The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year! End Of Madness Sadness

We're stealing the song and using for the correct season.
Thanks Andy!

Sorry December. Your song has been taken. We've contacted Santa and he will be personally getting in touch with the family of Andy Williams or whoever has the copyright to that Christmas song that he made so famous.  December is notorious for being maddening, but it is hardly the month of the year that we fondly brand with the moniker of "Madness".

This won't be another sharp criticism of the dreaded Christmas season that claims to be the most wonderful time of the year, yet for some involuntary reason, whenever February comes to a close, and March turns the corner, I find myself ballroom dancing all by myself while singing the Andy Williams Christmas classic "Its The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year".  This year, I accidentally caught myself singing along with another fella who seemed equally oblivious to the fact that it was 65 degrees outside and all the holiday lights had finally been pulled from the trees- which means neither of us live in Boston.  Even the birds seemed to be chirping along like they also knew March Madness was about to begin as well.

Reports say nearly 29 million Americans hummed along to our tune as record numbers tuned in to view the championship final despite the fact that the undefeated lure that we all had snagged in our mouths got its line cut by a pesky badger. The University of Wisconsin proved themselves worthy of their number one seed even though Duke overcame them, captured their 5th crown and proved to the UCONN Huskie's women's coach, Geno Auriema, (who also won his 10th title) that the boys can play basketball too.  Earlier during the tournament, Auriema complained that the boys were light years behind the girls in regards to the quality of game on the court.  He was totally correct, but the boys may never catch up with girls so long as one and done's force teams like Wisconsin to be the only schools in the land that graduate basketball players, allowing them to stay long enough to shake the AAU syndrome.

To the credit of the Blue Devils, the young guns got it done this time, but they certainly had the support of a Hall of Fame coach to join their ride.  Either Mike Krzysewzki knows how to deprogram modern players from bad AAU habits better than most modern coaches, or he's finally recruiting the top AAU kids that can also satisfy Dukes stringent enrollment standards as well since Duke has grown more "athletic" (code word for lots of black kids) over the years.  Coach K might look back on this years team and consider them among the smartest teams he's ever coached considering the youth of the team as well.  If these really smart Blue Devils decide to stay in college, they will have Kentucky like expectations from the start of next season, although Coach K would likely engineer a loss or two just to destroy the stigma of  another team trying the undefeated run.

In some ways, the tournament has become nothing more than a gamblers dream which is actually generating the spectator frenzy we call madness.  That 12 year old who won $20,000 from ESPN but couldn't collect because he was under age, will probably play the brackets for the rest of time trying to duplicate his near $20,000 feat.  We love the games but we really love choosing them correctly, especially the upsets.  This years tournament was a bit upsetting to our brackets since the higher seeds primarily prevailed all tournament long.  What we are starting to learn is the connection between our brackets and our interest in the tournament- which wanes a bit when brackets go bust. Because so many players leave early, its hard to actually claim an interest in the players anymore.  Whether we actually know the players or the teams before we make our brackets, or we get to know them when the tournament begins, we can always count on a memorable scene or two every tournament season.  Like the Georgia State team with the father and son sharing such a special moment. Or the journey of Kentucky's Wildcats, complete with winning epic battles with Cincinnati and Notre Dame before succumbing to Wisconsin.

This must be the most wonderful time of the year because I start to feel so darn awful once CBS plays that song "One Shining Moment" to conclude it all.  Fortunately, coaching youth basketball allows me to feed on my favorite dish all year round, yet, even I shake my head in dejected acceptance that the NBA is all we high level hoop spectators have left .You know, that league where you are wasting your time and your life if you watch the first two or three quarters?  You know, that league where the game looks a lot like AAU ball most of the time.  One of the greatest reasons to be sad about the end of college basketball is the NBA alternative that remains. Typically, we feel less stressed out when Christmas finally goes away, so how could it be the most wonderful time of the year?

