Georgia back's downfall latest NCAA disgrace

Phil Mushnick

EQUAL TIME

Perhaps because they no longer seem incredible, incredible stories hardly make news, a paragraph in big-city dailies, nothing on radio or TV, no buzz, no nuthin’.

Isaiah Crowell, 19 and about to be a sophomore running back at Georgia, was arrested at 2:30 a.m. Friday and charged with two felonies — possession of a concealed weapon and of a gun with an obscured serial number.

Even uglier, Crowell, who last season was benched for drug and misconduct issues, was arrested on campus.

So why would a major university, ostensibly a citadel of higher learning and an institution parents work and save to have their children attend, be inclined to even recruit — in exchange for a full scholarship — a “student-athlete” capable of such on-campus, criminal behavior?

AP (2)

TAKING A DIVE: Georgia RB Isaiah Crowell (diving past Auburn’s Erique Florence last fall) was dismissed from the team after being arrested for gun felonies on campus last week.

Isaiah Crowell

The answer could be found in the last sentence of the AP paragraph that appeared in a Saturday newspaper: “As a freshman, Crowell led Georgia with 850 rushing yards.”

Crowell, over the weekend, was dismissed from the team.

Sanders Commings, a Georgia cornerback, wasn’t dismissed from the team after he agreed to university-mandated drug and alcohol testing and “anger management counseling” after his arrest for assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

Commings will miss the first two games this season. The opener is at home against Buffalo.

What makes Georgia different from other lost-their-minds-and-souls football and basketball colleges? Well, the answer is another incredible story that doesn’t seem incredible: nothing.

These stooges are nothing but wise guys

If you’re going to be a wise guy, remember that wise is a by-product of wisdom.

Friday night, the Diamondbacks’ Aaron Hill hit for the cycle — for the second time this season. Saturday on Ch. 7’s 6 p.m. news, sports anchor Rob Powers reported the last man to do that was Brooklyn’s Babe Herman, in 1931.

Then Powers sarcastically added, “Remember him?”

Hah, hah, hah.

While few in the audience were likely to remember Herman, knowledgeable baseball fans were likely to know of him.

Playing mostly for the Robins — who became the Dodgers in 1932 — Herman was legendary as a poor fielder but a superb hitter, with a .324 lifetime average. He still holds a pile of franchise hitting and slugging bests. In 1930, in 153 games, he hit .393, with 241 hits, 35 HRs, 130 RBIs and 143 runs.

Also Saturday, on Ch. 4’s 11 p.m. news, it didn’t matter that the Yankees’ Hiroki Kuroda had shut out the White Sox that afternoon, or that the Mets’ Johan Santana had shut out the Dodgers that night. Sports anchor Scott Stanford, perhaps on orders, led with the Olympic trials, NBC being the Olympics network, as if no one knew.