Plenty of reminders NCAA Tournament truly is March madness
A rundown of the 12 things we leaned or relearned during the NCAA Tournament.
nypost.com
By Phil Mushnick
The 12 things we leaned or relearned during the NCAA Tournament:
1) This year, for the first time, being freshly implicated in a murder — allegedly delivering the murder weapon, a gun, to the crime scene — is no longer grounds for ineligibility provided you’re the star of a top-seeded team.
But with Alabama losing to San Diego State, Louisville became the most recent town for Bama coach Nate Oats to excuse his team for being “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” as if there’s a good place and time to deliver a murder weapon or lose a Tournament game.
2) Div. I coaches remain in the world’s second oldest profession.
3) Div. I college presidents continue to draw large salaries — but not as much as coaches — to front for basketball programs as logics, design and time invested provided no reasonable opportunity to educate recruited student-athletes.
4) Whatever flake or pretense of a flake of integrity St. John’s basketball radiated has been eradicated. It’s as much a bottom-feeder basketball college as the worst of them, administration, to coach, to recruits.
5) Capital One commercials remain the worst TV sitcom series since “Mama’s Family.”
6) Given that no seed higher than No. 4 made the Final Four, the newly concocted measuring stick that includes “Quads” one through four, should get lost and stay there.
7) Charles Barkley, this year used as CBS “60 Minutes” NCAA Tournament bait in what was pitched as a no-holds-barred Q&A, was just another sell of network goods as Barkley again wastes everyone’s time as a nothing-to-add, platitudinal studio commentator.
Here’s a question “60 Minutes” might have asked:
When ex-Knick and CBS basketball analyst Greg Anthony was busted for soliciting a hooker he was fired. So how has Barkley, guilty of the same, not only escaped such punishment but become an all-media go-to-guy, especially on social issues?
8) It remains easier for TV commentators to blame referees than coaches.
9) The NCAA Tournament remains a Home Shopping Network for previously unknown coaches to bolt for more money.
10) Courtside analyst Jim Spanarkel continues to remind local folks that YES dumped him as a Nets color man for no suspected reason than that he’s a white male, thus clogging YES’s feckless, misguided diversity movement.
11) It’s still an inexcusable crapshoot as to whether NCAA Tournament TV directors will choose to first and foremost stay focused on the game rather than the crowd. Incredible that in 2023, that the logical and easily cured are neglected.
12) If Jim Nantz, at this stage of his career, is not confident or secure enough to tell a few ugly truths — say, a coach’s suspension for cheating or the inevitability of NIL money becoming above-board recruitment payola — the bad guys will continue to win.
Giants’ Mara, Jets’ Johnson are study in contrast
This week, at about the same time Giants’ co-owner John Mara showed his welcomed noblesse oblige side by panning Roger “It’s All About Our Fans” Goodell’s latest dive for TV money — in-season “flexing” of Sunday NFL games to Thursday nights that would leave fans, especially Goodell’s VIP PSL owners to further go to hell — Jets’ owner Woody Johnson had the stage elsewhere:In what can only be described as a lie, total, detached ignorance or pandering above and beyond (below and beneath) NFL standards, Johnson said of free agent WR and career reprobate Odell Beckham Jr:
“It’s exciting that a player and person of his caliber would even consider the Jets. That’s really cool.”
More: “The fact that Odell Beckham, a man of his character and quality of his ability, would consider us and want to be with us — if that’s what he want is pretty much a compliment.”
Good grief! Perhaps Johnson didn’t cite any evidence of Beckham’s outstanding character because evidence exists only to the extreme contrary.
Is Johnson aware that Beckham, as both a physical and social risk, is running low on options?
Or does he think we’re all a bunch of fools?
It might be the latter. Consider: At the dawn of PSL sales in New York, the Jets told lie after lie to induce suckers.
In one case, a fellow known to the Jets front office and players as the team’s mortgage broker, “won” the contest as to who would bid the most for Jets PSLs. David Findel, the media blindly reported in 2009, bid a preposterous $400,000, before ticket prices, for two PSLs.
But there was a small problem: Findel didn’t have a pot to PSL in. The entire plan was a crooked sales ploy, fully enabled by the Jets and Roger “PSLs Are Good Investments” Goodell’s silence.
Even after Findel was sent to prison for mortgage fraud, neither Johnson nor Goodell addressed this scam though the Jets said they’re no longer associated with Findel.
Meantime, this week in one statement — stop treating the NFL’s best customers, ticket-buyers, like cash-stuffed piñatas tethered to another bait-and-switch — Mara did more on behalf of the NFL’s fans than Goodell has done since 2006, when he became commissioner of the NFL.
All aboard Yankees’ hype train
One game in and I already feel smothered in illogical, unnecessary hype.Thursday’s Yankees’ Opening Day pregame on YES was loaded with prompts and ads to watch the Yanks on YES, including a long, taped promo spoken by Michael Kay to remind us to watch Opening Day. Bring back Giuseppe Franco!
Prior to Anthony Volpe’s first at-bat, a walk, Kay seemed stricken by the maudlin, declaring, “This is the first step of the rest of his life.” Geez, first Yankee on the moon!
That Walt “Clyde” Frazier (or by now is it Clyde “Walt” Frazier still throws some old school common sense our way.
Wednesday over MSG, the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson scored inside then wound up on his back, from where he stayed to complain that he was fouled.
Frazier scolded Brunson for not getting back on defense. And just as he finished saying that the Heat scored on an easy, barely-contested layup.
By now we know that Buck Showalter is prepared to loophole one of MLB’s new, baseball demolishing rules. Just a matter of when.
Even soccer fans such as I often can understand those who don’t understand. The last two MLS Saturday matches on Fox ended 0-0.
Not sure why YES so often relegates John Flaherty to studio work, but I’d place Flaherty on games and know he’d at all times be solid.
So Wednesday on Islanders-Caps, TNT introduced its new “NHL Rules Analyst,” ex-ref Brad Meier. So what happens? Nothing. Not a penalty called until six minutes left in regulation!
