Gophers/College

Melvin Anderson simply wanted to make a difference.

“I want to help youth understand that there is a connection between athletics and life,” he said. “It’s about developing the whole person, not just the athlete.”

You can fool some of the people some of the time, but sooner or later character flaws expose you to all. Norwood Teague resigned Friday morning August 7 under fire for several incidents of sexual harassment.

The NCAA introduced the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) in 2005 “for a more accurate measure of graduation performance of NCAA athletics programs,” says The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida.

If there’s a momentary silence during Tyler Walker’s at-bats, it might be intentional. “I swear that the crowd gets quiet just so she can scream, because I always hear her at every at-bat,” joked Walker of her mother Deedy Walker. “She’s a handful.”

Nearly $12 billion was made this year through March Madness office pools ($3 billion), $4 billion in legal betting and $4 billion in illegal betting. The NCAA makes millions from television rights with CBS and Turner. This year’s Final Four men’s coaches combined make over $18 million in salaries and bonuses.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski has done it again: After 35 years at Duke, he knows a thing about recruiting good student-athletes. To finish first, you must first finish. Year after year he has done the best job of, like a magnet, drawing that talent to tobacco road. Apparently it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Not since 1976 has a men’s college basketball team finished undefeated. That team was Bobby Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers: They were 32-0. I remember it like it was yesterday — I went to college in Indiana. Indiana State that is, in Terre Haute, about an hour south of Bloomington, Indiana.

Her goals include “improving my finish” in this, her final collegiate season, and senior thrower Devin Stanford is halfway to her objective. The redshirt senior from Milwaukee, Wis. took third in the weight throw during last month’s Big Ten indoor championships, but that wasn’t enough to advance to this week’s NCAA indoor championships in Fayetteville, Ark.

Wonder if empty seats will be as noticeable at this week’s Big Ten men’s basketball tournament in Chicago as it was last weekend outside the Windy City at the tournament of their female counterparts.

Local sistahs shine

The media named Minnesota sophomore center Amanda Zahui B. the conference Player of the Year. She and Northwestern sophomore forward and Hopkins graduate Nia Coffey are two of nine Black players named Monday on the 10-player All-Big Ten first team.

The NCAA and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) are now partners on a three-year research project on concussions and head injuries in college sport.