1. Another day, another mob with pitchforks standing outside the gates. ESPN.com‘s Darren Rovell reported yesterday that a group of former NCAA athletes has filed a $5 million suit in federal court against a company that sells photographs of college athletes without their express permission. Although the claim does not list the NCAA nor some 90 schools alleged to sell images to the defendant company, it wouldn’t be much of a leap to eventually go after them as well down the line. Under current NCAA rules, the schools have the right to promote their own games using player images, but the legal question will center around whether they also have the right to sell or transfer those images. This lawsuit is of course unrelated to the Ed O’Bannon likeness case also working its way through the system in federal court, but the underlying issue — that players are not compensated for their work and corresponding brand — is very similar.
2. While on the subject of the mission of the NCAA and its member institutions, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece yesterday from a professor at Ohio State University named Steven Conn. Conn, an American history scholar, took his soon-to-be-former boss, OSU president Gordon Gee, to task not so much for his forced retirement based on a series of verbal gaffes; rather, for helping to create and propagate the “athletic-industrial beast that defines higher education now.” The point he’s ultimately making is that college presidents nowadays have to spend so much time dealing with their athletic programs because of the money and prestige associated with them, that they’ve completely lost sight of what the true mission of an institution of higher learning is supposed to represent. Interesting read.
3. With all the pressure on programs to succeed in the revenue sports, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the average D-I men’s basketball coach has been at his current job for a total of 38 months — just over three years. This information and plenty of other coaching longevity tidbits comes courtesy of D1scourse, Patrick Stevens’ site examining college sports in the mid-Atlantic area. Although it was news to us that only one coach has survived at one school since the ’70s (Jim Boeheim at Syracuse, 1976), and only seven since the ’80s, the real takeaway from his analysis is that over 55 percent of true seniors who signed a letter of intent in November 2009 have experienced a coaching change in their careers. And yet we continue to penalize them for transferring, why, again?
4. While on that topic, a really odd situation has developed involving DePaul forward Donnovan Kirk, a player who spent the first two years of his career at Miami (FL) before transferring to Chicago for the last two seasons. Given Miami’s success under Jim Larranaga especially relative to the train wreck at DePaul, Kirk has now decided to use his graduate transfer exception to head back to Miami for his final season. That’s right: a double-transfer where he is ending up at the same school where he originally started. He only averaged 6/4 last season for the Blue Demons, but he’s a great leaper and was among the Big East leaders in blocked shots per game (1.6 BPG). He’ll move right into a lineup in Coral Gables that is extremely lacking in experienced size, so this appears to be a win/win for both parties.
5. The fortunes next season for another major basketball school in Florida — not FGCU, sorry — are still somewhat up in the air at this early summer point of the offseason. There are always a number of players finishing up coursework and dealing with standardized test scores to become eligible for next season, but in the case of Florida’s Chris Walker, there are serious concerns about his eventual eligibility. Not only does he still need to pass the ACT, which he has now taken three times, but he has to finish three core course requirements over the summer before he can enroll at the university in Gainesville. With most players these days getting themselves on campus for the early summer term to start prepping for next season, it doesn’t appear that will be an option for Walker very soon, if ever.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The relationship between the NCAA and the schools it governs has grown more tense and distrustful over president Mark Emmert’s tenure. This is a simple observation – anyone who watches, reads or writes about college sports can’t go more than a few weeks without catching wind of some new bureaucratic squabble. But without digging deep and realizing the systemic disconnect that defines the relationship between the NCAA and the people its rules actually affect, it is impossible to comprehend just how incompatible the organization has become with everything college athletics, and their place within the larger academic missions of their respective universities, should be. Outgoing North Carolina Chancellor Holden Thorp’s comments Thursday upon leaving his post at UNC and moving on to D-III Washington University in St. Louis get at the core of what has been the NCAA’s most glaring issue under Emmert (and even before that): Sports people aren’t making sports decisions. People in academia are.

Being a president at a high major university means getting involved with important matters better-reserved for more qualified athletic department officials. Thorp saw the need for a redistribution of power, and resigned from his position to avoid further consternation (AP).

“Either we put the ADs back in charge and hold them accountable if things don’t work,” Thorp said in April during a campus forum, “… or let’s be honest and tell everyone when we select (presidents) to run institutions that run big-time sports that athletics is the most important part of their job.”

