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March Through Madness

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Mark Coatney

Devin Gordon

Mark Starr

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Though it's March Madness, We Know April is the Coolest Month

1:17 PM, April 1, 2008 | Comments (0)
March gets all the ink, and the fancy "Madness" nickname, but as a top-to-bottom sports fan, I'm finding myself much more partial to April. We get the Final Four and the national title game, then the Masters just a few days later. And wrapped all around...

The Ivies Muscle Up

4:12 PM, March 28, 2008 | Comments (0)

Teams to Root for--and Against

11:11 AM, March 27, 2008 | Comments (0)

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  • Comming this Summer: Our Blog About the Pacific Coast League

    Mark Coatney | Mar 19, 2008 05:45 PM

    Starr raises a good point that we might as well acknowledge and get out of the way now, which is the way in which our interest in the tournament is tied up in our own emotions and backstory. The NCAA tournament is an almost perfect sporting event in that it draws a huge, passionately interested audience from all over the country. And, let's face it: They're not all tuning in for the basketball, but for the connection the tournament brings, back to a college experience they loved, forward to their new connections in the working world. After all, from a purely sport standpoint, we're watching minor league baseball here. And I somehow doubt we'll be doing this during the Pacific Coast League playoffs. Take the university connection out of the Duke Blue Devils and they're just the Durham Bulls. 

    </SOAPBOX> Now, bring on those games!

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  • A Word About the Sham of College Ball

    Mark Starr | Mar 19, 2008 03:44 PM
    Devin, you've got nothing on me when it comes to the twin towers of fuddy and duddy. Tomorrow I will surrender to the infectious thrill of 12 hours straight of tournament basketball, bolstered by a "I can't believe they are paying me to watch this" giddiness. But today I am fuddy and duddy and cynical and somewhat appalled with the rah-rah sham that is our collegiate game. I understand why forcing O.J. Mayo and other high-school superstars to play a year of college ball (and NBA Commissioner David Stern is now going to push for an added year) is a win-win for basketball, college and pro. The college gets the cream of the crop for at least a year and then the NBA inherits, hopefully, a more mature talent as well as some rookies with bigger names and market value. Still, it's a devil's deal, an academic fraud. The NCAA handles cynics like me who would like to see both USC and K State--with their rent-a-players extraordinaire, Mayo and Michael Beasley--lose by making that impossible, matching them up in the first round. It's worth noting, though, that this super NBA season, with its extraordinary scrum of fine teams in the Western Conference and the Celtics revival in the East, has nothing at all to do with last year's biggest-name one-season-and-out college players. Greg Oden hasn't played a minute for Portland and Kevin Durant has probably played well enough to win Rookie of the Year honors, but not well enough to save the franchise in Seattle or to keep the Supersonics from a 60-loss season. In fact the NBA MVP and the center of attention in the league this season is Kevin Garnett, one of the early straight-out-of-high-school stars.

    But let's not stop with this minor matter. How about a shout out for Richard Lapchick who, first at Northeastern and now at University of Central Florida, has tried to hold the college basketball programs accountable through his annual report on graduation rates. Everything is, of course, relative and there appears to be some uptick in the graduation rates of this year's tournament teams. Still, it is hardly an impressive showing--with what, Lapchick notes, is still an alarming disparity between the graduation rates for white (77%) and black basketball players (53%) throughout Division I. Every year the schools with embarrassing numbers insist they have improved, but it isn't yet reflected in these numbers. Still, this systemic failure is clearly a different kind of March Madness. Here are some of the graduation rates for the basketball players on tournament teams: American 18%, Arizona 25%, Clemson, 31%, Connecticut 22%, Kansas 45%, Memphis 40%, Georgia 19%, Cal State-Fullerton 27%, Kentucky 23%, Washington State 35%, West Virginia 33%, Tennesee 33%, Texas 33%, Texas A&M 40%, Oklahoma 46%, Oral Roberts 48%, St. Mary's 38%, USC 29%, Temple 43%, UCLA 40% and, long in a class of its own (even if the kids aren't in any classes) UNLV at 15%. And try and remember that this year represents a slight improvement.

