Tuesday, August 31, 2010
A Twist on Student-Athlete Twitter Privileges
University of North Carolina administrators may not have banned the use of Twitter and Facebook by student-athletes — as some of their peers at other schools have — but a new social-networking policy indicates they are serious about maintaining a low profile in the wake of recent highly publicized incidents.
The Raleigh News & Observer reports that UNC has updated its 2010-11 student-athlete handbook to stipulate that “each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitor the content of team members’ social-networking sites and postings.” The athletics department also reserves the right to have other staff members monitor student-athletes’ posts, and if any online content violates the law or NCAA, university or athletics department policies, punishment could range from removal of the post to dismissal from the team.
Although associate athletic director Steve Kirschner said the updated social-networking policy “is not in response to any one thing,” news of this major policy tweak comes shortly after UNC announced a probe into academic improprieties by the school's football team, and several basketball players were told to tone down their tweets.
No reaction from players yet, but writer Rhiannon Bowman had plenty to say about the university’s crackdown Tuesday in a blog posting for the local weekly newspaper Charlotte Creative Loafing. “Is this healthy?” Bowman asked. “I mean, in a country that values free speech so much that we made that right part of the very first amendment to our constitution, is paying university staff (i.e. state employees) to police the social media ramblings of our youth a healthy and wise thing to do?”
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4:07 PM
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Employees Hurt in Cowboys Facility Collapse Get $10M
The two employees seriously injured in the 2009 collapse of the Dallas Cowboys indoor practice facility have been awarded about $5 million each. Attorney Frank Branson told the Associated Press that the payments in cash and other benefits to team scout Rich Behm and special teams coach Joe DeCamillis settle lawsuits the two brought against Cowboys Center Ltd. (which owned the steel-and-fabric facility, plus the land on which it stood) and Blue Star Development Co. Both companies are controlled by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
Behm was paralyzed from the waist down and DeCamillis suffered a broken vertebrae when the building collapsed in a windstorm on May 2, 2009. Both men still work for the team, which wasn't sued. Branson also disclosed that a previous settlement with the facility’s builder paid Behm $19.5 million and DeCamillis $4.5 million.
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3:14 PM
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Goodbye, Sit-Ups; Hello, Fit Soldier
Nearly a decade in the making, the U.S. Army’s new physical-training program is being rolled out at five basic-training posts this year. The goal? To reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat.
As The New York Times recently reported, the program was created to help address one of the military’s most pressing issues: overweight and out-of-shape recruits. "Too Fat to Fight," a report issued recently by a group of retired generals, admirals and civilian military leaders, reveals that between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of potential recruits who failed their annual physicals because they were overweight climbed almost 70 percent. As a result, it is harder for recruits to reach Army fitness standards, and more are getting injured along the way.
That's why the Army’s new fitness regime eschews traditional sit-ups and long runs in favor of different kinds of push-ups and more stretching, more exercises for the abdomen and lower back, and more agility and balance work. Difficulty levels increase gradually. In some cases, these exercises incorporate side twists, back bridges and rowing-like movements similar to yoga and Pilates — activities that have been among military workout trends in recent years. “It’s more whole body,” First Lt. Tameeka Hayes, a platoon leader for a class of new privates at Fort Jackson, told The Times. “No one who has done this routine says we’ve made it easier.”
Other recent alterations to various physical fitness tests have been made across the armed services, and the Navy recently introduced a new fitness and nutrition system.
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12:45 PM
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Turf Spray-Painters Face Felony Charges
Two teenagers who allegedly spray-painted a Mississippi high school's football field last week have been charged with felonies because of the cleanup cost, according to The Clarion-Ledger statewide newspaper. Adam Cook and Tyler Dearman, both 17, were arrested by police in Brandon, Miss., and charged as adults with felony malicious mischief for allegedly spray-painting “BHS” and paw prints (referring to the Brandon High School Bulldogs) on the new synthetic turf at Pearl High School.
Damage is estimated at $1,200; the threshold for a felony is $500. Each boy posted $5,000 bond and declined a preliminary hearing, so their cases are headed to a Rankin County grand jury, probably in October.
Meanwhile, a chemical was applied to the turf at Ray Rogers Stadium to remove the red paint prior to Pearl’s Friday-night game against Brandon — which the Bulldogs lost by three points in overtime.
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11:17 AM
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Monday, August 30, 2010
Minnesota School Still Reeling from Hazing
Last week’s hazing allegation at Elk River (Minn.) High School has resulted in disciplinary action against nine players, while five of 12 coaches remain on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation this week. The decisions came at a special Sunday night school board meeting.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that four players will be kicked off the varsity squad for their roles in at least one incident involving players striking or poking other players on or near the buttocks in the school’s wrestling room. Three other players are suspended for four games, and another two will sit out one game. The board also voted to reinstate seven coaches from paid administrative leave, and the entire football team must undergo sensitivity training in an effort to prevent future incidents.
"These are good kids, and they made a mistake," district superintendent Mark Bezek, who suspended the entire football program last week, told the paper. "But it's a serious mistake."
Some players told the Star News community newspaper that the board’s actions will “devastate” the team, which has not had a winning season since 2003. They also said that the punishment is “ridiculous” and that the whole ordeal was blown out of proportion. Additionally, Elk River police have noticed that
players and parents have begun clamming up about the incidents out of fear of more negative
consequences.
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4:33 PM
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High School Football Returns After Tax-Issue Hiatus
Football and other fall sports are back at all four high schools in a suburban Columbus, Ohio, school district. A failed school levy last year resulted in an $8 million budget cut for South-Western City Schools — killing all sports and extracurricular activities. But when voters approved a 7.4-mill operating levy in November 2009, winter and spring sports, as well as other activities, were restored.
Because of the timing, schools went without football for a year — and the sport’s return to the field Friday night was described as “deliriously joyful” by Columbus Dispatch reporter Michael Arace. Grove City opened its season by hosting defending Division I champion Hilliard Davidson in front of 12,000 fans, falling 28-21. But that didn't seem to put a damper on the celebration. "Friday night has always been very special here," George Edge, director of Grove City's marching band, told the paper. "People have always come out in droves, as if this were some mass exercise in civic pride for Grove City. Last year was like letting all the air out of a balloon."
That balloon is no longer deflated, but it isn’t floating as high as it used to, either. District administrators, as part of the levy agreement, have been forced to charge $150 pay-to-play fees for all sports ($75 per sport in the middle schools) — among the highest in Franklin County. This, despite the fact that more than half of South-Western's students are considered economically disadvantaged. Students in marching band pay $100 each, and clubs such as National Honor Society or the student council charge $20 per activity.
While The Dispatch reports that roster numbers for most fall sports are up after a year’s absence, Franklin Heights high school will not field a freshman football team, junior varsity soccer squad or cross country program because of low participation numbers. Meanwhile, football programs at Central Crossing and Westland high schools saw dramatic drops, with 38 fewer players at Central Crossing and 31 at Westland. (Band participation, on the other hand, is up at all four schools.) "I wish we didn't have to have pay-to-play fees, but it's what it took to pass a levy," school board member Cathy Johnson said. "It breaks my heart to know that at least one of our high schools isn't going to have a freshmen football team."
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3:43 PM
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California High Schools Not Impressed by ESPN
Coaches of the two California high school football teams featured Friday night on ESPN2 are riled up about the way the network treated them and their schools. In a “Hometown Report,” The Sacramento Bee reveals that the “overall sense of the ESPN superiority” flustered officials at Folsom High School and Del Paso Height’s Grant High School. Network crews took control of practically every detail of the sold-out event, school officials say, which aired live from Folsom’s Prairie City Stadium.
"I've covered eight Super Bowls and never had as many difficulties as I have with this game," Fox 40 sports director Jim Crandell told reporter Joe Davidson. Before the game, ESPN insisted that local television outlets have no access to the field — meaning no highlights on their newscasts — but that edict was adjusted to limited access from the end zones. The network also reportedly asked the student bodies of both schools to host on-campus rallies and pulled players out of class to conduct interviews.
Nationally ranked Grant crushed Folsom, 49-14, but Folsom coach Kris Richardson said that playing the game “was the easy part.” During the game — for which Folsom received $2,000 from ESPN and Grant received $1,000 — both teams’ coaches were told what they could have on their sidelines and where those items should be located, according to The Bee, including branded water bottles and jugs. "The national exposure is great for the kids and the fans, but being told exactly what you could have on your sideline … is new to me," Grant coach Mike Alberghini said.
ESPN has played a pivotal role in the evolution of televised high
school football, particularly since 2006. Schedules for the network and its sister stations, ESPN2
and ESPNU, that year included no fewer than
13 national broadcasts of regular-season football games. By comparison,
The ESPN RISE High School Football Kickoff this past weekend alone featured eight games played in seven states.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
NHL to Launch Women’s League?
After being warned that women’s hockey must become more competitive in order to remain part of the Winter Olympics, representatives of the sport have been in talks with the National Hockey League to form an NHL-supported women’s league. “I think we have the ear of the NHL,” Hayley Wickenheiser, a Canadian forward who is considered one of the sport’s greatest female players, told The New York Times. “They’re looking at it right now from a sponsorship level to get it off the ground. We’re not talking about big salaries, just sensible steps to get it on the ice to entertain people and see where it can go, and then down the road having an elite, WNBA-type league, which I think we could do.” (It's worth noting that the WNBA's longevity has been the exception for
women's professional team sports, not the rule. Consider the ill-fated Women's United Soccer Association.)
Bill Daly, the NHL’s deputy commissioner, confirmed Wickenheiser’s remarks to The Times, stating that discussions have taken place over a number of months and were very preliminary. But they are aimed at setting up a “women’s league or women’s competition,” he said.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said during the 2010 Winter Games that women’s hockey “cannot continue without improvement” — raising concerns that the sport could go the way of softball, which was dropped from the 2012 Olympics because of the dominance of Team USA. The United States has 60,000 registered female hockey players, and Canada has 80,000, according to The Times. But of the next 12 countries that support women’s hockey, none have more than 5,000 players, and most have only a few hundred.
Wickenheiser said she favors a women’s league featuring post-college players from North America and Europe, which she says could result in more internationally balanced competition every four years at the Winter Games.
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10:30 AM
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Hazing Allegation Suspends Football at Minnesota School
The Elk River (Minn.) High School football program has been suspended — one week before its season opener — following what appears to be a series of hazing incidents. Superintendent Mark Bezek announced his decision to shelve the program "until further notice" in a meeting with about 200 parents and students Wednesday night, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
The move came on the same day a player’s parent notified school officials that her son had been a hazing victim, prompting all 54 players on the team to be interviewed. More than a dozen students who might know more were expected to be interviewed today, according to Elk River activities director John Barth — who nevertheless doesn’t expect the Elks to miss any games on the gridiron.
District spokesperson Casey Mahon would not reveal to reporters the nature of the hazing. But he did state that the allegations appear to involve more than one isolated incident and “could've gone back the past couple of years." He added that no players required medical attention as the result of any hazing. Meanwhile, the district has hired an attorney to conduct a third-party investigation.
Last month — in light of hazing reports emerging from NFL training camps — hazing expert Hank Nuwer called for a hazing ban, imploring pro leagues to put an end to "the idea of humiliation" once and for all.
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Report: Full-Time Job of Football Cutting Into Grad Rates
The College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina today released its 2010 Division I Football Adjusted Graduation Gap report, and the numbers indicate a sizeable gap exists.
