Free Republic

Memorial Day is all about honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, and pro athletes have been part of that mix since World War I. Here's a look at some of the more notable athletes who lost their lives in service: In addition to former Giants infielder Elmer Gedeon (featured in slide No. 8 above), there was one other MLB player killed in World War II. Harry O'Neill appeared in one game as a catcher for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1939. O'Neill joined the Marines and was killed on Iwo Jima in 1945. The Big Ten's football...

Green Bay Packers wide receiver Donald Driver has always been a fan favorite in Wisconsin. But after his win on "Dancing With The Stars" with his dance partner, Peta Murgatroyd, Driver's national profile has increased markedly. That's the word from Brian Lammi, who runs Lammi Sports Management. Lammi has been working with Driver for 10 years to develop his marketing career and recently inked a new 25-year deal to work with the Packers star. "We certainly have felt an immediate increase in PR requests and national media requests," Lammi said. "We also had a number of requests for national speaking...

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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So this assistant basketball coach at Syracuse, this guy -- Fine is his name, Bernie Fine -- has been accused of sexually molesting boys and students for a whole bunch of years. It turns out that ESPN had a tape since 2002 with evidence. ESPN has sat on evidence for nine years because they say they couldn't corroborate it. On the tape the guy's wife cops to it, saying she witnessed it and a ball boy admits it. They say they couldn't corroborate it. I wonder if the coach's name had been Paterno if ESPN woulda sat...

So what manner of a man is this Jerry Sandusky? On Nov. 13, 1999, he received a standing ovation from a crowd of 96,480. It was the occasion of his official retirement as dean of Linebacker U's impenetrable defense. For a long, long time, he was thought to be the successor to Joe Paterno. When he finally decided to leave the fold, after 32 years of unswerving loyalty and uncommon patience, --snip-- It has been over 10 years since Sandusky left Penn State to devote all of his time to the Second Mile, a charitable organization he and his wife...

Spirit Lake Tribal Council representatives announced this morning that legal action has been taken against the NCAA over the Fighting Sioux nickname and logo. According to attorney Reed Soderstrom, representing the Committee of Understanding and Respect, and Archie Fool Bear, individually and on behalf of 1,004 petitioners from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the lawsuit against the NCAA was filed in response to their ruling on the nickname and subsequent sanctions. The lawsuit involves 12 counts, including copyright infringement, lack of jurisdiction and “intentional infliction of emotional distress on the Sioux people.”

Can't be about politics all the time huh? Anyways semi political as the BCS system maybe coming to a swift end with the apparent formation of 4 super conferences and the Big-10, Pac-10 and the ACC\Big East look to consolidate and create a defacto playoff system.

Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams, who won two World Series titles with Oakland and led two other franchises to pennants, has died. He was 82. Williams died from a ruptured aortic aneurysm at a hospital near his home in Henderson, Nev., the Hall of Fame said.

Fri-Sat-Sun (best of 3) Mississippi State at Florida 12pm (Game 1 & Game 2) Stanford at UNC 3pm (Game 1 & Game 2) Texas at Arizona State 7pm (Game 1 & Game 2) Oregon St at Vanderbelt 8pm ( 9pm Game 2) Game 3 , if Necessary, TBD Sat-Sun-Mon (best of 3) UC Irvin at UVA 1pm ( Game 1 & Game 2) Texas AM at FSU 430pm (1pm Game 2) UConn at South Carolina 6pm (7pm Game 2) Dallas Baptist at Cal 8pm (10pm Game 2) Game 3 , if Necessary, TBD

Colt McCoy's Wife Implies Some Texas Football Players Accepted Benefits by Jason Kirk • Jun 7, 2011 5:18 PM EDT Rachel McCoy, wife of former Texas Longhorns QB Colt McCoy, "randomly" called up ESPN radio's Colin Cowherd Tuesday. She was asked what kinds of things her husband was offered against the rules during his playing days in Austin. Here's the audio, and here are some of the key quotes, including one portion that would have had Mack Brown jumping out of his seat if Mack Brown was a big enough Miami Heat fan to listen to Colin Cowherd: Star-divide People...

