Politicians need to stay out of athletics

By Doug Robinson

Deseret News

Published: Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011 12:49 a.m. MST

Memo to state legislators: Butt out.

Stay out of high school sports.

Find something else to meddle with.

Oh, wait, we’re supposed to tone down the rhetoric.

Butt out … pa-lease.

Remember the little drama that began last summer when the state Legislature, led by Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, wanted to turn the high school transfer rule on its head by having NO RULES WHATSOEVER? A kid could transfer anytime, anywhere. He could play three different sports for three different schools in one school year.

That was a doozie, wasn’t it? Which is why legislators went back to work on the bill and modified it. The hope was that common sense would prevail, and they’d forget the whole business when (more…)

By Doug Robinson

Deseret News

Published: Friday, Dec. 24, 2010 5:45 p.m. MST

The NFL should consider contraction.

Not fewer teams; fewer pounds.

Let’s face it, the NFL needs to go on a diet. Send the players to Jenny Craig, sign them up for fat camp or Jillian Michaels, eliminate seconds at the training table, get serious about drug penalties — do whatever it takes.

Look, this sounds like a wacko idea, and it will never be seriously considered by the league because it makes way too much sense, but the NFL should adopt weight limits for players. Put them on a scale before each game, like boxers and wrestlers. With the much-publicized health problems of overweight NFL players, combined with the recent outbreak of explosive collisions and injuries, why not?

Doug Robinson has a great idea here. Now that it is openly on the table it could well happen. Support for this idea could pick up steam very fast. Limiting offensive and defensive linemen to 275 pounds would open the game up. Instead of 10 players standing and hugging one another in a mass at the center of the field (more…)

Football coaches’ salaries may not pay off on the field

Published: Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010 1:09 a.m. MST

So, what are we paying college football coaches these days.

And why? USA Today came up with its annual report on the salaries of the nation’s major college football coaches. The newspaper obtained tax records and other information to decipher base salaries, outside university income and maximum bonuses paid. There were private schools, including BYU, Boston College and Notre Dame, where no information was available.

You might be interested in a few of these paychecks and who is paying for what.

This article is not a legitimate study of the relationship between college football salaries and their won-lost records. A much more scholarly study would be interesting.

Nevertheless, the salary numbers mentioned in this article should be enough to startle the good sense of Americans.

College presidents and governing boards have let (more…)

(Opinion piece by Rep. Kay McIff in Salt Lake Tribune, April 10, 2010)

Advocates for forcing public access to streams, against the will of landowners, have advanced a raft of theories all designed to circumvent or trump the Utah Constitution’s prohibition against “taking or damaging private property for public use without just compensation.”

They have harkened back to the Magna Carta, the laws of England, Spain, the Roman Empire, Greece, the laws of the early American colonies and, most recently, Brigham Young. The exercise may be interesting and educational, but in the end the controlling document remains the Utah Constitution. It cannot be made subservient to other laws at other times and places.

If the effort to bypass the Utah Constitution were successful, what would be put in its place to protect private property rights listed by the framers as “inalienable” and second only to the rights of life and liberty? There is little comfort in the court-created easement in the Utah Supreme Court’s 2008 Conatser v. Johnson decision because it lacks constitutional side-boards and could be expanded by judicial or legislative fiat deemed necessary to make effective the public’s enjoyment of the easement.

Rep. McIff, Governor Herbert, and others, are taking considerable heat for this ill advised taking of public property and giving it to the adjacent land owners. The idea that the public doesn’t own the rivers and streams and reasonable access to them just doesn’t fly. Those who bought property alongside our rivers, streams, and lakes are just like those who bought property adjacent to our roads and sidewalks.

The Conatser decision necessarily relied upon a statute. The delegates to the Utah Constitutional Convention in 1895 had declined to declare public ownership of water, even though our neighboring states had done so. The reason may be found in the fact that Utah had been settled for almost 50 years and most of the water had already been appropriated. Delegates were uneasy about declaring public ownership, fearing it would compromise private vested rights. Hence, Article XVII, Section 1 of the Utah Constitution looked only through the rear-view mirror and protected only “existing rights.” It provided no guidance for the future.

Eight years later, the 1903 state Legislature adopted an extensive water code declaring public ownership of water, appointing a state engineer, fixing the procedure for acquiring the unappropriated water and authorizing the use of eminent domain to acquire rights of way for the beneficial use of water. All rights of way, even for the most basic uses of water, required payment of just compensation.

