For your Wednesday afternoon amusement, a tale from Lawrence, Kansas.
Via Ballin’ Is A Habit, news out of Jayhawkland is that the hoops’ team’s Tyshawn Taylor and one of the KU footballers — allegedly WR Dezmon Briscoe, though that is as yet unverified — both decided that it would be the right decision to jeopardize their health, their status on their respective teams, and maybe even their curb appeal in the eyes of the NBA and NFL, and get in a fight about a girl who reportedly chose to change teams — meaning she’s supposedly chosen to date a guy from one, then the other. Taylor wound up with a dislocated thumb because of this and ended up going to the hospital. I highly recommend you check out the piece from BIAH (linked above) that lists Taylor’s Twitter and Facebook updates about this whole situation. My favorite: “Never get outta character…I’m always a G about it.” Yeah. Because that matters.
There are reports that this incident actually involved multiple players from each team, but Taylor was the only one injured.
ESPN is also reporting that Taylor, a vital component for KU’s hoops success this upcoming season and a definite NBA prospect who was the leading scorer on the USA Under-19 team that won the gold medal in New Zealand this summer, could miss around 4 weeks because of this nonsense. If you behold our beautiful Midnight Madness Countdown Clock up in the top right portion of the RTC front page, you’ll notice that we are (thank God) well under a month until first official practices. So, this means that because of a girl, and his aforementioned desire to be a G about it, Taylor could miss (or be less than 100% for) the first few official workouts with the rest of his squad, the almost consensus pre-season #1.
Evidently, animosity between the basketball and football teams has existed for a long time at KU. This piece by Tom Keegan at KUSports.com gives a few examples of great feuds in his lead sentence. What would we call this one? Gridirons vs Hardwoods? Oblongs vs Roundballs? Leathers vs Pigskins? I invite you to leave your own suggestions in the comments section. More on this as it develops.