HUAAAAAHH!
Possibly the most poetic, emotional Nae Nae ever. Beautiful.
d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net / Via Twitter: @washingtonpost
Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed
CORVALLIS, Ore. — The mass text message went out on the morning of Aug. 25, 2008, a reminder from Oregon State University men’s basketball coach Craig Robinson that everyone should tune into any one of the major news channels that evening.
With his sister at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty
This had nothing to do with basketball. Instead, Robinson was slated to introduce his younger sister Michelle Obama on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. His speech would come two days before Barack Obama would officially accept the party’s presidential nomination.One of the people who received the text message was Roberto Nelson, then a 17-year-old basketball star from Santa Barbara, Calif. Robinson had entered Nelson’s life only a few months earlier during a recruiting visit. Nelson came away especially impressed with Robinson, in part because the coach never brought up the subject of basketball.
“That was totally different from all the other coaches,” Nelson told BuzzFeed. “We just hit it off immediately. You could tell that he really cared about me as a person.”
Nelson was dazzled when he saw Robinson introduce the future first lady. Robinson strode to the stage in a black suit and bright orange tie, the colors of Oregon State. “Today,” Robinson told the crowd, “I’m proud to be the coach of the Oregon State men’s basketball team. Go Beavers!”
Roberto Nelson
Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed
“It was so powerful,” Nelson said recently, still awed at the memory. Nelson committed to Robinson and the Beavers a few weeks later, choosing the traditional basketball doormat over national powers such as UCLA, Florida, and Ohio State.“I had to explain it to people,” recalled Nelson, now a 23-year-old fifth-year senior for the Beavers. “I was thinking more about my future than they were. I understood the vision that Coach Rob had.”
That vision includes living meaningful lives on and off the court, the sort of well-rounded experience that so many colleges claim to offer to their athletes. The 6-foot-7-inch Robinson is the embodiment of that ideal: He was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year, a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He was a successful businessman before he pursued a career as a college basketball coach.
Robinson lived up to expectations at Oregon State in all ways — except basketball. So Craig Robinson epitomizes an uncomfortable question: Is it enough for a coach to mentor boys into accomplished men in full, or does he also have to win?
Now at the end of his sixth year in Corvallis, Robinson has a record of 94-105 overall, 39-69 in the PAC-12 Conference. Oregon State has finished better than eighth place in the league only once.
The nadir came Wednesday in a third-tier post-season tournament called the College Basketball Invitational. The Beavers got eliminated in the first found, losing 96-92 at home to to Radford — a team that in regular season had lost by double digits to Hampton and Virginia Military Institute and that had exactly one starter taller than 6 feet 4 inches. In the arena, the number of empty seats was jarring. “I was told there were more people at Gill Coliseum for the 4A girls consolation finals Saturday morning than tonight,” tweeted Steve Gress, the sports editor from the Corvallis Gazette-Times.
The next morning, The Oregonian — the state’s largest daily newspaper — ran this headline: “Should Oregon State Beavers fire Craig Robinson?” Nearly two-thirds of the more than 4,000 voters chose this option: “Yes. He’s had enough time to show what he can do … and it’s underwhelming.”
In his best-selling memoir A Game of Character: A Family Journey from Chicago’s Southside to the Ivy League and Beyond, Robinson explains his theory — learned from his late father — that “you could tell everything you needed to know about someone by how they played the game.” He famously used a pickup game in 1990 to assess the character of his sister’s new beau at the time, a young Chicago lawyer named Barack Obama. “He was real, down-to-earth, a good guy,” Robinson wrote. “He had passed the test with a definitive thumbs-up on his playing and character.”
“Playing and character.” By his own account, both measures matter. But on the first, Robinson’s Oregon State hasn’t been good enough to succeed against its peers in the PAC-12.
This is a story about Craig Robinson and whether that uncomfortable but unavoidable fact should matter.
Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed
Almost any parent would want Craig Robinson to mentor their son. Whether at work or home, he has made it known that the door is always open to his players. In his memoir, he wrote of “letting (his) players see me not just as a basketball expert — but also as a husband, a father, and a citizen,” a change from Princeton, where he never even met his coach’s wife.
