I’m tired of being told that two plus two equals three. Or five. Or, “It depends.”
With NCAA President Mark Emmert’s optimistic chat about academic integrity with CBS’ Jim Nantz on Sunday still fresh in the head, here’s the Pitt basketball team’s recent schedule as per its play in the newish CBI (College Basketball Invitational):
March 21 — Pitt over Butler in Indianapolis.
March 26 — Pitt loses to Washington State in Pullman, Wash., the first in a best-of-three finals.
March 28 — Pitt defeats Washington State in Pittsburgh.
March 30 — Pitt wins at home over Washington State.
This follows a season that began last semester, on Oct. 22, and has lasted deep into a second semester.
Academic finals at Pitt begin in three weeks.
Come on, Dr. Emmert. The most academically deficient students stock the NCAA’s Division I basketball teams, they spend the least time in class over consecutive semesters, and we’re supposed to believe that the foundation is constructed of something better than fraud?
These institutions of higher learning don’t operate as fronts for basketball and football teams? Honest?
So the University of Rhode Island gave Jonathan Holton a full scholarship, but didn’t bother to ask the 6-foot-8 forward why he would be enrolled as a 20-year-old freshman?
The school waited until Holton was arrested, charged with videotaping and distributing sexual encounters with female students, then was arrested again when a student’s stolen laptop and other stolen goods were found in his dorm room?
And only then did Rhode Island learn that he was wanted for robbery in Miami, from where he had been recruited? Fascinating.
Oh, well, another one-and-done student-athlete. Keep ’em coming, fellas. The benefits to American society are incalculable.
Advance to the rear! Common sense, diss-missed!
Make no mistake, Tiger can do no wrong
Funny, how the back-slappers and glad-handers rarely, in the long run, do anybody any good. And TV seems to produce such bootlickers by the bushel.
In the case of Tiger Woods, the continuing on-air worship services have served him poorly. As the fair-minded in the audience must constantly fight nausea, it’s not Woods’ fault that his every step is followed closely, his every good shot brings marvel and his every bad one is flowed by suggestions that it was someone else’s or something else’s fault.
Such transparent, obnoxious coverage, now 16-years-very-old, is self-imposed by TV’s shot-callers. “Better we treat Tiger with greater respect than our audiences.”
Last Sunday, as Woods was on his way to his first Tour win in two-plus years, he missed a putt that was as least as miss-able as it was makeable. It spoke for itself. That’s golf.
But on NBC, the self-evident couldn’t speak for itself. Johnny Miller had to say that Woods’ missed putt may have been caused by a spike mark left in his line by a previous player.
And, no fault of Woods’. You just wanted to gag.
But Woods, the last dozen years, has been the only televised golfer who has missed putts because of spike marks. Better to insult the audience than to even hint that Woods missed a putt because, well, he just missed it, that’s all.
During and after his win last Sunday, he has been spoken of in terms of a glorious, heroic “comeback.”
But a “comeback” from what? Comeback from serious disease? Is he coming back from a horrible car wreck, as did Ben Hogan? The thought is never completed.
His comeback is from a massive, self-inflicted scandal. He knows it. We know it. So why hide it? Why so needlessly insult us? Why pretend that he may have been preoccupied fighting in the Peloponnesian War or busy volunteering at a leper colony in New Guinea?
And the mere notion that any of TV’s golf guys or gals even will mention that Dr. Anthony Galea — the Toronto HGH-advocating, quick-heal specialist Woods several times had flown to Florida to treat him — was convicted of bringing unapproved and mislabeled drugs into the U.S., well, forget it. You’ll never hear a word about that.
While that happened, it never happened. Never. Got it?
Cowboys, Giants are always late
Because Tv money is worth more than your PSLs and your ticket costs, the Giants and Cowboys, who open against each other on a Wednesday night, may never play each other again in daylight.
Including this year’s opener, the past 16 (two-per-regular-season) Giants-Cowboys games have included four 4:15 p.m. starts and 12 after-8 p.m. starts. The last time they played a logical, patron-friendly 1 p.m. game in either team’s park was Oct. 10, 2004.
* How’d ya like to be a Red Sox fan with Vicente Padilla now trying to make your team? Padilla is reported to have 10 illegitimate kids and has had arrest warrants issued for non-support in his native Nicaragua, although, since 2004, Padilla has been paid nearly $50 million. He also was shot in the leg at a shooting range.
As a pitcher, Padilla has been such a persistent head-hunter that teammates (Mark Teixeira, when both played for Texas) have knocked him because they must suffer the retaliation, and don’t much feel like defending him when he ignites a brawl, which he has done at least twice.
I’d rather root for locusts.
* Arnie Wexler, the media’s go-to-guy on issues of compulsive gambling — and the saver of dozens of careers, families and lives — on April 10 observes the 44th anniversary of his last bet.
“It was 1968. I was $16,ooo in the hole — a ton of money [back] then — working two jobs, loading trucks at night, to try to pay off my debts. It was the Mets’ opener, in San Francisco. I bet $20 on the Mets, Tom Seaver against Juan Marichal. The Mets were up, 4-2, in the ninth. They lost, 5-4. You can look it up.”
We did. Wexler’s memory is clear. Seaver was pulled with one out in the ninth, Jesus Alou doubled in two off Danny Frisella to end the game. “Who knows?” Wexler said, “that game might’ve saved my life.”
* Memo to CBS/Turner: There is no better way to make college basketball halftime shows — any halftime shows — more unmanageable, more unlistenable, more wasteful and more forgettable than to have five- and six-man, ESPN-like panels. The one-and-done Tournament now features one-line-and-done studio shows.
* Guess which brand of new model aluminum bats have been banned by youth leagues — Little League, Babe Ruth, Cal Ripken — for having too much juice, for excessive and dangerous “trampoline effect”? That’s right, Nike’s.