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(Tenured Radical)

Saturday, March 24, 2007

March Madness
Stream of Consciousness


From a writer at The Nation.



... While we await blessed baseball and its promise of renewal, here comes the National Collegiate Athletic Association Men's Division I Basketball Championship--the Big Dance for sportswriters, the Bracket Racket for gamblers, a frat-rat party, a racist entertainment, and a subversion of higher education, perhaps democracy as well.

Calling it March Madness slaps lipstick on a pig.



...In 2002, when I finally got to my first Final Four, I was amazed by the extravaganza. I had expected the usual painted yobs in the stands and the normal adolescent excess, not a corporate audience at a series of networking parties thrown by major sponsors. The Big Dance was a Super Bowl! Coaches looked for jobs; university presidents trolled for sportswriters who looked for drinks. What's the difference, I wondered, between a university that pours Pepsi and wears Nike and a NASCAR team that pumps Bud Lite and wears Drakkar Noir cologne? I wished I hadn't sworn off the word "hypocrisy" as too easy, too banal.


...College basketball coaches tend to be big guys with the confident patter of televangelists; just the kind of mouthy jocks who were allowed to dominate the dorks in high school because their personal goals, winning games to advance their careers, complemented the principal's goal, putting the school on the happy map.

Now, as coaches, they dominate their institutions because their goals are the same as their presidents'--raising money and visibility. Because they are without tenure, they can easily be fired when they start losing, which is why they will do anything to win. Because one or two players can turn a losing basketball team into a winner, coaches are tempted to recruit the illiterate, the felonious, and the "one-and-dones" (who will spend only a season at college en route to the pros).



... Myles Brand has always been the problem. He was the pragmatic fundraiser in college; now, he's the head of a trade association whose main functions are to generate TV income and keep a lid on corruption so it won't escalate into a ruinous arms race, with schools in sky's-the-limit bidding wars for teenage giant prodigies.


... No matter who you think causes the problems here--fans, players, boosters, coaches, presidents, or shoe salespeople -- the only group that could begin to solve them are the faculty of the schools in question, at once victims and accomplices when it comes to sports. They are intimidated by the jock bullies, easily bought off by them, and protective of their own little campus deals--why risk blowing the whistle on the altered or eased grades of athletes when someone could knock off your summer-in-Prague Kafka scam? ...