Colleges and Universities

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      Once an ‘Easy Way Out’ for Equality, Women’s Soccer Is Now a U.S. Force

      by

      Brooke Volza and the other girls who play in the top division of high school soccer in Albuquerque know all about the Metro Curse: The team that wins the city’s metro tournament at the start of the season is doomed to end the year without a state championship.So when Cibola High School defied that fate with Volza scoring the only goal in the team’s 1-0 victory against Carlsbad High School before a cheering stadium crowd at the University of New Mexico last year, it was pandemonium. “I started crying. I started hugging everyone,” Volza, 17, said, describing the experience as “times 10 amazing.”Now the ball she used to score that goal sits on a shelf in her bedroom, covered with her teammates’ autographs and jersey numbers. Across it in large capital letters are the words, “2021 STATE CHAMPIONS.”Fifty years ago, Volza’s experience of sprawling and robust competitive high school soccer was effectively unheard-of in the United States. Yet thanks to Title IX, which became law in 1972 and banned sex discrimination in education, generations of girls have had the promise of access to sports and other educational programs.Brooke Volza at Cibola High School in Albuquerque.Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesAsia Lawyer, a rising senior at Centennial High School in Boise, Idaho.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAnd girls’ soccer, perhaps more than any other women’s sport, has grown tremendously in the 50 years since. School administrators quickly saw adding soccer as a cost-effective way to comply with the law, and the rising interest helped youth leagues swell. Talented players from around the globe came to the United States. And as millions of American women and girls benefited, the best of them gave rise to a U.S. women’s national program that has dominated the world stage.“Once Title IX broke down those barriers, and let women and girls play sports, and said they have to be provided with equal opportunities, the girls came rushing through,” said Neena Chaudhry, the general counsel and senior adviser for education at the National Women’s Law Center. “They came through in droves.”A 50-Year Rise Out of NowhereWomen’s participation in high school and college athletics surged after the passage of Title IX in 1972, and no sport has added more players than soccer.

      .dw-chart-subhed {
      line-height: 1;
      margin-bottom: 6px;
      font-family: nyt-franklin;
      color: #121212;
      font-size: 15px;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      Girls’ Participation in High School Sports
      Notes: Top 15 sports shown. Data is not available for all sports in all years, and comparable data is not available prior to the 1978-79 academic year.Source: National Federation of State High School AssociationsBy The New York Times

      .dw-chart-subhed {
      line-height: 1;
      margin-bottom: 6px;
      font-family: nyt-franklin;
      color: #121212;
      font-size: 15px;
      font-weight: 700;
      }

