The Race Card’s Steep Cost

As the NYPD deaths show, demagogues’ constantly taking cheap shots at the police can end in tragedy. 

By Thomas Sowell

http://www.nationalreview.com/

December 23, 2014

Al Sharpton played three racist voicemails from a cellphone at a press conference on Sunday. Photo: Reuters

The cold-blooded murder of two New York City policemen as they sat in their car is not only an outrage but also a wake-up call. It shows, in the most painful way, the high cost of having demagogues, politicians, mobs, and the media constantly taking cheap shots at the police.

Those cheap shots are in fact very expensive shots, not only to the police themselves but to the whole society. Someone once said that civilization is a thin crust over a volcano. The police are part of that thin crust. We have seen before our own eyes, first in Ferguson, Missouri and then in other communities, what happens when there is just a small crack in that crust, and barbarism and arson burst out.

That can happen anywhere. So can what happened in New York. “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”

It is a painful irony that, on the eve of the murders of these two police officers in New York, some of the city’s police were already saying that, in the event of their deaths, they did not want Mayor Bill de Blasio to attend their funerals.

We can only hope that Mayor de Blasio has some residual decency, so that he will not defile these two officers’ memorial services with his presence. No politician in the country has done more to play the race card against the police and spread the notion that cops are the big problem in minority communities.

It so happens that the police officers killed were both members of minority groups — Officer Rafael Ramos, Hispanic, and Officer Wenjian Liu, Asian. It so happens that a substantial part of the New York City police force are members of minority groups.

But you might never know that from the story told by demagogues who depict the black community as a “colonial” society being “occupied” by white policemen who target young blacks. Mayor de Blasio joined the chorus of those saying that they have to warn their black sons how to cope with this situation.

“What can we say to our sons?” some demagogues ask. They can say, “Don’t go around punching strangers, because it is only a matter of time before you punch the wrong stranger.”

Mayor de Blasio has made anti-police comments with Al Sharpton seated at his side. This is the same Al Sharpton with a trail of slime going back more than a quarter of a century, during which he has whipped up mobs and fomented race hatred from the days of the Tawana Brawley “rape” hoax of 1987 to the Duke University “rape” hoax of 2006 and the Ferguson riots of 2014.

Make no mistake about it. There is political mileage to be made siding with demagogues like Al Sharpton who, as demagogue-in-chief, has been invited to the White House dozens of times by its commander-in-chief.

Many in the media and among the intelligentsia cherish the romantic tale of an “us” against “them” struggle of beleaguered ghetto blacks defending themselves against the aggression of white policemen. The gullible include both whites who don’t know what they are talking about and blacks who don’t know what they are talking about either, because they never grew up in a ghetto. Among the latter are the President of the United States and his attorney general.

Such people readily buy the story that ghetto social problems today — from children being raised without a father to runaway rates of murder — are “a legacy of slavery,” even though such social problems were nowhere near as severe in the first half of the 20th century as they became in the second half.

You would be hard pressed to name just five examples from the first half of the 20th century of the kinds of ghetto riots that have raged in more than a hundred cities during the second half. Such riots are a legacy of the social degeneracy of our times.

Calling this social degeneracy “a legacy of slavery” is not just an excuse for those who engage in it, it is an excuse for the ideology of the intelligentsia behind the social policies that promoted this degeneracy.

Let those who have laid a guilt trip on people in our times, for evils done by other people in past centuries, at least face their own responsibility for the evil consequences of their own notions and policies. If they won’t do it, then the rest of us need to stop listening gullibly to what they are saying.

The race card is nothing to play with. It can ruin us all.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His website is www.tsowell.com. © 2014 Creators Syndicate Inc.

There is blood on hands of those who demanded ‘dead cops’

By Bob McManus

http://nypost.com/

December 21, 2014

In this Dec. 4, 2014, file photo, protesters carry signs criticizing the police, and replicas of coffins during a march over the Brooklyn Bridge to protest a grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner, in New York.Photo: AP

“What do we want?” drones the blood chant.

