Years ago, when Frank McLaughlin, then Fordham ED, attended one of those innocuous NCAA correctional conferences, he was stunned to see and hear Jerry Tarkanian, the basketball coach of the notoriously lawless UNLV, supporting the most stringent rules and sentencing proposals Used to do
He later asked Tarakanian how his reputation as a lawgiver was in defiance of his positions of law and order. Tarkanian pioneered with his derogatory facial expression, explaining that he expected his contestants to take the new rules seriously, as he would not.
McLaughlin never finds out if Tarakanian is biting her choppers. But he did not think so.
With the NCAA Tournament, a billion-dollar TV asset, in the mass scene, a look into the hall of fame of college basketball instructors who run far beyond NCAA rules as a means to end their NCAA Tournament , And reveals their willingness to play their own kind of ball. The repeat drama of both parties was blink and blink.
And at the outset of this tournament it seemed that the recruited truths, important, whatever they were, were erased.
Utah State, who lost to Texas Tech on TNT on Friday, had two players from Poland, one each from Canada, Portugal, Australia and Ukraine. Was it so irrelevant – or harmful – that it was ignored by announcers Carter Blackburn and Debbie Antonelli.
You may be surprised to learn that Max Shulga, a Ukrainian, attended high school at the Basketball School of Excellence in Torreldon, Spain, a short bus ride to a state college 5,200 miles away in Logan, Utah. Or did he ship from Kiev, 5,700 miles out?
Jim Vulvano, now the holy version of ESPN’s Our Lady of Guadalupe, was available to star on ESPN as his operation and operative was caught cheating several times when he coached North Carolina State. Its 1983 national championship aside, until 1990 the state school could no longer stop the scandals on its watch.
Soon, big-name college coaches who were fired for running runway programs began to find TV networks eager and prosperous, no questions asked, easy money employment opportunities.
It is not that religion is found in schools. NCAA investigators were hired, and they were working as experts in recruitment and eligibility flaws by big-time sports colleges for big dough.
Many athletic departments were already in the habit of simply handing over the RAH-RAS as academic advisors, sacrificing academic integrity in “service” for players who soon returned to where they came from, Unable to read, despite his collegiate scholarship. Write, balance a checkbook or speak functional, sensible English.
Now the NCAA, through its basketball tournament, has returned to TV’s men and women, who know better, but say the opposite.
Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg, Grant Hill, Kevin Harlan, Tracy Wolfson, and others will be in line to tell us that coaches are special people, all legends, when they have one thing they are doing that wins a basketball. Takes for Games for colleges that serve as their team fronts.
More than 40 years ago, Arizona State football coach Darryl Rogers spoke an unfortunate and lasting truth: “They will fire you for losing you before setting you on fire for cheating on you.”
Networks strike A-rods
So now what? Now that Alex Rodriguez’s credibility is so low, it seems that his fiancée doesn’t trust him?
Well, he will continue to be MLB’s most visible and award-winning controversial renegade drug cheat and liar and the nation’s star prime-time Sunday MLB presence, speaking out his all-knowing contradictory nonsense, as well as Fox’s useless MLB studio show Serving as the star of the weekend.
It seems that he is still the team boy who stood in the hunt for “girls” during a Yankees playoff game, then sent a ballboy to complete their meet.
He still seems to be the same man who has given his fame, appearance, vision, name and hard-earned drug lessons to high school kids using lethal steroids – only to betray that organization and those kids To give who are battling to advance their fame. And luck.
TV knows what’s best for us. And in Rodriguez, two national MLB networks have determined that we are smoking with him – and keep smiling with him – when we get sick of him.
Why? Is it because TV at half price cannot do a better job? Or because TV thinks we don’t deserve any better? Or is it that TV hires as its shot-callers?
So now what? Nothing, same. We’ll return to the ESPN shooting Heartthrob A-Rod in the booth – perhaps for the third time claiming that even-number leads are better than odd-number leads. After all, Rodriguez is one of those TV shot-callers who think we covet, we end up, we deserve it.
NBA is in a bind 3
Watching (or not watching now) NBA self-destruct:
At first glance one would think that the Grizzlies 89, Heat 85 on Wednesday, had a good, old-value NBA game: strong defense, patient offense, determined play, well-coached on both ends.
But in such cases these days, such a low scoring game is a sign of a rotten-throated shooting 3-point game. And that was it. 76 3-pointers were thrown – Miami was 8-for-34 (23.5 percent), Memphis was 10-for 42 (23.8 percent).
By the way, the Mavericks’ 7-foot-3 Kristaps Porzingis went on the weekend with 45 offensive rebellions, but had 149 3-pointers. Career: 450 offensive rebellions, 1,337 3-point attempts. Yet the No. 4-overall pick in the 2015 draft – by the Knicks – is still listed as a power forward / center.
Despite being largely a country home and relentless incentive to maximize viewership by placing bets on the game, this year’s NBA All-Star Game TV ratings were miserable, a new low, 1.32 million viewers from last season, and A Titanic below. 17 million viewers since 1993.
To hear that Charles Barclay is trying to make his way through the NCAA Tournament Studio show again, this kind of put-down comedy Barclay likes others.
Ex-NBAer Brendan Heywood, an analyst who worked at Turner / CBS on Arkansas-Colgate on Friday, was good throughout, but particularly early on, in large part due to Colgate’s astounding 14-point lead. The defense tightened, the game flipped.
Good state call by Seth Davis of CBS on Friday: In his three-point loss to 15-seed Oral Roberts, Ohio State was a rotten 9-for-18 on free throws.
The radio call of the Drake-Wichita State NCAA Tournament play-in aired Thursday on Weston Forest, a Marwan Albert-spectacular. Until play-by-player John Cedek was doing it all, he quickly described the logistics and the play to both, down to a shot that hit the rim, then backboard, before it rebounded.
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