In the interest of fairness...

I hope this will be my last post about Frank Martin until we actually have something regarding K-State basketball to talk about. But given new information out today, I need to add to my comments in order to be fair.

Now we hear, thanks to the Manhattan Mercury (much improved Web site, by the way) that Frank Martin was never personally implicated by FHSAA authorities in the scandal at MSH. This information comes from the authority of the school principal at MSH, Victor Lopez, at the time Martin was fired.

Basically, it sounds like Martin was the fall guy. Even the FHSAA admitted in the story no evidence implicated Martin, and "Martin's name appears nowhere on the final report."

Kansas City sports radio personality Soren Petro had Dan Wetzel on his show yesterday. Wetzel is a sports reporter for Yahoo, and is the actual co-author of Sole Influence, a book chronicling corruption in youth sports. I found Wetzel's take on the matter to be particularly intersting, and you can listen to the full interview here.

Here are my thoughts, many of them similar to Wetzel's. Every hire of an assistant coach or unknown head coaching commodity is a risk. Heck, every hire period is a risk. You never know what a coach is going to do. Even seeming straight shooters can get into trouble. Wetzel chronicles the problems encountered by Quin Snyder at Mizzou and Roy Williams at KU (particularly the recruitment of JaRon Rush). Those former assistants came from Duke and UNC, respectively, and thus were considered straight shooters because they'd been trained by Mike Krzyzewski and Dean Smith.

The point is, nobody has any idea how this is going to turn out. Martin has a lot of questions. Maybe he's as crooked as a hockey player's nose and will leave K-State sports a smoking ruin. Then again, maybe he really didn't intend wrongdoing at MSH and would never break a single NCAA rule. Maybe he will be the next great coach, or maybe he knows X's and O's like I do (well, I'm sure he knows more than me). I'm done talking about it, I'll wait til the returns are in.

***

So, Husker fans. I hear your spring game will be broadcast on the NFL Network. I'm sure that all of you are only mildly excited about that, considering I heard what a shame it was the Texas Bowl was on that channel because nobody gets it.

Further, I hear Bill Callahan will be in the announcer's booth doing commentary for the game. I'm sure all of you are as red as Lil Red's hat because of your comments last year about how stupid it was that Ron Prince would be in the radio booth for K-State's spring game. We accept your apology, considering you now realize Prince was a pioneer in this field and beat your program to the punch.

Are you people really expecting 60,000+ for your spring game? Is there really nothing better to do than go watch a fake football game? Oh wait, I know the answer to that, I lived there.

***

Big baseball weekend for the Bat Cats in Stillwater. Look for a full recap here on Sunday night.

The Royals need to stop this annoying habit of losing close games.

Roy Oswalt (aka "the man") takes the mound for the Astros tonight. God I love baseball.