It became something of a political football involving a basketball coach when Texas gave Rick Barnes a $200,000 raise recently.
According to the Associated Press, a few Texas state legislators objected strongly last week when the University of Texas increased a scheduled $75,000 raise to $200,000 for the veteran Longhorns coach.
To the many Sonny Jurgensen fans out there, I hear you.
Dozens of you are coming in loud and clear with your emails and telephone messages in response to my top 25 all-time list of ACC quarterbacks, which ran in Wednesday’s print edition.
Thanks for the impressive response and let me state up front that as a pure passer in the NFL, the former Duke player had few rivals.
On the day Sidney Lowe was hired to coach N.C. State’s basketball team, he called it “a dream come true.”
That was in early May of 2006 -- a time when dreams were rampant in and around a program desperate for new hope.
There were good reasons to believe in Lowe, who parted ways with N.C. State today.
No one was more closely identified with Wolfpack oomph than Lowe, the point guard and floor leader on a 1983 NCAA championship team that was 15-10 entering its final regular-season game.
Three conclusions to be drawn from Wednesday’s first Duke vs. Carolina game of the season, a frantic 79-73 Blue Devil win.
Shoot or get shot.
The adage may be as old as basketball itself, but it's one worth bringing up again after weekend tournament setbacks for North Carolina and N.C. State.
A Southern Miss upset win at Central Florida has given ECU a hope for new life in the Conference USA East race.
Central Florida, ranked 25th nationally, took a 31-21 loss and now must close the season with road games at Tulane and Memphis.
Athletic director Debbie Yow’s decision last week to leave Maryland for N.C. State could lead to some chaos in the Terps' football offices.
Yow, in February of last year, made the decision to hire offensive coordinator James Franklin as head coach upon the resignation or retirement of Ralph Friedgen. Franklin, 38, got a big pay raise and the guarantee of a million dollar parachute should someone else follow Friegden.
That outcome now seems likely.
While Friday’s 87-71 loss to Syracuse was both staggering and humiliating for North Carolina’s basketball team, the experience should provide the Tar Heels with a valuable measuring stick.
For an inexperienced, still-uncomfortable team, which Carolina is, Syracuse amounted to the perfect early-season storm.
If there's an ironic upside for ECU's fans to the team's disappointing performances in a narrow win over Appalachian State and pair of sobering losses at West Virginia and North Carolina, it has to be that Skip Holtz's lamp has dimmed.
Had the Pirates done as some pundits expected and opened 3-0, Holtz by now would be Topic-A among the thousands of disgruntled Virginia who are sizing up Al Groh's office for a new occupant, with more schools in similar situations to soon follow.
Pressed to choose, some ECU football fans no doubt would still rate the team’s only victory in UNC’s Kenan Stadium, on Oct. 25, 1975, as the most special in school history.
The 38-17 win that afternoon by Pat Dye’s second team has a lot of best-ever competition, of course. But there’s little question that the circumstances surrounding the upset were memorable. A day before the game, ECU football patriarch and athletics director Clarence Stasavich died suddenly. Many Pirate fans didn’t even get the news until an hour or so before game time.
