* This might be a first. At the recent NCAA Division I Track and Field Championships, athletes from Tampa Bay high schools finished first and second in the same event. And not just any event, but the glamour event of any track meet: the 100-meter dash.
Trayvon Bromell of Gibbs High in St. Petersburg (and Baylor University) won it, and Dentarious Locke of Tampa’s Chamberlain High (and Florida State University) finished runner-up.
* Local baseball celebrity Tino Martinez, of Jefferson High, the University of Tampa and New York Yankee fame, has just been accorded another honor. This is big. Last weekend Martinez, a member of four Yankees World Series winners, unveiled his own plaque for placement in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park. Right there with those of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and more. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
* Most bowl games no longer sound like bowl games, so it’s no big deal that Tropicana Field’s Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl St. Petersburg will now become the rebranded Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl on Dec. 26. Anything but the 1-800-ASK-GARY Bowl.
* These are, to be sure, challenging times in major college athletics–as in football and men’s basketball. TV revenues are in the billions, head coaches routinely are compensated in the multi-millions, and players increasingly are sounding like employees rather than scholarship student-athletes.
Change is coming, with lots of scenarios yet to play out beyond “stipends” and Title IX subplots.
But those recent comments by NCAA President Mark Emmert belied any sense of reality. He said college athletes wouldn’t want to play against athletes who were getting paid. “They want to know the other teams consist of student-athletes just like them,” he reasoned. He also said the main reason fans like college sports is because the athletes are students who play for love of the sport and their school.
This just in, Mark: Either ease up and get flexible, fair and creative about compensating players–or get out in front and lead a major overhaul of major college sports. To wit: Pro-prepping, sham students–who don’t even pretend to be “student-athletes”–can no longer be an athletic-program lifeline. Second, playing a sport–time wise–can no longer be a year-round commitment. Something’s got to give.