We've written about Ray Gricar before. He's the former Centre County district attorney who declined to prosecute Jerry Sandusky in 1998, despite a psychologist's warning that Sandusky showed a "likely pedophile's pattern" of behavior. On April 15, 2005, Gricar mysteriously disappeared from central Pennsylvania and, seemingly, from this earthly realm. Gone. No trail. Just an empty car with a cell phone inside.

Three months later, fishermen discovered Gricar's government-issued laptop in the Susquehanna River. Police later found his hard drive on a riverbank, damaged so badly that no data could be recovered. They also learned about the Internet searches run on the DA's home computer before his disappearance: "how to wreck a hard drive," "how to fry a hard drive," and "water damage to a notebook computer."

Cases like this often don't get solved. Rather, conspiracy theories pop up, some more wackadoodle than others. And when news about Sandusky's alleged crimes broke last year, the tinfoil-hat crowd really rolled out the Reynolds Wrap. There was never any evidence to connect Gricar's disappearance to his Sandusky investigation. But so what? We figured his disappearance was bizarre enough that it warranted a FOIA request with the FBI. The documents we got back deal with an "URGENT" 1986 background check the FBI did on Gricar, when he was appointed by the local U.S. attorney to try federal cases. The documents don't reveal anything about the investigation into Gricar's disappearance, likely because the investigation is ongoing, but they do contain material that will raise eyebrows under all those tinfoil hats.

For one, the FBI consulted with the CIA before responding to my request. And the CIA refused to allow certain information to be released because it's classified "in the interest of national defense or foreign policy" and can't be disclosed in order to protect "intelligence sources and methods" as well as the names, titles, etc., of CIA personnel.

For two, the FBI destroyed three Gricar-related files. The FBI can't say what was in them because, hey, they've been destroyed. But that's not as suspicious. The destroyed files had similar tracking numbers to the one we got, and their contents probably didn't differ much from what's in our file, according to FOIA expert Michael Ravnitzky. Also, it's standard practice for the federal government to vaporize unnecessary records after a period of time.

The CIA "excisions" are more curious. For those, I got in touch with a friend in the intelligence community known as "The Wolf." I'm not making that up. That's what people call him. The Wolf didn't make too much of the CIA interfering with my FBI response. The forms and procedures followed were routine at the time, he told me. It's perfectly normal in the course of a background check for the FBI to contact the CIA for a "name check," which is basically a database query for related records. But that's also where things get a little weird. Here's the relevant text from the Gricar file:

The Central Intelligence Agency, responding to an FBI name check request, advised that they have [REDACTED] relating to the captioned individual.

The Wolf didn't quite know what to make of that. One can only guess at what's behind the redaction. I reckon it's a page count for documents, unless it says "no records" and the CIA are redacting to prevent us from knowing they don't know anything. Which would be very CIA-ish: secrecy for secrecy's sake, even when nothing's at stake. Typically, however, the feds don't redact non-information. I'm not even sure that's legal. So it appears the spooks might actually have something on Gricar, which drags us partway into conspiracy territory. Let's enjoy the ride for a moment.

For years, the Gricar conspiracy theorists have suggested that the missing DA might be hiding out in Slovenia, where he's said to have relatives. In 1993, a crooked judge from Pennsylvania's Cambria County, which borders Gricar's Centre County, absconded to Slovenia rather than serve a prison sentence for corruption. There's no way Gricar wouldn't have known about that incident, which is why a reported sighting of the DA in Southfield, Mich., a month after his disappearance generated so much interest. The sighting was made by a retired police officer who worked as a composite artist, of all things. It was, in other words, a credible sighting.

As the conspiracy theorists pointed out, Southfield is a Detroit suburb with a Macedonian consulate. As they further pointed out, if one cared to obtain a visa to enter Macedonia and thereafter progress into, say, one's ancestral homeland of Slovenia, one might first come to the consulate in Southfield, especially if one were lying low in Canada at the time.

Normally, this is the type of thing you laugh off, provided you are sane. Federal investigators would have to be pretty half-ass not to run down a visa for a vanished man. But consider this: Macedonia was part of the former Yugoslavia. So was Slovenia. And Gricar's FBI file reveals trips to communist Yugoslavia during the Cold War (in 1973 and 1984). These caught the attention of the federal background checkers in 1986. They noted the Yugoslavia travel on the "name check" forms submitted to the CIA.

Was Gricar spooking in the Balkans? Was he merely visiting family members in Slovenia? Or was he doing something else entirely? I emailed and called Gricar's nephew, Tony, to find out more. Tony is the Gricar family spokesman. He was Johnny-on-the-spot when we ran our first Gricar story. (Tony didn't like the headline.) But he didn't respond to any of my messages about the FBI and the CIA and overseas travel. So I returned to The Wolf, who had another interesting observation after studying Gricar's SF-86 form, which is the mandatory questionnaire the FBI gives to people up for national security jobs:

There may be something worth following up. Gricar did not include his summer spent at John Carroll University (Cleveland, OH) on his SF-86. Unusual for him, because he was one of those boring, precise and extremely responsible individuals who never overlooked anything. The FBI interviewed several people at JCU, including the asst. dean who said that Gricar "took Economics 101 from an instructor who was a _______________ and departed from the staff after the summer of 1966 and did not list an address". I inserted Yugoslav in the space, and it fit.

I contacted John Carroll University to find out who Gricar's instructor would have been. They told me it'd be almost impossible to find out. No records left. How convenient. Let a hundred more conspiracy theories bloom.

Image by Jim Cooke

JaVale steals the ball. JaVale runs the break. JaVale goes up for the power dunk and almost knocks a brave but foolish Jose Calderon out of the building. It's all so very JaVale. Great call from the Denver broadcast crew, too.

You don't even even need to get high to trip out on this. The dashing older gent in the fedora and shades is 82-year-old Marty Reisman, a New York ping pong shark/legend/champ from the old school and what every idiot hipster in Brooklyn aspires to be but NEVER EVER WILL EVEN FUCKING COME CLOSE to being. Want to know more about Reisman? Read the profile this month in The New York Times, which included the following quote:

"I took on people in the gladiatorial spirit," Mr. Reisman, 82, said. "Never backed down from a bet."

