Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Now Is the Summer of Our Discontent
A day after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, a glaring question remains not only unanswered, but unasked.
Why is there such a high level of discontent among the U.K. voters?
The question has gone unasked because everyone presumes to know the answer even though they have no idea how the Brexit became a reality and the experts predicted that the voters would vote in favor of staying in the European Union. Instead there has been a barrage of insults toward those who voted to leave the E.U. and the political leaders who campaigned in favor of leaving. The insults by and large label those who voted to leave the E.U. as xenophobic and ignorant, lumping them in with American presidential candidate Donald Trump and his followers. Pundits argue that the vote to leave the E.U. reflects a short-sighted, ignorant view of the U.K's relationship with the E.U., and a failure to foresee the numerous negative consequences of leaving the union, which include the possibility that people from other countries working in the U.K. will now have to leave or renegotiate their status, and that British citizens living and working elsewhere in the 27-bloc union will have to leave.
I will not dispute that there are negative consequences to this vote, and trust the opinion of the knowledgeable people who condemn the vote of those to leave the E.U. Without question there is now a great deal of uncertainty about how this decision may encourage other countries to exit the E.U. as well, potentially another ominous development.
But the troubling and difficult question remains: why the discontent?
Apparently, a great many people living the in the U.K. outside of London do not at all see themselves as benefiting from their country being a member of the E.U. Rather than consider this perspective legitimate, it appears that those who campaigned for the U.K. to stay in the E.U. reverted to insults--ad hominem attacks against those outside of London as being unenlightened, rather than a campaign that emphasized the positives of the E.U. for the U.K.
The problem with this approach is that it is itself ignorant. Failure to understand the discontent of those who voted to leave the E.U. does not empower those who disagree with their position. If anything, it reinforces the belief of those who voted to leave that the current governing system does not take their interests or needs into consideration, because they are looked down upon and seen as having nothing to offer the multi-national agenda the E.U. has established. It is also a bit presumptuous to think that other people are so ignorant they do not even understand their own individual quality of life, or their perception that the U.K's participation in the E.U. has benefited a globalized elite within their own country that has favored globalization at the expense of their fellow citizens. The "I-know-what's-best-for-you" mentality does not sit well with those who feel left out and taken advantage of, and it is hardly an enlightened mentality on the part of those who assume such omniscience.
This disregard for people who voted to leave the E.U. ought to be alarming. Stigmatizing them as villains out of a Harry Potter novel, for example, makes no effort to understand why people voted to leave. Obviously, if they felt that they personally benefited from E.U. membership, they would not have voted as they did. And insisting that all of these people are so ignorant that they don't know what is good for them is infantilizing, a sign that there is a bigger rift between those who voted to stay versus those who wanted to go than anyone seems willing to acknowledge.
What if it is the case that the E.U. of the 21st century is really a globalized network of wealthy elites who use the pooled power of member nations to benefit their own economic interests with no regard for whether or not the policies of the E.U. benefit the citizenry as a whole of each individual nation? Right now there is no way to answer that question because any anti-E.U. sentiment is put down immediately.
I will say that for years I have found the anti-immigrant, far-right parties that have become increasingly influential in the E.U.'s nations to be depressing and worrisome. But just because certain politicians and parties operate by exploiting fears simply to push oppressive, xenophobic agendas does not mean the fear and alienation felt by any number of citizens is baseless. They are not the same thing. It may well be that if there were another political party willing to listen to the fears and discontent of people who do not like the direction the E.U. is taking their country, these far-right parties would not have a monopoly on galvanizing their attitudes. But when all other parties are oblivious to concerns over the E.U.'s agenda and the results it produces, such citizens have no other option.
One thing I have noticed from social media threads and Internet articles is there is a great deal of ignorance over the E.U., the euro currency, and the relationship between member nations and the union. In fact, one article even argued that many British who voted to leave the E.U. weren't sure what the E.U. is. I do not pass judgement on the lack of knowledge about the E,U, and applaud the many people who asked questions about it for the sake of becoming better informed. I will point out, however, that this lack of knowledge is exacerbated by an unwillingness to understand the apparently strong dislike of the status quo in England and the perception that the E.U. only benefits a privileged class.
One of the potential dangerous of any trans-national alliance is that it could steer the national government toward an agenda that benefits the alliance rather than the people. Apparently, more people than expected in the U.K. feel that is the case. Putting them down only serves to alienate further a group of people who see the well-to-do in London following the lead from Brussels in order to further their own agenda instead of looking out for the well being of their fellow countrymen. Rather than take an honest appraisal of how well off those who voted to leave the E.U. have been in relation to the prospering of those who favored remaining in the E.U., the response has been an arrogant casting off of those who do not see themselves as benefiting from E.U. membership. Other countries considering leaving the E.U. ought to be asking these questions as well rather than assuming anyone who is fed up with the E.U. just doesn't know any better. I think it is best to assume that grown ups know best the status of what their personal experience and level of well-being are in relation to others--and that way of looking at the world is the basic foundation of politics. People do not like participating in any kind of organization where it is obvious to them others are prospering at their expense. And belittling those who feel that way is a thinly veiled attempt to maintain a situation that benefits one group at another's expense.
From my understanding, the European Union began in 1945, after WWII, with the noble purpose of forging alliances out of neighboring countries that had been fighting wars against one another. The union was a successful effort to end the bloodshed that plagued the continent. To this end, there is no doubt that the E.U. has worked to everyone's benefit: the neighboring nations of Europe have not gone to war with one another since.
But as the decades of the 20th century moved along, the European Union expanded, as did its agenda and bureaucratic reach. The U.K. joined in 1972. Other nations joined after the fall of the Berlin Wall. If one general observation of the E.U. can made, it is that its agenda has morphed from peace-keeping to global financial ambition. I say so because of the advent of the euro currency in 2002. The idea behind the euro was to pool the currencies of European nations for the sake of creating a more powerful shared currency not aligned with an individual nation. The main goal of the euro was to create a currency that could compete with, and perhaps even overtake the dollar as the world's strongest currency.
The U.K. did not adopt the euro and decided to retain its currency of the British pound, a generally strong currency (until yesterday anyway). Denmark and Sweden, also E.U. members, decided as well not to adopt the euro. In any case, the euro has proven a poor move. After the 2008 financial meltdown, the southern members of the E.U. were hardest hit. Unable to devalue their own national currency to encourage exporting as a way of revitalizing their economy, these nations have remained at the mercy of Brussels in terms of economic policy and Germany in terms of imposed austerity measures in exchange for bailout money to stabilize their depressed economies. Thus a significant power imbalance has become entrenched between countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain versus the stronger economies of Germany and others. The E.U. has turned into a money machine with the result of some nations literally being controlled--essentially governed--by others.
When Winston Churchill and the other founders formed the E.U., their overriding concern was to put an end to the bloodshed of world wars fought on the European continent. I seriously doubt they envisioned the E.U. becoming a massive bureaucracy that became primarily interested in economic supremacy, streamlining the economies of 27 different countries. The E.U. has become many things besides what it started out being, and the euro has proven a fiscal wreck. These problems are not going away. They have generated a great deal of discontent across the continent and between countries the union was designed to create harmony between, not resentment. The vote to the leave the E.U. by the U.K. is the first major sign that the problems it is causing for people are outweighing its benefits. The E.U. can either examine the possibility it has overreached its capacity to pool the resources and institutions of the continent for the collective well-being of its members, or risk a future of dissolution and continental fragmentation. And if the E.U. saga teaches us anything, it is that prosperity comes from peace, not avarice.
Why is there such a high level of discontent among the U.K. voters?
The question has gone unasked because everyone presumes to know the answer even though they have no idea how the Brexit became a reality and the experts predicted that the voters would vote in favor of staying in the European Union. Instead there has been a barrage of insults toward those who voted to leave the E.U. and the political leaders who campaigned in favor of leaving. The insults by and large label those who voted to leave the E.U. as xenophobic and ignorant, lumping them in with American presidential candidate Donald Trump and his followers. Pundits argue that the vote to leave the E.U. reflects a short-sighted, ignorant view of the U.K's relationship with the E.U., and a failure to foresee the numerous negative consequences of leaving the union, which include the possibility that people from other countries working in the U.K. will now have to leave or renegotiate their status, and that British citizens living and working elsewhere in the 27-bloc union will have to leave.
I will not dispute that there are negative consequences to this vote, and trust the opinion of the knowledgeable people who condemn the vote of those to leave the E.U. Without question there is now a great deal of uncertainty about how this decision may encourage other countries to exit the E.U. as well, potentially another ominous development.
But the troubling and difficult question remains: why the discontent?
Apparently, a great many people living the in the U.K. outside of London do not at all see themselves as benefiting from their country being a member of the E.U. Rather than consider this perspective legitimate, it appears that those who campaigned for the U.K. to stay in the E.U. reverted to insults--ad hominem attacks against those outside of London as being unenlightened, rather than a campaign that emphasized the positives of the E.U. for the U.K.
The problem with this approach is that it is itself ignorant. Failure to understand the discontent of those who voted to leave the E.U. does not empower those who disagree with their position. If anything, it reinforces the belief of those who voted to leave that the current governing system does not take their interests or needs into consideration, because they are looked down upon and seen as having nothing to offer the multi-national agenda the E.U. has established. It is also a bit presumptuous to think that other people are so ignorant they do not even understand their own individual quality of life, or their perception that the U.K's participation in the E.U. has benefited a globalized elite within their own country that has favored globalization at the expense of their fellow citizens. The "I-know-what's-best-for-you" mentality does not sit well with those who feel left out and taken advantage of, and it is hardly an enlightened mentality on the part of those who assume such omniscience.
This disregard for people who voted to leave the E.U. ought to be alarming. Stigmatizing them as villains out of a Harry Potter novel, for example, makes no effort to understand why people voted to leave. Obviously, if they felt that they personally benefited from E.U. membership, they would not have voted as they did. And insisting that all of these people are so ignorant that they don't know what is good for them is infantilizing, a sign that there is a bigger rift between those who voted to stay versus those who wanted to go than anyone seems willing to acknowledge.
What if it is the case that the E.U. of the 21st century is really a globalized network of wealthy elites who use the pooled power of member nations to benefit their own economic interests with no regard for whether or not the policies of the E.U. benefit the citizenry as a whole of each individual nation? Right now there is no way to answer that question because any anti-E.U. sentiment is put down immediately.
I will say that for years I have found the anti-immigrant, far-right parties that have become increasingly influential in the E.U.'s nations to be depressing and worrisome. But just because certain politicians and parties operate by exploiting fears simply to push oppressive, xenophobic agendas does not mean the fear and alienation felt by any number of citizens is baseless. They are not the same thing. It may well be that if there were another political party willing to listen to the fears and discontent of people who do not like the direction the E.U. is taking their country, these far-right parties would not have a monopoly on galvanizing their attitudes. But when all other parties are oblivious to concerns over the E.U.'s agenda and the results it produces, such citizens have no other option.
One thing I have noticed from social media threads and Internet articles is there is a great deal of ignorance over the E.U., the euro currency, and the relationship between member nations and the union. In fact, one article even argued that many British who voted to leave the E.U. weren't sure what the E.U. is. I do not pass judgement on the lack of knowledge about the E,U, and applaud the many people who asked questions about it for the sake of becoming better informed. I will point out, however, that this lack of knowledge is exacerbated by an unwillingness to understand the apparently strong dislike of the status quo in England and the perception that the E.U. only benefits a privileged class.
One of the potential dangerous of any trans-national alliance is that it could steer the national government toward an agenda that benefits the alliance rather than the people. Apparently, more people than expected in the U.K. feel that is the case. Putting them down only serves to alienate further a group of people who see the well-to-do in London following the lead from Brussels in order to further their own agenda instead of looking out for the well being of their fellow countrymen. Rather than take an honest appraisal of how well off those who voted to leave the E.U. have been in relation to the prospering of those who favored remaining in the E.U., the response has been an arrogant casting off of those who do not see themselves as benefiting from E.U. membership. Other countries considering leaving the E.U. ought to be asking these questions as well rather than assuming anyone who is fed up with the E.U. just doesn't know any better. I think it is best to assume that grown ups know best the status of what their personal experience and level of well-being are in relation to others--and that way of looking at the world is the basic foundation of politics. People do not like participating in any kind of organization where it is obvious to them others are prospering at their expense. And belittling those who feel that way is a thinly veiled attempt to maintain a situation that benefits one group at another's expense.
From my understanding, the European Union began in 1945, after WWII, with the noble purpose of forging alliances out of neighboring countries that had been fighting wars against one another. The union was a successful effort to end the bloodshed that plagued the continent. To this end, there is no doubt that the E.U. has worked to everyone's benefit: the neighboring nations of Europe have not gone to war with one another since.
But as the decades of the 20th century moved along, the European Union expanded, as did its agenda and bureaucratic reach. The U.K. joined in 1972. Other nations joined after the fall of the Berlin Wall. If one general observation of the E.U. can made, it is that its agenda has morphed from peace-keeping to global financial ambition. I say so because of the advent of the euro currency in 2002. The idea behind the euro was to pool the currencies of European nations for the sake of creating a more powerful shared currency not aligned with an individual nation. The main goal of the euro was to create a currency that could compete with, and perhaps even overtake the dollar as the world's strongest currency.
The U.K. did not adopt the euro and decided to retain its currency of the British pound, a generally strong currency (until yesterday anyway). Denmark and Sweden, also E.U. members, decided as well not to adopt the euro. In any case, the euro has proven a poor move. After the 2008 financial meltdown, the southern members of the E.U. were hardest hit. Unable to devalue their own national currency to encourage exporting as a way of revitalizing their economy, these nations have remained at the mercy of Brussels in terms of economic policy and Germany in terms of imposed austerity measures in exchange for bailout money to stabilize their depressed economies. Thus a significant power imbalance has become entrenched between countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain versus the stronger economies of Germany and others. The E.U. has turned into a money machine with the result of some nations literally being controlled--essentially governed--by others.
When Winston Churchill and the other founders formed the E.U., their overriding concern was to put an end to the bloodshed of world wars fought on the European continent. I seriously doubt they envisioned the E.U. becoming a massive bureaucracy that became primarily interested in economic supremacy, streamlining the economies of 27 different countries. The E.U. has become many things besides what it started out being, and the euro has proven a fiscal wreck. These problems are not going away. They have generated a great deal of discontent across the continent and between countries the union was designed to create harmony between, not resentment. The vote to the leave the E.U. by the U.K. is the first major sign that the problems it is causing for people are outweighing its benefits. The E.U. can either examine the possibility it has overreached its capacity to pool the resources and institutions of the continent for the collective well-being of its members, or risk a future of dissolution and continental fragmentation. And if the E.U. saga teaches us anything, it is that prosperity comes from peace, not avarice.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Thoughts On the 2016 Democrat Primary
For starters, I will always be amazed that at least 80% of Americans were not totally in favor of Bernie Sanders being our next President, and that most of us aren't asking one another "where has this guy been all along and why has it taken us so long to be the kind of country this guy thinks we should be?". How has there even been a contest, much less one that is rigged so blatantly for his opponent to win? Bernie Sanders is the only Presidential candidate to be totally on the side of the people. All of his policies are not only achievable but the norm in all other first world countries. He wants the American people to have a better life and he realizes that the days of "incremental change"--a euphemism for appearing to make things better while continuing the status quo, are over. Our problems are too big to be dealt with half-assed.
It's impossible not to be cynical about everything in this primary. The disproportionate gap between delegates and superdelegates, for example, is an ugly giveaway about how corrupt, conservative, and un-democratic the Democrats are. Okay, wait. Free college and free health care--criminal justice reform and actual governance of Wall Street and investment banks? How about non-poisoned water for the people of Flint, Michigan. Remember that? Yes, that is still a problem. But hey, who needs water? That's idealistic, right?
Donald Trump has enjoyed making himself an icon and sounding board for bigotry, sexism, and xenophobia. But criticizing him is beside the point: he has deliberately made himself an easy target and enjoys the attention. Criticizing him is a distraction from issues surrounding the 2016 Democrat Party that are far more disturbing than Trump's candidacy.
For starters, this Democrat primary has shredded what little pretense remained that the Democrats are a liberal, people-focused party. Those were the Democrats of the mid 20th century, and they are no more around than Prince, David Bowie, or Johnny Cash. The opposition to Sanders from within the Democrat party is the kind of rigid, angry, and prideful nonsense one would expect from the opposing party - the Republicans. What sense does it make to support Clinton at the expense of a Sanders' presidency? You want some change or some improvement, but not a lot of change and a lot of improvement? I don't get it. The idea that Sanders' policies are unrealistic and too expensive to pay for is both not true and ignorant. The country really does face serious problems of income inequality and a stagnant system that has gone so long without changing it has become malignant. Other countries really do have free college and free health care. If you don't want those things, quit calling yourself a liberal or a democrat. You're someone whose identity depends so heavily on the puerile notion that you're better and harder working than other people that you would implode if our society became more fair and equitable. And people who think like that to an unyielding extent are elitists on the verge of fascist.
Our culture is full of narratives about why some people succeed and others fail. Work ethic, morals, faith, talent, the reasons go on and on. But no human being is in a position to make such a ridiculous, other-worldly judgment. Obviously if you've made up your mind that 10% of us are worth 90% of the nation's wealth, any rebuttal of this "winners and losers" view of the world will get nowhere. But if you have a system that alleviates financial burden that serves no constructive purpose but instead exists so we can continue to be in awe of the rich and famous, we will never know what value countless talented and capable people have to offer our society. And we will never have an honest appraisal of the faults and shortcomings of people we hold in undeserving esteem.
Allow me to digress. I recently saw an excerpt about Finland's education system, ranked No. 1 in the world. Decades ago, Finland's education system was no better than America's. Both sucked. For some reason, though, Finland had the idea that it made no sense to perpetuate something that sucks. So they changed their education system, and now it is the best in the world. And the changes Finland made to its education system weren't "incremental." They overhauled their education system, which is what you have to do to improve something that sucks. Why not do that, unless you think it is good that something sucks? And that is the giveaway about how bogus and fraudulent our system is and the mentality of people who insist nothing in America could or should be changed. You hold dear to the idea there are winners and losers among us and at the same time endorse a system that sucks and encourages a bigoted, biased, and toxic view of other people.