Nelson, as much as anyone, has taken advantage of the open-door policy. There was the time, he said, that he told Robinson about his plans to retire at 50. Robinson gave his protégé a lesson in financial planning.
“He told me, ‘If you have a kid, just think about the price of college tuition now compared to how much it’s going to be,’” Nelson said. “That kind of set me back. Like, basically, I can’t stop working. I have a long way to go before I’m financially where I want to be.”
“He’s still a young man trying to figure things out; it was one of those lightbulb moments for him,” Robinson said. “I really try not to be too preachy. I learned that from my own dad. My dad was an easy guy to talk to. He wasn’t judgmental. And I just found if I come at it from that sort of angle, these guys will sit there and listen and ask more questions.”
Robinson playing for Princeton in 1983.
Peter Morgan / AP Photo
Robinson’s biography parallels the first couple’s: Their stories all involved modest upbringings, Ivy League educations, Chicago connections, professional success, and national prominence. But while the president plays basketball as a hobby, Robinson chose it as a career.
After playing for Hall of Fame coach Pete Carril and graduating from Princeton, Robinson secured a spot in a sales training program with Proctor & Gamble and then pursued a roster spot with the Philadelphia 76ers. Robinson, who knew the odds of making it in the NBA were long, was one of the team’s final cuts.
In his memoir, Robinson remembers 76ers assistant coach Matt Guokas telling him, “You’ve got a job with P&G, so you don’t need to worry about this.” It’s been a common thread in his life; Robinson’s talents have always seemed to be meant for more than games. “I was livid,” Robinson said. And he continued to pursue his hoop dream, spending two years with a professional team in Manchester, England.
When his playing days were finally over, Robinson returned to Princeton to talk with Carril about getting into coaching. Robinson remembers the famously irascible coach encouraging him to make another career choice, calling it a “dead-end, no-win, thankless job.”
Carril doesn’t quite remember it that way. “I wouldn’t say it was a dead-end job. But he didn’t come to Princeton and study his rear end off to get into something like coaching,” he said. “Craig had talent in other areas, so I thought it’d be better for him to do that. I just suggested other alternatives.”
Robinson became a broker at the retail brokerage firm Dean Witter, got married, had two children, and settled into a comfortable life in Chicago. He spent the rest of the decade as a bond trader, including seven years as a vice president of the firm.
In time, however, the six-bedroom home, high-six-figure salary and related perks — the Porsche, designer suits, jewelry, and five-star vacations — weren’t enough to sustain him or his marriage, he wrote. By the end of the decade, his marriage was on the rocks, and he seized an opportunity to coach at a local high school. Robinson got immediate results, helping the University of Chicago Lab School win its first league championship in 25 years.
Still, “I had no idea that I’d eventually end up coaching” full-time, Robinson said, sitting in his office. “I went into investments and thought I had it all figured out. Then, boom, things change. Your life takes on a life of its own.”
The moment of decision came on the trading floor the day after Labor Day 2000. Robinson took a phone call from new Northwestern coach Bill Carmody — another former Carril assistant — who offered him a position on his coaching staff. Robinson would become a 38-year-old assistant coach, an especially late start in a career that values youth and energy.
Even more inauspiciously, Robinson has said he made a fraction of what he was making in finance. That was particularly bad timing for someone going through a divorce settlement that required him to make child-support payments based on his former earnings. He was forced to move back into his childhood home on Chicago’s South Side with his mother.
At Northwestern, Robinson helped turn “a basement program into a competitor.” The Wildcats never reached the NCAA tournament and rarely finished in the top half of the Big 10 Conference, but they were no longer a doormat. Unbeknownst at the time, this stretch would look an awful lot like his time at Oregon State. “We started in the basement,” Robinson said. “It’s hard to get people to understand that. They want stuff fast.”
Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed
He moved on to his first college head-coaching opportunity in 2006 with Brown University, an Ivy League school without much basketball pedigree or the ability to award athletic scholarships. Robinson accepted the job on a Monday in June and married his current wife, the former Kelly McCrum, that very Saturday.Brown — a school that was barely drawing 1,000 fans per game — got stuff fast. By the end of his second year, Robinson had won a school-record 19 games and led the Bears to only their fourth postseason berth (albeit in the less prestigious College Basketball Invitational) in 108 years. He’d even managed to split a two-game series with Northwestern and win all four games against Princeton.
He did it by taking the renowned Princeton offense — a system of constant motion, passing, and backdoor cuts — he learned under Carril, the motivational abilities of Carmody, and his own natural leadership ability to win trust and build the confidence of a players in a program accustomed to losing.
“He was always there as a role model, a coach, and a mentor,” said Damon Hoffman, who played his final two seasons at Brown under Robinson. “There was never a doubt about whether he was going to be a great coach. But his personality and demeanor is meant for a big-time program. We knew that right away. There was no hesitation.”
On the other side of the country, more than 3,000 miles away, Oregon State was looking for someone who just wanted the job after finishing 6-25, including 0-18 in the league. The Beavers even lost to Division II Alaska-Fairbanks. At least three candidates — it’s rumored as many 30 coaches were contacted — had already turned down what was then the PAC-10’s worst job.
As Oregon State was reeling from those rejections, Robinson’s agent reached out to Beavers athletic director Bob De Carolis. Robinson didn’t have the experience typical of most other big-time college coaches, but the Beavers were open to trying something different.
There were skeptics close to home. “Robinson has one winning season as a head coach,” wrote The Oregonian’s longtime sports columnist John Canzano. “It’s a ridiculous hire.”
OSU President Edward Ray told ESPN.com that De Carolis, who didn’t respond to numerous requests for an interview, did not tell him about their new coach’s famous family ties until late in the process. “And I said, ‘You know what, if he doesn’t win some basketball games, nobody is going to give a damn who his brother-in-law is.'”
Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed
Robinson entered Roberto Nelson’s life during an especially wrenching period. Only a couple months before Nelson’s senior year of high school, his father Bruce Nelson was sent to prison for a sex offense.The case was big news in Santa Barbara, where Roberto was one of the city’s most-celebrated athletes and his father was an assistant basketball coach at the same high school. Bruce Nelson, himself a former high school star and college athlete, had poured much of his life into the development of his only son. Their relationship was first detailed in the book Play Their Hearts Out, a look at the sleazy side of the youth basketball circuit by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Dohrmann.
After Roberto's father was sent to prison, his grades suffered, putting his college eligibility in jeopardy. He endured numerous slights at school. He ached for his father.
Then he met Robinson, who was a model for balancing athletics and academics. “He stepped in and picked up that void and helped Roberto keep his head,” Bruce Nelson told BuzzFeed.
Yet when Roberto committed to Oregon State, his father was disappointed. He wanted him to go to a traditional powerhouse, Ohio State, near where Bruce was raised and still has family, or UCLA. Of course, Bruce Nelson was in no position to help or advise his son from prison. Even today, his disappointment lingers.
“That just came too far out of left field,” said the elder Nelson, who was released from Tehachapi State Prison in December 2011 and remains in Santa Barbara, looking for work as a coach again. “When you look at the schools he could have gone to, you kind of have to scratch your head. I didn’t think Roberto could go there and resurrect things.”
Photograph by Leah Nash for BuzzFeed
No one has ever played a cowbell as enthusiastically as this guy and no one ever will.
Fred Hoiberg may not have much rhythm, but his Iowa State Cyclones are dancing their way to the Sweet 16.
Tom Pennington / Getty
Tom Pennington / Getty
Brazilians are divided between those who want the World Cup to happen and those who don’t. This song summarizes the feelings of the latter group.
Nacho Doce / Reuters
Brazil has been struggling to complete the infrastructure needed to host the upcoming World Cup set to start on June this year. With billions of dollars invested in stadiums people have taken the streets to protest against this overspent of money when a great part of the population lives under poverty.