In the meanwhile, enjoy the video, created by Insanic Workshop for Copernican Tourbillons, which bills itself as "a visual study of human motion captured through the use of high-speed photography. Like the tourbillon, the subjects aim to counter the effects of gravity while mastering their craft within the whirlwind of energy that constitutes the universe...." Far out, man.

[via Table Tennis Nation]

(h/t Mike N.)

JaVale McGee has come in for some affectionate ribbing 'round these parts, but nobody better say nothing about his game-winning play in the Nuggets-Pistons game last night. It was McGee's first appearance in a Denver uniform and he made the most of it when it counted. I don't care how many times he tries to pass the ball with his face or runs back on defense when his team still has possession, look at the judo move he uses to unbalance Greg Monroe, who's one of the most fundamentally sound young centers in the game. And then McGee has the presence of mind to let the ball clear the cylinder before winning the game with a dunk. While hanging in the air. Because he's a seven-footer who can jump like a shooting guard. That's not a boneheaded player. That's a player the Nuggets were wise to acquire.

As a Bullets fan, I was sad when the Wizards traded McGee. It's nice to get a player like Nene in return, but Nene is a player for the present, not a player for a couple years from now when Wizards management coulda shoulda finally rebuilt the team into something that might have sniffed the playoffs, with McGee— who by then could easily be the best shot-blocker in the NBA (he's third in blocks this year)—destroying opponents in the paint. Oh well. Nene will do. Could be worse. Could be Rashard Lewis.

Nick Young joked that the Wizards had "a curse" after he was traded last week, and that's plenty easy to believe. Just look at McGee. No one has lowlights as low as Javale's, and perhaps only a handful of NBA players are capable of highlights as high as his. He's the perfect NBA player for the GIF era, a walking "FWD: fwd: fwd: MOST BRILLIANT THING YOU'LL SEE ALL DAY." Godspeed you, JaVale.

But what, may I ask, is Arron Afflalo doing in the above video? With five seconds left, he misses a free throw that would have tied the game. After McGee soars to the rim to win it for the Nuggets, Afflalo turns to Wilson Chandler and slaps his hand, as if this were all planned. As if Afflalo were in some way responsible for the game-winner. That's so Arron Afflalo.

It's sometimes easy to forget how good Leo Messi is. He performs extraordinary feats with such regularity they seem routine. Messi scores. Again. Messi dribbles through five defenders and scores. Again. Messi dribbles through five defenders, is hacked mercilessly, refuses to go down, dances around an onrushing goalkeeper, and doinks the ball into the net from an impossibly acute angle. Again. We become habituated to such achievements, rationed out as they are each week. But this video, which cuts together all of Messi's 234 goals for Barcelona on his way to breaking the team scoring record yesterday with a hat-trick against Granada, reminds us that Messi isn't just a special player but one who deserves GOAT consideration. Also, he's only 24.

[via Soccer By Ives]

Last week, we told you about the precociously thugged-out behavior of a player (No. 2 in the video) on the ESF Lions U-12 team in Hong Kong. The 10-year-old ginger went on a fouling rampage against the Kitchee Escola team that culminated with an ugly boot to the face of a downed opponent (at 1:36) and touched off a lot of talk in Hong Kong about "white bullies" and whether the government should be funding the education of foreigners. Now the boy has been arrested, which seems a touch draconian. Can't they just cane him in public or something?

Hong Kong child arrested after sickening football pitch kick [The Telegraph]

When University of Wisconsin associate athletic director John Chadima abruptly resigned on Jan. 6, neither the school nor Chadima offered much explanation. Chadima, who handled scheduling and travel for a Wisconsin football team that had just returned from a Rose Bowl defeat, penned a resignation letter that was Nixonesque in its pithiness. Two sentences. No answers. But the rumors were soon circulating about what happened in Chadima's downtown Los Angeles Marriott suite one night during the Rose Bowl trip, when Chadima found himself alone with a young male student and a large quantity of rum.

The mystery of the well-regarded Chadima's departure had metastatic potential, and Wisconsin investigated immediately. Within weeks, the school's chancellor had an incident report on his desk detailing the alleged interaction between Chadima and "John Doe" in Room 1564 during the wee hours of Dec. 31, 2011:

At one point, as they were seated at the corner of a large table in the suite, Chadima told John Doe that he thought that Doe might be gay, and that some of the other student employees thought Doe was gay. Doe told us he felt very uncomfortable and defensive but was not sure what was going on. He said that Chadima reached over and removed Doe's pants belt and then inserted his hand inside Doe's pants on his genitals. Doe reported that he was shocked and frightened and slapped Chadima's hand away and swore at him. He reported that Chadima said, "I thought you liked it" and "What are you going to do about it?" and "I could have you fired." Doe quickly left the room. As he was leaving the room, Doe reported that Chadima seemed to want to gloss over the incident as "just joking around."

Two other men have since accused Chadima of sexual misconduct, prompting a second investigation by Wisconsin. The school released another report last Friday, about which you'll find more details below. Wisconsin also recently responded to a public records request we submitted in January. We've extracted the interesting parts, which come mostly from Chadima's heavily redacted text messages. (Other original documents are attached to the bottom of the post.)

To understand the context here, one must first appreciate that a bowl game is an opportunity for a large group of school employees to live it up on the road and rip through school money. Two dozen members of Wisconsin's 131-person Rose Bowl contingent racked up a $954.28 gas bill motoring around L.A. for a week. Another 11 of them devoured 162 ounces of steak at The Palm on Christmas Day, claiming hardship because the restaurant was one of the few eateries open near their hotel. That bill came to $970.72.

Chadima behaved extravagantly at bowl games, too. He was renowned, the first Wisconsin report noted, for the "B team" parties he threw during trips for the "unsung heroes" of the athletic department who unload equipment and do other menial tasks. Many B-team members are students. One of them is the alleged crotch-grabbing victim, who was the last person to leave the B-team party in Chadima's suite during the 2012 Rose Bowl trip.