A drama class in Beginning Improvising and another in Social Dances of North America III were among dozens of classes on a closely guarded quarterly list distributed only to Stanford athletes to help them choose classes. The list, which has existed since at least 2001, was widely regarded by athletes as an easy class list. More than a quarter of the courses on the list did not fulfill university general education requirements. The classes on the list were "always chock-full of athletes and very easy A's," said Kira Maker, a soccer player who used the list her freshman year. Stanford...

It's so easy to look at teenagers in general today and sigh. They're more than a bit lazy, a bit spoiled and more than a bit morally compromised. Two teenagers made national news. One showed common decency and sportsmanship, two virtues seemingly uncommon in that generation. Hope is restored. Sixteen-year-old wrestler Joel Northrup faced a dilemma when he was scheduled to wrestle Cassy Herkelman, one of only two girls to make it to the state tournament. Even though he entered with a 35-4 record, Northrup forfeited rather than violate his religious principles. Cassy's father, Bill Herkelman, praised the Northrup family:...

When it became apparent that his opponent in the state tournament wrestling match would be a girl., e would be facing off against a girl, Joel Northrup, forfeited his match to her.  As a Christian, Joel is serious about his faith, and so he could not in good conscience wrestle with a  girl due to the manner in which a wrestler must grapple with their opponent. If only we had more boys raised to respect the fairer sex as much as Joel has been.   His parents are homeschooling him. but he has been allowed to wrestle with the Lin-Mar...

UC Berkeley’s recent elimination of popular sports programs highlighted endemic problems in the university’s management. Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s eight-year fiscal track record is dismal indeed. He would like to blame the politicians in Sacramento, since they stopped giving him every dollar he has asked for, and the state legislators do share some responsibility for the financial crisis. But not in the sense he means. A competent chancellor would have been on top of identifying inefficiencies in the system and then crafting a plan to fix them. Compentent oversight by the Board of Regents and the legislature would have required him...

 East W L Pct GB Home Road East Cent West Streak L10 New York Yankees 50 31 .617 -- 28-13 22-18 20-11 10-7 9-6 Won 2 6-4 Boston Red Sox 49 33 .598 1.5 29-17 20-16 18-17 10-9 8-2 Lost 1 6-4 Tampa Bay Rays 48 33 .593 2.0 20-19 28-14 19-10 11-6 11-6 Won 2 6-4 Toronto Blue Jays 41 42 .494 10.0 21-19 20-23 13-14 11-9 10-8 Lost 2 2-8 Baltimore Orioles 25 57 .305 25.5 16-25 9-32 9-27 4-6 5-13 Lost 1 5-5  Central W L Pct GB Home Road East Cent West Streak L10 Detroit...

John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach who became an icon of American sports while guiding the Bruins to an unprecedented 10 national championships in the 1960s and '70s and remained in the spotlight during retirement with his "Pyramid of Success" motivational program, has died. He was 99. Though his fame extended beyond the sports world, it was Wooden's achievements during 27 seasons at UCLA that put him in the company of such legendary coaches as the Green Bay Packers' Vince Lombardi and Notre Dame's Knute Rockne. Wooden's string of championships began with back-to-back victories in 1964 and '65. Starting in...

Before the attempted frame-up of innocent lacrosse players in Durham, lacrosse had a good reputation. It may have been seen as an elite sport (or, more truly, a regionally delineated sport); but it was also seen as honest, fun, exciting, and one of the few “sports” remaining which still concerned itself with “sportsmanship”. Then came the lies and the false accusations, and a university which was more concerned with the immediate PR fallout than with standing behind its falsely-accused students. And since it fit the convenient narrative which was being constructed, lacrosse was also lambasted. In Durham, three lacrosse players...

WARNING: Playing baseball is increasingly hazardous to kids' health. That's the message from a California lawmaker who is proposing legislation to impose a three-year moratorium on the use of metal or composite bats in high school baseball games. Assemblyman Jared Huffman is pushing for a crackdown after Gunnar Sandberg, 16, was critically injured while pitching for Marin Catholic High School when he was struck in the head March 11 by a line drive from a player using a metal bat. The San Rafael Democrat called the incident a wake-up call to protect pitchers from laser-like drives hit by "performance-enhancing metal...

