The Plane Truth: the University of Minnesota needs to give Richard Pitino a bigger travel budget

It’s no real secret that the University of Minnesota’s men’s basketball program really hasn’t lifted off under the tutelage of Richard Pitino. It’s widely known that the players that have graced Dinkytown during Pitino’s reign haven’t exactly been the best characters in the world with PR nightmares ranging from sex tapes on social media to an arrest for sexual assault. All of those are big problems, Richard Pitino’s travel expenses, and apparent overages on them, are not a problem.

Pitino’s travel expenses were thrown into the spotlight via the Star Tribune when it was revealed that the young coach had gone past his budgeted $150,000 over the past two fiscal years and had actually spent $325,000 over that span.

First of all, this overspending was approved by then-current Athletic Director Norwood Teague. Can you really overspend your budget when it is approved by your superior? Sure, that superior is a creep and is gone from the University now, but you can’t change the game on Pitino after the game was played.

Second, there is no real reason the University needs to be looking at the books of the athletic department. Athletics are self-funded, they spend the money that they make, and, to the best of my knowledge, are not taking money from the rest of the school. They are basically a standalone entity using the name of the school and its students to run itself. As long as the department isn’t stealing money from academic departments and is still operating at a sustainable level, President Eric Kaler and the Board of Regents should get their nosy noses out of athletics’ business. The nosy-ness probably comes from the hire of Teague and his later dismissal, but this is what happens when you hire an AD that had never overseen a football team before. That hire wasn’t a smart big boy move in a school that should be with the big boys.

Speaking of which, this paragraph is integral in the Star Tribune story:

“Elsewhere, other coaches have bigger private jet budgets. Rick Pitino, Richard’s father and the coach at Louisville, has a reported annual budget of $250,000 for private jet travel. At Kentucky, John Calipari spent more than $342,000 in 2013-14. In the Big Ten, Indiana spent $569,000 on chartered planes for all of its coaches to recruit that year. At Ohio State, Thad Matta is given a budget of $65,000 or roughly 11 hours, for recruiting, as well as an additional 15 hours of jet time for private use.”

His father has four times the budget at Louisville. Conference rival Indiana has over 11 times the budget. Thad Matta at Ohio State has well over double the budget if you factor in the private use hours. If you want to play with the big boys, the $50,000 budget that Pitino has isn’t going to get you anywhere close to the best schools in the country or, more importantly, close to the recruits you need to be successful. Hell, these other schools probably hire someone to fill up their head coaches’ rental car gas tanks, too. Pitino was flagged in the audit for returning rental cars without a full gas tank.

Pitino has this team in a mess, but his overuse of private plans isn’t a problem. The real plain plane problem is the lack of a reasonable travel budget for the head coach of a profitable sport at a Division One school.

Mark Coyle has more than enough on his plate as the new AD of the Gophers, but he should be adjusting the private plane budget before his new business cards are even made. The next basketball coach will greatly enjoy the added privilege if Pitino leads the Gophers to 8-23 again.

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A Riot Before A Riot: The Media, Police and University to Blame in Dinkytown ‘Riots’

If you head over to Dinkytown, the best-known college village literally steps from the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus, at bar close or any time in the later evening, you’ll see a lot of interesting stuff. Primarily, you’ll see a lot of college kids who have probably had a couple too many and are attempting to make their way home. That should have been the case on Saturday night.

At 6:30 Minneapolis time, the puck dropped on the NCAA National Championship hockey game in Philadelphia. Minnesota’s Golden Gophers played the role of Goliath, Union College played the role of David and, as usual, David won. Apparently, the Dinkytown dwellers were supposed to riot.

It was a likely scenario, right? They had just kind of, sort of had done just that when the Gophers beat arch rival North Dakota in the semi-finals. It was a riot full of, well, not a whole lot of rioting. Students were taking pictures with police officers, so obviously the enforcement wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with duties.