But let's pick things up with the texts to and from Chadima's phone on Dec. 5, 2011, long before the Badgers arrive on the West Coast. Fans are already schmoozing for tickets, and Chadima is juggling multiple requests from friends, several of whom refer to Chadima by his unfortunate nickname of "Meat":

Many similar "Meat" texts are exchanged up to Dec. 28, 2011, when we find Chadima in L.A., ensconced in his Marriott suite and ordering provisions from a hotel employee:

Chadima is awake before dawn to respond to texts and e-mails from the previous evening:

The business of the day commences as Chadima entreats other Wisconsin staffers to address such matters as "Jump Around," the compelling and highly original group cheer performed by Badgers fans to the House of Pain song. (A side note: Chadima's salary was $129,000 at the time of his resignation. As a mid-level employee in the Wisconsin athletic department, he'd been making over six figures for half a decade to do this kind of work.)

Later that night, Chadima complains to the Marriott that his laundry hasn't been cleaned:

A few hours later, Chadima complains again, this time to a B-teamer. His tone is noticeably different. One could point to these messages as establishing a pattern of abuse of authority by Chadima, but a student employee interviewed for the second Wisconsin report told investigators that he sent the texts using Chadima's phone and that they were intended as a spoof of Chadima's tendency to jokingly fire subordinates. The student was in Chadima's room boozing with Chadima at the time and wanted another B-teamer to join them for a drink. (To read texts in sequential order, start from the bottom and work upward.)

Chadima gets some good news the following afternoon:

The party starts:

Chadima's texting declines dramatically over the next few hours as the revelry mounts. What information we have about the B-team party comes from the first Wisconsin report:

The party began about 7:30pm. Chadima provided alcohol, beer and mixers from which guests were invited to serve themselves. Each of the students employees with whom we talked attended the Chadima party and most consumed alcohol there. Several Athletic Department academic and classified staff also attended the party even if only briefly. Some of the student employees who attended were under 21 years of age. [...]

The report states that 25-30 people were in Chadima's room at any one time. Chadima and others were drinking heavily. Between 1:30 a.m. and 2 a.m., the party dwindled to Chadima and six or seven student employees. At some point, everyone left except one student. More:

John Doe was the one student left in Chadima's suite after the other student employees left early in the morning of December 31. He reports that as he was leaving the Chadima suite behind the other exiting students, Chadima called him back to "Stay here and have a drink with me." This had never happened to Doe before with Chadima, but Does had no reason to be suspicious. He had known Chadima for several years as a "nice guy" who was always friendly and was highly respected. He did not work directly with Chadima but says Chadima was often around the football team's activities. Chadima asked John Doe to make a drink for each of them. Doe did so and remembers making about three rum drinks each for Chadima and himself. Doe reports that both he and Chadima were intoxicated but were coherent and in control of their physical movements.

At which point, the alleged groping occurs and the student leaves Chadima's suite. Around 3:15 a.m., the student knocks on the hotel door of Chadima's immediate supervisor and reports the incident. Chadima receives the following text from an unidentified person moments later:

The texts are timestamped, but it's impossible to know when Chadima reads this. We do know, however, that he's up at 8:30 a.m. the next day to issue commands to underlings:

The first indication emerges that the B-team party was a rowdy affair:

Chadima sheepishly confirms room damage:

The damage is extensive:

The damage is expensive:

Only debris is left:

Five days later, Chadima would resign, his reputation and career in much the same shape as that Marriott coffee table. In late January, his predicament worsened when a former Wisconsin football player ("John Doe 2" or "JD2") contacted police to describe an experience he had with Chadima in 2010, when JD2 returned to school to attend a game. After the game, JD2 went to the football locker room with B-teamers and other former players. Chadima was there. Everyone was drinking. The group went to a bar afterward and kept drinking. When the party shifted downtown, Chadima offered JD2 a ride in his BMW. Instead of heading downtown, however, Chadima told JD2 they were going to Chadima's house, despite JD's repeated protests. That's when things got weird, according to the second Wisconsin report:

En-route to Chadima's house, Chadima made statements to JD2 speculating on the size of JD2's penis and that Chadima thought that JD2 had "a nice ass." JD2 stated that at this time, he went on "high alert." JD2 stated that he was intoxicated and could not get out of the car because Chadima was driving too fast. JD2 was unaware of where they were but it appeared to be a rural area.

JD2 stated that they eventually arrived at Chadima's house and went inside. Chadima gave JD2 a tour of the house. Chadima made an alcoholic drink for himself and JD2 declined the offer for his own drink. Chadima continuously mumbled comments about JD2's "ass." JD2 asked Chadima if he was gay. Chadima did mumble that he was gay. JD2 said, "It's ok if you're gay." JD2 continuously stated that he needed to go downtown. Chadima remarked that he [Chadima] wasn't going downtown and the JD2 could spend the night. JD2 was really nervous about Chadima's intentions and went to the first floor bathroom and locked himself in. JD2 estimates that he stayed in the bathroom for a couple of hours. JD2 waited to the point where he could not hear anything and opened up the bathroom door. JD2 went upstairs, looked into Chadima's bedroom, and observed that Chadima appeared to be passed out.

JD2 came forward only after seeing Chadima's oxymoronic statement about the Rose Bowl incident: "I make no excuses," Chadima said, "and have come to the realization that over the past few months, alcohol had controlled and consumed my life."

But Chadima didn't need alcohol to make crass overtures to another B-teamer, according to the second Wisconsin report. "John Doe 3" or "JD3" claims he was regularly harassed by Chadima, who repeatedly told JD3 that people thought he was gay and that Chadima "will always have an eye out" for him. On one occasion, Chadima pressed himself up against JD3 from behind. On another, he put both hands on JD3's shoulders and asked him if he was ready for "one last hurrah" at the upcoming away football game. But the incident involving JD3 that leaps out from the second report comes from a bowl game trip during the 2000s:

JD3 was at a party held during a time that the UW football team was at a bowl game [specific game omitted]. The party was in John Chadima's suite and there were three other student employees present. JD3 went into another room in the suite and was pouring himself a tonic water. Chadima came up to him and put his hand on JD3's lower buttocks and moved his hand "upward along the crack area" and then pushed his hand in by his anus. This was done on the outside of JD3's pants. JD3 got very upset and Chadima remarked something to the effect, "Don't talk to anyone. You should be grateful for this opportunity." JD3 then left Chadima's suite.

What opportunity is that exactly?