On January 13, 2009, HSLDA filed a lawsuit against Florida High School Athletic Association because of its unjustified refusal to allow a homeschool student to play sports for a private school. In 1997, the Florida legislature passed the Craig Dickinson Act. This provision, which allows homeschoolers to participate in the sports programs of public schools and accommodating private schools, is most known for assisting to launch the career of well-known University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. In addition to Tebow, many homeschoolers across the state have benefited from this statute. Last fall, however, one member family ran into difficulty when...

ST. LOUIS (KWMU) - The death of an overweight eighth-grader during football practice has revived the debate over testing of children's hearts before they engage in sports or other strenuous activity. Anthony Troupe Jr. collapsed last week on a suburban St. Louis football field. The 13-year-old known as "Big Ant" for his 6-foot-2-inch, 383-pound body was pronounced dead at a local hospital an hour later. The cause of death won't be available for several weeks pending test results. But the boy's weight, heart and family history are suspect. Anthony's father collapsed and died two years ago at age 45 from...

The controversy over South African athlete Caster Semenya's gender has given the public a view into the complexities of gender. At first blush, the issue should be fairly straightforward: a person is either a male (with an X and a Y chromosome) or a female (with two X chromosomes). But the reality is that a number of conditions can blur the gender line. After her 800-meter final on August 19 at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, the International Association of Athletics Federations announced that they had asked Semenya to undergo tests to verify that she was female, with IAAF...

<p>The gold medal favourite in tonight's women's 800m World Athletics Championships race is today facing claims that she is really a man.</p> <p>South African Caster Semenya, 18, is set to race in tonight's final in Berlin after sailing through a semi-final on Monday in her first major international sporting competition.</p>

Country to perform complex gender test on 800-meter runner Semenya BERLIN - South Africa’s track and field federation had been asked to conduct a gender test on an 800-meter runner amid concerns she does not meet the requirements to compete as a woman. Eighteen-year-old Caster Semenya is a favorite in Wednesday’s 800 final at the world championships. The world track and field federation requested the gender test about three weeks ago, after Semenya burst onto the scene by improving her personal bests in the 800 and 1,500 by huge margins. IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said the “extremely complex, difficult” test...

While Title 9 has increased the participation of young women in high school and college sports, it has done nothing to address the most serious source of catastrophic injuries for young women -- cheerleading. Data from the Consumer Products Safety Commission show that the number of catastrophic injuries -- those involving death or disability caused by head or spine trauma -- have grown from fewer than 5,000 in 1980 to 26,000 to 28,000 per year in the last few years, according to Dr. Amy Miller Bohn, a family medicine specialist at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor....

SCITUATE — A girls soccer coach who told parents of his 6- and 7-year-old charges that he expected his players to “kick ass” has resigned. Michael Kinahan says he “meant to give parents a chuckle” but that people took his message on a the team he dubbed “Green Death” the wrong way. In an e-mail message to parents last week, Kinahan wrote that the girls on his team would “fall, get bumps, bruises and even bleed a little. Big deal, it’s good for them (but I do hope the other team is the one bleeding). “The political correctness police are...

FOX25, myfoxboston - A youth soccer coach is off the job after sending home a shocking letter to his team of 6 and 7-year-old girls. The letter didn't go over so well with parents and the Scituate soccer board and the coach has since resigned. This is Michael Kinahan's letter:

They called it history-making here in Minneapolis. Yesterday, Elissa Reinsma became the first female to compete in the state high school wrestling tournament. It was not a step forward. Some cultures spend a thousand years unlearning the brutality of men toward women.

The N.C.A.A. tournament hasn’t started, and already the women have fallen behind the men, never to catch up. Instead of being part of a sumptuous basketball buffet, the women are treated like leftovers. That’s too bad. And no one deserves more blame than the administrators in charge. Give me the women’s tournament over the men’s any day. Its coaches and players are more accessible and forthcoming. The story lines are plentiful and fresh. The women’s game is exciting to watch, and the players have careers, not auditions. No one who has met the garrulous wiseacre Geno Auriemma could possibly prefer...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Few Connecticut residents are calling foul on UConn men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun's recent outburst to a blogger who pressed him on his $1.6 million annual salary. More than three of every five Connecticut residents surveyed in a new Quinnipiac University poll say Calhoun, the highest-paid public employee in the state, should keep his entire salary rather than donate a portion to help ease Connecticut's fiscal problems. skip The poll came after the press conference in which Krayeske questioned whether Calhoun's salary was appropriate amid Connecticut's spending cuts, anticipated budget shortfalls and other fiscal problems. Calhoun...

