The Most Important Article Ever Written About College Sports*

Just finished reading it. Wow, what a piece. Basically, just about everything I've been saying on here.

Coupla of other thoughts:

1. Found it very interesting that an NCAA Tournament team was going to strike if they made the championship game. Maybe it's the conspiracy theorist in me, but I'd like to know which team it was, and see the circumstances of their loss. Maybe a free-throw disparity, or some bad calls by the refs? Obviously, the NCAA would have a lot to lose if the team went on strike before the title game.

2. A football playoff would, in one estimate, triple or quadruple the revenue from the NCAA tournament ($770 million). That would be, based upon the most recent basketball contract, at least $2 billion a year. Yet, all you keep hearing is the schools wouldn't be able to afford to pay athletes. Well, there's the money right there, and we get the playoff. Two problems solved. Give the players in the tounament a bonus, just like coaches receive.

 

Or, North Carolina could drop football and basketball, the NBA and NFL could put minor-league teams in there, and the school could fund the other teams through bake sales and have them drive in vans and buses to local schools on weekends for games. You know, what amateur sports are supposed to be about.

 

I have always read in the tinfoil-hat corners of the universe that this was the 1991 UNLV team. It would seem to make sense because Greg Anthony was the leader, and I believe the NCAA had stepped in before that season and barred him from pursuing a T-shirt business. Plus they all had the "fuck you NCAA" attitude and the NCAA had already punished them down the road but let them play in that tournament.

There were some very, very curious calls at the end of the Duke game.

 

BTE is right.

 

There are two options here. 1. By force of law, abolish athletic scholarships in all sports. That would make pro sports create minor leagues for their own manpower needs and end the charades.
2. Do nothing and let the show go on. This is of course what will happen until something very very big brings the system down on itself. Eventually I see a 1919 scenario. Players will happily accept bribes to throw a BCS championship game, and being idiot college kids, will get caught. The resulting criminal trial will have a lengthy defense examining every wretched aspect of college sports. Don't forget, the Black Sox were not convicted.

 

I just looked up the boxscore from that game. Duke had a 21-15 lead in free throw attempts. Not a huge disparity, and they made over 80 percent of their's while UNLV only made 60 percent of their's.

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/ncaa-tournament/history/yearbyyear/1991

Still, you can always think that the NCAA wanted to dick over Tarkanian for his lawsuits and his team and not risk having the players sitting at center court.

 

I listened to an interview with a guy who played on a team in the Final Four - I'm thinking it was sometime in the 1990s, and it sounded like his team was committed to it - but they lost in the semis. (internet searching...)I'm thinking the guy is Rigoberto Nunez of UMass. (more internet searching...) Bingo.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/iteam/2011/03/hbos-real-sports-must-see-tv-for-final-four-viewers

 

If you have a rule that cannot be followed or you cannot police (or do not want to police), get rid of the rule.

And I am guessing everything terrible thing you are thinking about that would happen is already happening in college sports.

 

Just from that blog it sounds like he was talking more about every team before the tournament. I remember a threat of something like that with Nebraska football too.

I've said it before, but I can't think of a single thing in the entire world -- with the possible exception of the Palin-Rice sex tape -- that would be more entertaining to watch than the teams refusing to play the NCAA tournament championship game.

 

Watching Jim Nantz's head explode would be fantastic.

I'd love to see the teams sit on the court, and a player or two grab a microphone and go all CM Punk on the system.

 

How much worse can it get than two teams sharing a title.
How much worse can it get than a dog like Nick Saban getting fat off the educational mission.
Please.

 

You can see into the future?