“Dead cops!” comes the reply.

Done.

Thus does rhetoric have consequences.

There may have been just a single shooter in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Saturday afternoon. But New York’s failure to denounce without nuance the bloodlust that’s been boiling out of the corners of the Eric Garner-Michael Brown demonstrations for weeks now boils down to this:

There is blood on many hands this morning.

Yes, First Amendment. Yes, redress of grievances. Yes, peaceful protests — even as clogged bridges and mobbed boulevards created, however temporarily, very real peril for tens of thousands of New Yorkers every night for a week.

The free-speech trope is so obviously true that it’s a deflection even to raise it.

Here’s the real issue: It was, and it remains, the responsibility of protest organizers — such as they may be in the face of ubiquitous social media — to directly address murderous incantations, to unequivocally condemn those who call down harm on the city’s protectors.

And they didn’t do that.

Moreover, when two of the six people who “allegedly” attacked two cops on the Brooklyn Bridge a week ago Saturday night turn out to be, respectively, a CUNY professor and an organizer for a union that placed five one-time senior union leaders in top de Blasio ­administration posts, it’s clear that New York isn’t dealing with bearded Bolsheviks living in caves.

Violence against cops has gone mainstream — that is, violent threats to society itself can manifest virtually without a soul among the city’s elected leaders saying so much as boo.

Pitiful.

The cops understand all this, of course. They get the threat. They are steeped in the department’s institutional memories of other cops, executed from ambush in similar circumstances. They know its tradition of reflexive heroism under deadly threat — and they are proud it its record: Not perfect, of course, but better than anyone else’s.

And now this.

Who would have thought that PBA President Pat Lynch’s don’t-come-to-my-funeral petition would have become so relevant, so prescient, so tragically right to the point.

So quickly.

There will be time to count the political consequences of Saturday’s cowardly murders.

They will be substantial.

The city’s cut-the-baby-in-half approach to the Garner-Brown protests — genuflect to the PBA, confer with the most rhetorically irresponsible of the protesting groups, rinse, repeat — lent an air of moral equivalence to the events leading up to Saturday’s savagery.

Nobody knows what was in the shooter’s mind, of course; happily, he relieved society of the ­responsibility of trying to find out with a well-placed bullet to his own head.

But anybody who thinks he wasn’t emboldened by City Hall’s placidity in the face of nihilistic, bloodthirsty incantations is delusional.

And anyone who believes that the city’s decision not to draw a high-profile line — even if only symbolically — after the ­“alleged” Brooklyn Bridge attacks was not empowering to the shooter is equally wrong.

Was the shooter crazy? Define crazy. The city is full of crazies. And none of them needs to be ­encouraged in their psychoses — certainly not by the suggestion that official New York thinks they somehow may have a point.

It’s wrong to blame the protests wholly for the actions of one person — up to a point.

That is, right up to the point when the protesters began to ­demand dead cops — and nobody put a stop to it.

Right up to the point where protesters began to drop full garbage cans 10 feet down on unsuspecting cops, and nobody took it for what it was: An escalation that culminated in yesterday’s Bed-Stuy executions.

And now for the funerals — for the heartbreaking skirl of the pipes and the agony of the families; for the grim-faced officers from across America, lined to the horizon in silent tribute to ambushed brothers; for the folded flags and the endless motorcades to the cemetery.

You wanted dead cops, protesters? You got ’em.

Now live with it. If you can.

FILED UNDER BILL DE BLASIO, ERIC GARNER, NYPD, PROTESTERS

Obama Comes to Castro’s Rescue

Posted By Humberto Fontova On December 22, 2014 @ 12:06 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro during the official memorial service for former South African President Nelson Mandela at FNB Stadium, Dec. 10, 2013, in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images











Did you notice the timing of  President Obama’s economic lifeline to Castro as announced on December 17^th under the guise of “changing [our] relations with the people [emphasis mine] of Cuba?”