The first-of-its-kind report utilizes the published four-class average graduation rates for the 1999-2002 cohort (the most recent available) and removes from general student body graduation rates data related to part-time students. The result is a comparison of how football players, who are also full-time students, stack up against the general full-time male student population. Overall, NCAA Division I football players graduated at a rate of 54.5 percent, 13.9 percentage points behind the male student population at large (68.4 percent).
Only one conference among the 23 competing at the Division I level posted a positive AGG. Players in the Southwestern Athletic Conference graduated at a rate 6 percentage points better than the full-time male population who attended SWAC institutions. Moreover, the top seven spots in the report are occupied by Football Championship Subdivision conferences: SWAC, Mid-Eastern Athletic, Big South, Southern, Southland, Northeast and Patriot.
Conversely, the bottom five positions in the rankings are occupied by Football Bowl Subdivision conferences: Western Athletic, Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Mountain West and Pac-10, with the latter league posting an AGG of negative 30.
Combined, FBS players lagged behind their male counterparts by 18.5 percentage points, while FCS players trailed theirs by 9.7. Since football players at both FBS and FCS schools graduate at approximately the same rate, the greater FBS gap is a result of full-time male students graduating at a higher rate (73 percent) than full-time male students attending FCS schools (63.2 percent).
The study’s authors attribute at least some of the graduation rate disparities to time constraints placed on football players, particularly during the fall term. “Football at the FBS level is akin to a full-time job. So is being a student,” CSRI director Richard Southall states in the report. “Something inevitably has to give, and the AGG reveals what is giving is football players’ graduation rates.”
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12:02 PM
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Concussions Causing Headaches for Baseball, Too
The National Football League isn’t the only professional sports organization suffering headaches from concussions. For some Major League Baseball teams, head injuries to key players could impact the pennant races.
Most notable on that disabled list is Minnesota Twins first baseman Justin Morneau, who's been benched since July 7, when he slid into the knee of Toronto Blue Jays infielder John McDonald. The Twins have a three-and-a-half-game lead in the American League Central, but the 2006 American League MVP was expected to be a crucial factor in the Twins’ playoff chase. "I still haven't had a symptom-free day," Morneau told USA Today.
Morneau, who suffered concussions playing youth hockey, still takes batting practice, but dizziness and other symptoms persist. Thus, he hasn’t been cleared to play. Neither has New York Mets outfielder Jason Bay, who banged his head against an outfield wall in July, but returned for two games before a doctor diagnosed his concussion — leading the team to consider revising its head-trauma policy, according to The New York Times. "We're paying more attention to it," Mets general manager Omar Minaya told USA Today reporter Paul White. "It's good for the industry that we're learning more about it."
Baseball’s stakes in the current concussion discussion became even bigger last week when Boston University researchers found evidence indicating that Lou Gehrig, one of the sport's all-time greats, might not have actually had the disease that bears his name. Rather, at least five documented concussions — including a pitch to his helmet-less head that knocked Gehrig out cold for five minutes in 1934 — may have contributed to his death.
As Yahoo! Sports columnist Jeff Passan recently reminded readers, concussions can end the careers of baseball players just as tragically as they can those of football players: “On July 5, 2006, nearly four years on the dot before Morneau’s concussion, [Milwaukee Brewers third baseman] Corey Koskie gave chase for a harmless pop-up. He twisted and turned, the ball’s loop-de-loop spinning him to the ground. It looked so benign. It felt that way, too, until nine days later, when Koskie took batting practice for the first time, felt dizzy, went to his hotel and never returned to a major-league field.”
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11:28 AM
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Canada Might Ban Mixed Martial Arts
The Canadian Medical Association is calling for a government ban on mixed martial arts in Canada, where seven provinces sanction MMA prize fighting. The vote came Wednesday, after often-contentious debate among 250 doctors at the organization’s annual meeting in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
According to an Associated Press report, those in favor of banning the sport say it puts fighters at risk of severe head trauma and other injuries that could have lifelong effects. They argue that unlike sports such as hockey and skiing, the intent of mixed martial arts is to incapacitate one's opponent.
MMA — which borrows from techniques found in Greco-Roman wrestling, kickboxing, karate, judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and which once was derided as "human cockfighting" by U.S. Sen. John McCain — began its American emergence in the 1990s, gradually becoming a legal, albeit violent, activity in a majority of states. In recent years, it has been the focus of popular video games, enjoyed sellout crowds at arenas and attracted pay-per-view audiences rivaling those for boxing's biggest events. Most recently, MMA has begun appealing to younger people as a way to keep them fit and build self-defense skills.
"There's nothing wrong with teaching kids to defend themselves, not in today's world," Terry Richardson, principal of Miller (Mo.) High School, told Athletic Business last fall. Miller High offered MMA as a physical-education class during a month-long summer school session in 2009, and Winchester (Mass.) High School sponsors an MMA club program. "Everyone's going to have their opinion," Winchester athletic director Brian Carroll told AB last year, steadfast in his belief that the school has set proper boundaries for the sport. "There's a woman in Michigan who thinks I'm the devil for offering this."
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Gulf-Coast Colleges Still Struggle 5 Years After Katrina
College athletics administrators at institutions battered by Hurricane Katrina five years ago this Sunday are adjusting to what they call a new normal — a normal that includes elaborate emergency evacuation plans, intimate knowledge of federal emergency management protocol, laptop computers instead of desktops, and standing agreements with schools outside the Gulf Coast for office and residential space.
In an enlightening piece of reporting at NCAA.org, Michelle Brutlag Hosick checks in with the University of New Orleans, Tulane University and the New Orleans-headquartered Sun Belt Conference and finds out that recruiting of both players and personnel remains difficult long after the floodwater receded. “That storm has lingered in this program for years,” UNO women’s basketball coach Amy Champion said. “There are still some people out there who think we are under water.”
“I remember the first job opening I had (after the storm),” Sun Belt Conference commissioner Wright Waters told Brutlag Hosick. “I called a friend in Kentucky and (asked for help). She said, ‘Wright, you have a better chance of finding Osama bin Laden than recruiting to New Orleans.’ We started looking for people who understand what’s going on in New Orleans, who have a connection with something here, as opposed to the traditional athletics search approach.”
The story also covers facility issues, student enrollment, athletic program survival and other recovery efforts, as well as the future of collegiate sports in the region. Colleges, universities and the Sun Belt Conference all have hurricane-evacuation plans in place now, Brutlag Hosick reports, which include temporary office locations, flash drives and individual assignments such as retrieving files and ensuring telephone service. “Preparedness is something we didn’t have at that time,” Champion said. “We do now. We learned through this event that we were not prepared, and we learned a lot of tough lessons along the way.”
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Is Peanut-Free Seating Necessary in Open-Air Venues?
The Chicago Cubs are the latest Major League Baseball team to recognize the risk that a trip to the ballpark can pose to fans who suffer from peanut allergies. For Monday’s game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cubs are converting the Bud Light Batter’s Eye suite at Wrigley Field into a peanut-free gallery.
A third of all MLB teams now host at least one game per season in which their stadium, or a section of it, is rid of peanuts. It took a fan-supported Facebook campaign to convince the Cubs to join the club. Stadiums in other leagues have been hosting such games for years, and others have nixed nuts altogether. Fans still carry-in their EpiPens in case of emergency, and the minor-league Frederick (Md.) Keys even have an allergist on hand during their annual peanut-free game to watch for cases of anaphylactic shock, according to an Associated Press report.
While exposure to peanuts can prove fatal for some, Robert Wood, director of pediatric allergy and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, asserts that watching a game in an open-air venue poses no significant threat to peanut-allergic children or adults, including those who have suffered severe reactions to peanuts in the past. Caution must be taken in enclosed areas, such as indoor sports arenas, according to Wood, who feels that peanut-free games represent sound marketing, as much as anything.
“Somebody who might not even enjoy baseball that much might go out to a game to support this team making an effort for its peanut-allergic children,” Wood said, as quoted in the AP article.
Added Lara Potter, vice president for brand development with the Washington Nationals, which will open an extra peanut-free suite for Friday’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals due to popular demand, “We even have some fans who live in other MLB cities, but drive to D.C. to enjoy baseball games since their teams don’t offer peanut-free games.”
But whether peanut policies in open-air venues amount to mere PR is open to debate, certainly among allergy sufferers. Joyce Davis, the Gurnee, Ill., resident who launched a Facebook page lobbying for the peanut-free zone at Wrigley Field, claims she and her daughter, Julia, left the ballpark 90 minutes into a game in June when the 10-year-old broke out in hives and began wheezing, according to a separate AP report. And die-hard Cubs fan John Rudnicki has only been to Wrigley once due to a severe peanut allergy. According to Chicago’s WGN-TV, Rudnicki plans to celebrate his eighth birthday Monday night in the Batter’s Eye.
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4:35 PM
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What Caused Prep Football Team’s Injury Epidemic?
At least 24 football players from McMinnville (Ore.) High School have been treated for what some medical experts are calling an extreme version of a muscle syndrome caused by intense exercise. About half of the student-athletes were admitted to a local hospital, and at least three needed surgery; one player required operations on both arms to reduce painful pressure.
The New York Times reports that the syndrome, known as rhabdomyolysis, often occurs when athletes who have not been training have a sudden increase in the intensity of their workouts — such as a return to practice after a summer break. Rupert P. Galvez, a sports medicine doctor in Denver who wrote a 2008 article about the syndrome, documented a case of rhabdomyolysis that year involving seven NCAA Division I swimmers who were put through an intense upper-body workout. And in 2005, according to The Times, a British medical journal reported on 119 high school students in Taiwan who developed the syndrome after their physical-education teacher required them to complete 120 push-ups in five minutes.
Associated Press reports indicate that all or some of the players had
elevated levels of the enzyme creatine kinase, or CK, which is released
by muscles when they're injured, according to Craig Winkler of
the Willamette Valley Medical Center in McMinnville, about 35 miles
southwest of Portland. High CK levels can result from vigorous exercise or the use of certain medications or food supplements, and they can lead to kidney failure if not
properly treated.
All that said, there has been no official word on the cause of the
players’ injuries, and medical authorities were awaiting the results of
blood tests to determine whether any of the players ingested a
supplement that could help explain what happened. The AP indicated that
some of the players told doctors they had taken protein shakes but were not
sure what was in them.
Before their symptoms began last week, McMinnville’s players were at an immersion camp organized by first-year coach Jeff Kearin, and the team worked out on Aug. 15 in the high school's wrestling room, where temperatures reached 115 degrees and, according to players and parents, water breaks were limited.
McMinnville School District superintendent Maryalice Russell told local reporters that she doesn’t think Kearin's workout was excessive, but the Oregon School Activities Association’s Medical Aspects Sports Committee is investigating the situation. The OSAA leaves oversight of high school athletics from Memorial Day to late August up to local districts — a policy that could very well change in light of what happened in McMinnville. “I think it’s high time for somebody to have some jurisdiction during that time of year, because it’s out of control,” Michael Koester, the physician who chairs both the OSAA sports medicine committee and the National Federation of State High School Associations’ Medical Advisory Committee, told OregonLive.com. “One of the issues we're going to be looking at is making recommendations to school districts about offseason conditioning programs.”
