What's happened to the Wooden Award?
Blake Griffin and Maya Moore won the Wooden Award Friday, but Griffin was the only men's finalist to attend the awards ceremony. John Wooden hasn't attended since 2005 as his family is no longer participating because of a trademark dispute. Here's the Wooden Award story I wrote about this for today's paper.
Hopefully the college basketball world is shunning this award out of respect to Coach Wooden. It is shameful that the LA Athletic Club persists in preventing Coach from using his own name as he sees fit.
So... is this award not a big deal anymore? Serious question.
It's still a good award, of course, but it's definitely not what it used to be. All five men and women's finalists used to attend. There was never a question about attending. Michael Jordan won this award 25 years ago. I couldn't believe there was only one men's finalist there.
What's the trademark dispute?
There are still some articles online from the LA Times that you can refer to regarding the dispute. Basically, Coach wanted to lend his name to an award, the Wooden Cup, that was presented by an organization called Athletes for a Better World, and the LA Athletic Club wouldn't let him.
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/27/sports/sp-wooden27
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/03/sports/sp-wooden3
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/nov/26/sports/sp-wooden26
From the second article:
"My dad [Coach Wooden] stood up and said, 'I want my name back. I want to be able to use my name.' At one point my brother had to hold Dad back because Dad wanted to go after Steve Hathaway," [Nan Wooden] Muehlhausen said.
So what is the big award now?