LARNED — It is time to get out the cranberry sauce and serve up my annual Turkey Awards for the year for the sporting world.
My favorite “Turkeys” from the world of sports.
Jonathan Martin, Richie Incognito, the Miami Dolphins and the NFL. There are enough turkeys there to have a banquet!
A bullying scandal in a football locker room and now everyone in the media wants to find out who to blame. Come to think of it, add the national media to this list of turkeys.  Pass the mustard please!
TCU’s head football coach, Gary Patterson and his assistants for their oversight in allowing two players on the field at the same time, both wearing jersey No. 2.
Late in the fourth quarter the Horned Frogs had stopped K-State and forced a punt on fourth-and-6 from the TCU 39 with the Wildcats trailing 28-27. At the time TCU had all of the momentum.
Following the penalty, which gave the Wildcats a first down, the ’Cats went on to score a field goal that gave them a 30-28 lead.
Kansas State head football coach Bill Snyder said, “It seemingly had a major impact on the game.”
The NCAA Basketball Rules Committee for their overreaction in instituting the new officiating to limit contact.
They’ve taken a fluid, rhythmic game and turned it into a herky jerky affair with more time spent at the free-throw line than the Kardashian gals spend doing their hair in the dressing room!
At the opposite end of the officiating scale is Major League Baseball.
While the NCAA goes too far with rules, Major League Baseball does almost nothing.
They allow the umpires to bend the rules so far that they become the game not the rules in the rule book. On double plays the fielder only has to “be in the area” of second base, not actually putting a foot on it. The variance between umpires in calling balls and strikes is a joke. The rule book states a strike is from “the letters to the knees”. Even a casual observer of professional baseball knows that doesn’t happen.
Why have a rule book if you don’t follow it?  All of this makes about as much sense as something that John Lowenstein, a former Baltimore Orioles outfielder suggested as a possible improvement in the game, “They should move first base back a step to eliminate all the close plays.”
A Turkey Award for the folks who rate high school basketball players.
You’ve all read those rankings and if a high school player doesn’t make the top 100, he’s not going to get a scholarship to a major school. Thank goodness there are coaches out there that do their own homework and discover those hidden jewels such as Wichita State’s Ron Baker from Scott City and Kansas State’s freshman phenom Marcus Foster, who has shown that he just might be the Wildcats new go-to scorer.
A Turkey for the Kansas State High School Activities Association, in fact two turkey legs.
One for not completely overhauling their school classifications. We’ve now got too many classes and too much disparity.
The second turkey leg is for their football playoff format. Yes, we need some form of seeding the playoffs to avoid situations like we had last  weekend when two Class 4A district winners opposed each other, Holton and  Andale, while two district runner-ups, Buhler and Topeka Hayden squared off.
Many considered the Holton-Andale game as the state championship. It goes on in every class, every year. Fixing it isn’t simple, but it needs to be done.
GOBBLE GOBBLE!

Charles Tabler is a contributing writer from Larned