Professor honored at halftime, tossed from game

We've seen players, coaches and occasionally fans get ejected from games for berating basketball officials.

But rarely do we see a professor get booted - especially one who was honored during the game for his donations to the school's athletics department.

But that's what happened Saturday in D.C. when Robert Kasmir was tossed from the George Washington-Dayton game for yelling at a referee over a foul call on sophomore forward David Pellom.

"Basically, I told the ref he was the worst ref I'd ever seen and he wasn't worth the $1,600 dollars they were paying him and that was it," Kasmir said, according to the GW Hatchet. "And then he ejected me from the game."

Kasten is an accounting professor, which may explain his precise knowledge of the official's paycheck.

But more remarkable than Kasten's monetary verbal assault was the timing of his ejection. The professor was thrown out of the game minutes after he and his family were honored at halftime for their generous donations to GW Athletics.

It's not clear exactly what Kasten's financial contributions to GW have been but apparently his verbal contribution worked. After his ejection, the team rallied to beat Dayton 60-58.

"He did get a bigger ovation when he was thrown out than when he was on the court for his donation," Senior Vice Provost Robert Chernak said. "Actually we started to play better afterwards, so maybe we need to make it a fan a game or something."