Is there anything worse than watching college basketball?
The hypocrisy, the incompetence, the exploitation, the half-hour to play the last two minutes because no one believes anyone can make a free throw.
Give me a Clippers-Warriors game anytime.
I’m the Tribune’s NBA reporter, so I guess I’m expected to be biased in favor of the NBA’s style of play. After all, I’ve watched the Bulls for the last six years and even the banging of my head against the wall feels better than all those missed shots and poor plays in Sunday’s Pittsburgh-Wisconsin NCAA tournament game. I know we’re all supposed to be swooning about the tournament, about those gritty kids playing for the love of the game, the purity of effort and exhilaration of victory.
Fuddelbigit (actually, that was one of the accepted spellings for “frog” on the University of Georgia final basketball exam for athletes).
If they didn’t allow pool betting, who would be watching all these bad games?
And they are awful. Look, if you want to see close games, why not go down to your local park district league and watch a bunch of overweight lawyers?
This is not necessarily a case for the NBA over college basketball, but the talent is in the NBA. The colleges are like a spent strip mine in rural America, all the value is gone and just a pile of rubble remains. It’s not the way I would want it, or the NBA for that matter, but that’s the way it is. If a player has talent, he either doesn’t go to college or leaves in a year or two.
So let’s get this perfectly clear: He’s not about to go to class. Student-athlete my foot. There are probably six players in the tournament who aren’t at Princeton or Stanford who will get college degrees out of all this. Cincinnati’s last player to graduate might have been Oscar Robertson. A lot of the education proponent of the college game is a joke.
Which is probably the worst thing about the entire system. The TV networks are paying top dollar for the NCAA tournament and college season. Games are played late at night to accommodate programming. Right, they’re studying all the way home on the bus. The colleges make millions from tournament appearances and fees.
And what do the “student-athletes” get? A degree, you say? Not many.
There hasn’t been so much money made on the backs of laborers since slavery. These kids practice early mornings and late in the day and are ordered to work out in gyms in off-hours. An athlete’s schedule at one of those major institutions of higher scoring is far more rigorous than that of most professors. And if you buy them an ice cream cone on the way home from practice, they’re likely to be suspended and face loss of that valuable scholarship that rarely leads to a degree.
If you watch the NBA, you blanch over the lack of fundamental play, the mistakes and lack of preparation. So where do you suppose those players are coming from? Not that many have skipped college.
The coaching in college is horrendous. Just what are those guys doing besides playing golf with rich alumni? Oh, that’s right. That’s what they do. The coaches will defend themselves by saying there are stupid rules that don’t even allow them to contact their players after the season. Yes, college rules are stupid. What they lead to are players who aren’t taught how to play basketball.
Why is it rookies have so many problems in the NBA? Because they don’t learn basketball in college.
Ever hear Bulls coach Scott Skiles railing about lack of basketball IQ? And the Bulls have just two guys who skipped college.
Ever wonder why they talk of the rookie wall? It’s because these kids who come out of college are in such miserable condition they can play about 30 games before having fainting spells.
When do you see rookies shooting better than 40 percent? Not often. It’s when they get to the NBA that they first are taught. That’s why teams have so many assistant coaches and practices. There’s one play in basketball–a screen–and most of the guys coming out of college don’t know how to use it.
Kids come into the NBA and they talk about how surprised they are at the speed of the game, at the strength of the players. That should give you an idea of the competition in college.
Notice who wins championships in the NBA? Or even makes the playoffs? Not young teams. Those teams filled with the college hotshots just keep going back to the lottery for enough years until their players finally learn how to play after they’ve been in the NBA five or six years.
It’s just excruciating to watch the ends of college games today. It’s clear no coach thinks anyone can make a free throw under pressure. If they did, they wouldn’t foul every time when they are behind. They certainly cannot believe their players are good enough to make a defensive play.
Which is another problem with the college game, coaches.
If you can’t make it in the NBA, if you can’t keep up with the talent and the game, if you’re John Calipari or Rick Pitino or Lon Kruger or any of the legion of failed college coaches who tried the NBA, you get yourself back to college where you can boss around and threaten a bunch of kids. There you can schedule yourself into a long career by playing enough less-talented teams out of conference. If you’re not good enough to coach pro ball, then you coach in college. Yes, you can look it up.
So let’s see what we have here: A game played by those deemed not talented enough for pro ball, coached by those not qualified or smart enough for pro ball and overseen by those who wink at dishonesty and profit from the work of kids. Funny, I don’t remember hearing it that way in the TV promos.
