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This action comes after three coaches recently complained about officiating. From AP-
Southeastern Conference coaches will face stiffer penalties from now on for complaining in the media about officiating.
Commissioner Mike Slive told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday that coaches who violate the conference’s ethics rules against criticizing officials in public will face a fine or suspension instead of receiving merely public reprimands when they first act up.
“On rare occasions over the last seven years there were several private reprimands and that took care of the matter,” said Slive, in his eighth year as the SEC’s leader. “On occasion there were public reprimands and that took care of it. It became clear to me after last week that I was no longer interested in reprimands and the conference athletic directors and university presidents unanimously agreed.
“For the foreseeable future there will be no reprimands,” Slive added. “We will go right to suspensions and fines.”
If I were the SEC, I’d concentrate on getting more professional officials to work their games rather than take action against coaches who criticize officiating. The SEC after all just suspended an entire football crew. I think the integrity of the league possibly being endangered by rogue officiating would be the more serious concern.
The league said there was no basis for their personal foul call in a recent game. From AP-
The Southeastern Conference has suspended officials from last weekend’s Arkansas-Florida game after the crew was involved in its second controversial call of the year.Referee Marc Curles’ crew called a personal foul on Arkansas defensive lineman Malcolm Sheppard in the fourth quarter as the Gators were rallying for a 23-20 victory. The league said there was no video evidence to support the call.
The same group of officials called the LSU-Georgia game earlier this month, which included a late unsportsmanlike conduct penalty the league said shouldn’t have been called.
“A series of calls that have occurred during the last several weeks have not been to the standard that we expect from our officiating crews,” SEC commissioner Mike Slive said Wednesday. “I believe our officiating program is the best in the country. However, there are times when these actions must be taken.”
SEC associate commissioner Charles Bloom said this is the first time the league has publicly suspended a football crew like this.
The SEC says the crew will be removed from its next scheduled assignment Oct. 31 and will not be assigned to officiate as a crew until Nov. 14.
Conference officials went on to say this will affect referee bowl assignments. I sincerely hope it does. This crew shouldn’t be given extra opportunities to screw up.
He was an All American for the U of Georgia and pitched a minor league no-hitter. Powell left behind a wife and three children. RIP.
A sheriff’s official in Georgia says former major league pitcher Brian Powell has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 35.
Capt. Liz Crowley of the Decatur County Sheriff’s Office says Powell died Monday at a hospital in Tallahassee, Fla. Powell was from Bainbridge, Ga.
Powell was 7-18 with a 5.94 ERA in 59 games for Detroit, Houston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. He last pitched in the majors with the Phillies in 2004, and spent 2005 in Triple-A for Washington.
He took the Gators to three SEC Championships and was even a assistant football coach. RIP.
Dave Fuller, the winningest baseball coach in University of Florida history, has died. He was 94.
Fuller died Tuesday at North Florida Regional Hospital in Gainesville.
Fuller guided the Florida baseball program from 1948 to 1975, compiling a 557-354-6 record and winning three Southeastern Conference championships (1952, 1956, 1962).
He was also a member of the football staff for 29 years (1948-76), the longest run of any assistant coach in school history. Fuller served in many capacities as head freshman coach, varsity assistant, head scout and a key recruiter under head coaches Bob Woodruff, Ray Graves and Doug Dickey.
The Crimson Tide went 12-2 in 2008. From AP-
Pledging his commitment to Alabama for the rest of his coaching career, Nick Saban signed a contract extension Saturday that will keep him in charge of the Crimson Tide football program through the 2017 season.
Saban, accused by some of being a coaching nomad and not willing to set down roots, said prior to last season that there were “no other horizons” for him in the coaching profession. This latest deal would appear to be another clear indication that he has dug in at Alabama.
I never thought of Saban as a coaching nomad. His namesake, the late Lou Saban, was the ultimate nomad in college football coaching.
Alabama officials had been working on a contract that would not change Saban’s base salary over the next several years, but would award him with a three-year extension, bumping up his total financial package to an average of more than $4 million per year.
