I grew up in the NC basketball culture. It was a fun thing - lots of schools and lots of cross-cutting rivalries and lots of great games. When I was young, there were walk-on players, a few who were married, deeply rooted local social histories, and it was taken seriously in a way (like knowing all of the stats and history of long-ago players and reciting your own experience of big moments in big games) but not a big money way. The "Big Four" tournament (only on the radio) was the most important for bragging rights. It was killed by big money.
The first thing, which maybe led to all the rest of the things, was "TV time outs". Gradually then completely, what had been for the most part still actually a *game* became disgusting, and damaging. It's all about raking in the most money the fastest, by any means necessary (including ruining kids' lives, and lying cheating stealing). So-called "college basketball" now is unrecognizable in the luxury, corruption, exclusion, and really just un-fun-ness, besides having absolutely no relationship to college.
I'd like to see a farm team system for basketball as there is in baseball, so that college ball might return to relatively obscurity, a bit more wholesome or at least less catastrophic, even ideally for-fun again. I'd also like a pony.
Or maybe my idea is not so unrealistic - after the higher ed crash that has to come, and the sooner the better, maybe schools can be about school, with games only on the side, while big-money big business that peripherally involves young adults on a field or court and a ball of some sort can go off and do their own thing somewhere else. It's the distortion of professional sports frankensteined into higher ed that is the fundamental problem; I'm not sure either govt or markets can do much except make the resulting monstrosity worse.
That environment has been gone a long time. Roy Williams - "who knew the athletes were taking fake classes?". Mike Krzyzewski - king of the 1 and done. Go Purdue. As an IU alum it's hard to say.
I used to live around the corner from Mack when he was the coach at Texas and we would talk when he was out walking his dogs. He bought that house from Lance Armstrong.
I'd be outside working on my azaleas -- yes, I grew huuuuge azaleas in the chalk stoney Austin basic soil w/ chemicals and peat moss -- and he would walk by and we would chat.
We never once spoke about football. He was a very nice chap.
One day he said, "I like talking to you because you never tell me what I should have done at the Saturday football game."
I said, "Oh, you're involved with football?" He laughed hard.
He got a lot of advice, but none from me. I attended about 30 UT v OU games in Dallas.
This has been an issue since sports became about not just money, which they have been that, men's basketball and Football, for 80 years at some schools, but now it is really, really huge money with football leading the way. Tough for most universities to put that monkey back in the box, in part because if they were to what they should do as it relates to men's basketball and Football, there would be no more more money for any other sports at 98% of all universities. Title IX as it relates to equal funding, which is what Title IX is really all about, would cease to be needed. So, these programs that constantly complain about inadequate funding would suddenly find themselves with no funding.
I played in college, it paid for my education. When I was being recruited it was by the likes of the Ivies, Academies, MAAC, WCAC, low end Pac 10 etc. A lot of D-2 schools with good academics because I had both test scores and grades. When I did commit to play at Fordham, I was shortly thereafter asked to take the SAT again so that the coaches could take my score, combine it with another kid they were recruiting with a 800 and say look, the average SAT score of our income class is 950. That was in 1990. I look around and see in the two primary money making sports a large swath of kids who have no business academically being in college and with all of the joke degrees that have come into being over the last 2 decades, that says a lot. NIL has only made things arguably worse. At the core of all of this as been the NCAA, one of the most poorly run entities out there, and that says a lot. The old adage was, we caught Kentucky cheating; let's put middle Tennessee Valley Tech on probation!! It has always been about money, but at least once upon a time the kids could take real classes and pass and they could actually absorb complex schemes and concepts on the court or field. Not so much anymore in either case. I also think that college coaching, at least at the Division 1 men's basketball level, has gone to the dogs. What are now in place are the guys who were part of the trend 40 years ago of what amount to used car salesmen getting into coaching because they can keep the pipeline full. As for the cheating, well outside Bobby Knight and the smaller schools who don't have the alumni with the money to even think about cheating, almost everyone else was. If universities want to change this, they could. Only allow kids in who actually academically belong there. However, college football and men's college basketball are going to look a whole lot different.