Meanwhile, The Oregonian Editorial Board on Tuesday urged football coaches everywhere to “be careful with those kids”: “No teenage football player knows his limits. All those McMinnville kids cycling through repetition after repetition of push-ups and ‘chair dips’ in that sweltering workout room last week were going to keep going until a coach or other adult told them they could stop. They had a brand new head coach, Jeff Kearin, to impress. As Brent Cordie, a 17-year-old fullback said, ‘I was trying to prove to the coaches I can push myself to the max.’ ”
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Doggie-Paddling ‘Lifedogs’ Rescue Swimmers in Italy
Every summer, hundreds of specially trained canine lifeguards leap from helicopters or speeding boats to bring aid to troubled swimmers off Italy's popular beaches. These "lifedogs" wear a harness or tow a buoy that victims can grab, or a raft they can sit on to be towed back to shore. According to the Associated Press, the Italian Coast Guard rescues about 3,000 people every year, and their canine helpers are credited with saving several lives.
It takes three years for the dogs — mostly large Labradors, Newfoundlands and golden retrievers — to reach expert rescue status, and currently 300 dogs are fully trained for duty, Roberto Gasbarri, who coordinates the Italian School of Canine Lifeguards program at a center outside of Rome, told reporter Francesco Manetti. "Dogs are useful in containing the physical fatigue of the lifeguard, to increase the speed at which casualties are retrieved, to increase the security of both the casualty and of the lifeguard," Gasbarri said. "The dog becomes a sort of intelligent lifebuoy. It is a buoy that goes by itself to a person in need of help, and comes back to the shore also by himself, choosing the best landing point and swimming through the safest currents."
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10:25 AM
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Economy Hits College Sports Hard
A new NCAA report shows that just 14 of the 120 Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money from campus athletics during the 2009 fiscal year, down from 25 the year before. Researchers blame the sagging economy and suggest that numbers for the 2010 fiscal year could be even worse.
The research was conducted by accounting professor Dan Fulks of Transylvania University, a Division III school in Lexington, Ky. It shows the median amount paid by the 120 FBS schools to support campus athletics grew in one year from about $8 million to more than $10 million, according to an Associated Press report. The NCAA doesn't release individual schools' revenues and expenses, but Fulks confirmed that Alabama, Florida, Missouri, Ohio State, Texas and Tennessee are among the select group that made money.
NCAA interim president Jim Isch, who spent 11 years as the association's chief financial officer, called the latest numbers less a reflection of "runaway spending" in college athletics than a reality of the country's larger economic crisis. He noted that most schools typically plan for future expenses several years in advance, which in this case meant fiscal projections that didn't account for a prolonged recession.
None of the 97 schools without football teams reported making money from athletics, with median losses of more than $2.8 million, according to the report. That means trouble at those institutions, because many schools funnel profits from football and men's basketball into lower-profile sports. "Football and men's basketball are the only two sports you have any chance of making money," Fulks told reporter Alan Scher Zagier. "If you start splitting that up between 30 or 40 sports, you start losing money."
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Monday, August 23, 2010
Critics: Michigan Stadium Water Policy All Wet
Newly renovated Michigan Stadium will feature 24 new drinking fountains (for a total of 28), at least 40 concessions stands that will sell $4 bottles of water and four hydration tents that will be set up around the stadium. For these reasons, as well as a recommendation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the University of Michigan will prohibit fans from carrying in bottled water this season.
In recent years, Michigan football fans could bring their own bottles, as long as the bottle’s seal had not been broken. But fears of flammable liquids being smuggled in plastic bottles has led to the policy change, according to the athletic department’s communications office.
But critics have been quick to point out that the added plumbing in the Big House still leaves roughly one drinking fountain for every 4,000 fans, while others see $4 bottled water as a shameless money grab. Some look with equal skepticism (and sarcasm) toward the promotion scheduled for the Wolverines’ home opener Sept. 4. The first 25,000 fans through the turnstiles will receive a commemorative bottle of Absopure spring water. “I know that bottle will sit in the trophy cases of many a lifelong fan for years to come,” wrote one commenter at annarbor.com. “What better way to say ‘I was there’ than to have an empty plastic water bottle amongst your fan collection of memorabilia. How idiotic.”
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Club Owner: ‘It’s Better to Work Out and Drink … ’
While some health clubs still insist on serving less-than-healthy snacks, select locations of the high-end David Barton Gym host cocktail parties. According to New York Times blogger Kayleen Schaefer, the post-group exercise events are sponsored by the Swedish vodka brand Svedka and tie in with that brand's “RU Bot Or Not?” ad campaign that features a sexy female robot.
After intense boot camp training classes, customers are invited to partake in cocktails made with clementine-flavored vodka, orange juice, sour mix and fresh mint. “It’s a little weird to serve bourbon or Scotch,” club founder Barton told Schaefer about why he chose vodka. “Tequila might seem out of control. Vodka seems like the right complement to the gym. … It’s better to work out and drink than to not work out and drink. Our members have intense lives, and some people party and that’s all the more need to work out. I’m not pushing alcohol, but I’m not a prohibitionist.”
David Barton Gyms have locations in New York, Chicago, Miami and Seattle.
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Sheriff Says Tailgate Crackdown Could Prove Taxing
If you plan on cracking down on tailgaters, make sure you include the local jailer in the discussion.
Lonny Pulkrabek, the sheriff in Johnson County, Iowa, is concerned that the University of Iowa’s new “Think Before You Drink” campaign, in which officers working around Kinnick Stadium will strictly enforce existing open-container and public-urination laws, could overtax his jail’s capacity. The university is also cutting off all drinking in UI parking ramps and lots one hour after games (all tailgating activity will be cut off after two hours), and vehicle safety check points will be set up to identify drunken drivers.
While schools have long struggled with the enforcement of tailgate policies, the Johnson County sheriff’s concern stems from a 2006 night game against Ohio State, after which “the jail got to some dangerous levels of inmates,” according to Pulkrabek, who claims he wasn’t consulted about the crackdown. “I’m not real thrilled with it,” he told The Iowa City Press-Citizen. “The university appears to be a little narrow sighted on it.”
In the past, 15 to 20 inmates housed at the Johnson County jail have been transported out of county to make extra room at the jail on home football weekends — a measure that costs county taxpayers between $3,000 and $4,000 on weekends featuring big games. The university is “making millions of dollars a year,” according to Pulkrabek. “We don’t get asked for our opinion.”
This year, Pulkrabek is planning on shipping 30 inmates out of county. He has also looked into establishing jail population “trigger points,” at which time would-be inmates charged with simple misdemeanors are turned away or transported to jails in adjacent counties. Even so, Johnson County officers will need to retrieve those inmates for their court appearances.
“The university ends up putting quite a burden on the Johnson County taxpayers,” Pulkrabek told Press-Citizen reporter Lee Hermiston. “I’m not going to let the liability of having so many inmates in our small jail happen again.”
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Friday, August 20, 2010
Head Games: Wii Fit Might Help Manage Concussions
Concussion awareness is dominating sports-medicine discussions, and today’s concussion-related news comes from The Washington Post, which reports on how certified athletic trainers at the University of Maryland, Ohio State University and other colleges are using the Wii Fit video game as a concussion-management tool. The exercise video game played on Nintendo's Wii console, which allows for physical interaction between player and game, is emerging as a practical (albeit unproven) method of assessing athletes' balance — an important yardstick for determining recovery from concussion.
According to reporter Steve Yanda, student-athletes use Wii Fit by standing barefoot on a small rectangular platform in front of a television screen and mimicking three different yoga poses performed by a digital Wii Fit instructor. Numerical scores indicate how well the student-athlete maintains his or her center of balance, and the scores are logged into a medical file. If he or she later suffers a concussion, doctors have a frame of reference to measure how far the individual’s ability to function is from his or her baseline measurements.
"The athletes love it because we've incorporated this fun game that they're playing at home into their rehab system," said Tamerah Hunt, director of research at the Ohio State Sports Concussion Program, which has partnered with Maryland to conduct research into the reliability of the Wii Fit as an effective tool in this area. "But they're also enjoying it at a time when they're injured or at a time when their spirits are down, and they have to come into the athletic training room every day and they have to get all this treatment . . . and it's kind of a reaction of, 'Oh, this is fun.' "
In April, Debra Runkle, chair of the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports, issued a statement calling for baseline assessments of student-athletes who suffer a concussion. She said those assessments, at a minimum, should include a symptoms checklist and standardized cognitive and balance tests (which can include, specifically, Wii Fit).
Not so fast, warned Micky Collins, assistant director of the Sports Medicine Concussion Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "Obviously, the spotlight on this injury is iridescent right now, and there's a lot of people that are concerned about it," Collins told The Post. "What I'm afraid of is that that's leading to sort of this potentially dangerous, really limited scope in terms of how you evaluate this and trying to come up with easy tools and sort of one-size-fits-all recommendations that can end up being very dangerous."
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Thursday, August 19, 2010
Sun Belt Conference Dissects Sportsmanship Data
Survey data gathered by the Sun Belt Conference during its first year of piloting the RealSportsmanship program reveals that SBC student-athletes arrive on campus with well-established personal values and that coaches hold the key to further shaping those values.
“We need to get the coaches to understand their role and the internalization of sportsmanship as well, and they may need to change what they are doing with their student-athletes,” SBC associate commissioner Kathy Keene told Michelle Brutlag Hosick at NCAA.org. “We are still trying to learn more, and hopefully with additional data, we’ll get a greater understanding of how student-athletes feel and act.”
The program, which presents student-athletes with hypothetical scenarios before comparing individual responses against peer response percentages, was designed by Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Sport Policy and Research to be iterative, and Keene anticipates that it will evolve as it becomes a regular part of the Sun Belt’s student-athlete experience.
It may, in fact, take years before behaviors change. One conclusion drawn from the first-year data that conference commissioner Wright Waters found “a little disappointing” is that sportsmanship awareness declines as student-athletes ascend from their freshman to senior years. “We need to remind them that athletics is still part of higher education, and it’s not just about winning but also about learning how to win and how to lose,” Waters told Brutlag Hosick. “We shouldn’t be condoning behavior in athletics that we wouldn’t condone in an English classroom.”
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Stadium's Plans for Waterpark Could Make a Big Splash
Sun Life Stadium will say goodbye to the Florida Marlins in 2012 — they’re moving to a new facility in Little Havana — but the home of the Miami Dolphins, University of Miami football and the FedEx Orange Bowl may get a new neighbor around the same time. Miami Dolphins owner and real-estate developer Steve Ross wants to turn a 40-acre parking lot next to Sun Life Stadium into an elaborate 20-acre waterpark with an adjacent 20 acres for parking.
The facility — estimated to cost “tens of millions of dollars,” officials say, and expected to feature private cabanas and a “swim with the fish” pool when it would open in spring 2012 — would be South Florida’s first major water attraction since Hollywood’s Atlantis the Water Kingdom closed in 1992. A zoning change from office use to an “unusual” designation must be approved by the Miami-Dade County Commission, according to The Miami Herald.
The development is intended to offset revenue losses in the summer months that previously came from the Marlins, and it is the first stage of a new stadium master plan. “We're looking at any and all ways that we can utilize the stadium and bring economic value,” Dolphins chief executive officer Mike Dee told The Herald. “It's both an opportunity and a challenge.”
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Is Petco Conversion a Pitch for Soccer in San Diego?
Is an MLS soccer friendly being staged in the middle of an MLB pennant race just to test San Diego's soccer-market waters? That’s a question posed by Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Zeigler reported that the San Diego Padres, who currently own a six-game lead in the National League West, will allow Petco Park to be converted for a Sept. 14 match between Chivas USA and its parent club Chivas of Guadalajara. The conversion will require removal of home plate and the sodding of the entire infield in barely 48 hours, once the Padres embark on a road trip.