I will stop advancing the virtue of March Madness at the expense of the NBA and Christmas, since hatred will not hasten the wait of the return, when me and that dude in the grocery store will ballroom dance around the lettuce singing our newly adopted March melody.  Unlike Christmas (last dig), every time I think that this tournament is great, the NCAA Final Four tournament only gets better.

UConn and Kentucky Shock Critics, Advance To Final Game

There is so much to write about regarding the irony of tonight's National Championship game with the University of Connecticut and the University of Kentucky.  UCONN and KU will square off to answer questions that millions asked going into this tournament, but few had UCONN and KU as the answers.

Given that truth, it also seems appropriate that we all shut up (or write less) and watch the game.  After all, only the friends and family of these teams had these teams winning it all, but even they didn't put it on their bracket. With such abject failure, who among us has room to forecast that which no forecaster had the vision to see.

In hindsight, there was that pre-season poll which placed Kentucky as the number one team in the nation.  The John Calipari recruiting class was seen as an historic group of freshman.  Had the journey been less rough, there might have been more comparison's to the infamous Fab Five of Michigan than ever materialized this season.

What has materialized is a similar scenario to the one that the Fab Five experienced.  Michigan and the Fab Five made it's way to the National Championship game and found themselves head to head against a more seasoned North Carolina team.

Can Napier seize the title and a top draft selection?

Shabazz Napier of UCONN is clearly the flip side to the freshmen of  Kentucky story line.  Napier is a senior who won a National Championship as a freshman, and stayed around to do it again.  In this day and age, staying in school is the formula for losing draft value as upper class players are generally seen as the left behind.  In essence, they become the REST of college basketball, not the BEST of college basketball.

If the older kids win they will say, "Stay In".  If the young boys get it done they will all be gone (since they have finished their one). What is right and what is best may be the same thing, but maybe not. Maybe the right thing is that every American be free to pursue their dreams even while the best thing is to get as many kids as we can ready for the real world.  Some actually say it is impossible to achieve both.

If the Northwestern University athletes and the labor lawsuit that went in their favor is a sign, young people these days are not only clear about what they want, they are willing and able to go get it.  Much like slave owners of the past, the modern owners of the NBA and NFL's unpaid semi-pro league (aka NCAA sports) have made a critical error in allowing the workers to educate themselves. In a twist of irony, the non-guaranteed education that is sort of promised to each kid is proving to be the most dangerous weapon against those who continue to exploit them.

We are all just as shocked by the outcome of the Northwestern ruling as we are with the outcome of this years National Championship run.  I, for one, am done with deciding what young people can or can not accomplish. Even in tonight's game.

How To Cure BBS (Broken Bracket Syndrome) So You Can Enjoy March Madness Again

Check out the best bracket left in this tournament.........Mine..........Sort of!

When you take the time to play lotto, and you are one of those people who plays the same numbers each time, you are passionately connected to each number as the lotto balls get called, unlike those quick picks where you can hardly remember your numbers. When hope is in the air, it hardly matters where those numbers came from, just that they have a chance to be called. Once the reality dons upon you (again) that you didn't win, you lose your connection to that piece of paper rather quickly.

Such is the nature of today's NCAA March Madness Tournament.  Every year is suppose to be that year in which we resurrect our sullen ego and reestablish our basketball prowess.  Back in the day, somebody you know was always the winner of these things.  Now, it seems to be the last guy or gal that you ever expected winning it all.  What is more frustrating is the method to their madness.

Some choose best uniforms, others lean towards hottest cheerleaders.  There hasn't been one of these quirky directions that has shown the power to win year after year, but the quirky road is clearly paved with more riches than the measured one that lead every analyst on ESPN (and Barack Obama) to wrongly choose Michigan State as the national champion..

If you would like to make the argument that this is a reason kids need to stay in college longer I might be inclined to take you up on that notion just for the sake of my Broken Bracket Syndrome (too many years of excessive indulgence in March Madness without a sniff of choosing one Final Four team).  Broken Bracket Syndrome (BBS) is sweeping the nation as we speak, causing millions who love basketball to throw away their useless lotto ticket of a bracket and to possibly lose a viewing interest in the proceedings overall.

