Keep in mind that this page was created two years ago, so Burr’s age has been on the mind of at least a few fans before yesterday’s debacle at Madison Square Garden. And for the record, “curmudgeonly old puss” is an absolutely BLESSED term.

The NCAA has thought highly enough of Higgins and Burr over the years to keep asking them back to officiate Final Fours. In fact, Burr has officiated more national title games (7) than anyone else ever has. And he appears to be fairly well thought of in the coaching community:

“He’s a good referee,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. “He calls them like he sees them. There may be calls I disagree with, but that’s the way it goes. When you have him, you get a chance at a fair treatment.”  (ECAC web site)

But what’s the shelf life for a good referee?  Was what we saw yesterday a case of both Burr and Higgins having hit a wall?

A ton of people are gonna shout “Hell yes!” to that last statement, regardless of whether or not there’s more recent evidence that age may have caught up with these guys.  Why?  Because this is America, and in this country we don’t necessarily love old people.

Humor me while I share a quick story to illustrate this point.  Back in college, my girlfriend at the time asked me to go to a rest home that her sorority was volunteering at.  I tagged along and ended up in the room of a woman who was from Evergreen, AL.

She was every bit of 70 but was still pretty damn sharp.  She wasn’t bound to a wheelchair and proudly told me that she still had all her original teeth.  In my mind, I thought that was probably a rare feat for any native of Evergreen, regardless of age.

While I sat there, she showed me pictures of what looked like a pretty nice ranch style home.  That’s when she laid a bombshell on me: that was her house, and her son had taken it from her and stuck her in the rest home.  When I asked her the last time that he had come to visit her, she replied, “Oh goodness, a little after Thanksgiving maybe.”  She and I were having that chat during the spring.

I’ve thought about that conversation over the years and how it illustrates the way our society has evolved.  In other countries, having four generations under the same roof is not uncommon.  Over here, we have a tendency to jettison our parents the way a Space Shuttle jettisons its booster rockets once it reaches a certain altitude.

I’m not saying that we’re all as nefarious as the bastard in Evergreen who took his mother’s house.  But when it comes to senior citizens, many of us just really don’t want to burdened with them.  They smell different than we do, their ear hair can get out of control, they’re a little too in love with hard candy and they need to have every other sentence repeated to them.  In our on-the-go society, old folks kinda don’t fit in.

That attitude probably creeps in to the way we perceive referees.  A ref in his 30’s who blows a call is labeled an incompetent a-hole. But a ref in his 60’s who does the same is a broken down old man who should be put out to pasture.

Now this isn’t a blanket defense of every old fart ref currently calling basketball games. Do I think that older referees should have a lighter work load than younger ones? Yes. Should refs in their 60’s be held to the same fitness standards as younger ones? Definitely.

But in the case of Rutgers-St. John’s, age might not have been the reason behind those blown calls at the end. This was crunch time in a tournament game, when the urge to let the guys play becomes strongest with officials. Now in this case, they REALLY let them play, to the point where it was comical. But that reluctance to intervene could’ve been the reason why things turned out the way they did.

If Burr, Higgins and Walton had gotten whistle happy in the closing seconds we might very well have a totally different set of complaints today. St. John’s fans would be bitching and moaning on every message board they can access about how the refs should’ve swallowed their whistles.

And keep in mind the frenetic nature of those final seconds. Watch the video again and pay close attention to Rutgers coach Mike Rice. He’s actually on the court jumping around like a maniac while demanding a foul call. In the post game press conference, Rice admitted that because of his own histrionics he didn’t notice any of the infractions committed by Brownlee.

Now this might come off like me making another excuse for this officiating crew, but here goes: could Rice’s theatrics have actually distracted Burr and his buddies? Maybe so, but in regard to the Rutgers coach, his actions could be more evidence that the refs were letting them play. Why? Because he should have been whistled for a technical for being on the court.

