Biggest loser in Miami's NCAA football sanctions case? It's USC, again

Biggest loser in Miami's NCAA football sanctions case? It's USC, again, The NCAA has made it clear it isn't giving football scholarships back to USC, or presenting Matt Barkley with an honorary Rose Bowl participation plaque.

Being the NCAA means never having to say you're sorry. The governing body of college athletics keeps saying it was wrong, though, every time it releases a sanctions report on another school.

First it was Ohio State, then Oregon, and now Miami.The NCAA on Tuesday essentially accepted Miami's self-imposed, two-year bowl ban and deducted only nine more total scholarships.

Miami announced it would not contest the findings, which translates to "whew."

All three cases appeared to rise somewhere near the level of what would constitute major infractions, which cost USC the 2004 Bowl Championship Series national title, two bowl seasons and 30 scholarships.

The NCAA in 2010 insisted it was out to make an example of USC, but then it did not. "The struggle is, the NCAA hasn't explained why USC is different than all the others that have come after," John Infante, a former director of compliance at Loyola Marymount and Colorado State, said in a telephone interview.

The NCAA hammered USC football essentially because Reggie Bush's parents took money and accepted free rent on a home from a would-be agent. The NCAA said USC should have known Bush was a future star who might be tempted by unscrupulous people.

"High-profile players demand high-profile compliance," said the late Paul Dee, the former Miami athletic director who was chairman of the NCAA infractions committee that punished USC.

Then Ohio State came along.

Buckeyes players received free tattoos in exchange for jerseys, rings and memorabilia. Coach Jim Tressel knew of the violations but lied about it. The NCAA hit him with "unethical conduct" and charged the school with "failure to monitor." Tressel was forced to resign in disgrace.

The NCAA punishment: a one-year bowl ban and the loss of nine scholarships.

Then Oregon came along.

The Ducks received three years of probation earlier this year for "failure to monitor" because it paid $25,000 to a scouting service that may have been steering players to Eugene.

It sounded bad. Chip Kelly received a "show cause" penalty, which means he was effectively banned from coaching in college for 18 months. Kelly dodged that by becoming head coach of the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles.

Oregon's punishment: no bowl ban and the loss of a couple of scholarships.

Then Miami came along.

There were cries for the death penalty three years ago when Yahoo Sports broke the salacious story of Miami football being a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

There was no disputing that booster Nevin Shapiro, who donated more than $500,000 to the Miami athletic program, had over the course of a decade — including years when Dee had been the athletic director — plied Hurricanes athletes with money, gifts and other favors. Miami, only when caught, impressed the NCAA by self-imposing the bowl ban and other sanctions.

Miami's football punishment: three years' probation and the loss of nine scholarships.USC responded as you might expect. "We have always felt that our penalties were too harsh," Athletic Director Pat Haden said Tuesday in a statement. "This decision only bolsters that view."

NCAA Committee on Infractions member Britton Banowsky suggested during a conference call that Miami's cooperation mitigated the damage.

Banowsky said each case is different but said of Miami, "In this particular case we felt like the institution's self-imposed penalties were absolutely significant, unprecedented really, and the level of cooperation in the case was commendable."

Infante suggested it would be helpful to know how much more severe the sanctions would have been had Miami not cooperated. "Just tell us what they would have got," Infante said.

USC was cooperative with the NCAA, but the process was certainly contentious with Mike Garrett, the athletic director at the time, leading the charge.

So that led to 21 more lost scholarships for USC than Miami?

One reason USC fought the NCAA was it thought the organization had bungled the case, particularly as it pertained to assistant coach Todd McNair's alleged involvement. McNair, who is no longer at USC, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the NCAA, and a lot of legal minds think it has merit.

If McNair wins, wouldn't that prove USC was right for being defiant? "That's the Catch-22," Infante said.

Miami's advantage was that it had a powerful legal wedge because it was revealed that NCAA investigators worked with Shapiro's lawyers to improperly depose witnesses.

In the end, it seems Miami and the NCAA may have played nice with each other.

Try as it might, USC can't shake the repercussions of its sanctions. Tuesday's lenient decision probably takes Miami Coach Al Golden off the list of potential Trojans coaching candidates.

Could there be one last course of action?

Haden picked the wrong fight when he flew to Indianapolis last month to ask for commensurate relief after the NCAA returned some scholarships to Penn State. NCAA President Mark Emmert had the perfect comeback — no case was comparable to Penn State's.

But USC's case is comparable to Miami's.

Haden needs to get back on a plane and ask the NCAA to waive the final year of scholarship losses. He now has the facts at hand that his school incurred more scholarship losses than the cases of Ohio State, Oregon and Miami combined.

He can rightfully ask: "Is this what the NCAA had in mind in making an example out of USC?"

New Baldness Cure Joins History of Hair-Loss Fixes

New Baldness Cure Joins History of Hair-Loss Fixes,  will work. In a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors took human hair cells and packed them into wee 3D spheres, implanted the hair balls into human skin, then grafted the skin onto the backs of mice.