Beneficial uses identified in the debates and statutes related to irrigation, industrial, mining, milling, manufacturing, livestock watering, domestic and culinary. While the statutory scheme has been tweaked from time to time over the years, it remains largely intact. Noticeably absent for most of our (more…)

by Brett Prettyman

The Salt Lake Tribune

Johnny Collinson set out a year ago to conquer the highest points on each continent, but along the way the 17-year-old discovered the peaks were not nearly as important as the cultures he encountered and the people who helped him get to the top.

Collinson, who lives at Snowbird in Little Cottonwood Canyon, became the youngest climber to summit the top of each continent last week after stepping on the top of Antarctica’s 16,067-foot Vinson Massif.

“Physically, none of them were that demanding,” said the teenager. “I learned so much about the cultures of the different places I went. It was a great education and was really eye opening to see all those places in the world and to take a look at how people use their environment and look at how we treat our environment.”

Collinson arrived in Salt Lake City late Tuesday morning and he heads to Washington state to compete in a ski competition Thursday.

Jim and Deb Collinson, who largely funded the trip around the world, haven’t seen much of their only son in the past year, but what they have seen has pleased them.

“He was being a typical teenager before the idea to try and make the Seven Summits (more…)

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Karl Lemuel Tucker 11/18/1926 ~ 1/9/2010 Karl Lemuel Tucker, 83, a dearly loved husband, dad, grandpa, uncle, brother, brother-in-law, father-in-law, friend, and mentor to many, passed away, Jan. 8, 2010. He died peacefully, at home with his family.

Karl was an Orem boy from the first to the last. He was born here on Nov. 18, 1926, to Della Redd Spillsbury and George Travers Tucker, the youngest of seven children. While his family knew lean times working at tenant farming, they had an exuberant household that fostered hard work, spirit, humor, and resourcefulness. He attended local schools, Spencer Elementary and Lincoln High School, where he was student body president. At Lincoln, he was an all-around athlete, playing tennis, basketball, and football, but he excelled in tennis and as a senior won the state championship in the singles division. His tennis and football coach, Sank Dixon, was one of his great influences. He also revered his band and chorus teacher, Elvis Terry, and loved his years singing in Terry’s Mendelssohn Chorus and as part of a quartet called the Townsmen.

In 1945, in the summer after he graduated, Karl was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served until early 1947, stationed first at Camp Roberts, in California, and then at Fort Sill, in Oklahoma.

In the fall of 1948, he found his way back to BYU, where he was recruited to play baseball by coach (more…)

January 09, 2010

Utah Golf Association Web Page

Utah Golf Hall of Famer Karl Tucker passed away this afternoon after six months of deteriorating health due to kidney and heart ailments. Funeral services are pending and a complete obituary will be published soon. Funeral services are expected to be later next week in Orem.

Tucker was one of the most significant figures in Utah golf history. As the golf coach at BYU his teams won 19 Western Athletic Conference golf championships and brought BYU its first national championship in all sports in 1981.

Many of his players have reached the highest levels of success and have all stayed in touch with him. The loyalty that was generated among the players is perhaps the most marvelous trademark of his career. There are few teams of any sport that have spanned a 30-year period where the oldest and youngest all feel the same camaraderie toward one another. There is an attachment among BYU golfers that is truly unusual and Karl was the key to all that.

Tucker recruited and mentored some of the best golfers in the country, coaching 14 WAC Players of the Year and 13 WAC individual champions. In 1979 and 1980, he coached Bobby Clampett to back-to-back Fred Haskins Collegiate Player of the Year awards. He mentored an amazing 69 All-Americans, including nine (more…)

by Michael Lewis

Salt Lake Tribune

Just over a year ago, the Utah Utes celebrated one of the finest moments in their sports history: a Sugar Bowl victory over legendary Alabama that capped a perfect football season and triggered much rejoicing.

Not just on the field, either.

The triumph allowed the Utes to balance their athletic budget — something that would not have come close to happening without the estimated $2.3 million profit they made from their second trip into the lucrative Bowl Championship Series in five seasons.

This is an outstanding story. Congratulations to Michael Lewis. There is much more that needs to be uncovered and written about the mess of college athletics. The Sugar Bowl was the absolute zenith of success for the University of Utah.

It resulted in a ‘pot of gold’ of $19.2 million, but when costs and shares are distributed Utah ends up with a paltry $2.3 million, and even that is an illusion because that money will vanish quickly into increased salaries for the head football coach and his entire staff that will continue even in non-Sugar Bowl years.