Finland didn't decide that improving their education system only required serving fruit during lunch or putting a computer within ten feet of everyone's line of sight. According to this excerpt, the Finnish school week lasts 20 hours, and there is no homework. The emphasis of the education system is to teach people to be happy and to learn how to socialize. That's not going to happen in a system that pits young people against one another in a nauseating parade of test scores and teaches people that the height of human ambition is to fuck other people over, whether it is financially or otherwise.
No, we don't live in a society of winners and losers and people who believe in a financial system that provides incentive for people to work hard and do their best. We live in a system where we reject any idea about how society should work that would result in people being happy and learning how to socialize. But then again, such goals are idealistic, right?
Before I go on, I want to address the two most depressing outcomes of the 2016 Democrat primary, not that there aren't more. But here are the two worst developments from both the debates, the media coverage, and the mentality of voters.
#1 Marijuana is STILL a taboo subject.
While we pat ourselves on the back for being ready to elect a female president - her gender seems to be the only qualifying attribute she needs - after having a Black president, the Democrat Party, and the media still cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that marijuana should be legal and that its prohibition is hideously oppressive.
I make this point because in each debate, Sanders has said something to the effect of "it is ridiculous that no one was jailed as a result of the financial practices that led to the 2008 economic crash but people still get police records for smoking marijuana." In the last debate he announced that he would reclassify marijuana at the federal level.
Each time Sanders has brought up the subject of legalizing marijuana federally and the stupidity of its prohibition, Clinton and the media have totally ignored his remarks. "Speaking of marijuana laws, since Senator Sanders has brought up his policies on marijuana, where do you stand, Sec. Clinton?" is never the media's follow up question. Instead, the debate moves on the topic as quickly as possible. How can you think it's backward to be sexist but still think people who use cannabis are second-class citizens, while every other commercial glorifies alcohol? Equality only matters in rigid contexts such as gender or race. Not to stand for equality as a matter of principle rather than perceived personal advantage is the pits of hypocrisy. "I'm for equality because it will give me an advantage over people who are not in my group" is a total bullshit idea.
Why would there be absolutely no exchange between Sanders and Clinton on the issue of marijuana legalization? If Clinton opposes legalization or reclassification on the federal level, why doesn't she say so? If she agrees with Sanders, why remain silent? And don't tell me that commercial for pistachios where penguins exhale smoke and fall over means we've made progress on this issue. We've gone from just say no to just say nothing. And what good are our media doing by not following up on Sanders' comments about reforming marijuana laws and policy? I guess these "winners" in the media world who have become national celebrities are too sophisticated for me to understand. Don't ask any hard-hitting questions. Don't discuss anything that might make one of the candidates or many of the people watching at home uncomfortable. No elbows on the table! Don't use that desert fork to eat your salad!
Controversy at a political debate? Why that's unheard of.
We live in a neo-Puritan Age. There is a freaking rule and implied etiquette for everything. Spontaneity and eccentricity are no longer welcome. Even being a freak has become a formulaic version of conformity.
Clinton's strategy of saying nothing in response to Sanders's comments on marijuana policy obviously serves the purpose of not alienating any potential voter, a clear sign her campaign is for the most part self-serving and indifferent to the serious problems ordinary people face in this country that are not their fault. That alone tells much about the difference between her and Sanders. Sanders is not worried that some people will hear his stance that marijuana should be reclassified federally and that its prohibition needs to end and say "I'm not going to vote for him." Any candidate who just wants votes but has no principles or conviction about how the country should move forward is obviously just in it for herself. The fact the media have never once pressed Clinton on her views on marijuana shows how pathetic and unprofessional these so-called "winners" in our society are.
The people on the news networks who get to rub elbows with some of the most powerful people in the world may be celebrities who have made it to the top of their profession, but that accomplishment is the consequence of their dull-mindedness and self-serving approach to life, not, journalistic ethics, smarts, talent, or any other impressive characteristic. And that is a microcosm of why we have the kinds of problems we do in this nation: obsessed with competition, winning, work ethic and judgment, we extend zero effort to pondering whether or not the people who become President or household media celebrities are impressive individuals or automatons who learned long ago how to get ahead and since then have made it a point not to learn another damn thing. Not surprising for a culture that has a fundamentalist and insane idea of what competition is and couldn't care less our education system ranks somewhere in the thirties. So much for being number one. Why let that get in the way of celebrating our God-given right to be willfully ignorant and abusive people?
We should not be surprised, then, that the candidates for the general election in November, are historically unpopular even among the people who affiliate with their respective parity. Got to love that quality control!
#2 The Iraq War is now apparently a non-issue.
Just as with marijuana policy and the issue of federal reclassification has never been worthy of extended discussion, Clinton's vote for the Iraq war has never been an issue on which she has been pressed. Sanders has brought up her vote for the Iraq war and his vote against it in each of the debates, but again, the shallow, spectacle-driven nature of these events has never allowed for the open-ended format that might have, God forbid, made Sec. Clinton uncomfortable and given her supporters the time to process who and what they are actually supporting, rather than just saying it will be great to have a woman president and we can't have a socialist in the White House.
The fear and anger after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon are totally understandable, but the reason that societies have institutions and leaders is precisely so that primal impulses do not materialize into national decisions--like the "shock and awe" attack on Iraq. We can recognize that we have enemies in the world and face threats to our security without resorting to the most destructive response possible. Even with a decade of hindsight with which to reflect on the decision to start a war with Iraq, the media, and many people who thought Bush and Cheney were terrible leaders now appear to think the one major decision that defined their administration was a good idea--or at least not bad enough to reject anyone who thought it was.
With those points made, I will leave with a couple of suggestions for future primaries, debates, and elections. As many people have pointed out the superdelegate count should be a proportional reflection of voters wishes, not an autocratic act of political power by people who obviously loathe democracy and the needs and wishes of ordinary people.
The format of the debates is circus-like and redundant. Even as a Sanders' supporter, I wonder what the point of continuing to listen to him is. I agree with him and think it is obvious he is the best candidate for President and clearly the only person running who is looking out for the people. It is a joke that he hasn't been the most popular Presidential candidate in decades, let alone that he is going to lose, let alone that the system was never going to let him have a chance.
So if we're going to have so many debates, why do they all need to be essentially the same: the same questions asked, and a format that only allows for brief discussion on a number of issues and never allows for the extended focus necessary to deal with serious and complex matters? Instead, I recommend having debates that are designated to focus only on a single issue. One debate would be on foreign policy, another on economic policy, another on education, and another on criminal justice policy. Such a format would not allow candidates to duck issues that might make them not look so good and would in turn force the viewing audience to at least acknowledge the complexity of these issues if it is too much to ask of people to use their minds to grapple with anything that is not reduced to overly-simplistic perspectives, as though there is nothing complex about the world and human politics. There is nothing complex about recognizing Hillary Clinton is a woman and Bernie Sanders isn't. One wonders if for many voters in the Democrat primary there has never been anything more at stake in this election or the future of the country.
The predictable story line that the media mega-star, American success-stories we see on TV all too much--I'm sick of all of them--is how inspiring the Sanders campaign has been. Young people being energized and involved in the political process, a candidate who has the social courage to voice views that here-to-fore were not articulated or advocated, and a platform that has been about addressing dysfunctional income inequality and the out-of-control greed that keeps feeding it. But in a society very much characterized by winning and losing, a more honest statement would be about the reality that Sanders is going to lose the primary, is not going to be President, and has been despised by the power-players of his own party and ridiculed by the snobs who make money pretending to be experts on politics and debating, but in reality are polished bigots and adolescent-minded attention seekers who do nothing but promote themselves.
How many times has this happened: debate ends. First question--no matter the network or the moderator--"so, what did Bernie Sanders do wrong in tonight's debate?" "He was weak on his gun policy and remains ignorant and unimpressive on foreign policy." Now, if that's not objective journalism, I don't know what is. Who would have thought that Fox news, long maligned as a phony, biased, bigoted propaganda operation masquerading as a network of professional journalism, has become the model to be emulated by the rest of American media?
In my idealistic, unrealistic world, an easy way to get around this problem is to have the debates focused on a single issue, and the moderators, rather than being the people who frame the discussion even though they are not the ones running for office (that's kind of dumb, isn't it?), would only moderate the discussion. In other words, they would speak up only when someone got off topic or was dominating the conversation at the expense of the opponent's ability to clarify a point or dispute something that had been said.
And besides, nothing says "the people are too stupid to make up their own minds about what they just watched" than to have the debates immediately followed up by arrogant know-it-alls telling us what we just saw and what we should think about it. If we're not going to have a good education system, let's not make things worse by pretending that all of us who don't have our own TV show are stupid. What ought to happen is that when the debate is over, the TV should go off, and families, friends, neighbors, and members of the community should break bread, have a beer, and discuss among themselves what happened during the debate and who the better candidate is. And a big part of learning to socialize--which I think most Americans are determined not to do--is to have vigorous arguments and disagreements and still respect and care about someone other than yourself. Who knows? Instead of being "offended" by everything you disagree with, you might learn something from someone who disagrees with you. And if you listened to them long enough, they would probably learn something from you as well.
Another thing: don't have the debates take place in front of audiences, who are divided up like sports fans cheering and jeering the comments of the debaters. These are supposed to be Presidential debates, not middle school, lunch-table put down shows. What is accomplished by hearing people chant "Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!" at the conclusion of a debate, as though he just hit a grand slam and the fans want him to take a curtain call. Politics is pretty serious stuff. It's slightly more important than who gets to be homecoming king and queen.
No, for me, there is nothing inspiring about the Bernie Sanders run for president. The way he has been ridiculed has alienated me from a Democrat Party I have always voted for and tried to believe in even when it has contradicted my sensibilities. Without question our political system is rigged, and even the more enlightened people in our society are apparently rigid and too conservative for me to relate to. They are not the people I thought they were. They have better things to do than deal with complex issues and dysfunctional national policies that won't go away "over a long period of time" because that's the only way change can happen.
The mark of a good leader--political or otherwise--is someone who makes the people around him or her better. Someone who improves the lives of others rather than improving their own lives at others expense. But America--most of it--is still not interested in that kind of person or that kind of mentality. We are still not interested in socializing with one another but instead taking sides, casting judgment, and being indifferent to the suffering and difficulties of other people that are caused by punitive, maniacal forces beyond their control. It won't be long until Bernie Sanders is reduced to a relic of a better world that was only ever meant to be a fantasy, rather than a vision for the future.
What a drag.
It's impossible not to be cynical about everything in this primary. The disproportionate gap between delegates and superdelegates, for example, is an ugly giveaway about how corrupt, conservative, and un-democratic the Democrats are. Okay, wait. Free college and free health care--criminal justice reform and actual governance of Wall Street and investment banks? How about non-poisoned water for the people of Flint, Michigan. Remember that? Yes, that is still a problem. But hey, who needs water? That's idealistic, right?
Donald Trump has enjoyed making himself an icon and sounding board for bigotry, sexism, and xenophobia. But criticizing him is beside the point: he has deliberately made himself an easy target and enjoys the attention. Criticizing him is a distraction from issues surrounding the 2016 Democrat Party that are far more disturbing than Trump's candidacy.
For starters, this Democrat primary has shredded what little pretense remained that the Democrats are a liberal, people-focused party. Those were the Democrats of the mid 20th century, and they are no more around than Prince, David Bowie, or Johnny Cash. The opposition to Sanders from within the Democrat party is the kind of rigid, angry, and prideful nonsense one would expect from the opposing party - the Republicans. What sense does it make to support Clinton at the expense of a Sanders' presidency? You want some change or some improvement, but not a lot of change and a lot of improvement? I don't get it. The idea that Sanders' policies are unrealistic and too expensive to pay for is both not true and ignorant. The country really does face serious problems of income inequality and a stagnant system that has gone so long without changing it has become malignant. Other countries really do have free college and free health care. If you don't want those things, quit calling yourself a liberal or a democrat. You're someone whose identity depends so heavily on the puerile notion that you're better and harder working than other people that you would implode if our society became more fair and equitable. And people who think like that to an unyielding extent are elitists on the verge of fascist.
Our culture is full of narratives about why some people succeed and others fail. Work ethic, morals, faith, talent, the reasons go on and on. But no human being is in a position to make such a ridiculous, other-worldly judgment. Obviously if you've made up your mind that 10% of us are worth 90% of the nation's wealth, any rebuttal of this "winners and losers" view of the world will get nowhere. But if you have a system that alleviates financial burden that serves no constructive purpose but instead exists so we can continue to be in awe of the rich and famous, we will never know what value countless talented and capable people have to offer our society. And we will never have an honest appraisal of the faults and shortcomings of people we hold in undeserving esteem.
Allow me to digress. I recently saw an excerpt about Finland's education system, ranked No. 1 in the world. Decades ago, Finland's education system was no better than America's. Both sucked. For some reason, though, Finland had the idea that it made no sense to perpetuate something that sucks. So they changed their education system, and now it is the best in the world. And the changes Finland made to its education system weren't "incremental." They overhauled their education system, which is what you have to do to improve something that sucks. Why not do that, unless you think it is good that something sucks? And that is the giveaway about how bogus and fraudulent our system is and the mentality of people who insist nothing in America could or should be changed. You hold dear to the idea there are winners and losers among us and at the same time endorse a system that sucks and encourages a bigoted, biased, and toxic view of other people.
Finland didn't decide that improving their education system only required serving fruit during lunch or putting a computer within ten feet of everyone's line of sight. According to this excerpt, the Finnish school week lasts 20 hours, and there is no homework. The emphasis of the education system is to teach people to be happy and to learn how to socialize. That's not going to happen in a system that pits young people against one another in a nauseating parade of test scores and teaches people that the height of human ambition is to fuck other people over, whether it is financially or otherwise.
No, we don't live in a society of winners and losers and people who believe in a financial system that provides incentive for people to work hard and do their best. We live in a system where we reject any idea about how society should work that would result in people being happy and learning how to socialize. But then again, such goals are idealistic, right?
Before I go on, I want to address the two most depressing outcomes of the 2016 Democrat primary, not that there aren't more. But here are the two worst developments from both the debates, the media coverage, and the mentality of voters.
#1 Marijuana is STILL a taboo subject.
While we pat ourselves on the back for being ready to elect a female president - her gender seems to be the only qualifying attribute she needs - after having a Black president, the Democrat Party, and the media still cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that marijuana should be legal and that its prohibition is hideously oppressive.
I make this point because in each debate, Sanders has said something to the effect of "it is ridiculous that no one was jailed as a result of the financial practices that led to the 2008 economic crash but people still get police records for smoking marijuana." In the last debate he announced that he would reclassify marijuana at the federal level.
Each time Sanders has brought up the subject of legalizing marijuana federally and the stupidity of its prohibition, Clinton and the media have totally ignored his remarks. "Speaking of marijuana laws, since Senator Sanders has brought up his policies on marijuana, where do you stand, Sec. Clinton?" is never the media's follow up question. Instead, the debate moves on the topic as quickly as possible. How can you think it's backward to be sexist but still think people who use cannabis are second-class citizens, while every other commercial glorifies alcohol? Equality only matters in rigid contexts such as gender or race. Not to stand for equality as a matter of principle rather than perceived personal advantage is the pits of hypocrisy. "I'm for equality because it will give me an advantage over people who are not in my group" is a total bullshit idea.
Why would there be absolutely no exchange between Sanders and Clinton on the issue of marijuana legalization? If Clinton opposes legalization or reclassification on the federal level, why doesn't she say so? If she agrees with Sanders, why remain silent? And don't tell me that commercial for pistachios where penguins exhale smoke and fall over means we've made progress on this issue. We've gone from just say no to just say nothing. And what good are our media doing by not following up on Sanders' comments about reforming marijuana laws and policy? I guess these "winners" in the media world who have become national celebrities are too sophisticated for me to understand. Don't ask any hard-hitting questions. Don't discuss anything that might make one of the candidates or many of the people watching at home uncomfortable. No elbows on the table! Don't use that desert fork to eat your salad!
Controversy at a political debate? Why that's unheard of.
We live in a neo-Puritan Age. There is a freaking rule and implied etiquette for everything. Spontaneity and eccentricity are no longer welcome. Even being a freak has become a formulaic version of conformity.
Clinton's strategy of saying nothing in response to Sanders's comments on marijuana policy obviously serves the purpose of not alienating any potential voter, a clear sign her campaign is for the most part self-serving and indifferent to the serious problems ordinary people face in this country that are not their fault. That alone tells much about the difference between her and Sanders. Sanders is not worried that some people will hear his stance that marijuana should be reclassified federally and that its prohibition needs to end and say "I'm not going to vote for him." Any candidate who just wants votes but has no principles or conviction about how the country should move forward is obviously just in it for herself. The fact the media have never once pressed Clinton on her views on marijuana shows how pathetic and unprofessional these so-called "winners" in our society are.
The people on the news networks who get to rub elbows with some of the most powerful people in the world may be celebrities who have made it to the top of their profession, but that accomplishment is the consequence of their dull-mindedness and self-serving approach to life, not, journalistic ethics, smarts, talent, or any other impressive characteristic. And that is a microcosm of why we have the kinds of problems we do in this nation: obsessed with competition, winning, work ethic and judgment, we extend zero effort to pondering whether or not the people who become President or household media celebrities are impressive individuals or automatons who learned long ago how to get ahead and since then have made it a point not to learn another damn thing. Not surprising for a culture that has a fundamentalist and insane idea of what competition is and couldn't care less our education system ranks somewhere in the thirties. So much for being number one. Why let that get in the way of celebrating our God-given right to be willfully ignorant and abusive people?
We should not be surprised, then, that the candidates for the general election in November, are historically unpopular even among the people who affiliate with their respective parity. Got to love that quality control!
#2 The Iraq War is now apparently a non-issue.
