LIN-AMENT. LIN FIRST HARVARD GRAD TO PLAY FOR NY KNICKS SINCE 1953-54

Jeremy Lin doing his thing for Hahvahd Hoops 2006-2010

Jeremy Lin is only the 3d player from Harvard to play in the NBA.

He was a terrific player not only at Harvard, but in the Ivies.  He established a line of records unmatched in Ivy League history, and along the way, the Harvard basketball team, which had never amounted to a bucket of warm spit until Lin and Coach Amaker arrived, found its way to the Ivy League title and the NCAA tournament.

My sons and I watched these guys, led by Lin, play a ferocious contest in the Palestra against their arch-rivals Penn in 2010, which was a double overtime contest, and as Harvard finally won, largely due to the intensity and refusal to lose of Lin, who kept penetrating, dishing off, shooting jumpers, and doing whatever it took to win, it seemed like a passing of the guard.

The Daily Pennsylvanian made pun of Lin's name back in 2009 at Penn, showing once again Philly was three years ahead of NYC media.

So it’s no secret why Lin is the 2d best player on the knicks in win shares per 48 minutes at .187 after Tyson Chandler’s .248; or why his PER approaching 25 leads the team.  Lin plays defense, doesn’t turnover the ball, and is efficient both on offense and defense.  Also, he hustles.  In the Ivy League, he led across a large number of categories, including points, steals, rebounds, assists, assist to turnover ration, etc. and established benchmarks for a guard across many such categories–in fact, all time records for a guard to have such all-around abilities.

What we saw, watching him two years ago, was a guy who refused to lose.  He could penetrate and score; penetrate and dish out to the three line; penetrate and dish to the man beside him after drawing the double-team;  penetrate and dish to the open man; had amazing peripheral vision; could drop the three or the jumper if left unattended; always could run the ball and locate the open man on the run; could play defense; could steal the ball; could rebound and start the break the other way; in short, he was a complete player.

And Lin never stopped to breath.  He was always in continuous motion.  Harvard had a lot of talented players, but they looked kind of confused unless Lin got them the ball and he was coordinating the offense.  He was, in short, a terrific and talented point guard who had game.

A lot of Penn players have played in the NBA, but not so much Harvard.  Hockey has always been the winter sport at Harvard, along with playing the stock market and inventing new financial instruments the SEC can’t regulate.

Three players including Lin played in the NBA:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/colleges.cgi?college=harvard#stats::none

first was

Saul Mariaschin

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/mariasa01.html

who was a 5 foot 11 inch player on the 1947-48 Boston Celtics.  The Celtics were in a predecessor league to the NBA, but who cares?

Here were Saul Mariaschin’s teammates on the Boston Celtics of 1947-48:

riebe, spector, sadowski, garfinkel with Saul Mariaschin Harvard Grad on 1948 Boston Celtics

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/BOS/1948.html

Here’s another of his teammates from that legendary Celts team:

CHUCK CONNORS.  Yes, the guy who later played the RIFLEMAN on TV.  Lucas McCain himself.  And a 6’5″ grad of Seton Hall, which in 1947-48 would have made him a giant player.  And he was a CELTIC.  You can look it up.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/connoch01.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Connors

Chuck Connors was a Celtic and played with Harvard Grad Saul Mariaschin in 1947-48

Chuck Connors also played baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers!

And he was a TV Star!

Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain the Rifleman

Chuck Connors was a Boston Celtic and and Brooklyn Dodger

The second player that went to Harvard and played in the NBA was

Ed Smith

Edward Bernard Smith (Ed)

Ed Smith was a New York Knick in 1953-54.  On that Knicks team, Ed played with Vince “Moose” Boryla, Nate “Sweetwater” Clifton, Al McGuire and Dick McGuire, and the famous Ernie Vandeweghe, and others well-noted.

That 1953-54 Knicks team finished 1st in the Eastern Division, going 44-28 under the helm of the legendary Joe Lapchick.  And they played in the old Madison Square Garden, which many hold in as high esteem as the old Boston Garden.

Nate "Nat" "Sweetwater" Clifton of the 1953-54 NY Knicks played with Harvard's Ed Smith

and here’s ernie vandewege v bob cousy:

Bob Cousy and Ernie Vandeweghe Reaching For Ball

Of course, Ernie has some bloodlines. Kiki Vanderweghe was a great NBA player, and now his granddaughter is a professional tennis player:

CoCo Vandeweghe professional tennis player and granddaugher of Ernie Vandeweghe who played on the NY Knicks with Ed Smith in 1953-54. Ed was the last Harvard alum to play for the NY Knicks, nearly fifty years ago

The Madness Begins

I can’t believe Temple got the #5 seed while Nova got a #2. Georgetown played really well down the stretch, by the way. That was a great Big East final.

I took my boys to the penn-cornell ivy league championship game in november. that was fun, at franklin field. i still can’t believe penn won at harvard.

cornell won the ivy over harvard barely, but they have to play temple in the first round, and temple is very, very good this year, that’s a bad draw for cornell. temple almost never loses in the first round of the ncaa. coming out of the bracket, temple has uphill all the way, but texas might actually beat kentucky, although john calipari has to be the best coach on the planet, he used to torture temple when he was at umass, he drove john chaney crazy.

also, i like richmond to win their first round game, and then upset villanova in the 2d round. richmond has a really good team and nova never plays well in the tournament. jay wright is a horrible tournament coach. richmond gave temple all they could handle inthe a10 final and richmond beat temple in the regular season. richmond is a great team this year, much better than a #7 seed. that’s a 2-7 matchup that’s bad for nova.

i was watching spike lee on 30-30 on espn on that reggie miller thing and 3 points.

first, reggie miller has to be the most overrated player in NBA history.  he could only do one thing, the three point jumper, and that was it.  He did it well, but he couldn’t pass, penetrate, dunk, rebound, run, steal or do any of the other things that an NBA Hall of Fame guy does.

second, Patrick Ewing, for all his greatness, came up short in two of the biggest games of his life, game 7 against Hakeem in the NBA finals, and the NCAA title game against Villanova in 1985, of which this is the 25th anniversary of Nova upsetting Georgetown, or Patrick Ewing choking unbelievably, depending on how you look at it.  Based on how awful Ewing was in his NBA finals against Hakeem, i’d bet Nova could have beaten Georgetown in a 7 game series, and, in fact, Nova did handle Georgetown if not outright beat them pretty well that season in Big East play.

Third, Spike Lee claimed “New York is the cradle of basketball.”

Uh, Spike, New York is the cradle of incredible wealth and incredible poverty, a lot of models and caviar and restaurants, and some good hoops players, but PHILLY is the cradle of liberty and hoops, pal.

ALL the great hoops players (and jazz players) have been from philly, not NY.  Earl the Pearl Monroe, Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, Rasheed Wallace, Tyreke Evans, Kobe Bryant, the list is endless.

John Coltrane is from Philly.  Dizzy Gillespie grew up here.  Lee Morgan was from Philly.  Philly Jo Jones.  Hank Mobley, McCoy Tyner, Archie Shepp, Byard Lancaster, Mickey Roker, Bill Harris, Calvin Massey.  Are You Kidding Me?????

Philly is like the Jazz/Hoops capital of the earth.  Doesn’t anyone remember Grover Washington Jr playing the national anthem at Sixers games? and he was like the WORST sax guy ever to come out of philly!  and he was great!  but hey, he was no JOHN COLTRANE soloing for hours on soprano sax!

Dr. J played here for TWELVE YEARS.  He played in New York for four years.  New Yorkers like to remember that it was longer, but hey, too bad.

We were at the Palestra the other week and there were no less than several HUNDRED NBA all stars who played their high school ball in philly pasted on the walls there.  Maybe a thousand.  Maybe more.  I couldn’t count them all.  That doesn’t count the guys who were kept out of the league for gambling, or who blew out their knees, or just didn’t have the grades to go to college.

It’s not even close–Philly v. NY in hoops is like PROS V JOES–NY being the JOES.

Oh, and by the way, Alex Rodriguez took steroids and needed an instant replay to win the world series last year.

And I didn’t see him tying Reggie “Reggie Bar” Jackson’ HR record of 5 dingers in a World Series like Chase Utley did–and Chase being about 1/2 the size of Reggie, by the way, who was enormously strong and had arms like a bricklayer.

Hey, the Yankees are great.  But Philly’s got the Hoops.  Even the guys at Sports Center know it’s Philly when it comes to Hoops.

And when was the last time a NY university made it into the NCAA exactly?

Columbia never gets in.  NYU doesn’t have a team.  St. Johns has fallen off dramatically.  Syracuse is way upstate.  CCNY had its glory days when the court was surrounded by caged wire fences.

In all the years, NY had exactly one great player–Kareem Abdul Jabbar, aka Lew Alcindor.  But he hates NY.  He changed his name, became a Muslim, and never goes back to NY.  He’s become such an LA/Cali guy, you’d never know he was a NY guy to begin with.

But i loved the guy in Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, doing kung fu and all.  Now that was awesome–way better than Wilt in that Conan movie.

