The off-season sometimes provides you with slim pickins - and when that happens, ain’t nothing you can do by ride that bomb all the way to the ground. Plus, real life has made strong demands on us today, so a-blogrollin’ we will go.

Today’s theme music - the exact opposite of how we feel these days as nuptials draw near:

Jarrett Carter may be our new favorite blogger, with two worthy posts at two worthy blogs - first, five reasons to keep the best D1 HBCU conference tournament in the Cackolack. We agree with him on all points, though we are saddened that the ACC Tournament won’t be in Greensboro, its rightful location. Atlanta is for bad traffic, gun crime, Tech fans, and SEC affairs - the ACC has no business dragging itself to such depths.

In worthy post #2, Carter asks if Gary Williams wants out of Maryland. Based on the offseason he’s had, as thoughtfully collected by the boys at DBR, who could blame him for wanting to get out with his reputation intact?

This is a bit old, but so is recruiting obsession - Mike DeCourcy breaks down the five spring signings that actually matter over at the SN. That one of said five impact players signed with Fresno Freakin’ State says all that is necessary about the current importance of the spring signing period.

In further evidence that as statistics increase, the result equals one, Yet Another Basketball Blog attempts to quantify coaching success based on recruiting and tournament play. Coach K underperforms! Tom Izzo does better than expected! Northwestern sucks! Oliver Purnell can’t beat competition with five breathing players! Surprises all around! (We kid. It’s a good piece that gives evidence to the conventional wisdom. But don’t expect a revelation.) (HT: RTC.)

Finally, while totally unrelated to college basketball, we love when two worlds collide - Above the Law, the preeminent blog in legal snark, links to Clay Travis, he of the CBS Spin on Sports column, as he gives law school selection advice. We link to this without comment, other than to say that given that Messr. Travis has abandoned the law to become a full-time sports writer, UVA Law should retroactively grant him admission.

Mess with the bull …

We have a certain friend - we’re guessing many of our readers know someone similar - who is just a f***in’ moron with women. He misses signals from interested women. He goes after the wrong type and drowns in flames. When he does land a girl, she is insufferable, and causes friction between him and his friends as he devotes himself to attending vegetarian cookoffs with her. By the time he comes to his senses, his buddies are pissed from five straight missed poker nights and a dozen unreturned phone calls, and he pretty much has to start from scratch in every aspect of his personal life.

We tell the tale of this friend because, after each crash and burn, we tell him, “Dude, maybe you should just be single and NOT looking for a while.” And we feel that someone needs to offer the same advice to Lute Olsen because … well, things aren’t going so hot out in Arizona:

Either way, the byproduct is this: A 73-year-old man (Olson) whose health has been questioned for years is coming off a leave of absence and trying to lead a program that is expected to lose its top two players (Jerryd Bayless and Chase Budinger) from a squad that just finished seventh in the Pac-10.

That’s a tall order, and that Olson will likely do it without a single returning assistant — while going through a publicly nasty divorce — should make it even taller, and if McDonald’s All-American Brandon Jennings doesn’t qualify (he still has some serious work to do, I’m told) then Wildcat basketball could be headed toward its worst season in many decades.

Lute, our advice - stay off the dating scene and spend that time reconnecting with your players and assistants. We’re told the young folk these days like to play video games. Maybe you could try that.

Re-defining “big” in Durham.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Hey, Wojo? Maybe You Should Sit This One Out.

Coach K’s recent recruiting failures with big men - see Patrick Patterson and Greg Monroe - have sparked a chicken-and-egg argument. Are the trees not interested because no Duke big man has succeeded at the next level, from Jay Bilas to Christian Laettner to Sheldon Williams with every Cherokee Parks in between? Or is it because the coaching triumvirate of Dawkins, Collins and Wojociechowski (most recently in charge of post players) had no idea how to coach bigs?

Consider the egg scrambled - in the wake of Dawkins’ departure for Palo Alto, Coach K hired former Blue Devil forward Nate James to fill his spot on the bench. What remains to be seen is if this will have any discernible impact, as James comes in with no coaching experience. In fact, this resume looked better suited for reality television:

After graduating from Duke and playing in the Carolinas Basketball League, James spent parts of five seasons playing in Bosnia, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Poland and Russia.

