Ten years ago we were carrying around a mobile phone that weighed about a half-pound and was the size of a baby’s arm.  The Internet was ubiquitous but you still needed a land line in most places to access it.  Remember that comical drill?  A quick burst of dialing notes followed by a cacophany of beeps and hisses on the external modem resulting in a satisfying echo effect that signified that you were, once again, online (at the blistering pace of 56k speed, mind you).  Google was a small search engine company that hadn’t really caught on yet, while iPods were something more closely aligned with the horrendous Star Wars prequels than an Apple product.  The word “blog” had not yet entered the popular lexicon, The Facebook was still four years from its genesis, and Twitter, well, let’s just say that tweeting was something left to our aviary friends.

It Doesn't Feel All That Long Ago! (photo credit: SI)

The point of this trip down memory lane is not to make everyone feel old, but rather to show that technology, more than just about any other part of our lives, changes very quickly.  We can remember Michigan State’s Mateen Cleaves cutting down the nets in Indy like it was yesterday; but the thought of using dial-up web access seems like the paleolithic era at this point.  Some of the changes are predictable, natural progressions — from land lines to wireless Internet access, for example — but others, such as the burst of social networking applications, come as a bit of a surprise.  If you can predict right now what the “killer apps” will be in 2020, then you are a lot smarter and prescient that most, and you’ll likely become a rich man as a result of it.

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Earlier today, ESPN-U let the world in on their plans for the evening of Friday, October 15th, otherwise known as Midnight Madness (see clock, above right). Like last year, ESPN-U will crank out four hours of coverage starting at 9 PM ET, with Lowell Galindo anchoring alongside Andy Katz and Adrian Branch, and of course they’ll have all the live peeks at several schools’ festivities.  This year’s featured schools:

• Duke
• Connecticut (women’s team will be featured)
• Kentucky
• Gonzaga
• Kansas State
• Memphis

Last year we BGtD’d during the broadcast, and we were surprised at how high the talk-to-hoops ratio was, but to be fair it looked like a lot of that was because the analysts and commentators were vamping as they waited for things like volleyball matches, relay races and raffle drawings to finish at the various sites — in other words, as they waited for something interesting to happen that was covering. Still, even though we have no problems with listening to Lowell, Andy, and Adrian talk hoops, even after things like the dunk contests and scrimmages started, there were several instances last year where viewers would be treated to a shot of two or three people talking at a media table or in a locker room while crowds were cheering at what was actually happening on the unseen basketball court. We bet that ratio will change this year.

This debuted during Midnight Madness last year. Wonder what Harrison Barnes and Brandon Knight have in store.

Given the program’s achievements last season, we were hoping to see Butler on the list of coverage sites. Seems to us like some Madness footage from Hinkle Fieldhouse would be a lot of fun, but then we realized — Butler does not do Midnght Madness.

Last year’s Madness coverage brought us the birth of the John Wall Dance and Tom Izzo riding into Michigan State’s party in an Indy car (since the Final Four was to be in Indianapolis). That turned out to be prophetic, so this time around we’ve got our money on Izzo referencing the 2011 Final Four in Houston by descending from the ceiling in some sort of space capsule. Only 27 days, 22 hours, 35 minutes (again, see clock) and change before we find out.

For the past ten years, the city of Dayton has been host to the NCAA Tournament’s Play-In Game (though the NCAA doesn’t really like that moniker). Affectionately known as the “PiG,” it wasn’t exactly a destination to which teams aspired after a long regular season and a conference tournament championship. If your team got into the dance, you wanted to be in the dance, you know? Despite the city’s admirable support of their Flyers — the student section in UD Arena was one of the loudest we encountered last season — among college basketball players, Dayton became a place you hoped you weren’t sent by the bracket-makers. Even though the NCAA treated it and paid schools the same as any other appearance, you didn’t want to have to play into the Tournament. You wanted to be in the Tournament.

The NCAA, the citizens of Dayton, and the people who work at the arena, however, have brought every ounce of dignity and elegance they could muster for the PiG, and they’ve done it each of the past ten years. There was never anything close to a half-hearted effort on their part. Despite the reputation of the PiG, Dayton made teams, fans, and media feel welcome. The seats were always filled.  The people of Dayton embraced the PiG. On Thursday, the NCAA confirmed that Dayton will be the site for all four of the first round games — the First Four —  that were created earlier this summer when the NCAA increased the tournament field from 65 to 68.