Just as with marijuana policy and the issue of federal reclassification has never been worthy of extended discussion, Clinton's vote for the Iraq war has never been an issue on which she has been pressed. Sanders has brought up her vote for the Iraq war and his vote against it in each of the debates, but again, the shallow, spectacle-driven nature of these events has never allowed for the open-ended format that might have, God forbid, made Sec. Clinton uncomfortable and given her supporters the time to process who and what they are actually supporting, rather than just saying it will be great to have a woman president and we can't have a socialist in the White House.
The fear and anger after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon are totally understandable, but the reason that societies have institutions and leaders is precisely so that primal impulses do not materialize into national decisions--like the "shock and awe" attack on Iraq. We can recognize that we have enemies in the world and face threats to our security without resorting to the most destructive response possible. Even with a decade of hindsight with which to reflect on the decision to start a war with Iraq, the media, and many people who thought Bush and Cheney were terrible leaders now appear to think the one major decision that defined their administration was a good idea--or at least not bad enough to reject anyone who thought it was.
With those points made, I will leave with a couple of suggestions for future primaries, debates, and elections. As many people have pointed out the superdelegate count should be a proportional reflection of voters wishes, not an autocratic act of political power by people who obviously loathe democracy and the needs and wishes of ordinary people.
The format of the debates is circus-like and redundant. Even as a Sanders' supporter, I wonder what the point of continuing to listen to him is. I agree with him and think it is obvious he is the best candidate for President and clearly the only person running who is looking out for the people. It is a joke that he hasn't been the most popular Presidential candidate in decades, let alone that he is going to lose, let alone that the system was never going to let him have a chance.
So if we're going to have so many debates, why do they all need to be essentially the same: the same questions asked, and a format that only allows for brief discussion on a number of issues and never allows for the extended focus necessary to deal with serious and complex matters? Instead, I recommend having debates that are designated to focus only on a single issue. One debate would be on foreign policy, another on economic policy, another on education, and another on criminal justice policy. Such a format would not allow candidates to duck issues that might make them not look so good and would in turn force the viewing audience to at least acknowledge the complexity of these issues if it is too much to ask of people to use their minds to grapple with anything that is not reduced to overly-simplistic perspectives, as though there is nothing complex about the world and human politics. There is nothing complex about recognizing Hillary Clinton is a woman and Bernie Sanders isn't. One wonders if for many voters in the Democrat primary there has never been anything more at stake in this election or the future of the country.
The predictable story line that the media mega-star, American success-stories we see on TV all too much--I'm sick of all of them--is how inspiring the Sanders campaign has been. Young people being energized and involved in the political process, a candidate who has the social courage to voice views that here-to-fore were not articulated or advocated, and a platform that has been about addressing dysfunctional income inequality and the out-of-control greed that keeps feeding it. But in a society very much characterized by winning and losing, a more honest statement would be about the reality that Sanders is going to lose the primary, is not going to be President, and has been despised by the power-players of his own party and ridiculed by the snobs who make money pretending to be experts on politics and debating, but in reality are polished bigots and adolescent-minded attention seekers who do nothing but promote themselves.
How many times has this happened: debate ends. First question--no matter the network or the moderator--"so, what did Bernie Sanders do wrong in tonight's debate?" "He was weak on his gun policy and remains ignorant and unimpressive on foreign policy." Now, if that's not objective journalism, I don't know what is. Who would have thought that Fox news, long maligned as a phony, biased, bigoted propaganda operation masquerading as a network of professional journalism, has become the model to be emulated by the rest of American media?
In my idealistic, unrealistic world, an easy way to get around this problem is to have the debates focused on a single issue, and the moderators, rather than being the people who frame the discussion even though they are not the ones running for office (that's kind of dumb, isn't it?), would only moderate the discussion. In other words, they would speak up only when someone got off topic or was dominating the conversation at the expense of the opponent's ability to clarify a point or dispute something that had been said.
And besides, nothing says "the people are too stupid to make up their own minds about what they just watched" than to have the debates immediately followed up by arrogant know-it-alls telling us what we just saw and what we should think about it. If we're not going to have a good education system, let's not make things worse by pretending that all of us who don't have our own TV show are stupid. What ought to happen is that when the debate is over, the TV should go off, and families, friends, neighbors, and members of the community should break bread, have a beer, and discuss among themselves what happened during the debate and who the better candidate is. And a big part of learning to socialize--which I think most Americans are determined not to do--is to have vigorous arguments and disagreements and still respect and care about someone other than yourself. Who knows? Instead of being "offended" by everything you disagree with, you might learn something from someone who disagrees with you. And if you listened to them long enough, they would probably learn something from you as well.
Another thing: don't have the debates take place in front of audiences, who are divided up like sports fans cheering and jeering the comments of the debaters. These are supposed to be Presidential debates, not middle school, lunch-table put down shows. What is accomplished by hearing people chant "Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!" at the conclusion of a debate, as though he just hit a grand slam and the fans want him to take a curtain call. Politics is pretty serious stuff. It's slightly more important than who gets to be homecoming king and queen.
No, for me, there is nothing inspiring about the Bernie Sanders run for president. The way he has been ridiculed has alienated me from a Democrat Party I have always voted for and tried to believe in even when it has contradicted my sensibilities. Without question our political system is rigged, and even the more enlightened people in our society are apparently rigid and too conservative for me to relate to. They are not the people I thought they were. They have better things to do than deal with complex issues and dysfunctional national policies that won't go away "over a long period of time" because that's the only way change can happen.
The mark of a good leader--political or otherwise--is someone who makes the people around him or her better. Someone who improves the lives of others rather than improving their own lives at others expense. But America--most of it--is still not interested in that kind of person or that kind of mentality. We are still not interested in socializing with one another but instead taking sides, casting judgment, and being indifferent to the suffering and difficulties of other people that are caused by punitive, maniacal forces beyond their control. It won't be long until Bernie Sanders is reduced to a relic of a better world that was only ever meant to be a fantasy, rather than a vision for the future.
What a drag.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
This is How Meaningless the NBA Has Become
Two and a half months from now, when the NBA season will finally come to an end, sports pundits will no doubt talk about the historic 73 wins that Golden State achieved this season. And yet, when it comes to historical achievements in the world of sports, I can think of no event that has generated less interest than the Warriors breaking the Chicago Bulls previous record of 72 wins back in 1996.
It's hard to imagine that if some team broke the Major League Record for regular season wins that no one would care. Kentucky's loss to Wisconsin in 2015 was a pretty big deal because the Wildcats were two wins away from college basketball's first undefeated season since Indiana in 1976. The same can be said for the Patriots loss to the Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl which left them one win short of duplicating the Dolphins undefeated season in 1972.
How can a pro team in a major sport break the record for regular season wins and it not matter?
Because it plays in a league whose regular season doesn't matter.
The NBA regular season is a snooze-job--a parade of boring games played by millionaire players on teams that know before the season even starts who is going to be in the playoffs--and more recently who is likely to be playing for the championship.
The season starts in October (too early) and drags on until April (too late). After five and a half months of basketball, sixteen teams make the playoffs, which consist of best of seven match-ups after the first round--which is why the playoffs are also rather dull and drag on too long.
The regular season would be probably be more engaging if only eight teams--four from each conference--made it to the playoffs. More would be at stake over the marathon regular season. Teams that sleepwalk through the regular season would have to play as though if they lost the evening's game it might be the one-game difference in not making it to the postseason. Of all the major sports, the NBA is without question the worst when it comes to the number of games played and the length of the regular season meaning the least when it comes to eliminating teams from postseason competition. Why play so many games when over half the teams in the league are going to make it to a postseason that lasts half as long as the regular season anyway? Why not shorten the season by a month and have all the teams in the playoffs? Oh, right. Because that's the only scenario that could be more ridiculous than the current one.
But the biggest reason that the Warriors' 73 wins is so meaningless is the meager competition and low quality of play the NBA has to offer. The reason for these problems: the NBA has over-expanded, and too many players enter the league who are not good enough to be pro players.
The success of LeBron James going straight from high school to the pros, and of a few other players who played their obligatory "one-and-done" season in college, has created a widespread mentality among college players that anyone who has a pretty good season is ready to be in the NBA. The idea that former UK player Skal Labissiere--who looked totally lost and out-matched for much of the college season in a really, really down SEC--is a projected top 15 pick to play in supposedly the best professional basketball league in the world is a glaring example of how poor the overall quality of play in the NBA is, and how void the talent pool from which it has to draw has become. The 6' 11'' Labissiere occasionally showed he could hit a mid-range jumper, so that is enough to get him a million-dollar contract and a spot on a pro roster. Young players want to get to the NBA as quickly as possible, so it makes sense that they are less skilled and less prepared to play pro ball than players were 25 years ago. Michael Jordan didn't go to the pros until after his junior season. So I guess Skal Labissiere is going to be a better NBA player than Jordan? That is how far the quality of play and quality of players has fallen.
The NBA had its heyday during the 1980s, when cable television made it a regular viewing selection. Then people started to watch its games as regularly as they did pro baseball and football. That was a considerable improvement for a sport whose championship series was played on a tape-delayed basis up until the end of the 1970s. That's how second-class the NBA was to pro football and baseball.
Then, as any sports fan knows, the NBA enjoyed nearly a decade of the Bird-Magic era, when two of the best players ever converged to play for two of the league's winningest teams, the Celtics and the Lakers. Those teams brought together the ethos of the East Coast and West Coast, with the white Bird epitomizing the blue-collar toughness of Boston, and the African-American Magic personifying the glitz and glamor of L. A. and Hollywood with dazzling play that led a team called "showtime." Those two players and those two teams were really, really, really good. Between them, they won seven of the league's championships in the 1980s, and faced each other three times.
Right when Bird and Magic were passing their prime, and when the Celtics-Lakers rivalry was no longer the league's showcase, along came Michael Jordan, who led the Bulls to six titles in the 1990s/ That number would have been higher had Jordan not indulged his desire to become a major league baseball player for two seasons.
But once Jordan's dominance began to wane, the next great star was nowhere to be found. Really what happened was that a professional league that always has been challenged to stand on par with college basketball's popularity no longer had the incredible players and amazing rivalries to make the league as interesting as a college game that had geographic identity as a perennial guarantee of fan-base enthusiasm. The NBA has always been a big-city favorite, while most of America has a college team nearby that captures its loyalty. But once upon a time, even the best college players played at least three years, and many played all four, and while that may delay the financial bounty of making it pro, in terms of basketball quality, it made both the college and pro game really good.
After Jordan, there was simply no player, or tandem of players, who could capture the adoration of the public the way Jordan, Bird, and Magic did. On top of the amazing ability of those players, there were not as many teams, and the overall skill of the league was pretty good--way better than today. Rather than talk about how this year's Warriors team would do against Jordan's Bulls, Bird's Celtics, or Magic's Lakers--for the record, they would get destroyed--let's remember Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns, Clyde Drexler's Portland Trail Blazers, Karl Malone's Utah Jazz, Patrick Ewing's Knicks, or Reggie Miller's Indiana Pacers. Those players and those teams were really, really good, and I point them out because they never won a championship. Anyone of those teams would be more formidable opponents for the Warriors than any team they will face until their (yawn, snore) inevitable re-match with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Some say that today's NBA players are more athletic than ever. But the term "athletic" is a euphemism for "not really that good at basketball"--which is what basketball players need to be good at. The NBA is not the decathlon. The high-flying dunks and other spectacular plays cannot make up for the generally dull and woeful play in a league where all but three or four teams have any realistic chance of competing for a title and where over half the teams are downright terrible, a revolving door of weak draft picks and players who come to the league too soon and under-skilled to be legit pro players no matter how much they sign for. Another UK player, Jamal Murray, has been projected as a lottery pick for the upcoming draft, and Murray looked intimidated, stiff, and tight in the NCAA tournament, having his worst game of the season against Indiana as UK went out in the second round. Murray went 1-for-9 from three-point range in UK's biggest, most pressure-packed game of the year. Are we to believe that a guy who put up a brick-fest in the NCAA tournament is ready to knock down big shots for millions of dollars in the conference finals? This guy could play with any of the studs mentioned above? Give me a break.
I could go on. LeBron James is a terrific player. Sometimes he looks erratic. He does not have the outside touch that the greats from earlier decades had. And Bird, Magic, and Jordan did not have to go play with another team with two other All-Stars to get a ring. But that is an unfair comment. James also did not get drafted by a team with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, or any other assortment of great players. I have no doubt James would hold his own with the greats from the 80s and 90s. He came along at a time when both college and pro ball were in decline.
But recent NBA seasons have been so awful that "in decline" is a drastic understatement. The NBA today is truly terrible, all the way around. Like I said: too many teams and way too many players are either too inexperienced or unskilled, or both, to be legit pros. There are too many teams because the NBA wants to have the same regional appeal that college teams do. It's not going to work. The NBA was at its best when its teams were exclusively big-city franchises. And the players are so fixated on getting to the NBA they clearly no longer care about being really, really good at basketball.
So Golden State's record-breaking 73 wins is a bit like a college player dominating pick up games against intramural teams. Anyone can look good when the competition isn't there and the reality is that everyone pretty much sucks.
It's hard to imagine that if some team broke the Major League Record for regular season wins that no one would care. Kentucky's loss to Wisconsin in 2015 was a pretty big deal because the Wildcats were two wins away from college basketball's first undefeated season since Indiana in 1976. The same can be said for the Patriots loss to the Giants in the 2008 Super Bowl which left them one win short of duplicating the Dolphins undefeated season in 1972.
How can a pro team in a major sport break the record for regular season wins and it not matter?
Because it plays in a league whose regular season doesn't matter.
The NBA regular season is a snooze-job--a parade of boring games played by millionaire players on teams that know before the season even starts who is going to be in the playoffs--and more recently who is likely to be playing for the championship.
The season starts in October (too early) and drags on until April (too late). After five and a half months of basketball, sixteen teams make the playoffs, which consist of best of seven match-ups after the first round--which is why the playoffs are also rather dull and drag on too long.
The regular season would be probably be more engaging if only eight teams--four from each conference--made it to the playoffs. More would be at stake over the marathon regular season. Teams that sleepwalk through the regular season would have to play as though if they lost the evening's game it might be the one-game difference in not making it to the postseason. Of all the major sports, the NBA is without question the worst when it comes to the number of games played and the length of the regular season meaning the least when it comes to eliminating teams from postseason competition. Why play so many games when over half the teams in the league are going to make it to a postseason that lasts half as long as the regular season anyway? Why not shorten the season by a month and have all the teams in the playoffs? Oh, right. Because that's the only scenario that could be more ridiculous than the current one.
But the biggest reason that the Warriors' 73 wins is so meaningless is the meager competition and low quality of play the NBA has to offer. The reason for these problems: the NBA has over-expanded, and too many players enter the league who are not good enough to be pro players.
The success of LeBron James going straight from high school to the pros, and of a few other players who played their obligatory "one-and-done" season in college, has created a widespread mentality among college players that anyone who has a pretty good season is ready to be in the NBA. The idea that former UK player Skal Labissiere--who looked totally lost and out-matched for much of the college season in a really, really down SEC--is a projected top 15 pick to play in supposedly the best professional basketball league in the world is a glaring example of how poor the overall quality of play in the NBA is, and how void the talent pool from which it has to draw has become. The 6' 11'' Labissiere occasionally showed he could hit a mid-range jumper, so that is enough to get him a million-dollar contract and a spot on a pro roster. Young players want to get to the NBA as quickly as possible, so it makes sense that they are less skilled and less prepared to play pro ball than players were 25 years ago. Michael Jordan didn't go to the pros until after his junior season. So I guess Skal Labissiere is going to be a better NBA player than Jordan? That is how far the quality of play and quality of players has fallen.
The NBA had its heyday during the 1980s, when cable television made it a regular viewing selection. Then people started to watch its games as regularly as they did pro baseball and football. That was a considerable improvement for a sport whose championship series was played on a tape-delayed basis up until the end of the 1970s. That's how second-class the NBA was to pro football and baseball.
Then, as any sports fan knows, the NBA enjoyed nearly a decade of the Bird-Magic era, when two of the best players ever converged to play for two of the league's winningest teams, the Celtics and the Lakers. Those teams brought together the ethos of the East Coast and West Coast, with the white Bird epitomizing the blue-collar toughness of Boston, and the African-American Magic personifying the glitz and glamor of L. A. and Hollywood with dazzling play that led a team called "showtime." Those two players and those two teams were really, really, really good. Between them, they won seven of the league's championships in the 1980s, and faced each other three times.
Right when Bird and Magic were passing their prime, and when the Celtics-Lakers rivalry was no longer the league's showcase, along came Michael Jordan, who led the Bulls to six titles in the 1990s/ That number would have been higher had Jordan not indulged his desire to become a major league baseball player for two seasons.
But once Jordan's dominance began to wane, the next great star was nowhere to be found. Really what happened was that a professional league that always has been challenged to stand on par with college basketball's popularity no longer had the incredible players and amazing rivalries to make the league as interesting as a college game that had geographic identity as a perennial guarantee of fan-base enthusiasm. The NBA has always been a big-city favorite, while most of America has a college team nearby that captures its loyalty. But once upon a time, even the best college players played at least three years, and many played all four, and while that may delay the financial bounty of making it pro, in terms of basketball quality, it made both the college and pro game really good.
After Jordan, there was simply no player, or tandem of players, who could capture the adoration of the public the way Jordan, Bird, and Magic did. On top of the amazing ability of those players, there were not as many teams, and the overall skill of the league was pretty good--way better than today. Rather than talk about how this year's Warriors team would do against Jordan's Bulls, Bird's Celtics, or Magic's Lakers--for the record, they would get destroyed--let's remember Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns, Clyde Drexler's Portland Trail Blazers, Karl Malone's Utah Jazz, Patrick Ewing's Knicks, or Reggie Miller's Indiana Pacers. Those players and those teams were really, really good, and I point them out because they never won a championship. Anyone of those teams would be more formidable opponents for the Warriors than any team they will face until their (yawn, snore) inevitable re-match with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Some say that today's NBA players are more athletic than ever. But the term "athletic" is a euphemism for "not really that good at basketball"--which is what basketball players need to be good at. The NBA is not the decathlon. The high-flying dunks and other spectacular plays cannot make up for the generally dull and woeful play in a league where all but three or four teams have any realistic chance of competing for a title and where over half the teams are downright terrible, a revolving door of weak draft picks and players who come to the league too soon and under-skilled to be legit pro players no matter how much they sign for. Another UK player, Jamal Murray, has been projected as a lottery pick for the upcoming draft, and Murray looked intimidated, stiff, and tight in the NCAA tournament, having his worst game of the season against Indiana as UK went out in the second round. Murray went 1-for-9 from three-point range in UK's biggest, most pressure-packed game of the year. Are we to believe that a guy who put up a brick-fest in the NCAA tournament is ready to knock down big shots for millions of dollars in the conference finals? This guy could play with any of the studs mentioned above? Give me a break.
