NEWS-- COLLEGE
CONFERENCE ALIGNMENTS CHURN
VIEW— ITS
ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS
The
tectonic plates of big-time college sports are on the move again, leaving carnage
in their wake. The U’s of Oregon and Washinton have left the PAC 12 for the Big
Ten, following the earlier switch by UCLA and Southern Cal. Arizona State,
Arizona and Utah moved from the PAC 12 to the Big 12, filling the holes left
when Texas and Oklahoma fled that conference for the SEC. Clemson and Florida
State are said to be mulling leaving the ACC for the SEC, Cal-Berkeley and
Stanford are talking to the ACC. You can’t tell the players without a
scorecard.
Left in the dust
are the 64-year-old PAC 12, now all but defunct, and whatever vestiges of
regionalism the other conferences embodied. The Big Ten, once a prime source of
Midwestern identification and pride, now stretches from sea to shining sea, and
with Cal and Stanford the ACC (which stands for Atlantic Coast Conference)
would, too. Traditional ties, such as
those between Oregon and Oregon State and Washington and Washington State, have
been torn asunder. Making the moves more head scratching, the severing of Cal
and UCLA was approved by the same Board of Regents that governs both.
Another likely
casualty is the NCAA, a mere spectator to the above proceedings. The
conferences now have the power, and can be counted upon to use it. The NCAA
used to be potent politically and in the courts, but no more. Its decades of countenancing
exploitation and hypocrisy finally brought down its shame amateurism, and
through court-approved NIL (name, image, likeness) payments college athletes
are able to be paid by check. The organization now exists mainly to run a basketball
tournament.
Behind the moves
is money. The key word is “content,” which is what the schools’ sports arms provide
to television and streaming operators. That’s the same thing the professional
leagues sell. The PAC 12’s collapse followed immediately on the league’s
failure to secure a TV contract that would have satisfied its members. Big-time
college sports are businesses pure and simple, separate from and often
conflicting with the schools’ educational missions. Contributions to university
athletics departments shouldn’t be tax-deductible.
NEWS—THE U.S. WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM BOMBS AT THE
WORLD CUP
VIEW—IF YOU WERE
SURPRISED YOU WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION
The two-time defending
champs’ elimination in the round of 16 was regarded as shocking, but it
shouldn’t have been. The team’s pre-tourney games, all in the U.S., resulted in
narrow wins, and it had lost twice in its only previous foreign venture (to WC
host country New Zealand) this year. I watched its first WC game against Viet
Nam, which turned out to be the worst team in the 32-country field, and found
its 3-0 win unimpressive, remarking to wife Susie that it would be in trouble
against better units. Its next three games, against the Netherlands, Portugal
and Sweden, all resulted in ties in which it scored a total of one goal. Its eliminating loss to Sweden came in a
penalty-kicks shootout.
It's news-media bad
form in the U.S. to criticize female athletes or teams, but the soccer team’s pre-tourney
hype in this land went beyond praise, to adulation. This was from a press corps
that had little apparent knowledge of the women’s game beyond these shores.
Thanks largely to the federal “Title 9” legislation of 1972 that vastly
broadened women’s athletic opportunities, the U.S. long dominated women’s
sports around the world. The rest of the world, however, has caught up on just
about all fronts; for example, none of best basketball players extant (Nikola
Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid and Luca Doncic) are Americans, and
the best baseball player (Shohei Ohtani) is Japanese.
No doubt there will
be a lengthy post-mortem of the WC debacle, with coaching and team organization
getting most of the blame, but old-fashioned big-headedness shouldn’t be
overlooked. Future team members should be advised not to read their press
clippings.
NEWS— THE
BALTIMORE ORIOLES SUSPEND TELEVISION BROADCASTER FOR PASSING ALONG A FACT
VIEW—WHAT ELSE
IS NEW?
Kevin Brown’s
sin, in chatter before a July game against the Tampa Bay Rays in Tampa, was to
point out that the resurgent O’s had beaten the Rays three of five times there this
season after losing 18 of 21 from 2020 through ’22. It’s the kind of tidbit
that’s included in every team’s pre-game press notes, including the O’s before
the game in question. But mouthing it on O-paid air was a no-no.
The incident was
only an extreme example of the state of play-by-play sports broadcasting on both
radio and TV. Broadcasters are not independent observers but employees of their
teams, expected to promote them. Even
the best of them—Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Jon Miller—are or were
“homers.” It was just that their teams allowed them to describe the games
before them, including, sometimes, the bad with the good.
These days, homerism
has morphed into cheerleading, with nary a discouraging word allowed. I
subscribe to MLB’s Extra Innings package, which gives me access to just every about
game that’s televised, and to most of the boys (and sometimes girls) in the
booths home teams are the good guys, foes the villains. Home players are
referred to by first names or nicknames, like pals, foemen by family names.
Home guys succeed by merit, foemen by chance. Every crew of umpires or refs has
it in for the broadcasters’ employers; non-stop, one-way bitching over calls is
the rule. Best choice to avoid the blather:
watch with the sound off.