UD Arena, In Its Usual Sold-Out State

To this, we say bravo. It’s a great, appropriate reward from the NCAA to Dayton, and we hope they extend this beyond 2011. Dayton would get four NCAA Tournament games every year, quadrupling any economic spike they’ve enjoyed by hosting the PiG for the last ten years. As for the games themselves, two of them will involve the last four “at-large” teams that gained admission to the dance, and two of them will involve the last four automatic qualifiers. They’ll take place on Tuesday and Wednesday after Selection Sunday, which means that there is no longer that seemingly infinite wait from Sunday night to the tournament’s start on Thursday (yeah, we know, the PiG was on Tuesday). You get Selection Sunday, then Monday to crank out your brackets. The first round begins on Tuesday with the start of the First Four.

There is one final question, though, and that’s who plays when. Will the last four at-larges play on one night and the 16-seeds all play on the other? We communicated with David Worlock, the Associate Director of the Men’s Basketball Championship, who told us that “was still to be determined,” but the NCAA’s contract with CBS and Turner Sports allows for “maximum flexibility” in terms of scheduling the games. If TV is making the ultimate decision on this, we figure that they’d be getting maximum eyeballs each night by pairing a 16-seed game first with a “marquee” at-large battle second, using, say, the old 7/9:15 PM ET game windows. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s fun to be talking about this kind of stuff. And it’s going to be a fun way to start the Tournament, and we know the city of Dayton will get behind it.

Zach Hayes is a editor, contributor and bracketologist at Rush the Court.

If you didn’t know, January, February and March mornings in the Northeast are cold. Very cold, often times extremely cold. That’s where 14 consecutive hours of college basketball on Saturday comes in handy. Throw on the coat, make the customary Dunkin Donuts coffee run and plop down on the couch for a full hour of fans shouting and screaming over Hubert Davis defending the eye test to determine NCAA bids. The football version is special in itself, but the hoops edition of College Gameday warms the heart of yours truly on those frigid Saturday mornings. Today, the 2011 slate was announced with the same Gameday crew visiting eight sites, the kickoff featuring a men’s-women’s doubleheader in Knoxville. If anything, these schedules trickling out continue to give us hope that mid-November isn’t all that far off in the distance.

The Gang is Back For Another Season of Gameday

Here’s the Gameday schedule (all times ET):

• January 15- Vanderbilt @ Tennessee (men’s)- 12 PM, Vanderbilt @ Tennessee (women’s)- 8 PM
• January 22- Michigan State @ Purdue- 9 PM
• January 29- Kansas State @ Kansas- 7 PM
• February 5- Kentucky @ Florida- 9 PM
• February 12- Pittsburgh @ Villanova- 9 PM
• February 19- Illinois @ Michigan State- 9 PM
• February 26- Duke @ Virginia Tech- 9 PM
• March 3- Texas @ Baylor- 9 PM

Some quick thoughts on the schedule:

• As they did last season, ESPN did a fantastic job identifying the teams projected to contend for a national championship and featuring their most challenging games on the schedule. In my opinion, Pittsburgh and Villanova will be the top two teams in the Big East. The same applies to Kentucky and Florida in the SEC. Kansas State and their top ten caliber squad visiting Kansas should be their toughest road test. Duke has only a handful of games this season where they have a legitimate chance to lose- the trip to Virginia Tech is one of them. Duke, Michigan State, Purdue, Kansas State, Villanova, Pittsburgh, Baylor, Kentucky and Florida could all be in the preseason top ten. Exciting stuff.
• The best game honor goes to the January 22 contest between Michigan State and Purdue in West Lafayette. This was the most obvious Gameday selection from the moment Robbie Hummel and Kalin Lucas were forced to return for their senior seasons. For the third straight fall, the debate for best team in the Big Ten- Spartans or Boilermakers- is a heated and tight one. Winner of this game gets an early leg up on their stiffest competition.
• The women’s selection is also no surprise given that ESPN opted to visit Storrs for a Connecticut women’s game last year. They threw a bit of a curveball with the men’s/women’s doubleheader, but it’s a creative concept that I’m absolutely in favor of.
• A potential stinker on the slate is Illinois visiting East Lansing to take on Michigan State. Illinois is a talented team led by Demetri McCamey, Mike Davis and Mike Tisdale, but there’s doubt whether the Illini have enough ammo to stick within 10-15 points of a loaded Spartan squad. Would Ohio State have been a better matchup? I think so. The Buckeyes are one team I felt were snubbed.
• One final note that caught my eye was no Pac-10 game featured. They usually throw that conference a bone and I expected Washington to make an appearance in one of their more difficult road games at Arizona or UCLA. Instead, Gameday opted for two contests involving SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 teams. No argument from me.
• I did expect the Gameday crew to make a trip to Hinkle and give Butler a primetime stage following their run to the national title game. The ratings for a team like Detroit, Wright State or Valparaiso at 9 PM on ESPN just wouldn’t have been there, though. A Mountain West duel (BYU at San Diego State), given the strength of that conference, would have been welcomed, but ESPN doesn’t have the TV rights for that conference.
• If you’re wondering why Duke-UNC is nowhere to be found, CBS stole ESPN’s thunder and will broadcast that game in Chapel Hill in primetime.
• The best part? Another year of halfcourt heaves.  And those are always fun.