I could go on. LeBron James is a terrific player. Sometimes he looks erratic. He does not have the outside touch that the greats from earlier decades had. And Bird, Magic, and Jordan did not have to go play with another team with two other All-Stars to get a ring. But that is an unfair comment. James also did not get drafted by a team with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, or any other assortment of great players. I have no doubt James would hold his own with the greats from the 80s and 90s. He came along at a time when both college and pro ball were in decline.
But recent NBA seasons have been so awful that "in decline" is a drastic understatement. The NBA today is truly terrible, all the way around. Like I said: too many teams and way too many players are either too inexperienced or unskilled, or both, to be legit pros. There are too many teams because the NBA wants to have the same regional appeal that college teams do. It's not going to work. The NBA was at its best when its teams were exclusively big-city franchises. And the players are so fixated on getting to the NBA they clearly no longer care about being really, really good at basketball.
So Golden State's record-breaking 73 wins is a bit like a college player dominating pick up games against intramural teams. Anyone can look good when the competition isn't there and the reality is that everyone pretty much sucks.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Would It Be So Bad If There Were a Growing Rift Within the Democrat Party?
While coverage of the 2016 primary races in both parties has done its best to render the race as a soap opera--a major reason Donald Trump has been in the spotlight so much--a more serious issue seems to be coming to the surface. Last weeks' exchange between Democrat primary contestants Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton that the other one was "unqualified" to be President, along with Bill Clinton's response to Black-Lives-Matter hecklers, indicate there is a division within the Democrat Party, and that the differences between Sanders and Clinton and their respective supporters is more significant than either camp or the media have let on.
Thus far, the media's efforts to present the primary races as a soap opera have been both predictable and paradoxical. For every effort to fan the flames of drama during the primary season, the coverage has been predictable--more of Trump's antics--and made something that ought to be inherently exciting and interesting--a Presidential election--seem rather dull. Even though Sanders has now won seven of the last eight contests, the media have consistently covered the Democrat primary as though Clinton is the inevitable winner and Sanders' campaign as a largely symbolic one featuring a candidate who never had a chance of capturing the nomination. At the same, the contest between Sanders and Clinton has been described as largely civil, while the Republican contest has been depicted as puerile, as so divisive within the ranks that front-runner Trump will be blocked from the nomination at the Republican Convention in Cleveland this summer. There has yet to be a diversion from either perspective.
But I have a different take on both primaries, particularly the Democrat primary. The "Bernie or Bust" movement was one clear sign that people who currently identify with Sanders don't automatically identify with the Democrat Party. During the debates, Sanders and Clinton have made it a point that no matter their differences, the tone and focus of their debates clearly distinguishes the Democrats from the Republicans. Both Sanders and Clinton made it a point to follow-up their alleged "unqualified" remarks (Sanders has been criticized for being touchy and defensive about something Clinton apparently didn't say about him) by praising the other and announcing that no matter what, should the other candidate be the nominee, that person would be far superior to whoever comes out of the Republican primary.
One has to ask, though, if such statements are not made in response to what both candidates and their entourage may recognize but not want to verbalize: the differences between Sanders and Clinton are quite significant, and their supporters have considerably less common ground than one might assume. In other words, efforts by both Sanders and Clinton to debate in a civil manner, and state their support for the other should that person become the nominee, betray a concern that there is greater turmoil within the Democrat Party than either candidate may want to admit.
Sanders supporters are clearly disgusted with the fact their candidate has not been taken seriously as a legit contender for the Presidency, and that the Democrat primary has been rigged from Day One to be a victory march for Clinton, regardless of the truth to that perception. The "Bernie or Bust" movement reflects a general disgust with the party, the primary, with the Clinton campaign, but most of all, the idea that they are obliged to vote for Clinton in the general election once she (inevitably) claims the nomination. Actor Susan Sarandon incurred quite a backlash when she made public she wasn't sure if she would vote for Clinton should Sanders lose the nomination. That backlash, in turn, makes it pretty clear there is a good deal of disgust among Clinton supporters for the Sanders campaign, especially Sanders supporters. "How dare you say you wouldn't vote for Clinton in November!" the Clinton supporters seem to be saying. This disgust seems consistent with the depiction of Sanders' message and the mentality of his supporters as childish, unrealistic, and disloyal. Sanders' supporters have been branded as people who believe in a candidate who can't possibly be President and a platform that is unachievable because, of course, "there is no way to pay for it." And how dare Sanders supporters jeopardize the Democrats' chances in November by saying if their beloved Bernie doesn't get the nomination, then Trump, or some other Republican can just go ahead and be President.
A number of things have not gone the usual way for the Democrats during this primary. For one, with a sitting Democrat president, the predictable arrangement would have been for Vice-President Joe Biden to be the presumptive nominee, and the primary would have just been a formality. But Biden chose not to run, and one gets the feeling that after losing in 2008 to Obama, Clinton has been the party establishment's choice to be the next Democrat to run for President. Usually the primary of the party already in the White House is a clear-cut choice. But while the party establishment may want it that way, that is not how it has turned out.
Sanders has given a voice and a face to a growing awareness within the population that super-rich people and corporations control the political agenda in the United States. Whether or not one agrees with this perception, or with the notion that such big-money influence is a major problem, that is the political trend. Thus, the Sanders' campaign has amounted to an attack on politics as we know it. That makes a lot of people more than a little annoyed, apparently. The displeasure Sanders' existence as a primary candidate has generated probably explains the ridiculous imbalance between the number of states Sanders has won and the number of delegates he receives when he wins a state. Sanders supporters complain (as the stereotyped version of them would have them do) that even when he wins a state, Clinton gets nearly as many delegates as he does. Thus the delegate total is not reflective of the will of the voters. If this imbalance between number of states won and delegate total indeed reveals that the Democrat establishment has made up its mind that Clinton will be the nominee, it is hard not to argue that whatever may distinguish the Democrats from the Republicans, it most certainly isn't that the former is "the party of the people," while the Republicans are the party of the rich and powerful.
Sanders has not made subtlety a cornerstone of his campaign. He has been quite blunt about the need for campaign finance reform and his stance that the current political system has been corrupted by super-PACs and big-money interests. Obviously, his supporters feel that currently neither party has either the incentive or the right people at the helm to represent the needs and interests of the non-rich, i. e. the ordinary people. As the primary contest enters its final months, and with a mathematically decisive primary in New York State a week away, I get the sense that for Bernie supporters the primary season has shifted from the excitement of seeing their candidate do better than expected and stay in contention longer than expected to a sudden frustration and anger that their candidate is nonetheless going to lose and was doomed from the start. If there is any truth to the perception that the Democrat party was never going to let Sanders win, then no matter how anyone may feel about either candidate, the party is coming apart at the seams.
It isn't the differences between Sanders and Clinton that matter, its the degree of those differences. And from the standpoint of the candidates' supporters, that degree is significant. It may be that the era of the Democrat Party appearing to be the party of the people while in reality being a party of the rich has run its course. For Sanders and his supporters, drawing attention to corruption in the political system and the perception that Clinton is first and foremost a candidate who will protect the interests of that system is not enough. Sanders supporters want their candidate to be taken seriously and to become the next President. His candidacy has not been a joke or a "socialist" diatribe against establishment politics just to make the primary more interesting and to make Clinton sweat a little. Rather, Sanders has delivered the most accurate and lucid message about our country's problems and what must be done to address them in recent memory. He stands apart not just from Republicans and from Clinton, but Democrat Presidential candidates in previous elections.
If the rift between Sanders and Clinton supporters is as great as it seems, it reflects a disconnect within the Democrat party that was growing long before 2016 and long before Bernie Sanders became a candidate. For the differences between the two groups to become a national dialogue is long overdue. The civility between Sanders and Clinton really amounts to a plea for people who may dislike one candidate or the other to keep the Democrat Party propped up. But if the party in fact does not unite the groups that stand behind the respective candidates, then both its establishment and those who automatically have voted for its candidates in the past will have to decide what direction the future of the party will take. That will mean deciding that if keeping the Republicans out of the White House will continue to be enough to keep the party united, or if the differences between the two candidates running in its primary and their supporters reflect a population that every day finds itself having less in common with others. The Democrat primary of 2016 may show that the Democrat party can no longer unite the supporters of the two candidates vying for its nomination, people who once had their differences but identified with a common cause. If that's the case, then the pretense of unity would be far worse than seeing the party fall apart, and then have to reinvent itself. It's OK for people of different political views still to be friends, but it's not OK if they can't stand one another's politics but feel obliged not to say so and vote to the contrary.
Thus far, the media's efforts to present the primary races as a soap opera have been both predictable and paradoxical. For every effort to fan the flames of drama during the primary season, the coverage has been predictable--more of Trump's antics--and made something that ought to be inherently exciting and interesting--a Presidential election--seem rather dull. Even though Sanders has now won seven of the last eight contests, the media have consistently covered the Democrat primary as though Clinton is the inevitable winner and Sanders' campaign as a largely symbolic one featuring a candidate who never had a chance of capturing the nomination. At the same, the contest between Sanders and Clinton has been described as largely civil, while the Republican contest has been depicted as puerile, as so divisive within the ranks that front-runner Trump will be blocked from the nomination at the Republican Convention in Cleveland this summer. There has yet to be a diversion from either perspective.
But I have a different take on both primaries, particularly the Democrat primary. The "Bernie or Bust" movement was one clear sign that people who currently identify with Sanders don't automatically identify with the Democrat Party. During the debates, Sanders and Clinton have made it a point that no matter their differences, the tone and focus of their debates clearly distinguishes the Democrats from the Republicans. Both Sanders and Clinton made it a point to follow-up their alleged "unqualified" remarks (Sanders has been criticized for being touchy and defensive about something Clinton apparently didn't say about him) by praising the other and announcing that no matter what, should the other candidate be the nominee, that person would be far superior to whoever comes out of the Republican primary.
One has to ask, though, if such statements are not made in response to what both candidates and their entourage may recognize but not want to verbalize: the differences between Sanders and Clinton are quite significant, and their supporters have considerably less common ground than one might assume. In other words, efforts by both Sanders and Clinton to debate in a civil manner, and state their support for the other should that person become the nominee, betray a concern that there is greater turmoil within the Democrat Party than either candidate may want to admit.
Sanders supporters are clearly disgusted with the fact their candidate has not been taken seriously as a legit contender for the Presidency, and that the Democrat primary has been rigged from Day One to be a victory march for Clinton, regardless of the truth to that perception. The "Bernie or Bust" movement reflects a general disgust with the party, the primary, with the Clinton campaign, but most of all, the idea that they are obliged to vote for Clinton in the general election once she (inevitably) claims the nomination. Actor Susan Sarandon incurred quite a backlash when she made public she wasn't sure if she would vote for Clinton should Sanders lose the nomination. That backlash, in turn, makes it pretty clear there is a good deal of disgust among Clinton supporters for the Sanders campaign, especially Sanders supporters. "How dare you say you wouldn't vote for Clinton in November!" the Clinton supporters seem to be saying. This disgust seems consistent with the depiction of Sanders' message and the mentality of his supporters as childish, unrealistic, and disloyal. Sanders' supporters have been branded as people who believe in a candidate who can't possibly be President and a platform that is unachievable because, of course, "there is no way to pay for it." And how dare Sanders supporters jeopardize the Democrats' chances in November by saying if their beloved Bernie doesn't get the nomination, then Trump, or some other Republican can just go ahead and be President.
A number of things have not gone the usual way for the Democrats during this primary. For one, with a sitting Democrat president, the predictable arrangement would have been for Vice-President Joe Biden to be the presumptive nominee, and the primary would have just been a formality. But Biden chose not to run, and one gets the feeling that after losing in 2008 to Obama, Clinton has been the party establishment's choice to be the next Democrat to run for President. Usually the primary of the party already in the White House is a clear-cut choice. But while the party establishment may want it that way, that is not how it has turned out.
Sanders has given a voice and a face to a growing awareness within the population that super-rich people and corporations control the political agenda in the United States. Whether or not one agrees with this perception, or with the notion that such big-money influence is a major problem, that is the political trend. Thus, the Sanders' campaign has amounted to an attack on politics as we know it. That makes a lot of people more than a little annoyed, apparently. The displeasure Sanders' existence as a primary candidate has generated probably explains the ridiculous imbalance between the number of states Sanders has won and the number of delegates he receives when he wins a state. Sanders supporters complain (as the stereotyped version of them would have them do) that even when he wins a state, Clinton gets nearly as many delegates as he does. Thus the delegate total is not reflective of the will of the voters. If this imbalance between number of states won and delegate total indeed reveals that the Democrat establishment has made up its mind that Clinton will be the nominee, it is hard not to argue that whatever may distinguish the Democrats from the Republicans, it most certainly isn't that the former is "the party of the people," while the Republicans are the party of the rich and powerful.
Sanders has not made subtlety a cornerstone of his campaign. He has been quite blunt about the need for campaign finance reform and his stance that the current political system has been corrupted by super-PACs and big-money interests. Obviously, his supporters feel that currently neither party has either the incentive or the right people at the helm to represent the needs and interests of the non-rich, i. e. the ordinary people. As the primary contest enters its final months, and with a mathematically decisive primary in New York State a week away, I get the sense that for Bernie supporters the primary season has shifted from the excitement of seeing their candidate do better than expected and stay in contention longer than expected to a sudden frustration and anger that their candidate is nonetheless going to lose and was doomed from the start. If there is any truth to the perception that the Democrat party was never going to let Sanders win, then no matter how anyone may feel about either candidate, the party is coming apart at the seams.
It isn't the differences between Sanders and Clinton that matter, its the degree of those differences. And from the standpoint of the candidates' supporters, that degree is significant. It may be that the era of the Democrat Party appearing to be the party of the people while in reality being a party of the rich has run its course. For Sanders and his supporters, drawing attention to corruption in the political system and the perception that Clinton is first and foremost a candidate who will protect the interests of that system is not enough. Sanders supporters want their candidate to be taken seriously and to become the next President. His candidacy has not been a joke or a "socialist" diatribe against establishment politics just to make the primary more interesting and to make Clinton sweat a little. Rather, Sanders has delivered the most accurate and lucid message about our country's problems and what must be done to address them in recent memory. He stands apart not just from Republicans and from Clinton, but Democrat Presidential candidates in previous elections.
If the rift between Sanders and Clinton supporters is as great as it seems, it reflects a disconnect within the Democrat party that was growing long before 2016 and long before Bernie Sanders became a candidate. For the differences between the two groups to become a national dialogue is long overdue. The civility between Sanders and Clinton really amounts to a plea for people who may dislike one candidate or the other to keep the Democrat Party propped up. But if the party in fact does not unite the groups that stand behind the respective candidates, then both its establishment and those who automatically have voted for its candidates in the past will have to decide what direction the future of the party will take. That will mean deciding that if keeping the Republicans out of the White House will continue to be enough to keep the party united, or if the differences between the two candidates running in its primary and their supporters reflect a population that every day finds itself having less in common with others. The Democrat primary of 2016 may show that the Democrat party can no longer unite the supporters of the two candidates vying for its nomination, people who once had their differences but identified with a common cause. If that's the case, then the pretense of unity would be far worse than seeing the party fall apart, and then have to reinvent itself. It's OK for people of different political views still to be friends, but it's not OK if they can't stand one another's politics but feel obliged not to say so and vote to the contrary.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Oh Boh!: The Legendary Andy Boh Is Leaving Kentucky's Football Coaching Staff
Kentucky football's realistic hopes of winning the SEC and contending for the national championship just went out the window.
Andy Boh--a household name in the world of sports fans--is leaving his position as special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach to take a position at Maryland to be defensive coordinator.
Boh was earning $325,000 for his coaching duties at UK.
In case you hadn't detected it, this blog has a smidgen of sarcasm. Less than 24 hours after perhaps the greatest college basketball game of all time, today's news about Boh reminds us all too starkly how pathetic the college sports infrastructure is. It's nothing against Boh personally--give me $325,000 to coach anything and I'll take it--but a critique of the relentless waste most of college sports operations are.
Kentucky football has been a forlorn operation for decades. Some years UK has managed to do better than they normally do. In 2007, the Wildcats beat No.1 LSU in an overtime contest. In 2011 they actually beat Tennessee--for the first time in 27 meetings.
But with few exceptions, UK football has been terrible, and everyone knows it. After Rich Brooks returned UK to respectability, the program took its latest nosedive. Joker Phillips quickly returned UK to the basement of the SEC, and was replaced by current coach Bob Stoops. After a predictably poor first year taking over a program in the doldrums, the misguided hope that UK football was on its way to respectability made a resurgence, stoked all the more when UK began the 2014 campaign with home wins against vastly inferior teams before getting pummeled--as usual--once they entered the maw of SEC play. The same pattern repeated last year when, after beating probably the worst South Carolina football team in memory, the UK football entourage again fell under the spell of the pipe-dream that UK was on its way to being a serious player in the SEC. But that South Carolina team was so bad that Coach Steve Spurrier didn't even bother to finish coaching through the season, and, once again, when UK faced its toughest conference opponents, they got hammered.
The one constant in UK football's poor play against its toughest opponents has been they can play zero defense when they run into the likes of Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi St., Florida, and Auburn. In other words, anyone coaching outside linebackers and special teams under Stoops must know something about football that I don't, because I've always assumed that giving up lots of points to your opponent, and getting trampled by your opponents' running game, was not good football. Apparently, Maryland thinks otherwise.
