Category: Fordham Ram Writing

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in May 2018.

The Fordham Men’s Golf team finished in seventh place at the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament at the Grand Cypress Golf Club in Orlando, Fla. this past weekend.

Once again, the star for the Rams over the three-day tournament was senior James Mongey, who shot a three-day total of 225 to finish 10th overall among individual players. When asked about his impressive weekend, Mongey pointed to his experience on the course as the biggest reason for his success.

“I think having played the course my sophomore year helped a lot,” he said. “I got a feel for how the course plays. It is very difficult and tough to shoot low. You are going to make bogeys and par is always a great score, but I hit the ball great. I think if my short game was a little better, I might have won.” Instead, he finished seven strokes behind tournament champion Mike Blasey of Davidson College. Davidson also won the team tournament by shooting a three-day total of 891; Fordham finished 28 strokes behind that figure with a 919, which placed them seventh out of 11 teams.

Senior Joseph Trim and sophomore Tomas Nieves were also impressive for the Rams, as both finished tied for 24th place on the individual leaderboard with a three-day total of 231; Nieves shot a two-under 70 in his final round on Sunday. Senior Matt Schiller shot a 19-over 235 over the three days and junior Josh Madarang finished at 28-over with a 244.

Despite finishing seventh in the Atlantic 10 yesterday, this was a historically good Rams team. Schiller and Trim finished their Fordham careers with an 18-hole scoring average of 75.5, which ties both of them for first all-time among Rams golfers. Mongey’s career ended with a 76.6 average, which puts him in third on the all-time list. Out of the three, Trim played the most career rounds with 95, with Mongey and Schiller close behind with 91 and 88, respectively.

“I will look back on my time at Fordham with a lot of great memories,” Mongey said. “I will miss playing for coach (Paul) Dillon. I feel so grateful to have shared these experiences with him. I’ve formed great friendships as well, along the way.”

The Rams will lose Mongey, Schiller and Trim to graduation next season and will have to pick up the slack in the absence of, statistically, the three best golfers in the history of the school. Players such as junior Tommy Hayes, freshman Mithran Denbow, Nieves and junior Tommy Hayes, all of whom appeared in minor roles this year, will have to combine to fill the shoes of the departing seniors. Mongey, Schiller and Trim leave an outstanding legacy and their absence will be difficult for the Rams to overcome next season as head coach Paul Dillon heads into his 23rd year at the helm of the program.

Even though replacing the departing players will be difficult for the Rams next season, coach Dillon has proven that he develop young talent and will need to do so again if the Rams wish to replicate their success from this season. The improvement of the returning players will be key to Fordham’s success next season and beyond.
As for the year that just finished, though, the Rams have no complaints. “I think my game has improved every year,” Mongey said. “I’m optimistic my best is yet to come.”

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in May 2018.

For some, baseball’s minor leagues are a tune-up for a long and successful professional career. For others, it is a constant struggle to be noticed by big-league scouts. And for the rest, the minors are the last stop in a player’s professional career.
But they are not, apparently, a lucrative enterprise.

A new bill passed in Congress just over a month ago, that includes a provision ironically called the “Save America’s Pastime Act” exempts minor league baseball players from federal labor laws.

This means a couple of simple things:

1. Players don’t need to be paid minimum wage.

2. Players don’t need to be compensated for potential overtime wages.

You may be thinking that Major League Baseball can’t afford to pay its players adequate wages. After all, many say that the sport is “dying” and things that are supposedly on life support don’t pull in a lot of revenue.

I am here to tell you that this argument is a load of garbage.

Here’s why: last season, the sport whose audience is dying and whose games are way too long, set a record for annual revenue with over $10 billion made last season alone. The sport, at least on a financial level, is growing at a meteoric rate; the league has increased its revenue by roughly $500 million since 2015, and MLB recently sold part of BAMtech, a derivative of its highly-successful MLB Advanced Media venture, for $1.58 billion. If you want an indication of how lucrative the sport is, retired outfielder Bobby Bonilla will rake in $1 million from the Mets every July 1 until 2035. Bobby Bonilla last played for the Mets in 1999.

