JUST WIN, BABY

 

               The NCAA Final Four weekend is about kids playing basketball, of course, but it also serves another function. It’s an annual, though informal, coaches’ convention, where college hoops mentors from around the country gather to network and gossip, the latter talk centering on what might be available where in the game’s always-lively job market.  A colleague once remarked to me that every sportswriter in America was on the lookout for a better job. The same is true of coaches, and then some.

               The celebrities of the conclave are the coaches whose teams are boogying in the “big dance,” or who have otherwise distinguished themselves. Coaches are among the most suggestible of people, always eager to put to use anything that might add a W” or other filip to their resumes. The saw “nothing succeeds like success” is nowhere more applicable than in their profession.

               The lessons of what counts or doesn’t in the scramble up the greasy pole were rarely more evident than at the just-ended get together in Indianapolis. Exhibit A was Kelvin Sampson, whose University of Houston Cougars were a Final Four contestant. If you follow the sport loosely you might have been surprised to learn that Sampson still worked at the collegiate level. He’s a heckuva coach, with a long record of winning seasons, but also left a trail of slime as a result of NCAA rules violations at Oklahoma and Indiana, his previous collegiate employers. He put both those schools on probation before moving on.

               NCAA members don’t trust one another so the organization has a fat rulebook, full of petty crimes. Thus, it’s easy to dismiss some violations as nitpicking. Not so in Sampson’s case. At Oklahoma he was found to have made, um, numerous improper recruiting phone calls over a several-year period ending in 2005, 550 to be exact. That figure impressed the most jaded and earned the school a three-year spanking, which included recruiting restrictions.

               Sampson wanted no part of that so by the next year he’d fled into the waiting arms of Indiana U., a promotion by most standards. In short order there he not only repeated his depredations but also lied about them to university and NCAA investigators. In 2008 Indiana got a three-year rap and Sampson personally was tagged with a rare order that effectively barred any NCAA school from hiring him for a five-year period.  

               That made him unemployable collegiately but he landed on his feet with a number of NBA teams, whose coaches employed him as an assistant. The fraternity takes care of its own that way. His penance completed, he’s thrived at Houston, pulling down a reported $3 m yearly to guide young men there, a shining example of rehabilitation.

               That, maybe, is what the good fathers at Iona College, a Catholic institution in New Rochelle, New York, had in mind went they hired another FF-weekend celeb, Rick Pitino, as their basketball coach last year, and watched him lead the Gaels to this year’s tourney.  A peripatetic type who’s bounced between the pros and the colleges, he got in trouble at his last employer, the University of Louisville, when it was discovered that his team hired stripper/prostitutes to entertain recruits in parties at school dorms.

 A hapless assistant coach took the rap for that one but none was available when Pitino’s name came up in the “pay for play” scandal of 2018 that had the shoe company Adidas funneling money to recruits to play at schools that used their products, so out he went. In between, he’d bravely fought off a shakedown attempt from the wife of an assistant with whom he’d had an adulterous relationship.  His reported Iona salary of $1 million a year is a small fraction of what he’d made at L’ville, but it’s probably enough to get by on.

Also taking bows at the tourney was another “Adidas school” principal, Bill Self, the head basketball coach at the U. of Kansas. His latest distinction was for landing a five-year rollover contract that amounted to a lifetime pact at the school at a $7 million-plus annual salary, something about which his contemporaries can only dream. Self was taped by the FBI yakking with an Adidas functionary about payoffs to one recruit, and about the guy’s continuing help in keeping KU supplied with future NBA lottery picks. Nonetheless, he denies all.

 Sean Miller, the coach at the U. of Arizona and another figure in the long-moldering scandal, just lost his job, but unlike Self’s teams Miller’s didn’t continue to win big in the three years since the thing broke. The point has been taken, I’m sure.

Another figure of veneration for the educators was Roy Williams, who retired after 18 years as head coach at the U. of North Carolina. Williams’ tenure at Chapel Hill included eight years (2003-2011) during which the school maintained an academic shell department, called African and African-American Studies, whose main function over an 18-year period (1993-2011) was to keep UNC athletes eligible by handing out no-work credits and grades. The Drake Group, a faculty-based college-sports watchdog, called it “the mother of academic fraud violations.”

Butch Davis, UNC’s football head coach at the time, was fired when the story surfaced. Not Williams, whose teams were busily winning ACC championships and contending for national honors. He claimed total ignorance of the fraud, and over the years questions about it faded. The New York Times devoted two full columns of its national-edition sports pages to Williams’s career when he called it quits, and only one paragraph mentioned the episode.

 How does that line go: “The evil men do lives after them”?

 Well, sometimes.

