So Finally a BIG National Champ in Basketball
- Thread starter hdhntr1
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Cadeau-UNC, Gayle-Ohio State, Mara-UCLA, Johnson-Illinois, Lendeborg-UAB. Great achievement but it is still a new world. I was hoping it would have been Purdue cutting down the nets for the B1G.
Right now college basketball (and football) are more popular than ever but the financials for most programs are not sustainable. Will fans tire of the same programs dominating year after year? The top teams poaching from other programs including recruiting international & established older players extending their college careers to the max has become the norm. Very disturbing trend that so many players are fleeing to the portal. No continuity.
The same programs dominating is not a new thing. Since 1996, seven programs (UConn, Duke, Florida, Kentucky, UNC, Kansas, and Villanova) have won over 70% of the national championships by themselves.
I haven't watched any games since the round of 32. Not interesting.
Huh? Michigan hasn’t had a natty since when? Indiana football? UCLA women’s basketball? Same teams are not dominating.
The only conversation is about money and negativity. That is a complete downer. I don't want to read the threads anymore. What's the point? Not because I have lost the delusion that NU will ever win a natty - that has never been a belief of mine - but because the discussion is so grounded in cynicism, disloyalty, greed and matters of little import other than human enrichment. Many commenters have nothing to add other than berating others for not funding behavior and a system they don't like or support with their own contributions. It is all ugliness.
I guess good for Michigan. I just find it utterly disheartening that the team who won basically bought a championship by going out and getting all the top tier transfers on the market for one year. It's just a new way of doing things and maybe we'll get used to it, but I don't think I will. Between this and then seeing what is happening to Northwestern's squad, my enjoyment of college basketball is just fading.
I am one who thought players needed to get paid something. There were stories here in CT of top players on championship teams who didn't have any money and weren't able to get part time jobs like other college students to have money for a pizza or fix a broken laptop. That may not seem like such a tragedy, but when you considered the millions of dollars they were brining into the university, it really did seem like something wasn't right. Of course, what we see now is not the solution I ever had in mind.
Not to get too rantboardy, but college sports has fallen prey to the creeping greed and money-is-everything attitude that has infused most aspects of American life. Don't get me wrong.... I recognize that we all have a basic instinct for survival and money helps us survive, but the idea that money is all that matters has gradually gotten stronger and stronger in our society. It has now ruined college sports. Of course, this didn't just start recently. It started a couple decades ago when the money in college sports exploded, except then it all went to university administrations, coaches and media outlets. Now the players are getting their bit of the apple, but taking the same money-over-all approach. It's pretty depressing and, I think, wrong. Money isn't everything and while having some money is important, having more money doesn't always make you happier.
I'll probably keep coming to these boards, mostly because I like hanging out with all of you guys, but the excitement I had for NU sports is at an all-time low.
I am one who thought players needed to get paid something. There were stories here in CT of top players on championship teams who didn't have any money and weren't able to get part time jobs like other college students to have money for a pizza or fix a broken laptop. That may not seem like such a tragedy, but when you considered the millions of dollars they were brining into the university, it really did seem like something wasn't right. Of course, what we see now is not the solution I ever had in mind.
Not to get too rantboardy, but college sports has fallen prey to the creeping greed and money-is-everything attitude that has infused most aspects of American life. Don't get me wrong.... I recognize that we all have a basic instinct for survival and money helps us survive, but the idea that money is all that matters has gradually gotten stronger and stronger in our society. It has now ruined college sports. Of course, this didn't just start recently. It started a couple decades ago when the money in college sports exploded, except then it all went to university administrations, coaches and media outlets. Now the players are getting their bit of the apple, but taking the same money-over-all approach. It's pretty depressing and, I think, wrong. Money isn't everything and while having some money is important, having more money doesn't always make you happier.
I'll probably keep coming to these boards, mostly because I like hanging out with all of you guys, but the excitement I had for NU sports is at an all-time low.
Before California blew everything up with the "Fair Pay to Play" law, the NCAA was starting to allow stipends to athletes precisely to give them some spending money. If this were merely about spending money, that problem was already being addressed.
The same factors that propelled Michigan to a NT this year also caused NU to implode (or dramatically transform) at season's end. Neither of these teams are their school's teams, rather the system's teams, masquerading as school teams. The schools now just pretend to give identity to the teams to keep the dollars flowing. BB is an American game and it is evolving as our economics evolve, even more toward greed. It is no longer your grand daddy's game. Will be interesting to see what this looks like in five years.
College revenue athletics was only sustainable as long as everyone agreed to pretend that the players were all true amateurs doing it for the love of the game, even though that was obviously, laughably untrue from the start. Now that we treat the players as what they are - assets in a multi-billion-dollar industry - the entire thing is crumbling. The lesson here isn't that the drive for money ruins everything, it's that the revenue sports were always an exploitative house of cards that is now falling down.
Ratings don’t mean anything. 1) Nielson changed the formula to include streaming assets so everything right now is going to set new “highs” since those weren’t previously included. 2) Gambling is infesting true sports fandom. I know tons of people who don’t know **** about the teams but play luck money lines. As gambling continues to show its ugly head and get re-regulated those people will dip out. 3) I legit know no one who likes the pay for play. Do you?