The stinky rumor floating around the internet is that Vitor Vianna lost control of his bowels after taking this picture-perfect flying knee from Brian Rogers during a quarterfinal fight of a Bellator middleweight tournament. Whatever. We've all soiled the silk before, usually without the excuse of being parted from our senses. Nothing messy about that knee though. Rogers put it right on the point of Vianna's chin.

Curtis Malone, who coaches the AAU DC Assault team, which has sent scores of players to Division I basketball programs and several to the NBA, including Michael Beasley and Jeff Green, has been charged with second-degree assault after some shit allegedly went down last month at a Maryland high school. To be more specific, Steven DePollar, the coach of a different AAU team, claims that Malone and two other men beat him down with punches and kicks outside a high school gym in front of a group of people that included DePollar's son. From The Washington Post:

DePollar claims that the assault continued after he balled up on the ground in a fetal position. DePollar told police it lasted about 90 seconds and "I wondered when it would end. . . . It seemed much longer. I feared for my family and myself."

The Washington Post implies that the fight broke out over a player defecting from DePollar's Force One team to DC Assault. The player's father is one of the other two men involved in the alleged attack and is also facing second-degree assault charges. The player in question, it should be noted, is among the best in the country for his age group. He's in middle school.

As for Malone, he's one of the most powerful men in basketball. He operates in that rich seam between the high school game and the elite college programs. You can read more about the ignoble demimonde he rules here. (Warning: It's a place where you'll often find Mike Krzyzewski rooting around.)

Let's all be thankful, at least, for one thing—the team isn't called DC Manslaughter.

D.C. Assault's Curtis Malone charged with assault [The Washington Post]

When an athlete realizes that he's reached the upper limits of his skill, he either accepts it and plays on. Or he learns to play dirty. Like the vicious ginger lad (No. 2) in this video, who was recently spotted in Hong Kong behaving like a human scythe. The boy commits several dirty fouls in the video, but they're love taps compared to what you'll find at 1:36, when he boots a kid on the other team in the face.

The backstory to this savagery can be found on a blog dedicated to Hongkonger happenings. As the blog explains, the thug child plays for the under-12 team for the English Schools Foundation, a consortium of international schools modeled on the British system and set up for expatriates, although students from all backgrounds now attend. The other team is called Kitchee. They'd apparently thrashed ESF in a previous game. The thrashing continued in the next game. Ginger thug grew angry. Now he's succeeded in touching off a minor race-tinged class war in Hong Kong, if that blog is to be believed. Nice one.

(h/t Anthony T)

Four years ago, Pete Thamel wrote a story in the New York Times about how new Harvard coach Tommy Amaker had landed a potential recruiting class that experts ranked as one of the top 25 in the nation. How'd Harvard do it? Thamel reported that the school was considering players with lower academic standards than before (although still relatively high when compared to schools attended by the hoi polloi.)

Fast forward to present. Harvard is in the NCAA Tournament, led by several of those original recruits. And a different story just appeared in the Harvard Crimson. It's about four-star prospect Zena Edosomwan, a 6-foot 9-inch, 225-pound power forward that Scout.com ranks as the 15th best player at his position in the country. Both Scout.com and ESPN have Edosomwan in their top 100 players overall. Over the weekend, he shunned scholarship offers from UCLA, USC, UC Berkeley, Texas, and Washington to commit to Harvard.

"It's a special day for all of us-for me [and] for Harvard basketball," Edosomwan said.

It's a special day whenever a smallish school for nerdlings beats the towering jocks, even if it's only in a recruiting race. Five years ago, you'd consider Harvard's inclusion on the above list an error. Not anymore. If nothing else, Edosomwan signals that what Amaker started won't end when Harvard gets knocked out of the tournament. (Amaker has already landed one three-star forward along with ESPN's No. 19 center in the country for next season.) It might even herald a new era for Ivy League basketball, at least if other schools begin recruiting the same way and especially if those academic standards previously mentioned continue to slide, perhaps into the same trough where you find Mike Krzyzewski rooting around.

For now, it doesn't seem like the slippage has been quite that dramatic. (Harvard, for its part, denies any erosion of standards.) Edosomwan still hasn't qualified academically for Harvard, which like other Ivy League schools doesn't award athletic scholarships. It's kind of funny to see ESPN's "recruiting nation" mention Harvard's "offer" to Edosomwan. What offer? An opportunity to apply if he scores over 700 on his SAT math section?

What has certainly "slipped" in recent years at Harvard and elsewhere in the Ivy League—and not in a bad way—are the parameters that govern financial aid. Rich schools like Harvard have spent millions of dollars more than they did in the past to help students pay for their educations. Students don't need to take out loans and rack up debt like they used to. Grants for middle-income families have grown. Families earning less than $65,000 annually often don't have to pay tuition at all. All of which makes a huge difference when recruiting athletes. From another New York Times article:

The financial-aid enhancements have had a profound effect on the quality of athletic recruits. Rosters are now fortified with top athletes who would have turned down the Ivy League in the past because they would have been asked to pay $20,000 to $30,000 per year more than at other colleges.

"We're seeing a significant change in the caliber of the student-athlete," said Steve Bilsky, the University of Pennsylvania's athletic director, one of more than 50 Ivy League administrators and coaches interviewed. "It's not even the same population because the pool has widened. We see a considerable number of student-athletes turning down athletic scholarships from places like Stanford, Northwestern or Duke to come to Penn."

But back to Edosomwan. Whatever scores Harvard requires of him, he doesn't have them yet, according to the Crimson. Edosomwan has taken standardized tests "multiple times" and is now waiting for the results of his latest attempt in January. In trying to qualify for Harvard, he's reclassified himself as a 2013 prospect and is doing a post-grad year at a prep school in Massachusetts called Northfield Mount Hermon.

This is something like the one-percenter version of what happens at many big basketball schools when a talented athlete doesn't have the academic chops to get in. It's just happening on a higher academic level, and while Edosomwan can't enjoy having his intellectual bonafides laundered so publicly, you've got to to think that if he's close to meeting Harvard's dangerously diminished standards, he's plenty booksmart for dozens of other programs.

