Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award
The Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award was an annual college basketball award in the United States intended to honor shorter-than-average players who excelled on the court despite their size. The award, named in honor of James Naismith's daughter-in-la ...
as the United States' top collegiate basketball player under 6'0" tall.
Basketball
He was the captain of the
Boston College Eagles
The Boston College Eagles are the athletic teams that represent Boston College, located in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. They compete as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level (Football Bowl Subdivisio ...
. He was nominated by Boston College (BC) as a
Rhodes Scholar
The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...
organized crime
Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally th ...
schemed to control the outcomes of several games. Sweeney was neither charged nor offered immunity in exchange for his testimony. The ''
Tampa Bay Times
The ''Tampa Bay Times'', previously named the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It has won fourteen Pulitzer Prizes since 1964, and in 2009, won two in a single y ...
'' featured Sweeney as one of the "Top 10 most intriguing people of Tampa Bay in 2014", for their fellow resident having displayed "little fear of the mob and no bitterness about getting caught up in a wise-guy point-shaving scheme."
Following his 1980 graduation from BC, Sweeney played basketball briefly in Sweden.
Post-basketball career
Sweeney spent the years after his time in Sweden as a manufacturer's rep in the computer industry. While still in his forties, Sweeney and his wife closed their computer firm to launch New Vision Entertainment, a Florida-based company focused on the development and promotion of entertainment properties that positively impact culture.
Creating a trademarked sports personality named MIKE (for "microphone"), Sweeney launched a series of MIKE Sports Comic Books, and regularly blogs under the same pen name. Sweeney's creative sports writing and reflections on his Boston College basketball past were covered in ''Forbes'' magazine.
Sweeney continued to play basketball domestically and abroad through the masters basketball circuit.
Jim Sweeney continues to compete in U.S. and international masters basketball tournaments and serves as head of USA for FIMBA, the international masters basketball organization based out of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has been featured as an active, global masters athlete in the January 14, 2018 on-line issue of ''
Parade
A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, float (parade), floats, or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually ce ...
'' magazine.
In 2020, Jim chronicled the history of masters basketball and his experiences competing in over 100 tournaments with an Amazon book release of Old School Hoops: Stories of an Aging Baller.
Family
Sweeney married fellow BC classmate Maura (Haggerty) Sweeney in 1981, and together they have one daughter. The couple resides in
Clearwater, Florida
Clearwater is a city located in Pinellas County, Florida, United States, northwest of Tampa and St. Petersburg. To the west of Clearwater lies the Gulf of Mexico and to the southeast lies Tampa Bay. As of the 2020 census, the city had a populat ...