An investigation by Sporting News found that single-A players will be making $1,160 per month this season. Even when spread out over 12 months, that figure comes out to $13,920 per year, which is sub-optimal to say the least. However, full season players only get paid during the year, which lasts only five-and-a-half months. The deal is even worse for short-season single-A players, who only play for three months, at the most. The math works out as follows: full season players get $6,380 per year while short-season players get $3,480. Players make more money if they get to AA and AAA, but the Sporting News investigation found that a AAA player’s minimum salary per year is just $11,825 per year. Of course, you may think that this isn’t too bad because minor league players get free housing along with their subpar contracts. Unfortunately, I have news for you: they don’t.

Some players get signing bonuses when they are drafted or sign with a team out of high school, college or the international market. However, there are many players who don’t, and those people are the reason why baseball should take care of its own and pay its players a livable wage. It’s not just me saying this, either: a 2014 article by Sports Illustrated’s Michael McCann showed that minor league baseball players make less than half the yearly income of fast-food workers. With the amount of money, or lack thereof, that players make, many of them likely need to get offseason jobs just to pay for everyday expenses. This is to say nothing of their offseason training programs and participation in fall and winter leagues. Players are already too busy with these things to have time for other jobs, and they shouldn’t have to take a minimum wage job at a CVS because a multi-billion dollar franchise doesn’t want to pay them living wages.

And while we’re on that subject, can we please talk about how exploitative this entire arrangement is? Major League Baseball is awash in money and can absolutely afford to pay the less privileged amongst them the money to get by while they are still in the minor leagues. Rob Manfred is not exactly running a makeshift operation on Park Avenue; if the Marlins can pay Giancarlo Stanton $3 million per year to play against them, there is no reason why the sport can’t pick up the tab to make sure blue-collar minor league players can afford to live a decent life in the minors.

Besides all of this, though, why haven’t we decided that paying people a livable wage is a decent idea? There are some small businesses who are short on cash and have to pay employees as little as possible. Despite that, the vast majority of these businesses are ethical and follow the United States’ labor laws on a budget that is approximately 0.0000001 percent that of Major League Baseball’s. That being said, we should seriously evaluate whether or not the sport has the best interests of its least affluent players in mind, as the rich have gotten richer at the highest levels of the game but minor leaguers have not seen any trickle-down effects from baseball’s sustained wealth.

The decision should not be hard for Major League Baseball. They should pay livable, lawful and ethical wages to its minor league players. After all, it’s not like they can’t afford to do it.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in April 2018.

Fordham Men’s Golf has had a long week.

After last week’s Wildcat Invitational on Monday and Tuesday, in which the Rams finished ninth, Fordham traveled to New Haven, Conn. to participate in the one-day, 36-hole Yale Spring Invitational. Fordham struggled at the same course in the fall, finishing twelfth of 14 teams at the Macdonald Invitational from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1.

The Rams would fare slightly better on Saturday, but not nearly well enough to compete for a victory.

Under evolving, dampening and deteriorating conditions, Fordham finished ninth out of 16 teams on Saturday at the Course at Yale. The Rams started off the day strong and were tied for sixth after 18 holes with a 15-over 295 team round. The leaders in the clubhouse after one round were seniors James Mongey and Joseph Trim, who shot 73 and 70, respectively. Also competing for Fordham were senior Matt Schiller and sophomore Tomas Nieves, both of whom shot a 76 in the first round. Also playing individually for the Rams were juniors Josh Madarang, who shot a first-round 77, and Tommy Hayes, who shot an 80. The Rams were playing solid golf after round one, but could they sustain their solid start?

The answer was no.

Fordham fell off in round two and pulled in with a tied-for-ninth finish. Trim struggled in his final 18 holes, and his 70 was followed by an eight-over 78. Mongey shot a second-round 75 and Schiller fired an 81. The only Ram competing on the team level to improve on his round one performance was Nieves, who finished the tournament at ten-over after shooting a 74 in the final round. Madarang and Hayes shot 85 and 82, respectively. Tennessee University ultimately won the tournament; the Volunteers took the championship by 11 strokes over second-place and host school Yale University.

