Crossing the Line

Title IX Fibber Sentenced to House Arrest!

Well...sort of.  She's been suspended without pay for a week.

Seems a female athletic director was pushing for equity in basketball scheduling.  Nothing wrong with using Title IX to give the gal thump-thumpers a fair shake, right?

Her fellow area athletic directors fell in line and supported the idear.  They're all about fairness up there in Massachusetts.  Heck, they even named it the Middlesex League so you'd know they planned to treat both genders equally.

While lining up support for her hoopsters,  Naomi Martin did a bit more than just stick up for the young ladies.  She created a story about some fiktishus fictitious parent threatening to sue over the issue.

Read more here.

But Martin embellished when she said that the parent had threatened to file a civil rights lawsuit and go to The Boston Globe with her complaints, “untrue statements” according to a letter of apology Martin wrote to Robb on January 19. Martin also told athletic directors that the parent was targeting the entire league, even though Robb only mentioned Lexington, and that she was a civil rights lawyer, which she isn’t. (Robb is a bar exam instructor.)

“I know this was wrong and I deeply regret having communicated as I did. I sincerely apologize,’’ Martin said in her letter to Robb.

"I deeply regret having communicated as I did."  Very creative!  Sounds a lot better than "Sorry I lied."

Hit Squad Hit!

The NCAA went after Miami's athletic program (foosball, mainly) for rules violations.  Didn't look like it'd take Holmes and Watson to do the job, so they sent in Duckman and Corny to handle the "gimme" of a case.

Seems those ding-dongs went a bit overboard in their quest to bring down them mighty Canes.  Read more here.

The NCAA does not have subpoena power and thus lacks the authority to compel testimony under oath, Emmert said, meaning the Miami investigation turned up evidence that shouldn’t have been accessible. Further, whoever hired Shapiro’s lawyer apparently did not have clearance to do so, because Emmert said the decision did not go through the NCAA’s general counsel as procedure requires.

Reminding everyone of his own demands of athletic programs to show integrity, Emmert expressed his disgust with the conduct of his own staff, two of whom are no longer employed there.

“I’ve certainly never seen anything like this, and I don’t want to see it again,” Emmert said, adding that the conduct was “deeply disturbing” and he felt “deeply disappointed and frustrated and even angry.”