More important, Petco’s mound, where San Diego pitchers have compiled baseball’s best home earned-run average, will need to be leveled and rebuilt. “Pitchers can be finicky about their mounts — the precise height, depth, angle, even dirt composition,” Ziegler wrote. Countered Padres president Tom Garfinkel, “We have a great grounds crew. We have [10] days before our next home game, and they’re confident they can put the mound back exactly as it was, so our pitching staff won’t even notice the difference. They’ve researched it. They’ve talked to five different teams about some of the things they’ve gone through and the things they’ve learned.”
Zeigler went on to speculate that the conversion and game might be seen as necessary to build a case for Chivas USA moving from the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles, which it shares with the higher-profile L.A. Galaxy, to San Diego, which Chivas USA nearly chose as its original home. The only time Chivas USA played in San Diego was 2005, drawing roughly 5,000 for a match against Mexican club Atlante. “Escondido has been proposed as a potential site for the Padres’ triple-A affiliate in Portland, which, it turns out, is being displaced by an MLS expansion team,” Zeigler wrote. “Could the Padres be forming some sort of partnership with the MLS club to build a mid-sized, multi-use stadium?”
A Chivas USA official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Zeigler, “There’s nothing to that. I can’t be emphatic enough about that.”
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Salaries for Fitness Professionals On the Rise
The average salary rates for full-time fitness professionals have increased since 2005, while part-time salaries have dropped. And the District of Columbia, Kansas, Maine, Oklahoma and Rhode Island rank as the states or territories reporting the highest annual income for fitness employees.
Those are among the results of the American Council on Exercise’s 2010 salary survey of fitness professionals. The organization culled the responses of nearly 3,000 fitness professionals nationwide and broke down the information into several categories to capture the current state of the industry.
Other survey highlights:
• Approximately 70 percent of all fitness professionals are paid hourly.
• More than one-third work 21 to 40 hours per week, with 10 percent working more than 40 hours.
• The split between personal trainers who work for a health club or other fitness facility and those who work independently is almost even.
• Average salary rates for full-time personal trainers have increased by 19% since 2005.
• 54 percent of fitness professionals with an advanced certification from ACE feel their advanced credentials enable them to earn a higher income. That said, compensation levels are more directly tied to years of experience in the industry than education.
• 69 percent of all personal trainers work with overweight or obese adults, and 68 percent work with older adults.
• Four out of 10 personal trainers believe the recession has had a negative impact on their income.
• On average, across all benefits categories, advanced health and fitness specialists and lifestyle and weight management consultants receive up to 7 percent more in employee benefits.
The four-page report can be accessed here.
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SEC to MSU: Less Cowbell
The Southeastern Conference has announced a fine structure for the inappropriate use of what it calls “traditional institutional noise makers” at SEC sporting events.
Implemented with the cowbells commonly heard at Mississippi State University football games in mind, the fines — $5,000 for the first offense, $10,000 for a second and $50,000 per game thereafter — are meant to put some teeth in the enforcement of a new cowbell compromise that allows MSU fans to ring their bells before games, at quarter breaks and halftime, during timeouts and possession changes, and after scores. The compromise, which basically allows the ringing of cowbells at the same times music can be played in the stadium, was crafted at the SEC meetings in June.
The MSU tradition is traced to the 1930s, when a jersey cow wandered onto the field during a game against Ole Miss. MSU won the game, and a good luck charm was born. In the early 1990s, the SEC established a policy that penalized teams yardage on the field for noisemaker use, but the NCAA subsequently scrapped a similar rule, forcing SEC officials to swallow their whistles on the issue.
The compromise expires next June, unless MSU fans prove themselves worthy of an extension. University officials vow to educate fans of their new cowbell constraints and enforce the rules with the same diligence they give MSU’s policy regarding running onto the field.
“I’m very empathetic toward Mississippi State’s situation,” Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs said, as reported by The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss. “That’s a tradition over there that means so much to the Mississippi State people.”
How much? Clarion-Ledger beat writer Kyle Veazey offers a separate profile of one MSU fan who quit his job in order to produce and sell cowbells full time, and reaction to Veazey’s blog posts on the topic provide further evidence of widespread investment in the tradition. Several readers commented that MSU should charge a dollar or two more per ticket to cover potential fines, thus allowing fans to ring at will.
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Concussions Linked to New Disease that Mimics ALS?
Scientists have found evidence linking traumatic head injuries to motor neuron diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The findings will be published in the September issue of the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.
Ann McKee and her colleagues at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University’s School of Medicine made the discovery while examining the brains and spinal cords of 12 athletes donated by family members to CSTE’s Brain Bank. When they died, all 12 showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease linked to head injuries that causes cognitive decline, abnormal behavior and dementia.
McKee found toxic proteins in the spinal cords of three athletes — former professional football players Wally Hilgenberg and Eric Scroggins, plus a former pro boxer whose family asked that he not be identified — who suffered head injuries and later died from ALS. Those proteins also were discovered in the brains, but not the spines, of athletes with CTE who did not have ALS. And they were not seen in the spines of non-athletes who died from ALS.
This finding suggests that the motor neuron disease that affected Hilgenberg, Scroggins and the boxer is similar to, but distinct from, sporadic ALS and represents a disease never previously described in medical literature — one that McKee and her colleagues now refer to as chronic traumatic encephalomyelopathy (CTEM), likely caused by the repetitive head trauma experienced by athletes in contact sports.
Although Gehrig is not mentioned in the journal’s report, the CSTE states that it’s now worth considering whether head injuries may have contributed to Lou Gehrig’s motor neuron disease, and whether he suffered from CTEM. Gehrig, nicknamed the “Iron Horse,” played football at Columbia University before joining the New York Yankees and playing in 2,036 consecutive games. Gehrig suffered at least five documented concussions and reportedly was knocked unconscious for five minutes after taking a pitch to the head while not wearing a helmet. He played the next day.
“Here he is, the face of his disease, and he may have had a different disease as a result of his athletic experience,” McKee, director of the neuropathology laboratory for the New England Veterans Administration Medical Centers and the lead neuropathologist on the study, told The New York Times.
The research was made possible by a $1 million donation from the NFL to financially support the CSTE’s research of the long-term effects of repetitive brain trauma in athletes. The NFL in recent months has taken a proactive stance on concussions, urging players to report concussions or symptoms, and warning that repeated concussions "can change your life and your family's life forever.”
New concussions-related materials also are available for athletes in youth sports and high school.
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Stakeholders Meet to Address Agent Issue
Representatives from the National Collegiate Athletic Association, National Football League, NFL Players Association, American Football Coaches Association and sports agent community met Monday to discuss their shared responsibility in addressing improper agent activity within the sport of football — described by the NCAA as “an age-old problem that not just one group or organization can solve on its own.” The unprecedented meeting is expected to be the first of several discussions with the goal of identifying points of collaboration and potential solutions.
AB spoke recently with John Phillips, owner of the Breakthrough Sports Agency, about the fierce competition among aspiring football agents, and how that competition often contributes to unscrupulous agent behavior. “There’s motivation to cheat,” Phillips says, pointing to the one organization that he feels holds the greatest potential to effect change. “The NFLPA needs to regulate more and have more swift punishment. There needs to be a federal registration or licensing system such that, if you’re rogue and you’re a cheater, you know what’s coming and when it’s coming. As it stands, there’s really no fear of retribution.”
Read more of the Phillips interview in the September issue of AB.
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NCAA Tweaks Drug-Testing Program
The NCAA's executive committee has approved cost-cutting changes in its drug-testing program. The Associated Press reports that future repeat tests will focus on sports and athletes at higher risk and eliminate the advance notice given to those schools and individuals facing additional tests.
Ephedrine will be eliminated from all test samples, and future steroids testing at NCAA championships will target higher-risk sports. In the past, athletes in sports other than football and baseball have been randomly selected without regard to risk.
The National Center for Drug Free Sport and World Anti-Doping Agency will continue to administer the program.
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Monday, August 16, 2010
Big Foot May Cost Prep Football Player His Season
Connor Duffy, a junior tackle for Kingsway Regional High School in Woolwich Township, N.J., stands 6-feet, 8-inches tall, weighs 300 pounds and wears a size 22 shoe. That’s the problem: Duffy, his parents and coach Tony Barchuk can’t seem to find cleats that fit.
A reporter for the Gloucester County Times searched retailers on the Internet and found nothing above a size 18. Most sites had no cleats above size 16, including Nike's online store. And when Duffy’s mother, Gretchen began, contacting shoe manufacturers to inquire about purchasing pair of size 22 cleats directly, she was told they only make shoes that size for NFL players.
Now she’s hoping the media attention her son’s plight has generated will help other young athletes in similar situations. "There's got to be other kids with the same problem,” she told the Times. “We found a lady in Florida whose son had a size 20 cleat. They finally got help from the Miami Dolphins, I think. We don't want somebody to pay for the cleats. We just need somebody to make them. I'll pay for them. If this works and we can get him cleats, I may start a website for oversized kids."
"It's really crazy," Barchuk added. "We had a kid we didn't have a helmet for, or [who] needed larger pants, [someone] would help us out. But we've never had a kid with a problem with a shoe before. This is 2010 — could he possibly not be eligible to participate because of a piece of equipment?”
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Holy Month, Hot Days Lead to Overnight Football Practices
Fordson High School in Dearborn, Mich., is holding preseason football practices in the middle of the night — between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. — to avoid scorching daytime temperatures and help the team’s Muslim student-athletes practice both football and faith. Members of the school’s predominantly Muslim squad say the nocturnal regimen is a way for players to eat and drink while observing the holy month of daytime fasting known as Ramadan, which started last week and will conclude Sept. 9.
Fordson, which is coming off a one-loss season, is situated in the Detroit suburb widely acknowledged as the capital of Arab-America. Head coach Fouad Zaban told the Associated Press that he proposed the late practices after realizing the rotating Ramadan would fall squarely during the start of two-a-days; it also helps beat the heat. (The holy month has not fallen during Fordson's preseason football schedule for more than three decades.)
Working out the logistics of nighttime practices meant obtaining the blessing of school and district administrators, as well as players, parents and police. Zaban also contacted neighbors around the school’s illuminated football field via a letter. The coach told AP reporter Jeff Karoub that he is unaware of other teams switching their schedules as Fordson football has, although other teams at Fordson and in the district have moved practices to earlier or later in the day because of the high temperatures. But a strategy that allows players to honor Ramadan while still participating in sports is another example of how administrators can meet the needs of people of Muslim faith.
In Cary, N.C., for example, an aquatics center installed a $3,000 retractable shade system to provide the privacy needed for Muslim women to attend learn-to-swim classes. And college athletic departments have been reflecting on the need for public prayer rooms in sports venues for years.
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12:28 PM
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Is This the End of Beach Volleyball?
The AVP Tour has shut down, citing financial hardship and cutting short its 2010 season. The Association of Volleyball Professionals, which helped usher in a new era of beach volleyball, is not funding the tour and has been unsuccessful at finding new investors.
“Through the course of this investor search, we have encountered individuals and groups with intelligence, common sense and a passion for the game of beach volleyball,” AVP commissioner Mike Dodd said in a prepared statement. “Unfortunately, the time constraints were such that pulling the trigger on the amount of money necessary to salvage this season were too great. Ironically this sad news comes as we approach the 50th anniversary of the Manhattan Open, our sport’s crown jewel and the one event that showed us all we could dream big. The Open has seen its ups and downs over the years and always persevered. I’m sure our sport will do the same.”