A brief word about Northfield Mount Hermon, which our elitist New England prep school correspondent, Jack Dickey, describes as:

[N]ot quite so bad a school as to stand alongside the pure basketball-postgraduate factories (Brewster, Tilton, Winchendon, etc.) of the world, but it's close.

Northfield Mount Hermon currently has 25 graduates playing Division I basketball, according to the Crimson. Three of them play for Harvard. A fourth will be arriving next year. If Edosomwan qualifies, that'll make five. Which makes Northfield Mount Hermon the official pipeline to Harvard for highly recruited basketball players.

And there you have it: transformation complete. In a quick four years, Harvard has gone from hoops nonentity to a program with a top 25 AP ranking, a twelfth seed in the east region, and at least some of the less-than-puritanical hallmarks of the high-major heavies. If you're interested in learning more about Harvard's evolution, the Crimson has a long and well-reported story on the subject.

I keep returning, however, to a few lines from Thamel's 2008 story:

Harvard's efforts in basketball underscore the increasingly important role that success in high-profile sports plays at even the most elite universities. In the race to become competitive in basketball, Harvard's new approach could tarnish the university's sterling reputation.

Could it? Harvard has gobs of money, a puissant name and exactly 19 students on the men's basketball team. That's barely enough to tarnish the paint job in the Lavietes Pavilion locker room, let alone the school's overall academic standards. And it's not like Harvard hasn't engaged in behavior that does far more to tarnish the school's reputation. Perhaps we should reconvene for debate after the Crimson put in back-to-back Final Four appearances.

The Knicks were in Chicago last night to play the Bulls. Both teams acquitted themselves well. The same can't be said for at least one of the fans at the United Center. That would be the soon-to-be-identified little bastard in this video. The video quality is crappy, but it looks like the bastard is hawking beaucoup amounts of phlegm into his palm in advance of slapping hands with Knicks players as they make their way out of the tunnel before the game. Jeremy Lin appears to be the primary target. I can't read the Chinese characters in the YouTube comments but I imagine several of them translate to one comment that I can read: "You bastard, Caucasian dog."

(h/t Jeffrey A.)

Good news on the politics front, MMA fans. New York assemblyman Bob Reilly, the human-size deer tick who toiled diligently to prevent MMA from being legalized in New York state, thereby keeping the sport underground and unregulated (not to mention unremunerative for the polis), is stepping down, according to the Times Union of Albany which ran part of a statement from Reilly today:

"I believe a limited term of service is integral to the concept of a citizen legislator. I do not want to morph into a professional politician."

It'd be inappropriate to let Reilly go out on such a noble note. So here's some video of him impersonating a man with cerebral palsy (fast forward to 0:21):

One can only imagine the fictional non-libelous scene yesterday morning when Redskins owner Dan Snyder opened The Washington Times to find a story about how the Redskins' mega-trade with the Rams to go after Robert Griffin III could revive the team's moribund fan base. If that didn't make Snyder cackle over his eggs Florentine, this account of one fan's reaction to the trade, almost surely would have:

Aneesh Mehta had a weird feeling Friday. With his beloved Washington Redskins pursuing a franchise quarterback just days before the start of NFL free agency, he sensed something big was about to happen. That was why he continually refreshed the Twitter feed on his phone while at a birthday party Friday night.

About 10:30 p.m., he learned that the Redskins had executed a blockbuster trade to position themselves to draft one of two highly touted quarterback prospects: Stanford's Andrew Luck or, more likely, Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III out of Baylor.

"I screamed it at the dinner table, ‘We got RG3!'" Mr. Mehta recalled with a laugh. "Then [my best friend] and I just went straight to the bar and started taking shots."

Mr. Mehta's joy took him a step further Saturday. He wrote the Redskins a check for $2,580 to renew his two season tickets, something he previously told a team sales representative that he would not do unless the Redskins traded up in the draft to acquire a quarterback.

Redskins fans keep buying the same bottle of snake oil every year. Griffin is undoubtedly an elite quarterback with a great chance of being successful in the NFL, but that chance drops when playing for the Redskins and their child dictator of an owner. The Redskins traded their first and second round picks this year, along with their 2013 and 2014 first round picks to move into the number two position in the draft. They've mortgaged the farm, again, to sell tickets, jerseys, and false promise. But don't take my word for it. Here are football players weighing in on the trade (via Dan Steinberg):

LMFAOOOOOO the Redskins gave up that ricky williams shit. LOL a whole draft for RG3 LOL I'm dying LOL I'm gonna wear a skins hat tonight!

— DARNELL DOCKETT (@ddockett) March 10, 2012

Wow skins never to be outdone its great to get RG3 but whos gonna help him the next 3yrs?

— Clinton Portis (@TheRealC_Portis) March 10, 2012

For the Redskins next trade how about Redskins park and Fed Ex field for a bridge or team to nowhere!

— Mark May (@mark_may) March 10, 2012

And here's some number-crunching from our friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, who conclude in no uncertain terms that "this trade is awful for the Redskins." If you'd like to understand all the acronyms and numbers in the excerpt below, visit the HSAC site for complete analysis. The important takeaway is in bold:

But let's not jump to conclusions. RGIII could be better than the average second overall pick. In fact, he could be the best second overall pick ever. So how good does RGIII have to be to justify this trade?

Given the discounted value of the future draft picks, the total price the Redskins paid was 753.5 eCAVOA. That price translates to a CAV of 113.0, comparable to Tom Brady's current production to date (109 CAV). For the Redskins to get the equivalent value from RGIII as they spent acquiring him, he must produce at least as much as Tom Brady. If RGIII merely lives up to his eCAVOA, he'll finish his career having slightly outperformed David Garrard (61 CAV). Because all-time-great quarterbacks are rare commodities, the Redskins likely lost value both on paper and in reality.

Zounds. Does Griffin know this? I realize he's already producing money for Dan Snyder, but as Portis and May point out, football still happens to be a team sport. Does anyone think Brady would have been so great if Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft hadn't put a deep, talented roster around him? There was a time long ago when the Redskins used to build teams like that. They often did it by trading down in the draft to get more picks.