Saban is scheduled to make $3.9 million this year. His original eight-year contract was worth $32 million and escalated each year. He’ll go to $4.1 million in 2010 and is scheduled to make $4.2 million in each of the final three years of that deal (2012, 2013 and 2014).
A long term contract locks in Saban in Tuscaloosa for a long time. It comes with disadvantages, which to me outweigh the advantages. A coach may underperform or bring scandal to the school. The University will then, and often with good reason, want to move on but are restrained from doing so because of the cost of buying out a coach’s contract.
Alabama football fans, no disrespect to my friend and owner of this blog James Joyner, seem fickle to me. They want the Bear Bryant days back and when a coach doesn’t live up to these high expectations, they soon long for the next candidate. That is just my humble opinion.
Alabama’s football program is getting spanked yet again by the NCAA, ESPN reports.
The NCAA will reveal later Thursday that the Alabama football program must vacate victories from 2005 through 2007 that included players who improperly obtained free textbooks for other students, the Birmingham News is reporting.
Alabama could be forced to vacate as many as 21 wins under the watch of former coach Mike Shula and current coach Nick Saban, sources at the university told ESPN.com’s Mark Schlabach. Citing a source, the News reported the number of wins to be at least 10.
The Crimson Tide will not lose future scholarships, according to the News. The university also will be placed on probation for the second time in the past eight years and ordered to pay a fine, the newspaper reported.
The NCAA alleges the violations began at the start of the 2005 season; the university reported the violations after uncovering them during the ‘07 football season, when starting linemen Antoine Caldwell and Marlon Davis, running back Glen Coffee and defensive backs Chris Rogers and Marquis Johnson were suspended for four games.
Under NCAA rules, the players would be ruled ineligible from when they first received the “extra benefits” and would have been ineligible until they were suspended and reinstated.
It is not clear which additional sports programs at Alabama are affected. The NCAA’s ruling will be announced in a 3 p.m. ET teleconference.
University officials aren’t permitted to comment until the NCAA releases its findings. The investigation also included athletes in other sports that the university has not disclosed.
Alabama appeared before the Committee on Infractions on Feb. 20 to answer allegations of potentially major violations involving the improper disbursement of textbooks and “failure to adequately monitor” the textbook distribution process for student-athletes.
The violations occurred during the 2005-06 school year and into the fall of 2007. That left the university subject to potentially stiffer penalties as a repeat violator because the football program was placed on probation on Feb. 1, 2002.
The new case also reopens the five-year repeat violator window.
Saban replaced Shula as coach after the 2006 football season and suspended Caldwell, Coffee, Johnson, Rogers and Davis when the university uncovered the violations. The Tide was 5-2 at that point in the 2007 season and their only wins in the next six games came against Tennessee and Colorado in the Independence Bowl.
The sanctions come at a time when Alabama fans were celebrating the program’s return to national prominence. Saban led the Tide to a 12-0 regular-season record and a No. 1 ranking last season, before the team lost to Florida in the Southeastern Conference championship game and to Utah in the Sugar Bowl.
As an Alabama alumnus — I was enrolled when we won our most recent national football title in 1992 — I’m sick over this. Just as the program recovered from the last set of sanctions, here we go again.
It sounds like Nick Saban is uninvolved and acted correctly here. If there are sanctions beyond losing past games, though, I wouldn’t be at all surprised for him to pull a Franchione and leave for greener pastures.
As an aside, I think retroactive forfeits are silly. You can’t change history and it only penalizes fans, not students, athletes, or others responsible.
He coached the Bulldogs for five years and after that spent two decades as an assistant at Auburn. RIP.
Former Mississippi State head football coach Paul Davis, who led the Bulldogs from 1962 to 1966, has died. He was 87.
Davis died Tuesday at Bethany House, a hospice in Auburn, Ala., according to a hospice spokeswoman and an official at Jeffcoat-Trant Funeral Home in Opelika, Ala. The cause of death was not given.
Davis, a native of Knoxville, Tenn., played at Ole Miss. He was Auburn’s defensive coordinator and assistant head coach under Shug Jordan from 1967 to 1975; an assistant for Doug Barfield from 1975 to 1980; and was a member of Pat Dye’s staff from 1987 to 1990.
