• Orange Bowl in Repose: The game itself has already bailed on its edificial namesake, and now Miami is close to deciding whether to leave the Orange Bowl:
The 'Canes lease in the decrepit Orange Bowl runs through 2009, but it might be moving on as soon as 2008. Why, exactly, would the Orange Bowl be worth subsidizing? We have pictures and even video of Joe Namath and Cory Schlesinger. Two hundred million is a high price for nostalgia.
• The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Everything: Here's an entity I never heard of in five years of intermittent attention-paying at Southern Miss: the Center for Spectator Sports Security Management, which coordinated some high-fallutin' workshop on stadium security concerns Wednesday in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, that is, not Mississippi). This in the wake of a foiled plot whose alleged conspirators lamented not striking December's Army-Navy game - very predictable alarmism, stock-in-trade of industry sponsors, ensued:
"The threats are here; it's real," said John Guest, a Department of Homeland Security protective security adviser for the mid-Atlantic region, who addressed the gathering and told the attendees the department provides security and vulnerability assessments for stadiums and arenas.
Among potentially unaddressed threats pointed out by Temple sports and recreation management director Michael Jackson:
Don't get any closer! Lloyd Carr is an old friend who knows the value of timeless, physical football! Yo! I'll blow us all to hell!
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• Disgruntled Alabama fans turned away from the Spring game.
• Duh: Blimps!
• Are there background checks for all ticketholders, including those coming through the pass gate, an eight-day waiting period, credit checks, tax audits, metal detectors and x-rays at entrances, retina scans, strip searches, homogenous clothing, inflatable rafts under each heavily-padded seat and freaky alien chicks in every luxury box who see and subsequently report malicious acts, especially those directed towards officials?
"I know this is hard to stomach, but no one is beyond suspicion," said Jackson. "Look yourself in the mirror and say, 'Am I ready? Can I provide a safe and protected environment for fans to come and teams to play?' " Only if the Corso menace is thoroughly addressed, Mr. Jackson.
• Repita, Por Favor: Headline says an Alabama judge is accused of bias re: a lawsuit involving the NCAA, but otherwise the Tuscaloosa News' Mike Perrin delivers the most confusing story I've ever read:
The court heard oral arguments on May 1 regarding several issues, including whether Cottrell was entitled to a jury trial to determine if an indemnity agreement between the NCAA and Culpepper was meant to cover the damages awarded by the Tuscaloosa jury.
Wilson also sent an order to the court intending to clarify his order regarding the indemnity agreement. He said his original order was intended to say that only punitive damages couldn't be covered by the indemnity agreement. His original order did not address whether compensatory damages could be, he said.
In a letter to the Supreme Court, Cottrell's attorneys said they were "seriously concerned that the NCAA, having exhausted the normal appellate procedures, has enlisted the cooperation of Judge Wilson in making yet another argument as to why there should not be a jury trial on the effect of the indemnity agreement."
Et cetera. Read aloud if necessary. WTF is this supposed to be about? Who's suing and why? The completely indecipherable jargon here - properly covered in sixth-grade level newspaper parlance, I would think, as "legal wranglings" - stems from a case that awarded the Cottrell in question $30 million at Cottrell's expense in 2005, in a case that also involved the NCAA as a defendant. A subsequent appeal in the Alabama Supreme Court is mentioned up front. Nowhere are newcomers to this case (ahem, me) informed what the original suit was about, or the judgment, or why it was overturned, or how, exactly Culpepper and/or Cottrell happens to be involved, information the standard inverted pyramid scheme would provide by journalistic fiat in the fourth graf at latest. I can't follow this, because I don't have a law degree, and have no idea as a person potentially interested in the NCAA or Alabama or whatever is at stake why I should want to.