How Soccer is Ruining America: A JeremiadBy Stephen H. WebbThursday, March 5, 2009, 12:00 AM Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it. Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people as if they can do no wrong. Every kid is a winner, and nobody is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer came first is hard to say, but soccer is clearly an important means...

They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas. It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through. Did you hear that? The other team's fans? They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions. It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200...

I always thought coaches got fired for losing. On the same day he sent an email refusing to apologize for his team's success, a Texas high school girls' basketball coach was terminated. The coach, Micah Grimes, of Dallas' Covenant School, had come under fire for winning a game 100-0, making national news.

DALLAS (CBS) ― The coach of a Texas high school basketball team that beat another team 100-0 reportedly was fired Sunday, the same day he sent an e-mail to a newspaper stating he will not apologize "for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity" and posted a detailed explanation on a hoops Web site. The Covenant School girls basketball coach Coach Micah Grimes, along with girls from his team, released a statement on the website of the Flight Basketball Academy. Kyle Queal, the headmaster for Covenant School, said in The Dallas Morning News online edition that...

SALEM, Ore. (Legal Newsline) -The University of Oregon was within its rights to jettison its men's wrestling program, a state judge ruled Tuesday. Marion County Circuit Judge Lynn Ashcroft upheld the university's decision to scuttle its intercollegiate wrestling program, saying the school can chose what programs it offers.

Dark Knight Shift: Why Batman Could Exist--But Not for Long Q&A with movement researcher E. Paul Zehr Batman is the most down-to-earth of all the superheroes. He has no special powers from being born on a distant world or bitten by a radioactive spider. All that protects him from the Joker and other Gotham City villains are his wits and a physique shaped by years of training—combined with the vast fortune to reach his maximum potential and augment himself with Batmobiles, Batcables and other Bat-goodies, of course. In the 2005 blockbuster Batman Begins, vengeful Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale)...

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Major league pitcher Joe Kennedy died early Friday morning, a Hillsborough County sheriff's official said. He was 28. Kennedy passed out at home and was brought to a hospital, Hillsborough County sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said. She had no further details. Kennedy's agent, Damon Lapa, told ESPN.com that Kennedy died while at home with family in Florida. He did not return phone calls and an e- mail from The Associated Press. "We were terribly shocked," Blue Jays president Paul Godfrey said. "From what we understand he was in Bradenton ... to be the best man at...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above. Honoring those who have served before. FOOTBALL FACTS Thanks for joining us once again as we look at some football facts. This time we’ll look at "From a regional to a National sport. From 1930-1958" In the early 1930s, the college game continued to grow, particularly in the south, bolstered by fierce rivalries such as the "Third Saturday in October"—a rivalry between Alabama and Tennessee. While prior to the mid-1920s most national powers came from...

WHEN Title IX was passed 35 years ago, high school athletics were an overwhelmingly male pastime. The boys played sports and the girls cheered them on from the sidelines. In the years since, Title IX has radically changed the local high school sports landscape. Once the law banned schools from engaging in gender discrimination in sports, girls flocked by the millions to the fields, courts and swimming pools to join their school teams. Today, a high school without opportunities for girls to play sports is almost unimaginable. Yet as much as things have changed, much has remained the same. Though...

Double Olympic champion Haile Gebrselassie has broken the world marathon record at the 34th Berlin Marathon.The 34-year-old Ethiopian athlete clocked two hours four minutes and 26 seconds to smash Kenya's Paul Tergat previous mark of 2hrs 4.55secs which was set at the same course four years ago...

LONDON (Reuters) - The smallest dinosaur could reach speeds of nearly 40 mph (64 kph) and even the lumbering Tyrannosaurus rex would have been able to outrun most modern-day sportsmen, according to research published on Wednesday.

As Title IX turns 35, the law needs to be reevaluated. Even as Title IX celebrates its 35th anniversary on Saturday, we still hear critics moaning that too many universities are dropping too many men's sports just to stay in compliance with the statute. Basically, Title IX says schools must offer athletic programs in proportion with their gender population. This was reasonably easy to accommodate three decades ago, when President Nixon (of all people) signed Title IX into law. At that time, you see, 55 percent of college students were male.

