The Behrend beacon. (Erie, Pa.) 1998-current, November 10, 2000, Image 19

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10,2000
The NBA:
Ten years ago, the National Basketball
Association looked to be the sport that
would challenge the remains of a slow
paced Major League Baseball, and a
highly successful National Football
League. Now, the NBA is struggling to
keep its television spot over professional
wrestling and keep its ratings up with
Walker Texas Ranger and the Brady
Bunch reruns.
Maybe that’s overboard, but what has
really happened with the NBA? It went
from rising success to rising boredom,
and raw talent to raw cockiness.
There are players like Allen Iverson,
Kevin Garnett, and Steve Francis who
would rather prance around on the
basketball court as some sort of authority
figure, than play modest hard-nosed
hoops that the NBA once founded itself
upon.
Iverson reluctantly drags his feet on
defense, but suddenly goes in overdrive
once the ball gets in his hands. His body
language, smeared with tattoos so
elaborate and symbolic, basically tell
those watching him and competing with
him, “my 50% effort exceeds your 110%
heart.” Yeah, that's really good for the
principles of modesty in basketball these
Behrend Scores
Women’s Soccer
The women’s soccer season
has concluded
Men’s Soccer
AMCC Tournament at
Frostburg
Oct. 4 vs. La Roche W 6-0
Oct. 5 vs. Frostburg L 1-0
(OT)
Volleyball
AMCC Tournament at
Frostburg
Oct. 3 vs. Pitt-Bradford W 3-
1
Oct. 4 vs. Frostburg L 3-1
Cross Country
No meets were scheduled for
this week.
Men’s Water Polo
U.S. Southern Champion
ships
vs. Princeton L 14-0
vs. Washington and
Jefferson L 12-1
vs. Johns Hopkins L 9-2
ken
AUe.
1. Arizona
2. Duke
3. Michigan St.
4. Stanford
5. Maryland
6. North Carolina
7. Kansas
8. Illinois _
, The problem in pro basketball
tOJ tf OUtluS escalates when you have 19-year
son Snyder olds com P etin B* n a ,evel of
\ basketball that great names like
~cf'!H k !" Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar
Robertson, Larry, Magic and
Michael have dominated for over 50
years now. An insult? You bet. This
league didn’t get based on overzealous
athletes ready to learn about finance
through their million-dollar paycheck
rather than in a college classroom. It got
based on an assortment of players that
pushed themselves at each level that
they competed so that they could get the
best learning experience possible.
Fine, tell me about Kobe and Kevin
Garnett. Rub in their success and tell
me that they are the ones that are
evolving this league to the next level.
Remind me that they skipped the college
level to go pro and have succeeded in
doing so. But I’ll tell you that their
success lacks something that makes
ditm4n
good players great.
Michael Jordan would have never
reached his level without a legend from
North Carolina named Dean Smith.
There’s an added ingredient of
knowledge that you can learn in college
hoops that you can’t learn elsewhere.
Kobe and Kevin will never learn the
importance of team. College might not
be necessary for individual talent, but it
means the world when it comes to
individual success.
Success in the NBA never used to be a
result of media coverage. Today, media
coverage is a prerequisite for career
success. It used to be that career success
(Standings as of November 6, 2000)
WOMEN’S SOCCER
School (
Penn State Behrend
La Roche
Frostburg
Pitt-Bradford
Lake Erie
Pitt-Greensburg
MEN’S SOCCER
School
Frostburg
La Roche
Penn State Behrend
Pitt-Greensburg
Lake Erie
Pitt-Bradford
WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL
School
Frostburg
Penn State Behrend
Pitt-Bradford
Penn State Altoona
Pitt-Greensburg
La Roche
Lake Erie
Mountain
College Basketball
Preseason AP Men’s college basketball poll
9. Tennessee
10. Seton Hall
11. Florida
12. Kentucky
13. Utah
14. Connecticut
15. (tie) Arkansas
(tie) Notre Dame
THE SCOREBOARD
AMCC STANDINGS
Conference record
5-0
3-2
3-2
2-3
2-3
0-5
Conference record
5-0
4-1
3-2
2-3
1-4
0-5
Conference Record
12-0
10-2
7-4
6-6
4-8
iate G
17. UCLA
18. Cincinnati
19. Wisconsin
20. Wake Forest
21. Depaul
22. Oklahmoa
23. USC
24. Virginia
SPORTS
dying young
was a prerequisite for media coverage.
You didn’t hear anyone calling Michael
Jordan “the next Oscar Robertson”
when he began his career. But right
now, you always hear the term “the next
Michael Jordan.” Athletes are being
made so big through the media that
these athletes know success is
inevitable
ESPN, The Magazine, just published
an issue that profiled a seventh grader,
an eighth grader, a high school
freshman, a sophomore and a junior.
Dwain Williams, an eighth grader from
Murrieta, California had this said about
him in the magazine: “Now, he’s the
focus of the nation’s most intriguing
recruiting battle, as prep schools from
New York to L.A. vie for his services.”
This is an eighth grader! He should be
bragging about making it onto the
basketball page in his yearbook, not a
nationally read magazine.
We wonder why athletes are skipping
college for the pros? It’s because they
have basically been drafted before they
even reach high school. It’s as if we are
skipping a level. We once played
elementary ball for fun, high school for
class popularity, and college for
preparation to the professional level.
