This article sets the University of Cincinnati back under the dark cloud of Bob Huggins. It is extremely distressing to read this and to hear no mention of the racist tweets and shouts from BBN!

http://nypost.com/2015/03/23/verne-lundq...-ugliness/

It appears the rest of the NCAA schools, coaches and players are all choirboys!!

GO BEARCATS!!

I feel dumber for just reading Mushnick! Whatever fits his agenda...

This guy is muckracking like the NCAA is promoting ISIS behind the scenes. My lord, I hope no educated individuals take them time to buy into this.

Mushnick is an idiot. The worst sports columnist in the country. And that's saying a lot.

there goes five minutes of my life I will never get back. what a hack....

Mushnick has made a career of writing articles like this. If it were up to him the game would look like it does in the movie Hoosiers with short shorts, set shots, bounce passes, and guys who can barely jump.

It is complete BS but it does show one of the perception problems we have. Few months back I was speaking to someone who attends all the basketball games, is a Tip Off Club member, etc...His concern is that we've had trouble recruiting elite level players so he directly asked one of our current assistants about it. He was told that two of the biggest problems with recruiting to UC right now is the conference affiliation and the "thug" reputation which continues to haunt us with the players' parents. Having garbage published like this doesn't help matters.

All boats rise. Meh.

Mushnick may be an idiot, but highly publicized or widely viewed transgressions like the UC/Xavier brawl and Ellis's flagrant foul aren't helpful to our university's image.. Neither was Larry Davis's over-the-top defense of Ellis following his ejection from the Purdue game. They just serve to feed negative perceptions, whether entirely valid or not, that last a very long time.

The reason people mention UC and "thug" in the same sentence is because, over the years, there have been some conspicuous and very unfortunate examples of bad behavior on the part of our student athletes. And pointing to other kids and programs and saying they do it too isn't a very convincing justification for our own failings. We should be better than that. And we must be better than that to counter those negative perceptions.

Nobody called us thugs when Twyman played, or Oscar, or when we won our two national championships, so being bad-asses doesn't necessarily equate with success on the court.

Play hard, play with intensity, and play with emotion, but keep it clean.

The man is absolutely right. The whole enterprise of "revenue sports" athletics is rotten to the core, and all is takes is watching a few post game interviews to prove it. 8 out of 10 of these players on TV have no business in college, ours or anyone else's. They have the ACTs and SATs to prove it.

(03-23-2015 04:41 PM)subflea Wrote:  Mushnick has made a career of writing articles like this. If it were up to him the game would look like it does in the movie Hoosiers with short shorts, set shots, bounce passes, and guys who can barely jump.

So you believe that academic integrity should be sacrificed to raise the level of play?

Wow. That article rambled from topic to topic, was completely void of any sort of context, and missed its subjects. Ellis, by all accounts, hasn't been a bad citizen off the court. You could have chosen dozens of others. He criticized New Mexico State for recruiting foreign players over non-existent talent in New Mexico and being subsidized by the state (most scholarships come from booster support). He ended with D'Angelo Russell, who apparently made one cocky comment off the court (who cares?), but I've heard nothing bad about otherwise. Silly.

(03-23-2015 05:24 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  The man is absolutely right. The whole enterprise of "revenue sports" athletics is rotten to the core, and all is takes is watching a few post game interviews to prove it. 8 out of 10 of these players on TV have no business in college, ours or anyone else's. They have the ACTs and SATs to prove it.

Honest question. I can't remember if you were the guy that was advocating recruiting more white players. Please tell me you weren't.

(03-23-2015 05:24 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  The man is absolutely right. The whole enterprise of "revenue sports" athletics is rotten to the core, and all is takes is watching a few post game interviews to prove it. 8 out of 10 of these players on TV have no business in college, ours or anyone else's. They have the ACTs and SATs to prove it.

In all seriousness, if this is how you actually feel, why do you care about UC sports or post on a UC athletics message board?

(03-23-2015 05:32 PM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  

(03-23-2015 05:24 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  The man is absolutely right. The whole enterprise of "revenue sports" athletics is rotten to the core, and all is takes is watching a few post game interviews to prove it. 8 out of 10 of these players on TV have no business in college, ours or anyone else's. They have the ACTs and SATs to prove it.

Honest question. I can't remember if you were the guy that was advocating recruiting more white players. Please tell me you weren't.

