Thanks, NCAA ... your timing is absurd

Robert Parish at Centenary
(The Shreveport Times photo)

     The top part here was written by John James Marshall for the designatedwriters.com web site (check it out), with the headline: "Out of record book? Parish the thought!"

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     It is not often -- ever? -- that "Centenary basketball" and "Son of Sam" gets used in the same sentence. There you have it!

     This is all due to the recent announcement that the NCAA will now officially recognize Robert Parish's statistics while he played for the Gents in the 1970s. As David Berkowitz -- 1970s serial killer in New York City known as "Son of Sam" -- said when they came to arrest him, "What took you so long?"

     The beginning and the end to this story defy description as far as absurdity is concerned. To make a very long story short, back in 1972 when Parish was about to enter  Centenary, the NCAA used a formula based on high school grades and standardized tests to predict a player's GPA, which needed to equate to at least a 1.600. But Parish didn't take the SAT, so Centenary converted his score from the ACT and used that for the NCAA formula. Centenary had done this for the previous two years and nary a peep. But when the No. 1 recruit in the nation showed up, the NCAA took notice and told Centenary that the move was "illegal." (Parish wasn't the only Gents player who this had been applied to.) 
     So the NCAA dropped six years on probation on the Gents -- unless they yanked the scholarships of Parish and four others. Centenary told the NCAA to go jump in the lake.
     (One questions remains more than 45 years later:  Why didn't Parish and the others just take the SAT? It's not like they have to achieve a Harvard-like score.)
     Eventually the NCAA did away with the formula (called the 1.6 rule), but still stuck the hammer to Centenary. There is the favorite (and often misquoted) line by famed coach Jerry Tarkanian, who often said (kind of): "Every time the NCAA gets mad at (UCLA/Kentucky/other big guys), they add another two years' probation to (Centenary/Cleveland State/other little guys). Tarkanian filled in whatever blanks he needed to fit the audience, but the message was clear -- Centenary was getting hosed.
     Parish and others could have gone anywhere else and been instantly eligible, but they stayed on Kings Highway and had a memorable four-year run.
     When it was over, he had 2,334 points and 1,820 rebounds, but you'd never know it because the NCAA did not recognize his stats in its record book. Only two players in the history of college basketball have more points AND rebounds than Parish's totals.
     So what happened? Did someone wake up at the NCAA one day last week and say, "OK, it's been 40 years. Enough's enough?" Were there protest marches outside the NCAA office and they were worried about the PR hit they were taking?
     Actually, to Centenary's credit, the school made an appeal last year to the NCAA seeking "reinstatement." After they woke up the guy in charge of such things, the appeal was granted. And then the NCAA turned around and slapped Louisville around by denying its appeal of the vacated 2013 championship.
     Somewhere out there, Jerry Tarkanian is smiling.
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     My take (as a sportswriter who wrote about Parish's high school and college careers in Shreveport):

     Surprised by this, but I am not thrilled about it. It's OK.

      It was so long ago, and the NCAA's "banishment" of the Parish statistics did not hurt his fabulous Basketball Hall of Fame career at all. 

      Don't see that it makes a lot of difference now, except for the principle that the NCAA -- after 42 to 46 years -- is admitting how petty it was in 1973-76.

      Centenary benefited greatly from Parish being in school there, Robert and his family benefited greatly, and so did the basketball fans of Shreveport-Bossier and North Louisiana.

      Can't tell you that Centenary did not break rules in admitting Robert to school. LSU (Dale Brown) and Indiana (Bob Knight) gladly would have taken him in their program, but were clear to Parish's high school coach (Ken Ivy) that he would not qualify academically.

      Still, what the NCAA did to Centenary was best captured by then-Gents athletic director/head basketball coach Larry Little's remark that Centenary was given a death-penalty sentence for a speeding ticket.

      Parish, in those years, got enough publicity to be known in many parts of the nation; I know this because I was the Centenary sports information director his senior season and set up several interviews with writers from other areas.

      Plus, we sent out a flier touting Robert's accomplishments to most major newspapers and college/pro basketball sources in the country, and each week the NCAA statistics came out, we made sure to note where Robert would have ranked in points, rebounds, shooting percentage, etc.

      Centenary showed up regularly in the Associated Press national Top Twenty or Top 25 polls because Jerry Byrd of the Shreveport Journal was on the voting panel in Parish's last couple of seasons and would vote the Gents No. 2 or 3 each week, giving them enough points to wind up in the Nos. 17-20 positions. (For some reason, Byrd's vote was taken away after that last season.)

      Where the NCAA six-year penalty hurt Centenary most -- my opinion -- was not Parish himself, but the team not being eligible for postseason play.

      It is highly unlikely that Centenary had a good enough record and enough victories over prominent opponents to have been selected for the NCAA Tournament, which then had a 32-team field (but no more than one team per conference). But the NIT (16-team field) would have been a strong possibility -- a likely spot, because of Robert's presence -- for Centenary.

      The example is this: In the 1975-76 season (Robert's senior year), one of the teams chosen for the NIT was U. North Carolina-Charlotte (UNCC), featuring Cedric Maxwell and Lew Massey and coached by Lee Rose. That season Centenary beat UNCC in Shreveport and lost by one point at Charlotte in the season's next-to-last game (and Centenary missed a wide-open last-second shot).

      UNCC finished second in the NIT, in Madison Square Garden (lost to Kentucky). 

      The next season UNCC made the NCAA Tournament, and went all the way to the Final Four (lost to eventual champion Marquette, by two points). 

      Maxwell would go on to be a teammate of Robert Parish with the Boston Celtics and be the MVP of the 1981 NBA Finals. Lee Rose would move from UNCC to coach at Purdue, and was back in the Final Four with a Joe Barry Carroll-led team in 1980.