From this day forward, I have found the cure for BBS.  Oddly, it derives from the same ideology behind the  lotto we play each week. The quick pick.

Thanks to PickMyBracket.Com (and photoshop), I have the closest thing to a perfect bracket that mankind will ever see in this era of parity in college basketball.

PICKMYBRACKET.COM allowed me to pick my most important statistic for victory and some quirky selection as the criteria for the final bracket it randomly produces. Each of my selections kept "Rebounding" as the number one statistic for victory on a list that included 3 other selections (offense, assists, defense).

For my brackets, the only thing I switched was the quirky option for bracket building, which included 4 choices; Mascot, SAT Scores, Co-Ed Hotness or Best Party School.  The chances of winning the NCAA bracket challenge is hard so hard, billionaire Warren Buffet put up a billion dollar prize for any one who creates a perfect bracket. With riches at stake, playing one bracket is about as smart as playing one lotto ticket

The 3 brackets I chose to follow all appeared plausible and calculated (kind of computer like), so I instantly appreciated the ease of creating something that I have unsuccessfully labored over for years. The only problem was that they each had a few problems.  In that dreaded first round, there are always games that could go either way.  On this website, the option to make minor adjustments to the random selections it generates does not exist (though I bet you it might next year).

For example, I am certainly a Colorado Buffalo fan who was happy to see them get in the tournament, but noticed that they received a life time achievement award with the #8 seed they garnered.  While it was easy to debate the worthiness of such a high seed for Colorado, it was hard to argue with the #9 ranking that their first round opponent, Pittsburgh received en route to a pummeling of the Buffaloes.

My gut said change that selection, but again,  the option did not exist.

My gut also said that UCONN had to be included in the Final Four of my bracket.  So, on this bracket (see above) I did switch out (photpshop) UCONN for Villanova (the computer selected Villanova instead). In actuality, UCONN was the only team that I can truly take credit for selecting.  The other teams were force fed by a computer that factored in party reputation as a key element in which team to choose. (Clearly CU was chosen over Pitt for this reason).

This year, my quick pick bracket gave me a reason to watch closely even after the first round was over.  If I had the foresight to put my money where my new found bracketology is, I might have made out like a bandit this year.  Sadly, this bracket will only give me remnants of my shattered ego back as I have finally risen to the top of my family bracket competition.

Does it matter that I essentially pulled the lever on a slot machine to win this time around?  Broken Bracket Syndrome is an illness that doesn't scoff at hope for a cure.

What Do You Get When You Make Professionals Play Amateur Sports? Shady Business.

While recognizing the wonderful accomplishment of 18 year old Colorado Avalanche rookie Nathan MacKinnon, it dawned on me that this 18 year old young man is pursuing his dream and proving himself capable against the best hockey players in the land. Baseball, tennis and any Olympic sport see's it the same way. Golf might force you to earn your mettle on the professional tour, but  will at least give you a chance to prove yourself against professional competition. The NFL and the NBA force professionals to behave as amateurs because they believe they know better.

What do you get when you force professionals to behave as college amateurs?  You get the Fab Five of Michigan, that's what.  

What we knew then is what we know now.  Some of these kids are simply too good to deny them an opportunity to get paid right away.  The only thing that we accomplish for a kid destined for the pro's is 6 months of more school and millions of dollars for the schools who get to use these athletes for at least one year (two if you play football).

If you get hurt in the process there is no insurance for your potential.  The school doesn't even have to honor your scholarship, which is a year to year contract that must be renewed.  Four years of guaranteed education is a reasonable exchange, but athletes who are worthy of going directly to the pro's could earn the value of a 4 year degree in the first year of a pro contract (with change to spare). The union was forced into this deal as a means of avoiding an NBA lockout.  It might very well be criminal, especially in the face of the absence of such a restriction in every other sport around the entire earth.

