NEWS & VIEWS

 

               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.