death Page 45 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

I Got Paid To Cheer For Another NCAA Tournament Team, And Other Confessions Of A Spirit Squad Member
Class is in session at my university this week, but I won't be there. I'll be a part of March Madness, but I'm not a basketball player. I'm a member of my school's band, which makes me a member of the "spirit squad"—the peppy umbrella term that also encompasses our school's cheerleaders and mascot. ...

Robotic Death Copters May Darken Skies At Pro Golf Tournaments
That terrifying image is a picture of a remote-controlled death contraption known as the Hoverfly in action. The Golf Channel plans to test one out while filming an episode of On The Range, and if the test goes well, the Hoverfly may be used to help broadcast future tournaments. Be very afraid....

Millionaire College Basketball Coach Describes College Basketball's Emphasis On Money As "Hypocrisy"
Our friend Sally Jenkins wrote a column on the death of Big East this Thursday, and quoted University of Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin, who was very passionate about the conference's widely perceived demise:...

Ryan Glasspiegel runs through sportswriting's reaction to the sad death of the Boston Phoenix, where Charles P. Pierce and Bill Simmons both got their careers started (and where the infamous George Kimball served as a writer and editor for many years). The Phoenix folded yesterday after a 46-year ru...

"I LOVE THE WAY YOU BALL": This N.C. State Recruiting Letter Is Insane (UPDATE: It's A Form Letter)
This photo of a batshit insane recruiting letter comes to us from the Instagram account Dexter Wright, a high school football player who has struck the fancy of N.C. State's director of player personnel, Drew Hughes....

Towson University Preemptively Called Police Before Telling The Men's Baseball And Soccer Teams They Were Cut From The Budget
In October, Towson University athletic director Mike Waddell recommended that his employer cut two sports—men's baseball and soccer—for reasons related Title IX compliance and "to make the remaining programs more competitive." Days later, Towson parents flew a plane over Ravens stadium trailing a ba...

NCAA Investigator Asked Judge To Take It Easy On Convicted Ponzi Schemer Nevin Shapiro
An NCAA investigator wrote a letter on Nevin Shapiro's behalf before his 2011 sentencing, the Associated Press reported last night. This should feel surprising: The NCAA is nominally devoted to preserving beautiful, ancient Greek ideals: competitive integrity, athletic amateurism, and scholarship, w...

Stanford-Cal Delayed 15 Minutes As Fight Results In Three Coaches Being Ejected Due To Stupid NCAA Rule
A solid Pac-12 conference season came crashing down last night as the Cal Bears found themselves on the wrong end of a 83-70 thrashing by rival Stanford. If that wasn't bad enough, a fight that broke out late in the game led to multiple ejections, six technical fouls, and three assistant coaches b...

The 10 Supplements You Actually Need
Men's Health, a magazine for men who are healthy and dumb, will tell you that there are 10 supplements that you, the fitness-seeking man, "actually need." Oh really? You can't go to the gym without "Coenzyme Q10?" You can't work out unless you're shoveling glucosamine powder down your gullet? It tak...

How Would Jay Bilas Fix The NCAA?
Originally published in Bloomberg View...

Ohio University Made A Bowl Game, Won Big, And Lost $78,569
How little sense does the BCS make? Well, apart from the difficult-to-calculate, in some cases negligible gains a university makes from the exposure of a bowl game—anyone applying (or donating) to Fresno State because they got crushed by SMU in the Hawaii Bowl?—the total cost of travel and accommoda...

Singing Wrestler May Lose Scholarship Because The NCAA Is The Worst (Even When It's Not Doing Anything)
I suppose we all agree that the NCAA is terrible. The organization does so many wretched things in the name of protecting academics and amateurism in college sports that it's hard to keep track. (If you remained unconvinced after this latest mess at Miami, where the NCAA's half-assed shadiness wou...

The NCAA And Miami Prepare For Battle
The NCAA has always gotten what it wanted. Because it made up the rules, and is the sole enforcer of them, the NCAA has never not been able to push around anyone in its way, be it players, programs or politicians. This time could have been different. After the investigation was screwed up so spectac...

Miami Says It Has Been "Wronged," Demands NCAA Wrap Up Investigation
After the Miami booster scandal broke two years ago, the university swiftly self-imposed a number of penalties, including declaring players ineligible, forfeiting scholarships, and banning itself from the postseason for two years. The NCAA's investigation continued, however—ineptly, corruptly. Miami...

The NCAA Has A Lack Of Institutional Control
The NCAA's investigation of Miami screeched to a halt last month, as it emerged that the enforcement program had inappropriately paid booster Nevin Shapiro's attorney to help them nail the football program. That attorney, Maria Elena Perez, was actually on the NCAA's payroll—she received at least $2...

Carl Pavano's Freak Spleen Injury Nearly Killed Him
Live by the freak injury, nearly die by the freak injury: On January 12, Carl Pavano slipped on some ice outside his Vermont home, fell onto the handle of his snow shovel, and after taking a moment to recover, went about his business until he couldn't anymore:...

Nerlens Noel's Injury Is Just The Latest Reminder Of How Stupid The One-And-Done Rule Is
I'd like to draw your attention to this passage from ESPN draft insider Chad Ford's analysis of how University of Kentucky big man Nerlens Noel's torn ACL might affect his draft stock (emphasis mine):...

Player From 1979 Final Four Stabbed To Death By Wife Who Says She Caught Him Looking At Porn
Matt White, the starting center on Penn's 1979 Final Four team, was found stabbed to death in his suburban Philly home yesterday. He was 53. Weirder still is that White's wife, Maria Rey Garcia-Pellon, has been charged with killing him by stabbing him in the neck while he slept, and she allegedly to...

To Avoid Criticism, Shabazz Muhammad Must Collapse With Joy When His Team Wins
Shabazz Muhammad is proving a good canary in the coal mine for figuring out if we've dispensed with the superstar-athlete-doesn't-care-about-team-play concern trolling as we've grown more sophisticated about the complexity of the NCAA and the intellectual laziness of humping tired sports cliches. We...

At UNC, "One Of The Worst Academic Fraud Cases In American History" Has Been Traced Back To One Guy
The University of North Carolina's academic fraud scandal has deepened and widened, and local officials have done the sensible thing in locating a fall guy. A brief refresher on why they need one: In December, an investigation officially found what had seemed probable from Julis Peppers' unintention...