Former AVP player and now AVP staff writer Hans Stolfus isn't so sure. In his farewell to the association, he claims “our sport is on the verge of dying.”
As recently as 2008, the AVP was hauling sand into arenas in 18 cold-weather U.S. cities as part of its first-ever Hot Winter Nights indoor beach volleyball tour. Created in 1983 as a players' association, the AVP first ran the United States’ domestic tour in 1988. Beach volleyball’s popularity increased significantly during that time, with AVP athletes winning at least one gold medal in every Olympics since the sport was recognized by the IOC in 1996.
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Politics Pollute Inaugural Youth Olympic Games
Iran was accused of putting politics before sports at the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore on Sunday after withdrawing from a taekwondo final against Israel. The Iranian delegation told the Games' internal news service that Mohammad Soleimani did not compete because of injury, while Israel called the withdrawal politically motivated. "My understanding is that he was taken to [a] hospital and unable to compete," International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams told the Associated Press.
But Alex Gilady, an IOC member from Israel who handed out medals for the competition, isn't buying it. Iran does not recognize Israel and has a policy of not competing against its athletes. In recent years, it has used various tactics to justify withdrawal. Gilady doubted Soleimani was injured and needed hospitalization, and claimed the move was made to ensure Iran didn't violate Olympic rules. Gilady told AP reporter Michael Casey that once Soleimani was deemed injured, he would win the silver medal and would have "to stand on the podium and listen to the Israeli anthem and see the Israeli flag over the Iranian flag."
The AP reports that another potential conflict was averted Monday when
an Israeli and an Iranian swimmer competed in different heats of the
200-meter individual medley, and the Iranian failed to advance past the
first heat.
So much for the Games’ goal of inspiring young people around the world to “embrace, embody and express the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect.”
The Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games began Friday and will run through Aug. 26. An estimated 5,000 athletes and officials from 205 National Olympic Committees are expected to participate, with young athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 competing in 26 sports. The Games have been criticized for the amount of money Singapore is spending ($390 million, reportedly three times the initial estimate), and some observers have questioned whether they are even necessary. “A 15-year-old Tara Lipinski took figure-skating gold at Nagano, Kerri Strug landed her gold-clinching vault at 18 and Michael Phelps collected eight medals before his 20th birthday,” wrote Clay Dillow in Fast Company magazine. “Of course, 12 days filled with 3,600 competitors, 370,000 spectators and sponsors ranging from Samsung to McDonald’s means that while athletes compete for gold, silver and bronze … Singapore is a lock to bring home the green.”
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Friday, August 13, 2010
Older Adults 'Backbone' of Fitness Industry
A new report from the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association indicates that older adults are the “backbone” of the fitness industry. “From 1987 to 2007, the number of health club members in the United States, aged 55 and older, increased by more than 500 percent — from 1.6 million to 9.9 million,” says SGMA president Tom Cove. “In 2009, one in four health club members in the U.S. were at least 55 years old. During that same 20-year time period, the number of health club members aged 18 to 34 rose by just 52 percent — from 9 million to 13.7 million. Without the support of America’s seniors, the fitness industry would be in rough shape.”
The significance of older participants to the success of the fitness industry is just one of the findings in SGMA’s annual “Tracking the Fitness Movement” study, released Thursday. And it reinforces the importance of safeguarding facilities against falls as the age of health club members skews older.
Other conclusions from the SGMA report include:
• Health club members enjoy networking with other professionals and, in some cases, use fitness facilities to relieve the stress associated with unemployment. They also tend to consider themselves more fit than people who work out at home.
• While the International Health & Racquet Sports Association estimates that 45.3 million people in the United States belonged to health clubs in 2009, SGMA research indicates that number is expected to increase by 6.2 percent this year.
• People are 3.3 times more likely to take part in team sports if they participate in school-supported physical-education classes. The likelihood of someone taking part in cycling, running/jogging, water sports and other outdoor activities also increases with P.E. classes.
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Will Luxury Condos Replace Famous Tennis Stadium?
Developers this week unveiled designs to transform The West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills in Queens, N.Y. — host site of the U.S. Open until the late 1970s — into luxury condominiums. Cord Meyer Development Co. wants to pay up to $9 million to scoop out the stadium’s interior and replace it with as many as 75 luxury units, carrying prices that could top $1 million each. Cord Meyer also agreed to provide $750,000 to build a permanent structure over the club's clay tennis courts to ensure year-round use. The stadium's facade and arches would remain. (Click here to see an artist’s rendering.)
The issue of what to do with the little-used venue has long split the club’s membership. Fixing the stadium would cost millions, club president Ken Parker, told The Wall Street Journal. “The stadium itself cannot be used,” he said. “It’s not safe for people to climb into it.”
But the proposal is not without its detractors. Losing the stadium "would be the equivalent to ripping the heart out of Forest Hills," said Michael Perlman, chairman of the Rego-Forest Preservation Council — an organization striving to “preserve and commemorate the architectural and cultural history of Rego Park and Forest Hills." He also said the proposed modern design, featuring “brutalist style” architecture “would suck the soul out of the stadium.” Meanwhile, four government officials, including a city council member and a state senator, have inquired with the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission about securing landmark status for the 15,000-seat stadium.
Two-thirds of the club’s approximately 290 eligible voting members must approve the sale. Because many of them are on vacation, the vote to determine the proposal’s fate has been moved from later this month to late September. Even if it is approved, the plan still will face a lengthy approval process. According to The Wall Street Journal, Forest Hills Gardens Corp, which maintains the 150-acre private Forest Hills Gardens community, must give the project final approval. Plus, the plan's aesthetic doesn't match the neighborhood's Tudor-style architecture, which could conflict with strict local design guidelines.
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NCAA Proposes Tougher Academic Standards
The NCAA’s board of directors is backing a new proposal that would require incoming basketball players to have their academic records assessed by university officials. Those in need of additional class work would have to take at least six credit hours during the summer to become eligible to compete in the fall. Additionally, school officials would have to reassess the academic records of players at the end of each school year and determine whether additional summer classes are needed. Schools that do not offer summer classes would be exempt from the legislation.
Coaches — who have made it clear that they would like more time to work with players during the summer — could then designate an eight-week summer period in which student-athletes enrolled in classes could participate in up to eight hours per week of strength and conditioning training.
Critics, however, contend that the legislation will be too expensive, give the NCAA too much power over the decisions of individual schools and provide coaches more practice time. The proposal now goes to membership schools for comment, with a vote slated for January.
Changes regarding academic performance could be in store for football players, too. A proposal would require players to earn at least nine credit hours during the fall semester (or eight hours at schools with a quarter system) to be eligible the following fall. Players who fail to meet the requirement could be suspended for up to four games the following year.
The NCAA's support of these proposals comes one week after the organization began attaching academic ratings
to coaches in basketball, football and four other Division I sports via an online database accessible to recruits, their parents and prospective employers.
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Thursday, August 12, 2010
Quinnipiac Will Keep Women’s Volleyball, Cheer
Following a court order to bring its athletics programs into compliance with federal gender-equity requirements, Quinnipiac University plans to keep its women's volleyball team and its competitive cheer squad. Under a plan filed in federal court on Wednesday, the university also proposed adding women's golf and rugby teams to provide more athletic opportunities for female students.
Several volleyball players and their coach sued Quinnipiac last year after the school announced it would eliminate volleyball for budgetary reasons and replace it with a competitive cheer squad. The school contended that the squad kept it in compliance with Title IX, but U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill disagreed. In a ruling last month, he said that competitive cheerleading had not developed enough to be considered a college sport for Title IX purposes. He ordered the school to keep the volleyball team and come up with a compliance plan.
According to the Associated Press, that plan includes renaming the cheer squad the stunts and tumbling team and keeping it as a varsity sport. Additionally, the university’s senior vice president for academic and student affairs will monitor rosters. Underhill found that Quinnipiac had been manipulating rosters to make it appear that women had more athletic opportunities than were actually available.
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11:55 AM
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More Football Coaches Atwitter Over Social Media
Boise State football coach Chris Petersen, it seems, is on to something. On Wednesday, mere days after Petersen banned his players from using Twitter this season, New Mexico State football coach DeWayne Walker did the same thing. And Jimbo Fisher is considering following suit at Florida State. When told Seminoles were tweeting about the recent dismissal of wide receiver Jarmon Fortson for violating team policy, he told The Palm Beach Post that, “Maybe I do need to ban it.”
Michigan football coach Rich Rodriguez would prefer that his players not tweet — or even have a presence on Facebook — but he’s not telling them they can’t. Instead, Rodriguez (who has a Twitter account of his own and recently used it to announce Michigan’s 2010 captains) has been educating the Wolverines about the pitfalls of social media. “We just have to … constantly remind them we monitor and follow that,” the coach told AnnArbor.com’s Michael Rothstein. “You’ve got to make sure they are representing not only themselves and their families, but also every other football player, our university, our community. ... It’s there for life, and future employers could look at that.”
That’s the same kind of advice NFL coaches are dishing out. Cleveland Browns coach Mike Mangini lectured his team during training camp this week following a vulgar Twitter post by Browns cornerback Brandon McDonald, aimed at new Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Terrell Owens. "Social media is a great way to connect with the fans," Mangini told Cleveland.com. "[Players] have a responsibility to do that in a way that represents the organization the right way. That's their responsibility and they're accountable for it. If they don't do it, there are consequences to those actions." (McDonald apologized for what he admits was a “bad decision,” but he plans to keep on tweeting.)
Meanwhile, we're waiting to see if all this sparks a Twitter trickle-down effect. Will high school coaches tweak their position on tweets in the coming weeks?
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Ryan Says He Can't Bring Relief From Ballpark Heat
During his playing days, no one could bring the heat like Nolan Ryan. Now, the newly minted owner of the Texas Rangers would like to take some away. But adding shade to Rangers Ballpark in Arlington is being deemed unfeasible.
“You can’t justify putting a retractable roof on this stadium at the current cost of doing so,” said Ryan on Thursday, less than a week after he and partner Chuck Greenberg purchased the Rangers with a winning bankruptcy auction bid of $385 million. “We’ve looked at sun screens that would reduce the temperature in the ballpark by 15 degrees, but we haven’t come up with something that is economically feasible on that yet.”
Wednesday’s game against the Yankees started shortly after 7 p.m. local time, with the temperature at 99 degrees under partly cloudy skies and a “breeze” blowing in from right field at 3 miles per hour. A near-sellout crowd of 48,676 attended, but the box score doesn’t say how many lasted the full three hours and 45 minutes to see a five-run Texas lead melt away in a 7-6 loss.
Rangers’ ace Cliff Lee, for one, couldn’t go the distance. “It was one of the hottest games I’ve ever played in,” said Lee, who struck out 11 batters before being pulled in the seventh inning. “But it’s hot for both teams. That’s just part of playing in Texas. You can’t change the heat or the environment.”
Well, you can — for a price. According to The Dallas Morning News, the Rangers two years ago looked into the type of sun-screen apparatus found in some European soccer stadiums, but found that it would cost roughly $70 million to shade 40 percent of the Ballpark and $100 million to shade 60 percent.