Flash-forward to Saturday night, throngs of cops and media showed up in Dinkytown; the former to keep the peace, the latter to report on the pending riot. The funny thing is that they caused the riot.

College students are the biggest group influenced by the theory of monkey see, monkey do. Students walk out of the bars and see police, mounted police, a State Patrol helicopter and a tank, seriously, and it hits them that they should be doing something bad. It’s what they are supposed to be doing, right?! That’s why everyone is there.

I assume there was probably a couple extra hundred people in Dinkytown because it was the National Championship game, but otherwise it would have probably been the typical Thursday-Sunday night on a college campus. Let’s not over-fascinate a common happening.

This brings me to the following example from KMSP, the FOX affiliate in Minneapolis – St. Paul, who had this beautiful piece of field reporting.

It shouldn’t come as a shock that drunken frat boys are the same to a lighted TV camera as a moth is to a flame. Did you seriously think you could go a legitimate live-shot in the middle of what you and your competitors blew out of the water and built up as a riot before the puck even dropped on Saturday night?

The University of Minnesota’s President Eric Kaler stating there would be a zero tolerance policy and announcing the extra police presence just added gas to the barely-lit fire. Let the kids be kids.

Do the police have to be there? Of course they do. Do they need to start attacking and pepper spraying? Absolutely not.

Does the media need to be there? Yes, it is a story. Is it right for the media to force feed a ‘riot’ days before it happens? No.

Drunken kids might have been a little rowdy, but all young people between the ages of 17-22 imitate what they see on their Twitter feeds, movies and TV shows. Say the kids were out of line, but don’t act like the adults in this scenario didn’t overreact.

Monkey see, monkey do.

The Ballad of Sid Hartman: Sadness In The Punching Bag Taking Another Punch

Picture via: http://images.publicradio.org/content/2008/02/11/20080211_sidhartman_33.jpg
Picture via: http://images.publicradio.org/content/2008/02/11/20080211_sidhartman_33.jpg

Usually when I shake my head at Sid Hartman it’s on Sunday nights during The Sports Show, but we all received a special Sid bit on Thursday. Hartman reported in his Thursday column for the Star Tribune that the University of Minnesota would be building a $70 million practice facility for the Golden Gopher football team. Which would be a pretty big story, except it’s not true.

Minnesota hockey godfather Lou Nanne said during his weekly interview on 1500ESPN that it wasn’t true and Chris Werle, senior associate athletic director at the U, confirmed Nanne’s statement.

I wonder who’s angrier: Sid or the poor guy that has to ghostwrite all of Sid’s columns. Does Sid get the information for his columns and has someone write them? Did Sid totally dream this up? There are a lot of questions.

Getting a report on a building wrong is not the end of the world and reading the comments congratulating Sid on the great scoop and then seeing those people realizing that it had been reported as false later in the day is pretty fun, but it’s sad to see. It’s another punchline to the punching bag that has become Sid Hartman.

Sid Hartman had to be pretty good at this journalism thing at one time, he has a statue outside Target Center for crying out loud, but he hasn’t been for a while now. As a 20-year-old Minnesota sports fan, Sid has always been in my life. Since I’ve been conscious of who Sid Hartman is, so about 10 years, he’s been a laughingstock.

I don’t know if Sid actually wrote the column or even if it is his own information, but it’s just sad to see this happen to the 94-year-old man. It appears Sid is probably on the retirement tour with the estate sale and Sid Hartman Day at Target Field and I wish he’d go out on top, at least the best way he could.

The man was the General Manager of the Minneapolis Lakers when he was 27 in 1947, think about how cool that is. I really wish I wasn’t shaking my head.

I Called Philip Nelson’s Transfer Four Months In Advance

 

Credit: Mike Carter-USA TODAY Sports
Credit: Mike Carter-USA TODAY Sports

I don’t want to claim that I can see into the future, but I might just be able to see into the future. My future sensing might only apply to Minnesota Golden Gopher football, which is not the best thing to be able to see the future of, but I guess that I’ll take it.