That sounds crazy, when you really think about it. Proposals to change inane bylaws and recruiting restrictions and scholarship limitations are being voted and ingrained into the NCAA’s rulebook by high-brow yes-men, the type of people who get up on stage at an athletic council meeting, get cozy behind a microphone and insolently mock everything from entire athletic conferences to religion stereotypes to individual coaches. College presidents, powerful leaders with academic backgrounds, are the ones taking the reins on the same issues athletic departments and coaches spend months and years wringing their hands about. If this presidential control model seems insanely ill-fitting, or just plain dumb, blame the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a group founded in the early 1990s to address the growing unease among educators of athletic departments’ lax enforcement of rule and regulations. Their solution – such as it was – was to hand control to the presidents and chancellors, esteemed educators with no specific experience dealing with the dizzying complexities of college athletics. The leaders of massive public universities would work with the NCAA to come up with reasoned solutions on how to address the problems athletic departments let linger far too long. ADs and other athletic department officials had it all wrong. Let’s hand this over to the presidents. They’re smart, right? They can handle this. They know exactly what they’re doing.

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1. College basketball’s worst kept secret became official late Wednesday night, as Missouri’s Michael Dixon, apparently the Teflon Don of sexual assault allegations in Columbia, announced via Twitter that he was transferring to Memphis. As we discussed in yesterday’s piece addressing the rumors of his transfer, Dixon brings a very interesting combination of talent and experience to a Tigers team desperately in need of some heady play to supplement the occasional wildness of returnees Joe Jackson and Chris Crawford. The question of whether Dixon will ever suit up with those two rising seniors, though, will be for the NCAA to decide, as he plans to request a waiver after already sitting out last season at Missouri. His argument will hinge on the Dez Wells exception, a unique and slightly different scenario where Wells was expelled from Xavier over a sexual assault allegation that even local prosecutors found completely unsubstantiated. Of course, Wells was ultimately allowed to play last season at Maryland, where he blossomed into one of the ACC’s most dangerous wings, and whether Dixon will receive the same treatment from the sport’s governing body may involve determinations on guilt or innocence that it is simply unprepared or unwilling to make. If he is allowed to suit up as a Tiger of the Memphis variety next season, though, Josh Pastner’s team suddenly becomes a lot more interesting on the national stage. 
2. Speaking of that stage, one of the biggest and best national events in the early weeks of the season is the Jimmy V Classic. Next season’s pair of match-ups have now been finalized, and Memphis in fact will be one of those teams featured. The Tigers will take on a top 10 outfit in Florida in the nightcap, while fellow AAC member Cincinnati will battle new ACC institution Pittsburgh in the undercard. Did you get all that? It’s AAC vs. ACC, and AAC vs. SEC. If Dixon is cleared to play next season, the backcourt battles between he and Crawford versus Kasey Hill and Scottie Wilbekin will be fun to watch.
3. Remember Julie Roe Lach, the former VP of NCAA enforcement who was fired in February related to a series of missteps that occurred under her watch, but most notably the ethical misconduct stemming from the Nevin Shapiro case at Miami (FL)? She resurfaced on Wednesday with an op-ed piece published at Yahoo! Sports giving her take on how the NCAA should operate its enforcement initiatives. It reads lawyerly, but if you can get past the tone and dryness of it, she makes several good points. From her perspective, the NCAA needed to accomplish three primary things with respect to its enforcement process: 1) make penalties against schools harsh enough to deter the risk/reward mindset; 2) shorten the length of its investigations; 3) in revenue sports, instill a valid fear in personnel of getting caught. As she writes in the article, the organization was moving steadfastly in that direction when the Shapiro case and subsequent media firestorm it entailed derailed the focus of the organization. Unfortunately for her, the piece has something of an air of desperation about it — even though Lach’s points are well-sourced and make sense, she won’t be taken seriously by either the media or the NCAA at this point. It’s worth a read, but what the organization now needs is the next general — a Lach without a reputation — who will carry the flag forward without the taint of scandal enveloping his every word.
4. One of the NCAA initiatives of the past several years that we’ve gotten fully behind is the Academic Progress Rate (APR). Notwithstanding the fact that schools can game the numbers with bogus classes and coursework to increase their APR scores — baby steps — it still provides some degree of academic accountability where there was little before. And it has some teeth, as Connecticut found out the very hard way last season. So kudos to 2013 national champion Louisville, which was one of only 35 men’s basketball teams to score in the top tier of schools (scoring 978 or above) in the most recent APR cycle (covering academic years 2009-12). The entire top 10 percent list that the NCAA highlights as part of its “Public Recognition Awards” is located here. The biggest surprise on the list this year? It has to be Memphis, although Alabama men’s basketball and football clearly show that the army of tutors and student-athlete assistants in Tuscaloosa are very good at their jobs.
5. We didn’t mention Indiana in the previous blurb, but we easily could have, as Tom Crean has taken a program that was scoring in the 800s to one that is at the very top of Division I men’s basketball on the APR nowadays (Will the Hoosiers print up commemorative t-shirts? Too easy.). But one IU player is not only receiving academic accolades, he’s also still getting lauded for his work on the court last year. The Tulsa Sports Charities organization has named Hoosiers wing Victor Oladipo as its 2013 recipient of the Eddie Sutton Tustenegee Award, an honor “presented annually to a college basketball player who best exhibits the traits of tenacity and unselfishness that Sutton advocated during a coaching career that landed him in the College Basketball Hall of Fame.” In a year when the race was fairly wide open among a group of about five players, we like to see the love spread around a bit. Good for Oladipo, probably the best player on both ends of the floor last season.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Imagine trying to lump wildly financially disparate athletic programs with different issues and different monetary imperatives under one legislative agenda. Imagine trying to hold that infrastructure together with vague terminology and philosophical principles and vexingly byzantine legalese. Imagine that organization asking an enforcement staff that can’t even police itself to make sure everything runs smoothly – no questions asked, no willingness to adjust. Imagine a near-universally loathed ruling figurehead, whose tenure has been besieged by near-constant turmoil on college campuses, wielding unseen legislative power, refusing to cooperate with influential school athletic directors, eroding public trust every step of the way, and doing it all while publicly casting himself as some enduringly unimpeachable monarch – untouchable, unimpressionable and, most recently, resentfully bitter to any and all external questioning or proposals for change.

