Morning Five: 09.22.11 Edition
Posted by jstevrtc on September 22nd, 2011
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Oklahoma took some heat for the ultimatum it gave to the Big 12 on Tuesday, claiming that it would stay in the conference if, among other demands, some restrictions were placed on exactly what Texas’ Longhorn Network could show, and if current Big 12 commish
Dan Beebe was removed. Nobody (including us) bought it as a good-faith negotiating tactic, but it turns out that OU might be getting at least part of what it wants. Evidently
Oklahoma isn’t the only school that would welcome Beebe’s ouster, and the most recent word is that the presidents of the conference’s member institutions are having a conference call (no pun intended) tomorrow that will determine the future of the Big 12, beginning with the removal of Beebe and the
installment of former Big 8 commissioner Chuck Neinas as the new boss.
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Last week, when people who follow college sports weren’t talking about conference realignment, they were talking about the piece that appeared in
The Atlantic by essayist and historian Taylor Branch entitled “The Shame Of College Sports.” The 14,573-word diatribe against the NCAA was lauded by almost everyone as a stinging polemic, to say the least, and an utter rout for Branch. CBS’ Seth Davis, however,
took Branch and his essay to task yesterday, charging Branch with basing his whole article on a faulty premise and conveniently leaving out obvious counterpoints. We provided
a CliffsNotes version of the Branch essay, and we highly recommend you check out Davis’ response, too, linked above.
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Rick Pitino had
a chat with ESPN’s Andy Katz yesterday in which the Louisville coach predicted that the Big East would survive Realignment ’11, that the conference would add two service acadamies (football only) by the end of the week, it would still remain one of the strongest basketball conferences in the land, and that he is “happy with Big East basketball.” Pitino has a gift for spin that makes even the most skilled of lobbyists envious, but he’s probably right about the Big East staying strong. Obviously it won’t be what it once was if Syracuse and Pittsburgh follow through with their departures, but as far as basketball power, assuming Rutgers and Connecticut leave and Notre Dame and West Virginia stay, you’d have those two programs plus Louisville, Marquette, Georgetown, Cincinnati, Villanova, and St. John’s, all NCAA Tournament teams last year.
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We bet you can win a few bar bets — though your chances of success increase dramatically if you’re outside the state of Michigan — on one of the great riddles in college basketball: who was
Michigan State’s only three-time basketball all-American? Hint: he was a point guard. Your sucker will probably pounce at the chance to answer “
Magic Johnson!” and expect to relieve you of your cash, but he’d be wrong. Magic was a two-time AA as a Spartan (because he only played two years). It’s a Flintstone named
Mateen Cleaves who holds that honor, and today he will be inducted into Michigan State University’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Despite feeling as humbled and honored as you’d expect, the 34-year old Cleaves
told Eric Woodyard of the Flint Journal and MLive.com, “It does make me feel old that I’m entering the hall of fame.” No comment.
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on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 at 4:20 am by jstevrtc and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: archie goodwin, big 12, bill self, chuck neinas, cincinnati, connecticut, dan beebe, georgetown, kansas, kentucky, louisville, magic johnson, marquette, mateen cleaves, michigan state, notre dame, oklahoma, perry ellis, pittsburgh, rick pitino, rutgers, seth davis, st johns, syracuse, taylor branch, villanova, west virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Davis’ counterpoints are very thin. They basically boil down to 1) tuition and board is ‘pay’, so shut up, and 2) the colleges also spend hugely on their sports, so there’s not much ‘profit’.
Point 2, of course, ignores the fact that many of the expenses redound to the benefit of University and administrators, that much of the revenue from ‘revenue sports’ supports other non-revenue sports. All of which we know, and none of which relates at all to the individual revenue sport athlete.
Davis also ignores the truly appalling NCAA use of athletes’ images after they graduate in, e.g., NCAA video games, posters and the like; the money involved is amazingly large, and there’s simply no excuse; the blanket permission form signed by 18 year olds simply doesn’t wash as permission. While the NCAA is very hard to sue, they’re going to lose that one, and a 9 figure verdict is likely.
It’s also clear that Branch doesn’t advocate paying athletes ‘like professionals’, as Davis implies; the problem as to how to compensate is unique, and tricky, as all admit.
Nice comment. I agree that the use of their images in perpetuity is a huge problem, somewhat reminiscent of how record companies coerced young bands in the 50s and 60s to give up their rights to royalties forever on songs that they wrote and recorded. What will likely come out of it is, as you said, a huge payout and some kind of sunset provision where the NCAA can no longer use those images and likenesses.