      Women’s Participation in N.C.A.A. Divisions I, II and III
      Notes: Top 15 sports shown. Data is not available for all sports in all years, and comparable data is not available prior to the 1981-82 academic year. Some schools were added to the data in 1995-96.Source: N.C.A.A.By The New York TimesBefore Title IX passed, an N.C.A.A. count found only 13 women’s collegiate soccer teams in the 1971-72 season, with 313 players. In 1974, the first year in which a survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations tracked girls’ participation across the United States, it counted 6,446 girls playing soccer in 321 schools in just seven states, mostly in New York. That number climbed to about 394,100 girls playing soccer in high schools across the country during the 2018-19 school year, with schools often carrying multiple teams and states sponsoring as many as five divisions.Mountain View Los Altos stretching during the tournament in Redmond, the Elite Clubs National League playoffs.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesIn 2018-19, the most recent season counted because of the coronavirus pandemic, there were 3.4 million girls overall participating in high school sports, compared with 4.5 million boys.Many of those athletes have overcome fears to try out for a team. Some have practiced late into the night, running sprints after goofing off with teammates. Some have found archrivals through competition, and plenty have grappled with the sting of defeat. Numerous girls and women on the soccer pitch have felt the thrill of a goal, and the pride of being part of something bigger than themselves.“We are the heart and soul of soccer at Cibola,” Volza said.Title IX is a broad law, and was not originally intended to encompass sports. Its origins lie in fighting discrimination against women and girls in federally funded academic institutions. But as the regulations were hashed out, they eventually encompassed athletics, and it helped bridge disparities beyond the classroom. Today, Title IX is perhaps best known for its legacy within women’s interscholastic athletics.Despite initial and heavy opposition to the law because of a perceived threat to men’s athletic programs, the N.C.A.A. eventually sponsored women’s sports, including soccer in 1982. Before that, only a handful of teams played one another around the country.The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a dynasty that has won 21 N.C.A.A. championships and produced inimitable players including Mia Hamm, began its run playing against high schoolers.“We didn’t really have anyone to play,” said Anson Dorrance, the head coach of the women’s team since its inception in 1979. He described how he cobbled together a schedule that first season. One travel soccer club, the McLean Grasshoppers, “came down to U.N.C. and beat us like a drum,” he said.Florida Gators Coach Samantha Bohon, left, talking with an assistant coach, Jocie Rix, as they scout players during the Elite Clubs National League playoffs.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThe playoffs are a big showcase for high school players to be seen by top college coaches.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAfter the N.C.A.A. brought women’s soccer into the fold, participation rates went from 1,855 players on 80 teams across all three divisions in 1982 to nearly 28,000 players across 1,026 teams in 2020-21.Now, the N.C.A.A. claims soccer as the most expanded women’s sports program among universities in the last three decades.Current and former athletic directors, sports administrators and coaches attribute the rise of soccer to several factors. Initially, complying with the law was a game of numbers and dollars: Soccer is a relatively large sport, where average roster sizes typically float between 20 and 26 players. The generous roster sizes helped schools meet the requirements of the law to offer similar numbers of opportunities to male and female students.For administrators, soccer was also economical: It needed only a field, a ball and two goals. It was also a relatively easy sport to learn.“At the time schools were interested in, ‘How can I add sports for women that wouldn’t cost me very much?’” said Donna Lopiano, founder and president of Sports Management Resources and a former chief executive of the Women’s Sports Foundation. She added: “Schools were looking for the easy way out.”The shifts did not begin until the late 1980s and early 1990s. College programs increasingly gained varsity status — often pressured by litigation — which created scholarship opportunities and made soccer a pathway to higher education. The game boomed at the high school level, where it became one of the most popular sports, fourth in terms of participation rates for girls for 2018-19, according to the high school federation (the top three girls’ sports were track and field, volleyball and basketball).An under-14 match in Redmond.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesA cottage industry of club teams also sprang up around the country, as athletes jockeyed for attention from college coaches. The youth game grew, and university teams became a farm system for the elite world stage, as women struggled to play the sport in many countries outside the United States.The U.S. women’s national team went largely unnoticed when it played its first international match in 1985. It also got little attention in 1991 when it won the first Women’s World Cup, held in Guangdong, China.Then the United States began to feel the power of Title IX. In 1996, women’s soccer debuted at the Olympics in Atlanta, and the United States won gold. During the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, against China, the Americans secured a victory during penalty kicks before a capacity crowd of more than 90,000 people at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.Michelle Akers, the pillar of the U.S.W.N.T. in the ’80s and ’90s who is now an assistant coach for the Orlando Pride women’s professional team, said Title IX was “game-changing.” “I can’t even understand the amount of time and energy and heartache that took to get that pushed through, and not just pushing it through but enforcing it — making it real for people, and making it real for me,” she said.The national team’s success continued, with a record four World Cup titles and four Olympic golds. And this year, after a six-year legal battle, a multimillion-dollar settlement and eventual labor agreement established equal pay for players representing the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams when competing internationally.“It was a historic moment, not just for soccer, but for sport,” Cindy Parlow Cone, U.S. Soccer’s president, said.The U.S. women’s national team celebrating its World Cup win in 2019 after a parade in Manhattan.Calla Kessler/The New York TimesSydney Sharts, left, and her sister Hannah, right, are college players. Their mother, Michelle, was on a club team in the ’90s.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesIn 1993, Michele Sharts was part of a club team at U.C.L.A. that threatened to sue the school under Title IX for not sponsoring women’s soccer.Sharts, who was cut from the inaugural varsity squad, now has two daughters playing at large university programs. Hannah, 22, started at U.C.L.A. before transferring to Colorado, where she is a graduate student. Sydney, 20, began at Oklahoma before transferring to Kansas State for the coming season.Hannah Sharts has played in front of as many as 5,000 fans. “Being able to gradually see more and more fans fill up the stands throughout my college experience has been very promising,” Hannah Sharts said. Both Hannah and Sydney have dreams to play professionally.Like the Sharts sisters, Volza, the rising senior in New Mexico, plans to play in college. She is looking at Division II and III schools with strong engineering programs.But first, she has her final year of high school ahead. Volza said she wanted to be a leader for the younger players.“I want to motivate them and teach them what it’s like to play varsity soccer for a state-winning championship team,” Volza said.And Volza wants to make history again in her own corner of America, by leading her team to win the Metro tournament and state championship in back-to-back years.Members of the De Anza Force celebrating a win over World Class F.C. in Redmond.Lindsey Wasson for The New York Times More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Basket

