Hoops

I've been updating my Cornell basketball blog-- but the rumors thus far for the 2007-2008 schedule include games against Duke, Syracuse, Minnesota and Bucknell on the road. Siena is coming to Ithaca this year. Saints were 20-12 a year ago and lost in the MAAC title game to Niagara.

In other hoops news...the NCAA announced that Mike Slive, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, has been appointed chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee for the 2008-09 academic year. Slive, a Utica, N.Y. native formerly worked as director of athletics at Cornell from 1981-83.

Finally, in a July 8, 2007 article by Craig Haley, the Princeton beat writer of the Trenton (New Jersey) Times, Haley writes, "Cornell, the last team other than Penn or Princeton to represent the league in the NCAA Tournament (in 1988), might even be picked as the league's preseason favorite..."

Thus far-- the Philly Inquirer, the Trenton Times, The Crimson (Harvard) and ESPN are picking Cornell.

CornellFan
In other hoops news...the NCAA announced that Mike Slive, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, has been appointed chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee for the 2008-09 academic year. Slive, a Utica, N.Y. native formerly worked as director of athletics at Cornell from 1981-83.

Slive was a simply awful AD--the worst in my 45 years following Cornell sports.

Al DeFlorio

CornellFan
In other hoops news...the NCAA announced that Mike Slive, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, has been appointed chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee for the 2008-09 academic year. Slive, a Utica, N.Y. native formerly worked as director of athletics at Cornell from 1981-83.

Slive was a simply awful AD--the worst in my 45 years following Cornell sports.

So not surprising the NCAA wanted some of that.

Al DeFlorio

CornellFan
In other hoops news...the NCAA announced that Mike Slive, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, has been appointed chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee for the 2008-09 academic year. Slive, a Utica, N.Y. native formerly worked as director of athletics at Cornell from 1981-83.

Slive was a simply awful AD--the worst in my 45 years following Cornell sports.

My question: how did we dump him after only 2 years? About to enter year 9...

A quick glance at his wikipedia entry (FWIW) reveals that Slive is also serving as the coordinator of the Bowl Championship Series for the 2006 & 2007 seasons. That means the same guy is in charge of the 2 most visible and lucrative championships in collegiate sports. Kind of remarkable and puzzling at the same time.

From Bob Kane's Good Sports:

"Michael L. Slive, a Dartmouth graduate..., succeeded Dick [Schulz] in 1979 and stayed only two years. Mike had credentials of a high order, an attractive personality, a law degree, and had been assistant athletic director at Dartmouth, thence assistant to the commissioner of the Pacific Coast Conference. But he never appeared to be quite comfortable in the Cornell environment.

"He instituted an investigation of the jobs held by the Cornell hockey players in faculty homes and in some Ithaca residents' homes, a form of employment that had been questioned at times by his former boss, Seaver Peters, athletic director at Dartmouth. The examination once again established the legitimacy of the work involved, but the nature of the search by a Cornell athletic director didn't ingratiate Slive with some Cornell people, especially the faculty householders. He left of his own volition."

I had heard that he in fact turned Cornell in to the NCAA for these student-athlete employment practices but the issue was dropped when the subsequent investigation turned up nothing incriminating.