Exactly how much the Ballpark’s current sauna-like qualities are suffocating the gate is anybody’s guess. Only one team in the American League has more home wins than Texas this season, yet the Rangers rank sixth in the AL in home attendance.
Mark Cuban, the Dallas Maverick’s owner who was outdueled by Ryan for the Rangers, weighed in on Ballpark market economics earlier in the week, stating in a Morning News Q&A, “The Rangers are always at a disadvantage just because of the heat factor out there. You’re never going to be able to charge quite the same as Boston just because of the comfort factor in going out there. A big part of what we wanted to be able to do was try to find leverage points with the city of Arlington to try to come up with some solution for sitting out in the bleachers. It can be brutal out there.”
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Residents Question Inflated Pay For Parks Administrators
Revelations of exorbitant salaries and bonuses paid to parks administrators in a wealthy Chicago suburb have got some city employees and residents up in arms.
The Park District of Highland Park is now hiring a consultant to do a comprehensive salary and benefit study after residents and even some city leaders expressed consternation over the fact that three of the district's administrators raked in more than $700,000 in bonuses from 2005 to 2008, a time of great growth for the suburb.
According to Highland Park News reports, the district awarded former director Ralph Volpe with a pension of $166,000, on top of his $138,000 salary to run the district in 2005. During those years of growth, in which the district built a large recreation center, the salary of finance director Kenneth Swan jumped from $124,908 to $218,372, and the salary of now retired facilities director David Harris swelled from $135,403 to $339,302. The employees were awarded additional individual bonuses of as much as $86,500, and Harris was even given a sport utility vehicle.
Although the park district is a separate taxing entity from the city, the rewards came at a time when some city employees, such as teachers, were dealing with a wage freeze.
"You could only imagine how frustrating and upsetting it is to hear that three people were given huge raises toward their pensions when we haven't had a raise in more than four years," longtime Highland Park teacher Marilyn Eisenstein told the News. "We were always told our pay was frozen because of budget problems. We were told every department had to watch their budgets, but now you see the commissioners voted for these huge bonuses and compensation packages."
Despite the salary study and some acknowledgment from mayor Michael D. Belsky that "even in good times the magnitude of the compensation awarded to the park district employees in question was not warranted," current park board president Lorry Werhane has remained somewhat defensive of the district's spending.
"Looking back, I guess we have to acknowledge that the citizens of Highland Park have a valid concern, and rightfully so, about our past compensation packages," Werhane told the News. "But at that point in time, we thought it was in the best interest of the community and the Park District to compensate well-performing individuals in that manner. They accomplished a lot in their final years of service."
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Wednesday, August 11, 2010
College Soccer Fans Scarfing Up Ticket Promotions
The hottest thing in college soccer ticketing? Scarves.
On Aug. 10, the University of Oregon, which had never offered soccer season tickets before, began tying admission to all 10 of the Ducks’ home matches this season to a green-and-yellow muffler. The athletic department’s ticket office reports that on the first day it had sold 20 of its inventory of 500 season-ticket scarves, which cost $30 apiece and are not available in stores. Fans don the garment on game day and simply stroll through the gate, starting with the Ducks’ season opener Aug. 20.
Other schools have warmed to the scarf trend, as well — to varying degrees. The University of Akron is for the second straight season awarding complimentary Akron Soccer scarves to season-ticket buyers, and a similar promotion is being repeated at the University of California Santa Barbara. The first 300 University of Oklahoma fans to arrive at the Sooners’ Aug. 29 season opener will receive a one-of-a-kind Oklahoma Soccer scarf, sponsored by a local Volkswagen dealership.
At least one other school has made the scarf itself a season ticket. The University of Utah is selling season-ticket scarves to the general public for $20, and to students for $10. They are also the focal point of a social media “Show Your Scarf” campaign, in which fans are encouraged to upload images of themselves and their scarves to the Utah soccer Facebook page. Amanda Vandervort, a former team captain on the University of Wyoming women’s team, was so impressed by this campaign that she purchased a rival Utah scarf. So have people from Las Vegas to California. As former director of online marketing, website and camps for the Chicago Red Stars of Women’s Professional Soccer, Vandervort even posted a blog about Show Your Scarf. The Utes soccer team, she wrote, “has truly embraced social media marketing, and as a result, I’ve embraced them.”
Scarves have become a part of the international soccer fabric, particularly in Europe, where chilly weather makes them practical game-day attire. They also serve as handy team signage for fans to hold overhead.
“These scarves are really big in the soccer world, and with the World Cup this year, people have seen them,” says Megan Robertson, director of promotions and game-day experience for Oregon athletics. “We’ve gotten a lot of phone calls and inquiries. It looks like it’s going to be pretty popular.”
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Iowa State's Arena Underwater; Football Team Sandbags
Iowa State University’s football team was scheduled for an early-morning weightlifting session today. But instead of pumping iron, players heaved sand.
With the gymnasium floor at Hilton Coliseum, home of the Cyclones men’s and women’s basketball teams, already under an estimated eight feet of water, the players sandbagged outside the Jacobson Athletic Building — headquarters for most of the university’s athletics department — as a precautionary measure. The players also helped athletics department staff members, student trainers and managers move as much football equipment as possible to the Jacobson Building’s second floor, and the sport medicine area was cleared of movable equipment.
A photographer for the Des Moines Register describes Hilton Coliseum as “an island,” and the Iowa State Soccer Complex also is flooded. “If there is a silver lining, it is the fact that this is a very quiet week,” John McCarroll, ISU's executive director of university relations, told the Register. “Last week was summer finals week.” Most students won’t begin moving into residence halls until Aug. 17, so there should be some time to return the campus to normal, he added.
Torrential downpours dropped up to six inches of rain in parts of Iowa on Tuesday night, closing roads in and around Ames. Some football players and Iowa State personnel weren't even able able to reach the campus today.
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Stevens Noted for Contributions to P.E., Title IX, Olympics
Former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who died Monday night in a plane crash in southwest Alaska, made significant contributions to the sports and fitness industries. He helped foster passage of Title IX legislation in 1972; authored the Amateur Sports Act in 1978, which brought centralized control of sports to the U.S. Olympic Committee and created national governing bodies to run individual sports; and was considered the founding father of the Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP), which provides federal money to school districts and community-based organizations for physical education and innovative physical-activity methods. Stevens also was a member of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education's Hall of Fame.
“He helped to restructure the U.S. Olympic movement in a way that has contributed to the success of our athletes at the Olympic Games,” said United States Olympic Committee Chief Executive Officer Scott Blackmun in a prepared statement. “Senator Ted Stevens probably had as much to do with promoting sports and fitness for all Americans as any legislator in our history,” added Larry Franklin, the current chairman of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the president of Franklin Sports.
Stevens is the second major P.E. proponent to die in the past four months. Phil Lawler — the architect of a revolutionary P.E. program that incorporated high-tech fitness equipment and detailed health-risk assessments — lost his battle with cancer in April.
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Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Locker Room Shoot Proves Too Steamy for UCF Officials
George O’Leary is not master of his domain.
Turns out the University of Central Florida’s head football coach overstepped his bounds when he allowed a local entertainment magazine called aXis access to the Knights’ locker room for a photo shoot of UCF alum Shanna McLaughlin, better known for her pictorial in the July issue of Playboy. While it didn’t include nudity, the aXis locker room shoot, in which McLaughlin suggestively tugged on her UCF-logoed tank top and bikini bottoms, proved too steamy for university officials once video appeared online Aug. 7.
“An employee without proper authorization allowed access to our football locker room. By the time the video of the shoot was brought to our attention, it had already made its rounds via the Internet,” stated UCF associate director of athletics Joe Hornstein in a prepared apology. “Let me make this clear, UCF does not condone the photos and the video. We have spoken to the employee in question and we will speak to our entire staff to make sure that this does not happen again. To any fans who were offended by this, we sincerely apologize.”
“I approved the magazine,” O’Leary told an Orlando Sentinel reporter after practice Saturday. “The guy called my office and basically wanted to know if they could do a magazine shoot. There was a UCF girl who had her MBA and all that. And the only thing I asked is, ‘Is that a magazine that is distributed on campus?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’ ”
O’Leary added that he thought he recognized the magazine as one that had produced an annual football preview in the past. He also admitted that he had seen the August cover shot of McLaughlin. “Eh, it’s not what I expected,” he said, “but I don’t think there’s anything outlandish on the thing.”
Remember, O’Leary has a history of dealing in outlandish print materials.
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Mets Fan Sues Over Broken Bat to the Face
James Falzon is suing the New York Mets (and at least two individual players), Major League Baseball and the maker of Rawlings-brand bats for severe facial injuries he suffered from a flying piece of broken bat three years ago.
The lawsuit claims that the severed barrel of Mets infielder Luis Castillo’s maple bat became "a dangerous projectile" and broke bones in his face during an August 7, 2007, game at the former Shea Stadium. Falzon is seeking unspecified damages, stating that more should have been done to protect fans from break-prone maple bats.
The ugly encounter occurred during a Mets game against the Atlanta Braves, as the 50-year-old Falzon was sitting with his son, his father and a nephew in second-row box seats. Falzon's injuries turned him into "a bloody mess," according to the New York Daily News, with multiple facial fractures that left him with pins in his jaw and metal plates in his face. “He was looking for the ball in the outfield when the bat slammed into his face,” Falzon’s lawyer William Maniatis told the paper.
A Major League Baseball committee in 2008 found that maple bats were three times more likely to break in multiple places than traditional ash bats. The league has since set new bat production standards.
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Youth Soccer Ref Allegedly Threatened with Gun; Teams Stage Boycott
One youth soccer association in Toronto is refusing to assign officials to games involving the North Scarborough Soccer Club’s under-13 team following an incident in which a parent allegedly threatened an assistant referee with a gun. Additionally, no fewer than four teams are refusing to play the Bulldogs.
The Globe and Mail reports that on July 12, a Bulldog parent approached the official after a controversial call in a 1-0 loss and allegedly revealed a weapon tucked into his belt. Police were called, but no charges were filed. Neither the parent nor the official has been identified. “There was the threat that there was a weapon,” Kent Green, secretary of the York Region Soccer Association, told the paper, explaining the organization's decision not to endanger its officials at Bulldogs games. “Whether a weapon was seen or not seen is not really the point. This is youth soccer and the district’s position, quite frankly, is that we’re not prepared to put our referees in jeopardy.”
“It’s just propaganda, nothing like that happened,” countered North Scarborough Soccer Club president Byron McCormack, downplaying reports of a gun. “It’s not a very responsible statement, and I don’t know who’s making those statements.”
The Central Soccer League, in which all the teams compete, held a disciplinary meeting for North Scarborough last Thursday, according to The Globe and Mail, but league representatives refused to comment on the outcome.
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Monday, August 09, 2010
Photographer Ban Backfires on English Soccer Club
A ban on photographers covering home games of England's Southampton Football Club hit a snag after the Digital South photo agency pulled out of the deal. The club’s original plan was to deny photographers press credentials for the new season, insisting that all news outlets negotiate for images from home games with Digital South.
But Digital South owner Robin Jones told the U.K. newspaper The Guardian over the weekend that he declined the deal. "I disagreed with their stance on a total ban of photographers from any media source," Jones said in a statement. "I voiced this opinion to the club and genuinely thought that the ban would not take place. It became clear to me on Thursday that this ban was indeed happening and so I rang the club to inform them of my decision to decline their offer.
