North Carolina football coach Butch Davis expressed ‘surprise’ at the latest investigation of his football program. At a hastily-called press conference also attended by North Carolina Chancellor Holden Thorp and Athletic Director Dick Baddour, it was revealed that the NCAA had uncovered yet another impropriety in the Tar Heels’ scandal-plagued football program. Allegations of academic [...]

It is the home stretch. Season tickets have been delivered, early [FedEx] travel arrangements made and I have even had dinner with Frank and several hundred other Roanoke Hokies. We are now inside a month and are counting down to another football season. Practice has begun at all schools and all available media outlets are [...]

So, how are your brackets? Following four days of basketball noted primarily for the large numbers of high seeds getting shot down like a Mig over the Sinai and the quick exit of 5/6 of the ACC schools actually invited, the college basketball world pauses to take a breath and rest for a few days. [...]

As usually happens twice a year, the howling about the participants in a college postseason is loud and long. Cries of rigged systems and nefarious plots to reward favored teams abound. There is not a lot of difference between what is heard in basketball than the clamor following each and every football season. In basketball, [...]

A month ago, things looked bleak for Virginia Tech. The Hokies had ridden an OOC schedule so weak that even a team coached by Seth Greenberg only lost to the one good team it played. Coupled with a relatively-easy ACC draw that had the Hokies playing twice the worst teams in the league and Tech [...]

Well, this very likely won’t be the first ACC basketball season where every single team finishes with an 8-8 record. While it looked for a while that the entire conference might finish at .500 in league play, and a bunch still might, a bit of separation has taken place in the standings. There is also [...]

The Hoos reacted to a Tech Internet columnist publicly proclaiming his support by losing to Arkansas in the College World Series. The announcement by a Tech fan that he was a closet supporter of Hoo baseball had something other than a positive effect on the Hoo team, as a blown late-game lead, a flurry of [...]

Last Saturday night began my annual month or so of actually paying attention to college baseball. Not by coincidence, this period of time just happens to coincide with the NCAA playoffs and College World Series. Well, it beats the NBA playoffs, although there was amusement to be found from watching King James storm off the [...]

05/04/09 There do seem to be a fair amount of problems besetting the Republic these days. From the recession to foreign wars to the death throes of the domestic automobile industry to the media’s Captain Trips scare, any and every venture into the various communication realms devoted to presenting what passes for ‘news’ these days [...]

So much for Destiny’s Darlings. The media-contrived efforts to turn a Michigan State team that won 26 games and the Big 11 title into some sort of Cinderella fighting for oppressed automobile workers everywhere lasted until Thompson’s first shot seconds into the game. The glass slipper was too small in the Heel. Carolina treated the [...]