While some might consider the career a world history tour, James didn’t exactly praise the vagabond experience. Instead, he talked about eating nothing but rice and noodles — with chopsticks only — in Japan for several months; playing in a freezing gym in Bosnia; and having to eat cow tongue in Russia.

So, future Blue Devil recruits, know what Duke can now offer. Even if your playing experience can’t get you in the NBA and your Duke degree can’t get you a job, Coach James can help you parlay your experiences in Durham into a spot on The Amazing Race.

TWO STORIES THAT INTERESTED US FOR NO GOOD REASON
Something is Afoot in the District

Player movements galore in our nation’s capital yesterday, as Karl Hobbs kicked two players off GW’s team. Role players, true, but two players nonetheless from a team that only managed nine wins last season. Which makes one wonder what “certain expectations” they failed to meet to warrant dismissal, since one could argue that Hobbs and all of his charges failed to meet the basic “certain expectation” of finishing higher than next-to-last in the A-10.

Meanwhile, further into the snooty part of the Northwest Quadrant, a second potential starter transfers away from the Hoyas. With the announced transfer of Doc Rivers’ kid, Georgetown will be down to four returning players with any significant playing time. Greg Monroe better be really, really good, or JTIII will need to bust out celebrity dance moves again.

Theme music for this morning’s quick post, as we prepare for another ill-advised road trip:

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
More Schools That Couldn’t Fake Academic Achievement
Buzz around the interwebs continues to center on the APR ratings released yesterday. Rush the Court broke down the numbers in much greater detail than us, with some interesting findings:

1) Davidson had the best overall APR (a perfect 1000) amongst hoops programs, while Carolina had the highest amongst BCS programs. There is a safety school joke in here somewhere, but damned if we can find it.

2) The total list of teams suffering scholarship losses: Kansas State, Purdue, Seton Hall, South Carolina, Tennessee, and New Mexico State take a hit of one scholly apiece, while Southern Cal and UAB will lose two apiece for their historic incompetence.

3) The ACC and the Big East had the highest conference APR averages. If that isn’t evidence of the worthiness of the APR as a measure of academic success, we’re not sure what is. (That, or Big Ten programs are even worse at finding decent educations for their players than we already suspect.)

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Fitting news for the day that we licked the stamp on the final exam of our academic career: the NCAA ratted out the college basketball programs with the same approach to academics as us. Forty-six Division I basketball programs failed to achieve a passing APR score 925 (because that’s a passing score that makes sense, no matter what the scale).

Many are only subject to a “public notice” penalty, which from all we can tell is somewhere between a few days in the stockades and the online equivalent of a wagging finger. Stephen Colbert approves.

But for a dozen or so schools, including a handful of teams from this year’s NCAA tournament, headlined by Tennessee, their low APR score means they will lose scholarships. The Vols will lose one free ride, which is convenient since they just booted two scholarship players from the team. No word on the other offenders. (We meant the other schools, but you didn’t know for a second there, did ya? Go Vols!)

Proudly, none of the institutions we have attended landed on the big list of fail - but for those that did, we offer the following as a public service announcement:

Since it isn’t Wednesday, we don’t feel bad for stealing a concept from the mothership. We hope everyone enjoys Mexican St. Patrick’s Day by drinking their fill in non-Corona Mexican beer (because Corona is for people who hate themselves), eating their body weight in tortilla chips, and accidentally injuring a loved one while swinging at a piñata.

Ready to conquer all the French forces … and ladies … in his path.

Us? Oh, we’ll be doing our part for the festivities, then playing GTA IV for about ten hours before taking the last final exam of our academic careers tomorrow morning. No morning roundup, but we’ll be back in the afternoon.

Happy Mustache de Mayo, everybody!

QEDMF.

Each time you pay a bill, a little part of you dies. We get it. It happens to us too. Every time we pay a bill, we need a half hour of Rock Band and a pound bag of pretzels to get back to a good spiritual place. (And we’re not even married yet. Should we start the Xanax now?)

