Image Via.

As young adults, one of the toughest decisions a budding mind must settle on is where to enroll in college. For aspiring student-athletes, this decision is far more pressing knowing he or she must weigh out what’s in their best interest for both for athletics and education. The headlines this week feature a young athlete who made the wrong choice and is now feeling the repercussions.

Meet Jarrod Uthoff, the 6’8” redshirt freshman power forward from Cedar Rapids. Just a year prior in the state of Iowa, he was known as Mr. Basketball. After being strategically recruited by the Wisconsin Badgers’ assistant coach Gary Close, Uthoff signed a letter of intent to play ball in Madison. The expectations for Uthoff’s potential in a Badger uniform were sky-high. 

After riding the pine during his redshirt season, Uthoff decided Wisconsin wasn’t the place for him. He cited the desire to be closer to home as his reason for administering a transfer request to the Wisconsin athletic department (apparently a three hour drive is far enough to feel homesick). This was unusual for Wisconsin—they rarely come across signees wanting out. 

Even though Uthoff had yet to play in a collegiate basketball game, his name inevitably began swarming the headlines after Badgers’ head coach Bo Ryan announced heavy restrictions on Uthoff’s rights to transfer…that is, his rights to transfer to certain schools. Uthoff was denied “permission to contact” any school in the Big Ten Conference, along with various schools spread across the country, such as Marquette, Virginia and Florida. Ryan was given the chance to explain himself on a popular ESPN talk radio show, Mike & Mike.  The interview seems to have ruffled the feathers of the twitterverse, as analytics suggest 71% of fan reactions toward Ryan’s dialogue with ESPN were perceived in a negative light (sprinkle a grain of salt, of course).

After feeling the hot water in this transfer fiasco, coach Ryan took a step backward on his stubborn stance yesterday, lifting his original transfer restrictions on all schools except those in (Wisconsin’s) Big Ten Conference. The University followed up with an official statement of their own. 

This raises an interesting debate in collegiate athletics. How terrible of a precedent could this be setting in an organization that is supposed to be working in the best interest of its student-athletes? Where should the NCAA draw the line when it comes to its policy on transfer requests? Should head coaches at universities be allowed this type of veto power, or should it fall into the hands of NCAA officials to ultimately determine a fair compromise for all parties involved? 

The discussion continues in the NCAA Transfer Debate Trap!

-Geoff 

image via CHUCK LIDDY - CLIDDY@NEWSOBSERVER.COM

For this trap of the day, it began as a staring contest—a blank gaze at my empty screen, blink-blink-blink goes the cursor. Honestly, I was tempted to simply jot down one giant question mark to sum up my insight on the greatest tournament in the world of sports. I could call myself an expert, but quite frankly, I’d be a liar.

To clarify, there is a justifiable reason the NCAA college basketball tournament has been coined “March Madness.” The do-or-die 68-team tournament is as unpredictable as it gets in sports, even forcing self-proclaimed basketball experts to hop down from their high horses, and don dusty humble hats for the weeks of basketball chaos. In this tournament you’ll find imagery of pure jubilation, but rest assured you’ll also see heartbreak and shattered dreams.

To put the craziness into perspective, each year my extended family of 25+ comes together virtually to enter a competition in which we battle it out to see who can successfully create the most accurate “bracket“ of win-loss predictions. The level of sports interest amongst us varies considerably, yet it’s become apparent that everyone—despite one’s sports erudition or effort—has a realistic chance to catch that lucky streak.  In 2011’s tournament, my aunt Kay stole the show and took home the family trophy (by the way, she is my GREAT aunt, 91 years young). 

That’s where Trapit comes into play. I pieced together a March Madness Trap so we can figure out this whole basketball formula together, what the so-called study sports gurus like to call, “Bracketology.” The trap is rather diverse, capturing opinions from bloggers, beat writers and columnists with predictions and pick breakdowns (remember to absorb each opinion with a grain of salt, because although one may be in-the-know, in actuality he or she often had no idea in retrospect).

Over the weekend, what is known as Selection Sunday is judgement day for many universities on the “bubble” of making the tournament. An NCAA selection committee will huddle and delve deeply into each team’s season-long body of work to deem whether they are worthy of getting their ticket punchedto go to the big dance.