While I'm on the subject, I must point out that Stoops doesn't seem to realize the one thing (at least) that his rival coach 70 miles to the west has always understood about putting together a winning football team: the quarterback is the most important player on the team, and you have to have a great quarterback. Last year's season finale proved that point, when UK's early 21-0 lead over Louisville turned into a second half U of L route because Bobby Petrino inserted a freshman quarterback who ran wild over the Wildcats, especially in the second half. That was UK's last game of the season. And it showed that they have no defense, no ability to stop the run, and a coach who is entering his fourth season at the helm without an SEC-caliber quarterback.
In other words, replacing Boh will be the least of Stoops' worries. Unless someone turns out to be surprisingly really good, UK will again be without an effective quarterback who can consistently pass accurately and run effectively. And once again, after UK pounds its chest after beating teams that have little chance of beating them, SEC play will be a carnage.
Stoops took on a difficult assignment, but he has nonetheless been a disappointment. And, because of the SEC's divisional scheduling, he's even had the good fortune of not having to face Alabama. The call here is after the 2016 campaign UK will be looking to replace more than just its special teams coordinator.
Andy Boh--a household name in the world of sports fans--is leaving his position as special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach to take a position at Maryland to be defensive coordinator.
Boh was earning $325,000 for his coaching duties at UK.
In case you hadn't detected it, this blog has a smidgen of sarcasm. Less than 24 hours after perhaps the greatest college basketball game of all time, today's news about Boh reminds us all too starkly how pathetic the college sports infrastructure is. It's nothing against Boh personally--give me $325,000 to coach anything and I'll take it--but a critique of the relentless waste most of college sports operations are.
Kentucky football has been a forlorn operation for decades. Some years UK has managed to do better than they normally do. In 2007, the Wildcats beat No.1 LSU in an overtime contest. In 2011 they actually beat Tennessee--for the first time in 27 meetings.
But with few exceptions, UK football has been terrible, and everyone knows it. After Rich Brooks returned UK to respectability, the program took its latest nosedive. Joker Phillips quickly returned UK to the basement of the SEC, and was replaced by current coach Bob Stoops. After a predictably poor first year taking over a program in the doldrums, the misguided hope that UK football was on its way to respectability made a resurgence, stoked all the more when UK began the 2014 campaign with home wins against vastly inferior teams before getting pummeled--as usual--once they entered the maw of SEC play. The same pattern repeated last year when, after beating probably the worst South Carolina football team in memory, the UK football entourage again fell under the spell of the pipe-dream that UK was on its way to being a serious player in the SEC. But that South Carolina team was so bad that Coach Steve Spurrier didn't even bother to finish coaching through the season, and, once again, when UK faced its toughest conference opponents, they got hammered.
The one constant in UK football's poor play against its toughest opponents has been they can play zero defense when they run into the likes of Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi St., Florida, and Auburn. In other words, anyone coaching outside linebackers and special teams under Stoops must know something about football that I don't, because I've always assumed that giving up lots of points to your opponent, and getting trampled by your opponents' running game, was not good football. Apparently, Maryland thinks otherwise.
While I'm on the subject, I must point out that Stoops doesn't seem to realize the one thing (at least) that his rival coach 70 miles to the west has always understood about putting together a winning football team: the quarterback is the most important player on the team, and you have to have a great quarterback. Last year's season finale proved that point, when UK's early 21-0 lead over Louisville turned into a second half U of L route because Bobby Petrino inserted a freshman quarterback who ran wild over the Wildcats, especially in the second half. That was UK's last game of the season. And it showed that they have no defense, no ability to stop the run, and a coach who is entering his fourth season at the helm without an SEC-caliber quarterback.
In other words, replacing Boh will be the least of Stoops' worries. Unless someone turns out to be surprisingly really good, UK will again be without an effective quarterback who can consistently pass accurately and run effectively. And once again, after UK pounds its chest after beating teams that have little chance of beating them, SEC play will be a carnage.
Stoops took on a difficult assignment, but he has nonetheless been a disappointment. And, because of the SEC's divisional scheduling, he's even had the good fortune of not having to face Alabama. The call here is after the 2016 campaign UK will be looking to replace more than just its special teams coordinator.
Monday, April 4, 2016
If All's Well That Ends Well, College Basketball Is Doing Quite Well, Thank You
I could choose not to write this blog, and let the more standard blog posted this same evening/early morning on the incredibly dramatic final possessions that concluded one of the best NCAA championship games ever played be my only thoughts on Villanova's brilliant championship victory.
But since I have engaged in a diatribe about how awful this college basketball season has been, including a vicious critique of the semi-final games on Saturday, I feel the need to address my criticisms just after a championship game that could not have more starkly contradicted every observation I have made about the game based on the 2015-16 season and the NCAA tournament up until Monday night.
I would begin by asking if tonight's amazing game made the three previous weeks of "poorly played, non-competitive basketball" as I called it, worth the wait.
It's hard not to argue "yes."
It may be that the very reason we sit through long stretches of disappointing games and sub-par play is that sooner or later, one of the best games we will ever see takes place before our eyes. And that's what it means not only to love sports, but to understand them and the humans who play and coach them.
The 2016 game between Villanova and UNC had it all. Both teams got off to good starts, connecting from three-point range, and answering one another basket-for-basket right from tip-off. Everybody came to play. The early going showed that the championship game was going to be a refreshing relief from the really bad basketball 48 hours earlier. The game was not going to be a blowout, and it was not going to be the display of bad shooting and dull play that was on display Saturday.
But the 2016 title game was far more than an improvement over Saturday's games: it was one of the best ever, including perhaps the most dramatic ending in NCAA championship game history, with each team hitting clutch threes in the final seconds: UNC's Marcus Paige a double-clutch three to tie the game, and Villanova's Kris Jenkins a buzzer-beating three to win it just four seconds later.
If ever a game was meant for me to eat my words about the national semi-finals and the season that led up to it, this was it.
Even Indiana's one-point win over Syracuse in 1987, and UNC's one-point win over Georgetown in 1982 fall short of the 2016 title game, because those dramatic endings involved a mistake by one team rather than back-to-back clutch plays by both teams in the final seconds. In '87, a missed front-end of a one-and-one by Syracuse's Derrick Coleman set up Keith Smart's game winning jumper for a one-point Hoosier win. In 1982, Michael Jordan's clutch jumper to give UNC a one-point lead was followed up by an unforced, inexpiable turnover by a Georgetown player who just passed the ball to UNC's James Worthy as though Worthy were his teammate. Even Villanova fans would probably agree that tonight's victory was even more amazing than the historic upset of Georgetown in the 1985 final.
No dramatic championship game I can recall ended with neither team making a mistake: a missed free-throw with a one-point lead or turnover when behind by one. On the contrary, one team making an incredibly difficult, clutch shot, and the other following that one with a buzzer-beating three sets the 2016 championship game apart. This game was college basketball's version of "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better."
I could nit-pick and find something to criticize. But that would be in poor taste after such a great game.
I will give myself credit for ending my blog about Saturday's basketball debacle by pointing out that I did predict Villanova would win, and that I hoped the game had a chance to be well-played and would get the game back on track for improved play in the seasons to come. Perhaps Saturday was a bottoming-out for the college game, and tonight was the night college basketball got its groove back, and then some.
It is worth noting, I think, that this championship Villanova team bares no resemblance to the pro-team blueprint of one-and-done players that have been the core of recent champions, in particular last year's Duke team and the 2012 Kentucky squad. Villanova won because it could consistently score the ball, which was critical in a game when UNC hit a torrid 7-of-9 from three-point range in the first half yet only led 39-34 at halftime. Without good shooters and front-line players who could score in the lane and knock down smooth baseline fade-aways, Villanova would have had a very rough night hanging with a UNC team that played as well as it could in the first half, and came back to earth in the second, when Villanova controlled the game until the Tar Heels' late rally.
Villanova got stops, rebounds, and loose balls when Carolina had chances to regain the lead in the second half as well. And, of course, like any champion, when Villanova needed a big basket, or needed to make free throws, they came through time and again. Villanova was not built around a single superstar but instead was a well-balanced team that had multiple offensive threats and could really shoot the ball. Maybe this team will be the last of its kind. Or maybe it is a timely reminder of what makes a great college basketball team--a team that plays to win the big games and make the big plays and is not put together to prepare for a lottery-pick press conference. A team that reminds us the college game is a great game that can stand on its own and doesn't need to be a prep for the pros.
So the joke is on me. I will leave it up to whatever readers are out there to decide what kind of shape college basketball is in, and whether or not tonight's game shows that I am too quick and extreme in my criticisms. On the other hand, I don't know how anyone could have watched college basketball this year up until tonight and not thought the game had seen better days.
I will say this, however. The glory of championships fades quickly. Hours before the game, a group of commentators including Jay Williams and Jay Bilas had an at-times contentious discussion about the ills of college basketball. The issue of player compensation came up. The argument was made that the college game needs to be more like the pro game, including a 24-second shot clock. And the debate about the value of the college "experience," and how to keep players for more than one year was addressed. These are difficult issues, and they will still be around when the euphoria of Kris Jenkins' game-winner and the rush of a truly great game have faded.
It is fair to say that this college basketball season featured a great many poorly played, non-competitive games. Right now, just hours after one of the best college championship games ever played, it seems also fair to say that such games come with the territory, and if you really are a fan of the game, you don't give up on it, because legendary moments like Villanova's victory are the real marker of how great the game is.
I could say that my self-described "diatribe" about the game really means that I care about it so much and am pained to see the quality of play deteriorate and its institutional operations become such a farce. But that would be a defense cop-out. There is no denying that for all its faults and hypocrisy, college basketball gave us maybe its best game ever on Monday night.
But I do wonder: if it takes such a great game to equalize or even outshine a generally dull season, was tonight's championship game a clear sign the game is as good as ever, or was it college basketball's last hurrah?
But since I have engaged in a diatribe about how awful this college basketball season has been, including a vicious critique of the semi-final games on Saturday, I feel the need to address my criticisms just after a championship game that could not have more starkly contradicted every observation I have made about the game based on the 2015-16 season and the NCAA tournament up until Monday night.
I would begin by asking if tonight's amazing game made the three previous weeks of "poorly played, non-competitive basketball" as I called it, worth the wait.
It's hard not to argue "yes."
It may be that the very reason we sit through long stretches of disappointing games and sub-par play is that sooner or later, one of the best games we will ever see takes place before our eyes. And that's what it means not only to love sports, but to understand them and the humans who play and coach them.
The 2016 game between Villanova and UNC had it all. Both teams got off to good starts, connecting from three-point range, and answering one another basket-for-basket right from tip-off. Everybody came to play. The early going showed that the championship game was going to be a refreshing relief from the really bad basketball 48 hours earlier. The game was not going to be a blowout, and it was not going to be the display of bad shooting and dull play that was on display Saturday.
But the 2016 title game was far more than an improvement over Saturday's games: it was one of the best ever, including perhaps the most dramatic ending in NCAA championship game history, with each team hitting clutch threes in the final seconds: UNC's Marcus Paige a double-clutch three to tie the game, and Villanova's Kris Jenkins a buzzer-beating three to win it just four seconds later.
If ever a game was meant for me to eat my words about the national semi-finals and the season that led up to it, this was it.
Even Indiana's one-point win over Syracuse in 1987, and UNC's one-point win over Georgetown in 1982 fall short of the 2016 title game, because those dramatic endings involved a mistake by one team rather than back-to-back clutch plays by both teams in the final seconds. In '87, a missed front-end of a one-and-one by Syracuse's Derrick Coleman set up Keith Smart's game winning jumper for a one-point Hoosier win. In 1982, Michael Jordan's clutch jumper to give UNC a one-point lead was followed up by an unforced, inexpiable turnover by a Georgetown player who just passed the ball to UNC's James Worthy as though Worthy were his teammate. Even Villanova fans would probably agree that tonight's victory was even more amazing than the historic upset of Georgetown in the 1985 final.
No dramatic championship game I can recall ended with neither team making a mistake: a missed free-throw with a one-point lead or turnover when behind by one. On the contrary, one team making an incredibly difficult, clutch shot, and the other following that one with a buzzer-beating three sets the 2016 championship game apart. This game was college basketball's version of "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better."
I could nit-pick and find something to criticize. But that would be in poor taste after such a great game.
I will give myself credit for ending my blog about Saturday's basketball debacle by pointing out that I did predict Villanova would win, and that I hoped the game had a chance to be well-played and would get the game back on track for improved play in the seasons to come. Perhaps Saturday was a bottoming-out for the college game, and tonight was the night college basketball got its groove back, and then some.
It is worth noting, I think, that this championship Villanova team bares no resemblance to the pro-team blueprint of one-and-done players that have been the core of recent champions, in particular last year's Duke team and the 2012 Kentucky squad. Villanova won because it could consistently score the ball, which was critical in a game when UNC hit a torrid 7-of-9 from three-point range in the first half yet only led 39-34 at halftime. Without good shooters and front-line players who could score in the lane and knock down smooth baseline fade-aways, Villanova would have had a very rough night hanging with a UNC team that played as well as it could in the first half, and came back to earth in the second, when Villanova controlled the game until the Tar Heels' late rally.
Villanova got stops, rebounds, and loose balls when Carolina had chances to regain the lead in the second half as well. And, of course, like any champion, when Villanova needed a big basket, or needed to make free throws, they came through time and again. Villanova was not built around a single superstar but instead was a well-balanced team that had multiple offensive threats and could really shoot the ball. Maybe this team will be the last of its kind. Or maybe it is a timely reminder of what makes a great college basketball team--a team that plays to win the big games and make the big plays and is not put together to prepare for a lottery-pick press conference. A team that reminds us the college game is a great game that can stand on its own and doesn't need to be a prep for the pros.
So the joke is on me. I will leave it up to whatever readers are out there to decide what kind of shape college basketball is in, and whether or not tonight's game shows that I am too quick and extreme in my criticisms. On the other hand, I don't know how anyone could have watched college basketball this year up until tonight and not thought the game had seen better days.
I will say this, however. The glory of championships fades quickly. Hours before the game, a group of commentators including Jay Williams and Jay Bilas had an at-times contentious discussion about the ills of college basketball. The issue of player compensation came up. The argument was made that the college game needs to be more like the pro game, including a 24-second shot clock. And the debate about the value of the college "experience," and how to keep players for more than one year was addressed. These are difficult issues, and they will still be around when the euphoria of Kris Jenkins' game-winner and the rush of a truly great game have faded.
It is fair to say that this college basketball season featured a great many poorly played, non-competitive games. Right now, just hours after one of the best college championship games ever played, it seems also fair to say that such games come with the territory, and if you really are a fan of the game, you don't give up on it, because legendary moments like Villanova's victory are the real marker of how great the game is.
I could say that my self-described "diatribe" about the game really means that I care about it so much and am pained to see the quality of play deteriorate and its institutional operations become such a farce. But that would be a defense cop-out. There is no denying that for all its faults and hypocrisy, college basketball gave us maybe its best game ever on Monday night.
But I do wonder: if it takes such a great game to equalize or even outshine a generally dull season, was tonight's championship game a clear sign the game is as good as ever, or was it college basketball's last hurrah?
Jenkins' Winner Caps One of the Best College Basketball Championships Ever
What had already been an exciting, well-played national title game between Villanova and North Carolina turned into a game of the ages in the final minutes.
Villanova rallied from a seven-point deficit early in the second half to lead 67-57 with four and a half minutes to go. Up to this point the game had already featured excellent outside shooting, lead changes, momentum shifts, and all-around competitive basketball. North Carolina's torrid three-point shooting in the first half gave way to a Villanova rally in the second. For one possession, it looked as though Villanova, up by ten, had a chance to take control of the game and win its second national title. But a turnover by the normally sure and steady Ryan Arcidiacono led to a quick 4-0 UNC run that closed the game to 67-61, and anyone familiar with college basketball could sense that this game was going to come down to the wire.
But what no one could have foreseen was how incredibly dramatic the finish would actually be.
Villanova looked still in control with a 70-64 lead going into the final minute of play. But a quick corner three from UNC's Marcus Paige cut the lead to three, and one possession later, Tar Heel big-man Brice Johnson cut it to one. Villanova played sound basketball on the ensuing possession, drew a foul, and knocked down both free throws to extend the lead back to three.
But UNC came up with a loose ball underneath on the other end to close to within one, 72-71. That's when an already terrific game turned into one of the best ever.
Villanova again took care of the basketball, drew a foul, and knocked down both free throws to extend its lead to three. At this point, UNC had to hit a three or the game, and the national title, would go to the Wildcats from Philadelphia.
That's when a sequence of incredible plays led to one of the most memorable endings ever in NCAA tournament championship game history. Paige took a pass on the right wing, double-clutched in mid-air with a defender flying at him, and drained another three-pointer to tie the game with 4.7 seconds to go. In a game of big-time plays and momentum changes, suddenly it looked like the Tar Heels had regained control, and that a sure Villanova victory was headed for overtime.
That's when Arcidiacono zoomed down court, and fed trailing Kris Jenkins, who pulled up from behind the three-point line, let fly a three-pointer with less than a second remaining, and watched with the rest of the college basketball universe as the shot went in with no time left. The final 4.7 seconds saw two of the most incredible, clutch baskets ever in a national title game. Fittingly, a game of momentum shifts and big plays ended with the most dramatic swings in momentum a title game has ever seen. Villanova saw Paige tie the game when victory seemed at hand. Then UNC was left stunned as Jenkins' three turned an apparently dramatic Tar Heel rally to send the game into overtime into a national championship for Villanova.
Villanova rallied from a seven-point deficit early in the second half to lead 67-57 with four and a half minutes to go. Up to this point the game had already featured excellent outside shooting, lead changes, momentum shifts, and all-around competitive basketball. North Carolina's torrid three-point shooting in the first half gave way to a Villanova rally in the second. For one possession, it looked as though Villanova, up by ten, had a chance to take control of the game and win its second national title. But a turnover by the normally sure and steady Ryan Arcidiacono led to a quick 4-0 UNC run that closed the game to 67-61, and anyone familiar with college basketball could sense that this game was going to come down to the wire.
But what no one could have foreseen was how incredibly dramatic the finish would actually be.