A few weeks ago, before the Rams trade, a Shepard Fairey inspired Robert Griffin III knockoff of the famous Obama campaign poster started circulating online. The poster scared me, for it represented not only the longing in Washington for a savior to liberate the team from 20 years in the football gulag, but also the exact kind of emotional agitprop that Dan Snyder and his gang of flimflam men have so effectively deployed for so long:

J.R. Smith has made quite the impression since signing with the Knicks last month. He's shooting 37 percent from the field and has already been fined $25,000 for tweeting a picture of the "girl with the biggest ass ever." But it's not like the Knicks weren't warned. The New York Post reports that Carmelo Anthony advised against signing Smith:

A couple of weeks before the signing, Anthony was asked if the Knicks should sign his former teammate who has a thuggish reputation. Anthony and Smith share the same agent, Leon Rose.

"If it happens, it happens and I'll be happy," Anthony said publicly before the signing.

But, according to the source, Anthony was not gung-ho and was "hurt'' Knicks upper management tossed his advice out the window.

This may only improve team chemistry.

Jenn Sterger is sorta-famous for two reasons. First, she got herself on TV at FSU games wearing low-cut outfits. Second, she received photos of a penis that was almost certainly attached to Brett Favre. That's not what one would call a distinguished resume. But it's good enough to land a job at The Daily.

For several months, Sterger has been appearing in awkward, useless sports videos for the Murdoch-owned iPad publication. Sterger learns to fly fish in Colorado. Sterger learns to rock climb at Chelsea Piers. Sterger warbles painfully while reading voice over. She's so graceless in all of these that you have to wonder if they wouldn't improve by simply cutting her out.

I don't even know what to make of her latest effort, which is little more than a celebration of the freakish height of Paul "Tiny" Sturgess, a 7-foot-8-inch Brit who talks like a cockney version of Andre the Giant and might be able to dunk without jumping. Sterger meets Sturgess at the top of the Empire State Building because, duh, it's the tallest building in town. This is a stunt, a carnie act. And that'd be fine if it were at least interesting. Unfortunately, it's terrible.

After lovable wingnut Mario Balotelli broke team curfew to visit a strip club in Liverpool last weekend, Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini proposed a cure for his young striker's antics: marriage.

Domesticity, Mancini claimed, would tame Balotelli. The Guardian offers the counter-point today, courtesy of Barney Ronay, who writes that Balotelli needs no cure. It's worth a read, especially because Ronay also writes stuff like this:

At least one recent Premier League manager is known to have forbidden his daughters, with a skinny-handed Ancient Mariner fervour, from ever marrying a footballer. It may be fair to add another caveat: Premier League footballers should, if possible, avoid marrying women who are willing to marry Premier League footballers. This is nobody's fault, but is instead an inevitable product of the peculiar plastic universe of the modern footballer, an environment peopled by hustlers and fixers, goons and creeps, profiteers, brutes, aardvarks, baboons, popinjays, sea cucumbers, bilious barnacles and a distinct species of sharp-taloned power-woman: irradiated by spray-on celebrification, empowered by bloodless consumer-lust, willing stooges to the textureless inanities of football's captive princes, big-haired, money-glossed, and dressed alternately in vamp-glam predator chic or the fashion-tracksuits of the basking social athlete.

With this in mind it was a bit surprising to hear Roberto Mancini suggest earlier this week that now may be the ideal moment for Mario Balotelli to get married. "It could be that marriage would help him," Mancini said, albeit under provocation from the latest episode in the miscellany of unbounded zaniness that now surrounds Balotelli, a player recast by the tabloid press from burgeoning scandal-magnet into a largely benign figure, a kind of man-child semi-cretin most commonly spotted unicycling around Manchester city centre with a beggar under one arm, playing croquet in a top hat made entirely from parmesan cheese or hijacking a school bus and driving it to Narnia.

That might be the best description of Balotelli yet.

(h/t The Fenian Mob)

Christian Laettner and Brian Davis were excellent college basketball players. But they appear to be terrible businessmen. After winning two national championships at Duke, Laettner and Davis started a real estate company called Blue Devil Ventures. Things went well at first. By 2006, however, Laettner and Davis were in major money trouble. That's when the litigation started, as the Wall Street Journal reports.

First, Scottie Pippen sued Laettner and Davis after a bid by the former Duke players to buy the Memphis Grizzlies imploded because of insufficient funding. Pippen helped finance the bid but never got his money back. A judge ruled last August that Laettner and Davis owed Pippen $2.55 million. Pippen still hasn't gotten his money back.

Laettner and Davis were later sued by Fannie Mae, Chevron Inc., and a Duke law professor for the same reason—failure to repay loans. Laettner and Davis had by then expanded their business to other cities and without their original partner, Tom Niemann, a Duke business school grad who favored a conservative approach. At one point, this clash in philosophy led to a tense lunch meeting that ended, according to the Wall Street Journal, with "Davis lifting the 5-foot-8 Niemann off the ground."

Shawne Merriman was another lender who was never repaid. A federal judge ruled in January that Laettner and Davis had to pay Merriman $3.7 million. All told, Laettner and Davis are now fending off lawsuits seeking repayment of loans worth about $30 million. The saddest of all these might be the one brought by Johnny Dawkins, the former Duke captain. Last year, the judge in that case ordered Laettner, Davis, and a company of theirs to pay Dawkins $671,309.

Laettner and Davis say they don't have the scratch. But they could always borrow money from someone else to cover. Might I suggest Vinny Four Fingers at the clam house?

Christian Laettner's Real-Estate Brick [WSJ]

Yesterday, Yahoo's Charles Robinson reported that suspended Auburn point guard Varez Ward was under federal investigation for alleged point-shaving. Robinson mentioned two games that the feds were looking into—a 56-53 loss to Arkansas on Jan. 25 and a 68-50 loss to Alabama on Feb. 7. In the Jan. 25 game, Ward got injured 19 seconds after entering the game, leaving Auburn only one reserve point guard. In the Feb. 7 game, he shot atrociously and turned the ball over six times in 17 minutes. Does that mean he was point-shaving? Impossible to say. But RJ Bell at Pregame.com has added some interesting analysis to the mix.

Bell looked at the percentage of bets made on each team in both games and the movement of the odds in both games, which is where things got interesting:

1/25/12
Arkansas started as a 10.5-point favorite over Auburn, and closed as a 9.5-point favorite (implying lopsided action ON Auburn).