No? But you have noticed the price at the gas pumps, right? These two items are closely related. Oh, and by the way, every atom of evidence shows that the actual people of Cuba actually want U.S. sanctions against the Stalinist regime that tortures them tightened. So perhaps President Obama should stop insulting the intelligence of Cuba-watchers by claiming to speak and act on their behalf.  Here’s their reaction to this week’s early Christmas gift from Obama to the Stalinist dictator who tortures them:

“Sadly, President Obama made the wrong decision. The freedom and democracy of the Cuban people will not be achieved through these benefits that he’s giving — not to the Cuban people — but to the Cuban government. The Cuban government will only take advantage to strengthen its repressive machinery, to repress civil society, its people and remain in power.”  (Berta Soler, leader of “The Ladies in White,” Cuba’s biggest dissident group.

“[Alan Gross] was not arrested for what he did, but for what could be gained from his arrest. He was simply bait and they were aware of it from the beginning… Castroism has won.” (Yoani Sanchez, Cuba’s most internationally famous dissident.)

“I feel as though I have been abandoned on the battlefield.” (Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, former Cuban political prisoner awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush.)

The list of back-stabbed and outraged Cuban dissidents is much, much longer.

At any rate, Cuba’s post-Soviet sugar-daddy (Venezuela) is currently in dire economic straits from the precipitous plunge in the price of oil, Venezuela’s top export. Their economic lifeline to the Castro regime looks shaky, hence the “Here I come to save the day!” by President Obama.

But let’s face it. Castro’s Stalinist regime has jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands (including some U.S. citizens) for over half a decade and most Americans don’t seem to give a flying flip. Fine. So let’s consult yet another Cuban dissident who actually serves up some red meat.  Let’s notify Joe Sixpack and Soccer Mom (who quite understandably find all this human-rights stuff regarding a foreign country utterly irrelevant) that maybe it’s time to pay closer attention to the issue:

“If the U.S. allows financing towards Cuba, it will be the U.S. taxpayers who would sustain the Castro regime. Since it has run out of doors to knock on [for credit], the Castro regime is now focused on the United States.” (Cuban dissident and three-time Amnesty-International prisoner of conscience Rene Gomez Manzanoin.)

Well, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the farm lobby, Council on Foreign Relations and Castro’s agents of influence (but I repeat myself) understandably avoid this issue like the plague, hence its invisibility in the mainstream media. So please listen up: For over a decade the so-called U.S. embargo, so disparaged by President Obama, has mostly stipulated that Castro’s Stalinist regime pay cash up front through a third-party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. And that’s what infuriates Castro, and motivates his U.S. agents of influence. 

Enacted by the Bush team in 2001, this cash-up-front policy has been monumentally beneficial to U.S. taxpayers, making them among the few in the world not rooked by the Castro regime, which per capita-wise qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation, with a foreign debt estimated at $50 billion, a credit rating nudging Somalia’s and an uninterrupted record of defaults. Standard & Poors refuses even to rate Cuba, regarding the economic figures released by its Stalinist apparatchiks as utterly bogus. Just this year the Russians wrote off almost $30 billion Castro still owed them.
Interesting that a Cuban dissident should plumb this matter more accurately than those “champions of the U.S. taxpayers,” Rand Paul and Jeff Flake, who loudly applauded President Obama’s Christmas present to Castro this week. From the White House “Fact Sheet; Charting a New Course on Cuba”:

* U.S. institutions will be permitted to open correspondent accounts at Cuban financial institutions to facilitate the processing of authorized transactions.

* The regulatory definition of the statutory term “cash in advance” will be revised to specify that it means “cash before transfer of title”; this will provide more efficient financing of authorized trade with Cuba.

Whoops! Though still a bit sketchy, it certainly sounds like we’re moving in the direction Rene Gomez warned against. This matter was recently explained in more detail by a Townhall columnist on Canada’s SunNews network.

Obama claims we’ve been “isolating” Cuba. Again, stop insulting our intelligence, Mr. President. To wit:

In 1957 when Cuba was a “U.S. economic colony,” as we’re constantly told by the media (though U.S. investments in Cuba accounted for only 14 per cent the island’s GNP), the U.S. exported $347.5 million worth of goods to Cuba.