Promoting discussion for a move towards a fourth subdivision allows schools with bigger budgets the possibility to change the NCAA’s separation of powers (US Presswire).

The public approval rating of NCAA president Mark Emmert, were there such a measure for the organization’s embattled leader, would not inspire confidence for election day. The rightful scorn and growingly pervasive critiques can’t be (or shouldn’t be) shoved on Emmert’s doorstep; his actions are merely a particularly irksome embodiment of the entire NCAA’s morally and ethically dubious ruling construct. Either way, his spot isn’t up for contestation, so Emmert doesn’t have to worry – even as swaths of media call for his resignation and athletic directors lose confidence in his ability to navigate the NCAA’s hazardous future. Emmert isn’t completely blind to the boiling discontent within his membership, and at the Big 12 meetings in Irving, Texas, last week, he made an important concession that shows he’s open to the concept of realigning the power structure to accommodate more-monied (and thus more powerful) programs.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Whenever someone brings up the possibility of a 96-team NCAA Tournament, reaction is unanimously predictable. Folks cringe, unnerved at the idea of seeing the regular season devalued at the expense of more Tournament games involving fewer quality teams. Bubble discussion would cease to be anything remotely close to riveting; when losing conference records and +100 RPI figures (and even uglier tempo-free profiles) are perfectly qualified for at-large admission, the enterprise breaks down. Opening-round byes for top seeds would feel inauthentic. Nobody wants a 96–team NCAA field. Maybe the NCAA, for strictly monetary purposes, but that’s it. The consensus is uncompromising. We bended our backs for 68, but the line of resistance is taut anywhere beyond that.

Next season’s Final Four will have a different TV provider.

If it weren’t for Turner Broadcasting System, the famous sports and drama-bearing cable network otherwise known as TBS or “Turner,” we might just be talking about 96 in harrowing certainty rather than lamenting the distant possibility of a hugely expanded field. That’s the way Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy sees it — that Turner, in co-bankrolling a deal with CBS in spring 2010 to keep the NCAA Tournament set at 68 teams, essentially “saved all of college basketball.”

The truth is that 68 saved everyone from 96. The truth is that 96 would have been the worst thing ever to happen to college basketball, robbing teams of incentive to excel in the regular season and fans from investing any emotion or interest in how it developed. And the truth is Turner’s cable wealth—it receives income from both subscription fees and advertising, whereas network channels receive only the latter—is the reason the NCAA was able to hold the line at a 68-team field.