I hate to hear this from someone who experienced it at all directly. Sadly it's not surprising. My mom was a huge Dean Smith fan and I was glad she had passed before the semi-worst of the UNC stuff came to light. (We had inside sources and believe me there was a lot that never did come out.) Such a waste and so damaging to young people (players or not) and the integrity of everyone touched by any of the systems.
You are right about all of that. I ran into a kid who was a two year walk on during Dean's time at a bar on the upper east side of Manhattan. He told me that UNC did not necessarily pay up front, but after the players got there it was $500 after a win in their lockers. I am sure there is a lot that did not come out. I was over at Bob Hill's home in NJ before I got married and left NYC, he had just taken over as the head coach at Fordham. He and I were going round and round about stories of shady going-ons in the world of college hoops. He ended our story telling session with this doozy. He was in his office at FU, just two weeks, gets a call from a street agent. Agent says, I got a kid, PG, do you need a PG? Coach Hill says, we need everything, I would like to see this kid. Street Agent says meet me at the Riverside Hawks Gym this weekend around 2. So, Coach Hill goes, agent comes up, introduces himself, and points out the kids. Kid was 6'4", built like an outside linebacker, and the ball was an extension of him, and he was a one man press breaker and great penetrator. He, however, only had range on his shot to about seven feet. Also, lock down defender. Agent said are you interested after seeing him, Coach Hill said absolutely. About two weeks later, at 2 AM Coach Hill's phone rings, he finally picks it up- it is the Agent- coach Hill did not give him his home phone number- Agent says UConn has flown their money man down, the kid was offered a new Nissan Pathfinder, $80K in cash, and a cell phone that is all ready on. The kid is in the bathroom at Smith and Wolensky's and has called me asking what he should do. I told him to stay in there- I am calling you Coach Hill to see if you can beat that offer from UConn? Coach Hill responded by tell the Street Agent that he coaches at Fordham, and they don't so nor do they have the resources to consider "recruiting" like that. Click came the sound on the phone. Funny thing is kid ended up at UConn, was the PG on one of their national title teams, and the Street Agent went up to Coach Calhoun two years later asking for more money and Calhoun told him to get the F out of his office because the kid still can't shoot beyond seven feet.
The worst thing about NIL is that it is going to bring a bigger divide between the haves and have notes. Minnesota football coach P.J. Fleck said last year that Minnesota can't compete with Michigan and Ohio State because they do not have enough donors to "buy" players. He also mentioned USC, Alabama, Clemson, Florida State and other football powers who can pay quarterbacks $1 million to entice them to come to those schools. NIL is going to make college football less competitive and it is disappointing.
Nickie Satan (what you call him if you live in Savannah as I do and root for the Dawgs) has more national championships than any other coach having won w/ the Tide in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2020; and, with LSU in 2003.
It is noteworthy that the #2 spot is held by the legendary Bear Bryant who had 6 national championships also at Alabama -- 1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978 and 1979.
Nickie Satan also has the distinction of having had other great assistant coaches who having learned from him went on to do great things -- Kirby Smart at Georgia is the first amongst all Nickie's archangels.
The government sticks its nose in a number of things it shouldn't and this is one.
One of the good things about the recent changes in College Sports is shown in the Terrence Shannon Jr. case. When I first heard about the 'rape' allegations, my reaction was, 'he should permanently be removed from the team and criminally charged' . Illinois did suspend TSJ and was reluctant to reconsider their decision.
But because of the market for college athletes, he was allowed to defend himself, and things were not at all what they seemed. He was never alone with the woman who accused him, but supposedly grabbed her backside on a dancefloor in Lawrence Kansas. However the dance bar keeps video of the dancefloor and there was no footage showing TSJ and the woman in question being near each other.
He would never had the resources or the leverage to defend himself without NIL and the Transfer Portal. He would just be a marked man, and shunned by the basketball industry. Now he is all B10 1st team and the Illini are looking at a NCAA Bid.
I am tired of the NCAA Time for them to dissolve. And I agree, someone like Nick Saban would be a good commissioner for a replacement organization.
Good point on Shannon. Looked like an overactive DA, and an overactive me too female. We will see but today because of all that bullcrap I tend to not believe accusations when it comes to athletes.
