DHL Dan CCXCIII - Rember When?

I don't always remember where I was for every seismic sporting event. I remeber where I was when the ball went between Buckner's legs in the 1986 World Series because I was watching the game with some Mets fans who went absolutely apeshit when it happened. I also remember the Tuck Rule game, because I went to bed as soon as I saw it happen, convinced it was a fumble. And now, we have the latest thing that makes you jump off of your couch:

You’ll always remember where you were when Braylon Mullins shot UConn into Final Four, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for the Red Sox to stagger into Fenway for their 126th home opener . . .

⋅ Where were you when UConn’s Braylon Mullins launched the shot heard ’round basketball America?

I was alone in my TV room/man cave, eyes glued to the giant flatscreen as the beautiful orange sphere flew 35 feet, then ripped through the netting with nary a trace of iron. I hollered, “Wow!” or some other profound remark that no one could hear. Not even the chair.

I starting thinking of friends and family across the land, wondering where they were watching, and how they were reacting.

Was former Globe columnist Leigh Montville watching? Montville’s a proud UConn alum who goes back to the days of Wes Bialosuknia and Toby Kimball. I knew he’d made a small purchase at Jordan’s Furniture during the “your furniture will be free if UConn’s men’s and women’s teams play for the championship” window. For sure, Leigh was watching.

What about Jim Calhoun? He’s a Braintree guy who first coached at Dedham High School, then had Reggie Lewis at Northeastern, and wound up at UConn, where he won the school’s first three men’s NCAA basketball championships. No doubt Calhoun was watching. Maybe he was there.

March Blandness

It seems like Shank's off the NCAA Tournament bandwagon, and maybe with good reason:

The men’s NCAA tournament used to be great. But now that it’s professional basketball? No thanks.

March Madness! How’s your bracket looking? Got tickets to the big subregional in Providence this coming weekend? Do you think Rick Pitino and Coach Cal could match up on Saturday? Is Cooper Flagg better than Bill Walton? How about that Dan Hurley, huh? Think we’ll see a No. 16 beat a No. 1? Do you hate Duke?

Sweet 16 . . . Elite Eight . . . Final Four . . . Whee!

No thanks, Basketball America. I’ll be sitting this one out. I’m not sure I’d watch the men’s championship game if they played it in my driveway on Monday, April 7.

Seriously. The NCAA men’s basketball tournament used to be great, but I have a hard time understanding how folks invest dollars and emotions in today’s farce that has almost nothing to do with colleges and universities.

“With the Power Four conferences, it’s fraud in terms of terminology,” says Leo Papile, former player personnel director of the Celtics (14 seasons) and presently a senior adviser with the Clippers who founded the Boston Athletic Basketball Club (BABC) 48 years ago. “They use the term ‘student-athletes.’ That’s fraud. If you brought that to trial, it would be very easy to prove that that does not exist. I’m not a scholar, but I know that in order to get a degree, you can’t bounce around three or four schools in four years.”

True that. Not that anyone cares anymore, but when we watch the big schools in this tournament, it’s impossible to buy the notion that we are watching students at play. Oregon traveled more than 26,000 miles to play its Big Ten schedule — yes, Oregon is in the Big Ten — this season. That’s more than the circumference of the Earth. Think those kids are cracking the books or interacting with their schoolmates?

Today’s NCAA basketball is unregulated professional basketball. Frothy fans boost their favorite school, screaming their heads off for skilled professional players, most of whom have zero allegiance to said college, and some of whom maybe never set foot in a classroom or interacted with anyone on campus outside of the athletic department and compliance office.

I largely agree with this, because it is really stupid having a West Coast college like Oregon in the Big Ten (Stanford's also in the Big Ten, or maybe it's the Big Sixteen now) and the NIL money's why all this is happening.

Throwing In The Towel

Shank doesn't think college sports should be played this year:

Colleges should follow the Ivy League, again, and shut down sports this year

Laugh at the Ivy League all you want, you tailgate-lovin', rib-eatin', under-the-table payin', FBS-series-playin’ college football towns across America. You’ve got All-Americans, spring games that draw 100,000 fans, and a legitimate shot at a national championship. You know who you are. We’re talking to you, Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, ACC, and Pac-12.

But never forget that the Ivy League is where today’s big-time college football started. And take these next couple of days to ask yourself if you really want your young men congregating and sweating and tackling one another with hopes of starting a college football season around Labor Day.

It’s over for this year, people. The Ivy League just told you so. Listen to them. And give it up for this year.

The Ivy League announced Wednesday that there will be no varsity sports this fall. The league will perhaps attempt to play its football season next spring. No sooner.