In one of the few instances where television contracts actually didn’t ruin something totally awesome about college sports, Turner deserves a hearty round of applause each and every year we watch Greg Gumbel on Selection Sunday list off 68 teams and then stop dead in his tracks. No more, no less. That’s the number the NCAA, Turner and CBS has settled on and – whatever your feelings on the “play-in” games – I kind of like things the way they are. This setup works. The number creates enough competitive balance to evoke truly compelling bubble cut-line angst, while remaining inclusive enough to allow any and all measurably deserving teams to play their way in. Win a few non-conference games, play .500 ball in your power league (smaller leagues have less margin for error), don’t lose to Old Dominion and Delaware in the non-conference (ah, Virginia), and you’re ticket to bracketland is as good as punched. It really is that simple. Could you imagine how much simpler it could have been with a 96-team threshold? I know what the depths of a 96-team bracket looks like. It’s called the CBI, which is a euphemistic way of saying, 96 teams is a dark and scary place.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Maybe the most important question is, “is anyone even the least bit surprised?”

That was the first thought that jostled around my frontal lobe after reading Eric Prisbell’s expose in Saturday’s USA Today detailing St. Louis-area AAU Coach Darius Cobb’s admission to receiving multi-thousand cash payments and free-expenses paid trips in exchange for perceived influence and access to Kansas star and likely top-three NBA draft pick Ben McLemore. Cobb reportedly met with various sports agents and financial advisers looking to steer McLemore to the professional ranks after his redshirt freshman season. Even a cursory knowledge of NCAA protocol would lead you to make the following conclusion without much in the way of deep introspective thought: An investigation of Kansas’, and by extension McLemore’s, alleged impropriety could result in the Jayhawks not only losing their Big 12 title and Sweet Sixteen appearance, but having its entire 2012-13 season expunged from NCAA historical accounting. Everything McLemore touched during his college career could be in danger of sheer obliteration. There would be protest and angst and complaints. It would get ugly.

The NCAA ultimately may not be able to find any wrongdoing on behalf of Kansas or McLemore (Getty Images).

Or maybe it won’t: thanks to some quick analysis on the matter at hand from John Infante, the internet’s resident NCAA bylaw expert and author of the famous Bylaw Blog, a completely blood-free resolution of the case seems entirely plausible, even historically prudent. Kansas can look through the superficial ugliness of its star freshman shooting guard and nefarious AAU-circuit go-betweens and financial impropriety, yearn for a punishment-free future and not feel totally nervous about the whole thing. The NCAA, as is all too often the case in high-profile impermissible benefits cases (and as was made glaringly evident in the resolution of the Lance Thomas jewelry fiasco), has no legal means by which to force Cobb, alleged McLemore-invested runner Rodney Blackstock or even McLemore himself, now that he’s declared for the NBA Draft, to discuss his muddy past. The only looming repercussion is if Cobb or Blackstock qualifies as an “agent,” which could very well be the case under the NCAA’s new expansive definition, or – as Infante details in much greater and clearer nuance – if McLemore is proven to have had knowledge and willing acceptance of Blackstock’s (or whoever else was involved) services.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The chorus of vitriol aimed at the NCAA will grow louder and louder over the next few months as college sports prepares for the landmark court case that could completely uproot its economic model. Well-reasoned critiques of the organization’s various hot debate points — the amateurism model, NCAA executives’ inflated salaries, the growing broad-scale realization that student-athletes aren’t entitled to the smallest slice of the massive TV revenue pie generated by broadcasts of their athletic competitions across as many television sets as humanly possible, president Mark Emmert – have become synonymous with any discussion of the NCAA, period. Enunciate the four-letter acronym, and be prepared for a deluge of denunciatory comments and generalized screeds about “exploitation” or “uncompensated labor” or, in its most extreme form, “slavery.” I have heard them all, and at this point, I’m ready to table the amateurism discussion for a while. If you’re looking for the next big date on the NCAA calendar, that’s June 20 – when the Ed O’Bannon group will file for class certification and potentially place the NCAA in extremely hot waters, with the very real possibility of inducing a settlement that could lead to direct concessions on the amateurism model everyone loves to hate.

Multi-year scholarships have been applied languidly across Division I athletics (AP Photo).

In the interim, there’s another NCAA-related topic that deserves your attention. When the NCAA passed a motion last year to allow Division I institutions the option of offering multiyear scholarships, one of the most frequently cited items on Emmert’s personally touted reform agenda, approval came and went without anyone paying much mind to one important fact: more than half of the 300 + Division I institutions voting on the matter flatly turned it down. According to the NCAA, who received ballots from 90 percent of Division I schools, the 62.12 percent voting against the measure fell just short of the required 65 percent disapproval rate. If the message wasn’t clear then, it certainly is now: most programs were never in favor of offering multiyear grants-in-aid, and the latest accounting on the matter reaffirms that premise in excellent detail. Thanks to some excellent reporting from Brad Wolverton and Joshua Newman of the Chronicle, the statistical realities of multiyear scholarship offerings have been laid bare for all NCAA-critics to supplement their typical dose of amateurism-related harangues with a new topic entirely. To the surprise of almost no one, the results plainly confirm the mixed opinions at the voting table last year.