The only distinction between the sports that allow teenagers to compete for a job right away and the one's that do not is the mass percentage of black people who compete in the two banned sports.  Both the NBA and the NFL are complicit to the behavior because they, much like the college's who partake in the bounty, get the benefit of not overpaying for the uncertain potential of youth.

The history of drafting high schoolers has been a mixed bag. For every Kevin Garnett or Lebron James you have an Eddie Curry or Kwame Brown.  One year players are still dominating the landscape even if the year of play helps eliminate the guessing game of it all.  Essentially, the NBA has asked to be saved from themselves with this restriction.

So what is the end effect?

In the end, kids who are excellent athletes but horrible students get to compete in any sport that they are good at, except football and basketball.  In these sports, you will be blocked from a career by your lack of educational prowess.  Kids that succeed in school often have the support of one or two parents who keep them on track and teach them good study habits and time management skills. If you happen to do football and basketball well but not literature and math, you either fix the problem or forego a dream.

The end effect of forcing professional talent into the amateur ranks is what I mentioned before.  It is the Fab Five of Michigan who all got money from the neighborhood mentor and lover of kids that may have also been a bookie on the side. Ed Martin probably did exactly what he is accused of doing for Chris Webber and many other kids in Detroit, especially the professional basketball player kids that he helped nurture.  He gave them a hand up.  For the really good ones like Chris Webber, he might have given more.  I may have even told these pro's that he helped out "remember me when you make it".

In America, it is illegal to do this for a professional basketball player playing amateur college sports, but it is legal to force that professional to pass an ACT and pick a school for a year or two, just to be considered worthy to earn professionally.  If you are a doctor, this type of restriction (aka certification) is universally accepted. In professional sports, no other country in the world recognizes such a restriction, and even the NBA will draft and pay an underaged European player but places a ban on US high school players at the same time.

Let me say this once more.  US high school basketball and football players  are the only athletes in the world who suffer such a restriction.  Every other sport in every corner of the earth is free to earn income as soon as someone offers one.

While I certainly admire the efforts of the players from Northwestern, I have been critical of their class action law suit that would force colleges to pay the athletes. Title 9 has made this functionally impossible, because in order to pay any athlete, we have to pay every athlete the same. In the past, schools would balance their sports budget by eliminating sports that did not make much money.  Typically, women's sports experienced the ax first, however, eliminating male sports instead of adding female sports has been another route towards Title 9 compliance.

Whereas large schools could easily pay all of the kids, smaller schools have a few sports supporting all of the others (and sometimes parts of the academic budget as well). Across the land, there simply is no easy way to pay every athlete and comply with Title 9 as well.  As a result of this challenge, I believe this fight needs to leave the arena of profit sharing and enter the realm of corporate collusion .

Restricting only adolescent athletes in these two bigger, blacker sports is beyond the pale of understanding.  It allows the NCAA the NBA and the NFL to have their cake and eat it too.  Back when the Fab Five launched on the scene, they started wearing plain blue t-shirts in defiance of the system they recognized was raping them for every dime it could earn, and giving nothing back in return.

When the Fab Five decided to go baggy, Nike sold baggy shorts and put "Fab Five" on the marketing. Nobody did it before them, and nobody does it differently since.  When they wore black socks for the first time, sock sellers across the land grabbed a sharpie and wrote "Fab Five" on their black sock signs.

It would be easy to say that nothing has changed but the date on the story.  After all, the same ugly face of racial injustice that plagues America simply rears its ugly head in new ways from time to time.

The truth is that the NBA version of said injustice only began in 2005.  Instead of simply forcing a rookie pay scale, the league saw the NCAA as fertile (and free) ground for a de facto farm league.

I don't think it can be reiterated enough. The fact that this restriction is only placed upon US high school kids either makes a statement about our failure to groom our kids, or is just another shady example of business in America.

Northwestern University Athletes Take On NCAA and Federal Labor Laws

The battle has begun.

Well, actually the battle has been going on for some time now.  Northwestern University and a group of its  current and former players have stormed the beach at Normandy in an attempt to get the NCAA (and probably one really inspirational labor law professor) to stand up and take notice.