Recently a MPB song has gone viral, in which the artist lets famous soccer players and coaches know he won't be cheering for Brazil this year.
I'm sorry Neymar,
But during this world cup I won't be cheering for you,
I'm tired of watching our people fading slowly on TV shows,
In the meantime FIFA worries about standards,
We're guided by thieves that play dirty to win,
I'm sorry Neymar, I'm not cheering this time.
Parreira I saw,
That Tetra [championship] make people so happy,
But we won't be real champions spending over 10 billion to have the world cup in the country,
We have beautiful and monumental stadiums,
In the meantime schools and hospitals are about to fail,
Parreira I saw, an abyss between the two Brazils.
Sorry Felipao,
When Cafu lifted the World Cup and showed it,
Your roots in such a solemn moment which turned Jardim Irene in a portrait of Brazil,
The promised spring never came,
Life is worth more than a goal,
And the improvements where are they?
Sorry Felipao, our country didn't flourish.
I know supporter,
That my simple and honest opinion,
Won't make you that makes little money and lives poorly,
Stop going to the end together with our team,
Even without money to pay an expensive ticket,
You'll never stop loving our team wherever they go,
I know supporter, it's you that is right.
Meet the newest, cutest college basketball fan.
“Say your prayers and eat your vitamins”. You’re going to be here for awhile.
Take the quiz before you start panicking.
A letter from owner Daniel Snyder announces the launch of the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation.
Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder announced a new foundation for Native Americans in a letter Monday that claimed a shared heritage with Native Americans and said he still agrees that "our team name captures the best of who we are."
Snyder also wrote he "committed myself to listening and learning from all voices with a perspective about our Washington Redskins name" and as a result has "pledged" to find ways to improve the daily lives of people in tribes.
This letter, like one Snyder released in October, claims Native Americans support the Redskins name, quoting an individual in a tribe whom he spoke to as saying, "There are Native Americans everywhere that 100% support the name."
However, New York's Oneida tribe announced a protest at the beginning of the 2013 NFL season, which included the airing of an ad that referred to "Redskins" as a racial slur.
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III.
AP Photo/Nick Wass
Snyder goes on to write that after visiting 26 reservations, he decided to start the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation to provide "genuine" assistance to Native Americans.
"The mission of the Original Americans Foundation is to provide meaningful and measurable resources that provide genuine opportunities for Tribal communities. With open arms and determined minds, we will work as partners to begin to tackle the troubling realities facing so many tribes across our country," he wrote.
The foundation will be run by Cherokee and retired Deputy Assistant Director of the U.S. Secret Service Gary Edwards, and the letter states that 100 reservations have already completed a survey about their needs.
The letter goes on to say that two projects have already been completed: the distribution of 3,000 coats to members of Plains tribes during the winter and the purchase of a backhoe for the Omaha Tribe in Nebraska, which will assist in the burial of loved ones, even during the cold.
Team owner Daniel Snyder wrote that he believes “even more firmly now” in the team’s name. The backlash against the NFL franchise continues.
In May 2013, he told USA Today: "We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER — you can use caps."
Patrick McDermott / Getty Images
Statements about honoring Native Americans "through our words and on the field" rung hollow against his defense of the team's nickname. And the use of the phrase "Original Americans" struck many as confusing.
Bryce Harper is the hottest baseball player in the whole wide world.
No, like really hot.
Photo by Sheahin/Sousa as special to 106.7 The Fan, used with permission
It’s not about winning or losing — it’s about winning.
Posted on reddit , the video shows O’Neal either mocking other players or showing a really good method for free throw shooting. Either way, The Beatles’ song makes it great.
The NFL will penalize goal post dunks next season. Here are 12 of our favorite celebrations.
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
Especially now that you're a Jet.
Wesley Hitt / Getty Images
Rob Carr / Getty Images / Via gettyimages.com
The Buffalo Bills’ longtime owner died at the age of 95. He’ll be deeply missed.
