NCAA Blogswarm

Having now seen the tape of the infamous IU/Wisconsin game, I'm really steamed. Despite an apparent conflict of interest, University of Northern Iowa Athletic Director Rick Hartzell and Southern Illinois Trustee Ed Hightower officiated the game. Many of the calls in the game, to put it mildly, stunk. Don't take my word for it, read what the Kentucky fans think (and they certainly have no love lost for IU).

Indiana, a bubble team, ended up losing the game on a series of (what seemed to me, at least) preposterous calls. Even ESPN's announcers mentioned the strange calls against IU. Just a coincidence? Perhaps, but here are the standings for Hartzell's and Hightower's two teams in the MVC, which also appear to be the very definitions of bubble teams:

Southern Illinois 15 3 - .833 25 6 .806 Wichita State 12 6 3 .667 19 8 .704 Northern Iowa 11 7 4 .611 21 9 .700

You may ask why two men -- whose schools have so much to gain by making the NCAA tournament -- are officiating a game involving another bubble team, the Indiana Hoosiers?

Good question. I have the same question. And I think it's one worth asking the NCAA about. Here's some contact information. Be polite and ask them about their policy of referees affiliated with or employed by Division I schools refereeing the games of other schools in direct competition for lucrative NCAA Tournament slots.

I've also included a couple of PR contacts at the NCAA: they can be asked whether the NCAA has reviewed this incident and whether this practice will be prohibited in the future.

Mailbox: Send a message to Division I Basketball Officiating Mailbox The National Collegiate Athletic Association 700 W. Washington Street P.O. Box 6222 Indianapolis, Indiana 46206-6222 Phone: 317/917-6222   Fax: 317/917-6888 Email: Div. I Mens Basketball Officiating Email: Erik Christianson, Director of Public and Media Relations Email: Gail Dent, Associate Director of Public and Media Relations

If you have a blog, please post an article about this practice. As of this writing, there is no mainstream media coverage of this incident or the apparent conflict of interest of this type of practice. And that's just not right, given the huge dollars attached to making the NCAA Tournament.
 

The Future of Blogging

The future of blog-related technologies is not a topic on which I've seen much speculation. As a heavy blogger over, lo, these many (16) months, I present some nebulous thoughts as to blogging directions over the coming months and years.

Blogpresence - first, I'd like to introduce the concept of Blogpresence. That is, a public face for a blogger's identity. Even when you're asleep, you're blogpresence "speaks" for you - even if it's just to say you're unavailable. Blogpresence is roughly equivalent to the instant messaging concept of buddy status. Buddies can put up away messages, or indicate that they're around but busy, or active. Blogpresence will provide a much richer version of buddy status. Implicit with status will come a concept of user identity. Anonymous users will not see as much information as trusted friends. Trusted friends, of course, will get to see additional information about the blogger (contact info, email address, etc.). In other words, blogpresence will morph to fit the user's identity.

Blogmessaging - building upon the concept of blog comments, blogmessaging will incorporate IM and text message into a blog. A trusted friend who wants to get a hold of you will visit your blog and punch a message directly into a text-box on the blog. A routing system will determine how best to deliver the message: via text-messaging, IM, voice-call, email, etc. Anonymous users will get the same message delivered, but only via a low-priority mechanism (say, email).

Blogalog - Amazon and other aggressive Internet retailers will soon embrace the concept of blogalogs, catalogs published by bloggers. If I read a book or listen to a CD, a toolbar add-in in Firefox will let me instantly create a blog entry or sidebar panel for it: link, image, affilliate tie-in (so I get credit for the sale), etc. A blogalog toolbar will make it much easier to pitch merchandise from my blog.

VoxBlogoli - is a term coined, I believe, by Hugh Hewitt that means "voice of the bloggers". Hugh organizes blogswarms on specific topics: say, filibustering of Supreme Court appointments. But VoxBlogoli could be organized by any influential blogger around virtually any topic: a potential conflict-of-interest by NCAA referees, what bloggers thought of the Superbowl commercials, etc. Of special interest to marketers, VoxBlogoli takes the pulse of the blogosphere quickly and efficiently.

Blogflow - based upon a concept I described in August of '04, blogflow is a workflow concept in which the blogger's inbox and outbox are partially made public (at least to trusted users). More useful in intranet situations, blogflow provides ad hoc workflow capabilities and, more importantly, visibility into work-processes that today are completely invisible.