On September 21, 2013 I tweeted the following:

I looked up the box score and game story on what game and why I tweeted this. ESPN’s lede paragraph is the exact reason:

Quarterback Mitch Leidner rushed for 151 yards and four touchdowns to lift Minnesota to a 43-24 victory over San Jose State on Saturday.

If Philip Nelson had his phone on the sidelines, I think he probably would have tweeted the same thing.

Nelson announced he would transfer in late January.

Power Ranking the Potential Acts at TCF Bank Stadium for July 2014

A view of the football field at TCF Bank Stadium during Gopher football.
A view of the football field at TCF Bank Stadium during Gopher football.

As a music geek, I love a good drum line. I find it pretty cool for a bunch of people with one type of instrument to make a whole song sound full. I’ll never love drumming more than I do than the fact that Drum Corps International has to move their annual date for their competition at TCF Bank Stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Why? Per a press release, Drum Corps International was knocked off for ‘a major concert’.

This major concert will correlate with the MLB All-Star Game that will be occurring at Target Field in downtown Minneapolis this summer. A concert is fun and all, but the Star Tribune’s list of potential semi-educated guesses is what makes it fun.

The Strib points to Prince, Garth Brooks, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, and Kenny Chesney as the potential headliners at the second major concert to happen at The Bank.

I’m going to power rank who I want it to be and you won’t be surprised, but the thought of one out of 50% of this group happening is amazing.

6. Pearl Jam – I’m not a Pearl Jam guy. I haven’t listened to a lot of Pearl Jam. There is no Pearl Jam in my music library. Sorry, Pearl Jam.

5. Kenny Chesney – Kenny is extremely popular in the country music world, I know because I live there. Kenny has been to Minnesota two years in a row at Target Field, he doesn’t need to come again. Plus, currently Chesney has no tour plans for this summer making him a so-so candidate in the first place. If Kenny has a fantastic opening act, I’ll go. I like Kenny just not enough to break the bank.

4. Prince – The Strib pointed out that Prince hasn’t done a major show in Minnesota in a long time and it would be cool if he was the guy. I don’t know if I would pay super bucks to see Prince, but it’s a for sure sellout. Prince puts on a hell of a show apparently, too.

3. Bruce Springsteen – You know it’s a good list when I put Springsteen at number three. I love Bruce and if it’s Bruce, Lord knows that I’ll put a lot of good money down to see him again. Bruce is the live king and he’ll be on tour in America later this summer. This might make the most sense on an already on-tour basis. The Boss and the E Street Band just slip because of who else is on the list.

2. Paul McCartney – Sir Paul is one of the performers on my bucket list and, to paraphrase something Springsteen said in a recent interview, you can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. McCartney isn’t going to be around forever, no less touring forever, and I want to see him before one of us leaves the game. The ex-Beatle is still figuring out 2014 tour plans, so this would be a good thing to start the setting of his plans.

1. Garth Brooks – I’ve been a Garth Brooks fan my whole life. I’m young enough though that by the time I was of concert going age that Garth Brooks had taken his hiatus to spend time with his girls in Oklahoma. I’m ready to see Garth. It’s one thing I’ve been looking forward to in my music loving career since I can remember, the problem is that this probably won’t be the venue. Garth will come to town, I’m 110% positive of that, but this is before his big she-bang in Ireland. The Strib points out this would be a good tune-up, but when Garth does something, he does it big. Other than maybe a couple more Vegas dates, I’d expect Garth to fire it up in Ireland and keep it trucking until the big rig runs out of fuel. I hope I’m wrong.

Update: The following from the Pioneer Press’ Charley Walters:

Contrary to rumors elsewhere, Bruce Springsteen will not be the concert’s performer. Neither will be Garth Brooks. Baseball is still considering concert performers. The show is expected to include multiple acts.

If it truly is going to be multiple acts, that means there’ll be little to no big names. Have fun with that lovers of mediocre bands.