The college presidents and the general public have been hood-winked.

You know we have our values upside down when the teacher-pupil ratio in college football is about one coach per five players, and our first grade reading classes have one teacher for 30 children, and the salary of one head football coach could pay the salaries of 30 elementary school teachers.

You know something is upside down when a coach is fired at one university for egregious rule violations and is quickly hired at another college at an increase in salary—-because he can win.

Utah put up with one of the crudest college basketball coaches in the nation for how many years?—all in search of the ‘pot of gold!’

Go Michael go! Don’t quit here.

(Also, congratulations to The Tribune for making this a front page story.)

But while that surely counts as a victory, on the eve of the annual BCS title game, it also illustrates a growing problem for many universities: Spending in pursuit of sporting success can result in serious financial jeopardy if they cannot reach a brass ring, such as a BCS game, to deliver multi-million-dollar salvation.

“The real crisis facing college athletics” is not the need for a major football playoff system, two co-chairmen of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics wrote in The Washington Post recently, but rather “the sustainability of its business model, which is on a path toward meltdown” because of soaring costs amid a troubled economic environment.

President R. Gerald Turner, of Southern Methodist University, and chancellor William E. Kirwan, of the University of Maryland, noted that NCAA statistics showed that nearly 80 percent of the 120 athletic programs that sponsor major-college football reported operating deficits (more…)

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Posted Dec 31st 2009 9:01PM by TMZ Staff

Football legend Merlin Olsen is suing NBC Studios, NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, Sherwin Williams, Lennox Industries and other companies, claiming he developed a rare form of cancer as a result of being negligently exposed to asbestos.

Olsen — who gained fame as a member of the Los Angeles Rams and went on to be a sportscaster, actor and spokesperson for FTD Florists — was diagnosed with the rare asbestos cancer mesothelioma a few months ago.

According to the lawsuit, filed today in L.A. County Superior Court, Olsen worked after school doing manual labor when he was 10 or 11 and was exposed to asbestos.

Olsen claims he was exposed to asbestos later in life when he was doing drywall. Olsen also worked at NBC and 20th Century FOX and is alleging those companies negligently exposed him to asbestos.

Olsen, who is undergoing chemotherapy, claims in the suit that all of the defendants, “were engaged in the business of manufacturing, fabricating, designing, assembling, distributing, leasing, buying, selling, inspecting, servicing, installing, repairing, marketing, warranting and advertising a certain substance the generic name of which is asbestos.”

Olsen says in the lawsuit that mesothelioma “is a vicious, painful, and invariably fatal malignancy” and there is no known cure.

Olsen and his wife Susan are suing for unspecified damages.

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by Casey Jones

Columnist, Salt Lake Tribune

The pick-and-roll, the box-and-one, the triangle-and-two. Now brash Brandt Andersen, owner of the Utah Flash franchise in the NBA Development League, has added a new term to the basketball lexicon — the bait-and-switch.

A record crowd of 7,542 got duped last week by Andersen. They crowded into the McKay Events Center in Orem expecting to see a one-on-one basketball game featuring NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan at halftime of the Flash home opener. Got a Jordan look-alike instead.

Without lifting a finger or speaking a word Michael Jordan once again embarrassed Byron Russell. There were 7,500 fans who got duped by Brandt Anderson and Byron Russell, but Michael wasn’t one of the suckers. He was above the scam promotion from the very beginning. Shucks, and Anderson so wanted to play with the big boys.

Jordan is so above this kind of malarkey this whole episode may never have even made his radar screen, but if he has heard about it he is probably enjoying a big laugh. Laugh, hell, he’s probably hooting about those wannabes in Utah. That was the easiest one on two he has ever played. At the end, the ‘no show’ was the only one with any dignity.

It was the start of a season that Andersen promises will be filled with promotions and fun. Next week the Flash will give away free “I got punked by Brandt Andersen” T-shirts and Andersen (more…)

Orem » An NBA Development League team owner is apologizing for misleading fans who thought Michael Jordan would play in a charity game at the Utah Flash’s home opener.

Flash owner Brandt Andersen acknowledged sending a Jordan lookalike around town Monday, when supposed “Jordan” sightings and an Internet video of the impostor eating at a local restaurant created buzz that Jordan really was in town. More than 7,500 fans showed up hoping to see Jordan play 1-on-1 against former Utah Jazz guard Bryon Russell at halftime.

