Prepare your black formal attire. Send flowers. Offer your condolences to the major college sports that have recently witnessed the death of class.
It's been a slow, painful death; but to me, the bitter end came in the past few weeks during a series of classless and distasteful actions.
It began on Nov. 20, the day after the Pistons-Pacers NBA brawl. Clemson football coach Tommy Bowden's attempt to explain the on-field brawl between his Tigers and South Carolina that day was a perfect trifecta -- asinine, distasteful and embarrassing.
"For 24 hours, they've watched that basketball fiasco on TV. That's all they've watched," he said.
If only it was so simple, Tommy. When I fare worse than I'd hope for on school assignments, I do not blame the poor grades on movies like Animal House.
Can you imagine if I did, though?
(Well, every time I looked at the screen, I saw the guys of Delta house failing their exams.)
Throw another pile of dirt onto the lowered casket. At Sunday's Lady Lions game against then-No. 2 North Carolina, I saw something I'd never before seen in a basketball game at any level. When Penn State would go to the line, the home crowd, as expected, would fall silent. But the lack of class came from the Tar Heel bench, as the players on the sideline yelled and screamed just before the Lady Lion released her shot.
The first time this happened -- when a few Heels screamed "box out" before the shot -- I was willing to concede that perhaps this was just a last-second suggestion to teammates. That concession was thrown out, however, when the Carolina players gave up on the rebounding advice and simply shrieked in order to distract the Penn State player. Perhaps those shrieking Tar Heels had been on the bench for so long that they forgot they were players, and not fans in the stands.
Either way, a few Carolina players took it upon themselves to play the role of fans in the absence of Tar Heel support on the road. In a time when the roles of players and fans are being scrutinized more than ever, perhaps these Heels should stick to the athletics.
Then there's the final nail in the coffin, which took more than a week to be fully hammered in: National television caught this one on Nov. 26 after the Texas-Texas A&M football game, when ABC gave victorious Longhorns coach Mack Brown an open mic to say what was on his mind concerning his team and its hopes for an at-large BCS bid.
"If you've got a vote, vote for us," Brown said, pleading directly to voters in the Associated Press writers' poll. "I'm asking you to do that and I'm asking everyone across the nation. This team deserves to be in the BCS. They deserve to go more than some teams that are being talked about."
Brown's lobbying worked, and the Longhorns moved ahead of Cal to gain a date with Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
Now, never mind that most felt Cal was better qualified to play in the Rose Bowl; that as a Pac-10 team, it would have been appropriate for the Golden Bears to take on the Big Ten champs in the Tournament of Roses. What is most disturbing here is that it's possible that Cal was slighted because its coach, Jeff Tedford, declined to toot his own horn, to market his team to the voters. Though Tedford wouldn't do the lobbying, Cal quarterback Aaron Rodgers would not remain silent on the issue after learning the Bears would be going to the Holiday Bowl instead of the Rose Bowl.
"I thought it was a little classless how Coach Brown was begging for votes after the [Texas A&M] game," Rodgers said. "I think a team's record and the way you play should speak for itself. ...Coach Tedford isn't going to [complain]. I think we're a bigger team, classier than that."
Sadly, that class is all relative.