–art k, philly

PENN, HARVARD DEBATERS ACCUSED OF EMBEZZLING IN COURT PAPERS FILED IN PHILADELPHIA

In court papers filed in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, LD Debaters Alex McCobin of Penn and Lily Deng of Harvard have been accused of embezzling more than $37,000.00 from the Penn Parlimentary & LD debate teams, their own non-profit foundation set up to allegedly run an urban debate league in Philadelphia, and from various other organizations and persons as well, according to both the filed court papers and according to an article published in the Daily Pennsylvania on April 2, 2009. Deng was a 2005 graduate of Perkiomen Valley HS outside of Philadelphia; McCobin was originally from York, PA, and the newspaper and court papers allege that McCobin & Deng were boyfriend and girlfriend, and acted in concert at all times, in terms of a conspiracy to defraud the Penn Debate Team and to defraud their own non-profit foundation.

It was not stated whether Harvard University, the University of Pa, or any law schools or state bars, had begun investigations into McCobin’s and Deng’s possibly illegal activities.

Here’s the link to the DP article:

http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2009/04/02/News/Alum-Sued.For.Embezzling.Funds.From.Debate.Organization-3693518.shtml

Here’s the link to the Philadelphia Court of Common Please docketing site:

http://courts.phila.gov/common-pleas/

Here’s the Daily Pennsylvanian Article in text form:

Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: News
Debate org. sues 2008 alum Alexander McCobin over misappropriation of funds
Perspectives founder McCobin allegedly withdraw $37,000 from group’s bank account
Naomi Jagoda
Daily Pennsylvanian

2008 College alumnus Alexander McCobin has been sued by Perspectives Debate Inc. – a nonprofit organization he founded while a student at Penn to teach high-school students debate skills – for breaching his fiduciary duty to Perspectives and misappropriating its funds, including allegedly withdrawing more than $37,000 from its bank account.

The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas granted an injunction on March 3 preventing McCobin from entering the corporation’s place of business and from issuing any checks or receiving any salary from Perspectives without the approval of its managing director.

A complaint was filed against McCobin and his Perspectives co-founder and fiancee Lilly Deng in February. The couple both resigned from Perspectives in November 2008, yet continued to access Perspectives’ business information and accounts after their departure.

Perspectives’ lawyer, Jonathan Crisp, said he is currently waiting for McCobin’s attorney to respond to the complaint.

According to members of Penn Parliamentary Debate, this is not the first time McCobin has improperly withdrawn money from organizations in which he had a leadership role. McCobin used the club’s debit card for purposes unrelated to Parli during his senior year at Penn.

Background

According to Perspectives’ Web site, McCobin and Deng met in 2002 at a summer debate camp in Boston. Inspired by their experiences at the camp, and disturbed by the expenses and distant locations of existing summer debate programs, McCobin and Deng started the Philadelphia Debate Institute in the summer of 2005.

Perspectives Debate Inc. was formally set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in November, 2005. In addition to running the PDI, it also offers affordable after-school Lincoln-Douglass debate programs to high-school students in the mid-Atlantic region.

In the fall of 2007, McCobin, then a Penn senior, created Penn for Youth Debate as a Penn-affiliated branch of Perspectives focusing on teaching students from the Philadelphia area. Penn students are involved in the group.

“We want to change students lives and not just go through the motions. We want more students in the program and want these students to get into college, gain scholarships and get jobs,” McCobin told The Daily Pennsylvanian about the mission of Penn for Youth Debate in November, 2007.

Penn for Youth Debate is no longer aflliated with Perspectives. The organizations formally separated about two months ago, according to a member of Parli who wished to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions.

The two organizations wstill in high praise from members of Penn’s debate community.

The Parli member who wished to remain anonymous called Penn for Youth Debate a “great organization.”

Wharton senior and former Parliamentary Debate President Daniel Rubin called Perspectives and Penn for Youth Debate “high-quality organizations that shouldn’t be run down by one person.”

In Spring 2008, McCobin graduated from Penn with bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Economics and a masters’ degree in Philosophy. McCobin – who was also involved in Parli, founded the Penn Libertarians and was a resident adviser – currently works at the Cato Institute, a think thank in Washington, D.C.

Penn students who knew McCobin through Parli describe him as bright and cunning.

College senior and former Parli Vice President David Marcou said that while McCobin is “very smart,” he is also “very ambitious and willing to bend the rules in his favor.”

Rubin agreed, adding that he “is very good at marketing himself.”

According to court documents, McCobin and Deng, a recent Harvard University graduate, were believed to have become engaged in October, 2008.

The anonymous Parli member described McCobin and Deng’s relationship as “weird” because they did everything together. This sentiment was echoed by the complaint filed by Perspectives against them, which stated that “it was not uncommon for Deng to speak on McCobin’s behalf, or vice versa.”

Current Legal Problems

The lawsuit filed against McCobin and Deng involves their alleged inappropriate attempts to control Perspectives’ board of directors and their alleged withdrawal of money and tampering with Perspectives’ business accounts following their resignations in November 2008.

While serving as directors for Perspectives, McCobin and Deng engaged in a number of activities that were of concern to other members of the organization, according to Perspectives’ complaint.

In 2007, they added members to the board of directors without following the organization’s bylaws, the complaint stated. The bylaws called for three directors, so they should have been amended before adding additional ones.

Deng and McCobin did not make changes to the bylaws before appointing five new directors, however, and they considered all of the directors to have been properly appointed.

Later, the complaint stated, Deng and McCobin became dissatisfied with the performances of two of the recently appointed directors, and put pressure on them to either devote more time to Perspectives or to resign. One of these directors decided to resign, while the other refused and notified the other directors of the pressure put on her by McCobin and Deng.

Prior to the contact, in September 2008, one of the directors resigned for reasons unaffiliated to pressure from McCobin and Deng.

On November 17, 2008 McCobin sent the three remaining directors an e-mail that stated they were not members of the board because they had not been elected properly according to the bylaws, according to the complaint.

The next day, one of the directors sent McCobin and Deng an e-mail disputing their claim, and they suggested the board discuss the issue at a previously scheduled meeting on Nov. 20, 2008.

Instead of meeting with the board, McCobin and Deng resigned from Perspectives on Nov. 19, 2008.

Following their resignation, the remaining Board members removed McCobin and Deng from Perspectives’ business accounts, including its bank account. The Board also directed Perspectives’ managing director and recent Columbia University graduate Matthew Scarola and Perspectives’ program director and College sophomore Allison Huberlie to change the passwords for Perspectives’ accounts.

Additionally, Huberlie requested that McCobin and Deng provide Perspectives with information regarding upcoming grants and turn in their Perspectives’ checkbooks and credit cards, which according to the court documents McCobin and Deng still have not done.

Despite the actions that Perspectives’ took to revoke McCobin’s and Deng’s power, the couple allegedly managed to access Perspectives’ e-mail addresses following their resignation and the e-mails and contacts stored in one of the addresses were deleted. Deng is believed by Perspectives to have accessed the e-mail account.

The online marketing and survey accounts of Perspectives were also accessed shortly after the resignations. The survey account was believed by Perspectives to have been accessed by Deng while she was visiting McCobin’s mother, according to the complaint.

Furthermore, Scarola and Huberlie were blocked from using Perspectives’ PayPal account in late November 2008.

After McCobin and Deng were notified of the accounts’ accesses, Deng sought a lawyer who tried to negotiate a settlement on behalf of McCobin and herself.

According to the terms of the settlement, which were sent to Perspectives on Dec. 11, 2008, Deng and McCobin would only disclose the documents they had pertaining to Perspectives if Perspectives sucummbed to a number of demands, including payment of $3,000 to McCobin and Deng each.

Perspectives had to respond to the demands reqested by Deng’s lawyer prior to Dec. 12, 2008 at 5pm. The board asked for an extension to consider the settlement on Dec. 12 at 12:21 p.m, but there was no response to this request.

At 3:28 p.m. that day, $37,000 was withdrawn from Perspectives’ bank account, nearly all of the accounts’ money. A specialist for the bank said the withdrawal ticket appeared to be signed by McCobin, and the money was withdrawn from a bank near where McCobin works. The incident was reported to the police, and the bank agreed to cease payment on the cashier’s check requested for the $37,000.

Scarola later discovered that McCobin and Deng had withdrawn more money from Perspectives’ bank account prior to the $37,000. These included checks made out to each of McCobin and Deng for $3,000, as well as checks labeled as reimbursement that the board had not been made aware of.

Because of McCobin and Deng’s actions, “the board members felt it was in the best interests of the company” to bring forth a lawsuit against them, Crisp said.

Crisp added that the injunction granted last month only applies to McCobin and not Deng, because Deng has not yet been reached, and he is waiting for McCobin’s lawyers to respond to the complaint.

McCobin wrote in an e-mail that he disputes Perspectives’ allegations and plans to “defend vigorously.”

“I feel confident that legal defense will vindicate what we have done and look forward to a successful resolution of the litigation,” McCobin wrote.

