Dan Wetzel

Christian Hackenberg's honesty reveals hypocrisy of NFL draft process

Christian Hackenberg apparently blundered during interviews with NFL teams in advance of next month's draft.

By telling the truth.

As a freshman at Penn State, the quarterback completed 58.9 percent of his passes, throwing for 20 touchdowns against just 10 interceptions. Some pegged him as an eventual No. 1 overall selection.

After that season however, Bill O'Brien left to go coach the NFL's Houston Texans. James Franklin took over with an offense that has traditionally skewed more to the spread than O'Brien's pro-style.

Hackenberg's numbers dropped to 12 TDs and 15 picks as a sophomore, only to rebound to 16 TDs, six interceptions as a junior. He isn't viewed as a great prospect anymore and is unlikely to be taken in the first round, let alone at the top of it.

Now he's dealing with interview issues. According to Robert Klemko of MMQB, at least two front-office executives said "when asked to explain his declining sophomore and junior numbers … Hackenberg has shifted blame to Coach James Franklin."

That has, according to the personnel sources, been a turnoff.

Let's get a bunch of NFL draft caveats out of the way here.

The Michael Sam conspiracy lacks a real conspiracy

Who doesn't love a great conspiracy theory? Especially when it isn't concerning something serious, like assassinations or terrorism, and instead focuses on a seventh-round NFL draft pick and a cable television reality show?

So consider this headline on the website of 590 Sports Radio out of St. Louis: "League Made Deal With Rams To Draft Sam." Or this one from Deadspin: "Did The Rams Draft Michael Sam Just To Avoid Hard Knocks?"

Whoa. Good times.

Sam is defensive end Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to attempt to make the NFL. The St. Louis Rams selected him late in the 2014 draft amid much fanfare. He didn't make the team and after a brief stint in the Canadian Football League is out of the game.

The suggestion is that the NFL attempted to both rig its draft and engage in social engineering for a public relations benefit using HBO. If so, it is a bombshell of a scandal and a potentially illegal activity. So let's delve into this one, which stems from a report by Howard Balzer, a longtime NFL reporter.

Issue No. 1: Like any good conspiracy theory, what Balzer implies, sounds plausible at first glance, even to the person in the middle.

No way.

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NFL's global plan: play everywhere, stay nowhere

The NFL will stage a 2018 regular-season game in China with the Los Angeles Rams serving as the "home" team, according to the Los Angeles Times.

No opponent has yet been named. No location either, although it'll be a surprise if it's anywhere other than 91,000-seat Beijing National Stadium, the centerpiece of the 2008 Summer Olympics. The NFL likes to do things big.

Commissioner Roger Goodell wouldn't confirm specifics on Wednesday, saying only that the league is "interested" in going to China and a number of teams have said they want to participate.

"The size and influence of China in the global marketplace can't be ignored," Goodell said wistfully.

This would be bold, daring and logistically challenging in myriad ways. It's fraught with failure. It's also the future the NFL is barreling headlong into. In other words, no matter how American the game of football is, get used to it.

While a second team sharing the stadium with the Rams is still an option, is L.A. really ready for two franchises? As such, the most powerful possible relocation target is London, where the league has set up shop since 2007 via the International Series.

Here's the coded message Bob Kraft sent Pats fans in sad letter to Goodell

Robert Kraft acknowledged Monday he sent a letter(to Roger Goodell) and a prayer (to the heavens). The New England Patriots owner knows that neither stands much of a chance of being answered.

The Patriots' deflate-gate appeal strategy is all but over. The first- and fourth-round picks are gone. The NFL will continue to hunt Tom Brady to the end of the federal court system. Bob Kraft might as well have saved himself a stamp.

Kraft's public comments at the NFL owners' meetings in Boca Raton, Fla., weren't an update on how things are going in the case. Instead it was him letting Patriots fans in on the concession of defeat. His son, Jonathan, filled in any remaining blanks Tuesday when he told CSNNE's Tom E. Curran, "at some point you have to realize it's not going to happen."

None of this is unexpected.

Last spring, Robert Kraft mistakenly was conciliatory and accepted NFL sanctions before investigator Ted Wells' report could be thoroughly deconstructed. Kraft later apologized to Patriots fans.

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Jim Boeheim has Syracuse in the Sweet 16, and why should anyone be surprised?

His Syracuse team was banned from the tournament last year and bashed for even garnering a No. 10 seed this season.

The team snuck in, despite he – Jim Boeheim himself – being suspended nine games over a 32-day midseason stretch, a dull, depressing period made worse by a 4-5 record. About the only thing worse was the 1-5 run to conclude the season.

This was a team and a program and a 40-year, Hall-of-Fame coaching career, saddled again by NCAA sanctions, seemingly leaking oil at every turn.

Yet Syracuse will tip off against Gonzaga in the Sweet 16 on Friday, Boeheim's 18th trip this deep into the NCAA tournament. The Orange in March, same as it ever was.

Boeheim can be as wonderfully and colorfully indignant and dismissive as anyone. He's also never cared what other people think of him, certainly not media or opposing fans.

So there have been no rants on the doubters, at least not many yet. Besides, he might note, that while being the show-up-the-critics underdog is fun, it's even more fun being a top-three seed with the ability to trot out a Carmelo Anthony or Pearl Washington or Derrick Coleman.

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Was Boeheim going to crow about his 2-3?