One of the first things I did on this website upon debuting two years ago was live blog ESPN’s first 24-hour college hoops marathon from start to finish.  You know how it is. You’re the new guy, you want to impress your co-bloggers, and all that.  I volunteered for the job, thinking I’d earn the respect of my RTC-mates and perhaps bring a few new visitors to the site. I assumed the novelty of it (it wasn’t that novel) would, in the same way that circus-goers stroll by the exhibition of freaks, bring a few people by to check in on the weirdo who was staying up and live blogging the whole thing.  I thought it turned out great, especially for a guy’s first time.  I had been awake for 16 hours before it started, too, so there were a few palpitations and many hallucinations by the time it was over, but I was proud. And as I was doing it, I was convinced that the combination of my astute basketball observations with my razor-sharp pop culture references would make this site a household name and propel us into the very heart of the American consciousness. Which, as we all now know, is precisely what happened.

Last year I did it again, despite the wagging fingers of my internist and a couple of specialists. We had some technical difficulties when the internet connection at the RTC Southern Compound tendered its resignation, but with some help of friends who subbed for me while I changed location, we got it done and I was able to finish strong.

Oh sweet, delicious caffeine -- the Marathon blogger's best friend.

We’re still in secret discussions as to what we’re going to do this year to celebrate the national holiday that is the 24-hour hoops marathon. I might insult my cardiovascular and central nervous systems for a third year in a row, or we might have something better in store this year. But because I’ve done it twice and not yet needed a trip to the ER, I — erroneously, in all likelihood — consider myself the authority on the subject.  To celebrate the release of this season’s Marathon schedule and the fact that it’s — *sigh* — only three short months away, here are my 24 favorite things about watching ESPN’s 24 Hour Hoops Marathon from beginning to end.

24. The fact that it’s actually about 26 hours of basketball, not 24. The last game starts at 11:30 PM ET, if it’s on time. Not only is it an “extra” game, but it’s a good time to summarize what you’ve seen during the day and pat yourself on the back.  Bonus hoops?  I’m not complaining, not even after 24 hours.

23. Seeing whether or not ESPNU’s Lowell Galindo will continue to go with the full Windsor knot in his tie.  Others in the sports media have worn it. Only one man has perfected it.  He’s made some appearances without it during the off-season, and stock markets all over the world plummeted each time.

22. The constant string of games is an instant reminder of those sweet days of Championship Week and the NCAA Tournament.

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Remember MTV? It’s evidently still popular with the kids these days, not so much for the playing of actual music videos, but…wait a minute.  I’m getting ahead of myself.

Remember music videos?  Oh, forget it.  Suffice to say, there’s still this thing called MTV and they now play alleged reality shows as often as they used to play music videos (go look those up yourself), and have even made a few forays into the world of sports.  Soon, they’ll even have a hand in college basketball, or at least in the life one particular kid who will be playing it starting in the fall of 2011.

As reported by CBSSports.com’s Gary Parrish last week, Melrose High School in Memphis — the high school of Adonis Thomas, a consensus top ten recruit in the class of 2011 — will be featured on an upcoming MTV reality series similar to the Two-A-Days series that chronicled the lives of those kids from high school football powerhouse Hoover High in Alabama. Shooting could begin as early as this week, and it’s said the show will focus on the battle of, as Parrish writes, “inner-city minorities trying to repeat as state champions.”

Hey, sounds good.  We’d tune in for that.  But we wonder if the upcoming MTV series might have also led to this:

That’s from Adonis’ Facebook page, as you can tell.  We’ve all seen kids announce final college choices on ESPN-U before, so that’s nothing new.  We enjoy those a lot — almost as much as we enjoyed the eloquent invitation on Thomas’ page for him to stay at home and play at Memphis by the inarguably well-dressed Charles Sims, Jr.  But an ESPN-U appearance to announce a final list of colleges?  Is this something we should all be getting behind?

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Not only did the Chicago Sun-Times not back down, they’ve responded with vigor.