      Why College Basketball Teams Are Turning to Alumni to Find Coaches

      by

      Coaches of several N.C.A.A. tournament teams either attended their universities, like North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, or started their careers there, like Kansas’ Bill Self.NEW ORLEANS — Just before his senior season at Oklahoma State, Bill Self injured a knee while working as a basketball camp counselor at the University of Kansas. Each time he saw Larry Brown, who was then the Jayhawks’ coach, the limp got worse.Brown felt so badly for Self that when the camp ended he told Self that if there was ever anything he needed, he had only to ask. So Self did.“I said ‘I want to be your graduate assistant next year,’” Self said. “And he said, ‘You’re hired.’”It was not much of a job. Self read USA Today and passed along any articles he thought might interest his boss. He made sure a lane was reserved at a local bowling alley on game days, in case Brown wanted to blow off steam. And, mostly, he stayed out of the way.But during that year, Self built relationships — with an assistant athletic director, with a publicist, with the basketball secretary — and maintained them well enough that when Kansas’ head coaching job opened 17 years later, he had a small army of fans within the athletic department.“That probably played a role in me being able to come back here,” Self said.Taking advantage of those early connections hardly makes Self an outlier in college basketball, where it is increasingly common for former students, team managers, players and low-level assistants to have triumphant homecomings as head basketball coaches.Just look at the Final Four, where Self is joined by Villanova Coach Jay Wright, who caught the eye of Rollie Massimino when he worked his camps and returned to the Wildcats after building Hofstra into a N.C.A.A. tournament team. There’s also North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, who starred for the Tar Heels from 1988-92, then returned to Chapel Hill as an assistant after a lengthy N.B.A. career and dabbling in broadcasting. The other team here, Duke, will be coached next season by Jon Scheyer, a former captain of a national championship team and a current assistant who will succeed the retiring Mike Krzyzewski.Jon Scheyer, right, a captain on a Duke national championship team, will lead the Blue Devils after Mike Krzyzewski retires.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesSimilar stories have dotted the entire bracket.Texas Tech’s Mark Adams, a 65-year-old basketball lifer, and Michigan’s Juwan Howard, a member of the fabled Fab Five who went on to have a decorated N.B.A. career, took their teams into the second weekend of the tournament with one thing in common: They were doing it at their alma maters.In all, 14 of the tournament’s 68 coaches were working at schools they either attended or began their coaching careers at. And the trend shows no sign of abating: Shaheen Holloway, the architect of St. Peter’s miraculous run to the East regional final this year, was hired on Wednesday by Seton Hall, the university where he starred as a slick point guard and later spent eight years as an assistant coach.Louisville, which has not won an N.C.A.A. tournament game since 2017, turned to Kenny Payne — a Knicks assistant and a reserve on Louisville’s 1986 title-winning team — to reverse the Cardinals’ fortunes. And at least six other people are taking over as head coaches at schools where they either played or served as an assistant.“I find myself watching the coaching carousel in all the sports, asking, ‘What’s their tie to the institution? Have they gone there before?’” said Nina King, the athletic director at Duke. “I think it’s something that we look at.”King said that while coaches who had no connection to Duke were discussed as Krzyzewski’s replacement, it was important to turn to someone from “the brotherhood,” where there was no shortage of possibilities, including the college coaches Bobby Hurley (Arizona State), Tommy Amaker (Harvard), Johnny Dawkins (Central Florida), Jeff Capel (Pittsburgh), Chris Collins (Northwestern), Kenny Blakeney (Howard) and Steve Wojciechowski (formerly of Marquette), or Quin Snyder of the Utah Jazz.Ultimately, Krzyzewski put his considerable thumb on the scale for Scheyer, who has continued to gain commitments from top recruits.“To be able to sit in a kid’s living room recruiting him and say ‘I’ve lived this — come throw in with me because I’ve lived Duke for X number of years,’ I think it’s important,” King said.Kenny Payne won a national title with Louisville as a player and left his job with the Knicks to try to revitalize the program.Timothy D. Easley/Associated PressAn increasing number of coaches can pitch more than a familial tie: They can cite N.B.A. experience. Often, though, that pro experience has not translated to the college game, where having connections to youth basketball power brokers are essential to recruiting elite talent. The job also requires glad-handing boosters and, more recently, navigating the transfer portal, duties that aren’t part of the N.B.A. ecosystem.It’s why former N.B.A. players like Clyde Drexler (Houston), Chris Mullin (St. John’s), Eddie Jordan (Rutgers) and Kevin Ollie (Connecticut) did not have enduring success at their alma maters, though Ollie did win a national championship before fizzling. And it is why Patrick Ewing has struggled at Georgetown, where his team lost its final 21 games this season.“Most of the guys that have been in the N.B.A., they’ve made so much money, they didn’t really care that much about coaching,” said Roy Williams, who retired last year as North Carolina’s coach after winning three national titles and cheered on Davis in Philadelphia last weekend.The Final Four in the Men’s and Women’s TournamentsCard 1 of 5The national semifinals. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Golf

      13-Year-Old Boy Drove Truck That Hit Van in Texas, Killing 9, Officials Say

      by

      The fiery crash killed a golf coach and six of his players, along with the boy and a man who was traveling with him.A 13-year-old boy was behind the wheel of a pickup truck that struck a van in Texas on Tuesday night in a collision that killed nine people, including a college golf coach and six of his players, along with the boy and a man traveling with him, officials said on Thursday.Bruce Landsberg, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference that the truck’s left front tire was a spare that had blown out before the truck veered into the lane the golf team’s van was traveling in and struck the van head-on. It was unclear at what speeds the vehicles were traveling, but Mr. Landsberg noted that the speed limit in the area is 75 miles per hour.“It was very clearly a high-speed, head-on collision between two heavy vehicles,” he said. “There is no question about the force of impact.” Both vehicles went up in flames in the collision near Andrews, Texas, about 50 miles east of the state line with New Mexico.It was unclear why the 13-year-old boy, whose name was not released by the authorities on Thursday, was driving the truck. Henrich Siemens, 38, of Seminole County, Texas, who was also in the truck, was killed in the collision, the authorities said.The University of the Southwest identified the victims from that institution as Tyler James, 26, the coach, and the student-athletes Travis Garcia, Karisa Raines, Mauricio Sanchez, Tiago Sousa, Laci Stone and Jackson Zinn. Most of the golfers were freshmen at the university, a private, Christian institution in Hobbs, N.M., near the state line with Texas.Two golfers who were in the van, Dayton Price and Hayden Underhill, were critically injured but survived the crash, and they were undergoing medical treatment in Lubbock, Texas, on Thursday, a spokesman for the university said at a news conference.Ryan Tipton, provost of University of the Southwest, said on Thursday that both players were “making steady progress.”“One of the students is eating chicken soup,” Mr. Tipton said. “Every day it’s a game of inches. There is no indication of how long it’s going to take, but they are both stable and recovering and every day making more progress.”In Texas, 14-year-olds can begin a classroom phase of a driver’s education course, but they cannot apply for a learner’s license until they are 15, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.In a statement on Wednesday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said state officials were helping to investigate the collision.“We grieve with the loved ones of the individuals whose lives were horrifically taken too soon in this fatal vehicle crash near Andrews last night,” Mr. Abbott said.Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said on Wednesday that she was “deeply saddened” by the news.“This is a terrible, tragic accident,” she said. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      After Hiatuses, These Teams Are Back in the NCAA Women’s Tournament

