ted valentine

Reminder. Tom VH will hold you at Literati tomorrow at 7. He'll also be on MGoRadio. Pat pat, there there. I'll be there, too, but I didn't write a book. 

So that happened, and then un-happened. Maryland retained DJ Durkin, and then fired DJ Durkin, because people are just in charge of things for no reason. Like Michigan State, the people in charge of things in this case are the regents. Reports that president Wallace Loh wanted to axe everyone were likely true, and after everyone from the student government to both candidate for governor publicly complained Maryland admitted what every adult American other than their board members already knew: DJ Durkin's career is toast.

Anyway, now's a good time to reflect on the colossal failure Big Ten expansion has been:

Let’s start with rutger. I don’t know if I need to say anything more about these guys that hasn’t been said in the past four years. They’re terrible at the major sports. They’ve embarrassingly brought down the strength of the Big Ten schedule. A few months after their Big Ten membership became official, the basketball coach was caught on video throwing basketballs and yelling homophobic slurs at players. Ex-AD Julie Hermann was routinely making shocking statements to the media and embroiled in controversy at her former schools. Ex-football coach Kyle Flood once threatened a professor if he wouldn’t change a player’s grade. The list goes on. rutger remains an easy target. We’ve already covered them extensively on this blog. Oh yeah, this [a Rutgers player being kicked off the team for a failed double-homicide] happened yesterday as well. Not great, Piscataway!

Moving onto Maryland. Until recently, the frustration with the Terps was a little more subtle than their New Jersey counterparts. The football team employed Randy Edsall. The basketball team hasn’t reached the heights it did under Gary Williams, attendance is down after a post-B1G boost, and an FBI investigation looms over the program. At least men’s lacrosse and women’s hoops have been reliable, though.

But then there is the situation with head football coach DJ Durkin, which after months of investigations regarding McNair’s death, was seemingly resolved yesterday. The Maryland Board of Regents overruled outgoing university president Wallace Loh, who seemingly wanted Durkin fired, and reinstated Durkin as the coach, despite the release of a 200-page report that illustrated the abusive behavior of the coaching staff under his watch. After all of this, one startling fact remains: a 19 year-old student-athlete died, and the head coach has been allowed to keep his job. Unsurprisingly, Jordan McNair’s family was angry about this decision, and at least 3 players walked out of a team meeting with Durkin yesterday. Now, the university administration has received tons of criticism, and is facing backlash from Maryland lawmakers as well as UMD students, who plan to hold a rally Thursday.

Great job, Jim Delany. Hope the brief surge in television revenue was worth it.

Urban's head. Meyer's strange behavior on the sideline has a cause:

Since kneeling down on the sideline in a game against Indiana on Oct. 6 because of severe headaches, Meyer has been peppered with questions about his health and future in coaching. He said the cause of the discomfort links back to a congenital arachnoid cyst in his brain, which has led to severe headaches at times in his career.

“The past four years, we’ve been working closely with coach Meyer to monitor and manage the symptoms that have risen from his enlarged congenital arachnoid cyst,” said Dr. Andrew Thomas, Meyer’s personal physician and the chief clinical officer at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center. “This includes aggressive headaches, which have particularly flared up the past two years.”

That sucks for him and does not excuse his conduct with Zach Smith. Verdict: still a bad dude. Not the kind that saves the president. An expired coupon kind of guy.

[After THE JUMP: secret scrimmages, ooooooh]

Oguine is excellent both ways

Montana scouted. Andrew Kahn interviews the Eastern Washington head coach a couple days after EWU went down in the Big Sky title game:

The Grizzlies won the league with a 16-2 record not just because they're well coached but because of their athleticism, according to Legans. Michael Oguine, a 6-foot-2 guard, was the Defensive Player of the Year in the conference. "He's quick, athletic, and can guard anybody on the perimeter." …

"If you can pull their bigs away from the basket a little bit, then you make them play small and beat them up inside. I see those problems occurring with this game because Michigan's size and skill could hurt them bad."

Oguine combines that DPOY status with excellent offensive efficiency and will be the main guy to watch for the Griz.