Next, the Rams moved on to the Rhode Island Invitational on Monday and Tuesday. Monday’s round was cancelled due to the day’s generally wicked weather, and the tournament was reduced to 36 holes on Tuesday. This time, Fordham got off to a slow start but improved in the second round. The team shot a 304 in the first round, and Schiller found himself second on the individual leaderboard with a first-round 72. “I went back to the basics this week,” Schiller said. “I had a rough weekend at Yale, so I just made sure I was getting set up correctly before shots and putts. It made a world of difference.” Trim and Madarang both shot 78s, while Mongey finished his first round with a 76. Nieves and Hayes competed as individuals; the former shot a 79 while the latter shot a 78. In the second round, the team fared slightly better.
Schiller finished his strong 36-hole showing with a 74, and his two-round 146 tied him for 5th on the individual leaderboard. Trim followed his 78 with a 73, Madarang shot 75 and Mongey finished his day with a 79. Nieves shot 76 and Hayes fired a 75 as individuals. Fordham finished the Rhode Island Invitational in seventh place and Rhode Island University, the host school, tied for the tournament victory with Rollins College. Fordham finished 17 strokes off the leaders.

Fordham’s regular season is now complete; they will compete at the Atlantic 10 Championships in Orlando, Florida from April 27 to 29. “The best way for us to succeed is to just go for it,” Schiller said. “We’ve been a little underrated in the projected finishes over the past few years, and we take a lot of motivation from that. We’re also a group of guys that weren’t heavily recruited either, so that underdog mentality can really drive our play. We don’t have anything to lose, so I think we can really shock some people in a couple weeks.”

Fordham finished seventh among the 11 teams that competed in the Atlantic 10 Tournament last season. The Rams are looking to do better than that this season, but they will need to improve upon their performances from this weekend if they want to make serious noise in Orlando.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in April 2018.

The Fordham men’s golf team competed in its second event of the spring season and finished in 9th place out of 19 teams at the Wildcat Invitational, which was hosted by Villanova University in Malvern, Pa. on Monday and Tuesday.

The Rams were in fourth place after the first round of the tournament on Monday. Senior Matt Schiller fired a first-round 70 to lead all Fordham players. Senior Joseph Trim, sophomore Tomas Nieves and junior Josh Madarang all shot a 74 in their first rounds of play, and they were accompanied by a first-round 75 from senior James Mongey. Things looked good for Fordham after 18 holes; they were in fourth places and ten strokes behind Drexel for first.

However, they were unable to sustain their hot start during play on Tuesday.

Trim, consistent as ever, led all Rams players with a 73 on Tuesday. Mongey shot another 75 on Tuesday, and both players either matched or bettered their first-round scores. No other Rams could say the same of their day two performances.
Schiller followed up a first-round 70 with a 78 in his final 18 holes. Nieves shot a 76 in round two after doing two strokes better on Monday, and Madarang finished his tournament with a 78.

“We did not play our best these last two days. I can speak for myself in that I was a little off in all facets of my game,” Mongey said. The Rams ultimately finished ninth at the tournament behind Binghamton University, Lehigh University, Delaware University, St. Peter’s University, Iona College, St. John’s University, Rhode Island University and the eventual tournament winner, Drexel University. This is the second event of the spring for Fordham; they finished in 6th at the Albarta Coca-Cola Lehigh Valley Collegiate Invite on Easter Sunday last week.

Also competing at the Wildcat Invitational were Siena College, Rider University, Wagner College, Bucknell University, Monmouth University, Villanova University (the host school), Le Moyne College, Lafayette College, La Salle University and Colgate University.

Freshman Mithran Denbow competed for the Rams as an individual and shot rounds of 76 and 83. The highest individual finisher for Fordham was Trim, who tied for 23rd place with a 147 over both days. Schiller finished tied for 29th, Mongey and Nieves both tied for 43rd and Madarang finished in 58th.

Next up for Fordham is the Yale Spring Invitational on Saturday, which will be a one-day, 36-hole tournament. After that, they have the 54-hole Rhode Island Invitational next Monday and Tuesday before the Atlantic 10 Tournament April 27-29.

“I think because the spring season is so quick and after a long winter, we are all trying to find our game leading into the A-10 Tournament,” Mongey said. “Hopefully, we will all peak then.”

The Rams need to get things going in the last two tournaments of the season as they head into the Atlantic 10 Tournament. If they do, they will be peaking at the right time, just like Mongey and the rest of the Rams hope to.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in April 2018.

