When you turn on the TV to watch a sporting event, you often see thousands of fans cheering wildly. Is it real or a mirage? That was how I began this column before the coronavirus recently brought the sports world to a halt. This time March Madness actually was madness. I mean, people hoarding toilet paper? Seriously? We’ll live without […]

My cousin recently shared with me a blog post by Carolyn Moore. It’s worth a read as the basketball season reaches a climax in the next month or so. “Most of the time, you probably don’t even notice he’s there. But the official prowling the sidelines of your high school gymnasium isn’t just a zebra to shout angry words at […]

My agent I.M. Slick dropped by the other day and asked me to write a column about basketball uniform rules. Here’s what transpired. Joe: Why should I write how players are supposed to wear their basketball uniforms? Slick: Why not? Joe: First, who cares how players wear their uniforms? And secondly, who cares how players wear their uniforms? Slick: You’re […]

As we turn the calendar from 2019 to 2020, it’s common to wonder where the time went. The older I get, the more I realize time is fleeting. Was it really that long ago that I played junior high and high school basketball, or I was playing baseball and soccer in college? The short answer is yes, but I still […]

As a former high school and college basketball official, I found that the best games were those in which the players played, the coaches coached, and the officials officiated. You could add that it helped when fans supported their teams instead of trying to coach and officiate. It sounds so simple, but all too often, it isn’t. All too often, […]

The basketball season hasn’t come a minute too soon for fans of Kansas University. All the talk about possible sanctions, however, is like a cloud looming on the horizon. It isn’t every day that a blue-blood school like Kansas might be penalized by the NCAA. As Jerry Tarkanian once famously said, “The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky it will […]

Maybe I’m too easily amused, but I’ve always found it interesting how much universities pay other teams to come to “their house” to play a football game. If you are naïve enough to think that college football isn’t a big business at the NCAA Div. I level, I can’t help you. KU football paid its first two opponents more than […]

Athletes, coaches, and refs enjoy what they do — at least most of the time. Athletes and coaches are competitive by nature, and officials enjoy being around the game and the challenge that it involves. But there comes a time when it’s time to move on. Everyone eventually says, “Enough!” When I officiated basketball, I didn’t want to have fans, […]

Even if you aren’t a social media fanatic, you might find this column about Twitter amusing. Twitter is the social networking site that launched in 2006. It is one of the most popular social media platforms available today, with 100 million daily active users and 500 million tweets sent daily. You don’t have to actually send a tweet to enjoy […]

If you’ve handled your emotions perfectly throughout life, stop reading. Actually, if you think that’s the case, you’re in denial. You definitely should continue reading. If you can admit to being human and you’ve said or done something you later regretted, join the crowd. Granted, the problem of keeping emotions under control isn’t identical for everyone, but that doesn’t mean […]