 

              

                    

BETTER BASEBALL

 

               There was a Major League baseball season last year, but not much of one. Because of covid they played 60 regular-season games instead of the usual 162, barred spectators from the stadiums and staged the postseason in “bubbles.” The statistical records, the sport’s lifeblood, were reduced to oddities. What could you make of a campaign in which 22 home runs, 60 RBIs and eight mound wins led leagues?  Seeing such numbers, a future fan most likely will just shrug and move on.

               In another sense, though, last year’s stats were important because they confirmed multi-year trends that could only be called troubling for the National Pastime. Strikeouts were up on average and home runs challenged recent highs. Batting averages were down and stolen bases continued to be regarded as relics of bygone eras. The fans, clustered around their TV sets at home, were restive.  Attendance had declined annually in each of the previous four seasons and a 2020 upturn would have surprised, had it been possible.

               The game has taken note and has mulled changes that could lead to more action on the field. Alas, aside from starting extra innings with a runner on second base (a plus!), nothing of importance will go into effect during the new season that begins today.  A number of things are being tried in various minor leagues, most notably a rule that pitchers must step off the rubber before attempting a pickoff throw (to encourage base stealing), but the gap between the Bigs and the Class A league in which this one is being tried is large. Baseball doesn’t change easily and this should be no exception.

               The causes of baseball’s turgidity are well known, but not all can be corrected or even addressed. One, perhaps oddly, is the trend toward bigger and stronger athletes at all positions, but especially pitching. Time was that a 95 mph fastball was remarkable, but today every team can trot out a half dozen pitchers who can hit that mark or higher routinely. Improvements in coaching at every level have enabled hurlers to be more refined as well as stronger, and that isn’t going to change.

               Another is the go-for-broke philosophy that governs many (most?) hitters’ approach to their at-bats. It’s a baseball cliche that chicks dig the long ball, but general managers do, too, especially at contract time. Until those two groups change their minds today’s bigger, stronger, fitter hitters will continue to flail for the fences at every opportunity, strikeouts be damned.

               Lastly, as much as it chafes traditionalists, the statistical focus called “analytics” is here to stay and pitching and defense will continue to be its main beneficiaries. The numbers crunched from every diamond action are behind what is thrown to whom and where fielders are stationed. Hitters can benefit from knowing pitchers’ tendencies, but the game’s central fact—that it’s really, really tough to hit a well-pitched ball— remains unchanged.            

               By me, though, three changes that are less than revolutionary could tilt the game’s balance in favor of more hits and runs, and, therefore, more action. The first is going to happen anyway so it might as well be sooner rather than later: MAKE THE DESIGNATED HITTER UNIVERSAL.

That was done last season to accommodate the increased inter-league play that accompanied regional scheduling groupings, but the change was erased for this one. Whatever argument against the DH that existed when the American League adopted it in 1973 has long been resolved on the ground; every organized baseball league from kids up now uses it. The main reason the National League holds out is because it's a bargaining chip for the owners at contract time. Look for it to be in play in the contract talks that begin after this season.

               The second change might be a bit more controversial: REQUIRE TWO FIELDERS TO BE ON EACH SIDE OF SECOND BASE BEFORE EVERY PITCH, thus eliminating hit-choking overshifts. Yes, the free positioning of players is a baseball tradition, but limits on it exist in other sports; football mandates that there be seven offensive players on the line of scrimmage before every ball snap, and basketball and hockey don’t permit players to lurk around an opponent’s goal when the ball or puck is in the other end. This change could be accomplished with a flick of a pen.

               My third change would require some pick-and-shovel work on the diamonds: LOWER THE PITCHING MOUND. That was what the game did in 1969 to counteract a hits drought in which pitchers like Bob Gibson, Luis Tiant and Sam McDowell were posting sub-2 ERAs. That year mound heights were dropped from  their longtime 15 inches to 10 inches. It worked, with overall averages climbing from .237 in 1968 (they were .245 last year) to .248 in ’69 and .254 in ’70.  This time let’s drop them to, say, six inches.  

               A little basic geometry explains how this would help hitters: lowering the mound would reduce pitchers’ leverage and flatten their deliveries. One reason pitchers are throwing harder these days is that they’re taller on average than they used to be; ones under six-feet tall are rare and those over 6-feet-4 are common. Lowering the mound would cut them down in size.

               Baseball also is casting around for ways to speed games but proposals to do this, such as instituting pitch clocks, only would nibble at the problem. A more-radical reduction would come if all the catch-playing that goes on before and during innings would be eliminated. In no other sport are players permitted to practice in-game the way baseball players do.

Do pitchers really need six warmup throws before an inning or when coming on in relief? Must infielders throw the ball around between outs? Those guys have been playing catch since age six and aren’t likely to forget how.