Any other thoughts on future directions? Comments appreciated.
 

Conflict of Interest

I'm an Indiana basketball fan having grown up in the era of Bob Knight. I happened to watch the IU - Wisconsin game last night and was shocked at the horrid officiating. Sure, it's easy to claim you get jobbed by the officials when the calls go against you. But what happens if the announcers notice it, too? And not just once or twice, but multiple times throughout the game. Is something more insidious at work?

Before I get to the conspiracy theory, I'll give you an example. AJ Ratliff is an Indiana freshman who took a runner in the lane during the second half and was literally pulverized. The ball went over the backboard... limbs slapping other limbs... and there was no call. On the other hand, Wisconsin's talented forward Dan Wilkinson, drove against Robert Vaden, lost control, and stumbled into him. The announcers thought it was a travel or an offensive foul. Nope. Foul on Vaden.

What's my point? Just some bad officiating? Check out this bizarre conflict of interest as noted on, of all places, a University of Kentucky message board.

Now I'm not a big conspiracy guy, but take a look at this quote from the Philadelphia Daily News: N is for Northern Iowa, which might be the first tournament school whose athletic director is an active referee (Rick Hartzell). So he won't be working any NIU games in the tournament, just as another elite official, Ed Hightower, won't be working any Southern Illinois games, seeing as how he is on the school's Board of Trustees. Both of the officials mentioned in this paragraph, Rick Hartzell and Ed Hightower, officiated last night's "must-win" Indiana-Wisconsin game. Both of their schools, Northern Iowa and So. Illinois, are bubble teams for at-large bids. Indiana is the definition of a bubble team. Can we say "conflict of interest"? Below is a link to the Hartzell's bio. UNI Athletic Director and Referee

This is an obvious, and completely unacceptable, conflict-of-interest. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars are riding on an NCAA bid... and the AD of a bubble team gets to officiate another bubble team's game.

And even ESPN's announcers noted the off-kilter officiating decisions.

CatsPause: Conflict of Interest

Hearts and Minds

Taranto notes the following contrast. The odds that any position Ted Kennedy takes will be proven wrong are about the same as those that William Hung will continue his "singing career". It's hard to argue with a series of miscalculations when you can still garner free PR.

"Our military and the insurgents are fighting for the same thing--the hearts and minds of the people--and that is a battle we are not winning."--Ted Kennedy, Jan. 27 "Thousands of mostly black-clad Iraqis protested Tuesday outside a medical clinic where a suicide car bomber killed 125 people a day earlier, braving the threat of another attack as they waved clenched fists, condemned foreign fighters and chanted 'No to terrorism!' "--Associated Press, March 1 Interestingly, the text of Kennedy's infamous speech seems to have disappeared from his Web site; the above link is to the Yahoo cache. We guess it's a good sign that he no longer stands by the speech, but we'd think more highly of him if he actually owned up to his mistake. Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

WSJ: Taranto's Best of the Web
 

Bitter and Inane is No Way to Go Through Life, Son

The inane and bitter Richard Cohen spewed forth a few days ago and -- shockingly -- he wrote of the Democratic movement rustling through the Mideast:

...something momentous is stirring: democracy, freedom, independence. Something. Or, as an Arab acquaintance just e-mailed me from the region, "I can smell the winds of change in the air wherever I go." ...

A gracious and glowing concession to the Reaganesque moves of the administration? Of course not.

Given what's happening, it's understandable that many eyes have shifted to Washington with a new sense of appreciation. Could it be that the neocons were right and that the invasion of Iraq, the toppling of Hussein and the holding of elections will trigger a political chain reaction throughout the Arab world? It would be the Middle East equivalent of what happened in Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union finally sank to its knees, took one last breath and crumbled. Maybe... some of us may be prematurely celebrating the changes in the Arab world, possibly mistaking them for what has happened in quite different places. No doubt... "something's coming" -- but, believe me, it may not be what we expect.

Ah, there's the Richard Cohen I know! He's back! Willing to spin any good news for the administration -- and, therefore, the United States -- into foreboding visions of disaster.

And not a mention of George W. Bush.

Yes, Richard Cohen's unblemished record of constipated analysis and failed prediction remains intact. Here's a gem from September, 2003, courtesy of American Thinker:

In diplomacy, in foreign affairs, in the waging of war and maybe in protecting America, he [Bush] has made mistake after mistake. Like Henry Ford II, he may never complain and he may never explain. But when you look back, there's still a wreck in the road.