On Monday, the President of the United States described an FBI raid as “an attack on our country.” Sadly, no one batted an eyelash.
Those words are appropriate for terrorist attacks, mass shootings and acts of war that take place on American soil. On Monday afternoon, the FBI raided the office of Michael Cohen, the president’s lead attorney, in relation to his business records related to porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels is suing the president over a non-disclosure agreement that he didn’t sign after the two supposedly had an “intimate” relationship after Trump married his current wife, Melania.

The FBI also wanted documents relating to Russia’s potential meddling in the 2016 presidential election. And, most importantly, the agency obtained a warrant when it did all of these things Monday. That’s not an attack on our country. That’s the FBI doing its job.
Sadly, our president’s comments (which also included another public rebuke of his own attorney general) are emblematic of a larger problem in America. Our politics — and more specifically, our discussions of them — are toxic. Actually, they can more accurately be described as a cesspool.

We disavow friends and even family members if they have different beliefs than we do. We don’t listen to each other. We yell at each other without even understanding what the other person’s position is.

And, worst of all, we listen to respond and offer a rebuttal to our interlocutors instead of listening to understand where they come from and why they think the way they do. This problem is not a Democrat or Republican one. It’s an American problem.

Unfortunately, our elections have also become about who can yell the loudest and who can lob the best insults at the other side. No longer do we elect leaders based on their intelligence and fitness for their jobs.

There is human proof of this trend in the White House, and chances are he’s in the residence watching cable television right now. If you really think that Trump was elected because he was the best person out of 320 million Americans to be our president, then I offer you these words he actually tweeted after his unprecedented 2016 election victory:

“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unpresidented act.”

This tweet shows that we do not value intelligence, contemplation and nuance in American society any longer.

Here’s a fun exercise: watch CNN for ten minutes on any weeknight. There will likely be a panel discussion the size of the last supper, and many of the panelists will scream at each other at the same time. But, most importantly, there will likely be one conservative voice on that panel, and that individual will likely be struck down very quickly. This person will not have a chance to further extrapolate his or her points beyond an initial statement, and if said analyst is a Trump supporter, then he or she is really in deep trouble.

Of course, if you turn on Fox News and you see a liberal, chances are that person is engaged in a shouting match with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or the woman who told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble.”

Here’s another problem with what is going on today: in addition to choosing their own sides, people now choose their own facts, as well.

If you decide to watch Fox News as a respite from the garbage being thrown around on other networks, you will find multiple segments devoted to a “deep state” within our government that is somehow serving to undermine President Trump. This, of course, is not true; there is an entirely legitimate FBI investigation going on right now as to whether a foreign country compromised our elections, to say nothing of a porn star suing the president. The left is not innocent here, either; many on that side have a predetermined outcome in mind for that investigation, which does not appear close to a conclusion.

I say all of this not as an elitist snob, but as an independent, concerned citizen living in the greatest country in the world. We, as a nation, have gone to the zoo of believing what we want to believe and pointing blind vitriol at the other side, regardless of what they are actually saying. We need to put our own opinions aside and listen to others, regardless of whether or not they share our beliefs. This is a legitimate problem for obvious reasons, and it also opens the door for unqualified people to reach positions of power like Donald Trump did in the 2016 presidential election.

Of course, social media has exacerbated this problem as well. We can call people we don’t even know every insult in the book without having to face any real-world consequences from doing so.

This problem is something we need to figure out, not just for the 2018 Midterm elections, but also moving forward. As a famous TV president once said, “Decisions are made by those who show up.” Let’s show up in seven months. Let’s be smart. And let’s not blindly cast a vote for an inexperienced, unqualified individual because he or she happens to be on our side of the issues.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in April 2018.

While this may come as a surprising development to some people, football is a sport that features a lot of violence.

It is no secret, then, that playing the sport for an extended period of time can lead to serious brain injuries and irreversible brain damage. Just last summer, a study of 111 brains of deceased football players found that 110 of them had at least some traces of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, otherwise known as CTE. CTE is a brain disease that can open the door to a variety of terrifying symptoms, namely depression, memory loss and anxiety. The disease was found in players such as Dave Duerson, Junior Seau, Paul Oliver and Terry Long, just to name a few. The common thread among all of these men is that they ended their lives by committing suicide. Just two weeks ago, Super Bowl-winning quarterback Mark Rypien opened up about his attempt to kill himself by consuming copious amounts of alcohol combined with prescription medicine. As we have seen, football is a sport that is quite literally and frighteningly forcing its former players to lose their minds.

