Ten items of interest to get your week started off right.
1. The question of multi-year scholarships reared its head again last week. As our man Michael Felder noted, Texas coach Mack Brown hit on the real issue with scholarships in major college football, which really nothing to do with how long they’re guaranteed.
Contrary to popular, very few college football players ever get “cut,” i.e. have their scholarships pulled. Instead, coaches use more surreptitious and indirect ways to jettison non-performers, from kicking them off the team for failing drug tests or missing class to making their lives hell in workouts and practices.
Multi-year scholarships won’t solve that, despite what the Big Ten may tell you.
Professional leagues have well-defined standards and contractual obligations that both the teams and players must abide by. Without collective bargaining, college athletes don’t have that luxury.
Keep all that in mind the next time someone espouses that multi-year scholarships illustrate some kind of commitment on the part of the schools to educate athletes. In practice, it means next to nothing.
2. Obviously, the Jerry Sandusky scandal is going to be a hellacious slog for Penn State that is sure to last years. Every time some piece of information like the report last week that school officials were warned of Sandusky’s alleged pattern of behavior, it re-opens some deep wounds.
Football is so secondary in all of this, but I still have to wonder how long it will be before the program can disinfect itself from all this nastiness.
3. Speaking of scandals, how about Sheriff Goodell laying down the law on the Saints last week? In the court of public opinion, the overwhelming reaction to the news seems to have been shock at the severity of the sanctions, but few complaints – outside of the Big Easy, that is – about the decision.
Honestly, Goodell had little choice in the matter than to throw the book at the major actors in Bountygate. Institutionalized bounties are a gold mine for the litigiously inclined.
I don’t think the idea that teams had these kinds of pools in place caught the commissioner off-guard, if you get my drift. However, as soon as his office was tipped off that the Saints had the bounties in place, the NFL’s risk exposure to legal action by injured players would have been equivalent to hittin’ it with Paris Hilton sans prophylactic. If it had gotten out that the league knew the bounties were in place and did nothing, well, that would potentially be the end of that little enterprise.
4. How’s about we move on to actual athletic endeavors…
Regarding the performance of the Kentucky Wildcats Sunday against Baylor, to quote Verne Lundquist, my goodness! And a little more Verne: How do you do!
Baylor hung with the Wildcats for precisely the first four minutes of the South regional final in Atlanta. For the next 36 minutes, John Calipari’s crew totally dismantled the Bears. We’re talking every facet of the game. I mean, I could try to pick out one particular key to UK’s win, but that would be completely beside the point.
Is this Kentucky team an all-time great squad? Hardly. The Wildcats’ dominance speaks as much to the state of college basketball today as it does the quality of their play.
Still, at this point, it would be an absolute shock if anyone other than UK won the whole thing.
5. I’m sure that I’m not the only person writing this today, but it’s also time for Coach Cal to finally get his props.
Yeah, he comes off like a cheesedick used car salesman. He’s almost like an avatar for all the seediness in major college sports today. Even so, watching this team in action, isn’t it easy to see why his players love him?
Calipari has created a system that plays to the strengths of all those diaper dandies he brings in for short stays in Bluegrass Country. Whereas you’d think some of his peers invented the game, he deflects all the credit to the Jimmys and the Joes.
Maybe more importantly, the other side of that coin is that Cal has mastered the art of taking the the blame. He’s probably a much better strategist than people like me give him credit for. Yet, he has managed to somehow turn his reputation as a subpar Xs-and-Os coach into a positive, owning it as a way of shielding his players from pressure. (Note that in his comments after working Baylor like a speed bag, he even had a self-effacing quip about his team’s “stupid coach” taking his foot off of the gas.)
The Wildcats head to New Orleans as the overwhelming favorites to win the whole shebang. That kind of scrutiny has felled plenty of teams in the past, especially when you throw in the fact that this squad represents a fan base that is the hoops equivalent of Alabama football fans. But the ‘Cats have played pretty free and easy in the first four games of the Big Dance, and I don’t see that changing in the next two. Credit Cal for that.
From the sublime to the ridiculous…
6. Scott Drew, everyone.
The Golden State Warriors would have had a tough time beating Kentucky Sunday. There’s no shame in losing to that team.
Even so, I’d argue that if the Bears aren’t equally talented to UK, they’re damn close. Funny that it didn’t seem to shock anyone that Baylor got its doors blown off.
The sad reality is that despite his miraculous ability to lure top-notch talent to Waco, Drew is simply putrid when it comes the Xs and Os. It was clear Sunday that Baylor was completely outclassed on the bench, and, like I said, I honestly don’t even think that much of Cal as a tactician. I’d throw out the line that “Cal was playing chess and Drew was playing checkers,” but that would be selling checkers players short.
Drew has raised his program from the depths of basketball hell and turned it into a marquee destination for elite prospect. That in and of itself is a great accomplishment. But the Bears are almost always going to be a step behind on the sidelines – or more – versus their opponents. Just how it is.
7. Dancing Baylor Kid, who brought the thunder when the Bears got within 13 of UK in the second half, really sums up the whole thing.
8. Back to the great coaches. Bill Self has probably done his best coaching job in his time at Kansas this year. This group is a far cry from his most talented teams, but he has coaxed a great season out of them. Thomas Robinson and Jeff Withey give KU a twin towers advantage down low that few teams around the country can match. Somehow, though, Self has harnessed mercurial guard Tyshawn Taylor and his combination of equal parts brilliance and WTF and turned him into the key cog in his machine.
Self gets knocked for his teams’ past struggles in the postseason, but hopefully those have been put to rest.
9. Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville and Ohio State in the Final Four… Count on a John Junker-like fiesta at CBS’s corporate office today.
10. If you must know why I was delayed from starting this column until such an unreasonable hour… OK, well, I realize you didn’t ask. Anyway, it’s because I was watching the Mad Men premiere.
All in all, I thought it was fantastic. The writing is just so damn sharp. It really strikes me that the show has evolved so much from its beginnings, when it relied heavily on atmosphere and the novelty of the time period.
And, man, Don Draper is soft as a Big 12 defense these days.