      by

      Some teams — like Illinois State and Massachusetts — will have already made history before taking the floor.The N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments always represent the chance to make history.Some teams have already done that before taking the floor.Massachusetts, a No. 12 seed in the women’s bracket, set a program record with 26 wins en route to making its first tournament in 24 years.UMass, the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament champion, will face No. 5 Notre Dame in Oklahoma. Coach Tory Verdi took over in 2016, when the Minutewomen weren’t exactly a high-profile program.But make no mistake; the Minutewomen aren’t just happy to be in the tournament. They want to shake up the field.“I feel like all of us really step up to that challenge, like the bigger the stage, the better we play,” Sam Breen, a graduate forward and the A-10 player of the year, said this week.Breen leads a group that has witnessed the program’s rebuilding, and one which includes Sydney Taylor and Destiney Philoxy, who were both second-team all-conference.Here are four more teams looking to create a new tournament narrative after years away from the biggest stage.HowardKaiya Creek, right, and Howard reached the tournament for the first time since 2001 and beat Incarnate Word in the First Four.Sean Rayford/Associated PressOn Wednesday, Howard made history twice in the same game: By defeating No. 16 seed Incarnate Word, 55-51, in South Carolina, the Bison won the first women’s First Four game.It was also Howard’s first tournament victory — ever.The Bison (21-9) made the field by winning the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament final, avenging their loss to North Carolina A&T in the championship game last season. Top-seeded Howard handled No. 2 Norfolk State, 61-44.So, for the first time in 21 years, the Bison are part of the N.C.A.A. tournament, and they already have a win under their belt thanks to a 15-point double-double from Brooklyn Fort-Davis.Their reward? A date on Friday with No. 1 seed South Carolina, one of the favorites in the field.FairfieldFairfield Coach Joe Frager is hoping to lead the Stags on a deep tournament run in his final season.Matt Rourke/Associated PressFairfield Coach Joe Frager knew this season would be his last.In October, ahead of his 15th season with the Stags, he said he would step away at the end of the year, citing his health.Frager has led postseason runs before: His Southern Connecticut State squad won the 2007 N.C.A.A. Division II championship in 2007, his last year there before he went to Fairfield.Under his predecessor, Dianne Nolan, the Stags earned an at-large bid to the 2001 N.C.A.A. tournament.They hadn’t been back since.“This has been a special season due to the efforts of our coaching staff and players,” Frager said. “This group has been focused and goal-oriented from beginning to end, and that speaks volumes about the leadership provided by our seniors. Right now, I am very much in the moment. I’m sure after some time passes, I’ll be able to savor the memories of this great season.”Fairfield (25-6) defeated Manhattan to take the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament championship and earn an automatic qualifier. The Stags are led by the senior forward Lou Lopez-Senechal, who scored 24 points in the conference title game. They’ll play Texas, a No. 2 seed and the Big 12 Conference tournament champion, on Friday.Nevada-Las VegasU.N.L.V.’s Essence Booker scored 25 points in the Mountain West Conference tournament championship game.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressU.N.L.V. (26-6) hasn’t been to the tournament since 2002. A win over Colorado State in the Mountain West Conference tournament championship game put it back there 20 years later.As a No. 13 seed, U.N.L.V. has an immediate challenge on Saturday night in the form of No. 4 seed Arizona, which lost to Stanford in last year’s title game.Coach Lindy La Rocque took over the program in 2021, and a year later has it back on college basketball’s biggest stage.U.N.L.V. averages 75.6 points per game, its most since 2009-10. The team is led by Essence Booker, who was named the Mountain West tournament’s most valuable player after dropping 25 points in the championship game.Texas at ArlingtonStarr Jacobs, the Sun Belt Conference player of the year, has played only a single Division I season.After transferring from Temple College, a junior college in Texas, she became the first U.T.A. player to average more than 20 points per game. She also led U.T.A. (20-7) to its first tournament appearance in 15 years.As a No. 14 seed, the team will face third-seeded Iowa State on Friday night. It will be the program’s last time representing the Sun Belt, as the university will join the Western Athletic Conference next season.Before then, though, U.T.A. wants to show its star power — or rather, Starr power.Illinois StateThe Redbirds, the Missouri Valley Conference tournament champions, have won a single N.C.A.A. tournament game, in 1989. They haven’t even had the chance since 2008.No. 15 seeded Illinois State (19-13) will play on Friday against No. 2 seed Iowa, the Big Ten tournament champion and one of the most dynamic and high-profile teams of the N.C.A.A. tournament.The Redbirds are 1-5 in the N.C.A.A. tournament, and it won’t be easy to beat the Caitlin Clark-led Hawkeyes.Juliunn Redmond leads the Redbirds in scoring with 17.6 points per game, while the all-conference forward DeAnna Wilson has tallied eight double-doubles this season.LongwoodLongwood’s Kyla McMakin, right, leads the Lancers in scoring. Longwood beat Campbell in the Big South tournament title game.Rusty Jones/Associated PressWhen Longwood takes the court Thursday night in Raleigh, N.C., it will have been more than a decade in the making.The No. 16-seeded Lancers, who completed their transition to Division I in the 2007-8 season, struggled through years of losing seasons before making the tournament. Just three seasons ago, they finished 3-27.Now, behind the Big South Conference player of the year Akila Smith, who is tied for third in Division I in blocks with Kansas State’s Ayoka Lee, the Lancers (21-11) will get a chance in a play-in game against Mount St. Mary’s. A win on Thursday would earn them a date with No. 1 North Carolina State. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Golf