In 1963, Davis’ Mississippi State team went 7-2-2 and battled North Carolina State and frigid temperatures to capture the Liberty Bowl in Philadelphia.
Davis’ teams were 20-38-2 overall and 9-22-2 in the Southeastern Conference in his five seasons at Mississippi State.
During his 17-year career at Auburn, Davis coached seven All-Americans and participated in nine bowl games.
It is claimed he punched a cabbie and used racial slurs against the man. From AP-
Police arrested Mississippi men’s basketball coach Andy Kennedy early Thursday after a cab driver said the coach punched him while calling him “bin Laden” and other racial insults.
A pretrial hearing has been set for Jan. 16. Kennedy was charged with a first-degree misdemeanor count of assault, which would carry a maximum sentence of six months in jail if he is convicted.
Kennedy denied the allegations and his attorney, Mike Allen, entered a written plea of not guilty in Hamilton County Municipal Court on Thursday.
Kennedy, a former assistant and interim head coach at Cincinnati, was set to coach the Rebels against No. 9 Louisville in the SEC/Big East Invitational later Thursday.
*****
The complaint filed in Municipal Court alleges that Kennedy assaulted Mohamed Moctar Ould Jiddou and “punched victim with a closed fist while shouting racial slurs.”
Truly bizarre. If Kennedy is convicted or cops to a plea deal, Ole Miss would be justified in firing him.
He’s coached the Bulldogs for 10 years and taken them to one SEC tournament title. From ESPN-
Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury was admitted Sunday night to Oktibbeha County Hospital with migraines and then went to Northeast Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo on Monday for more testing.
Assistant Robert Kirby told ESPN.com on Monday that he spoke with Stansbury and he fully expected him to coach the Bulldogs in Thursday night’s SEC/Big East Challenge against Cincinnati at U.S. Bank Arena.
Kirby said Stansbury had never experienced migraines before and wanted to get them checked when his condition did not improve. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if Stansbury attended practice Monday.
The Bulldogs are coming off a 19-point win over South Alabama after a loss at home to Charlotte in which the Bulldogs were “out-toughed,” according to Kirby. He said the Bulldogs went to a smaller lineup around shot-blocker Jarvis Varnado but are still looking for more on-court leadership moving forward.
I hope it is nothing serious. Get well coach.
How many times does a career 5-19 head coach get an offer elsewhere. From ESPN-
Iowa State coach Gene Chizik has been hired as the next football coach at Auburn, Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard said in a statement.
A former Auburn defensive coordinator, Chizik will succeed Tommy Tuberville, who resigned following 10 seasons. The hiring was first reported by several media outlets, including AuburnUndercover.com, the Birmingham News and the Mobile Press-Register.
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Chizik made $1.05 million in base salary and guaranteed pay last season under a six-year deal and would owe Iowa State $750,000 if he takes the Auburn job.
Auburn was paying Tuberville an average of $3.3 million a year and agreed to give him $5.1 million to buy out his contract despite calling his departure a resignation. He stepped down after a 5-7 season and the Tigers’ first loss to rival Alabama in seven years, a 36-0 rout that was the final blow for a team that was predicted to win the Southeastern Conference Western Division.
Chizik is 5-19 in two seasons at Iowa State after stints running the defenses at Auburn and Texas. He coached the nation’s top scoring defense in 2004 in his third and final season with the Tigers. That defense allowed just 11 points a game and Auburn went undefeated.
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Before coming to Iowa State to replace Dan McCarney, Chizik was one of the hottest defensive coordinators in the country. He led teams at Auburn and Texas to a 29-game winning streak over two-plus seasons before losing in 2006 to Ohio State while at Texas. He was Frank Broyles national award winner in 2004 and served as the coordinator on Texas’ 2005 national championship team.
But he’s gone just 5-19 in two seasons at Iowa State — including a 2-10 mark in 2008. The Cyclones went winless in Big 12 play this season, and their win total has dipped in each of the past three seasons.
Chizik is a familiar face to Auburn. Auburn, winner of 6 SEC Championships the latest of which was in 2004, has only had 7 head coaches since 1951.
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