Matt L
formerly known as mattyboy
I didn't really know where to post this. I read this article today and I have to say that I really like his work. I would like to know other people's opinions on him as well.
Basketball, Football Rotting as We Watch
TV Sports Overrun by Immature, Ill-Educated Players
By JASON WHITLOCK
AOL
Sports Commentary
Hang with me over the next several columns. I'm going to try to define how the overwhelming flood of television and gym shoe money has damaged professional/college football/basketball, their participants and fans and offer my strategy for fixing this problem.
It might take two columns or it might take five for me to make all of my points. Please e-mail the links to these columns to your friends who are fans of or participants in football and basketball. Please feel free to e-mail me feedback at [email protected]. You might think of something I haven't.
In this first column, I'm going to mostly discuss what I think is wrong with basketball and its participants. Understanding what's wrong, in my opinion, will help you understand the solution I'm going to offer.
In future columns, I'll limit the discussion to football and basketball because the sports are unique in that the NFL and NBA turn young men into instant celebrities and millionaires far more quickly than baseball and hockey, sports with established, off-Broadway minor league systems. Also, college baseball and hockey are not true TV sports.
It's my belief that in order to correct what ails football and basketball and their participants we have to accept that TV sports are totally different from non-TV sports. College athletes participating in sports that are primarily controlled and financed by television networks need to be governed by a different set of rules from a wrestler or a swimmer or a gymnast.
Women's basketball won't be a part of this discussion, either. The sport is not yet a major revenue generator, the WNBA is a weak television force and there are still only a handful of women's college basketball programs that have become as ethically/academically bankrupt as men's programs.
Men's basketball and football are rotting on the inside. March Madness, no matter how much the media fawn, doesn't cover the stench. The players are mercenaries who rarely get properly educated. At the professional level, the lawlessness of the players is an embarrassing turnoff to fans. In the NBA, it's widely accepted that the players don't play hard until the postseason and the pro game has been exposed as inferior by international competition. The professional leagues are overrun by immature players who are completely unprepared for the money and spotlight the NFL and NBA provide.
The rules need to be dramatically changed. For the most part, they were established long before the NBA and the NFL turned 19 to 22 year olds into overnight millionaires.
Let's start specifically with basketball. Right now all the hubbub is about whether Kevin Durant should leave Texas after one year. The media conversation focuses on whether Durant should be the top pick over Greg Oden, another freshman star. Because of the instant millions that await Durant and Oden as the top two picks, it's considered foolish to even discuss whether either would benefit from another year or two in college.
NBA executives, people presumably intelligent enough to know that Durant and Oden will stunt their intellectual and basketball evolution by entering the NBA at 19, have been breathlessly jockeying for Durant and Oden to leave college. Everybody, it seems, has this foolish belief that a large sum of money acts only as a problem-solver. It multiplies problems just as quickly.
Strictly from a basketball standpoint, the current NBA-eligibility system damages the game of basketball. Kevin Durant is a great kid. If left to develop in college, he could one day become one of basketball's all-time great players and winners.
If he leaves Texas now, it's almost a certainty he will never reach his full potential as a basketball player. Kevin Durant doesn't know the first thing about winning.
His Texas team, although young, underachieved this year, losing 10 games and bowing out of the NCAA Tournament in the second round after an embarrassing performance against USC.
Basketball players learn how to win and how to prepare to win in college. It's not a coincidence that the greatest NBA players over the past 25 years -- Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and Hakeem Olajuwon -- were all huge winners in college.
Kobe Bryant is the only straight-from-high school NBA superstar to win multiple championships. Of course, Shaquille O'Neal was the true star of those Lakers teams, and Kobe's snotty, child-star-spoiled attitude tore apart that Lakers dynasty.
You realize it's nearly impossible to control or even reason with the average know-it-all teenager? Imagine trying to coach a relatively uneducated, unsophisticated 18 to 22-year-old with several million dollars in his bank account. It's impossible.
NBA players don't want to be coached. They grow up playing winning-doesn't-really-matter AAU ball and being "coached" by professional butt-kissers who are far more interested in a payoff than bending young minds to team concepts.
Michael, Magic, Larry, Isiah and Hakeem all benefited from participating and succeeding in college. Had they not attended college and instead been given multi-million-dollar contracts at 18 or 19, I contend they would not have been as successful as professionals.
Here's another downside to a significant number of players leaving college after one or two years: It prevents the players from evolving socially.
It used to be that 95 percent of NBA players spent at least three years in college. What happens to most people when they're in college? They develop a totally new social group. The friends you thought you couldn't live without in high school get replaced by the friends you make in college.
So what happens now? Your boys in grade school and neighborhood opportunists identify a high-profile athlete as a possible lottery ticket and dig their hooks in deep. Guys carry their high school posses right into the NBA.
Some of the athletes call it "keeping it real." For the most part, it's keeping it real stupid. The hangers-on are leeches, people determined to prevent the star athlete from seeing the big picture or evolving past street culture.
Big-time athletes rarely say or do anything important now because a Dr. Harry Edwards never gets a chance to get inside their head. The athletes visit college campuses for a year or two, but never experience what's really happening on those campuses because their entourages won't allow it.