      Coach and Six College Golfers Die in Texas Bus Wreck

      by

      The University of the Southwest said its golf coach, Tyler James, was among the dead and that two people were in critical condition.Seven people from the University of the Southwest died after its men’s and women’s golf teams were involved in a fatal wreck in Texas on Tuesday night, officials from the Christian university in New Mexico said Wednesday.“The U.S.W. campus community is shocked and saddened today as we mourn the loss of members of our university family,” the university said in a statement that also said that two passengers were in critical condition and being treated in Lubbock, Texas.Although the university did not identify any of the victims by name, it said its golf coach was among the people who had died in the wreck, which it said happened when its bus was “struck by oncoming traffic.” A spokeswoman for the university in Hobbs, N.M., said the only people aboard the bus were the golf coach, Tyler James, and students.The Texas Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the wreck, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. But a spokesman, Sgt. Steven Blanco, told local news outlets that the other vehicle involved in the crash had been a pickup and that at least one person in the truck died.“It’s a very tragic scene,” the sergeant told KWES-TV near the crash site on Tuesday night. “It’s very, very tragic.”The golf teams had traveled to Texas, where many of their players had gone to high school, to compete in a collegiate tournament in Midland. The crash happened in nearby Andrews County.James was new to the nondenominational religious university, hired just last summer as coach after he had worked at other Christian universities and at a high school about 120 miles southwest of Fort Worth.The U.S.W. sports program, which competes in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, is a part of the undergraduate experience for most students, according to federal records. Between July 2019 and June 2020, it earned revenues of about $3.5 million and recorded just more than that in expenses. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      Across Town, Tony Bland Is Adjusting to a Different World

