More Basketball and All

This is a lousy way to end the NCAA basketball tournament. A Final Four composed of four teams that I really don’t want to win it. If Ohio State wins, more teams may decide that Big 10 basketball is the way to go. It isn’t the way to go. A win by Georgetown means way too much face time for the elder John Thompson. I don’t think that’s good for anyone. UCLA gets in, and here comes all the re-deification of John Wooden with no mention of how dirty his program was. If Florida repeats, we get Yoakim Noah simultaneously whoring himself to the camera and wondering why no one likes him. I used to wonder how someone that unattractive could have been spawned by a Swedish beauty queen, but then I saw this picture and began to realize she might have some hidden genetic problems. Overall, I just wish they would all lose, but I’m not predicting anything. My picks suck.

There’s another Final Four going on that I admittedly hadn’t paid attention to except to note that LSU is in the women’s Final Four even though their head coach abruptly resigned before the tournament started when it was discovered that she apparently did a former player. By “did”, I mean she apparently coached her down instead of up. Actually, word is that there was more than one. I’m assuming the appropriately named Pokey was having her “inappropriate relations” while the former player(s) was an active (no pun intended) player. Truthfully, I am curious to know who it was because I would like to see if she was worth throwing away a very lucrative career for. UL just hired a women’s basketball coach for $300K a year. Pokey had Final Fours on her resume, so she just lost a lot of money. Then it was how it was portrayed. I guess nothing should surprise me, but the level of support for Pokey within the press is pretty astonishing. From blaming LSU for the problems to glowing bios to my personal favorite – a story telling how LSU's tournament resilience is a tribute to Pokey. What? After years of fending off Pokey's advances, LSU was great at team defense? Give me a break. The fact that these reporters are tip-toeing around this story is a bit ridiculous. You know full and well that a male coach caught laying pipe to one of his female players would be crucified. And rightly so. I never thought college professors should mess with students, and I don’t think college coaches should mess with their players. Too much area for abuse.

I almost forgot. There was another Final Four this week – the NIT. Actually, there may have been a women’s NIT, but I’m not 100% sure that it really exists. There was a time that the NIT was as big as the NCAA tournament, because it was played at Madison Square Gardens while the NCAA was played in places like Kansas City. Then the NCAA squeezed the NIT into the background. Then they bought it to keep it from going under (presumably for the same reason they sanction enough bowl games for every team over .500, more teams in the postseason). They were supposed to improve the product, but much like every other thing the NCAA does, they screwed it up. Case in point, West Virginia won this year’s NIT, but the T-shirts provided by the NIT spelled it “West Virgina”. If they were going to misspell it, they could have at least made it interesting with “West Virginney” or “America’s Butthole”. Give it a spark. Or at least be more descriptive.

One last point on Tubby Smith’s job change. Originally, I thought the reason for his move was because he let the talent level drop and didn’t want to be stuck with it next year. Then I heard his son Saul was going to be hired there as an assistant, and it makes even more sense. Nobody in Lexington liked Saul, so no way he could ever be Tubby’s successor at UK. Minnesota’s a different story. Bet Tubby won’t have a problem dumping his staff with the Gophers. At least the ones who might be between Saul and the head coaching job when Tubby’s ready to retire. Hell, I bet youngest son Brian transfers from Ole Miss to be Minnesota’s starting point guard in 2008.

In other sports related news, I got great news the other day. Joe Theismann has been bumped from the Monday Night Football with Ron Jaworski taking his place. Unfortunately, Tony Kornheiser will still be there so I’ll probably still have to have the volume down. I wish they would replace him with pretty much anybody. Well, except Joe Theismann. A cinder block would be acceptable though. Since I watch a lot of college football, I was concerned when I heard that because he was still under a general contract with ESPN, Theismann might be moved to NCAA games. Fortunately, he says he won’t do college games, because “he’s an NFL guy”. I forgot how fundamentally different the college game is from the NFL.

Now, this was an odd story. A Toledo football player was busted for trying to bribe teammates to shave points for a local gambler. The oddity is that enough money was bet on Toledo football games to make bribing players worthwhile.

Okay, this is odder. They had hooligan riots in Greece over women’s volleyball. And apparently, it’s not the first time. Kind of proves my point from before. Americans don’t take sports near as seriously as other countries. I’m hard pressed to recall our last volleyball riot.