I'm for this - colleges overall are churning out way too many idjits nowadays and this will result in a price mechanism fix in the other direction. Who wants to go to college under current conditions? The sports ban will only make it worse.

Close Enough

Bill Walton. Lee Alcindor. Then everyone else https://t.co/VrKbFam0xM

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) March 19, 2020

Shank On The NCAA Tournament

Caution - some slightly contradictory statements ahead:

Zion Williamson.

There. Now you have a reason to watch the NCAA Tournament.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost interest in March Madness in recent decades. Living in Greater Boston, we are increasingly removed from big-time college sports. When the NCAA tourney unfolds, it feels like the rest of the country is having a party without us.

I'm not buying that. There's absolutely nothing preventing you from turning on a freakin' TV set and tuning into these games. Since Thursday, I've watched about a dozen tournament games, and I'll agree that Zion Williamson is an awesome player. What Shank is trying to sell here, as usual, is lazy provincialism.

For folks in North Carolina, Kentucky, Indiana, and most of sports-watching America, the NCAA tourney is a three-week Super Bowl Sunday.

Not here. Sure, we have office pools and young folks obsessed with bracketology. Gamblers and fantasy players (is there any difference?) study every nuance of Gonzaga and Iowa State. But we have no dog in the fight.

Go, Northeastern!

Apathy Noted

A Boston sports columnist who doesn't give a rats ass about college basketball writes a column to complain about Boston's alleged apathy towards college basketball:

There’s an annual three-week party about to start in our country, and back here in Greater Boston, we are pointedly not invited. We might not even watch it on TV. Why bother? It has nothing to do with us.

Selection Sunday is upon us and we are like tobacco-spittin’, old-timey baseball scouts with an unopened invitation to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. We are like “The Biggest Loser” contestants being asked to watch a DirecTV video on the making of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

March Madness? It’s March Apathy on our regional sports landscape.

The only time Shank gives a flying fuck about the NCAA basketball tournament is when his alma mater, Holy Cross, is in the tournament. Funny how that works, isn't it?

And Now For More Boston Globe Bashing - XXV

The Duke basketball team has lost two games in a row. Here's a genius Boston Globe writer with an incisive headline on the Duke at Louisville game being played tomorrow:

To end losing skid, Duke must win at Louisville

Thanks, Einstien, for clarifying that issue for us!

Phi Slamma Jamma II

Shank is all over the latest Cinderella story of this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — They play in the newly chartered Dunk City. They play on a campus that’s only been open since 1997. The oldest alums are in their early 30s. They play in the Atlantic Sun Conference. They are the lowest-seeded team (15) in the history of the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16.

And now they belong to the universe.

Florida Gulf Coast University is the home of the hottest sports story in the land. The Eagles just routed Georgetown and San Diego State in the Philadelphia sub-regional. Friday night they’ll play the University of Florida in Arlington, Texas, for a shot to advance to the Elite Eight. Not bad for a school that didn’t exist 20 years ago.

There never has been anything like this in sleepy Fort Myers. This is bigger than Deion Sanders. It’s bigger than the opening of Mike Greenwell’s amusement park. It’s bigger than Lou Gorman serving as grand marshal of the City of Lights Festival parade. It’s bigger than Red Sox vs. Twins in the rubber game of the Mayor’s Cup Series.

The only thing of note is the heavy doses of hyperbole throughout the column.

Now Get Off My Lawn!

The NCAA men's basketball tournament is fast approaching, and Shank gives the subject the contemporary treatment it deserves.

Just kidding! Shank instead goes back nearly four decades to his favorite decade (the Seventies) to let today's young whippersnappers know how good they have it now:

We will hear the noise a week from Sunday night when the NCAA men’s basketball draw is announced. Bubble teams will cry foul. Schools with double-digit losses will claim they were “snubbed” by the tournament selection committee.

Please.

You want to hear about a worthy team that didn’t make it to the NCAA Tournament? Hop into the wayback machine and let me tell you about the 1973-74 Maryland Terrapins.

They might have been the best team in the country. They had three of the top 10 players in the nation. They had six NBA draft picks. They were ranked in the top five all season. In December, they lost a 1-point decision to Bill Walton’s defending champion UCLA Bruins (the team that won 88 straight).

Then they lost the final game of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, 103-100, in overtime to North Carolina State. Some have called it the greatest college basketball game ever played. Maryland shot 61 percent from the floor in the losing effort.

The Wolfpack, led by David Thompson, went on to defeat UCLA in the Final Four, and won the NCAA championship.

All snark aside, this is a pretty good column; it's an example of the writer Shaughnessy is when he puts his mind to it.