“Bye Bye Bobby”

One of the greatest College Football coaches of all time appears to be retiring tomorrow.  The Florida State great Bobby Bowden will enter the retirement community tomorrow according to most sources.

Bowden is currently second in College Football history with 388 wins only trailing the legendary Joe Paterno of Penn State.  In my opinion, it is a shame that they are pushing this guy out like this.  I realize that 6 and 6 does not cut it at Florida State.  But does 2 National Titles and 14 consecutive top 5 finishes cut it?

I realize that Bowden at the age of 80 is probably not as involved with everything as he once was and serves as a figurehead similar to Joe Paterno.  Remember when there was talk about pushing Paterno out a few years ago.  All the sudden the program was revitalized into a Big 10 powerhouse.  Now maybe this had nothing to do with Paterno and more to do with the Big 10 getting soft, but still they did not push the man out.

The way I look at, Bowden should have been given one more year to say goodbye.  Sort of like a farewell tour type year.  I understand that the Seminoles want to win now and next year is too late in their eyes.  This is the mentality that was instilled in the program because of Bobby Bowden.  But it is just a simple matter of respect.  The man built them into a football haven, and after a few down years people have forgotten what wonderful things he has done.

Well Bobby, it was a great run and best of luck to you in your future endeavors.  You will definitely go down as one of the greatest College Football coaches ever and nobody can take that away from you.  Go relax on the beach now and spend some time with your family.  34 seasons of greatness at Florida State was a job well done.

Best of luck to Jimbo Fisher in revitalizing the program.  It will not be easy in that Florida is a juggernaut, and Miami and South Florida are both getting strong.  It may take a couple of years before the Seminoles can compete with the rival Gators again.

Stay tuned for the next edition of the Sportskraze.

-Kraze

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“About Time for the Fine?”

So Serena Williams received the big fine today.  And I mean the biggest fine in professional tennis history.  The fine was in the whopping amount of $82,500 to be handed over to the Grand Slam committee.

At first I was completely baffled at the size of this fine.  I mean it is double the amount of any other fine given in tennis history.  In the grand scheme of things though, Serena made over 6.5 million in prize money during the course of the 2009 season and who knows how much in endorsements and other ventures.  But this is a very steep fine.

In my eyes, it is not so much the steepness of the fine which is the problem.  It is the length of time it took for the fine to come out.  Why did it take so long for them to come out with the punishment?  This incident occurred on September 12th.  Like, does it really take 2 and a half months to come up with a fine?  Serena is one of the shining stars of women’s tennis and ended up the year ranked number 1 in the world.  She is the most well-known female tennis player in the world.  So her actions, obviously should not be condoned, although we have condoned Tiger Wood’s baby antics for years now.  Look at El Tigre now.

If you get a chance, please look back at the actual incident that occurred on the 12th of September in Serena’s semifinal match with the eventual champion Kim Clijsters.  Yes, her actions were way out of line.  But if you look closely at the foot fault call, I do not see how that call could of possibly been made.  It was so close that there is no way that a call gets made like that at that stage in a match.  Now do I think it affected the actual outcome of the match?..No, but it was definitely not a good call.

So Serena is handling this well now and will pay her fine.  Hopefully she can avoid another incident like this for the rest of the career and this can just become a bad memory.  I feel that Serena has shown great maturity in how she is handling this situation compared to how she dealt with it initially.

So my question for you all is, do you think the fine should be this steep?  And do you think if it wasn’t Serena Williams, that the fine would be as heavy as it is?

Stay tuned for the next edition of the Sportskraze.

-Kraze