Apparently it is time for the yearly reporting of NCAA violations and other wrong doings. Now I expect that at some point or another an over-eager assistant in any given sport is likely to do something they shouldn’t. I belief these are considered Level II violations and result in silly punishments like letters of reprimand or a day or two off the recruiting trail (can you say more time to analyze tape and fill out paperwork). Half the time I am guessing they don’t realize their actions are against the rules until after the fact or someone tells them so. Anyway, we had a few of these but no sports were listed except the oft discussed (at least on this site) Women’s Rowing Team. Lueck’s “relief of duties” was mentioned after some preferential treatment including lodging was given by the coach to a student. Gee, I wonder who was involved. The article also mentioned the coach was let go a day prior to a match on Lake Hartwell and two weeks prior to the ACC’s. No additional details were spoken about and the new coach coming from Louisville was quoted, and I am paraphrasing, that the infractions were not to a degree that the program would lose stability. I would love to agree but only time will tell on that one. Nice media sound bite though as most probably have no clue what all is/was going on.

What irks me is this: One, the sidebar headline read “Ex-coach committed violations.” Now this was on the ESPNU College Sports (I assume this is the page for most of the non-revenue sports) that I linked just by hitting the “ESPNU” link at the top of the college football page. Now, I wasn’t differentiating the sport types at the time, but I was still surprised to see this. I figured this was the story but they spoke a lot about this and didn’t mention anything about names, teams, sports, etc on any of the other violations. As we all know ESPN is a huge outlet. Had I not gone back to reference the other stories on this page, I could have easily been pulled in thinking they had Danny Ford on something from 20 years ago, or something screwy going on with the basketball team. Either way a Clemson fan, or rival fan looking for a talking point would easily pick up on a headline like this and run with it. This wasn’t something on page 6 of 5 in the Anderson daily newspaper. I’ll be interested to see how the whole saga shakes out but now that the media attention is a bit more widespread. I’m wondering if the ripples (no pun intended) will build more into waves instead of fading out as I thought they were.

The athletic department has announced the hiring of Richard Ruggieri as the new head coach of the rowing team. Ruggieri comes from Louisville where he has been since 2000. His resume looks impressive. But let’s be honest. I don’t know jack about rowing so I really can’t evaluate his qualifications. Let’s just hope he isn’t batshit crazy.

The WIStv article hardly says anything about Ruggieri, but does bring up former coach Susie Lueck.

Lueck has not returned repeated phone calls or e-mails asking for comment and Ruggieri, who was briefed on the dismissal, did not want to talk about the details.

A request made by The Associated Press under the state’s open records law for documents related to Lueck’s firing returned only the coach’s latest contract.

She was fired and there was no paperwork? Can you do that? Any lawyers care to comment?

Sources: Read the rest of this entry »

A special thanks goes to the disgruntled rowers who have been keeping things fresh around here the last few weeks. Without you the blog might have keeled over and died like I have wanted to do on many occasions after having one too many shots of whiskey followed by several more shots of whiskey chased with cheap beer.

The reasons for the slow down are pretty clear. The terrible finish of the football season and the long drought during basketball have taken their toll. We just aren’t as excited about the baseball team’s prospects as last year. On the upside, I’m hoping that the team is simply trying to avoid peaking too soon in the season. The reality of the situation should become evident within the next month as the team will either have to peak or end the season.

Additionally, it seems that life may be getting the best of us. In the next two months I’ll be finishing up grad school and moving. Walker is getting married, moving, and trying to grow his own business. Calhoun and Bowman are also contemplating taking new jobs in new locations.

In other news, TigerNet is either having technical difficulties right now, or I finally managed to get kicked off the site. Right now the site can’t find my username and I did openly wish death upon a person this morning. I saw it less as a personal attack and more as a rhetorical device meant to inspire deeper contemplation into his own wishing of a person’s drowning in the floodwaters of a hurricane. Or as Michael Bolton might say, “why should I change? He’s the one that suck.”

Hopefully the approach of football season will bring us out of hiding. Otherwise, maybe we can get Springer to have a show about the rowing team?

Fortunately for Clemson, rowing is a sport that no one cares about. So, when the head coach got fired unexpectedly in the middle of the season last Friday, there was virtually no hubbub. There was small announcement. The few people who heard the news assumed there was a scandal. And that was it.

A Google news search doesn’t reveal any new articles, which explain why Lueck’s contract was terminated.

And today’s release of Current Issues with Dr. Phillips, doesn’t say a single thing about rowing. I guess since the firing occurred last week, it does not qualify as a “current issue.”

Ok, so Jack Leggett has now not gotten his 1000th win three times. Hopefully, if the team gets swept at Maryland, it will be equivalent to their sweet last year at UVA after which they really got their shit together.

But while Leggett has not achieved his milestone, the rowing team has achieved a nice level of success. Saturday, “[t]he Tigers took on nationally-ranked teams Michigan, Michigan State, and Notre Dame in the varsity 8+, and led the entire 2000m race from start to finish.”

Outstanding.