Daily Archives: January 13, 2006

The sociological importance of hoops

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gloryroad3.jpgThe new movie Glory Road — the story about the 1966 National Championship Texas Western University basketball team — opens this weekend, and the story of that great team reminded me of my late father‘s use of basketball to teach me one of my life’s most valuable lessons.
In 1966, I was a 13 year-old basketball-consumed youngster in the somewhat sheltered existence of Iowa City, Iowa, a lovely midwestern college town where the University of Iowa is located. That season, the NCAA Basketball Tournament’s Mideast Regional was in Iowa City and my father graciously decided to let me tag along with him to the tournament games. Little did I know that part of my father’s purpose in doing so was to expose me to one of the most intimidating examples of racism that I would experience during my youth.
The four teams playing in the Mideast regional that year were Michigan (the Big 10 champ and one of the Iowa Hawkeyes’ arch-rivals), Kentucky, Dayton and Western Kentucky. My father was a native of Louisville, Kentucky, so he had always followed UK basketball, although he was partial to his alma mater Louisville and to Iowa after watching Big 10 sporting events for many years while teaching medicine at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. As a big basketball fan, I knew all about Kentucky basketball and its legendary coach Adolph Rupp, but that did little to prepare me for the sociological experience that was about to take place in the old Iowa Fieldhouse over that weekend in 1966.
You see, each of the teams in that regional except Kentucky was integrated, and it became clear from the moment I set foot in the hot, dusty arena that the antipathy of racism was about ready to boil over at almost any point. As Kentucky defeated Dayton and Michigan beat Western Kentucky in the semi-final games, many of the numerous Kentucky fans openly hurled insults at the black players for the other teams. Moreover, most of the Kentucky fans refused to cheer for the neighboring Western Kentucky team in its semi-final game against Michigan because of the presence of black players on the Western Kentucky squad. Rupp — who was a daunting and imposing figure on the sideline — didn’t even attempt to hide his contempt for the black players of opposing teams. Inasmuch as the Iowa baskeball teams that I had followed had already been integrated with black players, I had never experienced anything close to the seething impulses of racism that were palpable in the Iowa Fieldhouse that Friday evening.
Throughout that entire evening and the following Saturday, my father never mentioned anything to me about the acrimonious atmosphere in the Fieldhouse. However, as Michigan — with its star black players Cazzie Russell and Oliver Darden — took on the all-white Kentucky team in the Mideast Regional final game on Saturday night, there was no doubt that my father and I were pulling for Michigan to pull the upset over Kentucky. Alas, Michigan lost a close game to UK in that regional final, which set up Kentucky’s journey to the Final Four that season and its eventual loss to that special Texas Western team in the National Championship game. My father and I took great pleasure the night of that championship game in seeing the mighty Rupp and his UK team brought to their knees by an unknown underdog from far West Texas, and I have felt an affinity for that Texas Western team ever since.
While golfing together many years later, I asked my father why he had said nothing to me about the open expressions of racism that we saw and heard during that weekend of basketball in 1966. He looked at me and — fully cognizant of my youthful disdain for Michigan — replied with a wry smile:

“There was nothing to say. When I saw that you were pulling for Michigan, I knew you had figured it out.”

The bidding over Guidant heats up

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boston scientific_logo.jpgIn response to Johnson & Johnson’s increased bet earlier this week for heart-device maker Guidant, Boston Scientific has matched J&J’s bet and upped the ante.
Gee, wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that J&J was getting assistance from the Lord of Regulation in driving the price of Guidant down?
Boston Scientific’s sweetened bid is valued at $25.55 billion and gives Guidant’s board board until Friday afternoon to fish or cut bait on the offer. Boston Scientific’s new offer is valued at $73 per Guidant share (up from its earlier $72 per share offer) and deletes most of the conditions in prior bid that made J&J’s competing offer (valued at $67.92 per Guidant share) look to be more likely to close and, thus, a better risk for Guidant. What a far cry from the $56 per share price of Guidant’s shares just two months ago when J&J was threatening to walk the deal.
Update: Guidant Corp.’s board accepted the Johnson & Johnson offer late Friday and rejected the larger but potentially more time-consuming competing Boston Scientific offer. The agreement is valued at $24.2 billion, consisting of $40.52 in cash and .493 shares of J&J stock for each Guidant share and is scheduled to close as early as Jan. 31. Boston Scientific — which, unlike J&J, would have still had to obtain government regulatory approval of its bid — had hoped to close its proposed deal by March 31.

Getting ready to rumble

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enronlogo20.gifThe Chronicle’s Mary Flood reports on one of the final pre-trial hearings before the commencement of the January 30 criminal trial against former key Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, and while it looks as if U.S. District Judge Sim Lake is going to let the parties put on their respective cases, he left little doubt that monkey business will not be tolerated. Thus, the Task Force won’t be able to use tape recordings Enron traders joking about stealing money from grandmothers during the California energy crisis while the defense won’t be able to bring up key prosecution witness Andrew Fastow’s apparent penchant for viewing pornography on his company computer.
However, the most important ruling that Judge Lake made was denying most of the Task Force’s motion to exclude an impressive group of expert witnesses that the Lay-Skilling defense team has assembled to assist the defense in explaining to the jury their version of what happened to Enron. Given the bias of most mainstream media accounts of what occurred at Enron, Lay and Skilling have already been indicted, tried and convicted by the media outlets that have generated those one-sided accounts. Accordingly, it is vitally important for the Lay-Skilling defense to be able to present independent experts to explain objectively to the jury that there is a far more nuanced story about what happened to Enron than most of the mainstream media accounts provide.
Speaking of which, it’s a bit hard to get a handle on the Task Force’s theory about what happened at Enron at this point. There is little doubt that the Task Force is going to present the case against Lay and Skilling as a material non-disclosure case, but the Task Force appears to be having a bit of a problem getting the rest of its story straight on what went wrong at Enron.
Initially, the prosecution alleged that Lay and Skilling presided over a house of cards at the company that was hidden from the investing public by the fraudulent behavior of Enron management and its auditor, Arthur Andersen. Then, after putting Andersen out of business with an over-the-top prosecution that was later rebuked by a unanimous Supreme Court, the Task Force modified that story to allege that Lay and Skilling had also fooled Andersen about the company’s true nature. More recently, the Task Force’s story has evolved into allegations that Enron was in fact a highly-profitable trading company, but that Lay and particularly Skilling hid the company’s enormous trading profits to fool the investing public into thinking that the company was a stable “logistics” company rather than a volatile trading company.
The Task Force is required to file with the Court today its final statement before trial explaining what charges it actually intends to pursue against Lay and Skilling. One can only wonder at this point which of the above stories about Enron that the Task Force will choose to use. So it goes in the wacky world of criminalizing agency costs.