So over on the scout board there is a massive bag of douche that goes by the really cool handle of "homerhawkeye777".  I would call him a piece of shit, but that would insensitive to poo everywhere.  So I was talking about how the morons on that site are an embarassment to Hawkeye fans and that I basically just stick to this site now because people on this board actually understand football, and have also enjoyed vagina before.  Here was his great response about this here site...

He started by saying that the mod's have been proven to be dead wrong in their stance on the rape situation and that they have been to big of cowards to recant then...

"If folks want to intelligently find fault with what happened in the whole ordeal, they should have more disgust with where UI's policy is lacking (as alluded above) OR have an issue with Mason not disclosing the letters with the Regents. Otherwise, it would seem that some of the folks at blackheartgoldpants were the types who got picked on by jocks ... and now they're taking out their "issues" on the football team."

Oh he also had this AWESOME take on why our O-Line has struggled..I enjoyed it..

"but I seriously wonder if some of the "egos" on our OL are too afraid of letting it all hang out in fear that they compete their hardest and still not win a starting spot. I hate that logic ... yet I unfortunately see it ALL OF THE TIME!"

Anyway, I thought y'all would get a kick out of this douchebag.   If he ever starts spewing his bullshit over here, you'll know where he comes from.

[The tags alone made this one an automatic bump to the front page.--OPS]

I believe that tailgating is one of the great pleasures, nay, rights of being an American.  It is an indispenseable part of any live sporting event.

I'm just saying, tailgating is an underrated and underappreciated facet of life.  I'm preaching to the choir here, you're all fans, I know.  But many people don't fathom the goodness.  They don't see the beauty of getting up at 5 AM (or earlier), getting together with 5,000 (or 40,000) of your closest random strangers, cooking and drinking.  They don't  see why it's necessary to dress up in the appropriate colors to show that not only are you a part of this, but you are a vital cog.  That it is your presence as well as your effort that will propel the team to victory (god knows our teams can't find victory by themselves).   That those brats and drinks (and potato salad, and nachos, and pork chops, and eggs, and coffee, and....) are what you will do to help the team win.

For myself, I don't get to enough games anymore.  But when I do, I'm a bumblebee.  I've got the bibs. 

(I had a little captain in me.  Ok...I had a lot of captain in me.  What of it?)

My friends and I have a gameless tailgate for a Bears game, where we set up the grill, coolers, and chairs and tailgate in the back yard, then listen to the game on the radio outside.  And I believe that you can tailgate any event.  ANY.  I have tailgated a Simon and Garfunkle concert.  You read that right.  We got to the United Center early, set up a little grill and chairs, and sat there and ate and drank as the people were heading in.  And for every woman that went in rolling her eyes, there was a guy in tow who was pleading with us to throw him a cold one.  A guy who looked at us and nodded in understanding and appreciation (in all fairness, the women we were with came later and were not part of this.  They were appropriately mortified by our behavior.  Not that there aren't plenty of women who are tailgating masters)  It was the best part of the concert.  Everything should be that way.  It's the bond that brings us together as fans and as friends. 

But I'll be honest,  I don't even think tailgating the first couple of games feels truly right.  Because the main ingredient in a good tailgate isn't the food, it's not the alcohol (although that is a close second), it's the temperature.    It's seeing your breath.  Proper tailgating needs to happen when it's cold.  When you have ice in your drink despite there being no chance that it will melt due to the temperature, because dammit, beer should come from a cooler with ice.  Because a bloody mary or jack and coke have ice in them.  That's the way the drink is and you don't change it just because it's 40 degrees.

I feel a little sorry for tailgaters down south (Wait.  No.  Fuck'em all).  They can have their "worlds largest outdoor cocktail party" or the like.  Those poor bastards in the SEC, Big 12 South, south ACC...they think they know tailgating, but they're really just standing around drinking.  There is no difference to them between having a party inside or outside.  They'll never know the karmic rightness of needing to be drinking as the sun comes up in order to prevent dying of hypothermia (in all fairness, you'll still die from hypothermia.  You'll just be happy doing it.  That's the difference).   4 layers deep in black and gold clothes.  Seats that fit in September but won't in November.  This is the joy of being a fan.

It's almost that time again.  Praise the football gods for the gift that you've been given.

It bothered me last year that Lane Smith was not suspended from the Badgers for his actions.  I think if he were at Iowa he would have sat out the year, not the 5 road games.  And it really pisses me off now that U Iowa is the national media go-to for off-the-field troubles, while other programs are getting a free pass for looking the other way on their players' transgressions.

