- We will start off this Morning Five by talking about football or more specifically the lack of football for the rest of the college football season. We won’t try to claim that we don’t enjoy football from time to time although we still don’t quite understand America’s obsession with it. Anyways now that football season is officially over we hope the media can shift its focus to basketball as quickly as possible. So if you have friends who are huge football fans and only care about college basketball for the NCAA Tournament try to get them in on some conference basketball because they will quickly learn their is more to college basketball than the NCAA Tournament.
- One of the subtle changes that will be occurring with conference realignment is the potential movement of conference tournaments from their familiar locations to more functional ones given the new geography of various conferences. In our eyes the two biggest sites are Madison Square Garden and Greensboro Coliseum. Given the disintegration of the Big East it would appear that Madison Square Garden should be opening up and it appears that the ACC is interested in moving the ACC Tournament to the New York City area. It could be a while before that happens as the deadline for bids for the 2016-21 ACC Tournaments already passed with the current bids coming from Atlanta, Charlotte, Greensboro, Tampa, and Washington D.C. Of course, the powers that be could decide to reopen the bidding if they really wanted to get to New York City so it is something to keep an eye on in the future.
- Over the years we have heard a lot of questionable thing about the various basketball academies, but those criticisms are usually focused on lackluster or non-existent academics. In the case of CCSE Preparatory Academy in Roseville, California the allegations are much more concerning as at least four students are alleging that they were subjected to corporal punishment by the school’s president Francis Ngissah, who was arrested and released on $100,000 bail. The students, who pay $10,000 per year for tuition and another $5,000 per year for boarding, but as the link notes there are several questionable aspects about the school not the least of which is its 24 year-old president, who claims he graduated from Harvard, but Harvard couldn’t verify his attendance which the school’s spokesman explains by saying that Ngissah attended Harvard under another name, but refuses to release that name. At this point all we can say is that we continue to question whether the supposed need for these training academies is worth all of the shady activity at them given how lightly regulated they are.
- Speaking of students who actually attended Harvard the scandal the rocked the school and took away any chance of its basketball team being a player on the national stage this season appears to be winding down. According to the school, more than half of the approximately 125 students (approximately 1% of the total undegraduate student body) were required to withdraw from the school for an unspecified period of time. Approximately another quarter received disciplinary probation while the other students did not receive any further punishment. We have not heard which group Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry fell into, but would assume that the punishment would not extend beyond this academic year so t hey should probably be able to return to the team next season.
- While the Manti Te’o circus may have opened up the public’s eyes to the world of catfishing it appears that some programs were aware of it and tried to teach its players how to avoid it. According to some reports Michigan may have engaged in catfishing some of its football players. While some individuals are trying to avoid using the term “catfish” when they describe what happened to their players it appears that they did end up catfishing the players. Our favorite part of the story is a quote attributed to Brady Hoke who describes the female who was used to lure in the football players in this way: “she was hot, now; a very, very nice looking young lady”.