To derail Southampton’s strategy, London’s The Sun ran the following headline Monday after Sunday’s Southampton match against Plymouth: "Opposition 0 Plymouth 1." And Plymouth’s local newspaper, The Herald, commissioned city historian Chris Robinson to draw cartoon-like illustrations of the game in lieu of publishing actual photographs. "It's outrageous that a football club is blocking photographers from covering something which is of much interest and importance to many people,” said Bill Martin, The Herald’s editor.
A similar situation occurred three years ago in the United States, when the Illinois High School Association required photographers to sign an agreement restricting the use of pictures they took. The controversy stemmed from an arrangement the IHSA had with Visual Image Photography Inc. that granted the firm exclusive rights to the commercial use of photos taken at IHSA-sponsored events. In exchange, VIP provided hundreds of thousands of photos to the IHSA for free. Association officials claimed newspapers posting photo galleries — often containing hundreds of images from tournament play — and then selling copies to parents and other fans undermined the value of the association's contract with VIP. Therefore, the IHSA denied media access to photographers who refused to waive their rights to secondary use of the photos, defined by the association as anything beyond a traditional print newspaper story. The matter was eventually resolved, but the damage had been done: The fiasco landed at Number 3 on the “Top 10 Most Controversial” issues of the decade at the Northern Illinois Sports Beat website.
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Major League Soccer in Detroit? That's the GOAAAAAL!
A crowd of 30,514 enthusiastic soccer fans witnessed Italian giants AC Milan defeat Greek powerhouse Panathinaikos, 5-3, in a penalty kick shootout after playing to a scoreless draw Friday night at the Pontiac Silverdome. It was the first soccer event in metropolitan Detroit in 16 years, and the high turnout proves that a Major League Soccer franchise in Detroit is viable, according to Triple Properties LLC. The company, which now owns the mostly dormant dome after winning it in a private auction last year for $583,000, has made it clear that it would like to bring an MLS team to the facility.
"We consider tonight to be a tremendous success," Silverdome spokesperson John Mozena told MichiganLive.com after the game, adding that the “Match of the Titans” draw cost between $2 million and $3 million, on top of the money to fix up the stadium. Mozena said that Friday’s game was the first step toward making the Silverdome an entertainment destination specifically for soccer fans.
One of the design possibilities for the dome is splitting the lower bowl into two indoor arenas to house concerts and other sporting events, and then tearing off the roof and creating an open-air 30,000-seat soccer stadium on top.
In related news, the Silverdome did allow vuvuzelas at Friday night’s match, despite the results of a fan poll on the venue’s website that indicated approximately 60 percent did not want to hear the instrument's incessant buzzing inside the dome. "The numbers were a lot closer than we had expected," Mozena told MichiganLive, so officials decided to "give it a try."
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Women's Wrestling Scores With First Program in Iowa
Waldorf College will introduce women’s wrestling for the 2010-11 school year, and Warrior wrestlers will attend many of the nation’s top international events — including the World Team Trials. The college, the first in Iowa to offer the sport for women, hopes to place 10 females on the roster this season, with a future goal of 30 to 40. "In the state of Iowa, where wrestling is so important, I think it's a step in the right direction," Terry Steiner, the U.S. women’s national coach and a former wrestling standout at the University of Iowa, told The Des Moines Register.
"There are maybe 40, 50, 60 girls wrestling at the high school level [in Iowa]," Tyler Brandt, Waldorf’s men’s wrestling coach and interim women’s coach, told the paper. "Now they don't have to go to North Dakota, Oklahoma or Michigan. They can stay right here."
Waldorf — a private college of about 500 students, where men’s wrestling has
been among the most successful sports for the past 30 years — is only
the 14th women's collegiate wrestling program in North America,
according to The Register. All of the teams except Pacific compete in the NAIA. Two, Simon Fraser and Regina, are in Canada.
Nearly 14,300 girls participated in interscholastic wrestling during the 2009-10 school year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. That’s significantly more than double the 6,025 that participated the previous year. Women's freestyle wrestling made its debut as a new medal event at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
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Landfill Expansion Could Mean New Parks
If the mayor of Franklin, Wis., has his way, expanding a local dump may one day help build a "Central Park" and regional sports facility. "The time to acquire park properties and build recreational facilities is now, before you're having to compete with developers who want to build subdivisions where parks should be," Mayor Tom Taylor recently told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Last week, a committee representing Franklin and seven surrounding communities in a three-county area approved an agreement with Waste Management Inc., owners of the Metro Recycling and Disposal Facility, to expand that facility. Committee members also agreed on how the municipalities involved would share nearly $10 million in landfill fees that are expected to be generated over the next three to five years, if the expansion is approved.
Franklin, according to the paper, could combine its share of the money with impact fees it has collected from developers to create a "Central Park" that would include preserved open spaces and recreational facilities such as tennis courts and athletic fields. Taylor also said landfill money could help construct a regional sports complex capable of hosting large-scale high school track meets and other events.
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10:44 AM
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Rec Department Wants to Operate More Like a Business
The Boulder (Colo.) Parks and Recreation Department, in an attempt to operate more like a business, will ask the city council on Tuesday for permission to increase both fees and class sizes. This would mean moving to "service-based pricing," in which fees are set based on the cost of providing a particular service.
Under the proposal, the department would begin to classify programs similar to college courses, offering level 100, 200, 300 and 400 classes, according to a report in Boulder’s Daily Camera. The Level 100 classes would include introductory or basic courses offered to any age group, with level 400 classes including things such as competitive adult sports or advanced classes. Only the level 100 programs would receive a tax-supported subsidy. All other classes would require participants to pay fees that cover the cost of administrative overhead, instructors and facility time.
Alice Guthrie, Boulder's recreation superintendent, told the paper that the city needs to make a "paradigm shift," because the recession has hit tax revenues hard in Boulder and other cities. "We have gotten subsidy from the general fund, but we've seen it decrease and we think we'll continue to see it decrease," she said.
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10:28 AM
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Football Coach Bans Twitter
In a move bound for serious debate in cyberspace, Boise State football coach Chris Petersen has banned his players from using Twitter. The moratorium, which will last for the entire season, is intended to remove at least one “distraction” for the players. “There’s plenty of time in their lifetime for Twitter,” Petersen, who doesn’t have a Twitter account, told The Idaho Statesman. "We tell them long before they come here, there's a price to play on the blue turf. You're not a normal person, you're not a normal college student. There are a lot of things you can't do that those normal people get to do." Nearly a dozen Broncos were regular tweeters, the paper reports.
Since Petersen's announced his Twitter ban, New Mexico State football coach DeWayne Walker has followed suit. And other coaches have expressed concerns about the impact social media may have on their players and programs.
Last fall, then-Texas Tech coach Mike Leach banned his players from using Twitter after linebacker Marlon Williams noted the coach’s tardiness to a team meeting in a tweet. That tweet was deleted, as was Williams’ Twitter page.
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Friday, August 06, 2010
Big 12 Shakeup Spawns KU Fight Song Contest
The defections of Nebraska and Colorado from the Big 12 may have struck a sour note among conference purists, but officials at the University of Kansas will be singing a different tune entirely. The Jayhawks’ nearly 100-year-old fight song, “I’m a Jayhawk,” which mentioned both departed rivals by name, is in the process of being updated.
“It's not meant to be belligerent to Nebraska or Colorado for leaving the conference,” according to KU Alumni Association president Kevin Corbett. “It's just keeping up with the times."
Corbett’s office is encouraging students to come up with new lyrics to replace those that mention Nebraska and Colorado, with the winning effort to be announced during the Jayhawks’ Oct. 23 homecoming, according to an Associated Press report. The new song will debut in 2011-12.
Fight song alterations are not unprecedented. “On Wisconsin,” among the most familiar of college fight songs, once implored Badger football players to “run the ball clear ’round Chicago” — that is, until the University of Chicago, an original Big Ten Conference member, dropped football in 1940. This isn’t even the first lyrical tweak at Kansas. The song was altered in 1958 to remove a reference to Haskell Indian Nations College and reflect Oklahoma A&M’s name change a year earlier to Oklahoma State.
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Thursday, August 05, 2010
Rec Department Goes High Tech to Control Access
Beginning this fall, Montgomery County, Md., plans to use biometric finger vein scanners to control access to its pools, weight rooms and community center programs at each of its 33 locations. According to reports from The Gazette, a news source serving numerous Maryland communities, the scanning system will replace an existing identification card system, saving the county an estimated $50,000 a year.
Although biometric scanning is not new in recreation center applications, it seems few jurisdictions have embraced the technology wholeheartedly. Part of the reason could be the backlash from patrons.
"I just wouldn't come here anymore," 54-year-old personal trainer Rose Campbell, a regular user of the county's Potomac Recreation Center over the past 22 years, told Gazette staff writer Cody Calamaio. "Who in their right mind came up with this? Is this anti-terrorism or something? This is America for God's sakes. It's America and we go to the gym with our little access cards."
Although not all patrons may share Campbell's passionate disdain for such a security system, many do remain wary of any scanning device that encroaches on the body. Much of that may be blamed on a common misconception, as James Reyes, general manager of the Active Communities Division of the Active Network — a leading marketing and software company that boasts a long roster of clients in municipal recreation — told AB for a recent story on access control.
Reyes said many facility users believe, using the example of fingerprint scanning, that a replica of the fingerprint is being stored by the facility. In fact, the scanner takes an optical image of the finger. Then, using a digital coding formula, that image is translated into a series of numbers, a code. "Basically, that becomes your biometric template," Reyes told AB, adding that the original optical image is then discarded.
From there, the scanner interfaces with the access control or membership management software, which integrates the same way that it might with a barcode scanner or a magnetic strip, allowing or denying access, for example. "From the perspective of fitness clubs, a campus recreation center or a military base, an advantage is that you're not linking to a specific membership card that can be lost, forgotten or stolen," Reyes said.
Montgomery County recreation officials have been quick to point out that the data collected through their vein scans — in which images of an individual's vein patterns are collected as an infrared light passes through and is absorbed by hemoglobin, mitigating the common problem of topical skin issues in fingerprint scans — will not be available to other county departments or police.
Robin Riley, a division chief in the county's recreation department, likened the transformation to the move from paper sign-ins to ID card scans years ago. "At one of the senior centers, they were passionately against it and now they love it," Riley told the Gazette. "They can't wait to get their card scanned."
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Study Examines Differences in Male, Female ACL Injuries
A new study appearing in this month’s issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine adds to the growing body of research noting differences in injury rates and severity of ACL injuries among males and females. This particular study, involving researchers from Washington University School of Medicine and the Santa Monica (Calif.) Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation, found that male soccer players are more likely to sustain ACL injuries in their dominant kicking legs, while females are more likely to suffer ACL injuries in their supporting legs.
As with past research, these findings confirm that female athletes are far more susceptible to ACL injury. In fact, females are as much as six times more likely to tear their ACLs, and every year one out of every 10 women participating in intercollegiate athletics (and one in 100 female high school athletes) suffers an ACL injury.
The BJSM study looked at ACL injuries in dominant versus
supporting legs among 93 athletes: 41 male and 52 female. The
participants were a mix of professional, college, high school and youth
soccer players who had undergone surgery for a complete ACL tear.
