Still on the Search for Some Self Respect

If you think you’re not breaking NCAA rules, you must not be paying attention, new Kansas basketball Coach Bill Self says.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Illinois, um, self-reported 20 minor violations during Self’s three seasons as coach there.

In one case, a staff member gave players $7 for lunch instead of the $6.50 they were allowed. In another, a prospect had two meals at Self’s home instead of the permissible one.

“If you’re not turning yourself in for secondary violations, your compliance program is not very good,” Self told a meeting of the Great Plains chapter of the Associated Press Sports Editors.

“You know, if you bump into a kid and you say more than hello, that’s a no-no.

“I’ll tell you what, you could memorize the NCAA book and come back and take a test next year and make 80% on it because the rules have changed in so many areas.

“Everybody commits secondary violations. Everybody. If they’re reported, it shows you’re on top of your business.”

Sounding a bit self-righteous, you might say.

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Trivia time: Which NFL quarterback was a benchwarmer for the Syracuse basketball team that lost to Kentucky in the 1996 NCAA championship game?

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Meaning what, exactly? Nomar Garciaparra of the Boston Red Sox insists he just isn’t that complicated.

“You guys try to figure me out so much, I’m like, ‘Gosh, darn, if you only knew,’ ” Garciaparra told Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe. “I just play baseball and go home. It’s not that hard. I grew up, I went to the beach and I played baseball, then I went back to the beach. Sun, beach, what else is there?”

Well, there’s the fact that Garciaparra is from Southern California, which makes all of Boston nervous.

“One could interpret Nomar’s ‘sun, beach’ remark as a sign he wants to play on the West Coast,” Shaughnessy wrote. “The West Coast has sun and beach. We have clouds and Nantasket. The guy simply cannot win for talking.”

Garciaparra -- who was born in Whittier and played at Bellflower St. John Bosco -- will become a free agent after next season. But again, Shaughnessy wrote, he’s no open book.

“He’s not like Mo Vaughn, who gave us a Doppler radar update every day.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1998, Tour de France riders, angered by the drug scandal that had dominated the event, protested by delaying the start of racing for two hours. Armin Meier, a member of the disqualified Festina team, told a French radio station that he used a banned drug.

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Trivia answer: Donovan McNabb.

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And finally: Art Thiel in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the drawn-out dismissal of Washington football coach Rick Neuheisel, fired for gambling in NCAA tournament pools:

“Who knew that regime change in Baghdad would be quicker than regime change in Montlake?

“Then [Neuheisel] will take the case to court, where around the same time the Winter Olympics show up to crush Vancouver, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule that Neuheisel was so profoundly fired that it is removing his pictures from the UCLA yearbooks.”

-- Robyn Norwood