Finally, after all these years, we have an NCAA Tournament favorite we can root for without moral compromise, a team so steeped in unconditional, conspicuous integrity that right-headed folks can cheer as one. Go tell it on the mountain!
Ladies and gentlemen, sports fans of all demographic ages, Nike jersey and sneaker sizes, your University of Kentucky Wildcats!
Finally, a team without false collegiate pretense, a team that plays on courts stripped of scholastic varnish. Finally, a team fronted by a major university that knows we know that this team now annually has the same relationship to college as pigeons do to stone soldiers standing in town squares.
No team, as politicians vowing partial truths say, is “more transparent.” No team has made it so clear that its full scholarship recruits aren’t “student-athletes,” but assembled to spend seven months using Kentucky as a luxurious basketball facility. Then off they go!
Fame, and at least temporary fortune or back-to-the-furnace failure, await. Yep, Kentucky will pay your way to give you the opportunity to have peaked at 19 years old. Hey, you can always say you were a college man!
Now spin that wheel! And remember, Coach Cal loves ya — unconditionally, as in no apologies. No apologies: none to you, none to us. He’s just doing as he was hired to do by the University of Kentucky. And what a job he does!
John Calipari used to play the phony pretense game. He played college coach at Massachusetts then at Memphis. He won big, too, but bolted each as it was being punished for pretending to be a college.
This time? Straight-up and keepin’ it real! There’s nothing to debate — the University of Kentucky fronts a basketball team. On campus it shares reality with vending machines.
The University of North Carolina? Now there’s a school that still plays pretend, as if football and basketball recruits are legitimate “student-athletes.”
That’s why basketball coach Roy Williams claimed he had no idea — knock him over with a feather — when UNC was revealed to be giving away no-show, keep-’em-eligible academic credits to full-scholarship recruits who, even if they wanted a college education, were provided the plan and path to avoid it.
Williams’ claim of surprise and ignorance? Most of us, as a matter of applied common sense, could tell if a late-teen will make a minimally legitimate college student by spending, oh, 10 minutes chatting with him.
But Williams — 36 years coaching college ball, making millions in the process — spends seven straight months of every year with his recruits and has no idea if they needed a little “help” to get by, to make it to sophomore?
Gimme Calipari and Kentucky before that!
Or is it that Williams is paid to not know, to not recognize what people as sharp as he can’t possibly miss? Was his hiring and sustained employment (likely including fat bonuses for Tournament appearances) predicated on the sotto voce understanding that conspicuous truths — or even educated guesses — are not his to see or make?
Every March, readers ask a rhetorical question based on an antiquated, farcical notion: Why, as Tournament teams are seen boarding or off-loading buses, are they now always seen wearing earphones? Why do we never see anyone carrying a book? Or are they listening to Books on Tape?
Sunday’s Post carried an interview with Manhattan coach Steve Masiello. He told of keeping his team entertained and occupied by showing movies on long bus trips.
Some may be moved to ask if playing basketball over consecutive academic semesters hasn’t cost the student-athletes enough class time. Wouldn’t their best future interests be better served spending those travel hours at academic study?
But a Keepin’ It Kentucky Real With Coach Cal explanation would be that these young college men have spent so much time on basketball that they have missed a lot of movies.
Strap in for some tourney craziness
The NCAA Tournament, from Day 1, is a sarcasm stimulant: For starters, if injured coaches, such as Georgia State’s Ron Hunter, are to work seated in roll-abouts, shouldn’t they be strapped in?
As for a four-game “First Round,” reader Mike Kiely of Throgs Neck surmises that “the 60 other teams were given ‘a bye.’ ” Reader Joe Magnetico asks: “Has ESPN reported yet that ‘a record 64 teams have advanced to the Second Round?’ ”
On Thursday, Northeastern, led by relentless 6-foot-9 Scott Eatherton, nearly beat Notre Dame, but audibly won the crowd’s — and likely the Irish’s — admiration. Yet, as Eatherton reached Notre Dame players in the handshake line, CBS cut away.
Again Thursday, at halftime of the Texas Southern-Arizona game, Rachel (“I” “Me” “My”) Nichols, with Arizona coach Sean Miller, took 87 words — seriously — to ask her question.
Not-On-TV Stat of the Day: Northeastern, a college in Boston, has no players from Massachusetts, only one from New England and seven from the South.
During Tuesday’s BYU-Ole Miss game, then Thursday during Northeastern-Notre Dame, analyst Steve Smith became the latest to silly-talk about “scoring the basketball.”
The new applause: After a no-resistance Ole Miss slam, CBS/Turner cut to the bench, where a player was jumping around, grabbing at his crotch.
“Hollerin” Kevin Harlan on Thursday, after an uncontested baseline jam by Arizona’s 6-foot-8 Stanley Johnson, screamed. Apparently, he never before had seen one.
Wednesday, late in the Robert Morris-North Florida game, Ian Eagle noted that after seven first-half turnovers, Robert Morris “has not turned it over in the second half.” What did Eagle mean by that? Analyst Doug Gottlieb explained: “Zero turnovers is phenomenal basketball.” Heck, it ties the record!
More March Madness from Almighty Mike
When Mike Francesa, noted Pentagon-adviser and meteorologist — Hurricane Sandy, he ruled, will be a spritz — authoritatively stated the snowfall on March 2 would be the last of this season, he was right.
What lesser meteorologists have forecast for Friday is not snow, but Francesa Flakes.
More glory to Almighty Mike: He continues to take himself seriously as a genius among geniuses that no one has been more colossally and comically wrong — and more often — than he. Or is it He?
This week, his usual magic: He chose the biggest favorite on the early NCAA Tournament board — Manhattan by 8 ½ points over Hampton — then pretended to know enough about both teams to make a strong, know-it-all tout: Manhattan by a “double-digit” blowout.
The usual. Manhattan didn’t cover. Didn’t even win. Hampton, by double digits. Another deposit in the “Lost Tapes Warehouse.” Oh, the weather outside is frightful …