Once all the seeds have been selected and the first-round match-ups set in stone, the speculation officially begins. When the buzz hits a fever pitch, this is where the March Madness Trap will take twists and turns of its own. Who are the favorites to win it all? Who are the Cinderellas most likely to shock the basketball world? Which bubble teams were snubbed the worst? Who are the overrated squads most vulnerable for potential upsets and letdowns? Out of which region will 2012’s new shining star be born? And so on… 

After Selection Sunday wraps up this weekend, bracket-fillers around the globe have just a handful of days to finalize all their picks and cast in their brackets. So it’s time for you to start doing your homework with the March Madness Trap. Much love to my Aunt Kay, but she’s going down this year. It’s on!

-Geoff 

It’s a game for the ages. Rarely do two top-five (preseason-ranked) teams knock helmets the first game of the season. In fact, the last time it happened, I wasn’t even born yet. In 1984, the #1 Auburn Tigers took on the #4 Miami Hurricanes at Giants Stadium in New York. It’s been 27 years since a game of this magnitude has opened the college football season. With NCAA championship implications clearly on the line, it will be a heavyweight matchup between the #3 Oregon Ducks and the #4 LSU Tigers.

First up, let’s break down my alma mater, the mighty Oregon Ducks (click the image for content!):

For Oregon, it has been a tumultuous off-season for everybody. The football program has been actively investigated by the NCAA nearly all summer long, and a dark cloud of suspicion has been hovering over Eugene ever since. But Oregon also has questions to answer on the field if they wish to be successful against a vicious SEC defense that the Tigers will surely bring to the table. Oregon will have to replace both starting wide-receivers, and a large chunk of leadership at the offensive and defensive linemen positions. Fortunately for Oregon, they bring back their dual-threat Heisman contenders: their lethal quarterback Darron Thomas and runningback sensation LaMichael James. After losing a heartbreaker in the national title game last January, and then facing a barrage of off-the-field scrutiny soon after, there is no doubt the Ducks are anxious to storm the field today.

The LSU Tigers are chomping at the bit as well:

The Tigers had once been coined a surefire national title contender mid-summer entering the season. But less than two weeks before their matchup with Oregon, the national perception on the Tigers drastically took a turn for the worse. On August 19th, senior starting quarterback Jordan Jefferson allegedly took part in an altercation outside Shady’s bar, a popular college joint just off of LSU’s campus. The facts to this day remain hazy, with speculation swirling on both sides of the story. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s quite the read, click here! Regardless of what really happened, Jefferson eventually was suspended indefinitely from the team, and charged with felony battery. The Tigers will now have to adjust to using a quarterback—senior, Jarrett Lee—that never could’ve imagined he would be getting the start to begin the season. The sudden jolt to the program has the Tigers’ offense angry, the defense feeling ferocious and a massive LSU crowd ready to roar.

The teams will meet today at 8:00PM ET on a neutral field in Texas, known as “Cowboys Stadium.” Win, or lose, the season won’t end for either team when the clock finally ticks down to zero. Follow these teams all season long, with the Oregon Ducks Trap, and the LSU Tigers Trap. Let the Cowboy Classic begin! May the best team win.

-Geoff (Go Ducks!)

I was in the middle of my first week here at Trapit when I came up with the idea of an NCAA Probe Trap. At the time, whispers about a University of Oregon investigation were undoubtedly brewing and the Ohio State scandal had already been rapidly developing. The tightly woven spiral in college football began unraveling, wobbling out of control right before my eyes. It was the perfect opportunity to give the tools of Trapit a test drive to see where this story may go. Nobody could’ve predicted it would get this ugly.

I woke up that eerie morning via text message.

Next thing you know, I am upright in bed, blind as a bat, and opening my laptop without bothering to jump up to put in my contact lenses. Eyebrows inches from the screen, I read the headlines that the head coach of my beloved Oregon Ducks—Chip Kelly—was bound to be the next coach to walk the plank in college athletics. Moment of silence please. Yahoo Sports had just released a second investigative piece detailing the relationship the Ducks football program had with an unofficial street agent Will Lyles. The cold hard facts were startling, and as a diehard Duck grad, the realization that there was no logical explanation for our program’s actions created a fiery concoction of emotions I can’t bare to describe. It stung even worse to see that my NCAA Probe Trap had picked up the Oregon story right away. As a sports fan, as a sports editor, there was no hiding from it.

