The “pantheon” of Division I sports, better known as “March Madness,” is known to throw more articles than the legendary Phil Niekro, but Friday and Saturday’s events were truly stunning. Check out some of the results:
- NC State beat Vanderbilt as a team in the upper half of the bracket
- Spunky Xavier Hunchback Team Notre-dame [Never counts only basketball teams]
- Ohio U. [the “Harvard of Hocking”] defeated Michigan, a member of what it boasted as the “strongest conference”.
- USF’s 12th seed topped the fifth seed Temple
And as late night infomercials are wont to say, “But wait! There’s more!” As if those troubles were not enough, consider:
- 15 seed Norfolk State defeated second seed Missouri and
- Lehigh [does it hurt me… Lehigh?] Leader defeated!
Well, as the guy who filled out five brackets for the Yahoo Tourney Pick’em Contest, I can tell you that I’ve picked three teams to go all the way in history right now.
What bothers me is my worst fear. That is Calipari and Roy Williams “one year please” can produce this year’s champion. Come on folks, is this what college is all about? This deserves a closer look. All of these organizations receive federal and state funding. That translates to you and me, the taxpayers, spending approximately $30,000 or more per year to recruit, feed, house, and supposedly “educate” these so called “student athletes”. What? So they can stay a year or two at their “institution of higher education” and go to the profession, earning eight-figure salaries?
we need to be honest. As fans, as schools, we want to see winners, and that translates into television revenue, ticket sales, and a new rush for online ticket sales. Is this why we pay our taxes or what we want our children to believe is a college funded athletic scholarship ? I was old school, but when I was growing up in the sixties, the athletic “school” was an intelligent tool, gifted athletics as a college< /a> they would train if his family could not afford it. Now it seems that we only give our dollars tax to the schools that “leno” their pro athletes for their bad rewards. Without naming names, I present Chris “X” who was NC State’s player in years past. You barely scored 500 marks in college boards exams [with 400 to fill in your name correctly], and AD and Academy have their mutual eligibility He admitted publicly, years later, that he had never approached the class and examined others for his evidence.
See where college sports are now. The University of Nebraska recently played pro – OMG! text books providing student athletes. Apparently the rules of the game only allow book money for “required” text books! Sports now punish athletes and schools if a person really wants to learn something! However, there are no penalties in “one and done” schools, such as Kentucky and North Carolina.
Well, to all the gridiron fans who want to decorate the Playoff System division, I have only one thing to say: Look where the basketball is.
