Ed. Update (02.08.09 @ 9:30pm EST) – the Ebay listing has been removed.  The below screen grab is the only evidence remaining.

We all know that securing tickets to one of the annual Duke-Carolina matchups is a difficult task (particularly in the 9,000 seat Cameron Indoor Stadium), but sensing that change is indeed in the air, North Carolina state senator Eddie Goodall (R-Mecklenberg) has decided to offer his senate seat for a pair of tickets to next Wednesday’s game.  Channelling ousted Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich, Goodall didn’t choose to reach out to Jesse Jackson, Jr.; rather, his choice of a targeted customer base was… Ebay?

See, Goodall has for some cockamamie reason put his actual senate seat, as in his chair, on Ebay.  We know the economy’s bad and all, but you’d think that the NC Senator’s salary of $13,951 per annum would leave him in much better shape than that.  Ok, probably not, but his tax and financial consulting business probably enabled him to buy the monogrammed $787.95 chair in the first place.  A CBS Sportsline report that broke the story today suggests that Goodall cannot legally sell either one of his seats – physical or political – which begs the question as to what his orginal motive was here.  He claims that the whole thing is an “elaborate goof,” but that rings about as hollow as the assertion of yellowcake in Niger.

We’ll have to wait to see what happens with the chair, but we can rest assured of one thing – Goodall may have played ball at UNC-Charlotte instead of Chapel Hill, but he’s clearly no Dook fan.

Folks, we’re only five weeks from the first games… just sayin…

• Sixteen months after agreeing to return to Florida after about-facing on the Orlando Magic job, Billy Donovan finally signed his contract. 
• Fooling with the Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun setup of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament because of gas prices is pure folly – surely the NCAA isn’t that stupid, is it?
• This is a pretty interesting NY Times article on how YouTube is changing the world of prospect identification and recruiting. 
• More foolishness involving the Gazelle Group – they’re apparently trying to move UMass to a different subregional in the CvC at the last minute.
• The difficulty of playing in the Big East, where 9 teams could be top-25 worthy this year.  Although Jameson at B/R makes a compelling argument that Georgetown is wildly overrated this year.
• Ok, so it turns out that the George Mason F4 rings on Ebay were stolen and will be returned to the rightful owner, Dr. Scherrens.  Nice investigative work by Chris Brooks over at B/R. 
• Gary Parrish continues with his ‘seedy underbelly’ offseason theme.
• So what you’re saying is that the SEC will get seven teams in the NCAA Tournament next year (and deserve four)?
• So who wants to bet on which coach will have the better 08-09 campaign – Marquette’s Buzz Williams or Indiana’s Tom Crean?

Man, we really hope that GMB‘s take on this is true, and this ring belongs to some administrative office schlep that wasn’t really a part of the greatest Cinderella story in a generation.  

So how much would you bid for a claim to history? 

Maybe some enterprising UConn fans could pool their trust funds to buy up all of these and erase all evidence of their epic E8 loss to George Mason from public consciousness. 

Ebay auctions are here and here. 

For Carolina basketball fans, the title of this post has significant meaning beyond the city of Motown and its crappy cars.   Some of our younger readers may recall that in 1996 Jeff McInnis was the hotheaded starting point guard for the Tar Heels.  That version of the Heels was decent, with a nascent Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter as freshmen, but the “star” of the show (at least in his mind) was clearly the junior McInnis.

According to rumors flying around the Triangle area that year, McInnis was more than just a star on the basketball court.  You couldn’t go a Harris Teeter in Cary or Hillsborough without hearing that he had procured some extra practice time with assistant coach and Carolina legend Phil Ford’s wife.  Duke fans, in all their ribald ingenuity, queried on signs whether Jeff had “driven a Ford lately?”  From Josh Levin at Slate:

Sometimes the whispers get so loud that one of the subjects goes public to defend his reputation. In 1996, practically everyone in North Carolina had heard the gossip that University of North Carolina point guard Jeff McInnis had been sleeping with Phil Ford’s wife. In his book A March to Madness, sportswriter John Feinstein delicately alludes to Duke fans razzing McInnis about “personal animosity between him and assistant coach Phil Ford.” As that year’s NBA draft neared, McInnis broke the official silence when he told the Charlotte Observer that Orlando Magic staffers had quizzed him about the allegations that he was leaving school early due to the fallout from an affair with Ford’s wife. His answer: “Nothing ever happened. She is often hugging players. … The Duke people blew the whole thing up.”

That was over a decade ago.  Since then Phil Ford had a couple of well-publicized DUIs and was released by the Fiasco Otherwise Known as Matt Doherty, and has spent the last couple of years working in an education fundraising capacity for UNC, and now, the Charlotte Bobcats.  So why is this all relevant today? 

Well, because now you too can purchase a piece of Phil Ford history (nagging not included)!  His 2000 Final Four ring earned as an assistant coach is on Ebay, and it costs five g’s.  Mewonders whether McInnis ever spent that much on Mrs. Ford (h/t AOL Fanhouse).