      by

      Bland, a former U.S.C. assistant coach arrested in 2017 as part of an F.B.I. investigation, is now coaching at a Los Angeles-area high school. He still hopes he can return to the college level.PLAYA DEL REY, Calif. — In an alternate universe, Tony Bland might have been a world away on Tuesday night, on the sideline at the University of Southern California’s sold-out Galen Center, coaching the home team in a nationally televised, high-stakes men’s basketball game against Arizona.Instead, Bland was in a well-worn high school gym about 20 miles away with the St. Bernard High School boys basketball team in a state playoff game.He is trying his best to, as he says, plant himself where his feet are, to think about where he is and not stew about what he once had — a college career that had him on the fast track to possibly becoming a head coach.Still, the reminders are hard to miss: After St. Bernard dispatched feisty Long Beach Poly, 52-40, Bland was congratulated by Wyking Jones, a University of Washington assistant recruiting one of his players. In the stands was the U.C.L.A. assistant Rod Palmer, whose son Joshua is a freshman at St. Bernard. One of his team’s leaders is Jason Hart Jr., whose father was on the U.S.C. coaching staff with Bland and now coaches in the N.B.A.’s G League.The triggers are particularly strong in March, when college basketball takes center stage in the American sports landscape and deep N.C.A.A. tournament runs, like U.S.C.’s to last year’s regional final, can be springboards for coaches with aspirations.“It’s the competitive itch,” Bland said. “The what if? Ascending the college coaching ranks to maybe soon be a head coach. How I would have done it. I remember when I used to do this. It’s the whole thing.”Everything changed for Bland on Sept. 26, 2017, when armed federal agents — their weapons drawn — stormed into his hotel room in Tampa, Fla., and arrested Bland as part of a nationwide college basketball corruption scandal. Bland was one of 10 people arrested that day as a result of an investigation that targeted some of the nation’s most prominent programs and that federal prosecutors boasted would expose the sport’s shady underbelly.“We have your playbook,” the F.B.I.’s William Sweeney thundered, sending a chill through the college basketball world when he added that the investigation, which had been fortified by wiretaps, was ongoing.Now, some four and a half years later, it has long been clear how empty those overinflated proclamations have been. (The same can be said for the breathless exclamations that a sea change in the sport was at hand.)The N.C.A.A. has done little more than slap a few schools on the wrist, and Rick Pitino is the only head coach who was fired in 2017 — a result less of his culpability than that the investigation was the latest in a string of embarrassing incidents during his tenure at Louisville. (Pitino now coaches Iona).Federal authorities fought in court in 2019 to keep Louisiana State Coach Will Wade off the witness stand. Wade is in his fifth year at L.S.U.Jeff Blake/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAnd the Feds, rather than exposing top college coaches, went lengths to shield them. They fought in court in 2019 to keep Louisiana State’s Will Wade, Arizona’s Sean Miller — who was fired last year — and other coaches off the witness stand. They also fought to keep an undercover agent from testifying, the reasons for which became clear last week: An F.B.I. agent pleaded guilty to gambling with $13,500 in government money at a Las Vegas casino in late July 2017, dates and circumstances that coincide with the sting operation that nabbed Bland and others.So, the head coaches who were accused in court of having known about — or even having facilitated — payments to players have almost all continued to collect million-dollar salaries, and business has proceeded as usual. (Arizona, Auburn and Kansas — all implicated in the scheme — are ranked second, fifth and sixth, respectively, in this week’s Associated Press poll.)“If anyone thinks that there is such a thing as a clean big-time program, they need to wake up and smell the donkey” manure, wrote Merl Code, a former shoe company employee, in his recently published book, “Black Market: An Insider’s Journey Into the High-Stakes World of College Basketball,” using an expletive. “Somewhere along the line, even the so-called cleanest of programs has some dirt if you look close enough.”Code, like Christian Dawkins, an aspiring agent, was sentenced to prison for his role in shunting money to top high school prospects and/or their families — a practice that has long been against N.C.A.A. rules, but one that has looked far less illicit as schools have made millions off the backs of an unpaid, largely Black labor force.(Code said Pitino and Kansas Coach Bill Self knew about payments he facilitated to players; both have denied any involvement.)Lamont Evans, Emanuel Richardson and Chuck Person were all fired from their assistant coach roles for accepting bribes.USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe case has only underscored the racial dynamic that is coming under greater scrutiny in major college sports: Coaches and top administrators, most of them white, enriching themselves thanks to the athletes, largely Black, who power their team’s success. All but one of the nine people who have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the corruption case are Black.Chuck Person (Auburn), Emanuel Richardson (Arizona), Lamont Evans (South Carolina and Oklahoma State), Preston Murphy (Creighton), Corey Barker (Texas Christian and New Mexico State) and Bland were all fired as assistants for accepting bribes. Murphy and Barker were not charged with crimes because they had returned the bribes.All have also been hit with show-cause penalties ranging from two years to 10, meaning that any college that wants to hire them has to explain to the N.C.A.A. why it wants to do so.The penalties effectively serve as a ban, and so many of the coaches are working as trainers, running workouts and camps for anyone who will pay them. Bland seems to be the only one coaching at a school.“I’m not saying these guys did anything wrong,” Bland said of the head coaches. “But what the assistant coaches went down for, I don’t know if they anticipated something more coming from it. I don’t know if there was supposed to be a Part B. This whole scheme and TV and bust for that? I don’t understand it.”Bland pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery — accepting $4,100 from Dawkins to steer players to a financial adviser — and received two years probation.Bland said he accepted only $2,100 from Dawkins, a friend for about a decade who told him to enjoy a night out in Las Vegas as a thanks for meeting with the financial adviser. He said, though, that he had little choice but to accept the plea deal because, if his case went to trial, it would be lumped in with those of four other defendants. “It was a business decision,” said Bland, who said he was so traumatized by the arrest that he couldn’t sleep in a hotel room. “I had to protect my family.”Bland, 42, said his wife urged him to think beyond basketball and reminded him that he had much to offer, but a few decades ago, the game is what carried him from South Los Angeles to Westchester High, the powerhouse public school that’s just around the bend from St. Bernard. A state championship helped earn him a scholarship to Syracuse and San Diego State.Bland felt at home in those same Los Angeles gyms when he returned to recruit one of the nation’s most fertile talent grounds, first as an assistant at San Diego State and then at U.S.C. He volunteered at St. Bernard, then took over as coach before last season.“We had a team, but he’s building a program,” said Jamie Mark, the athletic director, who had spent most of her career working for a sports agency. “And I think Tony likes the idea of building something.”The opportunity to coach has meant something for Bland, too. He has not given up hope of returning to the college game and one day being a head coach. “The people in college basketball understand my situation,” he said, later adding that his former boss at U.S.C., Andy Enfield, remains one of his biggest supporters. (Enfield is recruiting one of Bland’s best players, Tyler Rolison, a junior guard.)But he also knows there is more to the equation. A college coach is going to have to sell his athletic director on hiring Bland, and the athletic director will have to explain it to the university president. And so, with two more years left on his show-cause penalty, Bland said he knew better than to look too far down the road — or even across town.“This right here,” Bland said Tuesday night, sitting on the bleachers of a nearly empty gym, “has been helping to rehabilitate my soul.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Football