So Saban was OK knowingly recruiting a lot of just plain bad people. He's upset about those bad people being rich while in college? The whole Division I sports complex stinks. The colleges should spin the Division I teams out into feeder leagues. Collect the cash. Get back to university-ing.
Interesting to read the comments about Carolina here. I'm a UNC Chapel Hill alumni. Played football for Mack Brown in the 90's, his first time around. I don't think many people appreciate the economic disparity between many of the athletes and the regular students. In my experience many of the scholarship guys didn't have a pot to piss in, no support at home and weren't allowed to work because of NCAA rules. I love that these kids are able to get an income. Yes there are downsides but I say let the free market roll.
The boosters prey upon the economic deprivation of some of the athletes. It is extremely hard for a kid coming from limited means to be able to have a social life in college with the crossection of peers attending those big football schools.
You probably don't need to hear from me, but I've given up on sports--pro & college.
Was a big-time fan from my earliest years, listening to games on the radio in the kitchen with parents and siblings before all the expansion of every game on TV and cable. ESPN was like a gift from heaven. Attended with season tickets to college basketball and football, and scores of pro football and baseball games. Good god, my father had season tickets to the NBA's Syracuse Nationals.
But it's no longer about the game or sport--it's money, and an entertainment spectacle. And the money is hugely corrupting to the entire enterprise of sports. What matters now is everything but the game, because the game has been subsumed by the money.
It's exhausting to watch and listen to (much less keep up with) every gyration, innovation, and reform, with analyses how this is the next best new thing to improve the sport forever. You wouldn't be mistaken for thinking woke-progressives were in charge of sports.
I grew up in the NC basketball culture. It was a fun thing - lots of schools and lots of cross-cutting rivalries and lots of great games. When I was young, there were walk-on players, a few who were married, deeply rooted local social histories, and it was taken seriously in a way (like knowing all of the stats and history of long-ago players and reciting your own experience of big moments in big games) but not a big money way. The "Big Four" tournament (only on the radio) was the most important for bragging rights. It was killed by big money.
The first thing, which maybe led to all the rest of the things, was "TV time outs". Gradually then completely, what had been for the most part still actually a *game* became disgusting, and damaging. It's all about raking in the most money the fastest, by any means necessary (including ruining kids' lives, and lying cheating stealing). So-called "college basketball" now is unrecognizable in the luxury, corruption, exclusion, and really just un-fun-ness, besides having absolutely no relationship to college.
I'd like to see a farm team system for basketball as there is in baseball, so that college ball might return to relatively obscurity, a bit more wholesome or at least less catastrophic, even ideally for-fun again. I'd also like a pony.
Or maybe my idea is not so unrealistic - after the higher ed crash that has to come, and the sooner the better, maybe schools can be about school, with games only on the side, while big-money big business that peripherally involves young adults on a field or court and a ball of some sort can go off and do their own thing somewhere else. It's the distortion of professional sports frankensteined into higher ed that is the fundamental problem; I'm not sure either govt or markets can do much except make the resulting monstrosity worse.
Tobacco Road, baby.
Is there anything in the world better than Heels v Duke home and away, then the ACC Tournament, and then the Final Four.
I pray they meet a total of four times and the Heels sweep.
Watching the Heels sweep Duke this year is just Blue Heaven.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
That environment has been gone a long time. Roy Williams - "who knew the athletes were taking fake classes?". Mike Krzyzewski - king of the 1 and done. Go Purdue. As an IU alum it's hard to say.
Of course the NCAA didn't really punish the Heels and Roy for cheating on academics.
And I am a huuuuuuuuge Heels fan.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I played football at UNC for Mack Brown in the 90's. This has been a difficult issue for a long time. It's a paradox.
I used to live around the corner from Mack when he was the coach at Texas and we would talk when he was out walking his dogs. He bought that house from Lance Armstrong.
I'd be outside working on my azaleas -- yes, I grew huuuuge azaleas in the chalk stoney Austin basic soil w/ chemicals and peat moss -- and he would walk by and we would chat.
We never once spoke about football. He was a very nice chap.
One day he said, "I like talking to you because you never tell me what I should have done at the Saturday football game."