Hair grew!

The hair was white. And the hair gurus don't know if new hairs would grow if these were removed. Human trials are three to five years away. So that gives us a lot of time to ponder other milestones in the age-old battle against baldness.

Biblical times: In the Book of Kings, mean kids call Prophet Elisha "baldhead." The humiliated Hebrew is said to have slapped bear grease on his pate as a remedy. For centuries, other bald men do the same. Their rationale: Bears are very hairy.

50 B.C.: Julius Caesar's laurel wreath? It's his version of a toupee.

1940s: Rest easy, male-pattern bald man. You did not cause your condition by emitting heat from thinking too hard or, as Samuel Johnson proposed in 1778, by having a "dry" brain. Nor is it the fault of dandruff or air pollution, as some thought. Research points to heredity and hormones.

1950s: A New York doctor moves plugs of hair from a fecund area to a bald patch, where the hairs follow genetic orders: Sprout! Thus begins the era of hair transplantation.

1988: The FDA approves minoxidil, an ointment applied to the scalp to stop hair loss and stimulate growth. Dermatologists say two-thirds of balding patients see minimal to moderate improvement. Women reportedly get better results than men.

1990s: Hair in a Can hopes guys will pay to spray their scalp the color of remaining hair. Meanwhile, the stylish baldness of basketball star Michael Jordan launches a head-shaving craze.

1997: Finasteride, the first prescription pill for balding men, gets FDA OK. According to one study, the prostate-drug derivative offers a 75 percent chance of halting hair loss for men ages 18 to 40, but only a 37 percent chance of regrowth at the front of the scalp.

2007: The FDA approves the first device to combat baldness, a laser comb. In tests, 123 men used the light-emitting contraption three times a week. Nine out of ten reported fewer hairs lost; some saw new growth. Dermatologists weren't entirely skeptical. A rare side effect from laser hair removal is … hair growth!

"Windmills of Your Mind" singer Noel Harrison dies at 79

"Windmills of Your Mind" singer Noel Harrison dies at 79, British singer and actor Noel Harrison, known for the Oscar-winning 1960s song "The Windmills of Your Mind", has died aged 79, his friends and family said on Tuesday.

Harrison was reported to have suffered a heart attack at his home in Devon in southwest England last Saturday after performing at the nearby village of Black Dog.

His co-star in the 1960s spy-fi TV series "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E", Stefanie Powers, announced his death on Twitter.

"Let us all light a candle to speed him on his way - he deserves to fly with the angels," she wrote.

Harrison, the son of the six-times-married movie star Rex Harrison, was born in London, raised in Cornwall in southwest England, and lived in Switzerland, the United States and Canada.

He developed a passion for skiing and competed for Britain in the giant slalom in two Olympic games in the 1950s.

In the 1960s he moved to the United States where he had chart hits with "A Young Girl" by Charles Aznavour and "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen.

"I was part of the 'British Invasion' spearheaded by The Beatles. I bought a nice house in Los Angeles," Harrison wrote on his website.

His best known work, "The Windmills Of Your Mind", won the Academy Award for best original song of 1968. It was the theme to the movie "The Thomas Crown Affair".

"People love that song, and it's great to have a classic like that on my books," Harrison said in his final interview with the magazine Devon Life a few weeks before his death.

But Harrison, who married three times and has five children, said he never enjoyed celebrity life and headed to Canada in the 1970s for a life on the land where he quickly became broke.

He moved back to Los Angeles in the 1980s where he was greeted with "great disinterest", he said, and his second marriage failed. But he stayed, working in construction, performing some live gigs and met his third wife, Lori Chapman, a former fashion stylist.

The couple moved to England about a decade ago where they settled in a two-bedroom terraced house.

Casey Anthony, Texas Group Reach Settlement

Casey Anthony, Texas Group Reach Settlement, Casey Anthony has reached a settlement in her bankruptcy case with a Texas search group that helped look for her missing 2-year-old daughter.

Texas Equusearch Mounted Search and Recovery will be allowed to have an unsecured claim of $75,000 in Anthony's bankruptcy case under the terms of the settlement filed late last week in federal bankruptcy court in Tampa.

The search group won't be entitled to any other claims and won't be allowed any further dealings in the case.

The group had objected to the bankruptcy, claiming it spent more than $100,000 searching for the girl in 2008. Attorneys for the group said Anthony knew her daughter was already dead.

Anthony was acquitted of murder in the death. She filed for bankruptcy in January.

Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers fans’ favorite quotes for Reddit to promote ‘Escape Plan’

Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers fans’ favorite quotes for Reddit to promote ‘Escape Plan, ‘It’s not a tumor!’ Arnold Schwarzenegger re-enacts his most famous lines in a series of YouTube videos.
The most quotable action star in Hollywood history delivered a few of his famous one-liners just for fans this weekend.

