That's just wrong, and some high school coaches and state athletic associations have gone so far in the past as to limit their cooperation with recruiters from the offending schools as a form of protest. But that, of course, hurts potential recruits at least as much as it hurts the colleges and is not a solution.
And, of course, that would be a minimal penalty for Syracuse. After all, the Orange football program wouldn't have to prostitute itself on Friday nights on ESPN if it had been able to pluck the likes of Mike Hart, Marquise Walker, Greg Paulus and Mike Paulus from its own back yard in recent years. With a few of those guys plus the likes of other missed N.Y. gems such as Ray Rice in the lineup, the Orange could be playing a steady diet of Saturday games on one of the three-letter networks.
Oh, well. At least we only have to wait until mid-November for Jimmy Boeheim's boys to take our minds off a two-win football program.
On a related note: SU announced Friday that it has added Southern Cal to the football schedule for a home-and-home arrangement in 2011 and 2012.
I'll offer Dr. Daryl Gross, the Syracuse AD, congratulations on that coup. Anyone other than a man with strong ties to USC would probably have been forced to agree to play twice on the West Coast in exchange for one game in the Carrier Dome. So, for the time being, SU still has some clout on the world of Division I football, though Greg Robinson would do well to start posting annual victory totals that cannot be counted on one hand of a bad woodshop teacher.
Winn robbed in Buffalo: I cringe at the thought of which sites will start linking here because they picked up the following item via our RSS feed, but I nevertheless offer this police blotter news item because it relates to a former Western New York basketball hero. So here it goes:
Three crossdressers robbed the Citizens Bank in Amherst on Friday, police told The Buffalo News. The bandits were last seen abandoning their getaway vehicle, which had been carjacked the night before in Buffalo from former Niagara LaSalle and St. Bonaventure basketball star Tim Winn.
"I’m glad to be alive," Winn told the newspaper.
Winn was jumped Thursday evening while leaving a basketball game at the Delavan-Grider Community Center in Buffalo. As Winn opened the door to his 2006 Chrysler 300M, a man who had been hiding near the vehicle stood up and pointed a gun at him.
Winn promptly reported the robbery and received a call from Amherst police Friday informing him that the vehicle had been used in the Citizens Bank robbery at 11:15 a.m. and then abandoned.
The holdup at the bank was pulled off by three men wearing women’s wigs, sunglasses and sweat suits. They displayed two handguns and fled with an undetermined amount of money, but were forced to discard the ill-gotten loot after dye packs bundled with the money exploded.
Extra points: Add longtime Hornell girls soccer and basketball coach Yvonne Knataitis to the list of summer retirees. She turned in her papers in June after 35 years in the school district.