In 2013 (when Cuba was being “strangled by a U.S. economic blockade,” was we’re constantly told by the media) the U.S. exported $457.3 million to Cuba. In fact for every year Obama has been in office the “Cuba-embargoing” U.S. has exported more goods to Cuba than it did in 1957.
In 1957 (when Cuba was a “playground for U.S. tourists,” as we’re constantly told by the media) 263,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S

In 2013 (when Cuba was being diabolically “blockaded” by the U.S., according to the media) an estimated 500,000 people visited Cuba from the U.S.  So under Obama twice as many people are visiting Cuba as in the golden 1950s.

In 1958 with Cuba under a “U.S.-backed dictator,” with the U.S. “controlling Cuba’s economy,” (according to the media, though in fact, U.S. companies employed 7 percent of Cuba’s workforce) the staff of the U.S. embassy in Cuba numbered 87, including Cuban employees.

Today with supposedly no diplomatic relations with Cuba (according to the media) the staff of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana numbers 351, including Cuban employees. In fact, for well over a decade the U.S. has hadtwice as many diplomatic personnel in Havana as Canada and Mexico combined. In the Twilight Zone occupied by the U.S. media this is termed “diplomatic isolation.”

In executive order after executive order, President Obama has already abolished President Bush’s travel and remittance restrictions to Castro’s terror-sponsoring fiefdom and opened the pipeline to a point where the cash-flow from the U.S. to Cuba last year was estimated at $4 billion a year.

While a proud Soviet satrapy Cuba received $3-5 billion annually from the Soviets. In brief, almost every year since Obama took office more cash has been flowing from the U.S. to Cuba than used to flow there from the Soviets at the height of their Cuba-sponsorship. In the Twilight Zone occupied by the mainstream media this is known as an “economic embargo.”

In sum, the proof is long in: record tourism and foreign investment into Cuba = record repression for the Cuban people. Every shred of observable evidence proves that travel to Cuba and business with its Stalinist mafia enriches and entrenches these KGB-trained and heavily-armed owners of Cuba’s economy. Thus they remain the most highly motivated guardians of Cuba’s Stalinist and Terror-Sponsoring status-quo.

This week they’re all toasting Obama, snickering and rubbing their hands. So grab your wallets, amigos.

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Did Cop Killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley Visit Terror-Tied Brooklyn Mosque?

By Patrick Poole

http://pjmedia.com/tatler

December 21, 2014

In my previous posts on assassin Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who murdered two New York Police Department officers on Saturday, I noted that he had posted on Facebook a page of the Quran with a notorious verse calling to “strike terror into the [hearts of] the enemies of Allah,” and another post about a fight he recently engaged in with an Atlanta panhandler when he discovered the panhandler was a “Muslim too.”

But an Instagram message posted by Brinsley during Ramadan five months ago may indicate that he visited one of America’s most terror-tied mosques:

Responding to a comment on his message, he notes that he is headed to “Al-Farooq Tomorrow inshallah.” His social media traffic indicates that he transited from Atlanta, Baltimore and Brooklyn on a regular basis.

If this reference by the cop killer was from Brooklyn (which is hard to discern since his Instagram account has been taken down), it may indicate that he was going to visit Masjid Al-Farooq in Brooklyn.

Al-Farooq’s long history of terror support goes back more than 20 years, when the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was hatched by members. One imam from the early 1990s, when Al-Farooq was a hub of the nascent Al-Qaeda and was hosting Al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam, was Fawaz Damra, who was charged, convicted and later deported for lying to immigration officials about his terror ties when he applied for U.S. citizenship.

Another Al-Farooq imam, Gulshair Shukrijumah, was not only a regular translator for the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, but his son, Adnan, became a top Al-Qaeda operative and was killed in a gun battle with Pakistani intelligence just a few weeks ago.

Yet another mosque official, Sheikh Mohammed al-Moayad, was charged in 2003 with using the mosque as a front to raise $20 million for Al-Qaeda. At the time, the New York Times noted the mosque’s extensive connections to terrorism.

