Naturally, we start in Kentucky, where college basketball is King. Rick Pitino, the head coach of the University of Louisville, is having some PR problems after he admitted to cheating on his wife and paying his mistress $3,000 for an abortion. He would've gotten away with it too if it weren't for said mistress trying to extort millions of dollars of hush money from him. Should Louisville have fired Pitino? Yes, but probably more because of his crappy press defense and inefficient offense.
At the same time, here in Lexington, some are worried about the recent news coming from newly hired John Calipari's former school. The University of Memphis will have to vacate its wins and Final Four appearance from the 2007-2008 season for having someone take the SAT for its star player, Derrick Rose. Even though Calipari's name was not mentioned in the NCAA report, this is the second time a team under his watch had to vacate a Final Four appearance (the first being UMass in 1996). So Calipari gets the full support of the university and governor of Kentucky despite cases of academic fraud and improper benefits to players in his two previous university head coaching jobs, on top of the fact that he depends on a horrible offense that he stole from a corrupt coach from Fresno (not named Tarkanian).Now to the NFL controversies:
Michael Vick: served about 2 years in prison for his involvement in dog fighting/torturing/killing and will receive an additional 2- to 6-game suspension by the NFL.
Donte Stallworth: served 24 days in prison for DUI manslaughter and will be suspended for the entire NFL season.
Plaxico Burress: received a 2-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to shooting himself in the leg with an unlicensed firearm in a nightclub and will likely not receive any additional punishment from the NFL.
I know that each case above has unique details, but how does the only action that resulted in a death of a human call for merely 24 days in prison? Also, do you think that the NFL should act as a second judge and jury for legal cases by adding additional punishment?
The next story comes from the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin. People are questioning the gender of 18-year-old Caster Semenya, the South African runner who crushed her competition in the women's 800m on Wednesday night. As you might imagine, this is a lot more complicated than investigating to see if there’s a man dressed up as a woman under there. Where do you draw the line between male and female? Should hermaphrodites compete as men or women? What if you have X and Y chromosomes, but no male genitalia? What if you have two X chromosomes, but no female genitalia? I feel bad for Semenya, who was teased for looking like a boy her whole life, and now the whole world is asking questions about her eligibility to race as a woman. What kind of privacy rights should Semenya have in this situation? I also think there is an element of racism as some have mentioned—perhaps this is another example of demeaning Western attitudes towards black Africans? Would people be questioning a white European or American woman who ran a really fast time and looked kind of manly?
And now to Michael Phelps. In the past year, he has: won 8 gold medals in Beijing using the controversial LZR suit made by Speedo; gotten caught with a marijuana bong at a party; and lost to Paul Biedermann at the world championships, who apparently has an even more hi-tech suit than Phelps. Phelps’s coach complained about the use of these new suits and demanded that they be banned. Apparently, any suit that might be better than the one Phelps uses should be banned.
Also, Usain Bolt is fast.
1 comment:
Does this change who won the family ncaa tournament challenge? Who won in 2008? Should they also be stripped of thier title and to make a cd for the second place person?
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