The NFL is trying something radically different to change that.

On March 27, the league announced several new rules aimed at protecting players from concussions. The main eye-opener was a new rule, entitled “Playing Rule Article 8,” that states the following:
“It is a foul if a player lowers his head to initiate and make contact with his helmet against an opponent. The player may be disqualified. Applies to any player anywhere on the field. The player may be disqualified.”

On the surface, this addition is similar to college football’s “targeting” rule that allows players to be ejected for initiating contact on a defenseless player; however, that rule mainly applies to defenseless players with the ball in their hands and is rarely enforced outside of such players unless the foul is glaringly obvious. The thing that differentiates this new rule from the targeting rule is that it will supposedly apply to players away from the ball as well. This is where a serious question and potential problem comes into the equation for the NFL: How can you possibly enforce this regulation?

To prove that point, USA Today reviewed the first half of a Monday Night Football game between the Steelers and Bengals in week 13 of last season; in fairness to the NFL, that game featured 20 combined penalties and more shots to the head than any of Martin Scorsese’s movies ever could. In its review of that game, though, USA Today found that the referees could have called, and you may want to be sitting down for this, 39 penalties in the first half alone. The game, which is oftentimes a difficult product to consume in the present moment, would become unwatchable with that amount of penalties in that short of a time. While the onus will be on players to adjust to the new rules, fans may need to suffer through years of abhorrent football until those adjustments are made.

Competition Committee Chairman and Falcons CEO Rich McKay has said that referees will be instructed to enforce the new rules in the trenches as well. If they do that, the league has just slid down one of the most slippery slopes in the history of the world, as helmet-to-helmet contact takes place all the time and referees could call a penalty on literally every single play. That would be a problem for obvious reasons, and even though the league is making a noble effort to take the helmet out of the game, it will be very hard to actually see this happening without seriously affecting the way football is played.

To be clear, I am as much against brain damage as anyone could be and the NFL’s recent rule changes have good intentions and could be a step in the right direction with proper enforcement. However, these changes will also force players, particularly offensive and defensive linemen, to completely re-learn everything they have previously learned about playing their positions. While these changes are probably necessary and good for the game in the long run, the long term benefits don’t mean that there won’t be serious consequences to the game in the short term that could make many fans turn away.

That assertion goes back to why fans actually watch the game: entertainment and violence. For example, when I watched the Super Bowl, I didn’t think of the potentially life-altering impact of Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins’ hit on Patriots wide receiver Brandin Cooks. My first thought was that it should have been a penalty. That attitude needs to change. While we have gotten better at realizing what happens to players after they retire, we need to come to the realization that every single play features some sort of violence that can create or add to a player’s mental health problems after his football career. But Americans like entertainment, and they also like violence, which is why Conor McGregor was trending on Twitter last week for attacking a group of MMA fighters and their entourages. The mass attraction wasn’t because his act was sophisticated, organized or sportsmanlike. We watched because McGregor was captivating and abusive, and many were enthralled by his actions.

This is to say that as long as the NFL is a violent sport, people will tune in to watch it.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in April 2018.

The Fordham men’s golf team finished in a tie for sixth place at the Albarta Coca-Cola Lehigh Valley Collegiate Invite on Easter Sunday. The event was the first of the spring season for the Rams after a fall season that saw the team win one tournament and finish in the top three in two others.

The event was originally scheduled for Sunday and Monday, but Monday’s snow storm forced all 36 holes of the tournament to be moved up to Sunday.

Leading the way for the Rams over the weekend was senior Matt Schiller, who finished with a 75 and a 72; his 147 finish over two rounds gave him the Rams’ best individual score and tied him for 11th on the Tournament leaderboard. “I was really proud of the way I stayed patient,” Schiller said. “The course was tough because it was coming fresh off a lot of melted snow, so guys caught a lot of bad breaks out there, especially on the greens. I knew that if I stayed in it and even had a sense of humor about the conditions, I would continue to play well.”
The next best player for the Rams on Sunday was junior Josh Madarang, who entered the clubhouse with a 149 after shooting rounds of 74 and 75. The performance of the Chester Springs, Pennsylvania native is particularly promising for Fordham because Madarang was a full two strokes below his 18-hole fall semester average of 76.5. His finish was the other top-20 showing for Fordham on the day, as he tied for 19th among individual players.