An established pattern

Not only did McCobin allegedly misappropriate Perspectives’ funds, but, according to members of Parli and Penn for Youth Debate, he also engaged in irresponsible financial behavior while holding leadership positions in Penn-affiliated debate activities.

As a member of Parli, McCobin ran the team’s tournament for high-schoolers, called the Liberty Bell Classic. According to Marcou and Rubin, the Liberty Bell Classic was supposed to be a fundraiser for Parli.

In the fall of 2007, McCobin segued the Liberty Bell Classic from being a Parli event to being a Penn for Youth Debate event, which Parli leadership allowed.

In Spring 2008, when Parli’s leadership was trying to determine why the organization had a great deal of debt, they discovered that McCobin was spending money on a Parli debit card that was unrelated to the tournament. The charges included about $1,000 for rent of rooms for Perspectives’ spring debate and $400 for a camera that was never seen by Parli or Penn for Youth Debate, according to Rubin and Marcou. The camera is believed to have been used for personal purposes, they added.

When Parli leadership tried to confront McCobin about his spending, “he was not very pleased,” Rubin said.

Eventually, issues concerning the debt brought on from the tournament were resolved with the Office of Student Life. Penn for Youth Debate assumed most of the responsibility and the debt for the tournament.

OSL associate director Rodney Robinson confirmed that he helped resolve financial issues between Parli and Penn for Youth Debate,but wrote in an email that he was unaware of any “personal purchases” by McCobin.

Now, Parli and Penn for Youth Debate are on good terms with each other, according to Rubin, Marcou and Huberlie, who is the president of Penn for Youth Debate in addition to her role at Perspectives.

Marcou and Rubin also emphasized that it was with McCobin, not with Penn for Youth Debate, that Parli experienced problems.

NOW HERE’S THE DOCKET FROM THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS

Case Description
Case ID: 090201768
Case Caption: PERSPECTIVES DEBATE INCORPORATED VS MCCOBIN ETAL
Filing Date: Thursday , February 12th, 2009
Court: EXPEDITED NON-JURY
Location: City Hall
Jury: NON JURY
Case Type: EQUITY – NO REAL ESTATE (TRO)
Status: LISTED FOR SETTLEMENT CONF

Related Cases

No related cases were found.

Case Event Schedule
Event Date/Time Room Location Judge
PROJECTED SETTLEMENT CONF DATE 02-NOV-2009 09:00 AM City Hall CITY HALL COURTROOM 653 MOSS, SANDRA M
PROJECTED PRE-TRIAL CONF. DATE 07-DEC-2009 09:00 AM City Hall CITY HALL COURTROOM 653 MOSS, SANDRA M
PROJECTED TRIAL DATE 04-JAN-2010 09:00 AM City Hall CITY HALL COURTROOM 653 MOSS, SANDRA M

Case Parties
Seq # Assoc Expn Date Type Name
1 JUDGE DIVITO, GARY
Address: ROOM 229 CITY HALL PHILADELPHIA PA 19107 (215)686-2636 Aliases: none

2 ATTORNEY FOR PLAINTIFF CRISP, JONATHAN W
Address: 3601 VARTAN WAY HARRISBURG PA 17110 Aliases: none

3 DEFENDANT DENG, LILLY
Address: 8 GRANT STREET CAMBRIDGE MA 02138 Aliases: none

4 8 DEFENDANT MCCOBIN, ALEXANDER
Address: 1029 NORTH STUART STREET 300 ARLINGTON VA 22201 Aliases: none

5 2 PLAINTIFF PERSPECTIVES DEBATE INCORPORATED
Address: P.O. BOX 42137 PHILADELPHIA PA 19101 Aliases: none

6 TEAM LEADER MOSS, SANDRA M
Address: 392 CITY HALL PHILADELPHIA PA 19107 (215)686-7910 Aliases: none

7 JUDGE FOX, IDEE C
Address: 656 City Hall PHILADELPHIA PA 19107 (215)686-4222 Aliases: none

8 ATTORNEY FOR DEFENDANT BOMSTEIN, MICHAEL S
Address: STE.206,BENJ. FRANKLIN HOUSE,834 CHESTNUT ST. PHILADELPHIA PA 19107 (000)592-8383 Aliases: none

Docket Entries
Filing Date/Time Docket Type Filing Party Disposition Amount Approval/Entry Date
12-FEB-2009 02:29 PM ACTIVE CASE 12-FEB-2009 03:08 PM
Docket Entry: E-Filing Number: 0960339

12-FEB-2009 02:29 PM COMMENCEMENT OF CIVIL ACTION CRISP, JONATHAN W 12-FEB-2009 03:08 PM
Docket Entry: none.

12-FEB-2009 02:29 PM COMPLAINT FILED NOTICE GIVEN CRISP, JONATHAN W 12-FEB-2009 03:08 PM
Docket Entry: COMPLAINT WITH NOTICE TO DEFEND WITHIN TWENTY (20) DAYS AFTER SERVICE IN ACCORDANCE WITH RULE 1018.1 FILED.

12-FEB-2009 02:29 PM PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION CRISP, JONATHAN W 12-FEB-2009 03:08 PM
Docket Entry: 80-09024280 PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION/TRO FILED.

17-FEB-2009 08:51 AM WAITING TO LIST CASE MGMT CONF 17-FEB-2009 08:51 AM
Docket Entry: none.

19-FEB-2009 03:26 PM MOTION ASSIGNED 19-FEB-2009 03:26 PM
Docket Entry: 80-09024280 PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION ASSIGNED TO JUDGE: FOX, IDEE C. ON DATE: FEBRUARY 19, 2009

19-FEB-2009 03:26 PM MOTION RESPONSE DATE UPDATED 19-FEB-2009 03:26 PM
Docket Entry: 80-09024280 PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION MOTION RESPONSE DATE UPDATED TO .

24-FEB-2009 11:29 AM RULE TO SHOW CAUSE ENTERED FOX, IDEE C 24-FEB-2009 12:00 AM
Docket Entry: 80-09024280 UPON CONSIDERATION OF THE VERIFIED COMPLAINT IN THIS MATTER AND THE PETITION OF PLAINTIFF FOR TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER AND FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION, IT IS ORDERED THE DEFENDANT SHOW CAUSE BEFORE THIS COURT ON THE 3RD DAY OF MARCH, 2009 AT 1:30 PM IN COURTROOM 426, CITY HALL, PHILA., PA, WHY A PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION PROVIDING THE RELIEF SOUGHT IN THE ACCOMPANYING PETITION SHOULD NOT BE ENTERED; AND IT IS FURTHER ORDERED THAT PLAINTIFF SHALL CAUSE A COPY OF THIS RULE, ALONG WITH A COPY OF THE COMPLAINT AND THE AFORESAID PETITION AND ACCOMPANYING PAPERS, TO BE SERVED UPON DFT AT LEAST FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE DATE OF THE HEARING. …BY THE COURT: FOX, J. 2-23-09

24-FEB-2009 11:34 AM MOTION HEARING SCHEDULED 24-FEB-2009 11:34 AM
Docket Entry: none.

26-FEB-2009 12:01 AM NOTICE GIVEN 26-FEB-2009 12:01 AM
Docket Entry: none.

03-MAR-2009 10:33 AM ENTRY OF APPEARANCE FILED BOMSTEIN, MICHAEL S 03-MAR-2009 11:13 AM
Docket Entry: ENTRY OF APPEARANCE OF MICHAEL S BOMSTEIN FILED. (FILED ON BEHALF OF ALEXANDER MCCOBIN)

04-MAR-2009 03:32 PM ORDER ENTERED/236 NOTICE GIVEN FOX, IDEE C 04-MAR-2009 03:32 PM
Docket Entry: 80-09024280 CONSENT DECREE ORDER ENTERED. PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION IS HEREBY GRANTED. SEE ORDER FOR COMPLETE TERMS AND CONDITIONS. BY THE COURT: JUDGE FOX, 3/3/09.

11-MAY-2009 09:44 AM LISTED FOR CASE MGMT CONF 11-MAY-2009 09:44 AM
Docket Entry: none.

13-MAY-2009 12:01 AM NOTICE GIVEN 13-MAY-2009 12:01 AM
Docket Entry: none.

10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM CASE MGMT CONFERENCE COMPLETED SULLIVAN, JOAN 10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM
Docket Entry: none.

