Leading off today: Reacting to the possibility of being sued under the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Southern Cayuga Central School District has told boosters to stop selling merchandise that displays a Chiefs logo,
The Citizen reported Thursday.
The National Coalition Against Racism in Sports and Media, a Minnesota-based non-profit organization, notified the district March 10 it would file a federal lawsuit against Southern Cayuga for "perpetrating continued illegal and discriminatory mascot names, images and behaviors of the Chiefs."
NCARSM asserted that a T-shirt featuring a Chiefs logo violated the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. NCARSM President David Glass wrote in the letter to the school district that "despite ample education and time to remedy" the alleged violation, the district has "deliberately chosen to continue your illegal practice of restoring the Chiefs mascot."
District Superintendent Patrick Jensen responded to the letter on April 1, noting that the T-shirt was sold by Southern Cayuga Sports Boosters, an independent sports booster club. In the letter to NCARSM, he said the district ordered the sports booster club to cease the sale of "clothing items with a Chief mascot image on our campus." He also said the board of education has referred the issue to the district's policy committee to draft formal guidelines for a school mascot.
Southern Cayuga changed logos in 2008 but retained the Chiefs nickname, the paper reported. The logo on the district's website features an interlocked "S" and "C," with no reference to the Chiefs name. The website links to an apparel vendor page that sells items that feature a Chiefs logo with a man in a traditional Native American headdress.
Hurley leaves UB: Thursday's blog included a quote from a New Jersey reporter: "This is how the world works now."
The statement was in the context of a development in high school sports, but I think we could find at least one development per day at the high school, college and professional levels that would compel us to utter those same words.
Today's example comes in the form of Bobby Hurley's departure late Thursday afternoon from his job as men's basketball coach at the University at Buffalo to accept a similar job at Arizona State.
It was inevitable that UB would lose Hurley soon. UB is not a "destination" school, and Hurley, 43, almost certainly has a few more moves up the ladder in him if he keeps winning. He could eventually make the short list at Duke when Mike Krzyzewski decides to call it a career.
I can't fault Hurley for leaving Buffalo. Going west triples or quadruples his salary and moves him into the Pac-12 and real major-conference basketball. The problem I do have with him though brings us back to "This is how the world works now."
Hurley, 42-20 in two seasons at UB, already had a couple of bites at the climb-a-rung-on-the-coaching-ladder merry-go-round (Sorry for the somewhat mixed metaphor there, but you get the idea.) this spring. He was regarded as a contender to fill vacancies at St. John's and DePaul.
But when those schools opted to go in a different direction and there didn't seem to be any other intriguing options on the hozizon, it sure sounded as though Hurley committed to returning to UB for a third season. "My heart is here in Buffalo with this group of kids I'm coaching and that's what I plan on doing moving forward," Hurley said in an interview with ESPN's Colin Cowherd last week.
Then and now, his words reminded me of another quote that can be trotted out quite appropriately on a regular basis: "Sincerity leads to success. Once you learn to fake that, the world is yours."
Life sentence for ex-coach: Ralph Wager, who coached Webster THomas to a series of Section 5 boys soccer championships from 1972 to '82, pleaded guilty Tuesday in North Carolina to child sex charges and was sentenced to life in prison.
