Lichtenstein: Everyone Out Of The Pool! We're Enabling NCAA's Shady System
By Steve Lichtenstein
» More Columns
After 30-plus years, I have decided to buck tradition. I no longer need to beware the Ides of March, for this year I will not be joining an NCAA men's college basketball tournament pool.
I know, not filling out a bracket seems as un-American as calling soccer "football." At this point of the year, we're supposed to be all-consumed with everything bracket—bracketologists, bracket-busters. Even President Obama fills out a bracket.
Never mind that a large portion of pool players are like me—they watch maybe 15 minutes of college basketball all year, brag when they go 8-0 in the early Thursday games, and then are in tears when half their Final Four picks are gone by end of the first weekend.
However, my reasons for nixing making picks go beyond my preference for watching the NBA over the deteriorated state of the college game—which was eloquently explained by Seth Davis in a recent Sports Illustrated piece. Sure, there are always "shining moments" in every tournament, but that's if you can get through the parade to the free throw line and the timeouts after each possession (how can the rules allow you to call timeout when the OPPONENT is inbounding the ball?) during the last two minutes of "play" without nodding off.
No, it's the answers that I usually get from the counterarguments that has set me over the edge. How the college players don't dog it like the pros. How these student-athletes go all out "for the love of the game."
Are you kidding me?
The vast majority of players you will be watching have the fear of God put into them by adult coaches and administrators. For if they do not perform up to expectations, their scholarships could be endangered.
Good gracious, what would happen if they were compensated monetarily? It would be the end of civilization as we know it.
Or so the NCAA would have you believe.
This is a topic I have tackled in several prior posts but will not rehash here. Instead I will direct you to John Oliver's Comedy Gold take from Sunday's "Last Week Tonight":
Pay particular attention to the faux video game commercial near the end, where Oliver and his staff rip our nation's universities for their false claims that these athletic enterprises "do not make money." In the game (rated "E" for Exploitative), you can simulate the reality of the college experience through the eyes of a fraudulently-educated student-athlete, a screaming coach or a scheming administrator (who launders the millions in TV rights, ticket sales and sponsorships in order to appear to be a "non-profit." "You want a stadium across from you stadium? How about a rocket ship? But be careful, because if you use a penny of that money to pay your players—Game Over!").
By participating in these tournament pools, we are enabling this corrupt system. Be honest—what would the television ratings be for Thursday's Arkansas-Wofford matchup without any pools? Half? A third? The audience would be limited to friends, family and the state of Arkansas.
Ah, but you're in a pool. Maybe one with bonus points for upset specials like Wofford. You'll be following the results of games like these more closely than your children's grades.
That's how the NCAA gets you. Of course these games are fun, a harmless way to socialize through shared entertainment. They're water-cooler icebreakers.
In most cases, however, it's also gambling—something the NCAA rails against with one side of its mouth while gobbling the gobs of cash they reap from it in the other.
The NCAA could always count on our attention spans so long as we have rooting interests, all the while counting the dough and laughing at everyone they exploited on their way to the bank.
Every year I keep hoping that the tide will turn. Once in a while, good news trickles in. The Ed O'Bannon lawsuit. The Northwestern NRLB complaint.
Yet the culture has barely changed and the NCAA will fight to protect its moneyed interests until its last dying breath.
I'm taking my own stand—I encourage you to join me in my boycott.
Maybe President Obama will also one day see the light and make it happen. He could have various agencies (IRS, Labor, Anti-Trust Division in Justice) get after the NCAA and pound them where it hurts. After all, here's an opportunity to correct a wrong that for so long has taken advantage of so many kids with underprivileged backgrounds—it's a slam dunk.
Besides, no one should care about his bracket either. He always goes with the chalk.
For a FAN's perspective of the Nets, Jets and the NHL, follow Steve on Twitter @SteveLichtenst1.