So we can forgive John Beilein for making a little bit of stink when he sent the first payment of his $1.5 million contract buyout settlement to WfVU last Thursday:

Beilein wrote that he made the first payment under protest, calling the buyout clause “unenforceable” and “grossly disproportional” to actual damages incurred by the university. …

“I urge the University to stop using the liquidated damages provision in its employment contracts because such provisions are illegal, onerous, and violate public policy,” Beilein wrote.

We applaud John Beilein on his legalese* - somebody paid more attention during their legal writing class than we did. (Attention employer: we kid. You know as well as us that no one pays attention in legal writing.)

Without belaboring the point, his argument holds no water. And since he’s already in Michigan, it’s not like he can secure PR points by bad mouthing WfVU now. But for such strong worded advocacy for a lost cause, we tip our cap towards John Beilein, and award him honorary lawya status for the day.

Give WfVU credit though - no strong worded response, no PR games, no silliness. They took the high ground and simply passed every cent of Beilein’s money on to his more successful replacement, as Huggy Bear signed an eleven-year extension that “guarantees” (promise!) that Huggins will remain at the school for the remainder of his coaching career.

Note to Morgantown Police: y’all know no danger like Huggy Bear with job security. Set your stun guns to “weird”.

No one can accuse him of discrimination.

* - Yes, we know his lawyer wrote it. We hope to write such letters some day for our clients. Trust us when we say they will be twice as wrong on the law and five times as snarky.

Sans Annie Liebowitz.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Recruiting - Even More Strangers with Candy-esque

Late last week, Michael Avery, a guard from Encino, CA, committed to play for Billy Gillespie at Kentucky. A good late-signing season get for the Wildcats? We’ll know when Avery starts playing college ball … in 2012. Sure, he doesn’t know where he is going to high school, or how to drive, or where (or what) the clitoris is, but dammit all, he is proud to be a Wildcat!

Every child has to take a step towards adulthood at some point, and perhaps Avery truly is ahead of peers in this regard. In that case, he’s doing a nice job of following Miley Cyrus’ lead - build up expectations amongst a fan base, then bring them crashing to the ground when you act like the budding adult that you are. We’ll see if the analogy holds when he backs out of his verbal in three years and goes to UCLA.

TWO STORIES THAT INTERESTED US FOR NO GOOD REASON
Character Problems + Fuzzy Math = Profit?

We searched for “addition by subtraction” images, hoping others had better luck than us visualizing the concept. Dane Cook was the closest we could get, though we admit that without the all-important knife through the torso, leaving a vastly improved romantic comedy or HBO special in its wake, it’s not quite apropos. (Though we roundly enjoy Cook’s evil twin on Heroes.)

Douchy sign of the apocalypse? Sexually immature? Why not both?

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Absolute badass.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Excuses, Explanations, and Honest-to-God Reasons

When Tennessee’s Chris Lofton struggled early this season even against cupcake opponents, some wondered what was holding the 2006-2007 SEC Player of the Year back. At the time, UT’s head trainer Chad Newman said, “These people that are questioning Chris are going to feel pretty stupid when they find out what’s wrong with him.”

Yes, yes we do - turns out that Lofton was catching up physically after fighting cancer in the offseason:

“When I first heard that word, ‘cancer,’ I thought I was going to die,” said Lofton, whose cancer was detected through an NCAA-mandated random drug test following the Vols’ 121-86 victory over Long Beach State on March 16, 2007.

The results of the drug test were positive; UT officials were informed that if Lofton wasn’t using drugs, the positive result could be a sign of cancer.

More tests followed, and Lofton underwent surgery on March 28 to have the cancer removed. Four weeks of radiation treatment followed, from late April into May.

We’ll admit that our first reaction was shock at Lofton chose to (and succeeded in) keeping this under wraps the whole season - especially with noted media whore Bruce Pearl as a coach. But apparently, Pearl was the only one, besides trainer Newman, who was in on the secret in Knoxville.

“When people are first diagnosed with cancer, sometimes the first thought is to tell everyone close to you, so you can feel all the support and be surrounded with the love you need to battle cancer,” said Pearl.