Also competing for the Rams on Sunday was senior James Mongey, who finished with a final-round 74 after a 79 in his first 18 holes. Sophomore and Miami native Tomas Nieves shot rounds of 76 and 78, respectively and senior Joseph Trim shot a 155 with rounds of 78 and 77 on Sunday. Finally, freshman Mithran Denbow competed as an individual and had rounds of 77 and 83; those figures did not count towards Fordham’s team figure on the afternoon.

As a team, the Rams came in sixth at the Lehigh Valley Collegiate Invite. The tournament was won by Rhode Island University, who won the event by two strokes over second-place finisher and host school Lehigh. Also playing at the invitational were the following schools, listed in the order in which they finished: Robert Morris University, Connecticut University, Villanova University, College of the Holy Cross, Ottawa University, Binghamton University, Siena College, Bryant University, Monmouth University, Lafayette College, Rider University, Hofstra University and Niagara University.

Next up for the Fordham men’s golf team is the Wildcat Invitational April 9-10 in Malvern, Pennsylvania; the event will be hosted by Villanova. After that, the team travels to New Haven, Connecticut to take part in the Yale Invitational on April 14. The Rams last played on the course at Yale in October, when they finished 12th out of 14 teams at the MacDonald Invitational on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 of 2017. After that, Fordham has a quick turnaround and takes part in the Rhode Island Invitational on April 16-17. With all that, the Rams are set to play 90 holes of golf in just four days. Fordham finished third in the Rhode Island Invitational a season ago.
“Our mental toughness drives how far we can go as a team,” Schiller said. “We all hit great shots, we can all make putts and we all can post red numbers on any given day. If we build on the conditions we faced this week and just have that same mentality of grinding through whatever the day throws at us, we’ll be a really tough team to beat the rest of the season.”

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in March 2018.

The NCAA’s men’s college basketball tournament starts next week. As it stands right now, the FBI should be everyone’s favorite to cut down the nets.

Last week, Yahoo! Sports reported that the FBI had obtained financial documents from former NBA agent Andy Miller that implicated approximately 20 collegiate programs and roughly 25 current and former players in a “pay-for-play” scheme to ensure that programs could lock up elite players. Notable players named in the documents include Michigan State’s Miles Bridges, Alabama’s Collin Sexton, Duke’s Wendell Carter, Kentucky’s Kevin Knox and Dennis Smith, Jr., who played last season at NC State before being selected ninth in this past year’s NBA draft by the Dallas Mavericks. Keep in mind that the FBI made several arrests last September in relation to this same scandal, and Louisville head coach Rick Pitino was let go by the university soon after. At the time, it was reported that an assistant coach had requested that five-star recruit Brian Bowen sign with the Cardinals with the incentive of a cool $100,000 bonus, by way of an Adidas executive.
The day after Yahoo!’s report, ESPN reported that Arizona head coach Sean Miller was caught on an FBI wiretap discussing a payment, also of $100,000, to DeAndre Ayton, a star center in the 2017 recruiting class. Ayton is currently a freshman at Arizona and could possibly be the first overall pick in June’s NBA Draft.

However, although the NCAA deserves to be a laughingstock and its president, Mark Emmert, has earned his reputation as a human punchline, are we jumping to a conclusion on this story too quickly?

These reports (if true, of course) are glaring because the NCAA proudly insists that players are not paid and goes to great lengths to protect the so-called “amateurism” of its organization. Just in the past year alone, the NCAA has ruled a player ineligible for monetizing his personal YouTube channel and suspended five Richmond University baseball players for the dastardly crime of playing fantasy football. And yet, somehow, some way, these infractions were more important than the under-the-table deals that were purportedly going on behind the association’s back. Whoops.

