New feature. Sporadically (as with everything on this unorganized, shitty blog), I will provide links to what others are saying about college basketball topics, leaving the one I wish to opine on for the end, as it makes for a cleaner format. Feel free to discuss any topics in the comment section.
- Doug Gottlieb remembers the 2001 Oklahoma State plane crash that killed 10. Gottlieb played for the Cowboys and graduated the season before the crash.
I remember the first time I really cried about the plane wreck. It was Dec. 24 of the same year, Christmas Eve 2001. I was on a bus with my Israeli team. Our wives traveled with us as we headed to Haifa in the northern part of the country. As I sat looking out the window at the Mediterranean Sea, Angie was a little homesick, as it was her first Christmas away from Oklahoma. Tears came as she mentioned 9/11 and how many others would never come home. I simply remembered The Ten (ESPN).
- Coach K to the NBA? Adrian Wojnarowski, an excellent NBA writer for Yahoo! Sports, offers his take on why the Nets want Krzyzewski and how they plan to land him. He also offers damning information on the Pitino fiasco:
Pitino understood that new Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire, wants to hire an immense figure to coach the franchise. Pitino mistakenly believed he could still be packaged as a transformative A-list hire in the New York market. Those days are over, and Pitino is seen as something of a desperate and diminished figure. Everyone knows he wants out of college and treats his denials for what they are: a mechanism to protect his recruiting, to deflect the embarrassment of appearing unwanted (Yahoo!).
- The New York Times on Binghamton’s downfall. The Times’ utility college sports reporter Pete Thamel delivers the goods unearthed by a 99-page report investigation. One of many gems in the article:
One player who transferred to Binghamton received credit for courses like Bowling I and Theories of Softball, according to the report. An assistant coach and a player discussed cash payments and having the assistant write part of a paper for him (NYT).
- Greg Doyle provides a unique take on the possibility of the NCAA Tournament expanding to 96 teams – he agrees with it? He asks us to think about it. I did, read his column and still oppose the expansion.
Because none of you are thinking about it. You can’t be. The hatred for this idea is almost universal, yet there appears to be no concrete reason for that hatred, unless you consider tradition a concrete concept. Which I do not. There have been other reasons given for the opposition to 96 teams, and I’ll get to them in a minute, but because those reasons are bogus and cannot be taken seriously, it all comes back to the same thing:
You don’t want the NCAA tournament to expand because you’re used to it the way it is (CBSSports.com).
The tournament will expand, and it will be driven by money. Maybe the outcry isn’t about tradition, Mr. Doyle, but about how one of the most enjoyable sports will dilute the competitive balacne of it’s championship-determining tournament in order to become more profitable as an organization.
College basketball is appealing to me because we are witnessing players coming of age. Greatness is not shared by the talent pool, but owned by a few of the sport’s elite. Giving bids to mediocre teams = trying to force “Cinderella” to make an annual appearance. Do you know why George Mason and Davidson were such good basketball stories? Because it isn’t often when a mediocre team makes a run at a championship. And it shouldn’t be.
Feel free to comment. This blog is meant to act as a forum for college basketball fans to share opinions and debate. If nothing else, tell me how shitty of a job I am doing, so at least I know there is a person behind the computer that my computer claims is reading this nonsense.