That's what the co-founders of the American Football League called themselves — The Foolish Club. In 1959, after Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams were denied by the NFL, they decided to make a league of their own, and they designed it to be in direct competition with the NFL, a league that has existed since 1920. Ralph Wilson was one of these eight "fools" who started franchises; his was the Buffalo Bills. Of course, the AFL later merged with the NFL in 1970. The fools' gamble payed off.
AP
AP / NFL
Rick Stewart / Getty
The Bucs’ backup catcher is a man after your hearts, Frozen fans.
Performed by Idina Menzel... or was it Adele Dazeem?
The Walt Disney Company / Via youtube.com
The crashing sound you just heard? That’s the gauntlet landing on the floor.
Photo by Keith Allison / Creative Commons / Via Flickr: 27003603@N00
i.imgur.com / Via reddit.com
“It cannot be said the employer’s scholarship players are ‘primarily students,’” the ruling said. Northwestern University will appeal.
Kain Colter
AP Photo/Paul Beaty
WASHINGTON — A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board ruled Wednesday that college football players at Northwestern University are employees and have the right to unionize.
The precedent-setting ruling could mean major changes in college sports, as the National Collegiate Athletic Association has worked hard to maintain the view that their athletes are amateurs.
Wednesday's ruling argues that the relationship between players and the university is primarily an economic one, in which the players often work more hours than other full-time employees have to, and are subject to control and regulations of their day-to-day activities that the rest of the student population is not.
"It cannot be said the Employer's scholarship players are 'primarily students,'" the ruling, written by Region 13 Director Peter Sung Ohr, reads.
But the ruling is only a first step. Northwestern University said in a statement it will appeal, sending the decision to the NLRB headquarters in Washington, D.C. It could take another several months before a final ruling is made.
"While we respect the NLRB process and the regional director's opinion, we disagree with it," Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations said in a statement. "Northwestern believes strongly that our student-athletes are not employees, but students. Unionization and collective bargaining are not the appropriate methods to address the concerns raised by student-athletes."
Donald Remy, the NCAA's chief legal officer, echoed Northwestern's dissatisfaction.
"While not a party to the proceeding, the NCAA is disappointed that the NLRB Region 13 determined the Northwestern football team may vote to be considered university employees," Remy said in a statement. "We strongly disagree with the notion that student-athletes are employees. "We frequently hear from student-athletes, across all sports, that they participate to enhance their overall college experience and for the love of their sport, not to be paid."
The complaint began when Northwestern players attempted to join the College Athletes Players Association, which has been spearheaded by former Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter. Colter has participated in the NLRB hearings and argued in the past that he was forced to drop his pre-med courses because of his football schedule.
The athletes have also received assistance from the United Steelworkers and the National College Players Association during their efforts.
NBA rookie Shabazz Muhammad’s father, Ron Holmes, tells prosecutors he arranged for a loan while Muhammad was at UCLA, according to court documents. Since this story was originally published, additional details have been added about the loan, the way Holmes’ attorney characterized it, and how the NCAA has handled teams that have violated amateurism rules.
Former UCLA star Shabazz Muhammad.
AP Photo/Julie Jacobson
Little more than a year ago, star freshman Shabazz Muhammad led UCLA to its first PAC-12 regular season title in five years.
It was the pinnacle of a season in which the Bruins were beset by NCAA investigations related to Muhammad's recruitment. The team ended that season with a first-round loss in the NCAA tournament. After all the tumult, coach Ben Howland was fired and Muhammad left early for the NBA.
Still, Muhammad's time in Westwood looms large: A filing last week in a federal bank fraud case against Muhammad's father, Ron Holmes, calls into question whether Muhammad should have played in college that year, and whether UCLA deserves the conference championship banner.
Holmes arranged for a loan in anticipation of his son's future NBA earnings and agreed to receive as much as $300,000 a year once Muhammad went pro, according to a memo filed by Daniel R. Schiess, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada. (The bank-fraud charges against Holmes stem from his participating in a mortgage scam in Las Vegas and are not related to the alleged loan.)
The memo was Schiess' response to a request from Holmes' attorneys to limit his sentence to one year and one day in prison plus at least 2,500 hours of community service. Holmes had pled guilty of conspiracy to commit federal fraud in December.
