Daily Archives: November 21, 2006

Is the Big 12 Conference really viable?

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BIG12c.jpgAs noted earlier here, the Big 12 Conference was formed as a money grab rather than because of any meaningful allegiances between most of the conference members. And, as noted here, football programs of the institutions in the Big 12 North Division have a difficult time competing with their better-funded and located (at least in terms of attracting good football players) brethen in the Big 12 South Division.
Well, Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post has been noticing the same thing. In this column entitled Divided, Big 12 bound to fall, he observes that the Big 12 is a poorly-structured alliance of convenience based almost entirely on money. As such, Kiszla predicts that the conference is destined to fail:

A football conference divided cannot stand.
There’s a feud in the Big 12 Conference between the North and South. It’s a civil war in which nobody wins and Colorado too often loses.
This league – held together by little except greed and a championship game that’s regularly as flat as a too-long-open can of Dr Pepper – is a clash of cultures as different as the Birkenstocks in Boulder and the ten-gallon hats of Texas.
In a conference in which the haves and have-nots are divided by geography, what has gone wrong? [. . .]
Can’t we all get along here?
I’m afraid not.
For a league in which almost half the football teams have trouble putting up a good fight, there’s way too much bad blood.
The Big 12 is a conference split by a Red River of tears, as the bullies from the south have won 13 of 16 games this season against the 98-pound weaklings from the northern plains.
Although the Big 12 boasts of three squads ranked among the top 25 (Longhorns, Sooners, Aggies), you again hear barely any noise from the north, other than the wind blowing through towns from Lawrence, Kan., to Ames, Iowa, as the Jayhawks and Cyclones get blown away by real football teams.
If something does not change, the Big 12 will be slowly ripped asunder, and I fear as the imbalance of power grows worse, the league as we know it will not exist 10 years down the road.

Just another example of the pressures arising from the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots in big-time minor league — er, I mean — college football.

Does anyone take John Edwards seriously anymore?

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edwards_convention_5.jpgAs noted in this post from late 2004, a decent case can be made that former Democratic vice-presidential candidate was the difference in costing John Kerry the close 2004 Presidential election, particularly after his Benny Hinn imitation on the campaign trail.
But now as Edwards postures toward a run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2008, he provided us an exhibition of hypocrisy that is brazen even by Washington, D.C. standards. On the same day that Edwards was bashing Wal-Mart on a conference call with labor leaders, an Edwards “aide” was requesting that the local Wal-Mart bump the former senator to the front of the line to get a Playstation 3 for his son. Reason’s Jeff Taylor wryly observes:

The alternative to a Democratic presidential campaign marked by a downward spiral of Pythonseque depravation one-upsmanship might actually address issues like the federal entitlement explosion or comprehensive income tax reform, two areas where Republicans have failed miserably to advance any coherent solution. Should Edwards or Hillary Clinton or someone find away to talk about these things without class-warfare cant, they’ll have a head start on the general election.
In any event, maybe the best thing for Wal-Mart to do is stop chortling and go ahead and give John Edwards a PS3 and a couple games. Throw in a flat-panel too. Maybe that way he’ll reacquaint himself with American prosperity and abundance and be a better candidate for the experience.

Is Hillary Clinton even going to have any competition for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination?

Piling on in the Slade case

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Priscilla Slade5.jpgThis Chronicle article reports that the criminal case of former Texas Southern University president Priscilla Slade does not appear to be moving toward an amicable resolution:

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office is investigating suspicions that former Texas Southern University President Priscilla Slade may have lied to the grand jury.
Prosecutor Donna Goode sought today to unseal Slade’s grand jury testimony so that Slade’s former assistant could review it for inconsistencies.
If conflicts are found, Slade could be charged with aggravated perjury.

Slade already faces an effective life prison sentence if convicted on felony charges of misapplication of fiduciary property, so why seek an additional ten years on an aggravated perjury charge? Slade attorney Mike DeGeurin suggests that the prosecution wants to use the grand jury testimony in preparing witnesses who would not otherwise have access to the secret testimony.
Meanwhile, Slade faces a possible February 16, 2007 trial date in what is shaping up to be one of the ugliest white collar criminal cases to take place in Harris County District Court in a long while.