Now, eighth grade is to get recruited to a
top-notch high school, and high school
is to get drafted.
So now we have people that aren’t old
enough to drive a car past midnight,
driving to the hoop in front of
professional recruiters. We have
elementary students with more
important names than their coaches,
high schoolers with a different agenda
2-10 3-24
0-12 0-12
ferena
Games for Week 9
Sunday, November 12, 2000
1:00 PM
Overall
16-5
14-6
11-7
7-12
7-13
0-12
Chicago at Buffalo
Cincinnati at Dallas
Seattle at Jacksonville
New Orleans at Carolina
Atlanta at Detroit
Arizona at Minnesota
Baltimore at Tennessee
New England at Cleveland
4:15 PM
Overall
15-4
6-9-2
10-9-1
8-9-2
1-12
4-13
Miami at San Diego
St. Louis at NY Giants
Kansas City at San Francisco
Green Bay at Tampa Bay
8:35 PM
NY Jets at Indianapolis
Monday, October3o, 2000
9:00 PM
Oakland at Denver
Overall
33-3
15-13
18-11
13-14
5-18
Open: Washington
NASCAR
WINSTON CUP
Leaders as of 10/15
1. Bobby Labonte, 4805
2. Dale Earnhardt, 4587
3. Jeff Burton, 4579
4. Dale Jarrett, 4449
5. Tony Stewart, 4336
6. Ricky Rudd 4329
7. Rusty Wallace, 4280
8. Mark Martin, 4197
9. Jeff Gordon, 4050
10. Ward Burton, 3936
11. Steve Park, 3682
12. Mike Skinner, 3649
13. Johnny Benson, 3509
14. Matt Kenseth, =3473
15. Joe Nemechek, 3337
lowa St
than their coaches with college athletes
being left with just the remains of the of
the players that weren’t made by the
media
The problem with this is that the NBA
players that are skipping college are
lacking one thing...discipline. If you
showed up to compete in a college game
in a wife-beater with your hat on
backwards with more gold chains around
your neck than Mr. T, chances are you
would be running laps until game time.
If you didn’t fight through a screen or
pressure the ball hard enough, you would
be sitting the bench.
It’s not the job of NBA coaches to
preach discipline or to provide dress
codes. Your values are taught at the
college level. You don’t hear college
professors giving lav passes to students
so they can use the bathroom and you
don’t see your professors showing you
how to cover your mouth when you
cough. Why? Because it’s something
they learned in kindergarten. Why have
to teach it again at a level of education
that students should have already learned
before?
The NBA is going downhill. It’s no
longer a league that values its veterans.
It’s a league that celebrates athletes that
would rather appear in fashion magazines
for their Tommy clothing and million
dollar jewelry than play modest
basketball. And by “modest basketball,”
I mean players that don’t dance around
for scoring a basketball and running
down the court as if no one else is there
besides themselves.
Snyder’s sports column appears
every two weeks.
National Football
League
Butch Davis has his Hurricanes at number 3 in the BCS
CLASSIFIEDS
IN STORES NOW!!
“Travis Bowen Pressents...Erie
Area Music Volume 1” The
Compilation: featuring music from
the Local Area!! Special Guests
include: Manon Kelly, SKUDD,
The Mollies, Self Inflicted, TRAV
feat. Lilith Stabs, RICO, Sabotage
theory, Jamie Daire, Double D,
Organic Voodoo Machine, and
more!!! At: Media Play, Dig Dio’s,
West Side CDs, World of Music,
Disco Round, Borders, and
Earthshine.
www.angelfirexom/liiphop/
highrollaz
SPRING BREAK 2001!
CANCUN & BAHAMAS. EAT,
DRINK, TRAVEL FOR FREE,
WANTED CAMPUS REPS! Call
USA SPRING BREAK, toll free
(877) 460.6077, for trip information
and rates. 25 Continuous Years of
Student Travel!
wwwjpringbreak.com
Anyone
interested in
writing a
sports
editorial next
semester can
send a sample
editorial to
behrcoli2@aoi.com.
It should be-
tween 600-
800 words and
should deal
with sports
nationally or
here at
Behrend.
BCS Ranking
Rank School
1. Oklahoma
2. Florida State
3. Miami (Fla.)
4. Nebraska
5. Florida
6. Washington
7. Oregon
8. Virginia Tech
9. Oregon State
10. Purdue
11. Kansas State
12. Notre Dame
13. Ohio State
14. Mississippi State
15. Northwestern
Wanted!
Spring Breakers! Cancun,
Bahamas, Florida,& Jamaica. Call
Sun Coast Vacations for a free
brochure and ask how you can
organize a small group and Eat,
Drink, Travel Free & Earn Cash!
Call 1-888-777-4642
or e-mail
Spring Break! Deluxe Hotels,
Reliable Air, Free Food, Drinks and
Parties. Cancun, Jamaica, Bahamas,
Mazatlan & Florida. Travel Free
and Earn Cash! Do it on the web!
Go to StudentOty.com or call 800-
293-1443 for info.
Students, faculty, and
staff of Penn State
Behrend are welcome to
place free classified ads.
Please send ads to
BehrColl4@aol.com
BCS Rating