Nearly two-thirds of the 56 most powerful Division I public universities now offer multiyear awards, according to a Chronicle review of public records. Yet few of those institutions do so for more than a handful of athletes.

It’s important to recognize one hugely important stipulation right off the bat: Emmert and his board of directors pushed this legislation through without any sort of sanction-backed enforcement clause. Schools are merely encouraged, not legislatively mandated, to offer multiyear grants-in-aid. As Wolverton and Newman note, there are select schools beginning to adopt the idea across select sports, and a few – such as Fresno State, which “handed out 425 multiyear awards this year”, one for every scholarship athlete – that have embraced the concept across all categories of Division I student athlete involvement: female, male, revenue-producing, and non-revenue producing. What you might be surprised to learn is the motivation behind using these recently-approved packages is far more nefarious than originally intended.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

Just last week, Louisville and Michigan were playing one of the most entertaining NCAA Tournament championship games in years. Luke Hancock was scorching threes, Kevin Ware was blissfully crutching his way around a confetti-drenched Georgia Dome, and Spike Albrecht was tweeting at Kate Upton. College basketball was just wrapping up another fantastic season. And now, just a week after the final game of the year, some of the nation’s top players have an utterly crucial decision to make: Stay in school or declare for the NBA Draft?

Players deserve more time to conduct research and solicit outside opinions on this pivotal decision (AP Photo).

Decisions like this – decisions that could have lasting implications on a player’s earning power and academic and professional futures – are not trivial matters to be pushed aside. Other than maybe choosing a college, deciding when to leave college and pursue one’s athletic dreams at the professional level is probably the biggest decision any of these kids have ever made. It requires calculated reasoning and a thorough investigation of the potential costs and benefits. This isn’t the case for everyone; some guys have it easy. For Shabazz Muhammad, leaving UCLA after one season will go down as one of the least surprising one-and-done jumps of all-time. Others face competing interests, unwavering loyalties and strong ties to teammates and coaches. Some just love being in college, particularly at “basketball schools” where the hardwood practitioners are afforded demi-god levels of celebrity. What’s so bad about unrivaled popularity and social stature, anyway?

The real process is a lot more complicated than that. Financial hardship often forces players to leave school earlier than they otherwise would have. A hot shooting streak during the NCAA Tournament sends them flying up draft boards, rapidly and prominently enough that not entering the draft could leave a prospect regretting a major missed opportunity after the fact.

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1. State of the U: Miami filed a 45-page motion for the NCAA to dismiss all charges against the university due to the NCAA’s questionable actions during the investigation (which have already resulted in multiple firings at several levels of the NCAA enforcement staff). Miami is officially not going away, no matter how much the NCAA wants it to. Between USA Today‘s recent blitzkrieg of Mark Emmert, the Miami fiasco and what I expect to be substantial fallout from any NCAA reaction to Miami, look for the NCAA to have a new person at its head in the near future.
2. San Jose Mercury News: Filed away under “fun historical ACC coaching factoids” is this gem from Jeff Faraudo. Apparently NC State legend Everett Case popularized cutting down the nets in college basketball, bringing the tradition from Indiana high schools. That leads me to believe that one of the colleges in Indiana probably did it first (and helps explain the Hoosiers’ zealous behavior for cutting down the nets this season), but Case made it big — especially once he led the way for the ACC Tournament, which would’ve given Case the platform to spread his tradition.
3. Winston-Salem Journal: Dan Collins does a great job previewing Wake Forest’s basketball team for next season player by player before coming to the conclusion that Codi Miller-McIntyre holds the key to the Demon Deacons’ success. I have a couple of thoughts on his take: I agree wholeheartedly that next year’s Wake Forest team will only be as good as Miller-McIntyre, but I think the most valuable players will be Devin Thomas and Travis McKie. Despite the fan base’s dismay over keeping Jeff Bzdelik on board, there’s a lot more talent on this roster than people give it credit for (and a lot more talent than Clemson or Virginia Tech will have next season). That said, Bzdelik needs his rising sophomore point guard to break out.
4. Run the Floor: Miami has had a rough go at the NBA Draft recently. The school boasts three current NBA players amongst its alumni ranks, but John Salmons was the last player to be drafted in the first round in 2002 (James Jones was drafted in the second round and DeQuan Jones wasn’t drafted at all). This year that could change if Shane Larkin decides to go pro. He probably played himself into the first round this season, despite his size (although he looks taller than his listing). Kenny Kadji has the second-best chance, but his age will hurt him significantly (though whatever NBA team gets him in the second round should be thrilled).
5. Blogger So Dear: Another player who will look to help Wake Forest next year is Daniel Green, the freshman starting center who tore his ACL before last season. It’s unclear exactly what Green will mean, other than added size and strength, but he could be another big piece of Wake Forest’s turnaround. The biggest issue for Jeff Bzdelik is playing Green and Thomas at the same time forces Travis McKie to play more on the perimeter against quicker defenders. Regardless, Green should help shore up the boards in Winston-Salem.