• Quickly: Houston Nutt talks three things he knows with Arkansas Truckers: Frank Broyles, turmoil and, uh, trust? ... Maybe he could apply for the Hogs' vacant play-by-play job before it gets snatched up ... The days of outsiders invading Miami's recruiting turf are over, if Randy Shannon has his way ... Incoming Michigan State lineman Arthur Ray Jr. has been diagnosed with cancer and will undergo chemotherapy ... Penn State offensive lineman Elijah Robertson's career is over due to a congenital "tight spinal canal" ... Texas A&M's draft draught won't last long ... Ex-Auburn guard Tim Duckworth's Broncos careerdidn't last long ... Georgia students: want a game ticket? Get your ass to class ... South Carolina assistants get a nice salary bump - especially recruiting coordinator David Reaves ... Vanderbilt's David Hood gets an NCAA waiver to play for Purdue next fall as a grad student ... The Tallahassee Democrat has one notable Hall-of-Fame snub: Deion Sanders ... Baltimore wants in on the ACC Championship derby ... Nebraska's vaunted conditioning program has a new trainer from the NFL ... Oklahoma players are reaching across Big 12 lines to donate to tornado victims in Kansas ... And inspired casting: Sal Rubinek as Art Modell.
The Rap Sheet
Crimes, misdemeanors and eligibility-crippling issues legal, academic, institutional and otherwise.
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Sentenced, to life in prison, the 42-year-old man who inexplicably killed TCU kicker Kasey Davis last year. In order to walk up to a complete stranger's parked car and unload a shot from a deer rifle into his chest, as Jeffrey Clay Lasiter admitted to doing in January `06, you either to believe - or fake belief in, according to Davis' mother - something like this:
''When he shot that poor little man, he believed he was part of a group that was persecuting his life," Scarano said.
But Lasiter, himself an unemployed and recently divorced "poor little man," also reloaded the rifle and "made angry, violent statements" caught on police video, evidence enough of malice in the opinion of Judge Kathleen Hamilton to discard the crazy defense and throw away the key on a maximum sentence for first-degree murder.
Pled guilty, massively hyped but perpetually troubled Maryland/Illinois/wandering linebacker Melvin Alaeze, to first-degree assault. That charge could get Alaeze 25 years...or zero, based on his lawya's assessment of the plea agreement.
Consider: Alaeze lost his scholarship to Maryland because of crap grades and a pot charge, then lost his ride to Illinois before last season for missing classes and "personal reasons." In January, he was hit with a misdemeanor gun charge during a traffic stop in which police found "a revolver with four empty .22-caliber shell casings and one bullet in the cylinder behind the driver's seat of the SUV Alaeze was driving," and still faces that charge. Okay, that's a negative pattern. And, on top of that pattern, he expects to get no jail time for a guilty plea to the following behavior:
The man told police that on the morning of Dec. 24, he met Alaeze on the basketball court at the apartment complex in the 8600 block of Bramble Lane and during a conversation, an unknown male grabbed and forced him into a vacant apartment.
In the apartment, the man said, he was robbed of $400, two cell phones, keys, his tennis shoes and his 1998 Buick. He was lying face down on the floor when he heard two gunshots and felt something hit him in the back of his head, police said.
When the man tried to get up twice, he was shot near his left eye and then in the back, police said. He fled the apartment, and a passerby on nearby Liberty Road took him to the hospital.
Alaeze was charged with attempted murder, armed robbery and related offenses in connection with the incident.
In other words, dropping attempted murder and armed robbery for only the assault charge was apparently already a concession in exchange for the guilty plea, and this repeat offender will likely not face the requisite time on even that. Tommy Carcetti would never stand for this.
On that note, if there's one thing I've learned about Baltimore from my wholesale, slobbering obsession with The Wire, and that Melvin Alaeze completely reinforces, it's that nobody wants any part of the vacants:
Herc is such a lame cop. So dangerously, inexcusably lame.
Suggested, by Centre County Assistant District Attorney Steve Sloane, that more arrests could be coming in the epic Penn State apartment brawl. Four players were essentially cleared when their charges were dropped last week, but two more unnamed players from among the dozen authorities say gathered at the apartment could get pulled into the proceedings. Both Anthony Scirrotto and Chris Baker, still facing felony charges, have replaced their lawyers.
Dropped, according to Sam Keller's father, very serious disturbing the peace charges filed against the quarterback in March, when he used his rocket arm to thread a paper cup across a parking lot at a woman who beat him to a space.
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