Not even two days after the University of Kentucky sent a letter to the S-T jumping on the paper’s accusation of them having given stud recruit Anthony Davis $200,000 to sign with the school, Michael O’Brien, the author of the original controversial article, stepped back up with another piece that claims:

“Sources from three separate universities told the Sun-Times that Davis, Sr. asked for money in return for his son’s commitment, with the amounts ranging from $125,000 to $150,000.”

There’s been no response from Lexington…yet.  The question is — should there be one?

Davis finds himself in the middle of a media maelstrom.

Just about every media outlet slammed O’Brien and the Sun-Times for publishing the original accusation based on what appeared to be a single-sourced “rumor,” burying it deep within the story, then revising the original article and not mentioning that they did a re-write.  O’Brien, asked by numerous outlets for a comment (including us), didn’t give one, but it’s safe to say that this story serves as his his response.

Let’s take a closer look at that new statement by O’Brien and the Sun-Times, though.  As you can see above, today’s article states that Anthony Davis’ father asked for money in the aforementioned amounts.  It does not say that Kentucky gave him anything, which is a bit of a comedown from the first article which was removed.  The dollar amount is different, too.  Are these three sources that the Sun-Times is holding up today different from the source that led to the first story?  If the original source is included, then why has the amount gone down from $200,000 to a maximum of $150,000?  And if these are indeed three different sources, then why weren’t they included in the original write-up on Wednesday?   Did he go out and find three new ones in the last 36 hours, and would they happen to have anything to do with the three schools said to be competing with Kentucky for Davis’ services?  Finally, why is the mention of three new sources backing O’Brien’s original version buried ten paragraphs down the page and not leading off the article?

The University of Kentucky is now in a strange position.  If they don’t come back with something stronger than a letter to the paper, they’ll look bad, and — right or wrong — people will wonder if they’re too busy covering their tracks to respond.  If they make good on the threat implied in that letter they sent on Wednesday night and actually get into this legally, then everything will come to light.  And we don’t just mean everything involved in the recruitment of Davis.  Once lawsuits get filed, subpoenas start flying and all the details emerge as part of the discovery process (just ask Rick Pitino).  Assuming everything John Calipari’s ever done in terms of recruiting is spotless, would he and UK want everything about his recruiting techniques and methods out there in the public for everyone to see?  That’s the best-case scenario for UK if this gets into the legal system.  Most people don’t want their trade secrets revealed, forcibly or otherwise.  Is there a chance the Sun-Times knows Kentucky would prefer to stay out of this legally, and is calling their bluff?  That’d be quite a gambit, but the paper has a lot less to lose here than UK.  No offense to Mr. O’Brien, but if he’s wrong about this, then he probably loses his job and the Sun-Times apologizes.  If he’s ends up being right, then Kentucky’s looking at NCAA penalties and John Calipari is looking at an even more tarnished reputation, not to mention the wrath of Kentucky fans.  You’d have to wonder if any program at any level would ever touch him again.

With this article today, the Sun-Times has directly challenged the University of Kentucky, and the fact that the paper actually quoted the letter sent to them by the school’s attorneys shows that they’re confident they’ve got the horses to back up their story, or they’re willing to go to the mat with UK on this because they have a lot less to lose.  And because of that, they’re winning this chess match right now.  It’s Kentucky’s move.

UPDATE:  Minutes after this story was published, the University of Kentucky issued this a press release, again denying the Sun-Times‘ assertions and — this is the most important part of the statement — saying it supports “any action” that Anthony Davis and his family (the school is not allowed to mention him by name, per NCAA rules) would take against O’Brien and the paper, but in terms of its own legal actions, the release states it is “evaluating all available rights and remedies it may have” against O’Brien and the newspaper.  Read the statement here.

Earlier today, the jury in the Karen Sypher extortion case found her guilty on all six counts with which she was charged by the government.  From KSR:

• Three counts of extortion,
• Two counts of lying to the FBI, and
• One count of retaliating against a witness.

By our tally, that can result in up to 26 years in the hoosegow and $1.5 million in fines.  The sentence will be handed down within the next two months.

A couple of quick thoughts, here. You may recall that Sypher’s defense team did not bother to call any witnesses as part of their case.  This can only mean that her attorneys felt confident enough in the failure of the prosecution to get over that “reasonable doubt” threshold they’re required to achieve.  After an across-the-board guilty verdict, though, you certainly have to wonder about the radar and the handicapping abilities of that defense team.  Not only will she not be taking them on any trips out to Churchill Downs any time soon, but it’s conceivable that she could accuse them of ineffective assistance of counsel, a form of legal malpractice, and appeal this verdict.  This tactic rarely works, however, because even if your defense calls no witnesses at a trial where you’re found guilty, proving your counsel was incompetent is a very hard thing to do.  You’d pretty much have to have an attorney like the lawyer who went nuts and stripped naked during the deposition in the movie Michael Clayton to make that stick.