It remains to be seen if the Brooklyn Al-Farooq mosque is the one referred to in Brinsley’s Instagram post. If so, it will be yet another connection that NYPD officials will need to examine as they investigate the cold-blooded murder of their two colleagues.

Nittany Lions sweep BYU for NCAA title No. 7

From CDT staff reportsDecember 20, 2014 

http://www.centredaily.com/

Penn State players pose with their trophies after defeating BYU during the NCAA women's volleyball tournament championship match in Oklahoma City, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2014. Penn State won in three sets. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) SUE OGROCKI — AP

Read more here: http://www.centredaily.com/2014/12/20/4519043/penn-state-volleyball-nittany.html?sp=/99/146/153/#storylink=cpy

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. — The trophy stays in State College.

The Penn State women’s volleyball dynasty rolled through another opponent and locked up a national championship Saturday night.

Behind 11 kills each for Megan Courtney and Aiyana Whitney, the Nittany Lions defended their title and won their NCAA-record seventh overall with a 25-21, 26-24, 25-14 sweep of Brigham Young at Chesapeake Energy Arena.

“I thought we had a great game plan,” coach Russ Rose said. “I thought the players worked really hard at executing it, and we feel great about tonight’s result.”

It marked the sixth crown in eight seasons for Penn State (36-3), which won its 20th straight match, dropping just two sets through the last 19 of those wins.

“It’s such a great thing,” said Rose, whose seven titles as coach is more than anyone else in Division I, as are his 1,161 career wins. “I don’t think it’s — we’re not trying to hoard them. We’re like everybody else. We’re trying to do the best we can.”

Courtney also posted 14 digs and five blocks on her way to earning Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. Saturday’s performance came on the heels of a career-high 23 kills, 16 digs and five blocks in the semifinals against No. 1 Stanford on Thursday.

“I just stuck to the game plan that all my coaching staff put hours and hours and hours of work in,” Courtney said, “and then my teammates just giving me the great balls to set, telling me where to hit. It’s all to them.”

Courtney, Whitney and National Freshman of the Year Ali Frantti, who put down six kills, were a tough matchup for the Cougars.

“(Courtney is an) outstanding outside hitter,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said. “They’ve got great pin hitters. We felt the match was going to come down to that. We felt comfortable with our pin hitters. Theirs were a little better than ours tonight, just overall.”

All-American Nia Grant added nine kills and four blocks, Haleigh Washington also had four blocks, AVCA National Player of the Year Micha Hancock gave out 36 assists to go with one ace and Dominique Gonzalez had a match-high 16 digs to go with one ace — a serve that ticked the net and fell to the floor for the final point of the night.

BYU, which was in the finals for the first time, was seeking to become the first unseeded team to capture the title. The team had earned wins over four other seeded teams, including No. 2 Texas in the semifinals, to become the first unseeded team to make the title match.

The Cougars (30-5) were paced by 6-foot-7 All-American Jennifer Hamson’s 14 kills, but the senior right-side hitter also had 11 errors and hit .071. Alexa Gray added nine kills and Amy Boswell and Tambre Nobles had seven kills each.

Penn State hit .233 to BYU’s .134, had a 42-38 lead in kills and also had a 10-7 advantage in blocks on the nation’s top blocking team.

It was Hancock’s ability to spread the ball around and keep the Cougar blockers off balance that helped keep the Nittany Lion offense humming.

“She did move the ball around better than we did,” Olmstead said. “I felt — I felt we were in good spots. I just — I thought their hitters just really, really took quality swings. They hit high with range.”

One key to beat the block was Courtney finding a seam between two blockers time and time again, and Hancock setting fast balls to the right side to Whitney or on slides to Grant and Washington.

“That was our game plan,” Hancock said. “So I tried to put some good balls up and so we could attack there right back move the ball around a little bit because they’ve got (Hamson), a pretty big girl. We wanted to try to limit the balls over there and execute our game plan and we did a good job of that.”

