MARCH MADNESS: GREAT GAMES, BIG $
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Albert Hunt <albertrhunt@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Subject: Fwd:
To: Albert Hunt <albertrhunt@gmail.com>
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March Madness is here; I'm starting to spend scores of hours watching college basketball teams vie for the national championship with stunning upsets, last second game winners and a few of the best basketball players in the world.world.
The next weeks will produce moments we'll talk, or argue, about for years like the stunners before: Farleigh DickInson beating Purdue, Oakland (MIch) toppling powerhouse Kentucky or the gentlemen from Princeton upsetting Arizona.
Or in 2016, Villanova's Kris Jenkins, the fourth or fifth best player on the team hitting a 25 foot basket as time expired to beat North Carolina for the championship; or six years earlier Butler barely missing a half court buzzer beater to upset heavily favored Duke.
My excitement is only slightly diminished because my three favorite teams--Villanova, my childhood favorite, Wake Forest, my alma mater and Georgetown where my dear friend Mark Shields and I had season tickets for more than 30 years. --aren't in the tournament.
I'm cheering for Duke, alma mater of my wife, who in basketball season bleeds Duke blue. The Blue Devils have a good chance to go all the way; so do seven or eight other teams.
Yet over all this there is a pall. The game now is much more about money than the quaint concept of student-athletes.
Two profound changes, both justified, dramatically changed bigtime athletics, especially football and basketball. Players now can be compensated, names, images and likeness. The other is allowing athletes to transfer -- the portal-- without having to sit out a year.
The NCAA, the governing body for college athletics, brought this on themselves with petty actions against minor infractions in a system where coaches and top officials, predominately white, made millions while players, mostly Black, got crumbs.
On the transfer portal anyone else in the college community from presidents or provosts to physics or philosophy majors, can change schools without penalties, so why shouldn't athletes ?
It has, however, turned basketball into a bidding war. According to one digital basketball site, the top player with NIL compensation is Duke fresman phenom Cooper Flagg pulling in an estimated $4.28 million. Of the others in the top ten two are high school seniors..
Smaller schools like Oakland (which upset Kentucky) says this puts them at even more of a disadvantage. "I spend summers trying to raise money so I can buy players," says Oakland coach Greg Kampe, while knowing if he lands a really good player, he'll eventually go to a bigger program.
Even at the top schools, like Connecticut, which won the last two national titles, coach Dan Hurley says as early as halfway through this season most of his players are gaming whether they can make more money elsewhere next year.
The system is made for the likes of Rick Pitino, as scandal ridden as he has been successful. He was fired some years ago as head coach of Louisville for cheating. Sure enough he's back producing a winning team at St, John's thanks to the largesse of billionaire Mike Repole, an alum.
Continuity is impossible at most programs, including my three favorites. At Wake Forest, four of the five starters came via the transfer program, at Villanova three of the starting five. At Georgetown the leading scorer this season was playing at Texas Christian last year.
It has rearranged the conference tournaments held prior to March madness. One second round Atlantic Coast Conference contest featured Stanford against the University of California in Charlotte , N.C., 2700 miles from their campuses. This year the football-dominated Southeastern conference has risen like a Phoenix with 14 teams in the tournament, including four of the top seven.
It is as my favorite sports writer, John Feinstein, who sadly passed away this month, observed, "all about money, greed,"
I hate that, but still revel in March madness. For you non-fans, expect a lot of talk in most work places and on social media about brackets as tens of millions try to guess who'll win each game. My record, charitably, is mediocre.
Nevertheless, my prediction: on April 7 the Duke Blue Devils eke out a W over Michigan State.