2B
SPORTS / THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
OUOTE OF THE DAY
"Without self-discipline, success is impossible. Period."
— Lou Holtz
FACT OF THE DAY
Todd Reesing has thrown for 11,172 yards more, as a Jayhawk, than the five quarterbacks listed on Kansas' 2010 football roster combined. Kale Pick has 22 career yards passing, the other four have zero.
Kansas Athletics
TRIVIA OF THE DAY
Q: Which current Kansas player has the most rushing yards as a Javhawk?
A: Toben Opurum, with 554. Running back turned linebacker turned running back Angus Quigley is second and quarterback Kale Pick is third.
Kansas Athletics
Professional athletes get easy street
MORNING BREW
I really envy Brett Favre. Of course it'd be nice to have his paycheck, athletic ability, adoring fans, and Wrangler jeans advertising contract. But those aren't the main reasons I'd want to trade places with the guy.
Really, I'm only jealous of Brett's ability to somehow, for multiple years now, put off real work until the last possible minute. This man has reached the coveted position in life where, apparently, he shows up only when he gets tired of hanging out with high schoolers in Mississippi all summer. As a college student, that is my dream in life.
The seemingly distant worlds of higher education and professional sports share some similarities in their annual cycles. Athletes have their off-seasons while college students have summers. Students study for days (occasionally) leading up to a big test, while athletes practice leading up to a game. Sports seasons build up to a climactic season in the playoffs, where legends are made or hearts across the nation are broken. School years
BY JOEL PETTERSON
ineterson@kansan.com
build up to finals, in which GPAS are restored or financial aid is lost forever
So the stakes aren't quite the same, but there are still similarities. And while I've been attempting to peel my eyes away from the media's 24-hour Brett Favre guessing game, I've been imagining what it would be like to wield the same power that he and some other top tier professional athletes do.
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
For example, I'd love to pull a holdout on college. Like New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis and plenty of other NFL stars, I'd send an agent with a list of demands to be met before I showed up for school. It would probably be less
about money than it would be about having free reign at cafeterias and getting my own parking spot. And I'd hold out until midterms if they'd guarantee me no morning classes all year.
Or I could be just like Brett, who apparently trained with a high school football team all summer instead of going the traditional route of practicing with his professional teammates in Minnesota. I'd like be like getting honors college credit for taking summer school at a local junior high school. 1 could hang out at home, show up to some Algebra 1 classes or maybe even Driver's Ed, and then arrive at college a month late with a 4.5 GPA.
Having Brett powers and showing up late to school would be great, but maybe not quite as rewarding as pulling a Usain Bolt. The fastest man alive decided he didn't feel like running for the rest of 2010 after he came in second in the 100 meters a couple weeks ago, blaming "tightness" in his back.
Imagine receiving a B on a midterm paper and then telling a professor,
"Screw it. School's way too stressful right now. I'm going to Jamaica for a while and I'll probably be back by February." Athletes may not be superheroes, but I can't imagine any power I'd want more than that one.
But since KU's financial aid office apparently doesn't respond to demands for a signing bonus, I guess I'll be showing up on time like the rest of the world.
Edited by David Cawthon
KANSAN FILE PHOTO
Sade Morris (left) and Danielle McCrav both signed to play basketball for overseas teams. Both girls look forward to their overseas experience and advancing their game.
Former Jayhawks sign deals overseas
BY KATHLEEN GIER
kgier@kansan.com
Danielle McCray and Sade Morris, who both graduated in the spring, just signed contracts to play basketball overseas for teams in Israel and Finland, respectively.
McCray was drafted seventh in the 2010 WNBA Draft by the Connecticut Sun but was unable to play this season because of an ACL injury sustained in her final season at Kansas. McCray, who finished her Kansas career ranked fourth on the all-time scoring chart, will be playing for Rishon Lezion of the Israeli Women's
League, Division 1.
"This is an exciting time for me," McCray said in a release. "I cannot wait to get over to Israel and officially begin my professional career. More than anything I am just excited to get back out on the court."
After playing in the 2009 USA Basketball's World University Games, McCray says she is ready to return to international competition. McCray will leave for her new team Oct. 1.
"This is a great opportunity for me to expand my game," McCray said. "I have heard great things about this league and I think it
will prepare me for playing in the WNBA"
"I know getting adapted to playing the European style of basketball will be an adjustment for me," Morris said. "I am looking forward to developing as a basketball player, but also as a person. I cannot wait to get over there and get out and do some exploring. I am anxious try to all the different foods and just see a new way of life."
Morris who went undrafted, but finished her Kansas career ranked 14th on the all-time scoring chart, will be playing for Huima in the Finnish Basketball League. Division 1. Morris will leave Sept. 1 to gather with her new team.
the WNBA, but in the meantime. Morris is excited to travel around Europe while she makes the most of her experience overseas.
"I am so thankful for this opportunity," Morris said. "I am excited to be able to continue playing the game I love and I think this team will be a great fit for me."
— Edited by Leslie Kinsman
McCray and Morris said they both look forward to playing against foreign talent and one day returning to the states to play for
NATIONAL
USC Trojans work to rebuild reputation
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
LOS ANGELES — To hear the USC Trojans tell it, their cataclysmic offseason began not with a clatter, but merely a peep.
"A few times he called the whole team in the locker room the Friday before a walk-through," says cornerback Shareece Wright, remembering the final season of Pete Carroll as football coach. "He had never done anything like that. It was more like a nervousness, as if he wasn't really sure."
Safety Jawanza Starling, a true
freshman at USC last year, wondered if this was the swaggering program he had signed up for.
"I didn't know how coach Carroll was in the past," he said. "But I sensed a little nervousness when we had team meetings. I was telling myself."
couple of decades.
So life around USC is a whirl: Five holdovers who left, none of them expected starters, plus two recruits who bailed on letters of intent; the adjustment to the brash Kiffin; and still, the possibility that if the Trojans' heads are on right, they could run the table and be in the AP's national-championship hunt.
"More than anything,it kind of brought us together. This is our team."
"We win 13 games," said Wright, "nobody can tell us we're not the best team in the nation."
JAWANZA STARLING USC safety
'Do we not believe we can beat teams?'
Perhaps it's because the Trojans have had a couple of months
On the heels of his most perplexing season (9-4, all the losses in conference play), Carroll exited the greatest dynasty of all-time in Pac-10 football to attempt to rescue his NFL reputation with the Seahawks.
Cue up the Count of Controversy, Lane Kiffin, to replace Carroll after a one-year fling with Tennessee. And in late spring, the Trojans were tenderized by the NCAA committee on infractions, dealing them a two-year bowl ban and loss of 30 scholarships over three seasons, one of the most thunderous penalties meted out over the last
"They didn't say we couldn't play hard," says senior linebacker Michael Morgan, talking about the NCAA hit. "They didn't say we couldn't win every game.
to let the bowl sanction sink in, but they seem to be phlegmatic about it.
Every game they're going to let us play, we're going to go out there and try to win it"
"More than anything, it kind of brought us together," says Starling. "This is our team; it's not like we get any help from anybody else. It's what we make of it. We still have the best players in the country, and we have a great coaching staff."
That staff includes the 70-year-old graybeard, Monte Kiffin, Lane's dad and one of the respected defensive minds in the game; and ex-Mississippi coach and former Carroll aide Ed Orgeron, one of the hardest-charging recruiters around.
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