Kent State

"Kent State Shooting Shattered a Generation" (Dec. 4) once again omitted a couple details that I remember. I lived for 30 years in Stow, Ohio (the next community west of Kent). I saved copies of the Akron Beacon Journal until they turned yellow. No one seems to remember that for three days, protesters were destroying businesses in downtown Kent and burned the ROTC building. Kent was not that large a town and local authorities appealed to the governor. He sent in the National Guard, young men with live ammo, which was not too bright.

FRIDAY :: AFTERNOON No. 19 Northern Illinois (11-1) vs. No. 18 Kent State (11-1) 4 p.m. at Detroit, ESPN2 Can a team that lost to yucky Kentucky make it all the way to the Orange Bowl? The answer, incredibly, is yes. The biggest game in Mid-American Conference history threatens to upstage the Pac-12 Conference championship game three time zones to the west. Kent State, which has already clinched its first postseason bid since the 1972 Tangerine Bowl, can probably secure an automatic major bowl bid thanks to complicated Bowl Championship Series bylaws that offer smaller-conference champions certain access entries.

UCLA pitcher Gerrit Cole pitched like an ace on Friday night in the Bruins' NCAA regional opener against Kent State. The sophomore, a former first-round draft pick by the New York Yankees, overmatched the Golden Flashes while Bruins hitters unloaded en route to a 15-1victory at Jackie Robinson Stadium. UCLA (44-13) will play tonight at 6 against defending national champion Louisiana State, an 11-10 winner in 11 innings Friday over UC Irvine. Irvine plays Kent State in an elimination game at 2 p.m. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound Cole (10-2)

  So it's the first game of the season. You are playing on special teams. While racing downfield to cover a punt, you notice the return man fumble. You scoop up the ball and head for the end zone. You get knocked out of bounds after running the ball for a 58-yard gain. What a great first game! But if your name is Andre Parker and you play for Kent State, you made one little mistake: You ran the ball the wrong way. You can watch it all in the video above. And pay attention to who knocks him out of bounds: two players from Kent State's opponent, Towson.

Kent State football coach Dick Scesniak collapsed today while exercising at the university and was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Scesniak, 45, was head football coach at the Mid-American Conference school for three seasons, and his teams posted an 8-25 record in that span.

Memorials were dedicated Wednesday in a Kent State University parking lot where four Vietnam War protesters were killed by National Guardsmen in 1970, an event that infuriated members of the antiwar movement. "This milestone commemoration will be and should be cause for people around the world to inquire, to learn, to reflect, to wonder why the world is still plagued by hate, intolerance and violence," university President Carol A. Cartwright said.

Independent filmmaker Jay Craven's "The Year That Trembled" is an ambitious coming-of-age story set amid the turmoil that beset rural Ohio communities in the wake of the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University, where 28 National Guardsmen fired some 80 rounds of live ammunition at student demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine. Antiwar sentiments were running high as the Vietnam War had spread to Cambodia the previous month.

Robert L. White, who was president of Kent State University when National Guardsmen shot to death four students and wounded nine during a protest against the Vietnam War, has died. He was 81. White died Wednesday in Ravenna. His career at the university spanned 44 years. White was president of the school from 1963 to 1971. He retired in 1975. During an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970, Guardsmen called in by Mayor Leroy Satrom opened fire on demonstrators.

As thousands of people watched, a bell tolled on the Kent State University campus Thursday at 12:24 p.m., marking the exact moment National Guardsmen opened fire 30 years ago on antiwar protesters. The Victory Bell sounded 15 times: once each for the four students killed and nine wounded at Kent State and once each for two students killed at Jackson State University in Mississippi 10 days later. The shootings on May 4, 1970, stunned the nation and galvanized the antiwar movement.

Two months after he resigned under pressure from his coaching job at North Carolina, Dick Crum was named Tuesday as head football coach at Kent State. Before he went to North Carolina, where he had a 72-41-3 record, Crum coached Kent State rival Miami of Ohio to a 34-10-1 record between 1974 and 1977. In 1974, Miami was ranked 10th nationally, the highest finish ever by a Mid-American Conference team.