10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM CASE MANAGEMENT ORDER ISSUED 10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM
Docket Entry: CASE MANAGEMENT ORDER NON-JURY EXPEDITED TRACK – It is Ordered that: The case management and time standards adopted for non-jury expedited track cases shall apply and are incorporated. All Discovery shall be completed not later than 08-SEP-2009. All Pre trial Motions (other than Motions in Limine) shall be filed not later than 05-OCT-2009. A Settlement Conference may be scheduled at any time after 02-NOV-2009. Fifteen Days prior to that date all parties shall serve on all opposing counsel or pro se parties and file a Settlement Memorandum containing the following: a. The plaintiff(s) shall provide a concise statement of the theory of the case. The defendant(s) and additional defendant(s) shall provide a concise statement as to the nature of the defense. b. A statement by the plaintiff(s) itemizing all damages sought by categories and amount; c. Defendant(s) and additional defendant(s) shall identify all applicable insurance carriers, together with corresponding limits of liability. A Pre trial Conference may be scheduled at any time after 07-DEC-2009. All parties shall file and also serve all opposing counsel or pro se parties the following documents by the due dates indicated: 1. Development of Joint Statement of Uncontested and Contested Facts. (a) Plaintiff’s Proposed Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Legal Issues for Trial. By 02-NOV-2009, Plaintiff shall provide the Court with a narrative statement listing all facts proposed to be proved by him or her at trial in support of his or her claim(s) as to liability and damages. Additionally, plaintiff shall provide the Court with all relevant conclusions of law based upon his or her proposed findings of fact and any and all legal issues presented thereto. (b) Defendant’s Response and Proposed Facts. By 07-DEC-2009, Defendant shall provide the Court a statement: (1) indicating the extent to which defendant contests and does not contest the plaintiff’s proposed facts: (2) listing all additional facts proposed to be proved by defendant at trial in opposition to, or in special defense of, the plaintiff’s claim(s) as to liability and damages; (3) listing all facts proposed to be proved by defendant at trial in support of any counterclaim(s), and/or third-party claim(s) if such claims exist; (4) listing any and all conclusions of law which arise from all contested and uncontested facts as proposed by the plaintiff; and, (5) listing for the Court all legal issues presented based upon proposed facts and conclusions of law. (c) Statement of Uncontested Facts. By 02-NOV-2009, the parties shall submit a joint statement of uncontested facts. This statement is separate and distinct from any other submitted. As such, agreement or disagreement, which terms are defined below, with any proposed fact by a defendant does not obviate the requirements of this paragraph. 2. Identification of Witnesses and Exhibits. (a) Plaintiff’s Witnesses. By 02-NOV-2009, plaintiff shall provide the Court with a list of all possible witnesses, including a brief narrative of each respective witness’s expected testimony. (b) Plaintiff’s Exhibits. By 02-NOV-2009, plaintiff shall provide the Court with a list of all possible exhibits which he or she may use during the course of trial. (c) Defendant’s Witnesses. By 07-DEC-2009, defendant shall provide the Court with a list of all possible witnesses, including a brief narrative of each respective witness’s expected testimony. (d) Defendant’s Exhibits. By 07-DEC-2009, defendant shall provide the Court with a list of all possible exhibits which he or she may use during the course of the trial. 3. Definitions. (a) Narration of Proposed Facts. In stating facts proposed to be proved, counsel shall do so in simple, declarative, self contained, consecutively numbered sentences. In a case with multiple parties, if a fact is to offered against fewer than all parties, counsel shall indicate the parties against which the fact will (or will not) be offered. (The facts to be set forth include not only ultimate facts, but also all subsidiary and supporting facts except those offered solely for impeachment purposes.) (b) Agreement and Disagreement. Defense counsel shall indicate that he or she does not contest a proposed fact if at trial they will not controvert or dispute that fact. In indicating disagreement with a proposed fact, defense counsel shall so set forth those disagreement(s) as explained above. (c) Objections. Objections to the admissibility of a proposed fact (either as irrelevant or on other grounds) may not be used to avoid indicating whether or not the party contests the truth of that fact. (Counsel shall, however, indicate any objections, both to the facts which they contest and those which they do not contest.) (d) Individual Positions. To the extent feasible, counsel with similar interests are expected to coordinate their efforts and express a joint position with respect to the facts they propose to prove and to the facts other parties propose to prove. Subject to the time limits above, each party may, however, list additional proposed facts to cover positions unique to it. 4. Annotations. For each proposed fact, the parties shall, at the time of proposing to prove the fact, list the witnesses (including expert witnesses), documents, and (with line-by-line references) any depositions and answers to interrogatories or requests for admissions that they will offer to prove that fact. In his or her response, defense counsel shall, if he or she objects to any such proposed fact or proposed proof, state precisely the grounds of their objections and, if they will contest the accuracy of the proposed fact, similarly list the witnesses, documents, depositions, interrogatories, or admissions that they will offer to controvert that fact. Except for good cause shown, a party will be precluded at trial from offering any evidence on any fact not so disclosed and from making any objection not so disclosed. 5. Effect. Preclusion of other Facts. Except for good cause shown, parties shall be precluded at trial from offering proof of any fact not disclosed in their listing of proposed facts (except purely for impeachment purposes). 6. Sanctions. Unjustified refusal to admit a proposed fact or to limit the extent of disagreement with a proposed fact shall be subject to sanctions. Excessive listing of proposed facts (or of the evidence to be submitted in support of or denial of such facts) which imposes obvious burdens on opposing parties shall also be subject to sanctions. 7. Length of Trial. Each counsel shall provide an estimate of the anticipated length of trial. It is expected that the case will be ready for Trial 04-JAN-2010, which is the earliest trial date pursuant to Pa.R.C.P. 212.1, and counsel should anticipate trial to begin expeditiously thereafter. All counsel are under a continuing obligation and are hereby Ordered to serve a copy of this Order upon all unrepresented parties and upon all counsel entering an appearance subsequent to the entry of this Order. …BY THE COURT: SANDRA MOSS, J. 10-JUN-2009

10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM LISTED FOR SETTLEMENT CONF 10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM
Docket Entry: none.

10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM LISTED FOR PRE-TRIAL CONF 10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM
Docket Entry: none.

10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM LISTED FOR TRIAL 10-JUN-2009 03:33 PM
Docket Entry: none.

16-JUL-2009 03:24 PM OTHER EVENT CANCELLED 16-JUL-2009 03:24 PM
Docket Entry: none.

This is interesting, no?

–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies

REPLY TO BLOG BY PROF. KARLAN ON BRIAN LEITER’S BLOG

I read with interest the following post by Prof. Pamela Karlan to Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports Blog at

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2006/04/high_gpas_at_to.html:

April 19, 2006
High Undergraduate GPAs at Top Law Schools: What Do They Mean and What Are Their Consequences for Legal Education?

Pamela Karlan, a distinguished expert on voting rights and civil procedure at Stanford Law School, writes:

I read, with both interest and a fair amount of distress, the 75th percentile LSAT rankings. The distress came from seeing the staggering 75th percentile GPAs.

These could reflect at least three states of the world, two of them unfortunate. First, and most optimistically, the 40 schools on your list could all be admitting kids with amazing undergraduate academic achievements. (A 3.96 means, for example a student with 34A’s and 2 B+’s as an undergraduate; a 3.85 could mean half A’s and half A-’s.)

Second, the GPA’s could reflect rampant grade inflation at undergraduate institutions. Leave aside the abstract debate over whether the current generation of students is so much abler than its predecessors that good students should never see a grade below A- or B+. Most law schools have mandatory means or curves, and I’m aware of none where that mean is over around 3.4. (Even at the schools that don’t have official means, I would guess the actual mean is no higher than that.) Thus, virtually all law students will have lower, substantially lower, GPA’s in law school than they had in college. (E.g., at my own institution, 25% of the students had GPAs equivalent to what the number 1 student in the normal graduating class is likely to have.) This drop has a number of unfortunate consequences. Many of us are familiar with a huge demoralization effect the day first-semester grades come out and people who’ve been told all their lives that they are “A’s” at everything that’s measured hear for the first time that they’re “B’s.” They give up, and simply float through the remaining five semesters. Many have a self-protective defensive reaction: if the law doesn’t love them, then they distance themselves from it. In addition, at law schools where there are course-selection strategies that allow students to manipulate their GPA’s, students are then drawn not to taking what’s good or useful for them, but rather what’s most likely to boost their GPAs back toward the range they’ve internalized as normal. The high UGPAs mean that many of our students have never really learned to bounce back from academic disappointment (the “C” I got my first semester of college is one of the best things that ever happened to me) and like learning to ride a bicycle, it’s harder to learn that the older you get.

Third, to get those astronomical UGPA’s, students necessarily had to be either (a) extraordinary across the board for their entire undergraduate career (the student who bombs the first year of college because she wasn’t yet ready for the work or who was planning to be a physicist before he realized he didn’t have the mathematical ability can’t get one of these sky-high GPAs) or (b) strategic and risk-averse, taking only the kinds of courses in which they’d get A’s, from the time they were 17 or 18 years old. I’d bet it’s more the latter than the former. One of the things I always though the U.S. had over many other advanced countries was that we didn’t expect students to specialize in only what they were good at when they were still teenagers. But in order to get a 3.9 UGPA, students really can’t take things well outside their comparative advantages. Many of us see the consequences of this in what our students do: they’re passive and non-entrepreneurial in their job choices, going to large firms not because that practice particularly attracts them, but because it seems less “risky” right out of law school than going to smaller firms or government jobs. Many of them haven’t exercised their intellectual imaginations in years. Many are in fact not particularly well educated, since the science majors took few writing courses, the humanities people took perhaps one semester of economics and flee any quantitative subject, and the social and hard scientists know no American (let alone world) history at all.

