been super busy lately — what the heck is goin’ on? it blows — all the off the field issues you guys are havin. seriously, every big time school has these issues pop up, it just stinks that it’s happening all at once for your team. hang tough, we’re only 192 days away from actual football : )

Thank God Kornheiser has been suspended from PTI for two weeks…because that means Dan Lebatard is on the show and he is one of the only sane reporters they ever have on there. He was mentioning Monday how Florida and Penn St. and other programs have this problem, too. Now…he made kind of snarky remark that I thought was pretty funny when he said “Watch Oregon win a nation championship in the next couple of years…because when things like this pop up it means you have really good players…the only difference between Kelly and Meyer and Paterno and Saban is that Kelly doesn’t have a ring.” I think Stewart Mandel said something similar. So there are smart people out there in the media who covering this whole thing realistically and with the appropriate amount of journalistic integrity (I love Mandel calling out the “alarmist” type sports writers).

Obviously that’s a cynical attitude from Lebatard, but there’s some truth to it; however, I do agree with Canzano (gulp) on one thing: you don’t have to sacrifice “morals” (whatever that may be) for championships. I don’t think Chip Kelly is and I think it’s ridiculous that the media is jumping all over this situation like he is some kind of horrible amoral coach who can’t control his kids.

Anyway…everyone should read Mandel’s article. He uses great examples (something Canzano doesn’t know how to do aside from his constant pimping of his time covering UNLV) of other coaches who took over programs, had some problems, won games and then everything was good. If all of this would have happened prior to last year’s Rose Bowl run…no one would be talking about Kelly’s lack of control. This is mostly due to bad timing, nothing going on in sports aside from the Winter Olympics (even the NFL is on a brief hiatus), and as usual a board Oregonian sports columnists who claims he enjoys watching the Blazers and Ducks succeed…which may be true, but I rarely can recall positive articles about last year’s Blazer or Duck team. Canzano may personally enjoy the successes of those teams, but I’ve rarely seen him articulate with his articles. His whole response after his show just reeked of him covering his tracks…

Just more of the usual insipid self-aggrandizing blather from a mid market muckraker reporter who would never make it on air without his newspaper gig. In theory, radio station gives controversial beat writer a block of airtime, typically without pay, which he then transforms into a platform to try and expand his audience and relevance beyond the newspapers rapidly eroding readership. In turn, the radio station with minimal if any financial stake in the dj/columnist hybrid also hopes to increase it’s audience share in cross promotion with newspaper. In industry speak, this is called PBS or Programming By Suits. Unfortunately for the Armani’s what typically results from this partnership is, either the audience tires of the “doom donkey” shtick and disappears (not likely) or said reporter tires of the Groundhogs Day nightmare of his lifework and transitions to more socially relevant and local civic issues, e.g..The Oregonion’s Steve Duin. But even as an ATQ’er listening outside of the huddle so to speak, CK had every right to get a little frosty over questions that could only be asked by someone who is an ass by nature. From the sideline I think CK could have avoided the horn locking and expanded more on the Alonso decision re: "having all the facts," by perhaps confiding to us that Alonso had fallen on his sword and admitted he was in fact guilty of drunk driving thus requiring the correct decision to suspend him immediately. LMJ however is obviously a more complicated issue than a DUII but I think the coach would have been wise to suggest that Cancerzano should book either a DA and/or a defense attorney on his show so he could educate himself and most of his audience about just how differently the legal procedure prism views those charged with domestic violence vs. most other criminal charges and not just under Oregon but many other states laws as well. Then maybe Cantzano could understand just why CK might want to "wait for all the facts." Maybe.