“But Chris didn’t want anyone worrying about it or our fans using it as an excuse for him.”

Lofton said he appreciates his school and the media for respecting his privacy.

And we respect you for fighting the good fight, Chris Lofton. Best wishes going forward on staying cancer-free.

We now return to our regularly scheduled dick jokes.

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With the deadline for players to file papers as early entrants for the NBA draft having passed on Sunday, it’s time for the annual handwringing over the policies of the NBA and the NCAA on how this is handled. This year, the focus has been on the so-called “one-and-done” rule. Thoughtful pieces on the policy and its effects have come from Bruins Nation, Conquest Chronicles, Doug Lesmerises of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer), and surprisingly, Gene Wojociechowski at tWWL. (Even a blind squirrel finds a nut.) Contrast these thoughtful pieces to, say, a certain famous “real” journalist. Tell us which are better, Mr. Bissinger.

To a man, though, they seem to endorse one shared policy of the NBA and NCAA - the “testing the waters” loophole that allows players to attend pre-draft workouts sans agent to figure out their likely draft spot and weaknesses, giving players until ten days prior to the draft to withdraw their names and return to school. (Though everyone seems to hate the term “testing the waters”.) Team gets more information. Player gets more information. Everybody is happy, right?

Not Jay Bilas - no no no. He doesn’t like this one bit, and writes a few pages of scrill saying that players should either stay or go pro, no takebacks. (Insider, natch. Stupid tWWL.) What was fantastic, though, was this:

To me, there are three reasons why an underclassman should declare for the draft: (1) if the player is truly ready to be an impact player on the next level, (2) if the player is in dire financial need, or (3) if the player is a fraud and wants to enter the draft and be selected before he is found out.

That’s what seven years with Coach K and three years at Duke Law teach you, apparently - fraud is a-OK! (Though we would have expected such a stance to come from Doug Gottlieb.)

In seriousness, we take no strong stance on such issues - after spending far too many hours drunkenly debating such points with friends, we’ve come to the conclusion that whatever rule you have screws somebody, either by being too paternalistic or by giving young men just enough rope with which to hang themselves, so the particular rule in question matters little so long as it is consistent. (Needless to say, law school has worn us down.)

We promise (well, sort of) that this will be our last Psycho T post for a while. In yesterday’s Roundup, we featured a picture of Sen. Obama driving on Tyler Hansbrough during their pickup game in Chapel Hill Tuesday, with Hansbrough in a clear position to block his shot. Our caption - “This likely won’t end well.”

Well, video is now available from the pickup game … and it didn’t end well for either man. (Key clip at the 0:40 mark.)

Hansbrough gave Obama a free look at the basket instead of swatting him like a fly, and Obama couldn’t finish the deal. Both lose points for the fiasco, though Obama gets them back for (a) recognizing that Hansbrough went easy on him and (b) playing the post despite being way undersized against the Tarheels.

Seriously, no more posts involving Psycho T for a while. Unless he does something really funny.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
End of Semester Rules at Chapel Hill

As seen yesterday at Rush the Court with 850 the Buzz, some Carolina basketball players spent the end of the semester blowing off some steam earlier this week with a little roof hopping. Now, it was enough for Ol’ Roy that his presumptive starting point guard for next year, Bobby Fraser, was diving from two stories up when he is supposed to be rehabbing his knee. But we have to imagine that seeing his All-American take the high-gravity dip would send him into a tizzy:

For Tyler’s sake, we hope the pool is filled with Chi Omega girls.

In case yesterday’s conversation with his brother didn’t do it for you, that picture above is all the evidence you need of why Psycho T is staying in college as long as he can. (HT for the photo to the Deadspin commenters, you profane bunch of cellar dwellers.)

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By now, you have assuredly heard of the kerfluffle on Costas Now on Tuesday night - Buzz Bissinger, he of the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and the best-seller and best-fucking-football-book-ever in Friday Night Lights, went on the offensive against blogs, and we mean offensive in the most literal way.