Now, of course, we’re talking here only about the 75th percentile. Perhaps we could find the students who are comfortable with risk, entrepreneurial, academically and intellectually adventurous, and resilient among the other three-quarters of the class. But even the 25th percentile at top 20 schools have staggering UGPAs. And that sets the tone for the student body.

I’m not sure, as long as US News drives so much of the world, that there’s anything to be done. But it’s frustrating if what we’re trying to do is to train imaginative, entrepreneurial, courageous, resilient lawyers with broad perspectives that one of the central criteria for admitting students undermines our chances of doing that.

(end of Prof. Karlan’s comments).

Now I actually knew Pam growing up–she was one of a circle of debaters I knew who grew up debating in connecticut (she went to Hopkins Grammar School and then to Yale) and she’s enjoyed a great deal of success as a law school academic, although she’s way too liberal for my tastes (what law school academic isn’t liberal?).

On the plus side, I don’t think she’s a communist, but if she is, i’m not down with that at all.

My father fought those jerks in the greek civil war, and they were rat bastards, the communists. I can’t believe the democrats are actually meeting with castro in cuba right now.

Anyway, here were my comments in reply to her post:

An addendum to the comment above on grade inflation and test scores.

1) it is well-known that the ETS re-normed the SATS, LSATs, GREs and MCATs at least one standard deviation approximately sixteen years ago. Consequently, our generation of the 1970s and 1980s had a mean on the SAT and other standardized tests that was one standardized deviation higher than the current generation of students–our IQ in short, averaged around 100, while theirs literally averages 85. If you pin the bell curve tail on the donkey, that makes the top 1/2 % of the current generation dumber than the top five % of the previous generation.

So the students aren’t getting smarter, they’re getting dumber. That’s what renorming the test means.

I worked teaching all of the standardized tests for more than twenty years and wrote the pilot materials for the LSAT for Princeton Review in the early 1990s.

2) Grade inflation ain’t so except in the courses where professors are giving easy grades. At colleges that are conservative like Drexel, William and Mary, Hamilton, and so forth, grades are given out fairly and with rigor. It’s at some of the humanities departments that standards have fallen, and as certain classics and history professors have noted, along with scholarship–you can hardly find an actual greek, latin or byzantine professor today in a major ivy league university. When I visited Harvard, Prof. Finley was lecturing on Ancient Athens. Today, you’re more likely to hear some humanities teacher deconstructing gender based issues in some unknown text from last week, or worse still, deconstructing something from the internet.

3) TV, the internet, cellphones and laptops have definitively made current law students stupider. They don’t know how to write, they don’t know how to read books, and their research skills are shallow and poor. Most important, they lack the skill of memorization. I used to know where every single book was in certain law libraries, just as I knew where they were in huge undergrad libraries for years. That was a lot more useful skill than Boolean searches, which are not a thorough method of seeking out facts unless you already know the subject matter at hand.

4) Westlaw and Lexis led us to the horror that is Google.

5) Google is driving the book and newspaper out of existence, leading us to a famous Asimov short story of science fiction in which (in the near future) everyone forgets how to read and do math because computers do it for us–until a nuclear war destroys the machines and we become helpless, until one day a boy re-discovers how to do math by hand, and is proclaimed a genius.

This is the orwellian place we are all headed.

In addition to the foregoing comments, I would have also pointed out that Prof. Karlan’s basic point is wrong.

She assumes that students get high grades in college, and then come to Stanford Law and get lower grades because the competition is tougher.

This is actually ass backwards. I know Pam from when she was 18 and kicking back beers at college debate tournaments, so I know she likes to pontificate without factual basis from time to time, so here are some facts;

1) except for the top ten law schools, most law school applicants don’t have a 3.90 GPA or a very high LSAT. The vast majority of law students and lawyers are trained at 2d, 3d and 4th quartile schools as rated by US News and World Report rankings, or at local state law schools. Those students make up the vast majority of the bar.

2) students who go to Stanford, Yale, Harvard law schools only rarely practice law in the “real”world. They usually become law professors, judges, politicians etc. or work for rarified law firms. It’s unusual to see these folks work with actual clients or appear in actual courtrooms. Pam is a perfect example of this. She’s spent her life in the classroom, not in the real world.

3) Pam admits to getting a C or two at Yale, and I admit to that with Harvard. Because those schools were hard, back in the day. They were not easy, there was no grade inflation and the competition was brutal in most of the classes. Plus I was a premed on the side. So my GPA in college was nothing pretty, although it was definitely higher than a B average and i was recommended for honors, had a cum laude on my thesis and a summa on my general exam.

4) When I went to law school, after working a while, I thought it was MUCH EASIER than college. To be honest, I barely cracked a book open, worked forty hours a week at law firms collecting cold hard cash, and found the work at law school to be trivial. It was in law school that i got racks of As and only a couple of Bs. It was funny how many As I got. I won Am Jur Awards and Best Paper Awards (best grade in my class) every single semester I was in law school. It became like a joke how smart I was in law school, and yet, I really wasn’t working 1/8th as hard as I did in college.

Consequently, I don’t really know what Pam is talking about, not at all. My grades were disappointing to me in college but I worked my ass off to get them; but my grades in law school were terrific, and I hardly broke a sweat.

Next, as far as training law students to be imaginative, entrepreneurial or creative, I think that’s a deeply flawed and dangerous thing to do.

The last thing I as a businessman want my lawyer to be is creative, imaginative or entrepreneurial. I want my lawyer to be a lawyer, that is, an unimaginative little nebbish who grinds out papers and hands them to my enemy at 5pm on friday afternoon, or gets deals done by smiling and being at peace and harmony with everyone in the bar.

Creativity, imagination and entrepreneurship, I’m afraid, is reserved for the Schumpeterians of the world, that is to say, the guys at Business School, and that’s why Wharton has a Center for Entrepreneurship, and why I and my colleagues at various Business Schools teach Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity at Business Schools around the North east directly, rather than teaching the stultifying subject of law. Law by its nature cannot be innovative, because it is precedential and must be followed to the letter of the law; whereas an inventor or entrepreneur is not bound by precedent and can be innovative.

I actually find Pam’s notion of what a good lawyer is to be incomprehensible. A good lawyer should be boring, ethical and should be able to repeat a statute from front to back thirty times in a row. Not creative, not innovative, not entrepreneurial, but efficient like a swiss army knife or a swiss watch. Efficiency and practice make for good lawyering. Also long hours spent learning how to write briefs exactly like everyone else writes them. The last thing you want to do in a brief is to introduce anything new, creative or innovative. Judges hate that. They just want you to follow the 8,000 appellate rules they’ve set forth for how to write the brief.

Good lawyers, then, are basically automatons. Clever and hard working automatons, but robots, essentially. In another century, they will in fact be replaced by AI possessing machines for many of their tasks, I predict. They’re already being outsourced to India for much of their robotic work such as document discovery, which was once thought to require intelligence and training. See my point?

Whereas good businessmen are creative, innovative and entrepreneurial.

5) A logic, rhetoric, oratory, philosophy background gets you through law school very easily; math and science make it trivial. All law problems are basically logic puzzles, and all law essays are basically debate/oratory speeches made in a philsophy manner of analyzing each question from both sides. This was perfectly normal to me. Undergrad teachers kept trying to make a marxist out of me, so they didn’t like my impartiality. Law professors loved it.

6) Law exams are graded without your name on the paper. No favoritism can creep into the grading. Undergrad is rife with favoritism and bias towards certain undergrads that the professors play favorites towards.

7) My friend NS who went to school with Pam at Yale thought Stanford Law was a joke after Yale undergrad; he thought it was a vacation. We used to get together frequently in Cali and hang out. He never seemed to work too hard.

8) My friend DB who went to harvard with me and then to Stanford Med thought Stanford Law was a joke after harvard undergrad and stanford med. He worked 40 hours at a top patent firm and saved all his money. Again, he had plenty of free time, he hardly worked at law school.

9) Law Schools should require all incoming students to study the following;

semester of logic, semster of intro to western philosophy
semester of oratory/rhetoric/speech
do two semesters of competitive speech/rhetoric/debate/parli
do two semesters of mock trial
spend a summer working at a law firm
spend a summer working at legal aid
spend a summer working for a judge
spend two years minimum working in business or somewhere between college and law school. The armed forces would be the best of all.
give preferential admission to army veterans, ROTC and reservists and end their anti-military culture.
sharply curtail the number of attorneys taking the bar nationally. End all state bars and apply one national bar, and only pass around 5,000 persons into it annually, and make them travel to one of three reginal centers nationally to take the exam, such as SF, CA, Chicago and New York, and only give the exam once a year.
Require proficiency in Spanish for ALL attorneys, since Spanish is required to speak to most clients on both coasts.

