We had a lot of fun with climate change deniers this winter about snowmageddon, because we knew this was going to happen — the blazing heat of a Columbia summer. A four or five-block walk, and things might be getting a little swampy, not to mention sitting still in the shade.
Even people used to dealing with the summer heat have been talking about how this season has been different.
Distance runners often train at the crack of dawn in the summer to avoid the heat. That did no good this summer.
“Even when I did just a short run, two or three miles, I literally had sweat dripping off my fingertips,” said Jeanna Moffet, who has been running in Columbia for 25 years. “My running friends and I have talked about how when we run we feel so sluggish, like we’re out of shape.
“I went out the other day (in the morning) and it felt like I could drink the air.”
The dog days of summer have been worse than normal, even for the dogs. Jeff Brandenburg takes his Weimaraners running with him in the mornings. This summer, the usually rugged dogs have given out after about 30 minutes, prompting him to take them back home and finish his training runs on his own.
The funny thing is that it was the temperature when the sun goes down that made the difference in the averages. This year, low temperatures were closer to 80 than 70. So really, the great outdoors was just an oven fluctuating between 80 and 100. Beyond that, there have been some happenings that go beyond our rather rudimentary knowledge of meteorology.
The more complicated question is why the air didn’t cool at night. Mark Malsick at the State Climate Office joked that a doctoral student could write a dissertation on it.
Malsick and Greg Carbone at the USC geography department offered some likely meteorological explanations.
In general, the Bermuda high that so often impacts our summer weather set up this summer and stayed put, steering moist air our way off the Gulf of Mexico.
Moister air and greater nighttime cloud cover keeps warm air from rising at night. In a more typical summer, the warm air rises after dark and is replaced by slightly cooler air at the surface.
Of course, the sick joke is that the heat probably won’t let up until, say, November.
We’re shocked — shocked! — that Carolina football players received discounted rates and/or didn’t pay for their rooms at all. The news of this situation has led USC coach Steve Spurrier to say the players in question will be suspended. We’re thinking that the NCAA will want a tougher penalty.
Some South Carolina football players owed the Whitney Hotel several thousand dollars after receiving reduced room rates during extended stays at the hotel that have come under NCAA scrutiny, a source close to the situation told The State on Wednesday.
Multiple sources said some players had been living at the Whitney since the spring while paying a rate of $450 per month. But officials determined players should have been paying about $1,200 a month, and players were told by school officials to pay the difference to the hotel.
For at least two players who had not made any payments, the resolution meant they owed the hotel close to $5,000, according to one of the sources.
The Chicken Curse strikes again.
The Chicken Curse is getting started early this season, which is hysterical to casual Carolina fans like ourselves. Any other time in recent memory, it would be a star running back or wide receiver firing up the stickiest of the icky about half a dozen times, to the point where the athletic department has to say, “Dude, you’re getting blazed out too much. You’re off the team.” And it’s not as wonderfully epic as getting blitzed, breaking into a house, stripping and rushing the cops in your birthday suit. Or slinging cocaine. Just, O lord, the 7-5 season of making sure you don’t see playing time.
In the crosshairs of an NCAA investigation since July, South Carolina tight end Weslye Saunders has now been suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules.
The issue, two sources told The Post and Courier on Monday night, is that Saunders lied to coaches about why he was late for Saturday morning’s practice at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Saunders, a senior, missed multiple team meetings Saturday morning, the sources said. He appeared at the stadium sometime before the team’s scheduled scrimmage, which began a little after 10 a.m.
Later, when coaches asked Saunders why he was tardy, Saunders told them it was because he was talking with NCAA officials. A quick check with the school’s compliance office showed that Saunders wasn’t telling the truth.
Whether Saunders will be kicked off the team or just not get on the field until the Georgia game is likely tied to coach Steve Spurrier’s desire to make it to the SEC Championship Game versus ethics and the like. We’re sticking with the former, unless the Head Ball Coach just gets pissed and boots Saunders for causing him problems. Right now, though, with a playmaker at tight end in trouble and the quarterback position a mess, Carolina is going to have to get its shit together in short order. Southern Miss may not be Florida, but the Golden Eagles do not fuck around.
Carolina coach Steve Spurrier can’t help himself and his penchant for playing around with the quarterback position like a general with so many green army men on a table. It started early this year and hasn’t stopped, his slagging on presumed starting quarterback Stephen Garcia. Everyone handicapping the Gamecocks this year say that Garcia has to have a great year for USC to move up to…No. 2 in the SEC East. And already he’s going to be pulled.