This is so spot on I wish I could super-like it. And I don’t mean like like because I hate our new reality but it’s completely true.
Oh stop. No one was getting exploited. They got free food, education, clothes, board, etc. I would have been fine with revenue share in a trust that could only be unlocked after graduation but the exploitation narrative is so lazy.
Hold on, let me go find some more clouds for you fogies to yell at
Sounds like Marxist Critical Theory. Every interaction under the sun is seen through the prism of oppressors vs. oppressed.
I wonder if there is a way I could monetize a super-like
I ended up going to the game and it was a fantastic experience. If you're a hoops fan within driving distance of the Final Four site, check StubHub and SeatGeek while the 2nd semifinal game is being played. Make a provisional hotel reservation if you need on Monday night.
If prices are below your budget, don't buy the tickets yet, just plan on driving in.
On Saturday, tickets fell to $100 when the Illni lost, then went back up. By Monday afternoon it was below Saturday's lowest price. You could get tickets on the 300 level for $150 or lower Monday afternoon. The game was not awesome but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
If prices are below your budget, don't buy the tickets yet, just plan on driving in.
On Saturday, tickets fell to $100 when the Illni lost, then went back up. By Monday afternoon it was below Saturday's lowest price. You could get tickets on the 300 level for $150 or lower Monday afternoon. The game was not awesome but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
I did the same the year the ‘ship was in Minneapolis after MSU lost and all their fans had to sell. Fantastic experience and an OT game. First major American championship I’ve attended.
This isn't some bizarre reading of history, it's a matter of record. College athletics didn't start out rooted in amateurism, the idea was introduced decades later to stop players from making money. After they successfully redefined players as amateurs, the NCAA then spent many years in the first half of the 20th century trying (and ultimately failing) to ban athletic scholarships entirely! The term "student-athlete" was later invented specifically to immunize universities from workers' compensation liability for injured players. I'm not going to quibble over words like "oppressed" but it is indisputable that the history of college athletics is largely driven by university and NCAA officials doing everything they can to keep as many benefits as possible from the athletes. And now that the players are finally being paid market rate you can see why they were so desperate to avoid this.
What I saw was a voluntary, mutually beneficial transaction that thousands of athletes entered into without anyone holding a gun to their head, with scores more who would gladly take the deal but lacked the athletic talent, to earn a free college education without the burden of college loans that most of us must take on. I do not, never have, and never will see them as oppressed, slaves, "chattel" (or whatever euphemism you choose to call them instead of slaves) or anything of the like. If it were such a bad deal for the students then the universities would have a difficult time filling out their rosters and fielding a team, but that was obviously not the case. There were plenty of takers. These are schools providing educational opportunities, roughly half of which are for women, and if that's no longer what this is about then the schools should no longer be in this business and I hope it collapses.
I don't see the players as slaves or chattel or anything else, as you say they entered into a mutually beneficial transaction and received compensation in the form of scholarships etc. But the benefits to the schools FAR outweighed the benefits to the athletes in the revenue sports.
The thing is, I agree with you insofar as the minor sports (and the lower divisions) do provide those opportunities to students. My wife was a D1 golfer and she's very grateful that her sport was able to help fund her education. But even those sports are now largely funded by the runoff from football and men's basketball. When was the last time you believe that FBS/D1-A college football was primarily a high-minded effort to provide educational opportunities to its players and not a profit-seeking exercise?
Well now they have had 3 in a row in FB and 3 different teams, So there is now precident
I think it's an interesting question what the motivation really has been over the years for D1 college football. I don't think revenue was the motivation until the recent era of the mega TV deals. It started out as clubby competition between the Ivy-type schools, then grew to most large universities across the nation, where it was billed as a combination of character-building, school spirit, and in the smaller places, community institutions much like local high school programs. If you read for instance, Alan Barra's book "The Last Coach" which spans Bear Bryant's long career, you don't hear much about school - lots about character and community. Until recently, it's not clear that most universities cleared much profit from their programs- some still don't seem to. Some have justified programs as educational opportunities for economically disadvantaged athletes, but for blacks - and this stands out in The Last Coach, particularly southern school were dragged into recruiting many of those students and did it to remain competitive on the field, not to expand educational opportunity. Another amazing book, "The Game of Life" by two Harvard sociologists uses a remarkable data base to analyze empirically these questions and does surface some evidence that football maybe builds character but it's a hard statistical slog for them to get there. So high-minded rhetoric, but the real purposes are at best multiple and at worst not consistently articulated.
Funny, I actually knew personally several players right after they graduated bc they lived in my building and not one had a negative experience.
Bingo. The “player empowerment” people just like to blow up what was working completely fine to prove a point and for the high profile ones like Bilas to simply make money for themselves through agencies, speaking fees, etc.
By several, do you mean three imaginary neighbors or four?
No. To be specific 2 former starting quarterbacks and a starting super back. But ok…