I’m sure the attention that the last few seconds of this game has gotten will prompt a move by college hoops leagues to have a youth movement in their officiating ranks. To me, that’s a little bit too knee jerk of a reaction.

Think about the flip side of a rapid injection of inexperienced referees into the game. Do you want that many young pups who can be easily worked over by the likes of Coach K and Jim Calhoun? Be careful what you wish for.

I didn’t think the Alabama-Auburn rivalry could get uglier. It can.

Okay, let’s rewind a little. Back in November, Alabama blew a huge lead to Auburn and lost the Iron Bowl by a 28-27 count. In the weeks afterward, some Auburn fans got a little overboard with the celebration. First, you had this:

And then you had this:

Now if you can’t tell what that is in the second picture, that’s rye grass that’s been planted to spell out the Iron Bowl’s final score.

Let me say this: both of these were instances of people having way too much time on their hands. Personally, when my team wins a huge game, the extent of my celebration is enjoying a feeling of contentment. I don’t sit around dreaming up ways to goof around with the opposing team’s campus.

But then again, harmlessly screwing around with the opposing team’s campus after a big win is what college kids do. Didn’t we all learn that when Homer Simpson and his nerdy classmates stole Sir Oinksalot?

However, upon seeing the images above, I can kinda understand how a rabid Alabama fan would be royally pissed and might not necessarily just chalk it all up to sophomoric hijinks. In the Tide universe, Bear Bryant is a deity, and you don’t screw around with the statue dedicated to that deity.

Even with their buttons pushed, I think most Alabama fans reacted by thinking, “Auburn loses its entire damn team next season. We’ll go to their place, whip ‘em and someone will find a creative way to leave the score of that game on their campus.” You know, typical rivalry stuff.

But that would be MOST Alabama fans. It turns out one did the following:

Auburn University today confirmed that an herbicide commonly used to kill trees was deliberately applied in lethal amounts to the soil around the Toomer’s Corner live oaks on campus, and there is little chance to save the trees. More information and ongoing updates as to treatment and prognosis are available on this site.

The City of Auburn Police Division is investigating the situation, and the application of this herbicide, known as Spike 80DF, or tebuthiuron, is also governed by state agricultural laws and the Environmental Protection Agency. The university does not use Spike herbicide. There is no reason to suspect any human danger from the herbicide, which manufacturer Dow Chemical says should be applied with proper clothing protection; a typical use of the herbicide is to kill trees along fence lines.

The university learned that a caller to The Paul Finebaum Show, a nationally syndicated radio show based in Birmingham, on Jan. 27, claimed he had applied the herbicide. As a precaution, soil samples were taken the next day and sent to the Alabama State Pesticide Residue Laboratory on campus for analysis. Due to a small fire that occurred in the Alabama lab in December, the tests were sent to the lab at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss., to expedite results. (www.auburn.edu)

If you’re even a little bit familiar with Auburn, then you know those same trees are an integral part of the celebrations that follow every home win (and many road wins as well):

If that’s someone’s idea of a proper response to a t-shirt on a statue and a little grass seed on the ground in front of it, then that person if bat-fucking-shit nuts. Luckily for you, I have the audio from the Finebaum call referenced above, so you can hear this crazy bastard for yourself:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I always knew Finebaum attracted the nutcases. After all, Paaawwwl is an expert at riling up the Tahd masses to boost his ratings. But Al from Dadeville makes Phyllis from Mulga seem like a perfectly adjusted human being.

Keep in mind that this son of a bitch called up a syndicated radio show and told everyone about it. That is CRAZY, and crazy knows no bounds. Therefore, someone needs to check this guy’s basement in a hurry, because I think you’ll find a woman in a pit and a dress being sewn out of human skin.

What makes it worse, this guy is originally from Texas.  Huh?!?  You weren’t even born into this rivalry and you’re that consumed by it?  Somewhere, there’s a book that needs to be thrown at Al.  And after it’s thrown, I hope he shares a cell with a large, hairy Auburn fan who is just as crazy as he is.

