre Dame announced that it was leaving the Big East and joining the ACC in all sports except football, where they will remain an Independent. Personally if they were going to switch conferences I would have preferred they join the Big Ten to keep most of their natural rivals on the schedule, but the ACC is still a fine conference with many good teams and I'm sure they will make new rivals in the coming years. As much as I do not like change, it is not like they are losing any big traditions by departing the Big East. Despite playing there for almost 20 years they never developed any rivalries like people would have expected, which is why I'm not all that sad to see them go. Not to mention their biggest battles in basketball the last few years have been with Pittsburgh and Syracuse, both of whom were already headed to the ACC anyway. But even though I think the move will benefit all of Notre Dame's teams, football remains king, which is why the most important part of this story is that even though they will be scheduling 5 ACC teams per season, the University will still be free to fill out its remaining schedule against traditional rivals such as USC, Stanford, Michigan, Michigan State and Navy. While they may not play all those teams every year, they will still be in a regular rotation, which is all I care about. They won't be able to play for an ACC Championship, but they will remain in the discussion for a major bowl should the season be a success. Overall I think this is both good for the ACC and good for Notre Dame.

-Only slightly less important was the news that basketball Hall of Famer Jim Calhoun retired as head coach at UConn. Normally this would have been the bigger news, but speculation about this move has been simmering for a long time, so it is not exactly surprising. Most people are assuming Calhoun knew he was retiring months ago but waited until the season was only a few weeks away to formally step down because he wanted assistant Kevin Ollie to take over and the Athletic Director wanted to conduct a national search for a new coach. Well, Calhoun got his way as Ollie was named coach, even if it is only on a one-year deal. (Considering the rumors that the two of them never got along, I guess you could consider this Calhoun's final middle finger to the AD.) In the last couple of seasons Calhoun's reputation had taken some hits, especially since UConn is ineligible for postseason play this year due to their continued poor graduation rate, causing some to compare Calhoun's retirement to Pete Carroll leaving USC right before the school was put on probation. However, whatever you think of the man, there is no denying he was a tremendous basketball mind. It takes a heck of a coach to turn a school in the middle of Connecticut into a basketball hotbed, but Calhoun not only made it a destination, he won three National Championships without ever considering a move to a more glamorous location. You may have to argue with his methods, but you can't argue his results. Personally I am fascinated to see what happens to UConn now. Without Calhoun you have to wonder how much longer they will be able to stay relevant. They were already in for a tough couple of seasons and now you have to wonder if they will ever get back to where they were just two seasons ago.

-Of course, Calhoun is hardly the first basketball coach to have some allegations of academic misconduct among his basketball players and he won't be the last. Hell, it is even happening at schools which are supposed to be above this kind of mischief, like Harvard. Early this week Kyle Casey, captain of the basketball team and a first-team all-Ivy League player, was implicated along with over a hundred other students in a cheating scandal. Apparently too many students gave similar answers in a take-home test for an "Introduction to Congress" class, which sounds an awful lot like the kind of class you take when you are a business major and just need to get your political science requirements out of the way. Personally I'm wondering exactly what the school expected to happen with a take-home test. Of course most kids were just going to copy and paste from Wikipedia. Just because they are Harvard students doesn't mean they aren't still 19 year old college kids. So, the school has launched an inquiry. In the meantime Casey has withdrawn from the basketball team to try and save his last year of eligibility, which would have continued to tick away had he been on the team while the hearing to determine if he will be allowed to stay in school is heard. When Tommy Amaker took over as head basketball coach after years of coaching at higher-profile program a lot of people wondered how Harvard's attempt to push themselves into the world of high-level college athletics was going to work. Seems to me they are getting the hang of college sports rather well. Then again, it is Harvard, so you wouldn't expect much of a learning curve.