The Flash had been pitching the Jordan-Russell rematch since September despite never hearing from Jordan after Andersen issued the first challenge.

Andersen maintained he held out hope that Jordan would agree to be part of Monday’s promotion.

“This was done in fun,” Andersen wrote on his blog after the game. “If you did not see it as fun or you feel we went over the top I am sorry.”

These people came to see Michael Jordan, not the Flash, and repaying them with a ticket to another Flash game is nothing but bait-and-switch and giving them their money back doesn’t square the deal either. This isn’t the last we’ll hear of this. There are some who have viewed it as funny, and others who feel duped. This will end up in court.

Andersen said that he had always planned to send out a lookalike, complete with bodyguards, (more…)

Tiger Woods said Friday he is taking an indefinite leave from golf to try to save his marriage, the biggest fallout yet from two shocking weeks filled with allegations of rampant extramarital affairs.

“I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person,” Woods said on his Web site.

Woods and his wife, Elin, have been married five years and have a 2-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son.

The announcement came two weeks after Woods crashed his SUV into a tree outside his Florida home, setting in motion a stunning downfall for the world’s No. 1 player who for 13 years rarely made news off the golf course. One woman who said she had a 31-month affair with Woods shared a voice mail that she said Woods left her two nights before his Nov. 27 accident.

“I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children,” Woods said. “I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I’ve done, but I want to do my best to try.”

Woods has not been seen in public since the accident.

He gave no indication when he might return in what could be a pivotal year as he pursues the record 18 major championships won by Jack Nicklaus. Woods, who did not win a major (more…)

The Making of a Legend: Merlin Olsen

There’s something special about being able to say “We knew him before the world did!’

To millions of sports fans Merlin Olsen became a legend as one of the Fearsome Foursome of the Los Angeles Rams. He was in the Pro Bowl 14 years, more than anyone else, and never missed a game in his 15 years with the Rams and was inducted into the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he continued his success as a popular television commentator and actor.

Long before that time, as a sophomore at Logan High, and before he had even played one game, he became a football legend to his high school teammates on the first day of practice.

As an awkward, oddly shaped teenager, with head and feet already full grown and anxiously waiting for his body to catch up, the only thing the varsity players knew about him was that he was big and strong and could possibly be a good football player someday—-and that he was only a mere sophomore.

In those days there were no little league or junior high football programs and this mighty man hadn’t played a down of real football anywhere. He was an unknown, even to himself.

At Logan High there was a tradition—-that sophomore’s didn’t go through the varsity dressing room to get to the football field. Sophomores (more…)

(Column written by Kurt Kragthorpe, Salt Lake Tribune)

The moment called for one of those classic Merlin Olsen voiceovers.

Utah State’s seemingly immortal, larger-than-life figure, his trademark beard now gray and his body shrinking as concessions to age and illness, walked slowly to the middle of the Smith Spectrum court Saturday night as a sellout crowd stood and cheered.

The scene was reassuring and stunning, celebratory and sobering, amid the realization that there was a reason the legendary Aggie football player was being honored during a basketball game. His legacy will include the naming of Merlin Olsen Field at Romney Stadium, a statue in the facility’s south plaza and a scholarship endowment.

Olsen, 69, is being treated for a form of cancer. Because of Olsen’s illness, USU president Stan Albrecht acknowledged during a news conference, there was “some urgency” for the school and Olsen’s family to stage Saturday’s observance, with the official dedication of the field and statue scheduled during the 2010 football season.

Olsen smiled and waved to the fans, but chose not to address them or the media. He did speak briefly during an exclusive dinner at the nearby stadium’s end-zone complex, where Albrecht was struck by “that incredible voice, ” made famous by Olsen’s broadcasting, acting, commercial and charitable efforts.

“We’ve all been touched by that voice in some way,” Albrecht said.

The connection is strong in Olsen’s native Cache Valley, where — nearly 50 years after his college career ended in the Gotham Bowl — the Outland Trophy winner as the country’s best lineman remains the symbol of what Aggie football once was.

He’s also the scholar who completed a USU master’s degree in economics in the middle of his NFL career, transitioned nicely to the next phase of his life and remained someone who brought “honor and dignity” to the school, USU athletic director Scott Barnes said.