Richard Cohen's predictions contain all the accuracy of Mizz Suzanne's Psychic Hotline, only without the snappy patter nor the Jamaican accent. I think it's high time someone graded Cohen on his litany of failures, although I'm pretty sure the pathetic number of online visits to his column would plainly indicate just how useless he is.

WaPo: The Inane and Bitter Richard Cohen
 

The Left's New Meme: Democracy in the Mideast? Just a coincidence!

Hugh Hewitt, once again, lays down a startling riff that should be required reading by everyone who votes. Including the felons and dead guys who apparently cast gubernatorial ballots recently in Washington state.

What gets Hugh started? The Left's new meme, starting with Ed Kilgore at TalkingPointsMemo, that the democracy movement in the Middle East has, well, absolutely nothing to do with President Bush! It's all a coincidence! Here's Kilgore:

...[it] never crossed my mind that Bush's fans would credit him with for this positive event, as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment... Barring any specific evidence (provided, say, by Lebanese pro-democracy leaders) that Bush had anything in particular to do with Syria's setbacks in Lebanon, I see no particular reason to high-five him for being in office when they happened.

Hugh's retort eviscerates Kilgore, who has sufficient chutzpah to attempt to discredit Reagan's remarkable handling of the Cold War...

Here's Lech Walesa on Reagan: "When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989." As with the Poles, so with the Lebanese --they are putting their lives on the line to face down their oppressors. But American policy stands with them and encourages them, and pressures the dictators not to strike back, and threatens the tyrants if they do. The refusal to recognize that American policy does indeed have consequences is yet another exhibit in the huge array of arguments as to why Democrats cannot be trusted to run the nation's foreign policy --- they don't think it matters. Kilgore's dissmissiveness of presidential rhetoric --"as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment"-- isn't just a misguided slam at W, it is an admission of awesome ignorance of the power of the American president to shape a world through words, a failure of imagination and an admission of an inexperience with foreign affairs that makes you question his commentary on literally everything... If you don't understand the power of the presidency, then you and your candidates ought not to be trusted with it, for it will end up a replay of the Carter experiment with presidential "small ball," where resignation to events is the dominant theme, and America's enemies to set the tempo and most of the rules. Democrats have spent more than 15 years trying to deny Reagan his role in bringing down the Soviets. I suppose they will be trying to minimize Bush's role in introducing democracy to the Arab world for an even longer period of time. Both efforts ask the public to set aside the facts they have witnessed and watch the Michael Moore movie over here, with post viewing commentary provided by Howard Dean. It didn't work with Reagan and it won't work with Bush...

Hugh Hewitt: Reconnecting the Dots
 

Appeasement Redux

It's like a really bad horror movie where the mummy keeps getting back up, even though it's been shot, set afire, run over with a car, and pulverized with a wrecking ball. The Europeans, insistent on continuing down their path of self-destruction are willing to give the Mullahs yet another pass. Let's trade some airplanes for a promise not to build nukes!

Yes, the Mullahs are just the guys that you want to play patty-cake with, given their unceasing support for terrorists of all stripes (including Al Qaeda) and their prior promises to nuke Israel into molten rubble.

I certainly can't say I understand the administration's apparent willingness to embrace, even temporarily, a soft line on Iran. But it's always worth remembering that the US recently sold Israel $320 million worth of bombs, including 500 BLU-109 warheads, one-ton "bunker busters"that can penetrate five meters of reinforced concrete.

Trusting the Mullahs, the world's foremost sponsors of terror, is a phenomenally bad idea. It's kind of like inviting Dennis Rodman to house-sit over Spring Break. The only surprises you're going to get won't be good ones.

The governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency is in session this week in Vienna, and today it will review the latest batch of evidence concerning Iran's violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These violations include: • Refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect all areas of the Parchin military site near Tehran, which the U.S. suspects is involved in illicit nuclear research. • Failure to disclose construction of a tunnel under the nuclear site of Isfahan. • The unresolved question of how weapons-grade uranium was detected on Iranian centrifuges. • A document describing technical assistance offers received from nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan dating back to 1987. Sounds bad. So what does the Administration intend to do?

WSJ: Carrots for the Mullahs - A surefire path to a nuclear Iran.