10) Science and business grad school were much more challenging and interesting than law school or undergrad. I would NEVER recommend to my own children to attend law school, maybe take a law class in business school, but not attend law school. The best combination out there today is the MD-MBA combined program, which I think is ideal in today’s economy.

These are some of the practical changes I would make to the legal eduction process.

I would probably close all but a handful of the existing law schools in the united states. Or, perhaps, people could obtain law degrees for reasons other than being a lawyer–for academic or scholarly purposes, as in europe, but not to be a lawyer or to make money. I’d convert a lot of the programs to MBA programs, actually.

we have way too many lawyers in this country and we need to reform the legal profession, reform tort law, and sharply regulate the profession before it drives all of the doctors, drug makers and other competent businessmen out of this country for good.

One final note, and this is about Pam’s constitutional law book, which she authored with Cass Sunstein, Mark & Rebecca Tushnet, Louis Seidman & Geoffrey Stone. This casebook has been ranked one out of five stars by nearly everyone who ranked it on Amazon dot com. I happen to be a fan of Pam, of Cass Sunstein (except for his dumping Martha Nussbaum, who I’m a bigger fan of, for that stupid Irish younger woman professor at Harvard who’s the big Obama fan) and I really am a big fan of Mark and Rebecca Tushnet–Rebecca was one of Harvard’s best debaters ever in the 1990s–and Mark is a very smart guy–but apparently brains doesn’t mean you can write a casebook as good as Larry Tribe’s.

Here’s a sample comment from Amazon dot com;

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Casebook, December 13, 2008
By kiki (Baltimore, MD) – See all my reviews
It’s a casebook, so it’s not supposed to be great reading, but this one is by far the worst casebook I’ve ever had. The only thing a casebook needs to do to achieve mediocrity is contain cases. This doesn’t, not really. It gives you the cliff’s notes of important cases. One sentence blurbs about others. And pages and pages of rambling, aimless, academic debate. It may be a good book for Con Law professors and others who have already read all of the cases discussed. For someone trying to learn con law, it is useless. It is also organized very poorly. Any class organized around this book is doomed from the start. If your professor uses this book, take another class. If you can’t take another class, buy the Chemerinsky treatise and rely on that instead. Professors: DO NOT USE THIS BOOK.

Constitutional Law (Casebook)

the website address is above, if you want to check out the remarks and the book yourself. Perhaps there will be a revised edition. I realize that Pam writes and talks a lot. As I said, part of her strength, and her weakness, is that she talks and writes too much, and perhaps she spreads herself a little thin.

When I was a litigator, I litigated civil rights matters in the trenches, and won them. It’s not as hard as it seems. You need to have a firm grasp of the history of the United States from 1776 through about 1900 to understand the reconstruction and civil war era, in order to make some sense of what the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments mean.

I actually think Justice Scalia had some pertinent remarks on US v. Cruikshank in the recent gun rights case. He noted that the US Supreme Court in that 1874 case took the right of bearing arms away from african american militia men under the second amendment, because of white supremacist views which were going on at the time. the dispute was that armed militias of african americans and republicans were fighting ku klux klansmen in Mississippi and elsewhere in the south, and the african american plaintiffs claimed a second amendment right to bear arms as a militia.

The US Supreme Court said no, that’s only a federal right against the federal government, not against the states, ignoring incorporation under the 14th amendment.

Scalia basically says now that Cruikshank was wrong, and that african americans had the right to arm themselves as a militia in 1874 and defend themselves against the Klan in the 1870s.

I think that’s an interesting point of view. Of course, an armchair liberal like Karlan would never consider that Scalia would have anything interesting to say.

But here at the Sophist, we think there are two sides to every question.

–art kyriazis
philly/nj home of the world champion phillies

–art kyriazis

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO – WHY THE SPARTANS WILL WIN

PART ONE – VILLANOVA HAD A GREAT RUN – ANOTHER BIG FIVE WINNER FOR THE BOOKS

There is no denying Villanova had a great run in this year’s NCAA tournament, making it to the Final Four before losing to North Carolina last night. It was a hard loss to swallow, especially after watching the Spartans of Michigan State make such a statement game of upsetting UConn in the opening of the Final Four doubleheader, but Villanova shot very poorly from the three point line, and could not establish its inside game against UNC. Moreover, Villanova’s normally excellent defense failed them against UNC’s superb inside-outside attack of attacking at the low post but also kicking out to the three point line, and here, UNC shooting 50% or better from the three point arc sealed Villanova’s fate—if Villanova sagged to defense the low post, UNC simply killed them from the three point arc. When Villanova came out to play perimeter defense, UNC exploited the seams to get easy buckets inside. One final point is that UNC seemed to be taller overall than Villanova, and this seemed to make some difference on the defensive side of the ball; Villanova was not getting out in transition, and in the half-court offense, was having trouble shooting over, or matching up with, the taller UNC players.

Having said that, Villanova was by far the best Big East team in the tournament this year. They beat UCLA handily, they crushed a very good Duke team (with an RPI of one), they got past a Pitt team that had been ranked #1 at times this season, and got to the Final Four.

This year’s Villanova team was a team of seniors and juniors, experienced players who had played together a long time. I had them bracketed to get to the finals of the NCAA, not just the Final Four, because I felt that having three seniors who had played together as long as Villanova’s seniors had played together, was an incredible advantage in today’s college basketball.

In today’s college game, your best player usually leaves after one season to seek out pro contracts and a sneaker endorsement. It’s hard to find athletes who will commit to four years on campus.

But we all know why they stay at Villanova. Howie Long tells the story every week on that NFL pre-game show. It’s the nuns, the professors, the small campus atmosphere. Villanova feels like home. It’s the kind of place you don’t want to leave. For many of the kids who come to play basketball there, they will learn much more than basketball at Villanova, they will learn life skills and many other things.

Having said that, it should be pointed out that Villanova is now spending as much money on its basketball program, according to the Philly Daily News and other sources, as any other major Division I basketball program, around $5 million annually, which compares to $6 million annually spent by UConn or by UNC. And yet $5 million annually isn’t even close to the top in the Big East.

However, because Villanova does not have a Division I football program that earns a lot of money, Villanova’s sports programs run an annual deficit of around $16 million which have to be picked up by NCAA revenues, boosters, and the like. It’s hard to believe that Villanova has continued to stay committed at this level, given their size and endowment.

At the same time, we can now more easily see why Temple, St. Joes’s, LaSalle and Penn are not competing at the same level as they used to ten or twenty years ago vis-à-vis NCAA competition—it now takes $5 million annually to really ramp up a program to final four viability.

That St. Joe’s made the Final Four a few years back with Jameer Nelson and Delonte West for a fraction of that budget is a testament to the recruiting and coaching skills of Phil Martelli.

That Temple got to the elite eight so many times with John Chaney and almost to the Final Four for a fraction of that budget is likewise a testament to the recruiting and coaching skills of Chaney, a hall of fame coach.

A school that has a big time football program—like Penn State or Michigan State—should be able to afford to spend on their basketball program—and Michigan State has been successful in basketball, as has Penn State to a lesser degree (they’re doing well in the NIT this year after being a bubble team that didn’t get an at-large bid with the NCAA). Those schools don’t have to deficit spend on basketball, they can take plus side monies from football and invest them in basketball.

I think this explains why, for so many years, President Liacouras of Temple, who was instrumental in getting the Liacouras Center built in North Philadelphia where Temple Basketball now plays its home games, was so interested in putting together a Division I Temple Football program which would be a money maker. He wanted a football program that would make enough money that basketball would be able to share revenues from football, rather than having the university deficit spend on basketball.

Given today’s economics of big time NCAA basketball, this was a far-sighted view of the situation. Temple today remains in Division I football, though they’ve dropped down a conference, and can still be a profitable football team. That dream is still alive for them. Al Golden is doing a good job as football coach.

To summarize, Villanova had a magnificent run in the NCAA this year, capping off a four year run by these seniors that was nothing less than magical. Kudoes and cheers to Villanova and to coach Jay Wright. For a long time I was a Steve Lappas guy, and I always thought he got a bum deal from Villanova, and I was very slow to come around to Jay Wright, I will admit I have a bias there. At first I thought Wright was glib and not too bright, and that he couldn’t coach in tough games. He’s proven me completely wrong. He’s both a good recruiter and an excellent coach.

Art Kyriazis Philly/South Jersey
Home of the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies

MARCH MADNESS – MAD ABOUT TEMPLE’S SEEDING

Collectively, the Big Five of Temple, LaSalle, Penn, Villanova and St Joes have made more than a dozen final four appearances since the NCAAs began in 1939; Villanova was in the first NCAA tourney back in 1939, and in every decade of the NCAAs, one or more of the big Five has had an impact on the tournament each and every decade the Tournament has been running, whether it was Temple getting to the Final Four twice in the fifties, St. Joe’s to the Final Four in the sixties, Villanova and Penn to the Final Four in the seventies, Villanova winning the NCAA in the 80s, Temple dominating and getting #1 rankings and seedings in the 80s and 90s and getting to the elite 8 three times, and Villanova getting #1 seeds and reaching the elite 8 in recent years, and St. Joes getting to the final four in the last decade and getting a #1 seed.