      Terry Brennan, Youthful Notre Dame Football Coach, Dies at 93

      by

      One of Leahy’s Lads as a player on national championship teams, he was hired as coach at 25 and fired at 30.Terry Brennan was one of Leahy’s Lads, the elusive runners, strong-armed passers and muscular linemen who propelled Notre Dame to four national football championships under Coach Frank Leahy in the 1940s.Brennan played halfback on two of those teams, and he starred in the annual rivalry with Army. But he was remembered most for succeeding Leahy at age 25, a move that startled the college football world.Notre Dame announced Wednesday that Brennan, who was living in Wilmette, Ill., has died at 93. It did not provide details.Brennan took over a football program that had transformed Notre Dame from a small, largely unknown Roman Catholic institution in South Bend, Ind., to a storied name in popular culture. But his coaching résumé was limited to three high school championship teams in Chicago and one year as Leahy’s freshman coach.When Leahy retired and Brennan replaced him in February 1954, the sports columnist Red Smith saw turbulence looming.“He’s only 25,” Smith wrote. “By the time he’s 30, he’ll be a good deal more than five years older. Coaching Notre Dame is the most coveted job in football, and probably the most nerve-racking.”At the age of 30, Brennan was fired.He had coached four winning teams in five seasons. His 1957 team pulled off one of college football’s greatest upsets, a 7-0 road victory over Oklahoma, snapping its record-setting 47-game winning streak. But he had been faced with a reduction in athletic scholarships ordered by Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, who was determined to have Notre Dame viewed as a renowned academic institution and only secondly as a football powerhouse. Father Hesburgh had, in fact, taught Brennan at Notre Dame and had admired his intellect.Brennan was probably doomed by his failure to win a national championship, something that Notre Dame’s alumni had come to expect virtually every year. And Leahy, in retirement, feuded with him, questioning the team’s fighting spirit.Brennan’s firing, four days before Christmas in 1958, was widely condemned in the football world.“Notre Dame won’t look very good in the eyes of the country,” said Louisiana State’s Paul Dietzel, the 1958 college coach of the year.The Indiana Catholic and Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, said that the real losers in Brennan’s firing were “the priests and laymen at Notre Dame who were trying, successfully, we believe, to remake the public image of Notre Dame from football factory to first-class university.”Terence Patrick Brennan was born on June 11, 1928, in Milwaukee. He was a high school football star, then made the Notre Dame lineup as a freshman in 1945, when most of the regulars were serving in World War II.In the postwar years, Notre Dame, led by quarterback Johnny Lujack, vied with Army for college football supremacy. Brennan, playing on both offense and defense, made a key play in their 1946 game at Yankee Stadium, a matchup of unbeaten squads, intercepting a halfback option pass by Army’s Glenn Davis on the Irish 8-yard line late in the first period. The teams played to a 0-0 tie, but Notre Dame was voted national champions.In the 1947 Army game Brennan ran the opening kickoff back 97 yards for a touchdown and scored again on a 3-yard run in the first period, sending Notre Dame to a 27-7 victory and another national title.He led the Irish in receiving and scoring in 1946 and ’47 and he rushed for 1,269 career yards, but knee problems kept him from a pro football career.Brennan coached Mount Carmel High School of Chicago to three consecutive Catholic league championships while obtaining a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago, then became Leahy’s freshman coach in 1953. Leahy developed health problems that season, leading to his retirement.Brennan had trouble getting into Notre Dame’s stadium for his first home game as head coach, against Texas, when he encountered roadblocks funneling traffic. “The police wouldn’t let me down Notre Dame Avenue, nor would they believe I was the head coach,” he once recalled. “I guess I looked too young.”Notre Dame went 9-1 and 8-2 in Brennan’s first two seasons as coach with players recruited by Leahy. But with the talent drying up in the face of scholarship restrictions and enhanced admission requirements for athletes, the Irish could no longer dominate. Notre Dame plunged to 2-8 in 1956, though quarterback Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy.On the eve of the 1956 season finale, at Southern California, Leahy said: “It’s not the losses that upset me. It’s the attitude. What has happened to the old Notre Dame spirit?”Brennan’s teams went 7-3 and 6-4 in the following two seasons, but with Notre Dame’s glory days clearly at an end, he was asked to resign. He was fired after refusing to do so, telling Sports Illustrated soon afterward that he didn’t want to be seen as “quitting and running out.”He was replaced by Joe Kuharich, a Notre Dame guard of the 1930s who had been coaching the Washington Redskins. Kuharich never had a winning team in four seasons at Notre Dame.Brennan became an investment banker in Chicago. He never coached football again.Brennan in survived by four sons, Terry, Chris, Joe and Matt; two daughters, Denise Dwyer and Jane Lipton; 25 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren. His wife, Mary Louise, died in 2001.Looking back at his firing, Brennan felt that criticism from Leahy had turned Notre Dame alumni against him. “Psychologically in his mind, if the person who followed him succeeded, somehow that took away from what he did,” Brennan told The South Bend Tribune in 1999. “I had absolutely no use for him.”“It’s a real shame, kind of sad,” Hornung said of Brennan. “He could have been one of the great coaches in Notre Dame history.” More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Basket

      Teenage Ballers Can Cash in Earlier Than Ever. But at What Cost?