-After a second successful outing for the Sugar Land Skeeters to prove he still has a little gas left in the tank, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Roger Clemens would make an appearance for the Houston Astros before the season ended. But, there is suddenly a fly in the ointment. Astros owner Jim Crane said he doesn't want Clemens pitching against any teams in contention for the postseason, because he doesn't want to impact the race. Clemens, on the other hand, doesn't want to come back and pitch unless it is against a contender. Now, everyone knows I don't like Roger Clemens, but I have to say I'm on his side in this one. The Houston Astros are about as close to irrelevant as you can get for a professional baseball team and they need all the interest they can muster. Seriously, last Sunday the Astros game was watched by about 1,500 people in the Houston area, so they can't exactly get on their high horses when it comes to fighting the 'stunt' label. On top of that, they happen to be the worst team in the league and probably going to lose 100 games, which throws their "we don't want to impact the playoffs" stance right out the window. Unless, of course they mean they have rolled over for everyone else, it would be unfair to make a playoff team actually earn a victory in front of a loud crowd for a change. What's funnier about this whole story is that we are acting like Clemens is some kind of secret weapon who is going to come back and dominate, when the reality is he will probably pitch 4 innings and get shelled. It's a big jump from Independent Leagues to the Majors. Personally I think if he wants to get embarrassed on national TV in front of as many people as possible we should let him. Clemens said he wants to change the memories of a lot of Hall of Fame voters, he never said the new memories would be positive.

-After the Dodgers were sold for over $1 billion earlier in the year there was a report in a New York paper which said the Yankees might possibly be for sale. At the time I wrote that I didn't think the Steinbrenner boys were planning to sell the team, but I could totally understand if they had asked around just to see how much the franchise was worth. This week a report surfaced claiming the Red Sox are "quietly" for sale and I have to say that I think the same logic applies here. Principle owner John Henry immediately blasted the report as false, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was one of those "We aren't actively trying to sell, but if you blow us away..." kind of situation. Clearly the owners don't appear as invested as they previously have been and Henry made his fortune buying assets, building them to their peak value and then selling them off. You could argue that this ownership group as made this franchise as profitable as they can make them and since they will easily get the $700 million they paid for it back now could be a good a time as any to sell. (Not to mention, they just shed a quarter of a billion in payroll, which would be attractive to a potential buyer. The Celtics did the same maneuver by getting under the salary cap right before they were sold, which is one of the reasons I thought this report could be true.) In the end I don't expect the team to be sold just yet. It is not like it will suddenly decrease in value, so there is no urgency to offload the team right this second. That being said, where there is smoke there is usually fire and I think the countdown clock on the Henry group has officially begun.

-Heading into the season, everyone feared the NFL replacement refs would negatively affect the outcome of more than a few games by missing crucial calls. And while they had their moments of ineptitude during Week 1 of the season and seemed to call more pass interference than normal, they weren't falling over themselves or calling penalties on players who weren't in the game. By the low standards everyone set for them their first outing was deemed a success. Personally, I would give them about a B-. That doesn't sound great, but in thinking it over I decided that is probably the grade I would have given the regular refs during a random week last year. Now, it appears to have been worse if you were closer to the action, as the players are calling for the NFL to get the regular refs back as soon as possible, but once they are back it isn't like the players won't be complaining about them as well. People talk as if those guys never blew any calls, but history is full of questionable flags being thrown, which is why the league eventually went to replay. If anything the replacement refs' performance gave the NFL even more power at the bargaining table because it showed that they were capable, which is all anyone really wants. That leverage is only going to increase in the NFL's favor as the season gets on and the replacement refs get more comfortable with their surroundings. Look, I'm well aware the refs are getting screwed in this deal. They have done a great job over the last couple of years and their reward is to have their benefits cuts. But if they are waiting until a replacement ref botches a call in a big moment and swings momentum back on their side to cut a deal they may be waiting longer than they originally expected.

-After winning back-to-back tournaments in the PGA's version of the playoffs, Rory McIlroy is sitting pretty to win his first FedEx Cup. However, lest you think everything is cruising along for the kid, early this week someone raised the issue of his citizenship for the Rio Olympics, which will feature golf for the first time in over a century. McIlroy is from Northern Ireland which means he has the option of playing for either Ireland or the UK in the games and he raised more than a few eyebrows when he said he, "always considered myself more British than Irish" in an interview. This has lead to people calling for clarification as to which flag he intends to play under in 2016. It makes for an interesting and complicated dilemma for Rory, but I just can't get passed that last number when thinking about this story. We just finished the London Games and are a full four years away from Rio. Hell, they haven't even decided on a format for golf in the Olympics yet and one man is supposed to decide today what country he wants to play for? For all we know four years from now his game will be in the crapper and neither side will want him. You would expect someone who has grown up in the public spotlight to handle questions like this well and Rory did, sending out a very well-written open letter essentially saying that everyone needs to calm the hell down and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, which isn't going to be for a long while. I don't envy him, because no matter what decision he makes there is going to be some tension, which is why I think Rory should spend the next four years applying to be a US citizen. I'm sure no one would have a problem with that.