High School Sports Recruiting Limited By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - Friday night lights are lure enough for young football players, the Supreme Court said Thursday in a decision that upholds limits on high school sports recruiting. The high court ruled in a dispute between a Tennessee athletic association and a football powerhouse, the private Brentwood Academy near Nashville. The school challenged a rule of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, which governs high school sports in the state. The association bars schools from contacting prospective students about their sports programs. Games have rules, wrote Justice John...

LONDON - Running in the most competitive men's marathon field ever, Ryan Hall (Big Bear Lake, Calif.), made his marathon debut in style, finishing seventh at the Flora London Marathon in a time of 2:08:24. Hall's time was the fastest debut marathon for an American man by 1:16. In a field that included multiple Olympic medalists and the current World Record holder, Hall not only ran with the leaders for more than 23 miles but was brave enough to take a turn at the lead before World Marathon champion Jaouad Gharib (MAR) made a bid to break away. As the...

Conventional wisdom holds that sports builds character, but a new survey suggests U.S. high school athletes cheat more than classmates who don't play sports. The two-year study of high school athletes -- conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles -- also found growing acceptance of cheating as a way to gain competitive advantage, the Los Angeles Times reported. Michael Josephson, president and founder of the institute, told the newspaper the report -- based on interviews with 5,275 high school athletes across the United States -- found that many coaches are "teaching our kids to cheat and cut...

The NCAA has appointed yet another female athletic director to help oversee the implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendments to the federal Civil Rights Act. Title IX, in order to create more opportunities for female athletes, simply choked off such chances for male athletes, as wrestlers, for example. Karen Morrison, who will serve as the NCAA director of gender initiatives and student-athlete well-being, comes to the job fresh from a posting as associate athletic director of the University of Colorado at Boulder, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. “I was one of those ‘Title IX babies’ who...

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Just to eliminate any confusion, let's get something straight. There is no way -- not even with a 40-homer, 100-RBI season on the horizon -- that Frank Thomas was returning in 2006 for one more year with the White Sox. This was a franchise that had spent the previous five years counting down the days, minutes and seconds to the instant Thomas and his catalog of contracts finally would be off the books. It was a divorce that was inevitable -- and it had nothing to do with sickness or health. When the dirty laundry got aired...

THE members of the swim team at Bloomington High School South in central Indiana cheer wildly every time Nathan Buffie races. In his two years on the team, Nathan has never won first place at a meet. Often, he finishes far behind. But it is the fact that Nathan even goes into the water and manages to compete at all that his teammates find so remarkable. Nathan, a trim 16-year-old with a boyish smile, has autism, the devastating developmental disorder that makes his participation in any sport or social activity a struggle. “He is probably the worst swimmer on the...

For America's baby boomers, a generation weaned on Jack LaLanne, shaped by Jane Fonda videos and sculpted in the modern-day gym, too much of a good thing has consequences. Encouraged by doctors to continue to exercise three to five times a week for their health, a legion of running, swimming and biking boomers are flouting the conventional limits of the middle-aged body's abilities, and filling the nation's operating rooms and orthopedists' offices in the process. They need knee and hip replacements, surgery for cartilage and ligament damage, and treatment for tendinitis, arthritis, bursitis and stress fractures. The phenomenon even has...

LOS ANGELES -- As a UCLA linebacker in the late 1990s, Ramogi Huma left college after four years with $6,000 in credit card debt. His scholarship paid for tuition, room, board and required books but not incidentals such as phone bills and travel expenses. Coming from a lower-income family, he lacked the funds to cover the difference. "That's where MBNA came in and cleaned house," Huma said of his high-interest credit card. After graduation, Huma lobbied for a bona fide full ride for NCAA athletes, whose standard scholarship package, called a grant-in-aid, is equal to an amount about $2,500 a...

A physical education teacher at a San Carlos middle school is behind bars today, suspected of videotaping female students as they changed clothes, the San Carlos Police Department reported. San Bruno resident Neal Sato, 34, was arrested today after an approximately six-week-long investigation into the Central Middle School teacher's alleged improper behavior, the Police Department reported. Police first became aware of the situation after an eighth-grade student reported that she believed Sato, who also serves as the school's athletics director, had secretly been videotaping her while she changed clothes. After obtaining a search warrant, police detectives reportedly seized computers belonging...