Future research, according to the study’s authors, may determine why female athletes are more prone to sustaining ACL injuries on their supporting leg. Such injuries most commonly occur when an athlete is landing, stopping or changing direction abruptly. During those athletic movements, females tend to keep their legs straightened, putting more stress on the ligaments of the knee. Another possible explanation is hormonal, resulting in weaker ligaments among women. A third reason may be that females’ quadriceps are more heavily used in the stability of the knee during athletic movements in comparison to their hamstrings. The quadriceps strain the ACL while the hamstring counteracts this strain, stabilizing the knee and preventing the ligaments from overexertion.
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Vuvuzelas Silenced
Almost a month after the conclusion of the World Cup, which introduced the vuvuzela's incessant buzz to the rest of the world, sports organizations and facilities in North America and elsewhere have begun to ban the instrument.
This week, basketball’s governing body declared vuvuzelas ineligible for the FIBA World Championships, which begin later this month in Turkey. Organizers say vuvuzelas used indoors could damage hearing and make court communication difficult. (A fan favorite in South Africa, the horns have been known to emit as many as 144 decibels — that’s louder than an air horn or a passenger jet.) FIBA warned that the instruments will be confiscated and the ban will be enforced at all indoor tournaments. Anyone bringing a vuvuzela to a FIBA basketball venue risks getting bounced.
New Meadowlands Stadium also announced that “noisemakers including whistles, vuvuzelas, plastic horns or air horns of any size” won’t be permitted during next Tuesday’s soccer match between the United States and Brazil. A yellow-box “stadium alert” on the venue’s home page sends the message loud and clear.
But in Detroit, owners and managers of the Silverdome are still asking for fan input regarding the use of vuvuzelas at tomorrow’s "Match of the Titans" featuring AC Milan and Panathinaikos FC. Online voters can click either “love them” or “ban them” in a poll that had generated more than 1,670 votes by Thursday morning. No word on when the poll closes, but “ban them” was leading the way with 59 percent. "The most important thing is the fan experience," says Steve Apostolopoulos, director of sports for Triple Sports & Entertainment, which manages the Silverdome. "Many people say they don't like the vuvuzelas, but plenty of fans clearly enjoyed blowing them in the stands at the FIFA World Cup. We're trying to see how many of our potential visitors feel strongly one way or the other before we make a decision."
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Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Clawson Returns to Life Fitness as President
Fitness industry veteran Christopher Clawson is returning to Life Fitness as the company’s president, Brunswick Corp., owner of the Life Fitness brand, announced. Clawson most recently served as chief executive officer and president of Johnson Health Tech–North America, parent company of the Matrix fitness brand. But the majority of his 25 years in the industry were spent at Life Fitness, where he held a number of positions within the product and marketing arena, eventually serving as vice president of sales and marketing–consumer.
Before joining the fitness industry, Clawson was a professional baseball player with minor league clubs in the Houston Astros and Atlanta Braves organizations.
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Manipulable Playground Opens in Manhattan
When New York City-based architect David Rockwell began taking his own two children to playgrounds, he wondered whether their imaginations and inherent desires to build structures could be better served by the playground environment. With that in mind, a vision began to form.
After six years of research and development, and in a partnership with KaBOOM!, a nonprofit organization striving to create play areas within walking distance of every child in America, the Rockwell Group opened its first Imagination Playground, in lower Manhattan.
The playground hinges on the concept that children can play most creatively in settings they can manipulate. It features sand and moving water, as well as more than 300 movable objects including blocks, crates, fabric and carts. All of these loose parts are designed to allow children to create their own activities and environments, or simply build something and tear it down.
Even the fixed elements of the park tend to involve deeper sensory experiences. A "sound forest" for example, allows children to speak into one sound hole, while their voice is projected through another. In this video, Rockwell describes the concept behind the new playground, one of several Imagination Playgrounds expected to open in New York in the coming years.
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Tuesday, August 03, 2010
New App Makes Pool Chemistry Fun
Looking for another way to make your job more fun? A new pool chemical app from the National Swimming Pool Foundation® makes chemical dosing easier, faster and more accurate for pool technicians and facility managers. Several tools within the app — compatible with the iPhone®, iPod Touch® and iPad® — will help users properly calculate many water chemistry adjustments, NSPF says, and the user-friendly interface includes preloaded chemical formulas for the most commonly used pool chemicals, organized by category. A special feature allows an individual to customize the app by adding, modifying or deleting chemical formulas.
The pool chemical app, which sells for $5.99, will perform calculations for even the world’s largest pool (which holds 66 million gallons of water), NSPF says. It features many of the commonly used calculations to make such adjustments as increase chlorine, neutralize chlorine, increase/decrease total alkalinity, increase stabilizer (cyanuric acid) and increase calcium hardness. Calculations match those in the “Pool & Spa Operator™ Handbook,” the NSPF Certified Pool/Spa Operator® certification course and the “Pool Math™ Workbook” — all published by NSPF.
The foundation earlier this year also introduced apps that calculate pool volume for different shapes of pools and spas; water flow for determining flow rates, turnover rates, number of turnovers and target turnover rates; and saturation index to help maintain proper water balance.
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Posted At
3:00 PM
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Minnesota Boy Dies in Playground Accident
A 12-year-old boy was found dead Sunday at a neighborhood park in Roseville, Minn., after receiving a blow from a rock flung by a makeshift slingshot connected to a jungle gym.
According to St. Paul Pioneer Press reports, Carter W. Geyen and a friend, also 12, were using a nylon sling and eight feet of surgical tubing connected to two posts to fling balls, rocks and other objects into the air, and the impact was powerful enough to create small craters throughout the playground.
Geyen died of apparent blunt-force trauma to the heart after he was struck by a five-pound rock that the man who discovered his body described to the Pioneer Press as being "bigger than his chest."
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Posted At
12:18 PM
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SEC Launches Academic Network
As part of its comprehensive $2 billion, 15-year media rights agreement with ESPN, the Southeastern Conference has launched the SEC Academic Network, a web site promoting the classroom atmospheres and research efforts of all 12 conference-member institutions. SEC alumni, fans and current and prospective students worldwide can now learn about SEC academics in one place.
Schools have their own individual pages on the site, which launched with five short videos highlighting each campus. Clips now showing cover topics ranging from the origins of Gatorade at the University of Florida to how a University of Georgia chemistry professor uses instant messaging devices to facilitate the asking of questions in his classroom of 365 students. Each institution will add new videos throughout the academic year using ESPN360.com technology.
“The commitment to highlight the accomplishments of SEC member institution academic programs was a key component of our new television agreements,” states SEC commissioner Mike Slive in a news release. “We are grateful to ESPN for providing our institutions this technology, which had previously been utilized exclusively for athletic events.” Adds Louisiana State University athletic director Joe Alleva, “We are excited that the Academic Network will give us an opportunity to grow the LSU brand in a new and dynamic manner.”
Per the partnership, ESPN will also produce for each institution an annual Campus Connection telecast, in which students take part in the production; telecast two programs annually dedicated to the academic accomplishments of SEC student-athletes, as well as a weekly academic feature segment on ESPNU’s SEC show; and select one undergraduate student from every SEC institution to participate in ESPN’s summer internship program.
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Posted At
10:13 AM
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Monday, August 02, 2010
Students Rally for Coach Accused of Racism
An estimated 100 students, former players and adults rallied outside of Whitmer High School in Toledo, Ohio, Sunday night to show their support for embattled basketball coach Bruce Smith. Schools officials and the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are investigating allegations from five families that Smith has made racially insensitive remarks — such as calling African-American players “monkeys” — and divided the team by race in practice drills.
"When we'd run, he'd split up the black and white kids, and he'd make the biracial kids decide which team to be on. He'd make us choose," Chris Wormley, a junior whose mother is white and father is black, told The Toledo Blade. "During two or three practices, he'd say, 'Blacks over here and whites over there.' I just thought it was kind of stupid. I went to the black side. I didn't really think about it at the time. He's a smart guy in basketball, but the things he says and does aren't right."
During Sunday night’s rally, the paper reports today, a group of female students, both black and white, chanted the coach's name while broadcast news crews recorded it. “I have coached with him and I know him personally as a friend. He's not a racist. I can tell you that,” said Ernie Miller, who is black and has been a youth basketball coach in Toledo for years. “It's a lynch mob. … It's a sad day.”
Smith, who led Whitmer to the state's final four in 2008, told reporters that he is not a “racist,” adding that he was instructed not to comment further.
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Posted At
4:05 PM
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NRPA Announces "Save Our Parks!" Winners
The National Recreation and Park Association has announced the winners of its "Save Our Parks!" contest, in which the organization asked agencies to submit 30-second PSAs exploring what would happen if parks disappeared.
As the grand prize winner, the City of O'Fallon, Mo., wins a free one-year NRPA membership and a free full registration package NRPA's 2010 Congress & Exposition, Oct. 25-29 in Minneapolis.
Here are the winning entries:
City of O'Fallon, Mo. - Grand Prize Winner
City of Novi, Mich. - First Runner Up
Aurora, Colo., Parks, Recreation & Open Space - Second Runner Up
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Posted At
11:45 AM
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Heat Sells Out Season, Fires Ticket-Sales Staff
There was little doubt that LeBron James would do wonders for Miami Heat's box office. In fact, since the superstar announced on July 8 that he would play for the Heat, tickets for all of the upcoming season's home games sold out in record time. But who knew the arrival of James also would signal the departure of the team’s entire season-ticket sales staff?
“Now that the supply for [season tickets] has been exhausted, we no longer require a season-ticket sales team,'' the Heat said in a brief statement Friday afternoon. A team spokesperson, Lorrie-Ann Diaz, declined to comment or answer questions about the firings, which cost roughly 30 people their jobs, one staffer told The Miami Herald — 30 people who worked tirelessly during the hours before and after James was signed. "Our sales reps were manning the phones around the clock," Diaz wrote in an e-mail interview with the paper. "We couldn't get them to go home! There was very little inventory remaining once LeBron officially made his decision. And we sold out of that, as well, in record time."
In its six-sentence statement, the Heat did not issue details of the staff dismissals: “While the decision to release part of our sales force was a difficult one, we greatly appreciate their contributions to the company. We have also hired a placement service to assist those individuals [to] find new employment.”
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Posted At
11:00 AM
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CDC Concussion Materials Available to Young Athletes
Last week's announcement that the NFL will hang concussion-awareness posters in all 32 team locker rooms left Athletic Business readers wondering why the posters — prepared in a collaborative effort between the NFL and the Centers for Disease Control — will not be made available to players at younger levels. “The NFL poster is written specifically for professional athletes with direct references to NFL/NFLPA guidelines, so there is not a plan to send that poster to high schools,” CDC spokesperson Gail Hayes tells AB exclusively. “However, we based the content for that poster on CDC's materials with NCAA, as well as the ‘Heads Up’ youth and high school concussion educational materials.”
The “Heads Up” concussion-awareness program has been around since 2006 and was recently updated. New materials are posted online, and printed materials should be restocked soon, Hayes says. The CDC also has teamed up with the National Federation of State High School Associations to offer a free online education course called "Concussion in Sports — What You Need to Know." Approximately 12,000 people have taken the course since mid-May, according to Bob Colgate, an assistant director with the NFHS. The NCAA reportedly has a similar video in the works.
Additionally, a new online course for youth sports coaches is expected to go live on the CDC web site this week, and special posters (above) are available — as are co-branded CDC materials with USA Football, U.S. Lacrosse, USA Hockey, USA Baseball, USA Volleyball, USA Soccer, USA Field Hockey and USA Softball.
The CDC has created a concussions section on its web site, and has a brain-injury awareness page on Facebook.
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Posted At
8:54 AM
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