Clearing off the desktop while wondering if Roy Williams will be the head coach of the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team in 2008. …
Now that the NBA’s Trail Blazers have hired Kevin Pritchard as player-personnel director, Portland boasts two former Kansas University point guards. Darnell Valentine has lived in Oregon’s largest city since retiring as an NBA player more than a decade ago. Valentine is a regional rep to the NBA Players Assn., helping administer the league’s annual rookie-transition program. …
Keith Langford was censured by the NCAA — and rightfully so — for saying referee Jim Burr made “a horrible call” when Burr fouled him out of the Georgia Tech game last March. It really wasn’t a horrible call. It was just a bad call. Burr was the trail official and should have swallowed his whistle like Tom Lopes, the official who had the best look at the play, did. …
This was KU coach Bill Self’s postgame reaction to the Langford foul: “It was a big call. I’d have to watch the film. From our perspective, it looked marginal.” That’s the non-censurable way of saying it was a bad call. …
Self’s announcement earlier this week that junior guard Jeff Hawkins had been suspended did not contain the standard words “for violation of team rules.” Instead, Self’s spin was that Hawkins needed “to address some team issues that demand immediate attention.” Either way, it means: “It’s for us to know and you to find out.” …
Trivia question: Can you name the former Lawrence High football player who just was promoted to associate athletic director at Georgia? Answer later.
It’s possible KU’s homecoming football game Oct. 9 with Kansas State will begin at 9 p.m., meaning it wouldn’t end until after midnight. Television windows are involved. Fox Sports Net has that slot available and has inquired about the possibility. KU officials have said OK, but K-State has to agree, too. And you thought the $65 ticket — by far the highest in school history — was a stiff price to pay. …
Is this the last year NCAA football schools will play an 11-game schedule? Among the legislation under consideration for 2005 is a proposal to make a 12th game permanent. Appropriately, the proposal was made by the Big 12 Conference. As the rule reads now, a 12th game can’t happen again until 2008. …
Interesting that Kansas University chancellor Robert Hemenway is head of the NCAA Board of Directors that approved the emergency legislation prohibiting the use of private or chartered aircraft in recruiting. That legislation hurt Kansas State, KU’s geographic rival, a lot more than it did the Jayhawks. …
Come to find out Tom Quick isn’t the first former Kansas University football player to become an NCAA Division I-A official. Tom Horner, a lineman for the Jayhawks in the mid-1950s, worked as a back judge in the Pac-10 for 14 years. Quick, a former KU wide receiver, will be making his debut as a Big 12 zebra this fall. Quick is an umpire. …
Trivia answer: Craig White, a 1980 Lawrence High grad who lettered four years as a wide receiver at Missouri, has been at Georgia since 1992. I suppose White would have to be classified as a Border War neutral. He graduated from MU, but owns a doctorate from KU. …
Lawrence native Alan Shaw, an Olympics staffing advisor, e-mailed his dad, Artie, this week from Athens that the cost of the Games “is beyond what anyone imagined or budgeted. Depending on who you listen to, the Games will exceed $8 billion, perhaps even as much as $10 billion.” Man, that’s a lot of Gyros. …
Back in the days of the old Big Eight Conference, no football team ever had to play at Oklahoma and Nebraska in the same season. Part of the reasoning had to do with gate splits, but there also was the overriding notion that having to play in both Lincoln and Norman was cruel and unusual punishment.
Well, one Big 12 school will be playing at OU and NU this season. You guessed it. Kansas. At least the games won’t be back-to-back. The Jayhawks will have Kansas State and an open weekend as buffers. …
There is no truth to the rumor Lawrence’s Perkins Restaurant will institute a priority points plan for seating. …