She can appeal, citing counsel's "ineffectiveness," but it's a huge stretch.

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It seems like we have an Anthony Davis post almost every other day, but it also seems like the power forward from Chicago has managed to keep himself in the news for the past two weeks. Just one day after Davis announced that he had made his college decision, but was not going to announce it to the world just yet (something that we viewed with a weary eye at the time), the Chicago Sun-Times published a story about the quasi-announcement, but also threw in a rumor about the Davis commitment reportedly being up for sale. While some may consider the current form — which, at the time of this post, includes a few sentences about the possibility that a cash payment may have been involved in the recruitment of Davis — to be both meritless and tactless the major issue comes from the originally posted story (posted as a picture after the jump), which included the following passage:

The rumors/sources that have Davis choosing Kentucky are also alleging that the commitment cost over $200,000. Davis Sr. has flat out denied everything.

On one hand, the paper and the author technically (and likely legally, although Kentucky apparently does not agree) did nothing wrong as he only stated what an anonymous source had said, and the journalistic “code of ethics” compels him not to reveal his sources. He also allowed the Davis family to refute the rumor. That same journalistic “code of ethics,” however, also calls on O’Brien to verify wildly inflammatory statements or at least vet the source and accusation. After the LeBron-Markazi incident that lit the blogosphere on fire over the past few weeks, we can’t say for certain what the reason was for the re-edit although it is curious that the Sun-Times did so without even mentioning it (like Kentucky fans will ever let them forget it). Given that the Sun-Times pulled out the previously stated passage and left the rest of the piece intact, it seems reasonable to believe that its editors felt uncomfortable with O’Brien’s defense of that particular part of the accusation. As Michael DeCourcy noted, if the accusation had any merit it would be the headline of a national story, not something that was buried in a local story — even if the local paper is widely read.

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The higher-ups in College Station, Texas keep on checkin’ that mailbox.

A few days ago, the Texas A&M student-run Battalion newspaper reported that Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe, the man credited with saving that conference, didn’t exactly seem fired up to discuss the $20 million the Big 12 is supposed to pay A&M annually as part of a deal that kept the conference intact, noting that Beebe would “get around to talking to A&M about this ‘hidden’ money.”

As you recall, part of the deal that held the Big 12 together a couple of months ago was that the “big three” schools — namely Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma — would each receive a yearly $20 million payment as part of a new ABC/ESPN/Fox Sports television deal and from the exit costs incurred by Nebraska and Colorado when they decided to bolt for the Big Ten and Pac-10, respectively.  Those exit fees (if they actually exist) from those two schools totaled upwards of $20-40 million, and five of the remaining schools — Baylor, Missouri, Iowa State, Kansas, and Kansas State, as reported in a summary of this situation by the Houston Chronicle — agreed to forego their shares of this money and let the “big three” divide it up amongst themselves, as long as those three schools would stay in the conference and thereby keep it together.  Texas and Oklahoma said thanks-but-no-thanks to that cash.  Texas A&M accepted it.

Will Beebe and the Big 12 come through with the $20M? We're betting yes. (AP/Cody Duty)

Also according to that piece by Brent Zwerneman in the Chronicle, a Texas A&M official stated last Wednesday that A&M doesn’t really care how the conference comes up with the money — just that the Big 12 honor their end of the agreement, and that failure to do so would result in both legal action and a reopening of talks with the SEC.   Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin spoke at an A&M event in Houston on Saturday and minced no words on the issue, proclaiming, “I guarantee you we will be treated fairly.  Whatever it takes.”  Loftin’s words came two days after Mr. Beebe reaffirmed that Texas A&M would get their $20 million cut.

For several reasons, we’re pretty sure that the Big 12 will come through.  Not only would they never live down the embarrassment from reneging on the deal, but consider that the payments don’t even start until the 2012-13 academic year, giving them ample time — something they didn’t have as the conference was crumbling in June — to figure out how to divide up the cash from the TV deal and the exit fees.  And if the conference somehow doesn’t hold up their end, Texas A&M would certainly make good on that SEC threat, enticing rival Texas to do the same, and leaving Oklahoma no incentive to stay put.  The price of not coming up with the money would seem to be the very existence of the conference.

Keep in mind, though, that as of right now this whole agreement involving the $20-mil is oral.  Until one of two things shows up in College Station — the dough, or a written form of the agreement — A&M will continue to play that SEC card, and you can’t really blame them.