       (Small-world department: The Golden State Warriors made Joe Barry Carroll the No. 1 pick in the 1980 NBA Draft and their starting center, and traded their previous starter. That was ... Robert Parish, who made the most out of being sent to Boston. First year: NBA champions.)

       But, of course, Parish then was still persona non grata to the NCAA, and remained that way through this last week. Yes, a 7-footer who could not be seen.

       We saw him. People in Shreveport and North Louisiana saw him. People all over the country, and the world, saw him -- after he got to the NBA. 

       And now we can even see where he ranked -- officially -- in the NCAA statistics. Like it matters a lot now. 

       If the NCAA had done this anywhere from 1973 to 1976, it would have been a lot more appealing to me. 

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http://www.designatedwriters.com/daily-happen/record-book-parish-thought/

Recruiting (I haven't changed my mind)

   Old joke: The groundhog saw his shadow Thursday -- six more weeks of college football recruiting.
   Oh, no! Not more recruiting. Haven't we suffered enough?  

     In the sports world, National Signing Day is one of the days I like least. Which makes me an exception among college football fans -- and I am a college football fan.
   But Signing Day -- aw, heck,  the whole recruiting process -- bothers me. It is the most overblown, overdone, overpublicized production other than Super Bowl Media Day or the televised first rounds of the NFL and NBA drafts.
   And I have felt that way for years. I despise the terms "offered," "lean," "verbal commitment," "commit" and the ubiquitous "ATH" designation ... what other ones have the "recruitniks" come up with?
   To see these kids -- with their hats to choose from, their gym-full of schoolmates and fans and the band and the cheerleaders and their glorified "news" conferences -- announce their decision is just part of much too much.
    We don't need to pamper these kids. Don't need to see their pictures in the paper. Let's pamper the academic scholarship kids instead.
    From a newspaper standpoint, I understand the business. I understand recruiting news -- or draft news -- sells newspapers. Speculation is great.
    When I was first at The Shreveport Times in the late 1960s/early 1970s, we didn't do a whole lot of recruiting news. We didn't deal in rumors, didn't chase down kids for their "verbal commitments." When they signed, we reported it.
    Almost always, area football/basketball signees for LSU, Louisiana Tech, Northwestern State, Northeast Louisiana, Centenary and other schools of interests were pictured in the paper signing the papers, with parents and/or coaches who had recruited the athlete in the picture.
   As the sports world expanded, there was not enough space in the paper to continue that (needless) tradition.
    Increasingly, recruiting coverage increased, both the buildup and Signing Day itself. Recruiting "experts" began their ratings, the dubious task of comparing a linebacker in southern California to one in North Louisiana or East Texas.
    Just as dubious? The "rankings" of how colleges fared on Signing Day. But I'm telling -- people take this stuff seriously.
    Here in Fort Worth and Dallas in the 2000s, we have had special sections covering National Signing Day, plus all the speculation leading up to it -- the Top 100 charts for area, state and national recruits.
      Unless I am editing the recruiting news, I am NOT reading it. I don't give a rip about "verbal commitments." That is my biggest gripe. It means absolutely nothing. Until that athlete signs on National Signing Day, he remains free to change his mind.
    If I'm the prep editor -- and I haven't been in a long time -- I'm telling my writers, you get one (1) mention of a commitment. No more than one. I'm wondering how many times The Shreveport Times referred to Toshiro Davis as an LSU commitment over the past year? What a waste of space.
     Right here you are saying, well, you are an LSU fan and you are bitter because two players -- Davis, a defensive end, and QB Gunner Kiel, from Indiana -- gave LSU verbal commitments, and didn't end up there.
     Kiel chose Notre Dame on the day he was to have reported to the LSU campus as an early enrolee.  Because Davis  went to my high school (Shreveport Woodlawn), which rarely has major prospects anymore, I went to the LSU signing board early Wednesday -- the only board I check -- to see if Davis had signed.
      Nope.
     Then the news came --  he had announced he was going to Texas.
     At first, it felt like a betrayal, it felt personal.
    How crazy. I haven't been to Woodlawn in years, don't know anyone there, sure don't know Davis. And I thought, he's an 18-year-old kid. He can change his mind. He's entitled to pick the place where he thinks he can be happy, where he thinks he can play. And I hope he is happy and does well.
     LSU's program shouldn't be so fragile that losing one or two -- or several -- kids to other schools hurts the program.
     It's a joke; it really is. What counts is what happens on the field in the fall, not the Signing Day rankings. And so many things factor into building a football program that wins. Good football players can be developed, they can be walk-ons, they can come out of nowhere. "Blue chip" recruits can never make an impact.
     There's no sure-fire formula on any of it.
      If they'd let me make the rules, I would do this:

•  No signing "ceremonies.
•  No paid "official visits" for recruits to campuses, no wining and dining.
•  No coaches making scholarship offers during summer camps.
•  A miminum of letters, calls, texts visits -- all the methods of "contacts" -- by one coaching staff to a recruit (say a minimum of one, so the colleges save tons of money and time.
•  An early signing day (say, Aug. 15), so the process doesn't have to drag on all football season. Another signing day about Jan. 15 (again, let's get it over with).
• Absolutely no calls by boosters or by kids on the campus.
•  Kids must be qualified academically to enter college before they can even be contacted for recruiting (no exceptions).
•  No news conference by the coach to talk about the recruits. (Question: Have you ever heard a coach say he had a bad or so-so recruiting year?
• Strict penalties for recruiting abuses (loss of bowl bid, loss of scholarships, loss of revenue, restrictions on coaches, etc.)

        I'm sure college coaches, recruits, recruiting "experts," media can shoot holes through all my ideal world of recruiting.
      Yeah, they're ridiculous ideas. Ridiculous, just  as college football recruiting is now.