After the Thursday scrimmage, Spurrier gave the green light that backup (?) Connor Shaw would see time in the season opener against Southern Miss, no matter what happens.
For the second consecutive scrimmage, the challenger outplayed the incumbent. And in the only vote that matters, Spurrier left the door wide open that Shaw, a true freshman and son of a football coach, could be the opening-game starter Sept. 2 when Southern Miss visits Columbia.
The fact that Shaw took the first snaps under center Thursday only added to the intrigue.
“Definitely Connor’s going to play in the first game,” Spurrier said. “Right now we’re planning on both of them playing and go from there. Statistically, he’s been the best quarterback on the team in every scrimmage. So that’s where we are with that.”
We don’t know much about Shaw’s potential while playing against SEC opponents, but we’ve watched Garcia. We’ve seen Garcia. We have Garcia to thank for a particularly nice errant throw to open the game in Tuscaloosa last season. And for those reasons, why not start Shaw? Everyone knows how Garcia’s done in game situations, and he’s getting beat in practice. Maybe it’s time to start Shaw and see what he does.
Southern Miss can and has jumped up on an otherwise superior opponent and given them the what-for. But if the rest of the team is decent enough, put in the new guy and the worst that can happen is another 10-6 opening week slapfight.
In other news, the Head Ball Coach has had enough of the NCAA sniffing around the Whitney and told the players there to pack up, move out, and for God’s sake, pay their bills. We find it hard to believe college students could afford to live — live — at the Whitney, and find it highly suspect when it’s a group of athletes. Free rent, discounted rent, or rent facilitated by others can each cause some serious problems for the Carolina football program.
Spurrier would not say specifically whether players had gone a period of time without paying rent.
“I can’t go into all that,” Spurrier said. “They’re going to pay their bills and move out is what we have suggested for them to do.”
Tight end Weslye Saunders, who is being investigated by the NCAA for possible illegal activity with an agent, is one of the players who were staying at the Whitney. Offensive lineman Jarriel King and defensive tackle Travian Robertson also had rooms there.
Defensive backs C.C. Whitlock and Akeem Auguste were seen leaving Williams-Brice Stadium on Thursday before their teammates.
When assistant head coach for defense Ellis Johnson was asked about Auguste’s early exit, Johnson said USC “had some guys, two or three starters, who had to leave early to go get out of the hotel.”
This one could be a slow burn, if anything does come down from the NCAA. We don’t expect any significant ruling for findings of fact this year.
The way it began, the NCAA’s wide-raging investigation into player contact with agents, involving teams from across the South, seemed like it was going to end up as a big class-action style ruling hitting a number of programs. For a while, South Carolina looked like it dodged a bullet, but that’s no longer the case. The NCAA is taking closer scrutiny over the behavior of Gamecock tight end Weslye Saunders.
South Carolina tight end Weslye Saunders was questioned about his connection to an agent a few weeks ago by the NCAA. The questions came from a trip Saunders took to South Florida in the spring with Tarheel [sic] football player Marvin Austin, who has been under NCAA investigation.
The NCAA is planning a second trip to Columbia to speak to Saunders. They’ve already visited North Carolina for a second time.
All we can say is good luck to Saunders. Hopefully his friendship with members of the North Carolina football team didn’t screw over the team and the university he represents on Saturdays. But now might be a good time to circle the wagons and get ready for some penalties.
South Carolina’s most famous band in recent memory, Hootie and the Blowfish, keeps doing its part to help out the Palmetto State and be true to its home. Doing good things for your home, after you go big and make the bucks, is something that needs to be celebrated more often. Wednesday night, Hootie played a show in the Lowcountry to help kids get what they need to get back to school.
The band – Darius Rucker, Soni Sonefeld, Dean Felber, and Mark Bryan – concerned about cuts in education, staged their first homegrown concert at the Family Circle Tennis Center on Daniel Island in 2003.
That night, fans brought enough school supplies to fill a large school bus. More supplies will be collected at this year’s concert, scheduled for Wednesday night, and sent to Title I schools in the Charleston School District. The supplies given out during the day Wednesday were donated by 40 companies and agencies.
The Homegrown Roundup is an offshoot of the effort. This year, the event’s fourth, supplies went to help more than 1,000 students from four Charleston elementary schools.
Rucker, who recently has achieved stardom in his own right as a country music singer, said the band always felt a need to give back to South Carolina.
“I think it was when we were born. This is our home,” said Rucker, wearing a University of South Carolina national champion baseball hat. “Our kids go to school here.”
Keep it up, gentlemen.