    Finally, there's another potential academic scandal brewing a la Auburn and Florida State--this one at the University of Michigan. Credit the excellent reporting of the Ann Arbor News, which recently revealed that a single psychology professor, between the fall semester of 2004 and the fall semester of 2007, taught 294 independent study classes--85 percent of those to athletes. An analysis by the newspaper of the transcript of 21 athletes who took either independent study or regular classes with that professor revealed that their average grade in his classes was 3.62, significantly above the 2.57 average they compiled in other courses. According to the News, the university has investigated this matter twice already and come away both times concluding that there is no problem. Why do I doubt that?

    I'll be rosy tomorrow. Promise.

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  • The 65th Team: Stop the Madness!

    Devin Gordon | Mar 19, 2008 01:56 PM
    There were two noteworthy basketball games on television last night--the NCAA play-in game between Mount St Marys and Coppin State, and the NBA contest between the Boston Celtics and the streaking (until last night) Houston Rockets. I'm not sure about you, Coatney, but Starr and I bailed on college hoops and watched the Celtics end the Rockets' 22-game winning streak. Or at least I did until I fell asleep during the 3rd quarter. I bring this up for two reasons: first, the play-in game is a mean-spirited waste of time, and it needs to go. Second, the NBA is having a much, much better year than college basketball.

    Let's start with the NCAA play-in game, which is the classic example of an organization trying to please everyone and, as a result, satisfying no one. Isn't it cruel to force a team that earned an automatic tourney bid to win yet another game before they can actually PLAY in the tournament? What's "automatic" about that? Last week, the players for Mount St Marys and Coppin State had one of the most exhilarating moments of their lives--until Sunday night, when they found out that, sorry, they're not quite in the door yet. Win one more game, and THEN you've earned the privilege of getting steamrolled by Carolina. I'm sure the NCAA would say that the play-in game IS part of the tournament, but I'd like to see them do it with a straight face. I understand the desire to get more big-conference schools into the tournament, but wouldn't it make more sense all around to force THEM to fight for the opportunity? There was no way I was watching Mount St Marys vs Coppin State--but I definitely would've tuned in for a few minutes of, say, Villanova vs Arizona State, with the victor getting slotted in as a 12-seed. Somebody tell me what's wrong with this scenario. Who is it unfair to? I suppose you could argue it's unfair the other three 12 seeds, but so what? The selection committee ranks within seeds anyway, so what's the harm in admitting that one of the four 12 seeds is "better" than the other three in the eyes of the committee? And more importantly, what a game!

    Right now, the play-in game is a failure in all senses: it's cruel, it's pointless, and it's unenticing to everyone but the most diehard sports fan... which means it's bad business, too. Stop the (March) madness!

    Onto the Rockets-Celtics game from last night. I don't have much to say about the contest itself, other than to note that it's bad news for college basketball when a regular season NBA game is much bigger news than the tourney. I think most NCAA fans would agree that this has been a down year for college hoops. There are no great teams and hardly any superb upperclassman players, aside from Hansbrough and Georgetown's Roy Hibbert, who's probably not even the best player on his own team. The freshmen are the big story of this NCAA season, and personally I find it hard to think of them as college players. They're more like lottery picks who are just killing time. This wasn't the case last year, when Greg Oden and Kevin Durant had to share attention with a transcendent Florida team. Not this year. What does it say about this season in college basketball when the most eagerly anticipated first round game is between two teams, USC and Kansas State, that probably won't make it through the second round? There's no way that pairing happened by accident, but in its pursuit of short-term goals like creating a marquee TV match-up, I wonder if the NCAA is cutting off its nose to spite its face. The more that college basketball becomes like the NBA--prioritizing individuals over teams--the worse it'll be for the long-term health of the product. Or maybe I'm just being an old fuddy-duddy. Starr? Coatney?
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