Fast Break

Administration

EWU concludes A.D. interviews

The interview process has concluded, but Eastern Washington University won’t have a new athletic director in place until sometime next week, at the earliest.

Bill Chaves, who has served as Baylor University’s associate athletic director of external affairs since 2004, interviewed for Eastern’s vacant A.D. post on Tuesday. He was the fourth and final candidate to meet with university officials about the possibility of replacing Darren Hamilton, who was fired on March 15.

As part of the interview process, all four candidates were made available to the general public at open forums conducted on campus. Those who attended were asked to fill out comment forms and return them the school’s human resources department by Friday.

According to EWU’s special assistant to the president, David Rey, who also chaired the search committee, university president Dr. Rodolfo Arevalo will presumably read those comments over the weekend.

“Dr. Arevalo will then mull things over and, beginning next week, start narrowing his thoughts down and finish off doing reference checks on candidates he feels are frontrunners,” Rey said. “And at some point – probably by the end of next week – we would like to have some kind of a decision.”

The other three candidates who have formally interviewed for the job are Providence College associate A.D. Peter “Mac” Hart, former UC Irvine athletic director Robert Chichester and Florida State University senior associate A.D. Robert Minnix, who is a graduate of Lewis and Clark High School.

Baseball

He’ll have to play ball with IRS

Before he celebrates his windfall, the New York Mets fan who emerged from a violent scrum clutching Barry Bonds’ record-setting home run ball should probably call his accountant.

As soon as 21-year-old Matt Murphy snagged the valuable piece of sports history Tuesday night, his souvenir became taxable income in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, according to experts.

“It’s an expensive catch,” said John Barrie, a tax lawyer with Bryan Cave LLP in New York who grew up watching the Giants play at Candlestick Park. “Once he took possession of the ball and it was his ball, it was income to him based on its value as of yesterday,”

By most estimates, the ball that put Bonds atop the list of all-time home run hitters with 756 would sell in the half-million dollar range on the open market or at auction.