Who said anything about race? There are black players who are quite intelligent (Kareem, for one, and I kind of remember reading that Armein Kirkland was an engineering major) and white players who are morons (Larry Bird). As long as we are going to have college athletics, is it so unreasonable that all the players of whatever race should be able to meet minimum academic standards?

(03-23-2015 05:19 PM)colohank Wrote:  Mushnick may be an idiot, but highly publicized or widely viewed transgressions like the UC/Xavier brawl and Ellis's flagrant foul aren't helpful to our university's image.. Neither was Larry Davis's over-the-top defense of Ellis following his ejection from the Purdue game. They just serve to feed negative perceptions, whether entirely valid or not, that last a very long time.

The reason people mention UC and "thug" in the same sentence is because, over the years, there have been some conspicuous and very unfortunate examples of bad behavior on the part of our student athletes. And pointing to other kids and programs and saying they do it too isn't a very convincing justification for our own failings. We should be better than that. And we must be better than that to counter those negative perceptions.

Nobody called us thugs when Twyman played, or Oscar, or when we won our two national championships, so being bad-asses doesn't necessarily equate with success on the court.

Play hard, play with intensity, and play with emotion, but keep it clean.

Overall, I understand and I agree... BUT...

What's amazing is how half-truths and spin work to carry out a narrative. For example, the narrative that "UC's 'thuggish' behavior was on display during the UC-X brawl." The narrative has to ignore X's Tu Halloway publicly bragging "Zip-em up..." and making finger pistols in the post-game presser. The narrative has to ignore Kenny Freaze's goonish behavior throughout the game and in the minutes before the punch. The narrative has to ignore all the gang-sign throwing by the X players, the UC assistant coach's pregnant wife being assaulted, the blue paint being spattered on fans, and the unprovoked chant of "F*** UC" by the good Catholic schoolboys and girls. AND IT DOES. All the narrative tells is Yancey Gates hitting Kenny Freaze and the innocent Freaze's bloodied face. All the narrative tells is that the "dangerous and thuggish inner-city youth" somehow invaded the pristine environs of the Cintas Center ("who the hell let THEM in???") and then brawled because they lost the game. Oh, the humanity! Oh, the brute, pagan savages!

I am sick-to-death of apologizing for the damn brawl and worrying "how it made us look." Who suspended their starting players? Mick Cronin did. We paid our price for that brawl and I'm done apologizing for it. Let Xavier apologize for their genteel racism in acting like "those people" invaded their country-club campus. Let Xavier apologize and come to terms that they recruited gangsters like Halloway or thugs like Freaze merely to win games "for them" even though their behavior is directly at odds with their purported "religious values."

Huggins brought in kids who wouldn't have gotten a chance anywhere else. His APR and grad rates were low because he made good BB players out of them. Why is nobody worried how all those "one-and-dones" at Kentucky will reflect on their "university"? Or why is nobody worried how the academic scandal at North Carolina tarnishes their degrees? But here we sit and worry about how an ejection by a player "reflects" on UC... Well, the narrative will spin it how it will. Kicking Ellis off the team will not help, worrying about the past will not help...

Sick.
To.
Death.
of this crap.

(03-23-2015 05:37 PM)InspectorHound Wrote:  

(03-23-2015 05:24 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  The man is absolutely right. The whole enterprise of "revenue sports" athletics is rotten to the core, and all is takes is watching a few post game interviews to prove it. 8 out of 10 of these players on TV have no business in college, ours or anyone else's. They have the ACTs and SATs to prove it.

In all seriousness, if this is how you actually feel, why do you care about UC sports or post on a UC athletics message board?

Because I graduated from UC and LOVE watching the games. I'm just not under any illusion that there isn't a fundamental illegitimacy to it all...a guilty pleasure, you might say.

(03-23-2015 05:40 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  Because I graduated from UC and LOVE watching the games. I'm just not under any illusion that there isn't a fundamental illegitimacy to it all...a guilty pleasure, you might say.

You are not under an illusion that it isn't illegitimate? Use that triple negative-type sentence in a postgame interview and someone might think you're uneducated.

(03-23-2015 05:53 PM)levydl Wrote:  

(03-23-2015 05:40 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  Because I graduated from UC and LOVE watching the games. I'm just not under any illusion that there isn't a fundamental illegitimacy to it all...a guilty pleasure, you might say.

You are not under an illusion that it isn't illegitimate? Use that triple negative-type sentence in a postgame interview and someone might think you're uneducated.

Ad hominem makes you sound so erudite.

He's not a former lurker....he's a perpetual one. This site would be so much better off without haters like this that drag the whole fan site and program with them.