I just detest reality shows in general, whether it's "American Idol", "The Great Race", "Survivor" or anything involving Ashton Kutcher. I get why we have so many of them. Hell, it's cheaper to bring in a bunch of unknowns and pay one of them a huge prize at the end of the season as opposed to bringing in real actors, and hiring real writers to create something interesting. Just bring in a few unfulfilled egomaniacs, toss in a few has beens that do have something resembling name recognition to act as judges, and let the folks at home have something to do with who wins if humanly possible and then just let the camera's roll.
However, as the debacle in lawrence, kansas continues to unfold, I may have to change my opinion. This has been like an MTV series full of self self indulgent exhibitionists trying to live together in a house, but also more twists than an entire season of "24". I fully expect Jack Bauer to pop in at any minute and attempt to get lew perkins spirited out of lawrence just ahead of the bad guys that are attempting to assassinate him, or kidnap his kid or some such shit.
So let's take a look at some of the things that have been going on in larryville. We know that 5 former employees of the university, plus the husband of one of those employees have been accused of stealing tickets that were supposed to be distributed to friends, family and members of the Williams Fund, and sold them to various unsavory characters such as David Freeman who started all this. In an attempt to buy his way out of a bribery charge of a Junction City judge, he offered up this tale of stolen tickets that he was distributing to characters in Kansas City hotels to "guys with guns and thick Jersey accents". It appears that over 17,000 basketball tickets and over 2,000 football tickets, parking passes and luxury suites were sold to the highest bidders over several years and most of those employees were put in place by none other than the messiah of kansas athletics, lew perkins.
Now a lot of beak fans that I see on message boards say this is nothing more than a few bad apples that took advantage of lew's trusting nature. However, I just happen to have a drinking buddy that attended the university of kansas and also happens to be a retired judge on the federal court of appeals. He presented a far less optimistic view of what is taking place right now.
In his opinion, and I have to believe he knows a thing or 2 about the law, David Freeman has had his date to appear at the prison postponed for 30 days, so it's more than likely that the feds are talking with him again. If what he said is true, then we're looking at not only theft, but interstate trafficking, fraud, possible collusion with perkins, Big XII officials, Dan Beebe, ncaa officials, Orange bowl officials and God knows who else. I mean my buddy is nervous as hell, and he really doesn't care that much about athletics. What disturbs him is that if this could be proven to go high enough, that the university could lose it's tax exempt status and donors could be facing retroactive audits for their donations for the past 10 years or so. I don't expect this to happen, but we are in uncharted territory right now. We've never seen anything resembling this.
And now, we get to the week of the annual Big XII meetings in Kansas City, where the commissioner, or as I like to call him; one huge dumbass, Dan Beebe, will be attempting to get Colorado, Nebraska and Missouri to pinkie swear a loyalty oath to not listen to any overtures from any other conference and stay in the Big XII for as long as Texas deems the conference worth of their presence. God know actually taking care of some problems such as the rampant cheating we've seen done by both kansas and Oklahoma in the past few months to decades depending on your perspective. I just don't know what it is, but when I see a photo of this boob I just want to kick something. Anyway, it appears to be a dead heat as to what off season news will be bigger; potential realignment of conferences or if the entire athletic department at the university of kansas will be getting fitted for orange jumpsuits in the next couple of years. But whichever happens, it's been a fun summer so far.
Oh, and I feel badly that I teased about having a pictorial tribute to Jennifer Love Hewitt (who I consider to be one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen) and it has yet to come to fruition. It's just that between all the Missouri/Nebraska to the Big Ten talk and now with the goings on at the university of kansas, I just haven't had time. So, just for my own enjoyment, here is a little taste for all of us. I hope you all had a great holiday weekend. I certainly did. And I wake up most every morning eager to get to the internet to read the news and see just what screwed up in lawrence overnight.
No comments:
Post a Comment