As the late Soupy Sales would say, “Be true to your teeth and they won’t be false to you!” To that end, if only our automobiles could run on the same BS Fuel that drives our sports. . .
Dr. Mark Emmert, the NCAA’s latest leader, reformer and traveling salesman of “Dr. E’s Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes Elixir” to eliminate common sense, seems like a nice man. You want to believe him when he says he stands — and firmly — on the side of academic, social and financial integrity.
It’s just that as long as two-plus-two equals four, you can’t believe him.
Sunday’s “Third Round” NCAA Tournament games — now so-named because the four play-in games are now absurdly called the “First Round” — used to end early Sunday evenings in order to give teams — not to mention cheerleaders, band-members and student-fans — a shot to get back to their campuses in time for Monday classes.
Even if it was just for show, those few players who took “student-athletics” seriously, those Sunday games, some played simultaneously, ended at a logical hour for all, including TV viewers of all ages.
But now all pretense the NCAA Tournament is formatted for anything better than allowing TV to make back some of its Tournament rights money has been removed.
This past Sunday, Duke-Creighton began at 9:48 p.m. and ended at midnight. It was played in Philadelphia. By minimally reasonable standards — not just for college sports — that’s nuts.
According to a Duke website, the Blue Devils — now often seen in black uniforms on Nike’s orders — reached the Philadelphia airport at 1:30 a.m. and arrived on campus at 4:30. Creighton presumably returned to its Omaha campus far deeper into Monday.
Ah, Creighton. It was 20 years ago when Kevin Ross, a 6-foot-9 ex-Creighton basketball player, reached a settlement with the school after claiming in a lawsuit that he was recruited and enrolled despite the fact that he was a functional illiterate, with the reading ability of a second-grader.
Before that — still, after Creighton — Ross was arrested after he barricaded himself in a hotel, but became a part-time custodian, and did learn, after college, to read.
Yet the NCAA now schedules 9:48 tip-offs in Philly and for TBS on Sunday nights.
Emmert will proudly cite stats about improving graduation rates. Great! But how so? What are the course loads and titles? Over how many full scholarship years? Among those with expired eligibility or all recruits? Are these legit degrees?
Sorry, that’s none of your business. Can’t divulge that. We’ll have to take his word for it.
Incidentally, Creighton Duke was a character in the “Friday the 13th” movie series, the one titled, “Jason Goes to Hell.”
Tiger’s ad just business as usual for Nike
Why is anyone appalled by Nike’s new Tiger Woods ad, the one flaunting his serial philandering with “Winning Takes Care of Everything”?
That’s Nike attitude, 25 years and counting, the same rotten attitude that inspired Nike’s Olympic billboards declaring, “You don’t win silver, you lose gold.”
And it hardly matters if you’re Tiger Woods, Rutgers University, a U.S. national team or a grunt in a sub-contracted Nike factory in Indonesia, when ordered to “Just do it,” you obey.
Besides, it’s true. America’s superficial media have conditioned us to equate winners with goodness. The Buffalo Bills, four-times defeated in the Super Bowl, are mocked as our biggest losers.
* By Wednesday, Mike Francesa had exceeded his weekly average for being arrogantly, comically expertly, rudely, transparently, egomaniacally, colossally, relentlessly wrong. And sometimes Y.
Wednesday, with chat turned to the day’s announced retirement of ex-Cardinal Tim McCarver after this season, Francesa took a call from a pleasant sounding fellow who said he recalls Game 6 of Cardinals-Yankees 1964 World Series, how it was a school day, and …
Francesa jumped the guy, cut him off; told him that he’s all wrong, told him that he, Mike Fran-say-so, has perfect recall of Game 6 — and it was a Saturday! So there!
Game 6 was played Oct. 14, 1964 — a Wednesday.
Then there’s the StubHub-Yankees issue. Francesa treats sports consumer issues one of two ways: 1) He ignores them because they don’t concern him. 2) He does nothing to educate himself on the issue, but pretends to have full, inside knowledge.
This week, he chose No. 2, screaming at, then hanging up on a caller for being completely wrong about the new Yankees StubHub policy — when the caller was, of course, completely correct.
Incidentally, the Mets sent down catcher Travis d’Arnaud until the kid learns to pronounce his name the way Francesa does.
Ex-Met VP new spinner for Dolan
Ex-met Vp Dave Howard has joined The Garden, where he’ll oversee the running of the Knicks, Rangers — a position that, under Jim Dolan, needs frequent filling.
Howard may have impressed Dolan in 2009, when Citi Field opened to complaints that the Mets were selling, at full price, seats with obstructed views — a stunning occurrence given the cost of the stadium and the failsafe, computerized architecture of our time.
Howard, on WFAN, however, insisted that there are “no obstructed view seats” — but conceded that some have “blind spots.”
* Bobby Valentine yesterday was announced as a part-timer on SNY’s Mets’ wraparound shows, meaning he’ll, 1) Be rumored to return as Mets’ manager, or, 2) He’ll alienate a cameraman, who, while Valentine speaks, will shoot only his shoes. Valentine will work from Citi before Monday’s opener.
* Who knows, at 36, what’s left or whether he’ll stick with the Yankees, but recently acquired Lyle Overbay, lefty hit/field first baseman, has the perfect stroke for Yankee Stadium’s right field, which is shorter than Toronto’s, where, with the Jays, Overbay regularly homered. He can work a count, too.
* YES has Yankees-Army, tomorrow, 2 p.m., from West Point. First-pitch is scheduled for 2:24, but the pregame includes a piece on Connecticut’s Major Stephen Reich, USMA, Class of 1993. Killed in action, his helicopter downed in a 2005 rescue mission over Afghanistan, Reich was a superb pitcher, Army’s all-time leader in wins.
* Marshall Henderson, Ole Miss’s four-college, me-firsting, post-jail chest-pounder who CBS and Turner sold as both a very cool cat and a don’t-miss star, finished the NCAA Tournament 14-for-42 and seven-for-27 on 3s.
* Reader Ed Cantlin no longer minds cutaways to show the cheerleaders during NCAA Tournament games because, “that’s the only way to know the school’s actual colors.”