Villanova looked still in control with a 70-64 lead going into the final minute of play. But a quick corner three from UNC's Marcus Paige cut the lead to three, and one possession later, Tar Heel big-man Brice Johnson cut it to one. Villanova played sound basketball on the ensuing possession, drew a foul, and knocked down both free throws to extend the lead back to three.
But UNC came up with a loose ball underneath on the other end to close to within one, 72-71. That's when an already terrific game turned into one of the best ever.
Villanova again took care of the basketball, drew a foul, and knocked down both free throws to extend its lead to three. At this point, UNC had to hit a three or the game, and the national title, would go to the Wildcats from Philadelphia.
That's when a sequence of incredible plays led to one of the most memorable endings ever in NCAA tournament championship game history. Paige took a pass on the right wing, double-clutched in mid-air with a defender flying at him, and drained another three-pointer to tie the game with 4.7 seconds to go. In a game of big-time plays and momentum changes, suddenly it looked like the Tar Heels had regained control, and that a sure Villanova victory was headed for overtime.
That's when Arcidiacono zoomed down court, and fed trailing Kris Jenkins, who pulled up from behind the three-point line, let fly a three-pointer with less than a second remaining, and watched with the rest of the college basketball universe as the shot went in with no time left. The final 4.7 seconds saw two of the most incredible, clutch baskets ever in a national title game. Fittingly, a game of momentum shifts and big plays ended with the most dramatic swings in momentum a title game has ever seen. Villanova saw Paige tie the game when victory seemed at hand. Then UNC was left stunned as Jenkins' three turned an apparently dramatic Tar Heel rally to send the game into overtime into a national championship for Villanova.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
What Would Anyone Miss About College Sports?
I awoke this morning to the sound of lawn-mowers, the breeze in the spring air, and the sound of the occasional motorcycle revving down a nearby road. The sun came up, the grass has started to grow, and people apparently have things to do and places to go (even I have this blog to write). And all of these glorious events have managed to happen after the single worst day of organized basketball in the history of the game.
Since I've been on a diatribe (apparently my natural style) about how awful college basketball has become, I thought, what the hell? Why not keep it going? Whatever I write can't be any worse than than the farce college basketball has become.
What prompted today's disgust, you ask? After all, didn't I get that out of my system last night, eviscerating everything from the poor play to the historical non-competitiveness to the fact Syracuse was in the Final Four arguably because of a terrible officiating call?
ESPN commentator Jay Bilas, who does a fine job doing color commentary for college basketball games, recently posted two articles about college basketball and its problems. Let's start with acknowledging that Bilas recognizes something is wrong with college basketball. Where he and I diverge is that Bilas actually seems to think the game can be "fixed," or at least improved, whereas I argue it is a lost cause, and further tinkering serves no purpose.
First, Jay Bilas, and anyone else who makes a living talking about sports games, is not an "analyst." He is, as I said above, a commentator--that is, he comments (note the etymological connection) about games and the state of the game. An analyst performs tasks of intellectual rigor. Talking about college basketball is not the same thing as--for example--figuring out how to engineer an aircraft carrier.
Bilas' two recommendations for the college game have been that 1) the game would be better if the games were played over four quarters rather than two halves, and 2) players have a right to boycott the Final Four over not being paid despite being the star pieces of a multi-million dollar performance.
If Bilas is somehow impressed by women's college basketball, which has adopted a four quarter system this season, I am confused. Seeing Connecticut lead Mississippi St. 64-11 in the third quarter of a regional final does not seem to contrast yesterday's indescribably bad and non-competitive play in the men's national semi-finals. As for paying the players, that argument has been around for a long time. All that's happened is that coaches' salaries continue to skyrocket, along with that of athletic directors and university presidents. How could the players be paid on par with all of the other people making millions of dollars off of a game that, if you ask me, has become worthless? The better question after yesterday's shitty play: why pay them--or anyone else involved in the operation?
What I find aggravating about articles and proposals like the ones Bilas has made is that they acknowledge major problems with college basketball but insist that the game is essentially in good shape since only minor adjustments are all that's needed to address its problems. How will four 10-minute quarters improve perimeter offense and free-throw shooting? How will that make the two two-thirds of games that are designed blowouts to pump up the win column less boring and predictable?
As for the boycott idea, let's say that happens. Tomorrow (Monday) night Villanova and UNC decide that instead of playing for the national championship they've dreamed about and dedicated themselves to winning, the players will instead march onto the court and hold signs of protest at the financial absurdity of college basketball, form a circle at mid-court, announce they are not going to play, and then walk out, leaving a stadium full of fans and millions of TV viewers with nothing to do for the evening. Game of chess, anyone?
So the games go to four quarters, and some arbitrary, cryptic formula is devised for paying the players. Now what? Suddenly everything is OK?
I wonder, after watching yesterday's carnage of basketball, why anyone cares at this point if another college basketball game were ever played again. If you're good enough to be a professional player, then go for it. If not, join a rec center and show everyone how good you are. You got next, dawg.
The irony is that, of all things, low quality of play and non-competitive games--even at the Final Four--have proven that college basketball is an operation who's time has run out. One would think that the millions of dollars poured into the game, the state-of-the-art facilities, and the "rule" that the few who really are good enough to play in the pros only have to play in college for one year would have made the game better than ever. But rather than get into some complex discussion about why the opposite is true--college basketball has fallen apart--I would simply point out, yet again, the poor quality of play and non-competitive games as more than sufficient evidence that the game serves no purpose. It was bad enough that the coaches, ADs, and presidents raked in millions while the laborers were forbidden a piece of the action. Now the product itself isn't worth anyone's attention, let alone money.
Wouldn't it be great if, instead of the one-and-done "rule," universities announced that any students who got a 4.0 for their entire year as a freshman could go ahead and graduate? You think that might get students to buckle down instead of spending their first year at State U. funneling beer, skipping class, and exploiting bullshit policies like "freshman forgiveness" that essentially program young college students to treat their education like their lowest priority?
Or how about if professors automatically got tenure after one-year of excellent student evaluations and classroom observations from colleagues, plus a publication? How long does it take to figure out if someone with a PhD is smart and knows what they're doing?
Yet no doubt such ideas would be rejected as absurd. Students and teachers need to do the hard work and prove their mettle through the euphemistic "endurance test" of higher education. Meanwhile, one successful season as a coach--exceeded expected number of wins, a major upset win in the NCAAs--yields a raise that will be enough to live on for a lifetime. For the players, one season of good basketball means you're ready to be a pro.
College sports in general have become a toxin of the university. Large numbers of students attend universities first and foremost to be immersed in the university sports culture, while those who attend primarily to pursue an education, or possibly an academic career, face an unending number of requirements and critiques no matter how much or how early they excel. The point is, there is zero connection between quality of performance and financial success. Society has already decided before tip-off that the athletes will win and the intellects will lose, even when the athletic events have somehow exceeded the presumed dullness and irrelevance of intellectual pursuits.
Maybe more people would be impressed with the efforts of Aristotle and Plato if there were U-Tube videos of them bricking three-pointers and free-throws in front of a packed house at the Parthenon.
To make it even worse, students who excel academically and pursue graduate degrees are often saddled with debt, while college professors make meager salaries compared to that of coaches. And for what? So we can watch games like the ones played yesterday? It would be impossible to attend a lecture that boring. To extend the ironic comparison, yesterday's games did provide an epiphany: college basketball is no fun, and whatever pretense college sports may have had for existing can no longer prop them up.
It is bad enough to support a system of higher education that so blatantly promotes sports over education, where large portions of the student population live for the games, the pre-parties, after-game parties, all the while bemoaning the fact that next morning's class will interrupt their hangover. So much for critical thinking as an essential part of higher education. But such an inverted perspective on the purpose of universities did have, once-upon-a-time, well-played, competitive, exciting games to mask the hypocrisy and intellectual sabotage that was at the root of their business. Now, a pickup game between faculty and staff would be more interesting to watch than yesterday's national semi-finals.
Even President Obama, a Harvard-educated, well-spoken, professorial figure, feeds this archaic and toxic sideshow by making it a point to fill out a March Madness bracket on national TV. At least that is one thing he has been able to do without Congress getting in his way.
Even more demoralizing is that the combination of inattention to education and bad basketball result in a scenario where the college students, who camp out for days to get tickets and go ape-shit over the introduction of players are so poorly educated they don't even realize how bad the basketball they are watching really is. Never mind their apathy about anything academic or intellectual; even the thing that they think is worthwhile isn't worth knowing anything about.
The financial hypocrisy, greed, and warped priorities that college sports cast on the university have been major problems that have gone on way too long. But with the horrendous quality of play on display at yesterday's final four, along with the undeniable reality that most games are rigged to be boring, non-competitive wastes of time played in packed stadiums for national TV audiences, one has to wonder why the glaring question instead isn't why do people still think college sports have any appeal--rather than the long-standing criticisms of college sports that have always run into the obstacle of their entertainment value in spite of their ethical and intellectual validity.
There's an old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But a basic truth is that lots of broken things either get replaced or simply thrown away. Their value and duration is finite, as tends to be the human condition, save for the unending bullshit of everyday life, which doesn't need any deliberate reinforcement on the part of humans themselves.
Given all the problems of college basketball and college sports in general, there is no good reason to keep them going. Young people who excelled in sports in high school but aren't good enough to be pros--and that's most of them--need to figure out what life has to offer besides doing something with a ball. The college sports system serves as a cakewalk to lucrative financial success that is neither legitimate nor beneficial to society. But the real source of bewilderment for me after yesterday, when basketball undeniably turned into something too boring and poorly performed to offer any excitement or entertainment, is why all of the fans behave as though there is anything of value in it for them.
If the financial hypocrisy, greed and warped priorities of college sports weren't enough to get rid of them, the fact that they don't even deliver the fleeting, superficial excitement they are supposed to is plenty of reason to bid them adieu. It's worth it to fix something that still has something to offer; it's a massive waste of time to tinker with something that has never been good for higher education or college life and now is an exercise in poor performance and boredom. In other words, if you would actually miss life without college sports, that is the best reason yet that the time has come to end them altogether.
Since I've been on a diatribe (apparently my natural style) about how awful college basketball has become, I thought, what the hell? Why not keep it going? Whatever I write can't be any worse than than the farce college basketball has become.
What prompted today's disgust, you ask? After all, didn't I get that out of my system last night, eviscerating everything from the poor play to the historical non-competitiveness to the fact Syracuse was in the Final Four arguably because of a terrible officiating call?
ESPN commentator Jay Bilas, who does a fine job doing color commentary for college basketball games, recently posted two articles about college basketball and its problems. Let's start with acknowledging that Bilas recognizes something is wrong with college basketball. Where he and I diverge is that Bilas actually seems to think the game can be "fixed," or at least improved, whereas I argue it is a lost cause, and further tinkering serves no purpose.
First, Jay Bilas, and anyone else who makes a living talking about sports games, is not an "analyst." He is, as I said above, a commentator--that is, he comments (note the etymological connection) about games and the state of the game. An analyst performs tasks of intellectual rigor. Talking about college basketball is not the same thing as--for example--figuring out how to engineer an aircraft carrier.
Bilas' two recommendations for the college game have been that 1) the game would be better if the games were played over four quarters rather than two halves, and 2) players have a right to boycott the Final Four over not being paid despite being the star pieces of a multi-million dollar performance.
If Bilas is somehow impressed by women's college basketball, which has adopted a four quarter system this season, I am confused. Seeing Connecticut lead Mississippi St. 64-11 in the third quarter of a regional final does not seem to contrast yesterday's indescribably bad and non-competitive play in the men's national semi-finals. As for paying the players, that argument has been around for a long time. All that's happened is that coaches' salaries continue to skyrocket, along with that of athletic directors and university presidents. How could the players be paid on par with all of the other people making millions of dollars off of a game that, if you ask me, has become worthless? The better question after yesterday's shitty play: why pay them--or anyone else involved in the operation?
What I find aggravating about articles and proposals like the ones Bilas has made is that they acknowledge major problems with college basketball but insist that the game is essentially in good shape since only minor adjustments are all that's needed to address its problems. How will four 10-minute quarters improve perimeter offense and free-throw shooting? How will that make the two two-thirds of games that are designed blowouts to pump up the win column less boring and predictable?
As for the boycott idea, let's say that happens. Tomorrow (Monday) night Villanova and UNC decide that instead of playing for the national championship they've dreamed about and dedicated themselves to winning, the players will instead march onto the court and hold signs of protest at the financial absurdity of college basketball, form a circle at mid-court, announce they are not going to play, and then walk out, leaving a stadium full of fans and millions of TV viewers with nothing to do for the evening. Game of chess, anyone?
So the games go to four quarters, and some arbitrary, cryptic formula is devised for paying the players. Now what? Suddenly everything is OK?
I wonder, after watching yesterday's carnage of basketball, why anyone cares at this point if another college basketball game were ever played again. If you're good enough to be a professional player, then go for it. If not, join a rec center and show everyone how good you are. You got next, dawg.
The irony is that, of all things, low quality of play and non-competitive games--even at the Final Four--have proven that college basketball is an operation who's time has run out. One would think that the millions of dollars poured into the game, the state-of-the-art facilities, and the "rule" that the few who really are good enough to play in the pros only have to play in college for one year would have made the game better than ever. But rather than get into some complex discussion about why the opposite is true--college basketball has fallen apart--I would simply point out, yet again, the poor quality of play and non-competitive games as more than sufficient evidence that the game serves no purpose. It was bad enough that the coaches, ADs, and presidents raked in millions while the laborers were forbidden a piece of the action. Now the product itself isn't worth anyone's attention, let alone money.
Wouldn't it be great if, instead of the one-and-done "rule," universities announced that any students who got a 4.0 for their entire year as a freshman could go ahead and graduate? You think that might get students to buckle down instead of spending their first year at State U. funneling beer, skipping class, and exploiting bullshit policies like "freshman forgiveness" that essentially program young college students to treat their education like their lowest priority?
Or how about if professors automatically got tenure after one-year of excellent student evaluations and classroom observations from colleagues, plus a publication? How long does it take to figure out if someone with a PhD is smart and knows what they're doing?
Yet no doubt such ideas would be rejected as absurd. Students and teachers need to do the hard work and prove their mettle through the euphemistic "endurance test" of higher education. Meanwhile, one successful season as a coach--exceeded expected number of wins, a major upset win in the NCAAs--yields a raise that will be enough to live on for a lifetime. For the players, one season of good basketball means you're ready to be a pro.
College sports in general have become a toxin of the university. Large numbers of students attend universities first and foremost to be immersed in the university sports culture, while those who attend primarily to pursue an education, or possibly an academic career, face an unending number of requirements and critiques no matter how much or how early they excel. The point is, there is zero connection between quality of performance and financial success. Society has already decided before tip-off that the athletes will win and the intellects will lose, even when the athletic events have somehow exceeded the presumed dullness and irrelevance of intellectual pursuits.
Maybe more people would be impressed with the efforts of Aristotle and Plato if there were U-Tube videos of them bricking three-pointers and free-throws in front of a packed house at the Parthenon.
To make it even worse, students who excel academically and pursue graduate degrees are often saddled with debt, while college professors make meager salaries compared to that of coaches. And for what? So we can watch games like the ones played yesterday? It would be impossible to attend a lecture that boring. To extend the ironic comparison, yesterday's games did provide an epiphany: college basketball is no fun, and whatever pretense college sports may have had for existing can no longer prop them up.
Even President Obama, a Harvard-educated, well-spoken, professorial figure, feeds this archaic and toxic sideshow by making it a point to fill out a March Madness bracket on national TV. At least that is one thing he has been able to do without Congress getting in his way.
Even more demoralizing is that the combination of inattention to education and bad basketball result in a scenario where the college students, who camp out for days to get tickets and go ape-shit over the introduction of players are so poorly educated they don't even realize how bad the basketball they are watching really is. Never mind their apathy about anything academic or intellectual; even the thing that they think is worthwhile isn't worth knowing anything about.
The financial hypocrisy, greed, and warped priorities that college sports cast on the university have been major problems that have gone on way too long. But with the horrendous quality of play on display at yesterday's final four, along with the undeniable reality that most games are rigged to be boring, non-competitive wastes of time played in packed stadiums for national TV audiences, one has to wonder why the glaring question instead isn't why do people still think college sports have any appeal--rather than the long-standing criticisms of college sports that have always run into the obstacle of their entertainment value in spite of their ethical and intellectual validity.
There's an old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But a basic truth is that lots of broken things either get replaced or simply thrown away. Their value and duration is finite, as tends to be the human condition, save for the unending bullshit of everyday life, which doesn't need any deliberate reinforcement on the part of humans themselves.
Given all the problems of college basketball and college sports in general, there is no good reason to keep them going. Young people who excelled in sports in high school but aren't good enough to be pros--and that's most of them--need to figure out what life has to offer besides doing something with a ball. The college sports system serves as a cakewalk to lucrative financial success that is neither legitimate nor beneficial to society. But the real source of bewilderment for me after yesterday, when basketball undeniably turned into something too boring and poorly performed to offer any excitement or entertainment, is why all of the fans behave as though there is anything of value in it for them.
If the financial hypocrisy, greed and warped priorities of college sports weren't enough to get rid of them, the fact that they don't even deliver the fleeting, superficial excitement they are supposed to is plenty of reason to bid them adieu. It's worth it to fix something that still has something to offer; it's a massive waste of time to tinker with something that has never been good for higher education or college life and now is an exercise in poor performance and boredom. In other words, if you would actually miss life without college sports, that is the best reason yet that the time has come to end them altogether.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
The Terrible Twos: Thoughts on the Final Snore
This is how bad today's Final Four semi-finals were.
A seventeen point North Carolina win over Syracuse actually had moments of feeling like an exciting game. The Tar Heels--who had twice beaten Syracuse in the regular season--clearly had their opponent out-manned. But when the Orange twice managed to close the gap to seven in the middle of the second half, watching college basketball's showcase seemed for a moment to be more exciting than, well, listening to someone snore.
That's what happens when the first game is a record setting blowout: Villanova over Oklahoma, 95-51. In showtime terms, that was not a hard act to follow.