I would repost the YouTube video, but Awful Announcing went through the trouble of collecting it and deserves the hits, so please go over to his site to see both Costas’ introduction to the segment and the roundtable “discussion” itself. Come on back when you’re done.

So, just to be clear - Bissinger says that bloggers: (1) are full of shit, (2) dedicated to cruelty, (3) professionally dishonest, (4) dedicated to speed, (5) uneducated and poorly read, (6) unable to evoke a moment, (7) causing the complete dumbing down of our society, (8) have a disgusting voice, and (9) contribute nothing to sports discourse.

He then attacks Will Leitch with cherry-picked evidence and scant knowledge of Leitch’s actual writing. He curses up a storm, ends up fuming and frustrated, having done little besides scream his opinion and sneer at Leitch. In other words … (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), and (9). Nice job, Buzz.

Beyond Leitch’s simple but polite defense of blogging on the air, there have been numerous, truly thoughtful posts in response to Bissinger’s attacks on the medium. Leitch penned his own after appearing on the broadcast. Michael Schur of FJM did the same. Shanoff defends his brethren. Awful Announcing had words on top of the video. And our own blogfather has a response in two parts over at the mothership and The Sporting Blog.

We have nowhere near the qualifications of these fine gentlemen, seeing as how we’ve kept up residence in these quarters for a scant two months. (Plus, unlike the linked authors, we still cling to our relative anonymity for professional concerns, as we fall into Orson’s Group 5 and we haven’t had “The Talk” with our firm yet.) So we’ll let their words stand for now.

The thesis statement of all is simple, though - the Buzz Bissingers of the world notwithstanding, blogging is doing just fine. It is not journalism, nor does it pretend to be. It is commentary from the perspective of people who watch and read about the sports, but don’t have the privilege of talking to them while they stand naked in the locker room. If said commentary is funny, it will get readers. If it is not, it will not.

And to that end, since we want readers, we will return to the pursuit of funny with our next post. Enjoy.

In a Chapel Hill apartment house, around 3am…

Psycho T: [on the phone] I don’t know what to do, Dad. Do I go pro? Do I stay here?

[chewing noises]

Gene Hansbrough: Andrew Tyler, are you eating a got-damn puppy again?

Psycho T: …..yes.

Papa H: Put that shit down. It’s not good for you, especially at this hour.

Psycho T: But it’s the only thing I can eat when I’m upset like this!

Papa H: That’s just pathetic. You think that if you go to the NBA, teams are just gonna put a puppy mill next to your house like they did in Chapel Hill?

Psycho T: [thinks for a long second] Yes?

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This likely won’t end well.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Campaigning in North Cackolack The Effective Way

The old story in our home state is that if Dean Smith wanted to be Governor, all he’d have to do is run, so rich is his cachet with the Tar Heel faithful, who comprise a bigger potential voting bloc than soccer moms and NASCAR dads put together. (Which is good, since NASCAR dads couldn’t get Richard Petty elected Secretary of State in 1996, nor could the soccer moms prevent Mia Hamm from marrying Nomar Garciaparra. ‘Cause that should have required a vote, right?)

With the North Carolina primary coming up next week, one candidate was smart enough to try to tap into that voter base. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL, in case you’ve been living under a rock) showed up in Chapel Hill early yesterday morning to play pickup with Psycho T and his Funky Bunch while Roy Williams watched from the sidelines. Which kind of makes it a coach-observed scrimmage. Which kind of makes it a NCAA rules viola … oh, bother:

“This was a unique situation and not an NCAA issue,” NCAA media relations director Erik Christianson said in an e-mail message to The News & Observer on Tuesday. “It certainly was a great opportunity for the student-athletes to interact with a presidential candidate.”

Dammit - the one time we WANT the NCAA to be nitpicky, overly-sensitive, by-the-books dweebs, they actually recognize a situation for what it is! But realistically, yeah, it was just a pick up game. We can’t blame Obama for using his notoriety to get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity most would kill for. But it certainly didn’t constitute an endorsement or anything, right?

Williams, who watched the play from a chair on the sideline, called out at one point: “You’ve got the future president of the United States wide open.”

Ahem.

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