Even though Miller did not coach his team for the first two games after the ESPN story broke, he gave a press conference on Thursday in which he vehemently denied ever discussing or carrying out a payment to any player, let alone Ayton. When Miller’s press conference was announced, many assumed that Miller would be stepping down from his position or that the school would announce his firing. Neither one of those two things happened, and Miller even went into detail about one situation in which someone approached him about paying a player and he refused to do so. It is important to recall that Emanuel “Book” Richardson, one of Miller’s former assistant coaches, was charged by the FBI in its initial September sting on bribery, fraud and corruption charges, a rare college basketball triple play.

So, to recap: a major media outlet publishes a damning report about an authority figure, said authority figure denies that report and basically shouts “fake news” from his pulpit and the public decides who they want to believe regardless of the facts of the story. Stop me if you’ve seen this before.

I am inclined to believe ESPN’s report except for one – actually, two – issues. Both of these problems come in the form of seemingly minor retractions the company has issued in the past few days. The first is that ESPN changed its report to state that Miller was caught on the FBI wiretap discussing Ayton’s payment plan in 2016, not 2017. Then, the Worldwide Leader changed that date back to 2017, the original year they reported Miller was caught in the act of discussing the payment with Christian Dawkins, one of NBA agent Andy Miller’s assistants. Here is where the problem comes in: Ayton committed to Arizona on September 6, 2016. In an article published after Miller’s Thursday press conference, ESPN announced, unsurprisingly, that they were standing by their reporting on this story. If they are, then they are saying that Miller discussed compensation on the wiretap after Ayton committed to the school, which is certainly possible, but less plausible than Miller discussing a payment plan to ensure Ayton attended Arizona in the first place.

After Miller’s press conference, I saw many tweets saying that the conversation he denied really did happen. Naturally, all of these tweets came from people who weren’t in the room for that discussion, don’t own a copy of the wiretap and haven’t actually heard its contents. But why would that stop anyone? Sadly, many people have decided for themselves what happened between Miller and the agent. Their opinion of the issue was dictated by whether or not they were on the NCAA’s side or that of ESPN’s reporting, not the facts of the story.

I would typically side with ESPN because the NCAA is up there with FIFA and United States Gymnastics as one of the most corrupt sport organizations in the world right now. But I also believe that Miller wouldn’t defend himself that vehemently and confidently if he didn’t sincerely believe in his own innocence. I also think many citizens have decided who they side with, regardless of what really happened.

Sean Miller is digging in to defend himself against ESPN. ESPN is standing by their reporting. The stakes could not be higher for both. Get your popcorn ready, but don’t decide who to believe until you know what the facts are.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in February 2018.

The Fordham men’s squash team is still rolling.
The squad won the Northeastern Round Robin this past weekend against Northeastern University, Brandeis College, Boston College and Boston University. The team only lost a single game in Friday night’s match against Northeastern. These wins bought Fordham squash to 18-3 on the season as they can begin preparations for the College Squash Association team championship, which will be held Feb. 23-25 at Trinity College’s Kellner Squash Center. The team is hot heading into that tournament, as it has won 13 of its last 14 matches.

All of the usual suspects were in action and firing on all cylinders for the Rams this weekend. The only loser over the course of the three days was junior Will Pantle, and his loss at the start of Friday’s match put the Rams down one game to nothing. Then, Fordham reeled off 35 individual wins in a row to sweep the weekend and win the Northeastern Round Robin to close out the regular season. It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.

After defeating Northeastern on Friday, the Rams took home victories against Boston College and Brandeis on Saturday, and closed the weekend with yet another 9-0 victory over Boston University. The team will now begin to set its sights upon Hartford, Connecticut as it participates in the College Squash Association Team Championships at the end of the month.
Fordham’s year is particularly impressive when you consider that many individual contributions have come from freshmen.

The first-year trio of Justin Deckoff, Griffin Fitzgerald and Tommy White has combined to go 46-7 on the year, but Fordham’s individual success has run both ends of the experience gamut. The three Rams in their final season with the program (Joseph Hughes, Peter Yuen and John Lennon) are a combined 41-13. In fact, the Rams have lost just 31 individual matches on the season, and were one win away from defeating Bryant two weekends ago, which would have put them at 19-2.

Another person who deserves immense credit for the Rams’ success is new head coach Sahel Anwar. Anwar, in his first season with the Rams, has led the team to their 18-3 mark after it went just 10-9 a season ago. Anwar is very familiar with Fordham, as he also serves as the head coach of the squash team at Fordham Prep. That being said, Anwar deserves his share of the credit for helping the Rams move forward and into the CSA team championships with just three losses on a season, including just once after Veterans Day.

