Sure hope to be awake for the end of tomorrow’s NCAA final — first shot to see a game determined by a replay monitor review, even if it’s is made long after the final horn.
While tip-time is none of your business, fool, it likely will come sometime after 9, before 9:30.
Reader David Distefano, blogger of “Disty’s Diatribes” and a West Coaster, doesn’t have to sweat losing the end to sleep. But he does see replay-rule panaceas as only occasional acquaintances of practicality and reality. He writes us that replay rules carry an unfortunate resemblance to government:
“What a fiasco they are, how inefficient; they so often fail to meet their original intent. And [like government] the only solution the people who run sports can come up with is more replay.”
If only the quest to “get it right” were as aggressively applied to, say, getting far more significant things right, to doing right.
Take an educated guess: If, every NCAA Tournament we were presented with a “Where Are They Now?” that tracked the starting fives of the Elite Eight to show what they are doing 10 years later — this year we’d see how the 2004 Elite Eight starters are making out — do you suppose we would be presented with more success stories than sad ones? Half-and-half?
Heck, half-and-half, while pathetic, would be overly optimistic, wouldn’t it? Or are full scholarship college student-athletes supposed to peak in life at 21, while regular, genuinely educated college students are supposed to be just getting started?
To that endless end, it seems to bother a lot of emailing folks — especially Connecticut taxpayers — that UConn’s second-season, UConn-educated and graduated basketball coach, Kevin Ollie, as a representative of the State’s namesake university and a school that in 2012 was sanctioned for gross academic negligence, is so painfully deficient in fundamental, spoken grammar.
They wonder if Ollie, who played for UConn, and, with a new deal that will pay him roughly $1.3 million per plus perks, is the third-highest paid state employee (behind UConn women’s coach Geno Auriemma and UConn football coach Bob Diaco), he might consider, if only for the future sake of his recruits, to work on that.
Come on, let’s get real. And let’s “get it right.” What in the name of student-athletics does a big-time college basketball program, especially one known for rotten academic achievement, have to do with college? What does that do for a school’s recruiting, winning, maximizing TV money?
That’s why it seemed so silly for Manhattan coach Steve Masiello, looking to bolt to the University of South Florida, to have pretended he graduated from Kentucky. What does college have to do with Division I college basketball? It’s as resume-pertinent as one’s favorite flower.
Meanwhile, with Bruce Pearl, the disgraced, caught-cheating/lying ex-Tennessee coach having been named Auburn’s coach, ESPN has an opening for another disgraced, caught-cheating/lying college analyst. There’s always a between-gigs waiting room for such coaches at the Bristol Inn.
Of course, and indisputably, the whole thing stinks. Those of us who love basketball yet recognize the score even before the opening tip, have to weigh their compromised fandom to determine how hard they must swallow.
That’s another problem with late-starting NCAA Tournament games. It’s too late, afterward, to shower.
1998 Hall of Fame stub salutes steroid stars
Reader Steven Anastasio, Manhattan, has sent a copy of a Hall of Fame visitors’ ticket stub from October 1998. The stub includes, “Congratulations to McGwire and Sosa. McGwire finishes at 70, Sosa finishes at 66 HRs.”
Yeah, but that happened long before self-described, media-certified anti-drug activist and hero Bud Selig suspected anything. He was only on the job, then, for six years.
Friday night the Mets, at home, were expected to play before a paying audience in miserable weather. That’s another thing. Before Selig, the season began a week later. Opening Day for all teams wouldn’t have been until later this week.
Going on nothing more than a recurring rumor from high places, FOX, now the majority owner of YES, is prepared to buy the Yankees.
Comical, how sportscasters, including ex-pro athletes, arrive primed to speak hand-me-down nonsense. If SNY’s Ron Darling told friends the Mets were “74-88 in the 2013 campaign” he would have no friends. But on TV, he effortlessly replaces “season” with a silly word such as “campaign.”
New Jets WR Eric Decker paid TE Jeff Cumberland $25,000 for his No. 87. Reader Dr. Gary Cicio: “You figure Cumberland declares this to the IRS under ‘Miscellaneous Income’?”
Perhaps Weekday Boomer Esiason was kidding Wednesday when, as Bob Dylan’s “Tombstone Blues” played on WFAN, he piped, “Johnny Cash!”
Left him in stitches: The fabulous title of a new book about the lives, loves and laments of team mascots, written by former Mr. Met, AJ Mass: “Yes, It’s Hot in Here.”
Good night, Knight?
Despite ESPN’s denials that Bobby Knight had a diminished role on ESPN this college basketball season, his role — or at least his presence — was diminished, so much so it would be surprising if he returned.
And if his absence next season is for anything other than health — he recently seemed to lose track of what he was watching and saying — that will allow ESPN the opportunity to reprise its “Bobby
Knight Goes Nuts Reel.” That ESPN staple vanished the day Knight was hired.
Reader Bob Eineker suggests that instead of the NBA suspending 76ers forward Arnett Moultrie five games for a drug violation, a fitting punishment would be to make him continue to play for the Sixers. Can’t, Bob. Geneva Convention, the part about cruel and unusual.
Yes, CBS plans to televise the Masters, anyway — provided they play it, anyway.
For all the four-flushing NCAA Tournament expert TV analysis that included “verticality” and “physicality,” a big chunk of these games were determined by the ability/inability to make free throws.
One moment Charles Barkley is seen in weight-loss commercials, the next he’s seen in a credit card commercial ordering an arena-sized pretzel. He’s a regular Chris Berman!
Golf Coarse: Not even a golf ball — in this case, Top-Flites — can be pitched in TV ads without a wise-guy, unfunny, crotch-targeting, vulgar sell. After all, it’s about balls, get it?
Mike Francesa, incomparable college hoops expert, attended the NCAA regionals in the Garden, thus was able to watch at least one game this season.