Folks, we have the best college basketball in the country, bar none. Collectively, the Big Five does better in NCAA than almost any other region or school, excepting possibly Duke, UCLA, Kentucky and a handful of other such bigtime programs–and yet Duke has only won three NCAA titles in 14 Final Four trips, etc. The Big Five is not doing so badly.

I really like the underdogs of the NCAA–Marquette in 1977 with Al McGuire, the late Jimmy Valvano and North Caroline State (who can forget the triple overtime opening round win over Pepperdine?) in 1983, Rollie Massimino and the Villanova Wildcats upending Patrick Ewing and Georgetown in 1986, and so on.

My personal favorite big five upset of all time has to be St. Joe’s beating #1 seed and #1 in the country DePaul and Mark Aguire in 1981 in the first round of the NCAA (maybe it was the 2d round).

This brings us to 2009. Villanova and Temple are in. Villanova had a very good season, but lost to Louisville in the semis of the Big East tournament. Nova’ had a good RPI and a good strength of schedule, but still, they got a #3 seed, which I thought was pretty generous for a team that really hadn’t won anything–they were third or fourth in their conference, and finished third/fourth in the tournament of their conference. Even if it’s the best conference in basketball, does finishing fourth in that conference make you the 12th best team in all of college basketball? I think a #4 seed would have been more appropriate. The NCAA worships the big east a little too much.

Next, Temple. Temple got an #11 seed, which puts them against Arizona State, a #6 seed. Now Temple actually won something–they won the A-10 Tournament. Second year in a row, in fact. Also, best player in the conference, Dionte Christmas, plays for Temple. Also, Temple has by far the toughest non-conference schedule of any A-10 team. But they beat all of those teams too, except maybe Villanova, and they gave them a tough time. Maybe if Nova’ didn’t insist on playing at the Pavilion, but at the Palestra, it would be a fair game.

Temple’s RPI is very good, and their strength of schedule is very good. In fact, if you look at most of the teams seeded from around #7-#10, Temple’s RPI and strength of schedule are BETTER than most of those 7-10 seeds. Take Michigan for example, a team that didn’t win anything, lost 13, won only 20, and was an at-large from the big 10. Michigan has a higher seed than Temple but why? Michigan’s RPI is worse, their strength of schedule much worse, and they have a much worse record than Temple.

I could pick out many more examples (UCLA?) of this, but the point is that Temple plays a big-time schedule, has been in the elite eight in three of the last twenty years, and has been ranked #1 more than once in the last twenty years, including most of 1987-88. They’re a good ballclub, and deserved at least an 8-9 seed matchup in the first round.

Frankly, i would have given Temple about the same seeding as Xavier, and higher than Dayton, a team Temple dominated during the season.

I believe Temple and Villanova will both win. Arizona State is a fine team and that game could go either way, but Temple will win this year. Villanova has a ridiculously easy first round game. Their second round matchup will be much tougher

Also, I really like the fact that the new President offered his own “bracketology” on ESPN. that was pretty cool. I don’t think we’ve had this sports minded a president since Jack Kennedy, an old football player, was going to the harvard-yale and army-navy games. A lot like Teddy Roosevelt, too.

–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies

T-CELL SCIENCES, INC. – CASE STUDY – WHARTON SCHOOL CASE STUDY – 1994 – Arthur J. Kyriazis University of Pennsylvania April 22, 1994

this is an actual case study I did at Wharton about fifteen years ago for Steve Sammut’s class on advanced patent portfolio management theory. This case is of interest because it concerns a biotech company, and because, re-reading it after a long time, it actually reads very well. Even before I had all the experience I do now, I actually had a good feel for what to do with the management of a biotech company even back then, so here it is. And yes, I did get an “A” in the class, of course. Dr. Sammut used to run the tech transfer office for Penn during the 1990s.

–art k

ps enjoy!

T-CELL SCIENCES, INC. CASE

by Arthur J. Kyriazis

MGMT 898 – PROF. SAMMUT

Wharton School (WEMBA)
University of Pennsylvania

April 22, 1994

Issues

T-Cell Sciences, Inc. (“T-Cell”) is a 1983 Cambridge, MA biotech/pharmaceutical startup sired by Patrick Kung, a “recognized pioneer in immunological research.” The main issue appears to be defining T-Cell’s ultimate market niche even as it undergoes the process of transition from a venture-funded start-up to a more mature publicly held corporation. Specifically, in the coming months and years, should T-Cell (1) concentrate upon basic across the board immunological R&D; (2) concentrate upon basic immunological R&D with a focus on diagnostic drugs and product(s); or (3) focus upon strategic alliances with large pharmaceutical companies with an eye cast towards the development and delivery of therapeutic pharmaceutical drugs?

It would appear that until the arrival of James D. Grant as CEO in November of 1986, the main issue might well have been a different one altogether, namely whether T-Cell would reorganize or liquidate. In early 1986, T-Cell was a company in trouble and one which was not being particularly well-run or well-managed, even though it had brilliant scientists and innovative technologies full of commercial promise. Even though startups might be expected to lose money at the outset, T-Cell’s losses in 1985 and 1986 totalled nearly $2 million, compared with $5.5 million capitalization from December of 1983 throught January of 1986. This apparently necessitated a public offering in May of 1986, which raised $11.1 million, followed by the hiring of Mr. Grant in November of 1986, and his hiring of a well-heeled financial CFO immediately thereafter.

In addition, up through Grant’s arrival, T-Cell had only developed two products of any consequence, ACT-T-SET, and CELLFREE, and only two joint venture/research alliances/R&D contracts of any consequence, the Syntex USA contract and the Pfizer contract, and had failed to show any revenue from product sales through 1986, and only $13 million in revenue from contracts in 1986.

In brief, one may surmise from the case study that a great deal of money was spent at T-Cell, until Grant’s arrival, on basic immunological research, without a very well defined sense of where the research was going, or how it would be profitable or generate a return to the company and to the investors. This might have been a result of Dr. Kung’s diffuse vision of the company’s market niche as somehow doing R&D better or faster, and perhaps a touch of the academic fondness for the intrinsic value of broad based academic research as opposed to targeted research and strategic alliances directed to product development and ultimate profit.

Grant’s arrival placed T-Cell on a radically different footing and he appears to have turned the company around. Losses were reduced by nearly a million dolars from 1986 to 1987, and for the year ending in April of 1987, T-Cell reported positive product sales revenue of nearly $400,000 together with contract revenues of nearly $2 million. In addition, Grant apparently negotiated the deal with Yamanouchi Parmaceutical, which as he characterizes it places T-Cell on a sound cash flow footing for the foreseeable future. In addition, Grant has introduced a sound line of command and professionalized the management of the company by hiring a financial officer and a regulatory affairs officer, paying attention to patent management issues, and spending time painting a sound, attractive picture to shareholders, potential investors and to regulators. Finally, Grant’s status an a former FDA head bodes well for the regulatory hurdles awaiting T-Cell’s products.

T-Cell’s Strengths

T-Cell’s strengths are many. First, it has a distinguished corps of researchers led off by Dr. Kung, who appears to be a leader in the field of T cell research. It is situated in Cambridge, MA, in the heart of the Harvard-MIT research community, and can be expected to easily draw upon an outstanding technical scientific staff for its research needs. Also, the scientific advisory board includes people like Dr. Mark Davis and others who are world-recognized scientific leaders.

Second, T-Cell has introduced two product lines in 1986, the ACT-T-SET and CELLFREE technologies, which assuming patent protection and FDA approval, are potentially product mainstays for the company. These two products are expected to have applicability in the diagnosis of various stages of immune system stimulation and white blood cell activity. Dr. Kung and Mr. Grant expect R&D to eventually identify other new products in the same T cell related vein with applicability in the diagnostic field.

Third, T-Cell has two joint ventures, with Syntex and Pfizer, and now a third, with Yamanouchi, which promise to focus on specific product development, with the obvious potential of delivering a drug to market which can be of wide therapeutic applicability and therefore be a cash mainstay for the company. The Syntex and Pfizer ventures aim to produce therapeutic drugs targeted at common medical ailments, including breast cancer, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and cytomegalovirus. The Yamanouchi venture aims to develop products to diagnose rheumatoid arthritis and lung cancer. An added benefit is the global ability to develop and market products and drugs in Japan and the rest of the world while awaiting FDA approval for their sale in the United States.

Fourth, T-Cell now has James D. Grant, who must be reckoned as an important asset of the company at this juncture. His management skills have put T-Cell on a sound business footing; his contacts have resulted in new joint venture(s); and his FDA expertise should translate into FDA product approvals.

Which Fields or Options are Most Attractive for T-Cell?

The basic R&D approach is wrong for this size company. What the company needs to do is ultimately make a decision between developing diagnostic products/drugs on its own, or on developing them with partners. Grant appears to be committed to a strategy of hedging his bets by pursuing both options. He is willing to commit some money to R&D and to diagnostics, while courting and signing deals with large pharmaceuticals for strategic alliance(s) aimed at delivering specific types of therapeutic products/drugs. Grant also feels that the diagnostic(s) division, once profitable, should be spun off because of the competition in that field.

