Kevin Blackistone Ncaa Basketball

As a college coach friend and I were being seated for an early dinner in a mostly empty hotel restaurant overlooking the Detroit River on the eve of the last Final Four, we spied Myles Brand and his wife, Peg. They were sitting alone at a table tucked deeper into the quietude of this large dining room with sweeping windows from which we could all watch the sun set.

And we knew Brand was counting the sunsets then. It had been just a couple of months since he publicly disclosed that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a cancer that he said had taken away a quarter of the rest of his life.

Who knows who was the first college chancellor or president to abdicate his or her responsibility as chief executive officer of their college campus? Who knows when that superior first exhibited so much spinelessness?

All we know for certain is who the newest university boss is, in what is a lengthening line, to wobble on weak knees. He is Dr. James Ramsey.

Ramsey (far right) is the president of the University of Louisville. He is the man seated in an office that touts a message to fellow Kentuckians about accountability. It announces: "More than ever, [the] University of Louisville is showing accountability in all that it does. But what exactly do we mean by accountability?"

Apparently, this: If you earn millions of dollars for our university, you can do whatever you want and the university will just look the other way.

On Wednesday, a group called America's Promise Alliance issued its latest report on the education of our country's youth. America's Promise was started by Gen. Colin Powell back in 1997 with a band of corporations, nonprofits, foundations, policymakers, advocacy and faith-based groups to ensure that we provide our kids a foundation from which they can be successful.

The newest report from America's Promise found that nearly half (47 percent) of all young people in the nation's 50 largest cities are not graduating from high school on time and that many of those aren't graduating at all, hence, becoming dropouts.

It is a problem because, the report reminded, the median income for high school dropouts is $14,000, which is significantly lower than the median income for high school graduates ($24,000) and for college graduates ($48,000). More troubling, the report pointed out, high school dropouts were the only workers who saw their income levels decline over the last 30 years.

DETROIT -- If you really think about it, to call the North Carolina basketball team Tar Heels has always been more of an oxymoron. Michael Jordan. Walter Davis. Bob McAdoo. Vince Carter. James Worthy. On and on. You think of them and you think smooth. You think finesse. You think of a pretty way of playing.

It isn't that Jordan and Carter and lots of other North Carolina basketball players weren't tough, but you don't think of them as the 19th century North Carolinians who burned trees into black muck, or tar, that they then spread on the bottom of boats. You don't think of them as part of that North Carolina Civil War lore -- the wrong and losing side, by the way -- where a Confederate troop leader pleaded with his boys to fight with the toughness of those North Carolinians he'd heard about, those Tar Heels.

At least not until now.

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DETROIT -- In an earlier journalistic life, Friday would've been a really big day for me. The reason: the government, each first Friday of the month, issued its most-important piece of economic news -- the unemployment report -- and I covered economics. The report it issued this Friday was an instant Page 1 story, which is what they called the first thing you saw on this thing I worked at forever called a newspaper. Friday's report revealed the recession we're in pushed the unemployment rate to its highest mark in a quarter century, 8.5 percent.

At the University of Maryland, where I started teaching a course last semester, the university president just before last Christmas announced that the campus would have to implement a furlough plan -- unpaid leave -- this year because of budget cutbacks from the state due to the economic downturn. Maryland wasn't alone.

Arizona State implemented furloughs. Utah State did the same for all of its 2,995 employees the second week of last month. That followed layoffs at Clemson. Small schools like John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio, aren't immune as it, too, forced unpaid vacations on employees.

MEMPHIS -- After Roy Williams answered his last question Sunday night at the press conference following his Tar Heels' easy 72-60 win over Oklahoma to advance to next weekend's Final Four, a North Carolina sports information official barked out some trivia for the departing media: the Tar Heels won for the first time all season with forward Tyler Hansbrough, the defending player of the year, and shooting guard Wayne Ellington failing to score in double figures.

MEMPHIS -- Of all the things a little boy growing up in North Carolina coveted in his bedroom, none was more precious than one of the Tar Heels posters on his wall, the one with Michael Jordan shooting a jump shot against North Carolina State.

"It was picture perfect form, his legs were spread out, and it had, 'The Tradition Continues,' " the now grown-up little boy cooed Saturday afternoon. "I just thought that was incredible."

Who's the little boy who was all grown up on Saturday? He's the coach who will try to knock off North Carolina on Sunday, Jeff Capel.

MEMPHIS – The last time I came to Memphis for a heavyweight title bout it turned out to be the dud most everyone figured it would be. It was 2002 and Lennox Lewis battered and befuddled Mike Tyson for eight rounds in The Pyramid before Tyson toppled over and could not get up.

This time, Sunday afternoon in FedEx Forum, I expect to see a more competitive match: 6-foot-10, 255-pound Blake Griffin v. 6-foot-9, 250-pound Tyler Hansbrough.

MEMPHIS – For those who doubted Blake Griffin was really head and shoulders above the rest of college basketball this year, among the last of his 30 points for the Sooners' Friday night victory over Syracuse came on a baseline dunk - after he hit his head on the side of the backboard. (I know. It used to happen to you every now and then too.)

"That was the first time that happened," Griffin said afterward. "It kind of took me by surprise."

(Video proof after the jump.)