Not that you need to be reminded, but the world has gone nuts.
Princeton University has invited Marshawn Lynch to be its special guest speaker at Class Day on June 1, an annual event that precedes graduation the next day.
Headlining Lynch as an NFL star running back and a relentlessly altruistic social activist, the Class Day coordinators explained his selection as a salute to his “sustained professional excellence” and for “his substantive work in communities that stands alongside his on-field success.
“Our goal was to invite a speaker who embodies the various experiences we have shared in as a community during our tenure. Someone whose professional and personal passions speak to the service-focused and intellectually rigorous interests core to the University.”
How nice. So why not invite someone who fits that description?
Nowhere in the statement, nor in the pandering media reports that followed, is there a word describing Lynch’s professional on-field signature display in selfless service to humanity:
After scoring touchdowns, and since 2011, he vulgarly “celebrated” himself by conspicuously grabbing his crotch. He has done so in front of 65,000 in stadia and hundreds of thousands watching on TV. He doesn’t care about the fines the NFL has hit him with to try to stop him from vandalizing the game by acting like an adult pig.
Additionally, NFL and college players, as well as Pop Warner kids, have imitated his crotch-grab in mindless salute.
In 2017 Lynch was fined for saluting an NFL crowd with both middle fingers raised. Pure class, Class of 2020.
Though it’s tough to quantify, he’s likely top-three among fined and sanctioned players in NFL history. Many of the fines and sanctions have been for rank, public misconduct.
Also left unaddressed was his ejection from a 2017 NFL game for leaving the sideline to shove a game official.
In 2009 he pleaded guilty — and was suspended by the NFL — for carrying an illegal handgun.
In 2008, Lynch pled guilty to a hit-and-run in his new Porsche and had his license revoked. In 2012 he was arrested for DUI and pleaded to a lesser charge of reckless driving.
Still, not even one word of this in what reads as selective, dishonest hagiography of Lynch crafted by the Princeton Class Day students’ committee.
I suspect that Lynch, the NFL pro, would have been, as a Princeton student, tossed from the school on multiple occasions for concerns about student safety.
The announcement concluded with Lynch lauded for his “service to humanity.”
So, why Lynch? Was it a matter of ignorance or just not caring? Or did they sincerely believe that Lynch represents the standards to which Princeton grads should aspire?
Or maybe it was a simply a matter of Lynch being the best they could do.
Big Ten travel woes is big surprise to Terps coach
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Mark Turgeon, the Maryland basketball coach, for example.
Last week he complained about his top-10 Terrapins being stuck in Minnesota overnight after beating the Gophers in an 8 p.m., Central Time, Big Ten on Wednesday start.
“My goal was to be in my driveway by 4:30 in the morning,” he told the Big Ten Network. “We played a 9 p.m. Eastern [Time Zone] game at Minnesota on a Wednesday. It makes no sense.”
Oh, yes it does. Dollars and cents. Maryland, like Rutgers and Penn State, doesn’t belong in the Big Ten — where 11 of its 14 schools are in the Central Time Zone.
But the lure of Big Ten riches, especially TV money, was too great to remain in a logically located Atlantic Coast Conference. Turgeon’s gripe is with Maryland, and no one else — not TV, not the Big Ten, not schedule-makers.
Maryland pays Turgeon at least $2.6 million a year to play at Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Wisconsin and Nebraska, among other far-away Big 10 places. Or did he have no idea that Big Ten inclusion came with that?
And if such trips to play basketball games precludes his student-athlete recruits from attending classes — a con that left the station when free agents first claimed, “It’s not about the money.”
Besides, Bobby Knight, before he went to work for ESPN, would use that plaint, complaining his Indiana U. kids would lose class time to TV scheduling that brought them back to campus near midnight.
Yet Knight, upon the team’s return to campus following a road loss, would order immediate midnight practice.
Swoosh? There it is
Let the record show that seconds before the first pitch of this exhibition game season, MLB greed was at issue.
Mets radio’s Wayne Randazzo, before last Saturday’s Marlins-Mets opener, described the Mets’ uniforms as the same as one of its several ensembles worn last season except for one inescapable change: the large Nike swoosh attached to the front of the jersey.
To that, Howie Rose said the addition of the Nike logo could have been more dignified, less conspicuous, more uniform and less all-game advertisement.
The untouchable, sacrosanct Yankees uniforms now also holler “Nike!”
The two teams whose uniforms would never be messed with as a matter of hallowed and stubborn tradition — the Yanks’ and Penn State’s football — both sold out to Nike.
In January, Michael Tate, a Yankees fan since 1961, wrote Hal Steinbrenner a typewritten, polite letter asking how he allowed this great Pinstripe Pride tradition to be destroyed by Nike money.
Tate concluded, “Legacy, Mr. Steinbrenner, especially when it comes to preserving the iconic Yankee home uniform, must always be much greater than unabashed transparent greed.”
As of Friday, Tate still had not received a reply.
TV at it its new-usual finest: Figures that two of the worst, most uncivilized acts in recent NBA history, Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes, were selected to co-host a show on Showtime that they load with backwards-pointed street vulgarities.
What’s the point? To prove that at 40 they still act like remorselessly indecent slugs? Good for them! Good for Showtime!
It seems Showtime learned nothing when it hired Warren Sapp for being insufferable and crude then fired him for the same reasons.
Reader Richie “The Roofer” Mariano asks why the NFL holds a combine for likely draft picks who have already been scouted while playing in college games — games that count, not drills.
Well, the combine gives analytical boobs with stopwatches and yardsticks a chance to change their minds, ignore what they’d previously scouted, forget what they’d seen and dismiss what they already knew.