Final pre-tourney shot volume. Michigan finishes 13th amongst P5 teams, and coupled with Michigan's stellar transition D this rather validates the approach:

For example, you’ll hear during the tournament that Duke is a swaggering beast of offensive rebounding might, and, sure enough, the Blue Devils do fit that description perfectly. But did you know that, with all those spectacular offensive boards, Mike Krzyzewski is merely equaling what a certain Big Ten coach is already doing with his less eye-catching yet highly effective low-turnover ways?

                         TO%     OR%     SVI
12. Duke                18.3    36.4     98.0
13. Michigan            13.6    24.5     98.0

So, yes, this can be a nifty item at times.

Potential S16 opponent North Carolina, unfortunately, finishes first.

Find me a single-atom violin. Ted Valentine will not be theatrically incorrect on your television sets this weekend:

Well-known NCAA referee Ted Valentine, who officiated the Final Four last season, will not be working NCAA tournament games this year -- and he told ESPN it's because of fallout from the incident in which he turned his back on North Carolina's Joel Berry II during a game in January.

"This is not right, it's just not fair," Valentine told ESPN. "It hit me like a ton of bricks. I'm being punished unjustly."

It is absolutely right, and absolutely fair, for the NCAA to make an example of Valentine after he did the Joel Berry thing. That was the worst breach of ref impartiality I can remember, and it came from a guy who fills out the rest of the top ten personally.

He'll no doubt be back next year unless his repeated public bitching sours the powers-that-be permanently. Any coach who talked about Valentine like Valentine has twice talked about his employers would be fined. Here he is complaining that the Big Ten is not professional enough for Ted Valentine:

Valentine, who had considered retirement after the Berry incident, said he was pulled off a pair of Big Ten games earlier this year because of the episode. Valentine had officiated primarily Big Ten games for 34 years, but said he began doing more ACC games two years ago because he lives in South Carolina and the travel was easier as he approached his 60s.

"It had nothing to do with the Big Ten," Valentine said. "The ACC handled it in the utmost professional manner. It was overblown, and no big deal."

Fire that guy into the sun and never have him work a Big Ten game again.

When the FBI can inject sensibility into your enterprise… The divers alarums and excursions you've been hearing from the direction of NCAA boardrooms has finally resolved itself into that greatest of problem solvers: the Task Force. The Pac-12 put one together; it put together a 51-page PDF that's actually kind of interesting* in that it acknowledges the relative helplessness of the NCAA and then puts forth a collection of proposals that sort of acknowledge this. Large themes:

• Restrictions on coach-prospect contact should be significantly loosened. This includes allowing prospects to take an additional five official visits as a junior and
• Agents should be more tolerated. Hockey and baseball have allowed formal contractual relationships with agents recently; the report suggests basketball should do the same. This is vastly overdue for a thousand reasons.
• Eligibility should be less fragile. The reports specifically reference baseball as a sport where players retain eligibility "after being drafted," and later directly calls for the NBA to adopt the baseball model where you can go pro immediately out of high school but if you don't you're in college for at least three years. Chance NBA adopts this: zero. Maybe draft and follow would be a compromise?

The report also calls for an NCAA enforcement arm separate from the NCAA, which sounds like rearranging deck chairs to me.

The Task Force doesn't go anywhere near something radical but it is a baby step.

*[A sports car races by. I am pelted in the head with a snowball. A bro in a white baseball cap screams "NEEEEEEEEERD" as the car peels out, careening wildly.]

Shea in limbo. Shea Patterson's lawyer is also spearheading five other applications for immediately eligibility and tells CBS that Ole Miss is being rather petulant about all this:

Ole Miss actually received that [waiver-request] package as a courtesy from Michigan. Because it didn't officially come from the NCAA, the 10-day clock did not start ticking.

"So, from a technical rules perspective, despite having all the information for the past two weeks, Old Miss could continue to keep its position on the Shea Patterson waiver request to itself for at least another two weeks," Mars said.

"In the meantime, as everyone knows, the process is at a standstill."

For whatever reason the NCAA has not sent the package to Ole Miss, so it will be at least another two weeks before a determination is made, and probably longer than that.