Penn State controlled most of the first set, hitting .250 with a 4-2 blocking advantage. A 4-1 run in the middle of the frame put the Nittany Lions in front for good, with kills for Hancock, Washington and a pair from Frantti earning the points. A Courtney kill bounced off the fingertips of a Cougar blocker to end the set.

“I thought our passing was good, allowed (Hancock) to run whoever she wanted,” Courtney said. “And we said that from the beginning whoever wins the serve pass game is going to win.”

It was a lot tougher for the Nittany Lions in the second frame as Gray began to find her swing, Hamson continued to pound the ball into the court and the BYU blockers started to find the Penn State hitters. The Cougars led nearly the entire set, but a cross-court kill for Grant on a slide out to the antenna tied it at 20-20. BYU fought off one set point when Boswell put away a kill on a quick set in the middle, but a Cougar service error gave the Lions another chance, and Hancock and Washington teamed up to stuff Nobles for the 2-0 lead.

The set was dead-even in a number of way statistically, with both teams hitting .267 and matching each other 3-3 in blocks.

The third set quickly became lopsided with an 8-1 run for a 20-9 lead as BYU was held to minus-.028 hitting with nine errors. The contest was at match point after a Hamson swing sailed wide, and Gonzalez’s serve bounced off the net and dropped to the floor in front of a couple Cougar passers to bring on the celebration.

It also was a sweet end to a college career for Hancock, who closed her career less than 20 miles from her hometown with one more ace to leave her NCAA single-season record at 125 and her Penn State career record at 380 — on the day she was due to graduate.

“It’s pretty cool,” she said. “What’s hitting me now is I’m not coming back to play with my girls. I’ve been around it for a long time. They’re like a family to me. So it’s really weird for me right now.”

http://www.centredaily.com/2014/12/20/4519043/penn-state-volleyball-nittany.html?sp=/99/146/153/

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Penn State repeats as women's volleyball champs

By CLIFF BRUNT, AP Sports Writer

Updated 11:01 pm, Saturday, December 20, 2014

http://www.timesunion.com/sports

Penn State players celebrate after scoring the winning point against BYU, right, during the NCAA women's volleyball tournament championship match in Oklahoma City, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2014. Penn State won in three sets. From left at Penn State's Megan Courtney (17), Ali Frantti (5), Nia Grant (7), Dominique Gonzalez (4) and Micha Hancock (12). (Sue Ogrocki, AP / AP)

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Micha Hancock's dream came true.

The senior setter from nearby Edmond won a national title in front of family and friends in her final college match. She had 36 assists and five digs to help Penn State beat Brigham Young 25-21, 26-24, 25-14 Saturday for its second consecutive NCAA women's volleyball championship.

"What's hitting me now is I'm not coming back to play with my girls," Hancock said. "I've been around for a long time. They're like a family to me. I'm just going to miss the Penn State family. It's just weird to be an alum. It's a great way to end my career here."

Hancock helped the Nittany Lions neutralize the nation's No. 1 blocking team. BYU coachShawn Olmstead said Hancock proved why she was named the AVCA national player of the year.

"She deserves all that credit, all that recognition," Olmstead said. "Absolutely, she is the best. She gets my vote. She did an outstanding job. She did move the ball around better than we did."

Penn State's Megan Courtney was named the tournament's most outstanding player. The junior had 23 kills against Stanford in the semifinals and 11 kills and 14 digs in the final.

Aiyana Whitney had 11 kills in the final and Nia Grant had nine for Penn State (36-3), which won its sixth title in eight years and No. 7 overall to break a tie with Stanford for most overall championships.

Jennifer Hamson had 14 kills and Alexa Gray added nine for BYU, which had won 12 straight matches. The Cougars (30-5) beat traditional powers Nebraska and Texas to get to the final, and were trying to become the first unseeded team to win a national championship.

"These kids didn't fail," Olmstead said. "They didn't lose. They competed, and they're going to grow from this experience, and they're going to be better because of it."

In the first set, Whitney had five kills and Courtney and Grant had three for the Nittany Lions, who held BYU to a .132 hitting percentage.