From the get-go, the NCAA has had a serious case against Oregon. Although there are many gray areas, there is still no doubt about some sort of a case existing there. When the facts emerged about the dated player profiles given, the documented phone records, and Kelly’s suspicious behavior, I decided I could no longer search for a reason to defend our program’s innocence. Instead, I hung my head and harnessed any energy I could muster from this situation into finding hope that the NCAA would have mercy on us when coming to an agreement on our reprimand. I couldn’t stop thinking about how hard the NCAA hammered our fellow conference nemesis USC. Could we really be the next victim to face a post-season ban, just one year removed from the national championship game?

And then it happened. Out of nowhere, we truly became lucky ducks. And who would’ve thought that Yahoo Sports of all institutions would be the ones to come to our rescue after what they had written about us just a month prior. After an eleven-month investigation, Yahoo struck gold for the second time this summer, releasing another groundbreaking article about a university tied to serious NCAA allegations.

This time, the negative light was beaming down on the Miami Hurricanes, and the Ducks were free to fly away from the headlines and start prepping for what truly mattered: LSU.

Seeing this picture posted above was just another day waking up to an absolutely eye-popping story in college sports. Details on the freshly surfaced Miami scandal began to flood my NCAA Probe Trap right off the bat. The Ducks were under fire for a paper trail amounting to a measly $25,000. With the seriousness of Miami’s situation, it was much different. We are talking millions of dollars in off-the-field exchanges. The types of infractions committed were through the roof, above and beyond what any university has done in recent memory. It made sneaky Oregon money look like toilet paper in contrast. There was a bigger picture in college football beginning to come into focus and Yahoo’s story revealed that the problems in college sports were well beyond players interacting with agents and boosters.

According to Yahoo’s little bird—Nevin Shapiro—the rule breaking on South Beach began in 2002, when athletic director Paul Dee was high in the chain of command at the university. Dee stuck around the Miami campus for the next seven years as the acting AD, but continued to turn a blind-eye away from serious infractions being committed by student-athletes year-after-year at Miami. Whether he knew about the dirt being swept under his very own rug or not, it doesn’t take a genius to decipher that Dee highly lacked institutional control over his position at the University of Miami. Dee even had the nerve to boast that all schools should, “have to put in place the kind of institutional control we have at Miami.” A little over a year later, Dee has found himself caught up in one of the biggest scandals in NCAA history, involving over 70 different student-athletes that all played under his watch.

So as Duck fans, why should we care about Dee in the first place? USC has their reasons, and so should we.

Dee’s eventual career move is where the rubber finally meets the road. After Dee stepped down as Miami’s AD in 2008, he graciously accepted a career move as the new chair of the NCAA Committee on Infractions. His first task was to evaluate how the NCAA should handle the investigation of the USC football program after it became public knowledge that the family of ex-Heisman champ Reggie Bush accepted a significant chunk of cash while he was still enrolled in school. As a result, USC was docked thirty scholarships and received a two-year post-season ban, both of which were heavily influenced by Dee’s role in the committee. It was the most harsh NCAA crackdown on a storied football program in decades.

It’s sickening to find out a year later that a complete hypocrite was the muscle man calling the shots on USC’s punishment. Dee’s doctrine was simple: “High profile players demand high profile compliance.” This was an actual quote he used to stand strong behind his decision to keep USC—a team vastly followed by a giant sports market—out of a bowl game for consecutive years. Even though Duck fans loved to watch the USC empire crumble, the baton passed over to us always felt like it was done in uncomfortable way.

It’s time for the NCAA to call off the dogs and take a hard look in the mirror at the monster that they have created. As fans, we are supposed to be able to expect that there is nothing but a trustworthy, unbiased governing body making the tough decisions that affect college sports. This is especially important when we are talking about decisions that could potentially break the hearts of millions of people that would be crushed to see to their team’s season lose its meaning. There is no hiding it now, the comittee made an awful mistake by allowing Dee to punish USC in such a brutal fashion. The NCAA absolutely cannot afford to make a mistake like that again…at least not while the heat is on them.

As a Duck fan, the realization that the NCAA took a step backward with Dee’s leadership debaucle is a beautiful thing. It bought us time. The credibility of the NCAA has been crippled, and they are getting hammered about this very truth in the media. And rest assured, journalists will be keeping a critical eye on the methods of future NCAA investigations from here on out.

For now, Duck fans can breathe a heavy sigh of relief, because in the current state of affairs, there is a little stench in everyone’s corner at this point. How can anyone point a finger right now? Let’s just put this NCAA Probe to rest, and play some football already.

Quack!

-Geoff