The picture, a fog-bound Horseshoe at the University of South Carolina. It’s a good showing of higher education in South Carolina, at least for the last couple decades. Before we graduated from high school, we heard from more than one Carolina student — and this was prior to June 1999 — that USC was way, way more expensive for in-staters than North Carolina or Virginia. Granted, we’re not going to bust our asses to see what the average tuition was for USC, UNC and UVa were for fall 1999, but we’ve got this. So, let’s bring on the AP.
An education group says South Carolina’s public colleges charge the highest tuition among 16 Southern states.
The Post & Courier of Charleston reported Sunday that median tuition at South Carolina four-year public schools was $8,400 for the 2008-09 school year. That compares with $4,174 in North Carolina and $4,032 in Georgia.
The figures were reported by the Southern Regional Education Board. The board says part of the reason for the high tuition is because state lawmakers do not fund South Carolina public colleges at the same level as North Carolina and Georgia.
State funding at South Carolina colleges was about $4,800 a student in 2008-09. That compared with more than $11,500 per student in North Carolina and about $7,800 per student in Georgia.
Oh, really? South Carolina lawmakers are not spending on public education to the same level of other Southern states? Jesus, man, you’re blowing our minds right here. Goddamn — we guess that we missed that entire situation while spending 2.5 years in K-12 and three years in higher ed in the Palmetto State. That whole issue missed us entirely.
It doesn’t take a graduate from a college way the hell off the Interstate to tell you that South Carolina doesn’t do dick for its higher education students of a lower income (among other things) compared to North Carolina, Georgia, or especially Virginia, where we transferred from. No kidding — if UVa had as good of a public relations program as Carolina did in 2001-2002, we would be the bastards making Va. Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli‘s life a living hell. But, unfortunately for Mussolini, er, Cuccinelli, we’re here, trying to help people out.
The fact is, though the rotten core would like to dispute it, Sen. Hugh Leatherman‘s idea of capping state college tuition hikes at 7.3 percent is the least anyone can do, but it’s taking one of the most powerful members of the General Assembly to do just that. Even The Post & Courier, whose editorial board must get Christmas cards from both Mark and Jenny Sanford, says that Leatherman is making a needed move.
Many students at our colleges graduate deeply in debt. And that was before the state’s institutions of higher learning upped tuition by as much as 14.8 percent.
There is no question that colleges, like every state agency and almost every business and family, are in a financial pinch. And there is no question that South Carolina would suffer if its colleges were unable to attract and educate people to take on challenging careers in a state actively courting new industry and business.
State colleges have seen state allocations decline over the years as a percentage of their budgets, and that’s occurred more precipitately with the current drop in state revenue. As a result, colleges are more likely to increase tuition to counter the shortfall. College officials should resist the urge, recognizing that students are dealing with the tough economy, too.
Even if students are able to manage higher costs through government loans, it only delays the pain.
This year, the College of Charleston has approved a whopping 14.8 percent hike; The Citadel, a hefty 13 percent jump; and Clemson, 7.5 percent.
Perhaps Sen. Leatherman has overstepped his authority by threatening to deal with state’s colleges and universities in the next budget go-round. But who else has been willing to take up the cause of struggling students and their families?
Just like the P&C, to take a shot at Leatherman to please the Sanford moneymen (and moneywomen). Here’s an idea — help people without a shit-ton of money, but good grades, get into college. You know, merit. Don’t give people who have the benefit of name and money initial admission. South Carolina is good on academic scholarships, so we should try getting need-based grants and loans in line with other Southern states. Because, and this is just a minor idea, South Carolina could lose its best and brightest to other states, while keeping its rich and asinine in-state.
We’ve given a damn about the Heisman and the Maxwell trophies for a very few seasons — 1994 (Alabama WR/KR/RB/QB David Palmer), 1999 (Alabama RB Shaun Alexander) and 2009 (Alabama RB Mark Ingram). Only last season was a Tide player able to get to the foulest of the foul who decide which very young man is considered the best of major amateur football athletics. We’d say that Alexander should have won both, while Ingram should have been left off until this season, but that’s not here or there.
What matters is that Monday, the organization that gives out the Maxwell Award and the Chuck Bednarik Award — the Maxwell Football Club — just about admits that the top athlete will be an offensive player, restricting the Bednarik Award to only defensive players. Those in the college football blogosphere know that the keepers of the Heisman are right bastards when it comes to use of the name, so they discuss the Maxwell Award in its place.
In the last season, though, the Maxwell winner was Colt McCoy, the senior quarterback for Texas who got knocked out of the game by Huffman High School product Marcell Dareus. The Bednarik Award went to a guy who simply played on a team that — sniff, sniff — just wasn’t good enough, Ndamukong Suh.