In the second set, BYU took a 17-14 lead before Penn State rallied to take it 26-24. Whitney hammered down four more kills with just one error. Gray had six kills in the set, but the Cougars struggled with their passing game.

Hamson's service error at 24-all gave Penn State a set point, and a double block by Hancock and Haleigh Washington put the set in the Nittany Lions' column.

Penn State rolled through the third set, holding the Cougars to a minus-.028 hitting percentage.

"I thought we had opportunities," Olmstead said. "I thought we were close. Maybe others don't think that, but I want to think that. I thought we pushed them. We gave them a good fight."

The Nittany Lions might not be done winning titles. Courtney, Whitney, Washington and outside hitter Ali Frantti all return.

Still, Hancock's shoes are going to be tough to fill.

"Micha's had a lot of great things happen at Penn State," coach Russ Rose said. "She's worked hard, and I'm sure that I've been hard on a lot of players, and I'm sure I was especially hard on her and her development. I think she achieved what she wanted to achieve when she came to Penn State."

Penn State's Micha Hancock (12) and Haleigh Washington (15) block a shot by BYU during the NCAA women's volleyball tournament championship match in Oklahoma City, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2014. Penn State won in three sets. (Sue Ogrocki, AP / AP)

Rose's Penn State

Russ Rose started at Penn State in 1979 and has built a dynasty in the years since

NCAA • Lee Feinswog • 12/20/14

http://www.volleyballmag.com/

Penn State coach Russ Rose, left, talks to his team during a timeout in the NCAA women's volleyball tournament championship match against BYU in Oklahoma City, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2014. The Nittany Lions defeated BYU to claim the program's 7th national title and sixth in the last eight years. (Sue Ogrocki, AP / AP)

That first season, in 1979, Russ Rose made $14,000 as the Penn State women’s volleyball head coach.

“I just turned 25,” Rose recalled. “I was happy I got a job. I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't have an office. I didn't have a telephone, I didn't have anything. I had 16 or 18 classes to teach a year, no assistant coach. I thought I had a good deal.”

Penn State, as it turns out, had a good deal.

The 1979 Nittany Lions finished 32-9 and were not invited to the postseason, but Rose nonetheless got a raise.

A $400 raise.

“I was feeling good,” Rose said.

He’s feeling better now. Penn State plays BYU on Saturday night for the national title in the NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship, and regardless of the outcome Rose has established himself as the greatest coach the women’s game has ever known.

Now, three weeks past his 61st birthday, Rose leads everyone with six NCAA crowns.

The next closest? Two have four national titles: John Dunning won two at Pacific and two more at Stanford, which got sent home by Penn State on Thursday in the semifinals, and his predecessor, Don Shaw, who won four at Stanford.

What’s more, Rose still teaches at Penn State.

“It’s an ethics and issues of athletic coaching, which I usually start with a disclaimer for the students,” Rose cracked.

These days Rose doesn’t have to disclaim anything. As he finishes his 36th year in Happy Valley, life is good. His four boys are grown, he makes way more than $14,400, and perennially has the team to beat in women’s college volleyball.

Penn State finally broke through and won it all in 1999.

Then the Nittany Lions put together the best run ever, winning four in a row from 2007-10.

In 2012 Rose’s team caught a bad break when setter Micha Hancock tore up her ankle in the national semifinal in Louisville. Without Hancock being herself, Oregon moved on to the championship match, losing to Texas.

Then last year, led by Hancock, Penn State won it all again.

There are competitive, driven people in sports. Few could match the intensity point-in and point-out that Hancock generates. Conversely, it’s hard to imagine a coach with higher standards and more pointed sarcasm than Rose.

Love-hate between Hancock—on Friday named the AVCA National Player of the Year—and Rose would be an understatement at times in those first two and half years.

When she made her visit to Penn State, Hancock recalled Rose telling her, “It’s going to be a challenge. You’re probably going to hate me for your career here, but I’m going to make you a really good player.”

Her response was simple: “Sure. I’m on board.”