2/7/12
Alabama started as a 5-point favorite over Auburn, and closed as a 5-point favorite (implying even action).

Conclusion: Neither game had lopsided action against Auburn – and one game had exactly the opposite (i.e., lopsided action ON Auburn)

Second tendency of corrupt games . . .

2) The team paid to lose actually loses the game against the Vegas spread.

1/25/12
Betting against Auburn (and on Arkansas) LOST vs. the Vegas spread.

2/7/12
Betting against Auburn (and on Alabama) WON vs. the Vegas spread.

Conclusion: 1-1 record would have resulted in any point-shavers LOSING money overall (after accounting for sportsbook commissions)

That conclusion, of course, doesn't meant there's no scandal. All Bell is saying is that "Las Vegas data on the two specific games named in the Auburn investigation is inconsistent with point-shaving." Ward may have tried to recruit some of his teammates into the alleged scheme, according to Yahoo. He might not have succeeded. And he might not have succeeded in point shaving. In fact, he might not have done anything but play like crap.

Auburn Point-Shaving Examined... [Pregame.com]

Auburn point guard Varez Ward is under investigation by the FBI for alleged point-shaving, according to Charles Robinson at Yahoo. Ward, who was suspended by Auburn at the end of February for "violating team rules," may have conspired to rope other players into the alleged scheme, say Robinson's sources. After another player on the team expressed concerns to an assistant coach in February, Auburn contacted the NCAA and the FBI.

At least two games are now being looked at, according to Robinson: a 68-50 loss to Alabama on Feb. 7 and a 56-53 loss to Arkansas on Jan. 25. In both games, Ward's performance on the court was either sorry or suspicious, depending, I suppose, on whom you're talking to. More details from Yahoo:

• In the Feb. 7 loss to Alabama, Ward played 17 minutes, scoring three points (shooting 1-for-5 from the field and 1-for-2 from the free-throw line) and committing six turnovers with two assists. His first shot was a made layup, his second shot was blocked, his third was an air ball, his fourth was a long missed 3-pointer and his fifth was blocked on a layup attempt. Tailing 43-33 with 15:25 left, Ward turned the ball over twice in 21 seconds. He was then subbed out of the game. Ward entered again with 11:30 remaining and Alabama leading 50-35. Ward then turned the ball over twice in 2½ minutes as the Crimson Tide moved to a 58-38 lead. In the other 26 games Ward played this season, he averaged 2.7 turnovers in 29.1 minutes per game. According to sportsbook Vegas Insider, Alabama entered the game as a five-point favorite. The Crimson Tide easily covered with an 18-point win.

• In the Jan. 25 game against Arkansas, Ward checked in with 14:25 to play. He turned the ball over in the backcourt on his first possession 19 seconds later, falling to the floor as Arkansas converted the turnover into a layup. After remaining on the floor for more than a minute, Ward left the game limping on his right leg. Coach Tony Barbee later described the injury as a knee to Ward's quadriceps. Ward's departure left Auburn with only one reserve point guard for the remainder of the game against the Razorbacks—little-used Tony Neysmith, who hadn't played in the previous seven games. According to Vegas Insider, Arkansas went into the game as 9½-point favorites. Auburn ultimately covered that spread without Ward, losing 56-53.

Now this is a potential scandal, unlike, say, players smoking doob outside the gym after practice. Think what you will of Robinson's role as NCAA bluebottle, but the man does rake the muck.

Sources: Auburn's Varez Ward at center of federal point-shaving probe [Yahoo]

So I went to Harvard. It was a daily challenge not to slug many of my classmates in the face. There are plenty of good people at Harvard. There are also a great many egotistical children convinced that their prattling is the stuff of genius. Too many politicians in training wheels. Too many cowards who wind up in finance. This morning, I felt a twinge of the Old Rage as I read a New York Times story about the reaction at Harvard to the men's basketball team making the NCAA tournament, which hasn't happened since 1946. I'll elaborate using quotes from the story:

"Everybody's so excited about it; in the dining halls, everyone's talking about it," said Danielle Rabinowitz, a Harvard sophomore from Brookline, Mass. "So, even for a person like myself, who isn't at the basketball games themselves, I'm pretty in tune with the success of the basketball team.

"People always stereotypically feel that our conversations are generally about philosophy, or obscure topics that the common man can't relate to. I think that just adding this element of sports to the mix kind of grounds us in a more human way that is really great."

The common man? Fuck you.

Tyler Neill, a graduate student in South Asian studies, was walking around Harvard Yard on Wednesday morning reading a copy of Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" in its original German. Neill had little knowledge of the university's latest basketball achievement.

"I watch sports none at all," Neill said. "It's not in my radar. Actually, when I talked with my father, he's mentioned this. He's excited."

None at all? Fuck you.

"We're not Duke, and don't want to be," said Peter Sampson, an alumnus from Los Angeles who was visiting the campus to attend a research seminar. "We're proud of the basketball team, and if they're going to play they might as well be good. But we're also proud of everyone. Tomorrow it might be the time to notice a new groundbreaking book by a professor or a scientific discovery. A basketball game is fleeting."

If they're going to play they might as well be good? Fuck you in the eye.

"The team has been a real community building force," [Drew Gilpin] Faust said. "It's a tribute to the notion of the student-athlete, and it's happening at the same time as the phenomenon of Jeremy Lin, who was on this team just two years ago and was fully a student here."

Faust has attended several Harvard games this season, sitting behind one of the baskets—often a serious fan's choice—in the small, old-fashioned pavilion gym where Harvard plays its home games. She said that her husband was a diehard basketball fan and that the game had deep roots in her family.

Huh. Hold on a minute. This one sounds kind of normal. Kind of common, even. I think I might like this one. Turns out she's the president of the school and the only person interviewed with whom you might actually WANT to watch a basketball game.

Harvard Encounters a Rare Subject [NYT]

Santos star and Brazilian international Neymar has been linked time and again, often prematurely, to transfers to big European clubs. But Neymar is still in Brazil, perhaps because he can do things there like dribble the entire length of the field without someone giving him a tumble, which is what he did yesterday against Internacional in the group stage of the Copa Libertadores tournament.