      by

      Male players as young as 16 have many options to play high-level basketball before the N.B.A. without going to college — and get paid big money to do it.In February, Ramses Melendez, who goes by RJ, announced his college decision in a video posted to his social media accounts. A 4-star forward in the class of 2021, Melendez followed a typical formula for the video: a highlight reel and then a jersey reveal. He strayed from the script for a moment, though, when he acknowledged in a voice-over that “it wasn’t easy to make this decision.”A couple of months later, an unusual phone call made that decision even more difficult.On the other end of the line was Timothy Fuller, a former college basketball coach and the director of recruiting for a new league, Overtime Elite. Backed by investors ranging from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to the Nets All-Star forward Kevin Durant, Overtime Elite aims to be an alternative to college as a path to the N.B.A. for high-level high school basketball players as young as 16.Fuller had seen Melendez play, and he wanted to offer him a spot in the nascent league. Fuller told Melendez that Overtime would help him prepare for the pros. Fuller also told Melendez that, unlike college, the league could pay him.A lot.Melendez declined to reveal a dollar figure during a recent interview at Rucker Park in New York City, where he was preparing to play in the Omni Elite tournament. But he did say that it was in line with Overtime’s other announced deals.In May, Overtime signed Matt and Ryan Bewley, twin brothers in Florida who are rising high school juniors, to two-year deals reportedly worth at least $1 million apiece. The league has since signed another set of Florida basketball twins for an undisclosed sum, and its leaders have said that it will eventually acquire 30 players who are each making a minimum annual salary of $100,000.“The money was nice, but it wasn’t the most important factor in my decision,” Melendez said. “I want my next step to get me ready to play in the N.B.A. I asked myself: What’s the best way to get there?”This year’s N.B.A. draft, whose order was announced last week with Detroit landing the top pick, isn’t likely to feature any players from the newest alternative paths when it takes place on July 29. But the 2022 draft will be a different story, and players and coaches from middle school to college have taken notice — and taken action.For top-flight high school basketball players, recruiting has often been a high-wire walk without much of a safety net. These teenagers have to discern the trustworthiness of college coaches who text and call them relentlessly, promising playing time and a sure path to the pros. And they have to be wary of boosters and agents and other unscrupulous characters who often offer money and benefits that run afoul of N.C.A.A. rules and the law.Now the best men’s players also have to decide whether it’s worth it to forfeit their college eligibility by turning pro during or immediately after high school.Because of the N.B.A.’s so-called one-and-done rule, American players must be 19 years old and one year removed from their high school graduating class to be eligible to be drafted. But no rule says they must attend college during that year. These new leagues are hoping to lure top players away from the N.C.A.A. with something colleges can’t match: a salary.In addition to Overtime Elite, there is also the N.B.A.’s own elite developmental team, the G League Ignite, which pays top players far and above the salaries for the G League’s regular teams. There is the Professional Collegiate League, which is backed by former Obama administration officials and aims to place 96 players on eight teams this fall. Those players will be compensated up to $150,000 each and receive a lifetime academic scholarship.And there are also overseas professional leagues, from Australia to Europe to China, pursuing American high school stars.“Before it was just, ‘What college am I going to?’” said Samson Johnson, a center from New Jersey who has committed to play for Connecticut in 2021-22. “Now there’s a lot of leagues, and it’s hard to keep up with all this new information. How can you be sure what’s real? It’s risky.”Among top prospects, the G League Ignite team has become the most attractive alternative to college. The G League enjoys the N.B.A.’s backing, and it also has proved it can develop N.B.A. draft prospects.Last year, the Ignite team inked the 5-star guard Jalen Green to a $500,000 contract. Despite playing a shortened season because of the coronavirus pandemic, Green is still considered a top-five pick for this year’s N.B.A. draft in July.Seeing other players succeed in the G League was part of the reason Scoot Henderson decided to graduate from high school early and sign a two-year, $1 million deal with the Ignite.“I wanted to be myself, and I wanted to own myself,” Scoot Henderson said. “With the G League, I get to play at a high level every night.”Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesHenderson had garnered interest from a professional league in China, from Overtime and from just about every college basketball powerhouse in the country.His decision came down to college or the Ignite team, which offered money, competition and the opportunity to sign endorsements. Despite some scattered progress on names, images and likeness reforms, it remains unclear whether N.C.A.A. athletes will be able to sign endorsement deals this year.“I wanted to be myself, and I wanted to own myself,” Henderson said. “With the G League, I get to play at a high level every night. I can also run camps and sign autographs and sponsor products.”Henderson had an added benefit while weighing his options. His A.A.U. coach, Parrish Johnson, is a longtime friend of Ignite Coach Brian Shaw.But not every elite high school player is so lucky. The N.C.A.A. doesn’t allow high school players to have contacts with agents, so they have to rely on the advice of coaches and family members who are not often familiar with the nuances of professional athletic contracts.Darrell Miller’s son, Brandon, is a top-15 prospect in the class of 2022. Whenever Darrell learns about a new league, he pulls out his laptop and starts Googling. Sometimes he’ll find himself with a dozen tabs open as they’re waiting at the airport for a flight to another A.A.U. tournament.“The scary part is: You just don’t know,” he said. “These are start-ups. They look really nice. They have the coaches. They have the board members. But then you get this feeling: What if? What if that check doesn’t clear? What if my son’s stock drops? If you’re a professional athlete, you’re not allowed to make the same mistakes you can as a college kid. If you choose the wrong college, you can transfer. If you choose the wrong pro league, what’s your backup plan?”Some high school and A.A.U. coaches, who are often players’ closest confidants, are also uncomfortable with their roles.“Your biggest nightmare as a coach is to push a kid in a certain direction and have it not work out,” said Vonzell Thomas, who coaches the A.A.U. team Southern Assault. “Then for the rest of that kid’s life, whenever he thinks of you, he’ll think: That’s the guy who screwed up my life. You never want your name to come up when a kid gets asked why he didn’t make it.”Melendez discussed the Overtime offer with his parents and coaches. They looked at the contract together. Ultimately, he decided to turn the league down and stick with his decision to play at Illinois. It felt, for now, like the safer decision.“I said no because I’ve heard some N.B.A. players talk about how they regret not playing in college,” he said. “I don’t want to find myself in that situation. I didn’t want to wake up next year and feel like I’d made a big mistake. These leagues may turn out to be great opportunities, but I want to be able to see some history first. I want to make sure it works. These decisions change your entire life.” More