The Fordham men’s squash team will need to maintain its momentum if it wishes to ascend to new heights as a team and a program. We’ll find out in a week and a half whether or not they do.

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in January 2018.

Michigan State has been one of the most successful sports programs in the country over the past 20 years. From three Big Ten championships in football to seven Final Four appearances in men’s basketball, the Spartans have become one of the most respected programs in college sports.

Over that same period of time, though, they willfully whitewashed the wrongdoings of multiple staff members and let a sexual predator roam their campus under the guise of “medical attention.” And that’s a little more important.

Yes, while the Spartans were cutting down the nets and going to major bowl games, their university engaged in a cover-up to protect university physician and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar from losing his job after he sexually assaulted at least 150 underage girls, including U.S. Gymnastics medalists Aly Raisman, Simone Biles and many, many others: The breadth of the individuals Nassar abused could fill the length of at least three of these Overtime articles.

Nassar was sentenced last week to 40 to 175 years in prison, and will likely never see life outside a prison facility ever again. Had it not been for the complaints of two American gymnasts in September 2016, Nassar would likely still be practicing medicine today. The Nassar trial has been exhausted thoroughly in the media, and the exploits of a predatory clown like him do not deserve to be rehashed here.

This is not just about Nassar. It’s about a larger pattern of injustice and lack of institutional control that has taken place at Michigan State over the past 20 years. Not coincidentally, the same amount of time that their stock has surged as one of the best programs in the country.

On Friday, ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” published a report stating that a former assistant basketball coach was allowed to stay at the school after punching a female student in the face at a bar in 2010. This report comes on the heels of the resignations of both the athletic director and the president of the university. There were other cases as well; the questionable handling of a sexual abuse case involving two basketball players, the accusation of 16 football players committing sexual assault and, of course, the Nassar case.

And where was the NCAA in all of this? Well, all of these accusations say nothing of the fact that Mark Emmert was personally notified of the Nassar allegations all the way back in 2010. In response to this, the NCAA – and this will absolutely shock you – did nothing. That may be a lesser-publicized aspect of this horrific story, but it’s true. While the natural inclination is to burn Emmert in effigy every time a controversial incident occurs involving the NCAA’s incompetence, the organization’s board of directors holds equal, if not more, culpability in allowing Nassar to continue his practice when they knew very well that his “practice” involved abusing literally hundreds of underage girls.

We live in a fascinating time in sports, culture and the world. The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have transformed Hollywood and alerted the world to an epidemic of sexual misconduct amongst actors, directors and other industry powers-that-be. Those movements have come to sports too and they even forced an NFL owner (the Panthers’ Jerry Richardson) to sell his team. This reckoning is long overdue, and while sports has not seen as extensive of an impact from it, players, coaches and executives could learn a thing or two from it. One of the people who falls into that group is former Michigan State President Lou Anna K. Simon.

In her statement announcing her resignation from the university over this mess, Simon said that “as tragedies are politicized, blame is inevitable”. With respect, ma’am, the people placing blame on you for this situation are absolutely right. While much time has been spent dissecting Nassar’s actions over the past 20 years or so, he had his fair share of enablers. Those include Simon and recently-resigned athletic director Mark Hollis, who oversaw Nassar’s predatory behavior and purported sexual misconduct by multiple members of the football and basketball programs. And frankly, enough people have been accused of these crimes for anyone to figure out that this a troubling pattern of behavior and not an isolated incident involving just one or two Spartans athletes.

Larry Nassar is an abhorrent human being and deserves to be eviscerated for what he did as a “doctor”. But let’s not forget about his enablers in this situation. This was the classic case of a difficult situation that should have required a very simple solution on the part of Michigan State’s administration and governing body. The move should have been to investigate Nassar and, when the hypothetical probe found his wrongdoing, to fire him. How difficult is that? But Michigan State’s administrators continually stepped around this situation and others at the university. Instead of holding those involved accountable for their actions, the school turned a blind eye to the matters at hand.

Last week, the law finally put Larry Nassar to justice. Now, the NCAA needs to do the same to Michigan State.