death Page 14 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

John Calipari Is So Close
Kentucky head coach John Calipari had his annual behind-the-scenes profile published today, this time in GQ; this one follows Calipari around his family’s beach house and his church, and the coach even let reporter Reid Forgrave attend mass with him. This somehow led to Calipari being referred to as...

The Arizona Wildcats Are The Fun Kind Of NCAA Bad Guys
Seen through a certain college basketball purist’s eyes, Arizona are the unquestionable villains of this year’s NCAA Tournament. With other alleged Sanctity Of Amateurism offenders like Louisville and USC out of the picture, the Wildcats are the most prominent tournament team that currently stands a...

Kevin Ollie Will Contest UConn's Dubious, Non-Specific "For Cause" Termination
That Kevin Ollie was fired after guiding the Huskies through consecutive losing seasons was not especially surprising. That he was fired as part of “disciplinary procedures” and “for just cause” registered as, well, interesting, especially without any explicit link to a reported NCAA investigation i...

Steve Kerr's Good NBA Draft Idea: Let Undrafted Players Return To Their Teams
Current NCAA regulations forbid any player who declares for the NBA draft and signs with an agent to return to his college team, even if he goes undrafted. It’s a particularly cruel facet of an already exploitative system, and a rule that’s explicitly designed to keep players within the bounds of th...

Perennial Quitter Tubby Smith Says NCAA Transfers "Teach Players How To Quit"
Memphis men’s basketball coach Tubby Smith, who quit his job at Texas Tech to take his current position in 2016, went off on NCAA transfer regulations following the last game of his regular season on Sunday, saying that relaxed transfer rules “teach (players) how to quit.” ...

Fiorentina Captain Davide Astori Dies Suddenly At 31
31-year-old Fiorentina captain Davide Astori died suddenly at the team hotel in Udine ahead of the team’s match at Udinese Sunday....

Roger Bannister, The First Man To Run A Sub-4:00 Mile, Is Dead
Roger Bannister, who in 1954 became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes—beating John Landy to it by less than two months—died last night in Oxford, England, the same city where he ran 3:59.4 64 years ago. He was 88 years old....

Arizona Loses Its Last 2018 Basketball Recruit
One day after Sean Miller defiantly denied ESPN’s report that he’d been caught on an FBI wiretap promising to pay a recruit $100,000, point guard Brandon Williams (24/7 Sports’s 31st-ranked national prospect) announced that he’s reopening his recruitment due to the “current climate surrounding U of ...

ESPN Retracts Correction In Sean Miller Wiretap Story, Reaffirms Original Timeline
The Arizona-ESPN saga is continuing to heat up, and shortly after Arizona’s Sean Miller vehemently castigated ESPN’s reporting, the Worldwide Leader doubled down on its initial scoop that Miller had knowingly violated NCAA rules....

Sean Miller Denies All Wrongdoing After ESPN Wiretap Report
At a press conference today, Arizona basketball coach Sean Miller read a defiant statement, denying that he’d done anything wrong and calling ESPN’s report about him being caught on FBI wiretaps discussing a $100,000 payment to then-recruit DeAndre Ayton “completely false and defamatory.”...

Is There A Good Reason To Doubt ESPN's Sean Miller Report?
Last Friday, ESPN published a big piece by Mark Schlabach that revealed the FBI had recorded phone conversations between Arizona head coach Sean Miller and sports agency runner Christian Dawkins in which they devised a pay-for-play scheme....

LeBron James Doesn't Think The NCAA's Flaws Can Be Fixed
LeBron James, the greatest basketball player ever not to play college hoops, spoke up about the very stupid FBI investigation that has currently engulfed the sport. While James didn’t play college ball, he dipped his toe in the recruiting process and has firsthand experience with its shady side. His...

Don't Try To Use Jalen Ramsey As Marketing Material
Since college football coaches can’t offer recruits the opportunity to earn real money, they often have to resort to wooing them with the promise of future earnings, which of course will only become available after submitting themselves to a few years of getting yelled at by sunburned men in polos. ...

Unpaid Athlete Resolves Paid-Dinner Scandal By Giving $40 To Charity
Today in tremendously stupid updates from the FBI’s college basketball investigation: Michigan State’s Miles Bridges has officially been cleared to play. The sophomore guard has been absolved of his sins (allowing an agent to buy dinner for several members of his family last winter, which reportedly...

Stan Van Gundy Roasts The NCAA, Calls Out Racism Of The One-And-Done Rule
Detroit’s Stan Van Gundy—one of the smartest and most quotable coaches in the NBA—got asked about the NCAA, and the Friday report about the FBI’s enforcement of recruiting violations, ahead of his Pistons’ game against the Hornets on Sunday. He took the opportunity to go in on the NBA’s free minor l...

Shaq's Son Shareef O'Neal Withdraws Commitment To Arizona In Wake Of Wiretap Revelation
Dominoes are falling at Arizona as a result of the FBI investigation into recruiting violations at NCAA schools: Sean Miller might be out at Arizona—he is for sure not coaching the team tonight against Oregon—and now star recruit Shareef O’Neal is apparently withdrawing his commitment to the school:...

Report: Sean Miller May Be Owed Twice As Much By Arizona If He's Fired With Cause
Ah, now here is a sensible way to write a contract: make sure you include in there some significant monetary incentive for behavior that breaches the terms of the contract....

Who Gives A Shit?
Let’s be clear on exactly what’s happening here. Yahoo! Sports is pushing out a press release for the FBI, which is acting as the enforcement arm of the NCAA. That all feels like a bigger scandal than a spreadsheet that shows, among other things, a basketball recruit’s mom receiving “hundreds of dol...

Marshall Football Player Dies From Gunshot Wound At New Year's Party
Marshall defensive tackle Larry Aaron died today, nearly two months after he was shot in the spine at a New Year’s Eve party. He was 19....

NCAA Denies Louisville Appeal And Strips 2013 Title, Bringing Escort Scandal To A Close <em></em>
The NCAA announced on Tuesday that it denied Louisville’s appeal of their initial findings in the escort scandal investigation, meaning the men’s basketball program will lose NCAA recognition of its 2013 national title and have to pay back millions earned in tournament money....