This is not a Dave Brandon story. Toys R Us is going to liquidate. Whenever there's a Toys R Us story several people send it to me. Please stop doing this. I am aware of goings on at Toys R Us that reach the media. The thing about Toys R Us is that it's not a story about one man's over-arching incompetence setting everything on fire. It's a story about a patsy being installed at a doomed company so he can leech millions of dollars out of it for doing nothing:

In 2005, the Toys R Us board of directors sold the company for $6.6 billion to the private equity firms Bain Capital and KKR and the real estate investment firm Vornado. The firms put up about 20 percent of the total and borrowed the rest.

Toys R Us became a private company with more than $5 billion in debt. And then things went off the rails.

“The beginning of the problems for Toys was that Amazon.com exploded,” said Charlie O’Shea, lead retail analyst at Moody’s.

During the next five years, sales at Amazon quadrupled to $34 billion.

“Amazon went into the toy sector in a big way,” O’Shea said, and it “added one more big competitor for Toys R Us.”

To compete, Toys R Us would have had to invest significantly in its website and stores. But the retailer was using most of its available cash to pay back its debt. …

The private equity firms’ investors haven’t made money off this deal. But the firms themselves have. It’s unclear where Vornado ended up. But after collecting fees from Toys R Us, Bain and KKR each took home at least $15 million.

Brandon, the chump installed on this sinking ship in 2015, was compensated ridiculously:

Toys ‘R’ Us is seeking bankruptcy court permission to pay Dave Brandon, the company’s chief executive officer since 2015, a cash bonus of as much as $12 million for 2017, on top of a $2.8 million “retention” bonus he received just before the company filed for bankruptcy in September, according to court filings.

Moreover, Mr. Brandon would be entitled to receive 40% of that bonus, or $4.8 million, within the first quarter of 2018.

A Toys “R” Us spokeswoman said that the company’s plan to pay millions of dollars to Mr. Brandon is in line with common practice in restructurings. “This type of plan is standard practice for a company involved in a restructuring and in this case rewards team members at all levels of the company,” she said.

You know this guy is an idiot, and it is crystal clear that nothing he did at a doomed company helped it an iota. But because he's bros with Mitt Romney he gets an eight-digit payday. That is one of many reasons income inequality has skyrocketed. Because it doesn't matter if you'd lose a spelling contest to a mop once you've got cronies high up.

Etc.: Fergus Connolly makes an entrance, also an exit. Shooting talent and FTs. The story of how the FBI got on the trail of college basketball is a typically bizarre one. Daily profiles Cooper Marody. Scrimmage observations.

rick pa knew [Patrick Barron]

Smearing the Pitinos' good name. Minnesota suddenly suspended center Reggie Lynch a few days ago because he was ruled "responsible" for a sexual assault by Minnesota's Title IX office. He is banned from Minnesota's campus until 2020, pending a potential appeal.

The best-case scenario here is that Minnesota pulled a Brendan Gibbons: they played a guy who they had to know was very likely to be booted off campus, telling no one and hoping that they could sweep it under the rug. That does not appear to be the case:

Gopher athletics knew about Reggie Lynch & his behavior from the beginning. I literally sat them down last year & brought it to their attention even further. They know there are multiple victims. They knew about this active report. They still did nothing https://t.co/7rnHrzYtFb

— Abby Honold (@abbyhonold) January 5, 2018

There are a lot of extremely pissed off locals on Twitter talking about how Lynch's behavior was widely known and nothing was done about it. Honold did have that meeting:

Honold said Friday that she told Coyle months ago that she knew of “multiple other victims” of sexual misconduct involving Lynch.

“This is a pattern,” she told Coyle and urged him to investigate further.

“But it did not really fall on open ears,” Honold said. “The only person who really responded told me, ‘Well, this sounds awfully personal, how would you even know all of this?’ And, ‘This is irrelevant because they didn’t report to police.’

Minnesota's athletic director pleads incomprehensible corporate nothing-speak:

University of Minnesota athletic director Mark Coyle's responses when asked about a meeting with @abbyhonold in which she said she, "literally sat them down last year & brought (Reggie Lynch's behavior) to their attention even further." pic.twitter.com/bfl4H2rRmp

— Chad Graff (@ChadGraff) January 5, 2018

That is a bald-faced lie in an attempt to cover his own ass and dude should get fired like Minnesota's previous sexual assault idiot AD. And their former associate athletic director. Or a gymnastics coach. Burn the whole department to the ground.

