by John Walters
A Medium Happy birthday to a pair of geniuses in their respective fields, Stephen Curry (28) and….
…to this man, who turns 137 (although isn’t time relative, so who cares how old you are?)..
A Schism at Yale
Last month Jack Montague, a senior at Yale and the captain of the Bulldog basketball team, was expelled from the Ivy League institution due to sexual misconduct. Yale never publicly disclosed that he was expelled or why. However, after Montague’s teammates wore T-shirts in support of him before a February 26 home game, a serious and organized backlash against them began to take shape on campus. The team was admonished to “Stop Supporting a Rapist” even though Montague has never been charged with a crime.
Rape is a serious and underreported crime on college campuses. On the other hand, the enthusiasm and vigor that many on Yale’s campus have displayed in rushing to label one of their former fellow students as a rapist harkens back to literature that they may have read in their AP English classes, be it “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Ox-Bow Incident” or “The Crucible.”
On Friday I sat down with one Yale student who is a little bewildered by what he has seen the past month in New Haven. No one here is declaring Montague’s innocence or guilt. But Yale and Montague’s accuser are not about to come forward with details of this incident, and Montague has not, either. In the absence of information a group of students have hijacked the issue, and by doing so have wittingly or unwittingly branded a young man as a rapist. But rape is a crime, and no one has been charged with a crime.
You can expect to hear/see a public statement about this case at some point this week. If circumstances change, I’ll print the interview with the student I met. For now, it is in the Hold bin.
2. Monmouth, Park Yourself
Everyone’s favorite bench mob failed to garner an NCAA invite after losing its conference final to Iona.
We will miss you at the Big Dance, Monmouth. Apparently a 27-7 record and the most entertaining bench in college hoops in recent years is not quite enough to be one of the 68 teams in the NCAA tournament. Someone, perhaps Monmouth, missed out on the NCAA tourney due to UConn hitting a buzzer-beating 70-foot shot on Friday in the AAC tournament. That’s the way the ball bounces in March.
3. Bracket Leakage
There is a God, after all
Those questioning the existence of a God or higher power, consider that somehow the entire NCAA tournament bracket was leaked on Twitter last night, subverting the primacy of CBS’s awkward two-hour selection show. Larry and Cheryl melded with the Blacks when they moved in than CBS’ college hoops crew did with TNT’s “Inside the NBA” crew last night. It’s a failed and flawed idea.
4. The East Is a Beast
Buddy Hield has a little problem with this bracket
North Carolina, Xavier, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Notre Dame. Those are the top six teams in the East. It was nice knowing you, Irish.
Meanwhile in the West, three of the top six seeds are Big 12 schools: No. 2 Oklahoma, No. 5 Baylor and No. 6 Texas. And there’s former Big 12 school Texas A&M at No. 3.
The South is the softest bracket. After the nation’s No. 1 team, Kansas, the next three seeds are Villanova, Miami and Cal.
Medium Happy Final Four: Kansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Michigan State.
5. Mad Max: Flurry Road
So, snow tires?
If ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” still existed, the sport of Ice Car Racing would certainly be featured. This takes place near the town of LaPorte, Minnesota, on Garfield Lake. Read more about it here.
Music 101
I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day (Jock Stewart)
It’s St. Patrick’s Day week here at Medium Happy, and we have a long history with Irish folk songs (which we love!). We’ll feature five of our favorites this week. This traditional folk song has by covered more famously by The Pogues more recently, but here’s a more authentic version.
Remote Patrol
Better Call Saul
10 p.m. AMC
At this point, do you even have to ask what to watch on Monday nights?
I’m sure you could have done this in previous brackets, but I feel like someone with knowledge of the sport could develop a respectable argument for this scenario:
Oklahoma, the 2-seed in the West region, could win the national title by only playing two teams outside of the Big 12 (outside of the first four games, you need 6 wins to win the title). If OU were to surpass 15-seed CSU Bakersfield in the 1st round, they’d play the winner of Oregon State/VCU. With a win in the second round, a potential matchup with fellow Big 12 rival Texas (6-seed) could be awaiting them in the Sweet 16.
