I think I am glad I was able to deal with all the great traumas in my life–my failures, my decades of depression, my disappointments, and my inability to meet the expectations of others–out of the public eye. With that perspective, a few impressions:

I look at Grimes, and it is obvious he is clueless about how to be that fluid 1st rounder, and how to fix things when the game is going too fast. I see a guy who would have benefitted from expecting to develop more gradually, but modern cbb doesn’t allow that anymore.

I look at Dedrick, who has put up AA stats this year despite inconsistent passing to him and with no help in the post where he has been forced to play as the only big, and I see people questioning his effort? or his character? And I think, wow, has he ever complained? Is his stoic expression more important to people than his single-handedly keeping us as competitive as we have been?

I look at Mitch and wish he had been allowed to play the small forward position, and I marvel at his ability to stay enthusiastic. Despite having to come in as a 1.5 ppg undersized player expected to turn it around in the middle when everyone is floundering.

I look at Charlie Moore, and the only flaw I see is that he tries too hard, goes too fast, and tries to change every game with boneheaded “hero” shot selection. His passes would have led to twice as many assists but for the team’s crappy shooting.

And Vick. I look at Vick, and like everyone I wonder what is going on. If it is a mental issue, it is largely beyond both his control and his own understanding. If it is emotional distraction from outside, I can only hope he can learn to deal with it–maybe getting out of the glare will help. I see someone whose face alternates reflecting either a wild fierceness or a bizarre disconnect to the game around him. I see someone whose talent belies the ropes holding him back. And I wonder how heavy it may be for him, knowing at times he is the savior of the team and at other times the anchor dragging the team down.

Finally, I see fans dealing with seeing a team of lofty expectations appearing to dismantle as we watch. Disappointment, anger, cynicism, hopelessness and helplessness all combining to just sap the joy out of us.

I know 2 things, going way back to my very first post a couple or three years ago: those kids are out there trying so freaking hard, and they are vastly more crushed than we are when they lose. So, I am going to do what I can to remind myself that there is always a lot of fun watching KU, and that I can be both disappointed and appreciative for the team, and that if this year is a bust I guess reality had to come sometime. Almost a decade and a half of championship ball (conference AND an NC) is something no other fanbase has ever had. I refuse to let the possibility of it ending get in the way of my unbridled pride in the kids who have made it possible. I hope I never join KU’s enemies by thinking of ANY KU team as losers.

If the suggestion to designate Gr-asshole-nola as a booster as a hypothetical truly came from the NCAA, I think this is all a lot of worrying over something that won’t be as much of a slam dunk as KU and fans are fearing. Here is why:

First, assuming it is true that the NCAA would not consider SDS’s petition for reinstatement without KU agreeing to the hypothetical, that would mean the NCAA was not willing to perform its job without exacting this designation. Courts generally don’t get into second-guessing private organizations’ adjudicatory processes except when an organization does not follow its own rules. To allow deference, those rules must set out the procedures to be followed, must meet minimum standards of notice and right to be heard, and must require initial judgment or appeal to be decided by impartial adjuicators. Here, the NCAA’s rules require determinations on eligibility, both preliminarily and on reinstatement. The NCAA cannot possibly extort a procedural advantage in another case before doing its job.

Second, I fail to see how a hypothetical for one purpose could be used in an enforcement case. A hypothetical is not an admission, and it is not evidence, so it has no res judicata effect. A hypothetical in a circumstance like this is like a statement made in a settlement discussion–it cannot be used in court against the person making the statement.

An example: Victim falls on a sidewalk and is injured. The claim is made that the property owner negligently failed to clear ice from a storm several days before. In settlement conference, the owner breaks in to the lawyers’ negotiations and says, “Okay, if I didn’t clear the ice because the sidewalk was closed, how much do you want?” His statement cannot be offered in any subsequent proceeding to prove he did not clear the ice. Protected–we encourage candid discussions to facilitate settlements.

Here, I can imagine that the NCAA stonewalling involved claiming they would not resolve SDS’s case unless KU accepted a hypothetical to cement Gassnola’s role. KU says, “Okay, if–hypothetically–he was a booster who slipped $2,500 to SDS’s guardian, please determine his eligibility and any sanction for him.”

No way that statement can be used to establish the booster relationship.

I tend to think this story is based on discussions with scared peripheral people who are second-guessing the lawyers because of the brutal 2 year decision, but who have no clue. Chances are, in my view, the lawyers knew precisely what they were doing. I think they have a strong case against any preclusive use of the hypothetical. The NCAA likely knows that, too.

This issue is not something to be upset about. However, I think the NCAA can prove he was a booster without too much trouble, so I think the hypothetical is irrelevant. Kind of like a case I had where the highest military appeals court agreed with me that a certain hearsay statement by an unknown utterer should not be admitted against my client, but it did not matter because my client hand wrote his confession anyway.

If all the NCAA has is the hypothetical, however, KU’s lawyers should go to federal court and stomp their ass. Heck, I am still licensed in Kansas!