This sounds educated, so that's good. The Daily transcribed a bit of new S&C guy Ben Herbert's philosophy:

“From a weight room development standpoint, the most important thing right out of the gate for our young guys when they come in is developing their lower body and developing their back,” Herbert said. “A lot of guys spend a lot of time (bench) pressing in high school. They don’t spend a lot of time pulling and they don’t spend a lot of time training their lower body. That’s where we see our biggest gains.

“Teach guys how to eat well, teach them how to hydrate properly, teach them how to train the right way, focusing on lower body and back development, and we set them up for a great result.”

One of Herbert’s biggest success stories at Arkansas, former tight end Hunter Henry, tweeted out support of the hiring on Dec. 30.

“One of the best hires in the country!” Henry, a second-round NFL Draft pick, wrote. “This guy is legit. Might have to make a trip up to Ann Arbor now.”

I'm looking forward to the inevitable war between Herbertites and Anti-Herbertites that erupts the first time anyone has a ligament injury.

I did not know this. Apparently when Kirby Smart was hired at Georgia the first guy he wanted to call was Dan Enos, but Jeff Long had created a contract that prevented him from making a move:

“Kirby called me early (Monday), asked me for permission to talk to Dan," Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema revealed. " (I) just basically said … ‘I understand if you’ve got to talk to Dan if that’s something you want to do, but he’s got a non-compete clause in the SEC. So that kind of null and voids those things from really becoming real within our conference.”

It's tough to judge Enos's ability in a vacuum since he's going up against Alabama with a shooter and only one bean, but he appears to be well-respected in the SEC.

TV Teddy has a sad. Embarrassing toolbox Ted Valentine may have finally gone too far with his on-court antics after this flatly disrespectful action in the aftermath of a call he obviously missed:

UNC's Joel Berry tried to discuss a non-call with referee Ted Valentine.

Valentine was not interested. pic.twitter.com/dP5jeL90pK

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 4, 2018

Valentine was yanked from a couple of Big Ten games this weekend, including OSU's surprising mud-stomping of MSU, and now THREATENS TO RETIRE as a result.

"I'm thinking about retiring," Valentine told The Athletic's Seth Davis. "I've had enough of people blowing up stuff. I think I've had a stellar career, and I think it's time to get ready to walk away."

At least he thinks he's making a threat. The rest of the world sick of his histrionics looks at that as a promise. Valentine might not be the worst ref in the world, but he is the most annoying. It's long past time for that dude to hit the bricks. Hopefully his Big Ten ban is permanent. Something ain't right with that man.

So much for that defensive logjam. Michigan Hockey Winter strikes twice, with 2019 D Mike Vukojevic defecting to the OHL in the middle of a USHL season—bizarre—and 2018 D Mattias Samuelsson apparently decommitting so he can join his brother at... Western Michigan?

FWIW, Lukas Samuelsson was a Michigan commit but is now a WMU freshman... with zero games played. He's got to be a walk-on. Tremendous, tremendous screw-up on Michigan's part to let Lukas walk for another program where he wasn't going to play. Since Samuelsson dropped off Michigan's commit list more than a year prior to his enrollment at WMU this is more of a Red thing than a Mel thing.

Michigan does still have a top-ten-ish pick coming in in Bode Wilde, so it's not a crisis or anything. But the mega-D does not appear to be happening.

David DeJulius gets after it. He took on Clarkston, which features MSU-bound PG Foster Loyer, and went to work:

Very much a Walton vibe there. He's comfortable pulling up from three and the midrange and attacks downhill like Walton did early in his career. Dunno how well that aspect of his game will translate to college—Zavier Simpson was a huge scorer in HS and that went away—but the shooting and all-around dawg-ness should stick.

Etc.: Vital stuff. Equanimeous St Brown leaves ND, enters draft, avoids getting worked by Lavert Hill and David Long next year. Ditto ND RB Josh Adams. Greg Roman staying in NFL. Season summary of Wolverines in the NFL. Isaiah Livers is comin'.