5-seed Baylor is also in the West, as noted by JW, to which degree they’d have to go through Yale and (most likely) Duke and Oregon (although the experts say St. Joseph’s is hot). If Baylor were to advance that far (not too unrealistic; they are a 5-seed after all), they’d play Oklahoma in the Elite Eight.
If Oklahoma were to advance versus Baylor, another Big 12 matchup could be awaiting them in the Final Four: Kansas.
And probably most far-fetched of them all, Oklahoma could play either West Virginia, Texas Tech or Iowa State in the championship game. I’m going to say it is safe to say TT won’t be there and most likely not Iowa State, either (would have to go through Virginia, Michigan State and potentially Kentucky, North Carolina or West Virginia).
Therefore, if Oklahoma were to play four Big 12 teams in this year’s tournament, it would go as follows (seed in parenthesis):
Sweet 16: vs Texas (6)
Elite Eight: vs Baylor (5)
Final Four: vs Kansas (1)
Championship: vs West Virginia (3)
Seed-wise, that really isn’t all that implausible.
Want to know my I-Don’t-Care Final Four? Well, here: Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Michigan State
If you look at the “wayback machine”, archive.org which archives web pages, you’ll find that the link to the printable bracket on CBS sports site has been mapped 103 times since 2011 (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/ncaa-tournament/brackets/printable_men).
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the file with the bracket was placed in the appropriate directory during the Selection Show (though not linked yet) and some enterprising geek typed it in and found it.
Excellent Newsweek article on the Yale case. I find how Yale handled this situation an abomination as I do ALL attempts to use Title IX as a way to MAKE colleges & universities investigate/accuse/punish any incident deemed “sexual malfeasance”. A few decades ago I wrote numerous college papers about Title IX & its necessity. I supported it. I demanded it. But NOT for this. Colleges do not have the money or expertise to investigate such alleged crimes. This should SOLELY be the domain of the legal authorities. What we now have instead are secret hearings without due process & rampant rumors that destroy the reputation & future of the accused.
Justice has a price & total disclosure in a court of LAW is part of the payment.
If Montague ever wants to restore his reputation & future, he will have to sue not only Yale but the accuser. And perhaps pursue criminal charges. It is unconscionable to me that unsubstantiated he said-she said testimony a YEAR after the alleged ‘crime’ is enough to expel someone out of any college. If a crime occurred, why didn’t she go to the police & have charges filed?
As for the Yale students & others who rushed to the alleged “victim’s” defense AND verbally attacked the already expelled accused, was NOTHING learned from the Duke lacrosse team fiasco (10 year anniversary this week!) or the more recent Rolling Stone UVA alleged gang rape travesty?
Yale failed. And our federal government is failing all colleges & universities in regards to how any campus ‘sexual’ crime should be handled.
The Yale situation is one that should concern us all.
I’m not going to debate the case at the center of all this but the process that was undertaken at Yale that has destroyed a young man’s future without due process or without consideration of the rights we all assume are inalienable, that are the foundation of our justice system, a system implemented to deal with these kinds of events.
1. The Yale disciniplary board should only be dealing with complaints that are not covered under the criminal code, i.e. cheating, plagerism, etc. They are not a criminal investigative force or a legal procedure body.
2. As soon as Yale, or any other educational body, is made aware of a CRIMINAL complaint, their first call should be to the legal/police authorities in their jurisdiction. Yale then is out of it and it trusts and stands behind the innocent until proven guilty mandate that is at the cornerstone of our justice system.
3. Once the proper authorities have investigated the case, brought or not brought official charges, or a conviction is achieved, then Yale can write into its code of conduct that if a student is convicted of a felony, they will be expelled.
It’s not that complicated. If this kind of thing happened in a corporation or in the “real” world, would any of us support the board of governors or the neighbourhood watch committee deciding our fate? Anyone’s fate?
Yale is widely acclaimed as one of our finest educational institutions but in this case they get a monumental fail. And we should all be concerned that in reality, you and your rights are safer off campus than on it. Shameful.
I plagiarised my spelling of “plagiarism”. She what happens when you do that…