Udoka has a long ways to go in most regards but the look is perfected! And, we have to remember, Jeff Withey himself wasn’t Jeff Withey for the first couple of years…

From ESPN:

URI’s Hurley not talking job future after defeat Rhode Island coach Dan Hurley, who sources say is the front-runner for the UConn job, had no interest in addressing speculation about potential openings after his team’s loss to Duke, saying, ‘I could give a crap about who’s got an opening anywhere.’

So, this means he is definitely going, right?

@BeddieKU23 If I used drugs, I might prefer Walton, but I’d rather have Bilas.

“It is unclear whether Jayhawks coach Bill Self will be charged with a coach control violation…”

Well, nice journalism here. I think the whole damn thing is “unclear” since it is just rumor getting repeated based on nothing new since the June statements by the NCAA.

My dad and I watched SB I and IV together (I was 10 and 13 on those), but the only game I remember really well was the infamous Christmas Day game a couple years later when Stenerud broke my Dad’s heart. The Chiefs were no good for the rest of the 70’s and he passed away in 1978.

I started crying today! I was watching all those fans going nuts, thinking, “That’s my city! This one’s for Dad.”

From an alleged newspaper you can find on the Web, or perhaps buy it and use it for lining bird cages:

Traylor to play in Greece

Former Kansas forward Jamari Traylor has signed a contract to play for GS Kymis, a team located in Kymi, on the island of Euboea, Greece, Eurobasket.com and the GS Kymis official Website reported.

Traylor, 25, averaged 10.2 points and 7.0 rebounds per game in 40 games for the Redwell Gunners of Oberwart, Austria, last season. He was selected to Eurobasket.com’s Austrian League All-Imports Team and to the All-Star Game.

He also played 10 games in the FIBA Europe Cup. He averaged 9.1 points and 6.3 boards a game.

I am often accused by people I know of being a great moralist, and of being overly harsh in my expectations and judgments of myself and others. I might exceed the speed limit by 8 mph, but I pay every dime of income tax, don’t download pirated movies and broke off a close friendship when he wanted me to lie about an affair. In short, straight and narrow.

But I think y’all are going way overboard in calling this a program that is out of control, or assigning blame to Coach Howard for Bragg’s infractions. This thread really has degenerated into a massive amount of handwringing and old-lady fainting over a few reported incidents that actually only involve two kids currently in the program. Yet we are being referred all the way back to Giles as an indictment of our team? I will take all the success stories in the meantime as an overwhelming counterbalance to that, or to a DUI here or an embarrassing photo there–any and every day of the year.

Zero tolerance policies are being set up everywhere, and good kids are being kicked out of grade schools for having drawn a picture of a gun. I think HCBS has earned the right to decide who works for him and to use his discretion in evaluating character or administering punishment to athletes or staff.

Please note that if Vick was put on probation for something from 16 or so months ago, that could have been with the cooperation of the athletic department. No indication that it hasn’t been successful. Bragg’s stuff is more serious, but hardly reason for anyone to pull the rug out from the coach.

Take a deep breath, everyone. Please!

Of course, if the rape incident involved a player, and if it was known to the staff and ignored like Baylor’s football players, I will retract this post and light the torches myself.

@Bwag Well, you can keep calling it uncorroborated or unsupported, or you can say the earth is flat a thousand times, but repetition doesn’t make what you say true.

Polygraph showing no deception, many witnesses to Kavanaugh being an out-of-control drunk, book by Mark Judge about “Bart” Kavanaugh’s wild behavior, Kavanaugh’s own letter (signed “Bart”) describing his group as loud obnoxious drunks, the calendar, the yearbook, his false testimony about those…Hmmm, he has always upheld polygraphs as a law enforcement tool. Wanna bet he would refuse to take one?

Incidentally, Dems have always wanted more time, more documents, and a more thorough investigation. The Republicans withheld over 40,000 pages of documents and dumped the rest on Senators the night before the originally scheduled vote. Dems have without success provided dozens of names of people to be interviewed, only to run into the Republican brick wall.

Former Justice John Paul Stevens, a Republican appointee to the Court, knows a little something about what qualifies a judge to be a Justice and, after watching Kavanaugh become unhinged in a prepared sworn statement, says Senators should reject him (after initially believing the opposite) due to his partisan and intemperate performance. 2,400 law professors and even the National Council of Churches have said the same. Dems didn’t move the goalposts–Kavanaugh went racing the other direction, almost frothing at the mouth while spouting conspiracy theories and evincing a horrifying disrespect for members of another branch of government, for anyone of a different political bent, and for anyone daring to have criticized or even questioned him.

But all that being said, you might be surprised that I would admit that I do not necessarily believe Dr Ford’s allegation that it was him, or if the details tracked her recollection even if she believed him. There is a fundamental problem in trying to resurrect information about an event almost 4 decades old. That is why statutes of limitations set limits on when claims can be raised–witnesses die, memories fade or get confused, documents get lost (I thought my calendars I have kept since 1984 were crazy!)…it is just impossible to prove guilt or innocence so we don’t try in civil or criminal law. An exception is for murder–and arguably a Supreme Court appointment warrants that higher level of scrutiny.