[Via Soccer By Ives]

The latest issue of Sports Illustrated has a feature by David Epstein about the human flotsam that is Lenny Dykstra, who was sentenced on Monday to three years in California state prison after pleading no contest to grand theft auto and filing a false financial statement. Epstein spoke with an LAPD detective who investigated Dykstra to gather some new details about the ex-ballplayer's sad, seedy behavior.

Among the revelations was the following information about the businesses that Dykstra's jockhanging accountant, Robert Hymers (here's the only photo I found of him) hoped to launch with Charlie Sheen, with whom Dykstra was palling around at the time:

In late 2010, Hymers, according to a taped interview that police conducted with him on Feb. 14, 2011, began helping Dykstra package assets—specifically his MLB pension and a stake in the online celebrity poker site Hollywood Poker—to be sold or used as collateral to obtain loans. Dykstra promised Hymers equity in his new business Home Free Systems, ostensibly set up to help people refinance predatory home mortgages. Dykstra had also introduced Hymers to Sheen, with whom Hymers hoped to partner on an energy drink with the slogan, "Sheen power, Sheen blood, Sheen energy." Hymers also wanted to market an electronic cigarette called the Nico-Sheen through a company called Vapor Rush. Vapor Rush, which lists Hymers as the CFO on its website, filed for a Nico-Sheen trademark on April 4, 2011, according to records from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Later that month, TMZ reported that Nico-Sheen would be billed as the "winning E-cigarette" and Dykstra would be a partner in the venture.

Hymers was dazzled by the possibility of earning money with Sheen; in a second police interview, on March 22, 2011, he referred to Dykstra as "Sheen rich and cash poor."

Oh, and then there was the part about the fortune teller. And the human growth hormone found in Dykstra's fridge. The HGH allegedly came from Sheen and traced back to an HIV patient. Nico-Sheen, Sheen Blood, HGH, a fortune teller. I smell a sitcom episode....

How Lenny Dykstra Got Nailed [Sports Illustrated]

Does LSU football have a placekicking problem? It wouldn't seem so. They've got this guy, who sprained his knee last year but doesn't seem to miss field goals too often. They've also got this guy, who competently handles kickoffs. But do they have a female kicker who was the 2011 homecoming queen? They do not. And Mo Isom, who was not only the first athlete in school history to be crowned queen but also an All-American goalkeeper for the women's soccer team, might be the answer.

Beginning today, Isom, who has one year of athletic eligibility left, will participate in a three-day tryout, according to a Facebook page USA Today is using as a source. The news has been reported elsewhere, though, and it really would be a remarkable thing for Isom to make the roster of a FBS juggernaut like LSU, especially considering her background. Isom's father committed suicide in early 2009. Later that year, Isom was in a horrific car crash that left her in bad shape. More from the devout Concordia Sentinel:

And it wasn't until Nov. 25, 2009, that God grabbed Isom's attention, and it came at 1:30 in the morning on her trip back home to Georgia for the holidays.

Isom lost control of her jeep, flipped it three times and landed upside down around a tree in a ravine.

"I remember waking up hanging upside down, literally vomiting blood and choking on it because I was upside down," Isom said.

Isom broke her neck and all of her ribs, while damaging her lungs, face and brain.

That Isom now wants to play football is impressive. There's no questioning her leg strength. You can watch video of her giving first-team All-American LSU punter Brad Wing everything he can handle in this skills competition. Isom claims to have kicked a 51-yard field goal while working out on her own. She also boomed this outrageous 90-yard goal during a soccer game. It looks like a Powerade ad:

Top photo by Steve Franz, LSU Athletics Staff Photographer

Where to begin with this epic bar tab (full version at the bottom)? It's so single-minded, so devoid of nuance. I hate it. When Petchesky first directed my attention to this abomination, which was posted a few places yesterday, I thought it could only belong to one man—Don Johnson, the "champagne king" and "beast of blackjack" responsible for several enormous tabs last year. But I'd only seen the grand total, which is the highest we've recorded to date. (£203,948.80 = $323,000, roughly.)

Upon closer examination, however, it became clear that Don Johnson had nothing to do with this effort. Don Johnson gets the joke. Whoever rang up this bill does not. And that person is Alex Hope, according to the papers. Hope is a 23-year-old foreign currency exchange wunderkind and a model of that British reserve we've all come to admire. Just check out his website. There's Hope poised soberly over the Financial Times. There he is stroking his hairless chin, prepared to dispense wisdom. See how reserved he is.

Hope must have been equally reserved when he swept into the Playground nightclub in Liverpool with a group of friends. He wore sunglasses so nobody would think him gauche:

I suspect he politely greeted Manchester City footballers Joe Hart and Adam Johnson and Wayne Rooney's wife Coleen, who were all in the club. He bought them drinks. Perhaps he quietly gave them one of his £500 champagne bottles.

Hope's first purchase upon entering the club appears to have been his most lavish—a £125,000 Nebuchadnezzar of Armand de Brignac (Ace of Spades) champagne. That's how you break a record. You don't do it in some spectacle of a climax. You get it over with. You snort at the record. And you keep buying drinks.

"Nice one, Hope! Now where the fanny at?" one of Hope's less-reserved friends might have asked shortly thereafter.

"Now look here," Hope might have responded. "I don't refer to women in such crass terms. I'm Alex Hope and I am a renowned foreign currency trader. I have a brand to manage. And my brand manager—which is also myself because Alex Hope is multi-talented—informs me that women should be treated with respect and not referred to as "fanny," even as a joke. That is why I have decided to buy each woman in this nightclub a drink."

By then, of course, the less-reserved women in the club were swarming Alex Hope and his party, according to once clubber who spoke to The Sun:

"After the big bottle came in they were mobbed by gorgeous girls.

"There must have been about 60 of them at any time vying for his attention and he then ordered shots for every single woman in the club."

Direct your attention now to the final drink order on the tab. That could only be Alex Hope ordering drinks—shots it would later be reported—for 42 of those women. They are not fanny shots. They are "pussy" shots. Direct your attention a little lower to the service charge and the gratuity lines. That could only be Alex Hope leaving a very reserved 10 percent tip and not a tuppence more. Don Johnson will eat this wastrel alive.