Old dog. Old tricks.

Complete system failure: Everyone loses in Yale's mishandling of alleged sexual assault case

If you seek justice for victims of sexual assault, then you have to support a system of justice that is, at its heart, just. It must be based not on expediency or its ability to easily deliver a pound of flesh, but one that protects both the accuser and the accused.

This isn’t just some high-minded concept; it’s pragmatic. Anything less struggles to stand up to time and protest, losing its credibility, leaving verdicts debased and disbelieved and causing harm to the victim. Soon enough there is no system at all for future complainants.

The Yale University basketball team will appear in the NCAA tournament on Thursday for the first time since 1962. It will do so without its captain, Jack Montague, who was expelled on Feb. 10 after a disciplinary panel determined he had unconsented sex with a fellow student.

It is a reminder why colleges and universities should work to change federal government and get out of the business of trying to handle complex cases involving what is otherwise criminal conduct, such as sexual assault. No matter how noble the goal, they aren’t equipped for it.

It’s a mess. And it’s a mess Yale, and federal law, created.

Playing Law and Order? No.

It’s undermining it.

50 years after Texas Western's historic NCAA title run, star's grandson to play in tournament

Fifty years ago, David Lattin was a 6-foot-7 center from Houston who helped lead Texas Western to the NCAA championship.

The Miners were the first team to start five black players in the title game. Their victory over all-white Kentucky helped break college basketball's color barrier in the Deep South, where, at the time, there were no African-Americans playing in the SEC, ACC or old Southwest Conference.

The game proved one of the most influential in basketball history – "college basketball's Emancipation Proclamation," Hall of Fame coach Nolan Richardson dubbed it.

Texas Western's impact grew through the years: The team has been enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame and been celebrated in books, movies and documentaries.

The NCAA plans to again honor the historic Miners at this year's Final Four by bringing members of the team onto the court. The event is, coincidentally, taking place in Houston, where Lattin returned after a professional career and, at age 72, still owns and operates a pharmacy.

And he's hoping to see a familiar face … one beyond just his old teammates.

Khadeem Lattin.

David Lattin's grandson.

More NCAA tournament coverage:

3 reasons why Bill Belichick sent Chandler Jones packing in trade

Earlier this month Malik Jackson reset the market for defensive ends when he left Denver and headed to Jacksonville, lured by a six-year deal worth about $45 million guaranteed and up to $90 million with incentives.

Big money. Big risk, also.

Chandler Jones was staring at a similar payday following the 2015 season. He has proven to be an elite, if at times inconsistent, edge rusher in New England, recording a career high 12.5 sacks last season.

He's also a guy who showed up shirtless and disoriented at the Foxborough police department the week of an AFC divisional round game, dealing with what the Boston Globe later reported was an adverse reaction to synthetic marijuana.

You want to give $50 million to someone capable of that, no matter his sack total?

Maybe that was Bill Belichick's concern or maybe he just couldn't pass up the opportunity of moving someone at a position of depth for someone at a position of weakness. The converse is true out of the Arizona Cardinals, who coveted a pass rush more than waiting on a once-promising offensive line prospect to pan out.

"The Lord has answered my prayers," defensive back Patrick Peterson said via Twitter.

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Douglas, Raisman face age-old question in pursuit of Rio Olympics comeback

LOS ANGELES – Gabby Douglas is 20 years old in a sport that isn't kind to 18-year-olds.

The last three Olympic women's gymnastics all-around gold medalists were aged 16, 18 and 16, the most recent being Douglas herself. In the last two Olympics, no all-around medalist was older than 17.

You can go back four or five Games ago and find some older female gymnasts who succeeded, but in this sport, those are the olden days. There hasn't been a repeat winner since the 1964 and 1968 Games when Vera Caslavska of the then-Czechoslovakia did it. Caslavska was 26 the second time around.

"Well, I don't feel that old," Douglas said with a laugh here Monday at the Team USA Media Summit at the Beverly Hilton.

She isn't, except for the standards of competitive gymnastic standards. It's a cruel sport. If Douglas can pull this off, it will be the greatest accomplishment in a career filled with them. It's the ultimate challenge, the repeat.

"It's coming from my heart," Douglas said. "I really believe I can achieve more. I really do."

neck seemingly on the line.

The thought never crossed her mind.

"It was awesome," Biles said.

Peyton Manning's NFL legacy: He took quarterbacking to a new level

Over his first two seasons as the head coach of the New York Jets, Rex Ryan may have reached his peak at designing defensive schemes that baffled quarterbacks and coordinators alike. Much of it was in the ability to disguise which players were rushing the passer and which were dropping back in coverage.

This was at the height of Darrelle Revis and his island, so Ryan knew an opponent's top receiver was neutralized. He would then have the rest of his guys set up in ways that tricked offenses into using two blockers for a defensive lineman who'd fall 10 yards back while leaving the other side exposed for a blitzing linebacker.

Everything was a confused mess. New York won four playoff games (all on the road) those two seasons, reaching consecutive AFC title games despite trotting out Mark Sanchez at quarterback.

Through much of the first half of that AFC title game, Ryan and the Jets were having his way with Manning. The quarterback couldn't set up the proper blocking schemes to buy the time to complete passes downfield. He'd been sacked twice. The run game was mostly corralled. Drives stalled in the red zone.

Greatness it was, though.