EXTRA: Shane Ryan did an awesomely esoteric piece on the history of basic basketball statistics — mostly focused on the “dead ball rebound” (the statistic that balances the rebound/missed shots books without rewarding teams or individuals). It’s worth a read.

1. After 40 minutes of dominating Marquette this past Saturday, Syracuse punched a ticket to the program’s first Final Four since 2003, but Jim Boeheim warned his players that they’ve come too far to settle for anything less than a title. “[I]f you don’t win the Final Four you will be more unhappy than you would be if you lose—if you’d lost [in the Elite Eight].” The Syracuse coach admitted that a berth in Atlanta this weekend was so unanticipated that it forced him to cancel an already-scheduled family vacation, and he quipped, “If I know I’m going to lose I would rather lose now and get it over with and I can go to Disney World tomorrow morning.” “I’ve lost two final games and it’s not good, not a good feeling,” reasoned Boeheim, referring to 1987 and 1996 Finals losses to Indiana and Kentucky, respectively.
2. The Louisville Cardinals earned themselves a trip to Atlanta alongside the Orange with an 85-63 victory over Duke last night, in a game sadly dominated by the disturbing spectacle of a compound leg fracture Kevin Ware suffered in the first half in front of his team’s bench. Ware’s teammates broke into a scene of hysterical distress at the grisly sight of his leg, which evoked memories of Joe Theismann’s career-ending injury. But the sophomore guard stoically repeated to them, “I’m OK. Just win the game,” while being secured on a stretcher, and Pat Forde credits Ware’s “courage and grace amid terrible pain” with helping his team refocus and play with an unmistakable purpose. That theme resonated in the locker room at halftime, and soon thereafter a 17-2 Cardinals run would quickly put the game out of reach.
3. Ware’s injury itself stirred up interesting discussions about the finer ethical points of broadcasting horrific injuries, as well as the absence of a “safety-net” in the amateur realm of the NCAA for athletes who suffer such injuries. After two wide-angle replays in the immediate aftermath, CBS elected to refrain from any additional replays or close-up images of Ware’s leg giving way, focusing instead on the reactions of his coaches and players. Conversely, websites like BuzzFeed and Deadspin quickly tweeted links to videos of the injury. And on the NCAA front, Dan Diamond at Forbes wondered whether Ware had been exploited by a system that contravenes traditional assumptions of labor protection. UofL will fit the bill for Ware’s medical bills, but Diamond points out he “has no recompense to file for worker’s compensation” due to the “student-athlete” terminology.
4. The Big East has now placed a team in the past five consecutive Final Fours, but Kevin McNamara at the Providence Journal contends that the ACC is the real winner of Syracuse and Louisville’s accomplishments. After watching its basketball brand slowly erode around Duke and North Carolina, “Adding Syracuse, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh next season, plus Louisville in 2014, will revitalize a flagging conference and leave fans of the Big East with only memories.” McNamara notes that a potential all-Big East championship game would mark the third Final Four meeting between Boeheim and Pitino, who split such contests in 1987 and 1996.
5. On the topic of disturbing injuries, Dave White at On The Banks asks if Eli Carter’s season-ending injury ultimately helped Rutgers and Carter himself. The Scarlet Knights developed a more diverse and consistent offensive character once Carter was no longer dominating possessions, White argues, which helped role players develop into more confident offensive weapons. Next year will present Mike Rice with a watershed challenge, as he seeks to reconcile Carter’s scoring talent with more equitable ball movement: “It can’t be all about Eli Carter. It has to be about Rutgers. It has to be a team game where everyone trusts each other.”