Sports fodder for a Friday morning...Do you think Colin Kaepernick regrets signing a six-year contract extension with the San Francisco 49ers a year ago. OK, dumb question. Kaepernick, who will make more than $15 million this year, has more than 100 million reasons to be thrilled with his contract. But there’s no way Kaepernick could have seen what was about to happen almost from the moment he signed the extension. Head coach Jim Harbaugh is gone. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio is gone. Teammates Mike Iupati, Patrick Willis, Chris Borland, Dan Skuta, Chris Culliver, Frank Gore, Perrish Cox and possibly Michael Crabtree and Justin Smith are or will be gone. Everything around Kaepernick has seemingly fallen apart since he signed the extension. Kaepernick now is a rich man off the field and the leader of a team full of questions on the field. Kaepernick’s career once seemed destined to join the ranks of Joe Montana and Steve Young. Now he seems headed on a path similar to John Brodie and Jeff Garcia.
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Borland’s decision to retire at the age of 24 is a bit disturbing. Did he just figure out there’s the possibility of head injuries and long-term health issues by playing football? Is he just smarter than everybody else? Did he simply not love the game enough to risk walking around with fake knees and hips and a brain that sloshes around in his skull at the age of 50? Borland, who played for former Wolf Pack linebacker and defensive coordinator Andy Buh at Wisconsin, must have had tremendous courage and love for the game to even play the sport at just 5-foot-11. His decision to retire before he made tons of money is a red flag the NFL better not ignore. If you’re a parent of a young boy you really need to seriously think about whether or not you want him to play football.
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If Kentucky doesn’t run the table in the NCAA tournament and finishes the season as the first undefeated team since Indiana in 1976 is it going to be forgotten? You bet. Does anybody even remember Wichita State was unbeaten just last year heading into the tournament? What about St. Joseph’s in 2004, UNLV in 1991, Alcorn State in 1979 and Indiana State in 1979? Kentucky has to win the national title or else its season is going to be a disappointment. That’s the price you pay for being so great in the regular season. A one-loss season will be considered a bust. The Wolf Pack lost more than one game most every week this past year.
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It’s probably not a coincidence the 1975-76 Hoosiers are the last team to go unbeaten. They did it before the shot clock, the 3-point line were allowed. You can argue those two things ruined the game. And you’d be dead wrong. Those two things saved the game and made it into the national phenomenon it is today (OK, just this month). Can you imagine if there was 3-point shot, let alone a shot clock, now in college hoops? We’d have final scores in the 30s. The NCAA is thinking of pushing the 3-point line out and shrinking the shot clock. Big mistake. Teams can barely shoot now and imagine how many more turnovers we’d have if we speeded things up. Leave the game alone.
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Former NFL coach John Madden received a lot of hate from the mindless, follow-the-crowd Twitter-happy media this week after he criticized Will Ferrell for playing in major league spring training games. The media used all the tired old man jokes (get off my lawn, etc.) to bash Madden and justified Ferrell’s sideshow by saying it was for charity. There are other ways for celebrities to raise money for charity.
The NFL makes its players wear pink shoes, wrist bands and socks for breast cancer awareness. It doesn’t allow Justin Timberlake to take snaps at quarterback in a pre-season game. Baseball needs to start respecting itself more and stop allowing rich celebrities to turn the sport into a joke.
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Jim Boeheim needs to disappear. Why doesn’t Syracuse just fire the guy? Syracuse, which got hit with NCAA sanctions this week (including the loss of 12 scholarships and five years probation) for numerous violations over the last decade under Boeheim’s watch. Boeheim, though, said he’s going to stay on as head coach for the next three years and then retire. Why is that his decision? Should any coach who resided over a decade worth of NCAA violations be allowed to keep his job? It’s time for Syracuse to move on.
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The Boise State Broncos and the Mountain West Conference got a raw deal this week when the NCAA sent them to Dayton to play the host school in a NCAA tournament game. It’s the first time a school played a home game in the tournament since 1987. Do you think the NCAA would do that to a Big Five Conference team? Of course not. But it did it to Boise State and the Mountain West. Dayton won by one point and overcame a seven-point deficit in the last three minutes. That only happens on its own floor where it’s now won 22 games in a row. The NCAA turned its own tournament into the NIT and CBI by allowing Dayton to play at home. It would have more dignity by allowing Will Ferrell to play point guard for Boise State.