The problem with holding grudges is that they eventually turn you into an ugly person, causing you to say and do things that are repulsive. Apparently Chuck Woodling of the Lawrence Journal World has become such a person. While the sports world was mourning the loss of one of the greatest college basketball players of all time over the weekend the LJW and Chuck Woodling was using Wayman Tisdale’s tragic death as an opportunity to push a personal vendetta.

While most news outlets were celebrating Tisdale’s legacy by reliving his accomplishments both on the basketball floor and in the music world, Woodling chose instead to criticize for the way he, and his teammates, celebrated winning the 1984 Big Eight Championship. After being subject to the verbal abuse of the raucous crowd of Allen Fieldhouse for most of the night, Sooner coach Billy Tubbs called a timeout in the waning seconds of Oklahoma’s 92-82 overtime victory so that his team could bask in the glow of their victory. They would then follow that up by doing the unthinkable. Led by Tisdale (19 years-old at the time) the Sooners cut down the nets in Allen Fieldhouse to celebrate their championship.

I guess this has been stuck in Woodling’s craw for twenty-five years now and he couldn’t have chosen a more inappropriate time to let it out. Why not write about it when the Jayhawks knocked OU of track for winning the Big 12 Championship this last winter? How about using it in a celebration post for when the Jayhawks won the national championship just a year ago?

By choosing this opportunity to make the following statement about Tisdale, Chuck Woodling is showing that he is nothing more than a disrespectful, petty, spineless coward who harbors resentment without the ability to let things go and move on.

Wayman Tisdale always will be remembered as a bit player in one of the ugliest incidents in the history of Kansas University’s Allen Fieldhouse. – Chuck Woodling, Lawrence Journal World

I’m sorry, Chuck. Wayman Tisdale Tisdale will be remembered as a champion of sports and life who had a contagious smile, zeal for life and was a compassionate man who faced life’s obsticales with uncanny optimism. After reading your poorly chosen and ill timed words, I hate to think of what the sports world is now going to remember you as.

You can send your thoughts to Chuck Woodling via email, here.