Bad stats, bad stats, what you gonna do? (2/11 edition)

Why bother highlighting the less fortunate? Because those who forget bad stats are condemned to repeat them:

• CBB - UConn’s Kemba Walker is an elite player, but lately he’s been shooting like a dude who just took up the game. The Huskies have lost three of their last four, and in those losses Walker has shot 14-of-53 from the field. Yup, that’s a 26% effort. In those games he was also pretty damn ineffective at the chartity stripe, shooting 57% (8-of-14).
  

  Kemba, dude, c'mon now

• CBB - I can always find some bad stats in the SWAC, but lately Southern has been putting up numbers that are horrid even by that league’s standards. On seven different occasions this season, the Jags have failed to score more than 49 points. Things have really bottomed out for them in the last two contests, a 49-45 loss to Grambling and a 72-43 loss to Jackson State. Putting the numbers from those games together, Southern shot 29.7% from the field and turned it over 31 times.

• CBB - Remember when David Robinson controlled the paint for Navy once upon a time? There’s no such interior presence in Annapolis these days. The Middies pull down 31.1 boards a contest while their opposition is grabbing 42.8. That’s a rebounding margin of -11.7, a full rebound and a half more than the next worse team in Division I (Alcorn State).

• NBA - The longer the Cavs losing streak goes, the worse Antawn Jamison seems to play. In the month of January, he shot 42% from the field but through five games in February he’s shooting 38%. He turned the ball over 1.6 times a game in January vs. 2.4 a game this month. And his rebounding numbers? Those were 8.1 in January compared to 6.8 in February. Strangely, this comes with an increased work load (39.8 minutes per game this month, 35.6 minutes last month).

• WCBB - In case you didn’t catch the Tulsa-UAB women’s game from last night (which I’m sure goes for ALL of you), then you missed a monumental second half meltdown. The Golden Hurricane shot a solid 50% in the first half en route to being down 23-21 at the intermission. But the second half, well, that was a total friggin’ disaster. Tulsa shot 4-for-22 (18%) after the break and ended up losing 59-36. Two points down at the half to losing by 23 = NOT BLESSED.

USC cleans house and acts like Bush and Mayo never existed

Now that newly former AD Mike Garrett has been forced into retirement at USC, the school can embark on a housecleaning more ambitious than you’d see on any given episode of “Hoarders.”

USC’s president elect C.L. Max Nikias sent out a memo today that outlined the sweeping changes.  In it, he named former Trojan quarterback and current nerd Pat Haden as the school’s new athletic director.  Hopefully Haden can stop pulling for Notre Dame long enough to concentrate on the USC cleanup.

David Roberts, formerly the managing partner of Roberts, Raspe and Blanton LLP, has been hired as VP for athletic compliance.  The memo also stated that the Freeh Group will now have an expanded role in the school’s athletic compliance efforts.  It’s unclear whether or not that role will involve shooting any player agents seen walking on USC’s campus.

However, the most fascinating aspect of the memo was the following:

Daammmmmmn, they’re basically erasing Mayo and Bush from the school’s record books.  In the case of film, the university will just superimpose Bugs Bunny over them in any clips in which they appear and adjust the audio accordingly. “Leinart hands off to Bugs, gain of three over the left side.”

The return of Bush’s Heisman prompted the following homage to Norm Macdonald from Deadspin:

“Reggie Bush Has Heisman Taken Away From Him Even Though He Didn’t Kill His Wife And A Waiter” (Deadspin.com)

These events have generated the following questions in my mind, questions that I’ll share right here:

• How quickly can Haden run this thing into the ground and oversee an 0-12 season for USC football?  Two years?  Three years?
• Can Bush still refer to himself as a Heisman winner when trying to score ass in clubs?
• After hiring Tim Floyd and Mike Price, will UTEP go for the triple crown and make Garrett its new AD?
• Is “C.L. Max Nikias” the biggest smug bastard name in the history of smug bastard names?

To read the USC memo in its entirety, click here.

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