I suppose, at this point, it is just none of our business.
Still, as long as we’ve been watching the NCAA Tournament contested by student-athletes, isn’t there someone — anyone — on these telecasts who can explain for us how the players attend college, when they attend and whether their courses are taught in English?
Chris Webber, a Michigan man working Tournament telecasts, could’ve helped us figure out the presence of 6-foot-11 Moritz Wagner, who arrived at Michigan from Germany last season.
Given that Michigan is a tough academic school for English-speaking kids, given that Wagner presumably speaks English as a second language, and given that he misses so many classes to play basketball, how does he legitimately matriculate at such a school?
But Webber, who must know how it works at Michigan, apparently wasn’t asked.
If we’re talking about fraud here — colleges operating as wholesome fronts for basketball teams — TV’s silent financial partnering on such matters makes CBS and Turner a prominent party to the fraud, no?
CBS’ Kevin Harlan didn’t help us out, either. Thursday he seemed delighted to declare Michigan recently “won four games in four days!”
Perhaps that was the week Michigan gave Wagner’s German-speaking professors off.
Gonzaga-West Virginia on TBS was filled with such wonder. Forget about attending classes, are Gonzaga’s practices conducted in English? In addition to a player freshly arrived from Japan, the Zags have recruits from Poland, Denmark and France.
They must be exchange students, enrolled in exchange for helping the college win games — a lofty goal among so many of our institutions of higher learning and social engineering.
Would it be cynical or rude to ask how these full-scholarship players receive a legitimate, useful college education?
A few years back, CBS tried listing players’ academic majors. But, perhaps because so many were identified as majoring in “general studies” and “undecided” — “I’m majoring in General Indecision” — it was, you should excuse the expression, a one-and-done.
That year a French-speaking player recruited from a former French protectorate in Africa was shown to be majoring in French.
Deep into the second half of Oregon-Michigan, Harlan let us in on a secret: Oregon’s Dylan Ennis, 25, is the oldest player in the Tournament.
He might’ve added that he also is among the most immature. After scoring on a layup, he struck an all-about me, double-arm muscle flex.
But at 25, Ennis by now must know that such demonstrations, as seen live, then on tape, throughout the Tournament, guarantee replay attention. CBS immediately rewarded his immodesty with a recorded encore.
As a student-athlete, Ennis has circled the continent playing college basketball. From his home in Ontario, Canada, he first went to Texas to play for Rice, then to Villanova and now Oregon. Before that, he went to high school in The Bronx, then in Chicago.
But no one on CBS/Turner has found that suspicious, let alone curious.
Early in Gonzaga-West Virginia, sideline reporter Louis Johnson seemed pleased to report that WVU coach Bob Huggins’ motto is “No days off, and make every day count.” No days off? What about studying for midterms? Finals? Or am I being facetious? What does college have to do with college basketball?
Moments later, play-by-play man Brian Anderson, in what sounded like a salute to Huggins, reported this about WVU:
“This is a team that won on Saturday in the round of 32, bussed from Buffalo back to Morgantown, and were in the gym later that night.”
Of course, there was no chance we would be told that Huggins, while the coach at Cincinnati then Kansas State, annually produced graduation rates of zero percent.
But that didn’t matter to the shot-callers at WVU, who hired him to return to his alma mater to coach their student-athletes. WVU, after all, is where Adam “Pacman” Jones refined his social graces before being unleashed on the NFL.
So maybe it doesn’t matter if you speak English to become a full scholarship college student-athlete in the United States — as long as you can, as they say in German, erzielte das basketball! (score the basketball!)
Rose hoops picks don’t rise above the fray
Surprise! CBS’ special halftime guest during Oregon-Michigan was Charlie Rose, the CBS News journalist who stopped by to prove that he also is a willing network shill!
Rose, who identified himself as a big college basketball fan, said he would like to see North Carolina play Kentucky, thus he apparently has no problem with how either school — Kentucky’s one-and-done NBA warehouse, UNC’s 15-plus recent years of rank, sustained academic fraud — annually achieved basketball success.
Why we watch: Best game seen all week? Defying logic, it was Tuesday’s Rangers-Devils. After all, the Rangers are in; the Devils are out.
Yet, throughout it was played with fury — aggressive, fast and with both goalies, Antti Raanta and Cory Schneider, making tremendous saves to keep it 2-2, before Jersey won in overtime. It was time well spent, as riveting as any game played for greater stakes.
It brought to mind Chris Russo’s dismissive day-before wisdom on an Army-Navy game when both were unranked: “This game does nothing for me.”
A timely Clemson prediction
The ease with which Mike Francesa tells self-inflating lies would be stunning only if we expected better.
Not that his guest asked, but Thursday he told FOX Sports’ Peter Schrager that he picked Clemson to win this year’s national football title. He has claimed that several times despite demonstrable proof — type in SportsFunhouse for the audio — to the contrary.
In early November, after Clemson lost at home to Pitt, Francesa abandoned Clemson’s bandwagon as if it had been hit by lightning. He repeatedly said — he is known to repeat himself, repeat himself — that Clemson is not a good football team.
Though Francesa is 25 years overdue to get one right, this wasn’t it.
One can hear Pinocchio defending himself to Geppetto: “Oh no, Dad, there’s a guy on the radio in New York who’s much worse!”
Had Oregon, 69-68 Sweet 16 winners over Michigan, lost, it would’ve been a residual of modern, TV-inspired, senselessness.
In the first half, Oregon’s 6-foot-9 Jordan Bell took an inside pass and had an unrestricted path to the basket. He could’ve laid it in, dropped it in or given it a two-handed slam.
Instead, he shifted the ball to his right hand, took it high above his head then went for an ESPN “Top 10” wrecking ball slam. Clang, boing, bing, he missed.
Michigan ran it the other way and scored an easy layup. As Reggie Miller said, “A four-point swing, right there.” Miller was kind. He should’ve added “absolutely ridiculous.”