I said, "Oh, you're involved with football?" He laughed hard.
He got a lot of advice, but none from me. I attended about 30 UT v OU games in Dallas.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
This has been an issue since sports became about not just money, which they have been that, men's basketball and Football, for 80 years at some schools, but now it is really, really huge money with football leading the way. Tough for most universities to put that monkey back in the box, in part because if they were to what they should do as it relates to men's basketball and Football, there would be no more more money for any other sports at 98% of all universities. Title IX as it relates to equal funding, which is what Title IX is really all about, would cease to be needed. So, these programs that constantly complain about inadequate funding would suddenly find themselves with no funding.
I played in college, it paid for my education. When I was being recruited it was by the likes of the Ivies, Academies, MAAC, WCAC, low end Pac 10 etc. A lot of D-2 schools with good academics because I had both test scores and grades. When I did commit to play at Fordham, I was shortly thereafter asked to take the SAT again so that the coaches could take my score, combine it with another kid they were recruiting with a 800 and say look, the average SAT score of our income class is 950. That was in 1990. I look around and see in the two primary money making sports a large swath of kids who have no business academically being in college and with all of the joke degrees that have come into being over the last 2 decades, that says a lot. NIL has only made things arguably worse. At the core of all of this as been the NCAA, one of the most poorly run entities out there, and that says a lot. The old adage was, we caught Kentucky cheating; let's put middle Tennessee Valley Tech on probation!! It has always been about money, but at least once upon a time the kids could take real classes and pass and they could actually absorb complex schemes and concepts on the court or field. Not so much anymore in either case. I also think that college coaching, at least at the Division 1 men's basketball level, has gone to the dogs. What are now in place are the guys who were part of the trend 40 years ago of what amount to used car salesmen getting into coaching because they can keep the pipeline full. As for the cheating, well outside Bobby Knight and the smaller schools who don't have the alumni with the money to even think about cheating, almost everyone else was. If universities want to change this, they could. Only allow kids in who actually academically belong there. However, college football and men's college basketball are going to look a whole lot different.
I hate to hear this from someone who experienced it at all directly. Sadly it's not surprising. My mom was a huge Dean Smith fan and I was glad she had passed before the semi-worst of the UNC stuff came to light. (We had inside sources and believe me there was a lot that never did come out.) Such a waste and so damaging to young people (players or not) and the integrity of everyone touched by any of the systems.
You are right about all of that. I ran into a kid who was a two year walk on during Dean's time at a bar on the upper east side of Manhattan. He told me that UNC did not necessarily pay up front, but after the players got there it was $500 after a win in their lockers. I am sure there is a lot that did not come out. I was over at Bob Hill's home in NJ before I got married and left NYC, he had just taken over as the head coach at Fordham. He and I were going round and round about stories of shady going-ons in the world of college hoops. He ended our story telling session with this doozy. He was in his office at FU, just two weeks, gets a call from a street agent. Agent says, I got a kid, PG, do you need a PG? Coach Hill says, we need everything, I would like to see this kid. Street Agent says meet me at the Riverside Hawks Gym this weekend around 2. So, Coach Hill goes, agent comes up, introduces himself, and points out the kids. Kid was 6'4", built like an outside linebacker, and the ball was an extension of him, and he was a one man press breaker and great penetrator. He, however, only had range on his shot to about seven feet. Also, lock down defender. Agent said are you interested after seeing him, Coach Hill said absolutely. About two weeks later, at 2 AM Coach Hill's phone rings, he finally picks it up- it is the Agent- coach Hill did not give him his home phone number- Agent says UConn has flown their money man down, the kid was offered a new Nissan Pathfinder, $80K in cash, and a cell phone that is all ready on. The kid is in the bathroom at Smith and Wolensky's and has called me asking what he should do. I told him to stay in there- I am calling you Coach Hill to see if you can beat that offer from UConn? Coach Hill responded by tell the Street Agent that he coaches at Fordham, and they don't so nor do they have the resources to consider "recruiting" like that. Click came the sound on the phone. Funny thing is kid ended up at UConn, was the PG on one of their national title teams, and the Street Agent went up to Coach Calhoun two years later asking for more money and Calhoun told him to get the F out of his office because the kid still can't shoot beyond seven feet.