I blogged prior to today's train wreck in Houston that will be conceptualized as a pair of basketball games that the 2015-2016 season has been the worst I've ever seen in thirty plus years of being a college basketball fan. I qualified that statement by admitting that being a UK fan has tainted my outlook on the year's tourney (UK played lousy and lost to Indiana in the second round).
But today's Final Four match-ups did nothing to counter my assessment of play. On the contrary, the lopsided games and horrendous play on the whole by all four teams reinforces my claim that this year is an all-time low.
Villanova is a really good basketball team--one would expect that from any team that makes it to the Final Four--but the idea they are 44 points better than an Oklahoma team that beat them by 23 in December is wacko. What happened in today's first game is that Oklahoma never showed up. The game could have still involved two teams had the Sooners put on a display of functional basketball for more than two consecutive possessions. But that was not going to happen.
Buddy Hield was a non-factor after playing lights out in the regional, especially in the regional final against Oregon. As I mentioned in my previous blog, the locale in Houston did not have a shooter-friendly reputation based on the miserable offensive outputs from the 2011 Final Four participants. While I give Villanova credit for playing good defense, I find it hard to believe that the venue in Houston had nothing to do with Hield turning from lights-out three point marksman to brick-layer in one week.
Again I will say: for a college game where three-point shooting and even free throw shooting are making the game more difficult to watch one season to the next, it doesn't help the quality of play to have the Final Four played in giant domes where no one plays basketball until the biggest games of the college season come around. Never mind the hundreds of large arenas designed and built as basketball stadiums, where crowds would still be enormous and outside shooters wouldn't be looking at a backdrop that looks like the Grand Canyon.
Hield and the Sooners were not the only ones who looked lost this afternoon. At halftime of the second game, UNC and Syracuse were a combined 3-of-20 from long range. The Tar Heels were 0-for-10, yet they still led by eleven at the half. That's how inept and lopsided the second game also was. The Orange made 3-of-10 threes in the first half, but were only 3-of-10 from the free-throw line. In case you want to go on and on about how great the defense was this afternoon let me remind you: no one plays defense on free throws.
Neither game was well played, nor was it competitive, a microcosm of a season characterized by inconsistent play from even the highest ranked teams, and pre-conference schedules by the major programs that loaded up on blowout mismatches that obviously do nothing to add excitement to the game nor provide players and teams the challenges they need to improve from game one and be their best come tournament time. It's as though the season doesn't start until January, and even then conference play has degenerated, as I said previously, into redundant contests and too many predictable outcomes.
So, fine. Villanova played extremely well. They played with energy, hit some threes early, had offensive balance, and took Oklahoma completely out of its game. But no one in their right mind imagined that even with Villanova playing its best the result would look more like what one would expect of a first-round 1 versus 16 seed. Oklahoma's inability to compete fueled the Wildcats' impressive play as much as Villanova made the Sooners look bad. Again, for the basketball game to have been played in a basketball game arena would have helped--hypothetically--an Oklahoma team that relies on perimeter offense, especially from Hield.
But giving all the credit in the world to Villanova can't hide that today's first game was one thing: ugly. The game was incomprehensibly non-competitive. It's brain-racking to wonder how far the quality of play in college basketball has fallen that a team could make it out of an NCAA region and play like it had just been introduced to the game a week earlier. The game was so bad, it was surreal.
The closest to such lopsided results I can remember was in 1990 when an awesome UNLV team blew out Georgia Tech and then a Duke team in the finals that went on to win back-to-back titles in the next two years. So blowouts in Final Fours is not unprecedented. The horrible play and historical non-competitiveness of this afternoon is.
Of course, as a UK fan, I won't duck from the comparison of Oklahoma's performance to UK's horrendous second-half against Georgetown in 1984. But Kentucky actually led that game at halftime, if I'm remembering correctly, and still seemed to have a chance to win until the game got in the final minutes. In any case, it wasn't a 40-minute, 44-point thrashing. At least that UK team waited until the second half to disappear.
As for the victorious Tar Heels, they controlled a game in which it wasn't until less than seven minutes remained that they managed to hit a three-pointer. It's hard to believe that in any other season against any other opponent that that kind of cold streak from three wouldn't have meant the team's doom. But it's fitting for this season that UNC could shoot bricks nearly the entire game and it never felt for a moment they would lose. After the Tar Heels' Marcus Paige finally connected for a three, his team did find some rhythm from behind the arc, snuffing out whatever remote chance Syracuse had of repeating its comeback effort against Virginia last weekend.
Speaking of, it is also fitting that a couple of days ago Gonzaga coach Mark Few announced that officials admitted they blew a 10-second backcourt violation call against the Zags that contributed to their late-game meltdown against Syracuse, who benefited from that officiating fuck-up to pull out a one-point win. Gonzaga may have lost anyway--but as all sports fans know, one never wants to see a bad call late in a game turn out to be a pivotal factor in the outcome. What's too bad is that Gonzaga had been playing extremely well--shooting the ball well from the three-point range and hitting their free throws, so it is somehow fitting--in a twisted way--that bad officiating had to derail them from at least making the regional final, in which case either they or Virginia would have had a chance to take on UNC. Such a matchup would have been more competitive than today's second act--I guess. Who knows. The only reliable aspect of this year's season and NCAA tournament have been lopsided games and poor play.
In any case, while I'm bitching about everything else, I may as well point out that the average ten minute delay in games so the refs can look at monitor replays to determine how much time should be on the shot clock with 38 minutes to go in the first half or whether or not a hard foul is intentional or flagrant, it was not within their power to review a call that might have cost Gonzaga a chance to play for a Final Four birth. If we're going to have a shitty season, let's let everyone get in on it.
Oh--wait, yeah. The alarm clock in my head went off and I remember I can't end a blog like this without a prediction for the final. And since in my previous log I said Oklahoma would actually win the whole thing, I will include myself in the matrix of college basketball ineptitude. With that disclaimer, it's hard to tell if Villanova was that good or Oklahoma that bad. But a team that wins by 44 points is my favorite over a team that didn't hit a three until late in the second half against a team that very well wouldn't have been there had they not benefited from the worst call of the tournament. So my guess is that UNC is too one-dimensional for a Villanova team that beat a very talented Kansas team and proceeded to make OU look historically bad. I hope to see a well-played, competitive game. Maybe Villanova wins such a game, and sets college basketball back on track for next season. Maybe.
A seventeen point North Carolina win over Syracuse actually had moments of feeling like an exciting game. The Tar Heels--who had twice beaten Syracuse in the regular season--clearly had their opponent out-manned. But when the Orange twice managed to close the gap to seven in the middle of the second half, watching college basketball's showcase seemed for a moment to be more exciting than, well, listening to someone snore.
That's what happens when the first game is a record setting blowout: Villanova over Oklahoma, 95-51. In showtime terms, that was not a hard act to follow.
I blogged prior to today's train wreck in Houston that will be conceptualized as a pair of basketball games that the 2015-2016 season has been the worst I've ever seen in thirty plus years of being a college basketball fan. I qualified that statement by admitting that being a UK fan has tainted my outlook on the year's tourney (UK played lousy and lost to Indiana in the second round).
But today's Final Four match-ups did nothing to counter my assessment of play. On the contrary, the lopsided games and horrendous play on the whole by all four teams reinforces my claim that this year is an all-time low.
Villanova is a really good basketball team--one would expect that from any team that makes it to the Final Four--but the idea they are 44 points better than an Oklahoma team that beat them by 23 in December is wacko. What happened in today's first game is that Oklahoma never showed up. The game could have still involved two teams had the Sooners put on a display of functional basketball for more than two consecutive possessions. But that was not going to happen.
Buddy Hield was a non-factor after playing lights out in the regional, especially in the regional final against Oregon. As I mentioned in my previous blog, the locale in Houston did not have a shooter-friendly reputation based on the miserable offensive outputs from the 2011 Final Four participants. While I give Villanova credit for playing good defense, I find it hard to believe that the venue in Houston had nothing to do with Hield turning from lights-out three point marksman to brick-layer in one week.
Again I will say: for a college game where three-point shooting and even free throw shooting are making the game more difficult to watch one season to the next, it doesn't help the quality of play to have the Final Four played in giant domes where no one plays basketball until the biggest games of the college season come around. Never mind the hundreds of large arenas designed and built as basketball stadiums, where crowds would still be enormous and outside shooters wouldn't be looking at a backdrop that looks like the Grand Canyon.
Hield and the Sooners were not the only ones who looked lost this afternoon. At halftime of the second game, UNC and Syracuse were a combined 3-of-20 from long range. The Tar Heels were 0-for-10, yet they still led by eleven at the half. That's how inept and lopsided the second game also was. The Orange made 3-of-10 threes in the first half, but were only 3-of-10 from the free-throw line. In case you want to go on and on about how great the defense was this afternoon let me remind you: no one plays defense on free throws.
Neither game was well played, nor was it competitive, a microcosm of a season characterized by inconsistent play from even the highest ranked teams, and pre-conference schedules by the major programs that loaded up on blowout mismatches that obviously do nothing to add excitement to the game nor provide players and teams the challenges they need to improve from game one and be their best come tournament time. It's as though the season doesn't start until January, and even then conference play has degenerated, as I said previously, into redundant contests and too many predictable outcomes.
So, fine. Villanova played extremely well. They played with energy, hit some threes early, had offensive balance, and took Oklahoma completely out of its game. But no one in their right mind imagined that even with Villanova playing its best the result would look more like what one would expect of a first-round 1 versus 16 seed. Oklahoma's inability to compete fueled the Wildcats' impressive play as much as Villanova made the Sooners look bad. Again, for the basketball game to have been played in a basketball game arena would have helped--hypothetically--an Oklahoma team that relies on perimeter offense, especially from Hield.
But giving all the credit in the world to Villanova can't hide that today's first game was one thing: ugly. The game was incomprehensibly non-competitive. It's brain-racking to wonder how far the quality of play in college basketball has fallen that a team could make it out of an NCAA region and play like it had just been introduced to the game a week earlier. The game was so bad, it was surreal.
The closest to such lopsided results I can remember was in 1990 when an awesome UNLV team blew out Georgia Tech and then a Duke team in the finals that went on to win back-to-back titles in the next two years. So blowouts in Final Fours is not unprecedented. The horrible play and historical non-competitiveness of this afternoon is.
Of course, as a UK fan, I won't duck from the comparison of Oklahoma's performance to UK's horrendous second-half against Georgetown in 1984. But Kentucky actually led that game at halftime, if I'm remembering correctly, and still seemed to have a chance to win until the game got in the final minutes. In any case, it wasn't a 40-minute, 44-point thrashing. At least that UK team waited until the second half to disappear.
As for the victorious Tar Heels, they controlled a game in which it wasn't until less than seven minutes remained that they managed to hit a three-pointer. It's hard to believe that in any other season against any other opponent that that kind of cold streak from three wouldn't have meant the team's doom. But it's fitting for this season that UNC could shoot bricks nearly the entire game and it never felt for a moment they would lose. After the Tar Heels' Marcus Paige finally connected for a three, his team did find some rhythm from behind the arc, snuffing out whatever remote chance Syracuse had of repeating its comeback effort against Virginia last weekend.
Speaking of, it is also fitting that a couple of days ago Gonzaga coach Mark Few announced that officials admitted they blew a 10-second backcourt violation call against the Zags that contributed to their late-game meltdown against Syracuse, who benefited from that officiating fuck-up to pull out a one-point win. Gonzaga may have lost anyway--but as all sports fans know, one never wants to see a bad call late in a game turn out to be a pivotal factor in the outcome. What's too bad is that Gonzaga had been playing extremely well--shooting the ball well from the three-point range and hitting their free throws, so it is somehow fitting--in a twisted way--that bad officiating had to derail them from at least making the regional final, in which case either they or Virginia would have had a chance to take on UNC. Such a matchup would have been more competitive than today's second act--I guess. Who knows. The only reliable aspect of this year's season and NCAA tournament have been lopsided games and poor play.
In any case, while I'm bitching about everything else, I may as well point out that the average ten minute delay in games so the refs can look at monitor replays to determine how much time should be on the shot clock with 38 minutes to go in the first half or whether or not a hard foul is intentional or flagrant, it was not within their power to review a call that might have cost Gonzaga a chance to play for a Final Four birth. If we're going to have a shitty season, let's let everyone get in on it.
Oh--wait, yeah. The alarm clock in my head went off and I remember I can't end a blog like this without a prediction for the final. And since in my previous log I said Oklahoma would actually win the whole thing, I will include myself in the matrix of college basketball ineptitude. With that disclaimer, it's hard to tell if Villanova was that good or Oklahoma that bad. But a team that wins by 44 points is my favorite over a team that didn't hit a three until late in the second half against a team that very well wouldn't have been there had they not benefited from the worst call of the tournament. So my guess is that UNC is too one-dimensional for a Villanova team that beat a very talented Kansas team and proceeded to make OU look historically bad. I hope to see a well-played, competitive game. Maybe Villanova wins such a game, and sets college basketball back on track for next season. Maybe.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Hype is All That's Left for a College Basketball Game in Ruins
by Dr. David W. Overbey
By this time next year, in-coming UK recruits D'Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, and three or four other All-Universe basketball players will be celebrating their declaration for the NBA draft and UK followers will revel in the likelihood that half of the lottery picks will be from UK's team--the team that of course will play one season together and then disband.
That's what happens when the games themselves and the season they comprise have become so boring--a consequence of their excessive importance and simultaneous meaninglessness.
Before I go further, let me make this point: the 2015-16 college basketball season was the worst ever in the thirty-plus years I remember being an avid college basketball fan.
Disclaimers: As a UK fan, I lost interest after the woeful loss to IU. At 47, my interest in watching college basketball can't realistically be what it was when I was 27, and playing basketball every chance I got; Generally speaking as a person, I find it increasingly difficult to find anything positive to say about anything.
But now that we have all of that out of the way, here are some observations in support of my main point.
This was the first year I can recall when there were no really, really, good or even great teams on the college landscape. And I'm hardly the only person to make this observation. The #1 spot in the rankings was a revolving door of teams that would look good for a week and then lose to an obviously inferior squad. When the brackets came out, observers noted that cumulatively the #1 seeds collectively had more losses than at any time previously in the history of seeded NCAA tournaments.
There is a difference between parity and the absence of really good teams. Sub-par basketball is not dramatic; it's dull.
Despite efforts to speed up the game, increase scoring, and create greater flow--which is kind of like saying "in an effort to make operas musical"--this season was characterized by low scoring games, dull play, tentative players, and controlling coaches. I wrote in a recent blog that UK and coach John Calipari are prime examples. Calipari makes it a point to recruit the very top talent at every position, and then plays as though it is somehow to his advantage to keep the scoring down and win with defense and rebounding--the strategy of lesser-talented teams.
This year's NCAA tournament has been so boring that the most interesting topic to discuss according to the media was the "controversy" over an Oregon player shooting, and making, a 45-foot three-pointer with less than a minute to go and the shot-clock running out. Bad sportsmanship. Duke had already lost the game. Why was Duke losing and Oregon winning less important than some pseudo-Aristotlean discourse about the ethics of jacking up a 45-footer versus dribbling out the shot-clock? Because that's how damn boring the games themselves have gotten, and how vapid the jackass talking-heads who "analyze" the game have become. Bad basketball and bad pundits: made for each other.
A major factor in the deterioration of the game has been that the money/business side of an always somewhat-seedy operation has completely taken over the college game. When young players already good enough to go straight to the NBA from high school are mandated to take a one-year layover to play for a para-professional "amateur" team, that is when the silly and dishonest status of big-time college players as "amateur" descends into the ridiculous and corrupt.
One sad consequence of the one-and-done trend that has marked college basketball for the last six seasons is the absence of joy and flow the players exhibit in playing the games. The players will never have a chance to bond or even fathom that the time they spend together in "college" could be meaningful in and of itself rather than just a means-to-an-end. Forget the predictable "feel good" stories about players bonding, and coaches bonding with teams. My point is that the demeanor of the players during games gives away that the game has lost the joy and artistry that make it more fun to watch than someone putting up drywall. The first five minutes of the Virginia-Syracuse regional final were so uptight that the players looked like the first person to miss a shot would be sacrificed at halftime.
College basketball has become a symptom of the very system that once made it great. The availability of big money to give college basketball teams big arenas to play in, followed by the proliferation of cable, made college basketball one of the most entertaining programs around. Not long after, the addition of the shot-clock and three-pointer made the game even better. It was highly unusual that a player would leave before his four years of eligibility were up. Michael Jordan--the best basketball player of all time--still did not depart for the NBA until after his junior season. That's how meaningful the college game was a few decades ago.
Kentucky's super-talented and deep championship team of 1996 was led by two great players who stayed all four years: Tony Delk and Walter McCarty. Ron Mercer even stuck around for a second season after that championship before he went to the NBA. Kentucky's 1998 team was characterized by a group of players who I really believe thought winning a national title for UK was the most important thing in the world--when it came to basketball anyway--even more important than a possible NBA career. Sure, those players were not the NBA stars-to-be that the current teams are, but there is no question that for them to wear the Kentucky jersey and win an NCAA title for UK gave them the joy and desire to play and win. The players today know why they are there and it ain't "for the love of the game;" let's not pretend otherwise.
This year, no one has looked terribly interested in playing basketball--as though the entire season has been a four-month NIT tournament in disguise that will mercifully come to an end this weekend, so we can watch more exciting things like golf tournaments and spring training baseball games (yes, that's a joke).
That's because the big money and big-time media coverage that made college basketball so exciting not long ago have now made it a dull, mechanical, big-money operation that has zapped the joy and desire out of the games themselves. UK fans once-upon-a-time would still be lamenting the loss to IU and insisting over beers that UK would have given UNC a much better game than IU did. Not until late September came around, and Midnight Madness suddenly was right around the corner, would fans turn their focus to the upcoming season. And the concern--believe it or not--would be how good the team would be--not how high the recruiting class was ranked or how many projected lottery picks would bolt from the program ASAP. Nothing says "It's been my dream to play for UK and I love playing for the Big Blue" than "I want to get out of here as soon as I can because the only reason to play is for the big bucks."