Arnold Schwarzenegger opened the floor to Reddit users Friday to send along their favorite bits of dialogue in a bid to promote his new action flick, “Escape Plan,” which hit theaters that same day.

Requests came pouring in, spanning a dozen different movies over the Hollywood icon’s long career. Most were from his best-known hits, including the original “Terminator,” “Kindergarten Cop” and “Predator.” But there were others from classics such as “Total Recall” and “Conan the Barbarian.”

In the end, Schwarzenegger was able to offer up only a few notable recitations via YouTube.Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers one of his famed lines from ‘Predator’ in front of a burning field.

The first video includes quotes from his new movie, in which he stars opposite fellow action icon Sylvester Stallone.
It was followed by a line from his infamous Christmas comedy, “Jingle All The Way.” Notable lines from “Conan the Barbarian” and “The Running Man” followed.

Kindergarten Cop” got dual treatment. One video focused on the famed “It’s not a tumor!” exclamation, while the other centered on Schwarzenegger’s probing question to his young students: “Who is your daddy, and what does he do?”
The last video pulled from his 1987 sci-fi classic, “Predator.” He then posted a final video thanking everyone for participating, leaving them with his single most famous bit of dialogue as he promised he’ll “be back.”

It’s not clear where he captured the videos. The location on each appeared to change. The “Predator” video was shot in front of a burning field, another outside his trailer and the last on an airplane.

Jake Gyllenhaal explains dramatic weight loss for ‘Nightcrawler’: ‘I was always a bit hungry’

Jake Gyllenhaal explains dramatic weight loss for ‘Nightcrawler’: ‘I was always a bit hungry, Gyllenhaal plays a video news journalist in ‘Nightcrawler,’ which he’s also co-producing.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a prisoner to his art.

The 32-year-old actor dramatically changed his appearance by dropping a significant amount of weight for his role in “Nightcrawler,” reports Us Weekly.

“I knew that [Lou] was literally and figuratively hungry,” he said of his character, a freelance crime reporter who discovers a dark underground world in Los Angeles.

“It takes place in a land where I think there is a desert in a lot of ways, great opulence, and at the same time, great vastness and emptiness,” he said of the film’s scenery.

Noticeably gaunt, Jake Gyllenhaal arrives at the 17th annual Hollywood Film Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on Monday in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The “Prisoner” actor showed up to the 17th Annual Hollywood Film Awards on Monday with his shocking new look. He appeared bony with protruding cheekbones.

In order to truly relate to his part, Gyllenhaal said, he stayed in a “mode where I was always a bit hungry.”Other Hollywood heavy weights who have shed several pounds for roles include Christian Bale in 2004’s

“The Machinist,” for which he lost 65 pounds in order to portray an insomniac industrial worker, and “Magic Mike’s” Matthew McConaughey, who grinded down his physique by 50 pounds for “Dallas Buyers Club” to play a HIV-positive man.

“I play a lot of intense characters, and going the other way can help,” Gyllenhaal said in the November issue of GQ Australia about rocking out to pop music in order to transition between roles.

Gyllenhaal with his standard, heavier appearance in June at the Tony Awards in New York City.

“Sometimes if you listen to something that’s the complete opposite of the feeling you’re having, you can dive even deeper,” he added.

Gyllenhaal’s recent shift for the Tony Gilroy-directed thriller is momentary, as the actor admits to his love affair with various cuisines.

“I’m obsessed with food,” he told the Aussie mag. “I love eating in general, but if I’m somewhere on location, I tend to find one restaurant and weirdly will eat one or two things that I love. Then I’ll know I’m going there at the end of the day to eat that thing.”

But food aside, Gyllenhaal’s new gaunt appearance is surely his way of staying focused on the character he’s tasked to portray in the film he’s also co-producing.

“I think [I’ve lost] probably a little over 20 pounds, something like that,” he told People. “Who’s to say what the process is? I have a strange one … but I love what I do.”

One-armed basketball star Zach Hodskins headed to Florida to play for Billy Donovan

One-armed basketball star Zach Hodskins headed to Florida to play for Billy Donovan, Zach Hodskins is an inspiration and incredible basketball talent. He commits to the University of Florida and hopes to earn playing time for Billy Donovan's Gators.

Zach Hodskins, the Georgia high school baseketball star born without the lower half of his left arm, has verbally committed to the University of Florida, ESPN reports.

Hodskins, a 6-4, 200-pound guard who tore up the AAU circuit this summer, will be a preferred walk on for the Gators, not a scholarship player.

"It's always been my dream growing up," Hodskins told ESPN. "I never expected it to be like this, but the hard work has paid off. I'm ecstatic I'm going to be a Florida Gator."

Hodskins' story of overcoming adversity has inspired the likes of Clippers guard JJ Redick and even singer Beyonce. But the talented playmaker is looking to be more than just a feel-good story, he says.

"I'm coming on as a preferred walk-on, but I'll be treated like every other player," Hodskins said to ESPN. "If I work hard, Coach Donovan told me I'll have a chance to play."