by Neil Patrick Healy

STOCK UP: KIRBY SMART

New Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart is just the latest of college coaches who use their power to impede student athletes. Smart came down with a ruling last week that Georgia players would not be able to transfer to Miami, where former head coach Mark Richt has taken over the same position. The transfer rules that the NCAA enforces are that you can transfer from a school, but you must sit out a year. Schools can limit where kids transfer if the teams are on the school’s schedule or in the same conference. Miami doesn’t appear on Georgia’s schedule and Miami isn’t in the same conference as Georgia, yet the head coach has the power to deny these players the chance to play for the coach they originally committed to.

This instance is just another example of college coaches having too much power. Limiting the transfers from going to a school on your schedule or your conference is one thing, but Smart denying Miami just shows that he is not about the kids. He is about winning. So when Smart goes into living rooms across America to recruit kids to come to his school, he will have to lie through his teeth when he says it’s about teaching, education and the kids. If it were truly about the kids, then this wouldn’t have come up. While Richt was at Georgia, he didn’t limit transfers, regardless of scheduling. He said that “life’s too short” to restrict a player’s choices. This coaching switch shows what Georgia is truly about: winning over all else.

STOCK DOWN: DAVID ORTIZ

The hot debate around the baseball community is the acceptance of bat flips and if it is disrespectful or not. It is becoming the usual younger guys like Bryce Harper poking fun at the ancient establishment types like Goose Gossage, who argue for a more old-school type of baseball. But when Red Sox slugger David Ortiz came out and told pitchers who felt disrespected by a bat flip to “take it like a man,” that gives the youth movement for bat flips a bonafide hall of famer on its side.

“Whenever somebody criticizes a power hitter for what we do after we hit a home run, I consider that person someone who is not able to hit a homer ever in his life,” Ortiz said. “Look at who criticizes the power hitters in the game and what we do. It’s either a pitcher or somebody that never played the game. Think about it. You don’t know that feeling. You don’t know what it takes to hit a homer off a guy who throws 95 miles per hour.”

With a veteran like Ortiz, the movement for bat flips and increased celebrating will be seen as more than just the punk kids trying to ruin the establishment.

Neil Patrick Healy can be reached at neil@sagebrush.unr.edu and on Twitter @NP_Healy.