Spare me the argument that it's good for the players and their families that the players get big-money pro contracts as soon as they can and that Calipari is some "genius" for figuring out how to use the one-and-done loophole to his advantage. Calipari has done an excellent job recruiting and shown he can coach well in high-stakes, pressure-packed NCAA tournament games. He and UK are hardly the sole sources of college basketball's demise.
In fact, it may be no one's fault: just a simple reality that nothing stays great forever. What's too bad is that college basketball in its present form isn't going to go away: the low-scoring games, the lack of chemistry and artistry to how teams play, and the overly-serious approach the coaches implement will only harden and further deteriorate the quality of play. And on top of all that is the undeniable reality that the conflict over the "amateur" status of college basketball players and the tons of money swirling about the game has reached a point where the game is broken. If anyone truly cared about the financial well-being of college basketball players, they would be paid like the young pros they are, and how soon they got to the NBA--if they were good enough at all--would not cast the giant, dollar-sign shaped shadow over the college game the way it does now.
Not that anyone will listen, but I have some recommendations:
The regular season has become incredibly dull because it is saturated with pre-conference games that are deliberately non-competitive followed by a conference schedule of redundant match-ups that tell us little about how good anyone really is because no one will play a competitive non-conference game unless it includes a week-long vacation in Hawaii or the Bahamas. The point, of course, is to rack up as many wins playing at home against teams who have no chance of winning before the "grueling"conference schedule kicks in and teams have to go into hostile opponent's arenas to gut out tough wins over conference opponents. Why? Because the regular season is now nothing but a means-to-an-end for the NCAA tournament: three months of dull basketball is not the formula for a final three weeks of excitement. But the formula is in place: win as many games as possible, get as high a seed as possible, get the easiest bracket as possible, and a Final Four birth has the highest odds of happening. Yeah! How exciting!
The most exciting weekend of this past season came in late January when the SEC and Big 12 took a break from business-as-usual and played games against one another in a day-long, inter-conference challenge. It was refreshing to see SEC teams play someone besides someone from the SEC. Florida upset West Virginia, Oklahoma beat LSU in the final minute, and Kentucky took Kansas into overtime before losing. Why can't the entire regular season be more like that? Why can't both the regular season and the NCAA tournament be exciting, instead of neither? For example, why does Kentucky play Illinois St. but no longer will play IU? Why does UK play Arizona State instead of bordering Virginia? Why does UK--like all other major teams--make it a point to play as few competitive games home-and-away as possible? What does anyone --the fans, coaches, or players--get from watching Kentucky beat Illinois St. in Rupp Arena? What cause for celebration! The game is dull, the outcome is predictable, the players do not learn about the weak links in their games, they don't improve by playing such a game, and the coaches have nothing to work with in order to figure out how to make the team its best.
The dull play and super-serious, super-controlled approach of the coaches has led to once-unfathomable breakdowns in basic basketball plays. How did taking all of the joy and fun out of playing basketball help Northern Iowa--a team that beat UNC--somehow not be able to inbound the ball to the point it blew a twelve point lead with 44 seconds to go? My point is that making the game mechanical, predictable, and as non-spontaneous or artistic as possible does nothing for making the play more fundamentally sound. Texas A&M's comeback against N. Iowa was less about anything amazing the Aggies did than a harsh example of how dysfunctional the game has become. In-bounding the freaking ball is now something else to stress out about and dissect endlessly.
So, for whatever it's worth, make the pre-conference schedule more competitive, and in turn, shorten the conference season so that it isn't the hum-drum round-robin same old thing over and over again that it has become. No need to play every conference foe home and away every year. Play half of conference opponents only once, home this year, away the next, and play only half both home and away. Then after two years, switch up who plays whom only once and which teams will meet twice.
Get rid of the worthless postseason conference tournaments. Even coaches like Calipari have out-right said they don't like them. How many times do teams have to play each other and beat other before something is settled? Getting rid of the postseason tournaments would give teams more chance to rest and nagging injuries to heal. Besides, the tournaments are worthless. They serve no purpose but to make money, and when that is the only purpose to a human endeavor it becomes the worst version of itself it can be. Winning a postseason conference means nothing. Austin Peay was not going to beat Kansas, and Kansas would gladly trade its Big 12 Conference Tournament title for a re-match with Villanova where they might resemble the team that could score in the 70s as it did when it plowed through the Big Twelve regular season.
Imagine a UK season that begins with away games at Virginia and Indiana, (oh my God, UK could start 0-2? Even the football team doesn't do that!) followed by home games versus Ohio State and Maryland, and then throw in some automatic wins before the annual showdown with Louisville. Then go out west and play Oregon, or up east and play Syracuse on the road? Why not a head-to-head versus West Virginia or nearby Butler? An early season schedule like that would undoubtedly be more exciting than opening with Albany and New Jersey Institute of Technology, opponents who have no chance of giving UK a competitive game much less beating them. Such a challenging early season schedule would seem to be just the thing for UK teams that for the foreseeable future will be comprised of "freshmen" who won't have four year to mature and improve.
And Louisville was just as bad as UK when it came to early season scheduling: the same idea was at work--rack up as many wins as possible before the conference season starts and play the odds to get the highest seed and best draw possible (assuming there is no self-imposed postseason ban).
In any case, the pre-conference schedule for UK that I humbly suggest would be more entertaining for a regular season dominated by two-and-a-half months of games against Georgia, Auburn, Arkansas, etc.--games either UK will win by blowout or lose to the confusion and consternation of the fan base.
As for this year's final four, the best thing about it is that this season will end. The semi-final match-ups are appropriately dull and predictable. Oklahoma already blew out Villanova in December, and while I'm sure the Final Four match up will be more competitive, Oklahoma will likely control and win a game Villanova will do everything to slow down and make as dull as possible. UNC is talented but has underachieved, yet they are going to make it all the way to the title game without a seriously competitive game.
To make things worse, the NCAA has to schedule the Final Four in some giant sports dome in Houston that has shown itself to be shooter-non-friendly--just what the game needs for its jewel moment. The last time this site was host to the Final Four--which obviously ought to be display of the most impressive, exciting, and competitive basketball of the season--UConn and Butler set a tournament record for offensive futility in the 2011 title game. Maybe this year will be an inspiration if the four teams actually hit outside shots and play games that don't end in the 50s. Personally, I think college basketball has gotten so bad the Final Four should be televised in black-and-white--or only broadcast over the radio. Then the intelligentsia of America can debate the ethical and tactical variables that determined the games' outcomes while reminding us regular people how college basketball makes its players and coaches into the best versions of human beings the universe has ever known.
And then a football school, Oklahoma, beats a basketball school, UNC for the title in the last game of a season that can't end too soon.
By this time next year, in-coming UK recruits D'Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, and three or four other All-Universe basketball players will be celebrating their declaration for the NBA draft and UK followers will revel in the likelihood that half of the lottery picks will be from UK's team--the team that of course will play one season together and then disband.
That's what happens when the games themselves and the season they comprise have become so boring--a consequence of their excessive importance and simultaneous meaninglessness.
Before I go further, let me make this point: the 2015-16 college basketball season was the worst ever in the thirty-plus years I remember being an avid college basketball fan.
Disclaimers: As a UK fan, I lost interest after the woeful loss to IU. At 47, my interest in watching college basketball can't realistically be what it was when I was 27, and playing basketball every chance I got; Generally speaking as a person, I find it increasingly difficult to find anything positive to say about anything.
But now that we have all of that out of the way, here are some observations in support of my main point.
This was the first year I can recall when there were no really, really, good or even great teams on the college landscape. And I'm hardly the only person to make this observation. The #1 spot in the rankings was a revolving door of teams that would look good for a week and then lose to an obviously inferior squad. When the brackets came out, observers noted that cumulatively the #1 seeds collectively had more losses than at any time previously in the history of seeded NCAA tournaments.
There is a difference between parity and the absence of really good teams. Sub-par basketball is not dramatic; it's dull.
Despite efforts to speed up the game, increase scoring, and create greater flow--which is kind of like saying "in an effort to make operas musical"--this season was characterized by low scoring games, dull play, tentative players, and controlling coaches. I wrote in a recent blog that UK and coach John Calipari are prime examples. Calipari makes it a point to recruit the very top talent at every position, and then plays as though it is somehow to his advantage to keep the scoring down and win with defense and rebounding--the strategy of lesser-talented teams.
This year's NCAA tournament has been so boring that the most interesting topic to discuss according to the media was the "controversy" over an Oregon player shooting, and making, a 45-foot three-pointer with less than a minute to go and the shot-clock running out. Bad sportsmanship. Duke had already lost the game. Why was Duke losing and Oregon winning less important than some pseudo-Aristotlean discourse about the ethics of jacking up a 45-footer versus dribbling out the shot-clock? Because that's how damn boring the games themselves have gotten, and how vapid the jackass talking-heads who "analyze" the game have become. Bad basketball and bad pundits: made for each other.
A major factor in the deterioration of the game has been that the money/business side of an always somewhat-seedy operation has completely taken over the college game. When young players already good enough to go straight to the NBA from high school are mandated to take a one-year layover to play for a para-professional "amateur" team, that is when the silly and dishonest status of big-time college players as "amateur" descends into the ridiculous and corrupt.
One sad consequence of the one-and-done trend that has marked college basketball for the last six seasons is the absence of joy and flow the players exhibit in playing the games. The players will never have a chance to bond or even fathom that the time they spend together in "college" could be meaningful in and of itself rather than just a means-to-an-end. Forget the predictable "feel good" stories about players bonding, and coaches bonding with teams. My point is that the demeanor of the players during games gives away that the game has lost the joy and artistry that make it more fun to watch than someone putting up drywall. The first five minutes of the Virginia-Syracuse regional final were so uptight that the players looked like the first person to miss a shot would be sacrificed at halftime.
College basketball has become a symptom of the very system that once made it great. The availability of big money to give college basketball teams big arenas to play in, followed by the proliferation of cable, made college basketball one of the most entertaining programs around. Not long after, the addition of the shot-clock and three-pointer made the game even better. It was highly unusual that a player would leave before his four years of eligibility were up. Michael Jordan--the best basketball player of all time--still did not depart for the NBA until after his junior season. That's how meaningful the college game was a few decades ago.
Kentucky's super-talented and deep championship team of 1996 was led by two great players who stayed all four years: Tony Delk and Walter McCarty. Ron Mercer even stuck around for a second season after that championship before he went to the NBA. Kentucky's 1998 team was characterized by a group of players who I really believe thought winning a national title for UK was the most important thing in the world--when it came to basketball anyway--even more important than a possible NBA career. Sure, those players were not the NBA stars-to-be that the current teams are, but there is no question that for them to wear the Kentucky jersey and win an NCAA title for UK gave them the joy and desire to play and win. The players today know why they are there and it ain't "for the love of the game;" let's not pretend otherwise.
This year, no one has looked terribly interested in playing basketball--as though the entire season has been a four-month NIT tournament in disguise that will mercifully come to an end this weekend, so we can watch more exciting things like golf tournaments and spring training baseball games (yes, that's a joke).
That's because the big money and big-time media coverage that made college basketball so exciting not long ago have now made it a dull, mechanical, big-money operation that has zapped the joy and desire out of the games themselves. UK fans once-upon-a-time would still be lamenting the loss to IU and insisting over beers that UK would have given UNC a much better game than IU did. Not until late September came around, and Midnight Madness suddenly was right around the corner, would fans turn their focus to the upcoming season. And the concern--believe it or not--would be how good the team would be--not how high the recruiting class was ranked or how many projected lottery picks would bolt from the program ASAP. Nothing says "It's been my dream to play for UK and I love playing for the Big Blue" than "I want to get out of here as soon as I can because the only reason to play is for the big bucks."
Spare me the argument that it's good for the players and their families that the players get big-money pro contracts as soon as they can and that Calipari is some "genius" for figuring out how to use the one-and-done loophole to his advantage. Calipari has done an excellent job recruiting and shown he can coach well in high-stakes, pressure-packed NCAA tournament games. He and UK are hardly the sole sources of college basketball's demise.
In fact, it may be no one's fault: just a simple reality that nothing stays great forever. What's too bad is that college basketball in its present form isn't going to go away: the low-scoring games, the lack of chemistry and artistry to how teams play, and the overly-serious approach the coaches implement will only harden and further deteriorate the quality of play. And on top of all that is the undeniable reality that the conflict over the "amateur" status of college basketball players and the tons of money swirling about the game has reached a point where the game is broken. If anyone truly cared about the financial well-being of college basketball players, they would be paid like the young pros they are, and how soon they got to the NBA--if they were good enough at all--would not cast the giant, dollar-sign shaped shadow over the college game the way it does now.
Not that anyone will listen, but I have some recommendations:
The regular season has become incredibly dull because it is saturated with pre-conference games that are deliberately non-competitive followed by a conference schedule of redundant match-ups that tell us little about how good anyone really is because no one will play a competitive non-conference game unless it includes a week-long vacation in Hawaii or the Bahamas. The point, of course, is to rack up as many wins playing at home against teams who have no chance of winning before the "grueling"conference schedule kicks in and teams have to go into hostile opponent's arenas to gut out tough wins over conference opponents. Why? Because the regular season is now nothing but a means-to-an-end for the NCAA tournament: three months of dull basketball is not the formula for a final three weeks of excitement. But the formula is in place: win as many games as possible, get as high a seed as possible, get the easiest bracket as possible, and a Final Four birth has the highest odds of happening. Yeah! How exciting!
The most exciting weekend of this past season came in late January when the SEC and Big 12 took a break from business-as-usual and played games against one another in a day-long, inter-conference challenge. It was refreshing to see SEC teams play someone besides someone from the SEC. Florida upset West Virginia, Oklahoma beat LSU in the final minute, and Kentucky took Kansas into overtime before losing. Why can't the entire regular season be more like that? Why can't both the regular season and the NCAA tournament be exciting, instead of neither? For example, why does Kentucky play Illinois St. but no longer will play IU? Why does UK play Arizona State instead of bordering Virginia? Why does UK--like all other major teams--make it a point to play as few competitive games home-and-away as possible? What does anyone --the fans, coaches, or players--get from watching Kentucky beat Illinois St. in Rupp Arena? What cause for celebration! The game is dull, the outcome is predictable, the players do not learn about the weak links in their games, they don't improve by playing such a game, and the coaches have nothing to work with in order to figure out how to make the team its best.
The dull play and super-serious, super-controlled approach of the coaches has led to once-unfathomable breakdowns in basic basketball plays. How did taking all of the joy and fun out of playing basketball help Northern Iowa--a team that beat UNC--somehow not be able to inbound the ball to the point it blew a twelve point lead with 44 seconds to go? My point is that making the game mechanical, predictable, and as non-spontaneous or artistic as possible does nothing for making the play more fundamentally sound. Texas A&M's comeback against N. Iowa was less about anything amazing the Aggies did than a harsh example of how dysfunctional the game has become. In-bounding the freaking ball is now something else to stress out about and dissect endlessly.
So, for whatever it's worth, make the pre-conference schedule more competitive, and in turn, shorten the conference season so that it isn't the hum-drum round-robin same old thing over and over again that it has become. No need to play every conference foe home and away every year. Play half of conference opponents only once, home this year, away the next, and play only half both home and away. Then after two years, switch up who plays whom only once and which teams will meet twice.
Get rid of the worthless postseason conference tournaments. Even coaches like Calipari have out-right said they don't like them. How many times do teams have to play each other and beat other before something is settled? Getting rid of the postseason tournaments would give teams more chance to rest and nagging injuries to heal. Besides, the tournaments are worthless. They serve no purpose but to make money, and when that is the only purpose to a human endeavor it becomes the worst version of itself it can be. Winning a postseason conference means nothing. Austin Peay was not going to beat Kansas, and Kansas would gladly trade its Big 12 Conference Tournament title for a re-match with Villanova where they might resemble the team that could score in the 70s as it did when it plowed through the Big Twelve regular season.
Imagine a UK season that begins with away games at Virginia and Indiana, (oh my God, UK could start 0-2? Even the football team doesn't do that!) followed by home games versus Ohio State and Maryland, and then throw in some automatic wins before the annual showdown with Louisville. Then go out west and play Oregon, or up east and play Syracuse on the road? Why not a head-to-head versus West Virginia or nearby Butler? An early season schedule like that would undoubtedly be more exciting than opening with Albany and New Jersey Institute of Technology, opponents who have no chance of giving UK a competitive game much less beating them. Such a challenging early season schedule would seem to be just the thing for UK teams that for the foreseeable future will be comprised of "freshmen" who won't have four year to mature and improve.
And Louisville was just as bad as UK when it came to early season scheduling: the same idea was at work--rack up as many wins as possible before the conference season starts and play the odds to get the highest seed and best draw possible (assuming there is no self-imposed postseason ban).
In any case, the pre-conference schedule for UK that I humbly suggest would be more entertaining for a regular season dominated by two-and-a-half months of games against Georgia, Auburn, Arkansas, etc.--games either UK will win by blowout or lose to the confusion and consternation of the fan base.
As for this year's final four, the best thing about it is that this season will end. The semi-final match-ups are appropriately dull and predictable. Oklahoma already blew out Villanova in December, and while I'm sure the Final Four match up will be more competitive, Oklahoma will likely control and win a game Villanova will do everything to slow down and make as dull as possible. UNC is talented but has underachieved, yet they are going to make it all the way to the title game without a seriously competitive game.
To make things worse, the NCAA has to schedule the Final Four in some giant sports dome in Houston that has shown itself to be shooter-non-friendly--just what the game needs for its jewel moment. The last time this site was host to the Final Four--which obviously ought to be display of the most impressive, exciting, and competitive basketball of the season--UConn and Butler set a tournament record for offensive futility in the 2011 title game. Maybe this year will be an inspiration if the four teams actually hit outside shots and play games that don't end in the 50s. Personally, I think college basketball has gotten so bad the Final Four should be televised in black-and-white--or only broadcast over the radio. Then the intelligentsia of America can debate the ethical and tactical variables that determined the games' outcomes while reminding us regular people how college basketball makes its players and coaches into the best versions of human beings the universe has ever known.
And then a football school, Oklahoma, beats a basketball school, UNC for the title in the last game of a season that can't end too soon.
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