The irony of Paul Hornung's recent controversial statement is that it created a strong argument that Notre Dame has had low admissions standards for football players since at least the 1950s - when Hornung played there.
The Golden Boy morphed into the Racist Man on the subject of race, admissions standards and Notre Dame football. His racial musings aside, though, Hornung raised a topic that made college administrators squirm: football admissions standards.
Division I-A football programs must recruit the best, whatever their skin pigment, in order to succeed. And even Notre Dame lowers its academic standards for football. It must. According to collegeboard.com, the average first-year N.D. student scored roughly 1,360 on the SAT, and 95 percent were in the top 25 percent of their high school class.
That doesn't necessarily mean N.D. and other I-A schools compromise integrity. Few would complain about the low SAT score of a violin prodigy. Likewise, football ability is a talent that can offset a subpar GPA. Hornung said his alma mater needs to drop its academic standards for football players to a level he thinks exists at other top-notch football schools.
Do the Irish need to do so to contend for national titles? And what are their admissions standards for football players? And what about other schools? All are good questions that have been muted because of how the bumbling Hornung addressed the matter.
Rave: Lightning at the top, and fun to watch to boot
Given a heavy dose of truth serum, even Lightning general manager Jay Feaster and coach John Tortorella are likely to say they didn't see this coming a couple of years ago.
Heck, it was implausible in December, when the Lightning couldn't find the back of the net if it was shooting at a soccer goal.
But with the playoffs beckoning, eternal pushover Tampa Bay has clawed its way up to the league's heavy hitters. The Lightning is one of the NHL's power brokers, one of its most feared teams - the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference!
Tampa Bay spent the past few weeks battling for the highest point total in the league. It has the leading MVP contender, Martin St. Louis, who also is the league's top scorer. It has, amazingly, as good a chance as anyone to bring home the Stanley Cup. It becomes perhaps the favorite if one of the goaltenders, Nikolai Khabibulin or John Grahame, gets hot.
The Stanley Cup in Tampa? Don Cherry might not survive the summer.
But it could happen. The Lightning has done it with smarts, heart, talent, a streamlined payroll and good breaks, notably few injuries. The bonus: Tortorella preaches an aggressive, exciting style, a bold break from the NHL's boring barrage of neutral-zone traps.
The Lombardi Trophy and the Stanley Cup in less than a two-year span?
