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There were several interesting stories in today's area papers:

• The Post-Dispatch is reporting that long-time Vashon High School basketball coach Floyd Irons has admitted to spending more than $25,000 for an apartment for two of his players to live in. I don't think this story will surprise anyone. Everyone knows that Irons is a crook and hasn't been running a clean program for years. I don't usually buy the argument that the PD has an anti-Mizzou agenda, but you see all the investigative reporting that they did on Athenagate, the Snyder era, etc. and yet it's taken them this long to uncover how corrupt Vashon's basketball program is? This story is at least 25 years overdue.

• KC Star reporter Kent Babb takes a sociological look at the attraction that college athletes have to bars and night clubs. Interesting stuff. The whole question as to whether or not of age players should be allowed to go to bars/clubs is a tricky one with a lot of variables. You can try to forbid them from going to certain ones (like Athena and the Moon Bar in Lawrence) but how do you determine which bars or clubs are "too dangerous." Personally, I don't really have a problem with a coach forbidding his players to go to bars or clubs altogether. As student athletes you're held to a higher standard whether that's fair or not. It's even like that in most high schools. And if you take away bars and night clubs from them it's not like they're going to have a shortage of things to do on Saturday night. I'm sure they'll find something. 

• I LOVED Bill Self's quote in Babb's article about the curfew he has set (or hasn't set) for his players: 
  Self says players usually are not allowed to be out past 11 p.m. on a weeknight during the season, and "not ever after midnight." On this night, midnight was nearly an hour ago. After Self learned Friday the four KU players at The Hawk were there after midnight, he changed his earlier statement to say players’ curfew Wednesday was 1 a.m. Then he said it was 1:15 a.m. He finally said players had no curfew because the Jayhawks had no game. "I’m not positive we had one or not," Self said.

So for the record, Bill Self doesn't know whether or not his team has a curfew. And we thought Mike Anderson's zero-tolerance policy lacked consistency.

•  And finally, an inspiring column by Joe Posnanski on K-State guard Clint Stewart whose mother passed away a couple weeks ago. After reading the column Stewart immediately became one of my favorite players in college basketball. There aren't too many sports columnists better than Joe Pos.