A Kent State University student has been arrested after he allegedly tweeted about plans to "shoot up" the campus. William Koberna, 19, of Brunswick, Ohio, pleaded not guilty Monday to a felony charge of inducing panic and a misdemeanor charge of aggravated menacing, university spokesman Eric Mansfield told the Los Angeles Times. The alleged threat comes as the nation is already on edge in the wake of the July 20 shooting in which a gunman opened fire during a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," killing 12 and injuring 58. Moreover, Kent State is a campus with a unique history: Four students were killed and nine others injured on May 4, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students and others protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

South Carolina wins two in Omaha Freshman Jordan Montgomery and Matt Price combined on a three-hitter Thursday night, lifting two-time defending national champion South Carolina to a 2-0 victory over Arkansas in the College World Series at Omaha. Michael Roth of the Gamecocks threw a two-hitter against Kent State earlier in the day. South Carolina and Arkansas will play again Friday night to decide which team goes to the best-of-three finals. The winner will play Arizona, which converted three errors into a six-run first inning and advanced with a 10-3 victory over Florida State.

South Carolina took advantage of two mistakes by the Oklahoma to build a two-run lead in the seventh inning and eventually defeated the Sooners, 5-1 to win a super regional and advance to the College World Series. Chase Vergason's two-run double an inning later gave South Carolina a 5-1 lead at Columbia, S.C. Two-time defending champion South Carolina wrapped up its super regional series for its third consecutive trip to Omaha and 11th CWS appearance overall. Should South Carolina (45-17)

Four people wounded in the 1970 National Guard shootings at Kent State University have asked for a federal investigation centered on a digitally enhanced audio recording of the confrontation. Four students were killed and nine injured in the incident, which began as a campus protest against the Vietnam War. The survivors contend that the recording contains evidence that National Guard troops were ordered to fire on unarmed protesters.  A command to fire has never been proved, and some Guard members have said they fired in self-defense.

SERIES Friday Night Dinner: Adam celebrates his birthday and Dad makes a surprising revelation in this new episode (8:30 p.m. BBC America). The High Low Project: In each episode of this new series, Sabrina Soto makes over a room with top-of-the-line furniture and decor, then replaces each item with something equally appealing but much less expensive (8:30 p.m. HGTV). MOVIES Game Time: Tackling the Past: Ryan McPartlin stars as a football player who returns to his hometown for the first time in years when his father (Beau Bridges)

Senior guards Jimmer Fredette of Brigham Young and Nolan Smith of Duke were the leading vote-getters on the Associated Press All-America team announced Monday. Freshman Jared Sullinger of Ohio State, junior guard Kemba Walker of Connecticut and senior forward JuJuan Johnson of Purdue also are on the team. Fredette, the nation's leading scorer at 28.5 points a game, received all but one of 65 votes from the national media panel that selects the top 25. Smith, who led the Blue Devils to a No. 1 ranking for 10 weeks this season, got 61 votes.

Former Gov. James A. Rhodes, whose decision to quell an antiwar protest by sending National Guard troops to Kent State University in 1970 resulted in four deaths, died Sunday. He was 91. Rhodes, the state's only four-term governor, died at Ohio State University Medical Center of complications from an infection and heart failure, said David Crawford, a hospital spokesman. The son of a coal miner, Rhodes rose from poverty to become Columbus mayor when he was 33.

You can talk about underdogs and how Villanova's great upset of Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA title game happened right here in Rupp Arena. Or you can simply understand this: Kent State can make it to the Final Four because all it has to do is beat Indiana today, a team it upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament last year.

Just as it was all season, pitching has been UCLA's calling card in the NCAA baseball regional at Jackie Robinson Stadium. On Saturday night, Bruins sophomore right-hander Trevor Bauer shut down defending national champion Louisiana State, striking out 11 in eight-plus innings as UCLA beat the Tigers, 6-3, to remain unbeaten in the regional. LSU will play UC Irvine, a 19-9 winner Saturday over Kent State, in an elimination game today at 2 p.m. The winner meets UCLA, which needs only one more victory in the double-elimination tournament to advance to a super-regional.

Just as it was all season, pitching has been UCLA's calling card in the NCAA baseball regional at Jackie Robinson Stadium. On Saturday night, Bruins sophomore right-hander Trevor Bauer shut down defending national champion Louisiana State, striking out 11 in eight-plus innings as UCLA beat the Tigers, 6-3, to remain unbeaten in the regional. LSU will play UC Irvine, a 19-9 winner Saturday over Kent State, in an elimination game today at 2 p.m. The winner meets UCLA, which needs only one more victory in the double-elimination tournament to advance to a super-regional.