This isn’t directly Vanderbilt-related, but I’d argue that stories of corruption in college sports are pretty important to the context in which Vanderbilt’s football and men’s basketball teams operate.
Now that I live in Memphis, it’s been sort of hard to miss all the sordid details coming out about the vacated 2008 Final Four previously claimed [...]
Entries Tagged as 'sociology'
College sports is corrupt. We’re all patsies.
August 21st, 2009 · 1 Comment
Tags: MCBB - general · college · ethics · ncaa
Coaching circus
April 2nd, 2009 · No Comments
All the nonsense surrounding Calipari here in Memphis has been hilarious to watch. Actually following it has been a bit of an obsession for me this week.
If I had lots of time I would write up a huge long post on the topic but instead I’ll just paste in some thoughts from a VandySports [...]
Tags: General · MCBB - general · SEC · Uncategorized · ethics · sociology
More bloglove and other such stuff
November 17th, 2008 · No Comments
Not surprisingly, our “old friend” (in blogosphere years) Jerry Hinnen didn’t let VU’s sixth win pass without commemoration over at the Car Wash. He linked to a nice mention on an Auburn-ish blog I’d not heard of, JRSuicide’s A Lifetime of Defeats. Hey, if the ‘Dores can combine with the President-elect to push back the [...]
Tags: sociology
Your on-the-ball NCAA
October 13th, 2008 · 2 Comments
No better way to kick off basketball season than to celebrate the fact that the NCAA has absolutely no problem with Billy Gillispie paying a recruit’s dad to speak at a basketball camp.
Why again do I waste time following this farce called college sports?
(Thanks to GoDores2005 for the link.)
Tags: MCBB - general · Stallings · ethics
VU-UTK game dynamics and bandwagons
October 5th, 2008 · No Comments
I had an intriguing thought today: I wonder if the respective seasons Vanderbilt and Tennessee are having will lead to a lot of Vanderbilt fans who didn’t buy season tix buying “back” tickets from the usual crowd of Vol fans in Nashville? I made a point of not buying a season ticket and deemphasizing football [...]
Tags: Vandy football · sociology
In case you missed it…. (+ open thread)
September 28th, 2008 · 3 Comments
ESPN College Gameday actually will be coming to Nashville, and VU is up to 19th in both major polls. I’m not sure which is a bigger deal.
To be honest, I’ve sort of minimized the whole Gameday thing in my mind in part because people make too big a deal out of ESPN’s validation and in [...]
Tags: Vandy football · football · media · sociology
The “black-out” thing has jumped the shark
August 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I sort of thought it had more than run its course anyway, but today was the final straw. Apparently Penn State declared it a “white out” to get the fans fired up for their 66-10 win over Coastal Carolina.
Incidentally, note that the Georgia-Auburn game last year was so cool because the ‘Dawgs had never worn [...]
Tags: Vandy football · football · sociology
International intrigue
August 24th, 2008 · 1 Comment
I just got home from the casinos, was reminded by the radio that Spain-USA is going on right now. So I got the bright idea of listening to it on Cadena SER while watching on TV. Astonishgly, the Webcast is not lagged more than about 10 seconds behind NBC’s video. Perusing the Spanish media, [...]
Tags: international soccer · olympics · sociology
Amazing the stuff people spout on the radio
August 15th, 2008 · No Comments
Yesterday I happened to catch the beginning of the ESPN Radio program “Game Day”. The host, named Jeff something or other, was drawing on the Olympic basketball and particularly on the viewership of the China-US game to assert that hoops is catching up to soccer as the world’s favorite sport. Leaving aside that brash and [...]
Tags: international soccer · olympics · sociology
To hell with football
July 20th, 2008 · 8 Comments
I mean that in a couple of different ways. College football has become such a morass of cheating and of actors posing as college students that, as much as I love some things about it, I really think it would be best for everyone if the sport just collapsed under its own dishonesty, birthing something [...]
Tags: Vandy football · football · sociology