The governments motivation for getting involved is to grow its power.
The worst thing about NIL is that it is going to bring a bigger divide between the haves and have notes. Minnesota football coach P.J. Fleck said last year that Minnesota can't compete with Michigan and Ohio State because they do not have enough donors to "buy" players. He also mentioned USC, Alabama, Clemson, Florida State and other football powers who can pay quarterbacks $1 million to entice them to come to those schools. NIL is going to make college football less competitive and it is disappointing.
Don't you think there will be a dozen schools who get all the talent and thus make the top ten schools wildly competitive?
No more Gonzagas, App States for sure.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Excellent article tat sums up the situation nicely.
Nickie Satan (what you call him if you live in Savannah as I do and root for the Dawgs) has more national championships than any other coach having won w/ the Tide in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2020; and, with LSU in 2003.
It is noteworthy that the #2 spot is held by the legendary Bear Bryant who had 6 national championships also at Alabama -- 1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978 and 1979.
Nickie Satan also has the distinction of having had other great assistant coaches who having learned from him went on to do great things -- Kirby Smart at Georgia is the first amongst all Nickie's archangels.
The government sticks its nose in a number of things it shouldn't and this is one.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
One of the good things about the recent changes in College Sports is shown in the Terrence Shannon Jr. case. When I first heard about the 'rape' allegations, my reaction was, 'he should permanently be removed from the team and criminally charged' . Illinois did suspend TSJ and was reluctant to reconsider their decision.
But because of the market for college athletes, he was allowed to defend himself, and things were not at all what they seemed. He was never alone with the woman who accused him, but supposedly grabbed her backside on a dancefloor in Lawrence Kansas. However the dance bar keeps video of the dancefloor and there was no footage showing TSJ and the woman in question being near each other.
He would never had the resources or the leverage to defend himself without NIL and the Transfer Portal. He would just be a marked man, and shunned by the basketball industry. Now he is all B10 1st team and the Illini are looking at a NCAA Bid.
I am tired of the NCAA Time for them to dissolve. And I agree, someone like Nick Saban would be a good commissioner for a replacement organization.
Good point on Shannon. Looked like an overactive DA, and an overactive me too female. We will see but today because of all that bullcrap I tend to not believe accusations when it comes to athletes.
They really are targets, but some of them are also maniacs.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
💯 agree.
So Saban was OK knowingly recruiting a lot of just plain bad people. He's upset about those bad people being rich while in college? The whole Division I sports complex stinks. The colleges should spin the Division I teams out into feeder leagues. Collect the cash. Get back to university-ing.
Interesting to read the comments about Carolina here. I'm a UNC Chapel Hill alumni. Played football for Mack Brown in the 90's, his first time around. I don't think many people appreciate the economic disparity between many of the athletes and the regular students. In my experience many of the scholarship guys didn't have a pot to piss in, no support at home and weren't allowed to work because of NCAA rules. I love that these kids are able to get an income. Yes there are downsides but I say let the free market roll.
The boosters prey upon the economic deprivation of some of the athletes. It is extremely hard for a kid coming from limited means to be able to have a social life in college with the crossection of peers attending those big football schools.
It is an insurmountable temptation.
Hook 'Em Heels!
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
You probably don't need to hear from me, but I've given up on sports--pro & college.
Was a big-time fan from my earliest years, listening to games on the radio in the kitchen with parents and siblings before all the expansion of every game on TV and cable. ESPN was like a gift from heaven. Attended with season tickets to college basketball and football, and scores of pro football and baseball games. Good god, my father had season tickets to the NBA's Syracuse Nationals.
But it's no longer about the game or sport--it's money, and an entertainment spectacle. And the money is hugely corrupting to the entire enterprise of sports. What matters now is everything but the game, because the game has been subsumed by the money.
It's exhausting to watch and listen to (much less keep up with) every gyration, innovation, and reform, with analyses how this is the next best new thing to improve the sport forever. You wouldn't be mistaken for thinking woke-progressives were in charge of sports.
Well, it's just one opinion. Cheers.
Same for me. A pox on all their houses.
Amen! Mr Carter!