"While raising children and serving the community is praiseworthy, it appears that Holmes' motives were not completely virtuous. He intended to get something out of it for himself," Schiess wrote in the memo, which asked that Holmes receive 37 months incarceration. The court filing does not indicate who provided Holmes with the loan, except to say it was a "marketing company."
The document states that Holmes "told the FBI in his March 21, 2013 interview that he had been living off of a loan tied to his son's [Shabazz Muhammad] projected earnings as a top NBA prospect."
The date of that interview is important because it indicates that the loan was procured while Muhammad was still an amateur athlete. In fact, Muhammad's final game as a Bruin came the following day, in a tournament loss to Minnesota that had Muhammad scoring 20 points.
NCAA amateurism rules forbid athletes or their families from receiving financial benefits based on the athlete's sports ability. The rules also prohibit receiving benefits from agents, financial advisers, or "any person who represents any individual in the marketing of his or her athletics ability."
Violators of those rules are deemed ineligible to play. Yet Muhammad played 32 games for UCLA during the 2012-13 season, leading the team with 17.9 points per game. He was named first team All-PAC 12, co-PAC 12 freshman of the year and a second team All-American.
Holmes and his attorneys did not reply to emails, calls and text messages seeking comment, and Muhammad's agent, Bill Duffy, reached by phone, declined immediate comment.
Previously, Holmes has claimed through his attorney that the loan was made against the earnings of his daughter, a professional tennis player. But in Holmes' pre-trial detention hearing, the federal judge hearing the criminal case as well as Assistant U.S. Attorney Schiess said that Holmes had previously stated the loan was directly related to Shabazz Muhammad's future NBA career.
Holmes has since changed attorneys and has made no further statements about the terms of the loan. His daughter, Asia Muhammad, is currently 296th in women's worldwide singles rankings.
"UCLA is aware of statements made in court proceedings subsequent to Shabazz Muhammad's time at the university," UCLA spokesman Josh Rupprecht told BuzzFeed on Wednesday. "As in any situation of this type, after immediately becoming aware of this development, UCLA notified the PAC-12 and the NCAA with this new information."
The PAC-12 and NCAA didn't immediately respond to messages left by BuzzFeed on Wednesday.
If the NCAA were to find Muhammad was ineligible, it could retroactively strip UCLA of its regular-season title and force the Bruins to vacate all wins from that season that Muhammad was involved in.
There's precedent for that sort of penalty: The NCAA has levied similar punishments against the University of Memphis' basketball team in 2009; the University of Southern California's football, men's basketball and women's tennis teams in 2010; and the University of Oklahoma's men's basketball team in 2011.
In Memphis' case, the Tigers lost their NCAA-record 38 victories and NCAA finals appearance because of several infractions. Those included a fraudulent SAT score for a freshman player, later revealed to be current NBA star Derrick Rose, and close to $1,700 in free travel that the university provided to Rose's brother, Reggie.
The NCAA has previously investigated Muhammad for amateurism violations, ultimately suspending him for three games at the start of his time at UCLA for receiving approximately $1,600 in impermissible travel benefits.
That investigation was cut short, however, after the Los Angeles Times revealed that the boyfriend of the NCAA's lead investigator had been speaking publicly about the probe.
After leaving UCLA, Muhammad was selected 14th overall by the Utah Jazz and immediately traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves. He has mostly struggled in his rookie season, playing in just 31 games and averaging 3.6 points per game.
Less than a month before the draft, Muhammad's father, Holmes, was arrested and charged with federal bank fraud for his alleged role in securing mortgages in the Las Vegas area using fraudulent information and straw buyers. In addition, he was accused of living in the homes and making fraudulent bankruptcy filings to delay foreclosure.
In December, Holmes, a former USC basketball standout, pleaded guilty and is due for sentencing on Thursday.
In a filing last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel R. Schiess noted that Ron Holmes, father of former UCLA standout Shabazz Muhammad, said he received a loan in anticipation of his son's future pro basketball career.