It was just a throwaway line in a movie. Yet when “Anchorman” star Will Ferrell tried to impress a co-worker by saying, “I’m friends with Merlin Olsen,” (more…)

By Joe Drape

The New York Times

State College, Pa. » They turn cartwheels and mime acrobatic moves to the techno beat pumping through the sound system until sweat begins to glisten on their bodies. They are muscled and agile and could pass for Cirque du Soleil performers except that most of them have mangled ears, a telltale giveaway that they are wrestlers.

In their midst, rolling his shoulders, stutter-stepping and slapping the neck of an invisible opponent is their coach, Cael Sanderson. He is a youthful 30, with a shaved head that makes him indistinguishable from his Penn State wrestlers.

Except Sanderson is not just a coach: He is the greatest wrestler in NCAA history — a four-time champion and the only one with a perfect record (159-0). He also won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics. Last spring, he left his alma mater, Iowa State, where in three years as head coach he sent every one of his wrestlers — 30 in all — to the NCAA championships.

Cael Sanderson hails from Heber City and Wasatch High School and when you consider all the great athletes across all sports you could make a great case that his achievements are the greatest in Utah sports history.

159-0! Unbelievable!!!!!!!

Penn State has a gem!

His departure shocked the wrestling world because at first glance it looked like the equivalent of an actor leaving Broadway for regional theater. Sure, the Nittany Lions had captured a national title — but that was in 1953, and Penn State is still the only school east of the Mississippi to have won one.

Sanderson, however, saw it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity. As a wrestler and a coach, he had too often looked across the mat and seen Pennsylvania kids in the singlets of Iowa, Minnesota and Oklahoma State — the three programs that have accounted for the past 20 NCAA titles.

In fact, of the 80 collegiate wrestlers to earn all-American honors last spring, 11 were from Pennsylvania, but only one was from Penn State, according to Pennsylvania Wrestling Newsmagazine . Sanderson saw a chance to build not only a champion but also a dynasty much like the Hawkeyes, the Gophers and the Cowboys have.

“It’s like if I was a football coach with a chance to go to Texas where all the great players are, where they have the best facilities and where the fans support you to this incredible level,” said Sanderson, who said he was bowled over when 500 students and wrestling fans showed up last April for a news conference introducing (more…)

Provo » The Cougars had two touchdowns called back in their 38-21 win over the Air Force Academy on Saturday, including one in which officials called quarterback Max Hall for unsportsmanlike conduct as running back Harvey Unga was scoring from 2 yards out in the third quarter.

Lined up in the shotgun formation, Hall started walking toward the referee and waving his arms as if he was going to call a timeout. Instead, center R.J. Willing snapped the ball to Unga, who carried it into the end zone.

The Cougars used the play to score against Utah last year.

Asked after the game for an official interpretation after referee Land Clark announced it as an “attempt to deceive” when explaining the call to the crowd, the officials said: “Unsportsmanlike conduct was called for an unfair act to deceive the opponent. A 15-yard penalty for a live ball foul was imposed at the previous spot and the down [was] repeated by rule.”

Interesting! The official indicates that his decision was based on a rule. Watts Cookin’ will check the rule and get back with specifics.

Backed to the 17, Hall threw a 15-yard pass to Dennis Pitta on third down. The Cougars then chose to go for the touchdown, rather than a field goal, but Hall was intercepted by Anthony Wright .

BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall responded to a question about having two TDs called back by saying it was “hard to understand.”

Farmingdale, N.Y. » The U.S. Open might have one tough act to follow.

Tiger Woods was pure theater at Torrey Pines last year, playing on a left leg so badly injured that the U.S. Open turned out to be his last event of the year. He made two eagles on the final six holes in prime time Saturday to take the lead, forced a playoff with a 12-foot birdie putt on the final hole Sunday, then battled Rocco Mediate over 19 holes to capture his 14th career major.

“I’m not sure we can duplicate that drama,” USGA president Jim Vernon said Wednesday.

Try telling that to thousands of fans who trudged through the soggy turf of Bethpage Black for five hours on the final day of practice, all because it was their first glimpse of Phil Mickelson.

The New York gallery has always loved Lefty, even as he broke their hearts with runner-up finishes in the U.S. Open at Bethpage in 2002, Shinnecock Hills in 2004 and Winged Foot in 2006 with that double bogey on the final hole.

The support now is louder and more tangible than ever.

Mickelson wasn’t even sure he could return to Bethpage Black upon learning last month that his wife, Amy, a native of Sandy and a Hillcrest High School graduate, had been diagnosed with (more…)