I struggle with fully engaging in this debate because my anger towards the herd mentality of major college sports seriously infuriates me.  When people are involuntarily treated like cattle we invoke laws to fix it.  When it is our "so-called" student athletes, we pretend that access to an education is a fair trade off even though we don't insure they get the support they need to succeed in school.  Sports scholarships are not even guaranteed, but are a year to year evaluation of the herd to determine who you keep and who gets sent to slaughter.

Don't be mistaken.  Success in college takes preparation that begins long before college.  Success in college is often the by product of a lot of prodding and pushing from family and someone to push you pass that "I want to quit" wall.  In fact, success in college is a lot like success in sports.  Somehow we invest highly in the cost of creating top notch college athletes, and then we sugar coat their class schedule and slap them on the head to make sure they are staying on top of Basket Weaving 101.

It is fairly clear that every college is much more invested in the financial return of the athlete and not the resource drain of the student, even though we will never have one without the other.  This system is rigged against the success of the student, especially if they never had the foundation for success to begin with.  Some endure as long as they can and run off to make the money that they crossed the college bridge to make in the first place. Most fight like hell to get educated because going pro is a real long shot, staying pro even longer.  Every one of them performs a service to the university that demands better compensation.

Even the worst of college coaches can make a sizable penny in the job.  The upper echelon make pro coaches look like they are in the wrong line of work. As for the schools?  Some schools cover all of their sports budget on the backs of the major sports, with money to spare.  Every few years the NCAA negotiates a new deal, and the television ratings for college sports have given them true negotiation power.

They don't call it March Madness for nothing.   Famous Jameis Winston is a household name now, and for more than his scandal.  Now that the NFL and NBA (both sports with large minority populations) are fully in cahoots with the NCAA by restricting access ONLY to US high school kids, our student athletes are now forced to run with the herd before they can make money for themselves.  The NFL and the NBA win because they are not paying for potential (which can cost too much). The NCAA wins because they get to force a herd of young people through their turnstiles and leech a penny or two from them before freeing them to get a fair share of the pie.

Title 9, which legislates an equity of treatment between all athletes on a college campus, was created to improve sports standards in college for women, but creates another challenge.  Money maker sports in college support the money taker sports that do not generate a profit.  The NCAA sports revenue model involves dumping the lion share of the money into a bucket and dividing it up among the masses.  If this pie it to be divided any further, Title 9 says it has to be divided equally among all athletes in a school.

Despite this hurdle, some believe that it can be done.  I believe that it can only be done at the schools who have enough to do it.  The rest of the schools will struggle from such a mandate creating a scenario worse than the one we currently have. This is where I usually disengage because its a reality that is not easy to fix and I struggle with rehashing debates that have no sensible resolution.  I honor the efforts of those Northwestern players, but what they earned for themselves could not work for that Division 3 school just down the road.

Scholarships are an awesome thing when they fulfill their complete purpose.   They succeed in luring a herd of talent onto the college campus but fail to insure they succeed.  Since schools do not have to honor any commitment towards achievement, they are free to cut the athlete and evict the student as well.

I say no more.  Colleges can not pay student athletes, so they must be held to account for their graduation rates.  Only an athlete that earns three years of professional income will be exempted from a school's athletic graduation rate.  If you don't invest into the success of your athletes, you will sacrifice a portion of your NCAA payment as a penalty.   The NCAA is making lots of money here too and should be forced to intervene with resource support for any school that is not achieving a minimum graduation rate among athlete's.  The penalty underachieving schools will pay can go directly to an athlete education assistance fund to insure proper resources for this effort.

As a special caveat, students should have a reasonable window to complete their degree.  I think 5 years of paid education and 10 years to complete it.  Student athletes with life disruptions (illness, injury, family emergency) should get the opportunity to return to school in a reasonable timeline and cash in on the only benefit that their athletic prowess can earn them.  Labor laws are going to struggle to encompass the role of a student athlete for various reason's.  However, if the college can't be called an employer, they must make sure that they tend to the cattle.