Not that she always liked it.

“There were times when I was like, ‘OK, you’re putting a lot of pressure on me when you’re saying things that don’t exactly help me on the court,’ but he did it to make me tough and I always took it with a grain of salt.”

She smiled.

“I think I’ve understood him more than a lot of players do because he’s always just trying to get the best out of me and I’ve always kept that in mind when he’s being kind of jerk,” Hancock said.

“That’s the great thing about him, especially now that he knows I’m leaving. He’s got a soft spot for me now, maybe because of my toughness and hard work. He’s a little nicer now.”

Rose claims that now that his top assistant returned to the program, he simply turns his complaints with Hancock over to Salima (Davidson) Rockwell, who also set for Rose and was a 1996 Olympic alternate.

Not every player has that luxury.

“Sometimes it can be hard, because he expects the best out of you and he wants the best out of you at all times, but when you take a step back and look at it, you wouldn't want it any other way,” senior libero Dominique Gonzalez said. “As a college athlete, you want somebody to drive you every day and make you better. And I appreciate that.”

Gonzalez remembered the first time she met Rose. She was 14 and she said Rose asked her, “What's your best skill, passing, setting, or winning?”

She pondered it and, “I said I'd like to win.”

And win he does.

On paper, you would have to think that the Nittany Lions (35-3) of the Big Ten would be favored to beat upstart BYU (30-4).

BYU of the West Coast Conference might lead the nation in blocking, have 6-foot-7 wrecking crew Jennifer Hamson, and victories over Arizona, Florida State, Nebraska, and Texas to make the final. But Penn State, led by Hancock with so many weapons at her disposal, has won 19 matches in a row. That includes beating top-seeded Stanford on Thursday a couple of hours after BYU shocked the Longhorns.

BYU’s coach, fun-loving coach Shawn Olmstead, is almost half Rose’s age at 36.

“I mean, it's remarkable what he's done. And he deserves all the recognition that he gets in this sport and Penn State's been synonymous with success at this level and winning national championships and competing year in, year out,” Olmstead said.

“I understand that. And so we're excited.”

But he only took that so far.

“These kids aren't going to back down from a name or from a brand. They'll compete with anybody. And they're going to see that's an outstanding program over there, but we're not going to get caught up in that.

“Give Russ all the credit he deserves, and I think very fondly of him. And he's been very complimentary of BYU and [former coach] Elaine Michaelis, and of others that have come before myself.

“So we're excited to just match up with him and understand when the ball gets tossed up for the first serve, it's volleyball. It's not anything other than that. And so we'll compete that way.”

You would expect nothing less, but one thing to consider is that Rose, a member of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, almost did his postgraduate work at BYU, the Mormon school.

“I was accepted at BYU to get my EdD,” Rose said. “I received a teaching assistantship. I was ready to go. I met with the resident bishop and then I got the Penn State job. Do you remember Glenn Potter, former basketball coach at BYU, anybody? That was my guy. Just a long time ago. You guys are young guys.

“I had it all worked out. And then the Penn State job came along and I'm a big sports guy. And I'm a huge fan of Coach [Joe] Paterno. And being a physical educator, we had some of the top physical educators teaching at Penn State. I thought it was really cool to go to a place where I had read their books.

“And I've been there for 36 years.”

In that time he’s compiled some staggering accomplishments:

— He’s a five-time AVCA Division I Coach of the Year, an award won this year by Olmstead

— He’s in the AVCA Hall of Fame

— The graduate of George Williams has an overall coaching record of 1,160-180

— And he owns the most victories of any coach in Division I women's volleyball history

“It's all about what the players do,” Rose said. “I've been fortunate that the university has allowed me to be who I am. And I haven't had to play games to make other people happy, that I could do my job the way I want to do it.”

The greatest resume the college game has ever known.

“Absolutely. I know who I’m in the gym with,” Hancock said. “And I never take that for granted.”

She smiled again.

“People are scared of Coach. I tell them he’s just a big teddy bear. He’s a great guy and more fun-loving and sarcastic that you would ever believe.”