Recommendations

Grant probably has it right. The therapeutic emphasis is the best way for T-Cell to go right now. The joint venture/strategic alliance approach is a sound one. If successful, the development of even one drug marketed to a patient population as widespread as the breast cancer or lung cancer populations promises immediate payoff for T-Cell’s efforts and a handsome reward for its investors.

With diagnostic drugs on the other hand, even if approved and even if proprietary, it is hard to see how T-Cell will be able to exploit the discoveries, so that Grant is probably correct when he surmises that this division or these proprietary discoveries will ultimately be spun off. Of course, licensing and franchising are options we have discussed which absent from Grant’s discussion(s).

The best way for T-Cell to go would be to continue to solicity these contracts and joint ventures. T-Cell has recognized, proven scientific talent and recognized expertise in this very specific area of immunological research.

One specific recommendation is that the company hire a patent portfolio manager and begin to concentrate on patenting more of its discoveries, as well as concentrate on getting products to FDA submission stage. This manager must also concentrate on getting the researchers to recognize when a discovery may or might be patentable or commerciable in some respect. These two steps will make the company attractive to investors and a steady stream of patent application(s) and FDA approval applications are evidence that a company has been doing its homework.

These steps, if followed, should result in a successful new round of equity financing and/or an invitation to buy the company out altogether. In either event, the company will have attained a substantial goal. Finally, T-Cell should keep Grant around. Given the company’s history, investors could get extremely nervous if he were to depart suddenly or unexpectedly.

–Arthur J Kyriazis, 1994

THIS WAS AN ACTUAL CASE STUDY I WROTE FOR THE WHARTON SCHOOL IN THE SPRING OF 1994.

–art kyriazis
Philly/South Jersey
Home of the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies
Home of the Incredible Philadelphia Eagles
Home of the Arena Football League Champion Philadelphia Soul
Making the Playoffs in 2008: The Sixers, the Flyers, the Phillies and the Eagles!
Happy New Year 2009

Saving Big Five Basketball in Philadelphia

Big Five Basketball has been dying a slow death in Philadelphia the past few years, unnoticed and unmourned by the schools involved and by the sportswriters, telecasters and other media figures who once celebrated it so ardently. At its height in the 1970s and 1980s, all of the Big Five games were at the Palestra of Penn, a neutral site, many of those games were locally televised, and often there were doubleheaders, meaning you could see two basketball games for the price of one, perhaps a non-Big Five matchup paired with a Big Five Game.

The unraveling of the Big Five has been well-documented. It started with Villanova’s demands after it’s national title in 1985 for Big Five home games at the Pavilion and to be released from its contractual obligation to play all of the required Big Five Games. Once all the dust settled, the restructured Big Five agreement no longer required the games to be played at the Palestra, but rather alternated to home and home series between each school involved, and even that was negotiated by the schools involved, e.g. Villanova might want two home games for every away game.

Consequently, for example, although Villanova recently won a “Big Five” game against Temple this year, it really wasn’t a “Big Five” game in the traditional sense of the term. The game was a home game for Villanova, held at the Pavilion at Villanova, meaning it was a home game for Villanova with few or no Temple fans. Temple has a good team this year, but there’s an enormous difference in playing a Big Five Game at a neutral site like the Palestra in front of a crowd of half your fans and half their fans, and playing the same game at the Villanova Pavilion in front of a hostile audience.

Villanova has completely dominated “Big Five Play” as we now know it in recent years, but they’ve done so by playing two or more of the annual Big Five games at Villanova’s Pavilion each year, thus giving Villanova home court for two of those Big Five games plus a large gate share. The main reason for this is that Villanova is more concerned about their national ranking and Big East ranking than they are about the Big Five.

Well, I have a modest proposal to salvage the Big Five as we once knew it and put it back on the road to what it once was. It will involve a bit of radical surgery, but it might be the best thing overall.

My proposal is as follows; expel Villanova from the Big Five for the next five years and replace them with Drexel. All Big Five games will once again be at the Palestra, a neutral site. The new Big Five will be Temple, LaSalle, St. Joes, Drexel and Penn. Drexel will be delighted with the arrangement and Villanova might actually come crawling back asking to be let in on the new/old terms of playing at the Palestra at the end of five years. Then you could have a six team league of Big Five teams.

The situation is pretty clear; since 1985, Villanova has gotten too big for its britches. Unfortunately, they mistook a Cinderella season in which they overcame unbelievable odds to win an NCAA championship for a sign from the heavens that they were better than everyone else in the big five, and ever since, Villanova has been spending more money on recruiting, coaching and building a big-time program, all in an ill-conceived quest to be a nationally ranked team each and every year, oblivious to the fact that the odds against Villanova ever winning another NCAA title again are stratospheric (especially with Jay Wright, a great recruiter and great regular season coach, but a poor NCAA tournament coach at the helm).

The rest of the Big Five is under no such illusions. St. Joes’s even after it’s national run with Jameer Nelson and Delonte West under Phil Martelli remains a locally minded program that aims to field a good team every year without having its head in the clouds; Temple with Fran Dunphy has continued the tradition set by his predecessor of attaining A-10 excellence and making the NCAAs each year and building from there, and Temple continues to put out more good NBA pros than Villanova does year in and year out; Penn continues to be the class of the Ivy League, though currently they are going through a rebuilding time; while LaSalle is struggling they have shown signs of coming around again; and finally, Drexel has really shown signs that they are truly a major college program to be reckoned with.

At this point in time, Drexel is a better fit for the Big Five than Villanova. Drexel is better suited to playing its Big Five games at the Palestra by geography and location, and Drexel would benefit by joining the Big Five in every way. Villanova can continue to have home and home series with any and all of the big five schools—they just won’t be Big Five games.

Finally, it should be incumbent upon the new Big Five to get a TV or cable contract to televise the new Big Five locally so that the new Big Five games are televised locally in the region. A new generation of fans should be built up loyal to philly college basketball.

These are modest proposals, but necessary ones. The Big Five must be saved.

–Art Kyriazis, Philly/South Jersey
Home of the World Champions Philadelphia Phillies
Happy New Year 2009

THE EAGLES FAMILY OF COACHES IN THE NFL

The clash between Eagles head coach Andy Reid and his former assistant coach (and now Minnesota Head Coach) and good friend Brad Childress in the playoffs yesterday highlights a new trend in the NFL—the Philadelphia Eagles family of coaches in the NFL. First, there are the Buddy Ryan assistant coaches—Jon Gruden, formerly of Oakland (where he went to the Super Bowl) and now of Tampa Bay (where he also went to the Super Bowl, and narrowly missed the playoffs this year) and Jeff Fischer of Tennessee, the NFL’s longest tenured coach, who is the AFC’s top seeded team this year, a regular playoff contender, and a former Super Bowl coach and AFC champion. Former Eagles head coach and Buddy Ryan assistant coach Ray Rhodes continues to work as an assistant coach in the league. Buddy Ryan’s two sons now are assistant coaches in the league. Second, there are the ex-Eagles—such as Herm Edwards of Kansas City, and former head coach Dick Vermeil, who used to coach at St. Louis, and won a Super Bowl there. Ex-Eagle John Bunting was a college head coach at North Carolina. And then you have the Andy Reid connections–Harbaugh at Baltimore, who used to coach special teams with the Eagles, and all the connections of Reid through Green Bay as well as Philly like Childress at Minnesota and Holmgren in Seattle.

There are probably many more connections to the Eagles that could be found, but it certainly is illuminating how many coaches and assistant coaches in the NFL (and in the college ranks) now have philly ties. And we used to think this was a college hoops town with a lot of college and pro hoops coaches everywhere. Who knew we were a spawning ground for college coaches. Guess it’s a spawning ground of football coaches as well for the NFL.

–art kyriazis philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies
Happy New Year 2009

Harvard Beats Penn 27-24 at Penn in Crucial Ivy Football Game

In a game with huge Ivy League title implications, Harvard defeated Penn over the weekend at Penn’s Franklin Field on Saturday, November 15. Penn outgained the Crimson almost 2-1 in overall yardage, but turnovers hurt the Quakers and Harvard made some big plays and got some big stops; a crucial missed field goal of about thirty yards also hurt the Quakers badly in the final tally. It was the second straight time that Harvard has won as a visitor at Franklin Field (they also won in 2006); prior to winning these past two contests, Harvard had not won a football game on the road at Franklin Field for approximately twenty years and change. This is certainly the start of an unusual trend. Also, it makes Penn-Cornell next week just a rivalry game, while Harvard-Yale, “The Game”, is now loaded with Ivy League title implications.

Minor Observation: Harvard never lost to Yale during the Lawrence Summers Presidency. No other Harvard President went undefeated to Yale during his Presidency in the Game.

–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
HOME OF THE WORLD CHAMPION PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES