The Daily Dose/October 6, 2018
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
In The News
The first trial resulting from the probe of alleged corruption in major division NCAA college basketball is underway in federal court in New York City. On trial are five men accused of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to launder money in attempts get prized college basketball recruits to play at certain schools.
In order to have a crime you have to have a victim and who exactly is the victim here? Poor families who need the money? No. NCAA schools? Maybe, maybe not. You cannot deny the schools achieved and maintained states of arousal over the prospect of landing a top player. Maybe, perhaps, the claim made in the indictment that the defendants opened the schools up to NCAA sanctions constitutes fraud. We’re not lawyers here – thank God – but the schools were willing participants in all this and hardly victims.
Besides, what will the NCAA do anyway? They established in the Penn State child abuse imbroglio that their primary concern is keeping the money factory going. Yes, they issued significant penalties to Penn State, but they started rescinding them after a couple of years and now it is as if Penn State never kept a child molester on staff at all.
We read one of the indictments and we found this stuffed somewhere in the middle. It’s from the NCAA’s core values, so you know it’s going to be funny:
…student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional and commercial enterprises.
Oh, this is rich. The NCAA obviously frowns on the exploitation of its athletes unless it’s exploitation conducted by the NCAA brilliant, as always, in their role as pimp, whore and john.
This trial is hardly a surprise. NCAA basketball has been a cesspool for generations. The NCAA and its major division members are so hell-bent on winning and making money that they all but requested this scandal.
Today at the Site
Sparrow picks up his dry cleaning for Tuesday’s candidate forum and the retailer is farting around with his schedule again on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. Also, Sparrow remains pleased with Thursday’s haircut.
She nods her head solemnly and significantly as if she’s debating which strain of the clap to be infected with and I’m surprised she didn’t break out in prayer…It took her a couple of minutes before she actually decided to take the warranty which would have pleased me more if we got commissions on it, but we don’t.
The Thought for the Day is still enjoying some time off, so please enjoy this repeat from November of last year. It’s from Mark Messier, a former professional hockey player, who talks about slaying the dragon. Click here to read it.
While it is not always easy to slay our dragons, once you’ve slain one or two you might well look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. A plan for slaying your dragons, plus the courage to go and do it, aided by the patience to see them slain seldom fails to produce dividends.
On This Date
In 1995 – The discovery of the first extrasolar planet orbiting another star, 51 Pegasi b, is announced in Switzerland by two astronomers with the University of Geneva. 51 Pegasi b is about 50 million light-years from Earth and is closer to its sun than Mercury is to ours. Its year is about four Earth days long and it is tidally locked, meaning it rotates on its axis at the same speed at which it orbits around its start, further meaning it presents the same side to its star all the time. This is the same relationship Earth has with the moon.
In 1984 – Steve Garvey of the San Diego Padres hits a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning leading the Padres to a 7-5 win over the Chicago Cubs in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series (NLCS). The win ties the best-of-five series at two games apiece and the Padres would win their first National League pennant the following day.
In 1973 – Cher is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with Half Breed. It was her second of four number 1’s as a solo act and spent two weeks at the top and also went to #1 in New Zealand and Canada. Cher had also spent three weeks at #1 with Sonny Bono with I Got You Babe.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The two songs that are ranked ahead of Mack the Knife on Billboard’s All-Time Top 100 are The Twist by Chubby Checker and Smooth by Santana featuring Rob Thomas. The Twist is at #1 on the chart and remains the only song to go to #1 in two separate chart runs. Smooth spent twelve weeks at #1 and stayed in the Top 10 for 30 weeks. It remains the only song to chart on two end-of-decade charts, the 1990’s and the 2000’s.
Today’s Stumper
To date, how many extrasolar planets have been discovered? – Answer next time!
Click here to take advantage of our special lifetime subscription offer.