The Maxwell Award has been presented to the outstanding collegiate football player in America since 1937 and is named in honor of sportswriter Robert W. “Tiny” Maxwell. The Chuck Bednarik Award has been presented to the nation’s top defensive player since 1995. Mr. Bednarik is a member of both the College Football Hall of Fame 69′ and the NFL Hall of Fame 67′.
Colt McCoy of the University of Texas was the recipient of the 73rd Maxwell Award and Ndamukong Suh from the University of Nebraska was awarded the 15th Chuck Bednarik Award for their outstanding performances during the 2008 season. The two men were selected by the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions respectively in this April’s NFL Draft.
So, yeah.
Anyway, this year, the SEC/Clemson watch list looks thusly:
MAXWELL
Mark Ingram, RB, Alabama
Julio Jones, WR, Alabama
Greg McElroy, QB, Alabama
Stephen Garcia, QB, South Carolina
Kyle Parker, QB, Clemson
John Brantley, QB, Florida
Jeff Demps, RB, Florida
Randall Cobb, WR, Kentucky
Washaun Ealey, RB, Georgia
A.J. Green, WR, Georgia
Ryan Mallett, QB, Arkansas
BEDNARIK
Marcell Dareus, DE, Alabama
Dont’a Hightower, LB, Alabama
Mark Barron, S, Alabama
Stephon Gilmore, CB, South Carolina
DeAndre McDaniel, S, Clemson
Ahmad Black, S, Florida
Josh Byrnes, LB, Auburn
Justin Houston, LB, Georgia
Pernell McPhee, DE, Mississippi State
Patrick Peterson, CB, LSU
Kelvin Sheppard, LB, LSU
Jerrell Powe, DT, Ole Miss
Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier has always been a mercurial sort with quarterbacks, all but saying he’ll pull starting quarterback Stephen Garcia this year if the slightest thing goes wrong. He did the same all the time at Florida, not the least of which with Noah Brindise. Zac, Noah’s little brother, has been on the Gamecock squad for three years, including a redshirt year in 2007 when he was with the practice squad. But in 2008 and 2009, he didn’t see any action on the field.
Brindise asked to be released from the USC football team, and had his wish granted. He’s expected to enroll at Western Carolina. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Players leave and transfer during the offseason all the time. This summer, Star Jackson, who was one of the top quarterbacks coming out of high school, left Alabama for Georgia State, which is just starting its first year of competitive play. Of course, the big reason there is that Jackson was likely to be third string this year, and that he couldn’t break through to solidify the No. 2 spot behind starter Greg McElroy.
The problem at Carolina, though, is that recently quarterbacks have been high-tailing it out of Columbia. Aramis Hillary and Reid McCollum have both left the team this year. At one time, quarterbacks really wanted to be coached by Spurrier. The Head Ball Coach was able to take damn near anyone and turn them into excellent college players. Now whatever Spurrier is able to do during recruiting is being undone after the players join the team.
Maybe the HBC can turn it around or fix the problem that has these guys taking off for the Football Championship Subdivision. But it seems more plausible to us that Carolina fans will get tired of this song-and-dance, and Spurrier will get tired of the bullshit — probably at the same time. Unless there’s some spectacular string of winning coming up, we say this circus closes down the big top before the 2013 season begins.
Commemorative resolutions are an every day part of life in an American legislative body. Usually they move through rather quickly and that’s that. In Congress, when a sports team wins a national championship, the usual thing to do is to have a resolution sponsored by a few people, there’s a little speechifying and the matter’s done. But not recently in the U.S. Senate, and not for the national champion Carolina baseball team.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham sponsored the legislation in the upper chamber to congratulate the team after a similar resolution, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, made it out of the House (though the AP article mentions a “nasty floor fight”). But this one isn’t moving, not one bit.
“It’s one thing to not be able to do the big things which are hard, like reforming Social Security,” Graham said. “But it’s quite another to not be able to do the simple, appropriate and easy things like recognizing a team for winning a national championship.”
As the article points out, other resolutions from other senators are holed up in committee too, for the reason that it appears a small number of legislators seem to have some PTSD from getting picked last for kickball and are taking it out on successful athletes. Measures recognizing Alabama‘s 2009 football national championship (Richard Shelby, R-Ala.), Duke’s 2009-2010 men’s basketball national championship (Richard Burr, R-N.C.) and LSU’s 2009 baseball national championship (Mary Landrieu, D-La.) are going nowhere, along with resolutions dealing with NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson and S.C. golfer Lucas Glover.
Really. There’s petty, and then there’s OMG SOOOOOOOOO PETTY.
