Viewing EWU’s woes from afar

Stuff happens.

Usually when I’m on vacation — which was the case once again last week when all hell broke loose at Eastern while I was busy carving out an 85-86 golf win over one of my closest friends on his home course in Fort Worth, Texas.  I even used his clubs.

But now I’m back, trying to catch up on the NCAA sanctions that soiled EWU’s football program while I was away.

Read on.

Hopefully, most of you were able to keep abreast of the news concerning the NCAA’s investigation in the Eagles’ football program via this report filed by S-R columnist John Blanchette — who, by the way, claims our national debt pales by comparison to what I owe him for filling in during the crisis.

Actually, I think it was fitting to have an interim beat writer do the violations story, considering most of them occurred while seemingly in Eastern’s athletic department was serving on an interim basis.

In any event, I followed the developments as best I could from afar, and noticed that not all stories were posted on the blog.

Of particular interest was this piece dealing with the reaction of former EWU athletic director Darren Hamilton.

On Friday, current Eastern AD Bill Chaves announced that the university has decided to file an appeal with the NCAA on the one-year postseason ban in placed on the Eagles football program.  I did a shot story for Saturday’s S-R, but there isn’t much else to report, other than the fact that the university has accepted all of the other penalties handed down by the NCAA and has no idea how long it will take for the appeal process to play out — which has to be a bit disconcerting for the seniors-to-be on the Eagles roster, some of whom are being courted as potential transfers by the University of Washington, according to this piece JB did in the wake of the sanctions story.

I will do my  best to keep you posted on what current EWU players, if any, might be considering changing schools.