Lance Smith Article

What the hell were Bielema and Alvarez thinking when they made this policy for Smith?  I know what they were thinking - let's win some freaking football games.

I'm no Gopher lover, and I sure as hell am no Dominic Jones lover.  In light of the sexual assault incident involving two (or more) Iowa football athletes, however, this recent article about Jones seems to carry relevance.

If you don't recall, Jones was convicted of sexually assaulting a girl - while she was unconscious, and after she had had sexual relations with other football team members - in an incident eerily echoing that at Iowa.

It seems that as despicable we may find the situation and Jones himself, at least he appears to be taking the right approach to his life following it.  He's actually got a lesson to share with other athletes.

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/26011539.html?location_refer=Homepage:highlightModules:3

I only hope that something as positive can come of the Iowa situation.

NOTE:  I Fan(!)Post(!)ed (TM) this one, because we said we're not going to talk about this for a while.  Yes, it might be BHGP Reloaded, but for fuck's sake, someone's got to start actually paying attention to what's coming out of the mouths of the administration.  If the media won't do it, I guess we will.

Also, please pardon the language.  It's 4:30 in the morning and I can't sleep.  Mom, don't read this.  I hear Oprah's website is very nice.

You are WRONG!

You know, it was less than a week ago that, after getting more or less bitch slapped by the Board of Regents for failing to turn over documents considered essential to the Board's investigation of what was either a fuck-up or a cover-up, Gary Barta told us how "challenging" it had been not to tell his story and how, after meeting with the Board, he was going to tell us all just what had happened.

Turns out, neither he nor any other member of the University administration decided to wait.

The University took its lumps in the emergency meeting last Tuesday, but was spinning like a top by the end of the week.  Now, a look back at the bullshit, speculation, and baldfaced lies given to you by the UI:

First, a complete fabrication by Sally Mason.  From her interview in the wake of the Regents meeting:

The mother had claimed that UI athletics officials failed to alert Phillip Jones, vice president for student services, about the alleged assault.

Jones would have been alerted, Mason said, if the internal reports prepared by the athletic department and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity on the alleged assault hadn't been put under seal by a judge because of the criminal investigation.

WRONG! 

While it's questionable whether the athletic department's internal reports and the EOD investigation were subject to the seal, the timeline simply does not corroborate Mason's tale.  According to the mother (and in one of the few points not being argued by the UI), she first made contact with Jones on November 15; in fact, she did so at the request of the general counsel.  Judge Potterfield did not seal any records in this case until the next day.  At no point prior to November 16 was there any order demanding the university withhold anything.  By that time, Jones had been notified.  Oh, and the "informal" procedure so conveniently implemented by the university?  It required Jones be notified, so that any potential issues involving housing (like the alleged perpetrator LIVING THREE ROOMS AWAY) could be fixed.  This, my friends, is a lie.  There is no other way of characterizing this statement.

That wasn't Mason's only fib this week.  As you know, the University initially argued that the mom's letter was protected by FERPA, and therefore was not disclosed to the Board of Regents.  This is a legal absurdity along the lines of "waterboarding isn't torture," and Marc Mills is an embarassment to the legal profession for even attempting to justify such a withholding.  Good thing it only took the Sally Mason spin machine 48 hours to understand that fact. 

Mason told the board the UI administration, based on legal interpretation from its counsel, Marcus Mills, thought that FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal statute that protects the privacy of student records, prevented the university from sharing the letters with the board.

Mason admitted to the board the university's interpretation was wrong.

"There is no excuse for the failure to turn over those letters as part of the investigation that you directed the Board of Regents office to conduct in the wake of the report of the assault," she said.

Of course, that's all well and good if the letters are the only things withheld, right?  Um, Sally?  WRONG!

Letters from the mother of an alleged sexual assault victim were not the only documents the University of Iowa failed to turn over to the Iowa state Board of Regents during the initial investigation of how the assault report was handled, UI President Sally Mason said.

Among documents withheld from the regents were letters from UI officials to football players implicated in the assault telling them not to retaliate against the alleged victim, a student-athlete, Mason said Thursday.

The documents, which amounted to a "small box," according to UI General Counsel Marc Mills, previously were concealed from regents based on an inaccurate interpretation of a federal student privacy law, Mason said. Those materials have now been turned over to the regents, who have opened a second investigation into how the UI dealt with the high-profile case.

Wow, there must have been a lot of letters to those football players, considering they filled a "small box."  Any bets as to what else was in the box?  Were the only documents initially produced for the Board of Regents a copy of KOK's one-page playbook and an IHOP placemat colored by Gary Barta?

Finally, a nuanced finagling of the truth by Mr. Integrity himself.  When asked point blank at BXI Media Day whether he had removed Everson and Satterfield from the squad by the next game after the alleged assault (Purdue, 10/20), Ferentz first refused to answer the question, then gave us this gem:

I can’t think of an instance where I kicked anyone off immediately. They were suspended immediately. As the week went on, and my conversations with parties involved were ongoing, I finished on Thursday (four days after the alleged incident), 6 or 6:30 on Thursday it was my last information gathering conversation. I made the decision at that point where we were going. It’s not as simple as saying you are off the team. To remove a player from school, I don’t have that power to remove a player from scholarship immediately.

WRONG!

Let's take a look back at exactly what the head ball coach said in the days following his revelatory investigation into this incident.  In the wake of the October 20 shitkicking at the hands of Purdue, Ferentz was asked why Everson didn't make the trip.  His response?

"He came up short in a couple of departments last week and we opted not to bring him," Ferentz said. He was then asked if the problems were on the field or off.

"That's a matter between (them)," Ferentz said. "It was my choice not to bring him. We'll see how it goes."

So...Everson is still on the team?  And what the fuck are the "couple of departments" where he came up short?  The "not raping women" department?  The "successfully avoiding getting your coach into a year-long investigation of what the hell is going on in his program" department?  The "not losing in-state offensive line recruits to Michigan Fucking State because they have more 'discipline and structure'" department?

No answers there.  How about three days later, at his weekly press conference?

Q: Is Cedric Everson in good standing?

KF: Well, that's pretty much about where he was Saturday, I guess.  That's probably the best answer I could give you.  He wasn't with us Saturday.  Things haven't changed an awful lot.

Q: Is he practicing?

KF: No, huh-uh.  Didn't last week.  I guess Thursday would have been his last day.  He's not in good standing.

Q: Is he off the team?

KF: He's not in good standing.

So...Everson "is not in good standing"?  Is he suspended?  Dismissed?  None of the above?  It wasn't until November 13, with the criminal investigation underway, that Ferentz formally announced Everson and Satterfield were suspended.  Maybe it's a game of symantics, but take another look at those two statements.  The word "suspended" is never used, though God knows he could have added it at any given point.  Those aren't statements made to warn of a future dismissal; those are "Cedric missed 2 classes this week" statements.  There is only one conclusion: HE CLEARLY EXPECTED TO GET THESE GUYS BACK ON THE TEAM.  To say now that they were immediately suspended is fudging the truth at the best and lying at the worst.

I have to wonder if the administration has purchased their Olympics tickets yet.  They've already dug themselves halfway to China.

From my friend Eric in Dez Moinz...

Just read a funny little article in Sporting News magazine where they interviewed Baltimore Raven's CB Samari Rolle. They asked him his most memorable rookie initiation. His response, "We bet a rookie last year $500.00 that he couldn't take getting tased. Marshall Yanda took it for 5 seconds, walked away, and all he had was redness. You've got to have guys like that on your team".

Continue reading this post »

Just reading through some of the old posts and noticed your nicknames for some of the players. Could you give this rookie a breakdown. I chuckled at the Flyin Hawaian or the Run DJK. If you have any for the coaches or the past players you can also include those. Don't forget to include the new guys too because some will play. I read somewhere that Guillory's nickname was Mighty Mouse.

Rock On

ChryslerKinnick (2 great Iowans) 

To whom it may concern:

There is no denying the horrendous implications of the pending legal drama that will undoubtedly unfold over the coming months.  However, at this point, there is very little that anyone here - writer, fanposter, or commentor, will do to change the course of events.  The world is now aware that something fishy is going on. 

So here's a proposal:  let's go back to trying to be funny.  I say "trying" for myself - I suppose it would be "being funny" for you guys.  Let's get JoePa going again, let's start referring to obscure Spanish literary figures for nicknames (that hasn't been done yet?  Oh.), and let's break out of this slump.  Shit happened that sucked, and its going to be dealt with no matter how much wallowing we do.  I really, really think that everybody here has put themselves through enough misery.  You've done justice to the topic.  Let's be funny again.

Here, I'll start:

Balls.

See?  That wasn't so hard.  I'm sure you guys will have Jaypa and Secretary as the main event in a donkey show in no time.  And you know?  It's really not as cool as it sounds...I mean...it's a girl fucking a horse...and he was really givin it to her.

Stay funny.  I mean it.  My workday sucks without a dose of BHGP.

Beauford

[Bumped only because it warrants mention that the second letter was released, and thankfully Bellanca didn't share the BHGP staff's collective burnout on the issue. We promise to get back to sports soon.--OPS]

If there is any truth at all to the events described in the second letter, and I don't know if there is, then, many, many people need to go far, far away from Iowa City.  Or else Iowa City is no longer the place in which I grew up, and is now just another suburb in the equivocating, amoral, materialistic hell that is Developed America.  

Is that so?  Is Iowa City now a place where adults with good government jobs discard youth at risk?  Because they have mortgages on oversized houses in Coralville?  Because they don't want to go back to coaching D-IA or D-III or high school kids?  Because ... why exactly?  There is a groupthink 'I was just following orders not to mention the informal judicial policy playbook' nightmare described in this letter. 

Go read Kinnick's Heisman acceptance speech and contrast that with the generally accepted and verified behavior of certain members of the football team and athletic department senior staff and ask yourself two questions:

a.  Are we living up to the value system Kinnick described, which we exploit commercially, not to mention psychically, in order to consider ourselves so, so superior to football-mill D-I schools?  Or, when did the scorned Ron Zook have a year like the last 12 months in Iowa City?

b.  Are you comfortable that if your daughter were that young woman, that you would be any happier than her mother is today?

The primary impression I come away with, aside from horror at the alleged bestial behavior by certain practicing and projecting alleged rapists, for months on end after the event, is of a university professional staff that will cite any technicality to avoid moral action or responsibility.  And a coaching community that knows that a job at Iowa is probably the top of the pyramid for each of them professionally, so a 'go-along, get-along' attitude appears to be assumed by all.  Certainly that explains the panic that exudes from Barta's whining illiterate plea for sympathy this week.  How, again, would Barta need sympathy in contrast to this picture of the young athlete who was left bleeding and alone, on a Sunday morning, in a university building?  And then left to fend for herself as she was taunted and ridiculed for ... what exactly?   Oh, right.  It appears she drank too much one night, like approximately 15,000 SUI students on your average Saturday.  

Mason has already proven herself a liar, unless she wishes to claim that the Register reporter misquoted her.  She has also lied to her board, perhaps unfairly impugned her GC (it depends which explanation you accept, because she's made incompatible explanations), and dumped this girl's mother into the voice mail hell of  her corporate attorney.  As a CEO she is a disgrace.  Everybody else just seems to be on the sidelines, wringing their hands, while an adolescent is taken apart by jackals.  

I'm a man, a parent, the father of a female college athlete.  Everything about this situation is seriously wrong.

I am so proud of the Press-Citizen this week, and that surprises me, because I prefer greatly the pre-Gannett Press-Citizen, when the publisher was an intellectual and a friend of Grant Wood, and the editor was a man who studied politics and diplomacy at Oberlin and Columbia, and Al Grady, and Mark Rohner and Jo Beers did what they did, pretty darn well.  But Morelli and Hermistad -- Jesus, they may actually clean up the university.  

Disclaimer: we all must remember that the second letter may have been coached by a plaintiff's bar attorney, and all or part may not be true.  Because this is going to be the largest punitive settlement negotiation in the history of the SUI.  

Sally "I honestly and sincerely abhor violence" is quoted in the DMR today:

"When I discovered FERPA was the reason we weren't turning over the documents, I said, 'That's not a good enough reason,' " Mason said.

I'm in a bit of a hurry, and I apologize for littering the site with too many entries, but I count at least four (?) lies here.  This, in an interview after she was just read the riot act at an emergency board meeting.  This woman truly believes she is untouchable by any obligation to tell the truth.  Has she been going to faculty meetings so long that she doesn't realize she was read the riot act?  Is that possible?  Anyhow:

1.  The P-C's publication of the letter brought it to the board's attention, not the violence-abhorring Mason.

2.  Oh, she was a violence-abhorring ombudswoman watchdog of her own process, who investigated and discovered the suppression of this document?  Just in time?  Whew.  Way to go, SuperPrez.  As in, if it weren't for her, the board never would have known about the letters?  Gosh, she deserves a raise, and not just for being honestly and sincerely abhorring of violence.  She is honestly and sincerely abhorring of lying to her board.

3.  Why, she honestly and sincerely had no idea that the documents had been suppressed; after all, they were in her files, and somebody else does the filing, you know, and why would she dirty her regal fingers and ruin a happy talk meeting by saying to her GC:  "Look me in the eye and tell me there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that we have held back from the board.  Because if we have suppressed anything, anything at all about this radioactive disaster, we are all toast and deservedly so."

4.  She directly contradicts what she just told the board, where she said that it was she who determined that FERPA was cause to suppress the document.   Check out her prepared statement to the board.  You can't reconcile it to this statement.  One of them, evidently, is not so sincerely honest.