My personal bottom line from my own experience as a criminal lawyer, as an appellate lawyer who argued in US Courts of Appeals in Florida and D.C., and as a judge for 19 years: I have never before seen someone who is raising falsified claims repeatedly ask–make that literally beg–for a thorough police investigation or pass a polygraph exam given by a former FBI examiner. Fun fact: none of my >400 convicted criminal appeals clients asked us to arrange a polygraph regardless of how vociferously they contended other people had set them up. And, conversely, I have never seen anyone who was innocent refuse to agree to a more extensive investigation, however long it would take, to prove their lack of complicity. Innocent people welcome investigation. I think she believed her testimony, but I do not know without an honest inquiry whether her testimony was in fact accurate.

Still, to me the issue is not whether he did or didn’t do it. The issue is whether his record, his conduct, and his testimony demonstated his status as someone whose integrity and temperament should elevate him to the highest judicial rank in the land. To me, the burden was on Kavanaugh throughout the process, just as it is on anyone seeking such a role. He did not carry that burden, and demeaned himself in the process. All things considered, the country can do better, and has, in finding a brilliant candidate–even a conservative one meeting every one of Republican criteria (except possibly a demonstrated anti-Democrat animus).

So what are Republicans so afraid of?

Jar Jar Binks seems like a Seuss caricature come to life, and, as many others pointed out when that miserable movie was unleashed on an unsuspecting fandom, has exaggerated features, speech patterns, and personality traits, all of which are often used as racial tropes. (See how careful I was there, 'Prox? )

I recognized the racist nature of GWTW in junior high when I first read it. I also recognized Huckleberry Finn as an attack on racism by the use of a racist narrator who is gradually becoming aware of the inhumane biases with which he is filled. Still, its language reflects Twain’s time when the N word was acceptable. Both can be read with an eye to what they reveal about changing cultural standards and racial identity, but it is absurd to think that they should be treated as racially neutral due to being “art”.

The world, especially my fellow liberals, seems to me to be too incapable of accepting the contradictions in life. There are good and bad in many things. Our job is to figure them out, and improve what we can.

@approxinfinity said in Juneteenth:

“Racist” should be reserved for use only when a person or thing displays overt intent to discriminate based upon race.

I am not sure what John Oliver called “racist” that would not fit into this category. Much of what he described were things that stemmed from institutional racism designed to perpetuate white supremacy and stereotypes of black inferiority.

The only thing I had any problem with was the lumping of the 3/5 provision in the Constitution in with his other examples. As with so much of history that provision’s inclusion is complicated. To wit:

At the Constitutional Convention, Southern states wanted a federal legislature based purely on population, which would have resulted in the huge slave population that could not vote being used to inflate the influence of Southern states over the free, less populated, Northern states. The Northern states wanted a federal legislature where each state had equal representation. The bicameral system adopted as a compromise gave the Northern states a Senate where each state is equal in power, and the South its House based on population.

In creating the House, the North objected to counting slaves for purposes of calculating the population to be represented. The compromise of counting slaves as 3/5 did not affect how free Blacks were counted.

A provision in an amendment about fugitive slaves favored the South, as did a probition on banning the imported slave trade until 1808 at least.

The power of the South in the federal government would have been much greater had the 3/5 provision not been adopted. So it is simplistic, and misleading, to discuss it only as a racist reduction of the humanity of a Black person.

@benshawks08 said in I am curious as to your opinions - life back to normal or stay shutdown:

their own personal shit downs

It is wonderful how apropos some typos are!

@DanR said in Surfin' again on Safari!:

good things are hard to come by these days

We were pretty excited the other day when our neighbor installed a string of blinking white lights above her porch. Biggest event around here in weeks!

@nuleafjhawk As it turns out I forgot my Scotch last night. The ramblings are just the usual insanities floating around inside…

@approxinfinity I will always upvote a post giving me Scotch permission!

@Texas-Hawk-10 Yep, Self failed by getting someone anticipated to be a project in 2013 who merely became the number 3 pick. Crappy recruiting…

Oh, don’t forget the no. 1 pick that year, too…

@approxinfinity Gronk is actually closer to the nature of time travel than the reporter credits.

Since nothing can travel faster than light, and a traveller’s relative time slows as you approach the speed of light, then it would seem he would necessarily have to overcome those limitations if he were able to instantly appear anywhere else. Time would stretch infinitely if he went at the speed of light (and he would haave infinite mass, IIRC, but that is another issue, so we have to assume Gronk has figured out how to have no mass). Since light speed is 186,000 miles per second, there must be a time lag for any body travelling even close to that speed.

Instantaneous means no time lag, meaning travelling through space, and time, conquering the effects of relativity and other Einsteinean physics.

This physicist says that instantaneous travel between any two points in the universe by a body with no mass actually does not involve infinite speed at all–it reduces the distance to zero instead. So…if Gronk could do it, his NFL yards will not increase but his scoring would be phenomenal.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-instantaneous-travel-and-travel-at-infinite-speed#:~:text=So yes%2C a massless body,again as predicted by relativity.

I need a Scotch.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/sport/michael-porter-jr-coronavirus-nba-basketball-spt-intl/index.html