They're also less likely to develop friendships with people who don't have a financial interest in them. They don't develop peers -- young people their age who are headed for professional careers.
It used to be that the NBA drafted 21- and 22-year-olds who entered the league with relatively well-developed fundamental skill sets, an understanding of what it takes to win and a passionate fan base. The players were marketable. Beyond potential, a bad attitude, a sense of entitlement, a tattoo-graffiti-stained body and a posse, what does the typical American-born, early-entree basketball draftee bring to the NBA?
The players are a lot less valuable, but they're being lavished with far more money than Magic Johnson received when he entered the league. Magic and Bird had to elevate the entire league and become ultimate winners to earn millions.
Kevin Durant just finished 25-10 without elevating the performance of one of his college teammates, and he'll be seduced with a shoe contract from Nike or Reebok that will dwarf the 25-year, $25-million "lifetime" contract the Lakers once offered Magic after he'd made the Lakers and the NBA the rival of the Cowboys and the NFL.
Yeah, the game has changed and the rules that govern the game must dramatically change.
The current setup is failing the game. We play an inferior brand of basketball. The NBA is virtually unwatchable in the regular season. Shaquille O'Neal won't be the last NBA star to get in the habit of skipping the first half of the regular season and deny season ticket holders of what they paid for in November, December and January.
The setup is also failing the athletes. Their educational opportunities are compromised the moment they enter high school and are identified as a prospect. By the time they enter college, almost no one in authority over them has a genuine interest in their education. The interest is in their eligibility and their ability to meet the demands of TV networks.
The money and fame are turning out the athletes the way Hohabits (drugs, poor work ethic, gigantic egos, etc.). We see the finished product. If they sold tickets to watch a star make a movie or television show and invited the media to write about what transpired on the set every day, we'd be repulsed by the behavior and snotty attitudes of Johnny Depp, James Gandolfini and Sandra Bullock. The same would be true if we watched Madonna or Usher record an album.
OK, this a good place to stop. I have lots more to say. Check back on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Also, send me e-mails with your thoughts. [email protected].
llywood and the music industry turn out their child stars. Dennis Rodman = Michael Jackson. The problem is sports fans have different expectations from music/movie fans and child entertainment stars don't have to go to high school or college.
Basketball, Football Rotting as We Watch
TV Sports Overrun by Immature, Ill-Educated Players
By JASON WHITLOCK
AOL
Sports Commentary
Hang with me over the next several columns. I'm going to try to define how the overwhelming flood of television and gym shoe money has damaged professional/college football/basketball, their participants and fans and offer my strategy for fixing this problem.
It might take two columns or it might take five for me to make all of my points. Please e-mail the links to these columns to your friends who are fans of or participants in football and basketball. Please feel free to e-mail me feedback at [email protected]. You might think of something I haven't.
In this first column, I'm going to mostly discuss what I think is wrong with basketball and its participants. Understanding what's wrong, in my opinion, will help you understand the solution I'm going to offer.
In future columns, I'll limit the discussion to football and basketball because the sports are unique in that the NFL and NBA turn young men into instant celebrities and millionaires far more quickly than baseball and hockey, sports with established, off-Broadway minor league systems. Also, college baseball and hockey are not true TV sports.
It's my belief that in order to correct what ails football and basketball and their participants we have to accept that TV sports are totally different from non-TV sports. College athletes participating in sports that are primarily controlled and financed by television networks need to be governed by a different set of rules from a wrestler or a swimmer or a gymnast.
Women's basketball won't be a part of this discussion, either. The sport is not yet a major revenue generator, the WNBA is a weak television force and there are still only a handful of women's college basketball programs that have become as ethically/academically bankrupt as men's programs.
Men's basketball and football are rotting on the inside. March Madness, no matter how much the media fawn, doesn't cover the stench. The players are mercenaries who rarely get properly educated. At the professional level, the lawlessness of the players is an embarrassing turnoff to fans. In the NBA, it's widely accepted that the players don't play hard until the postseason and the pro game has been exposed as inferior by international competition. The professional leagues are overrun by immature players who are completely unprepared for the money and spotlight the NFL and NBA provide.
The rules need to be dramatically changed. For the most part, they were established long before the NBA and the NFL turned 19 to 22 year olds into overnight millionaires.
Let's start specifically with basketball. Right now all the hubbub is about whether Kevin Durant should leave Texas after one year. The media conversation focuses on whether Durant should be the top pick over Greg Oden, another freshman star. Because of the instant millions that await Durant and Oden as the top two picks, it's considered foolish to even discuss whether either would benefit from another year or two in college.
NBA executives, people presumably intelligent enough to know that Durant and Oden will stunt their intellectual and basketball evolution by entering the NBA at 19, have been breathlessly jockeying for Durant and Oden to leave college. Everybody, it seems, has this foolish belief that a large sum of money acts only as a problem-solver. It multiplies problems just as quickly.
Strictly from a basketball standpoint, the current NBA-eligibility system damages the game of basketball. Kevin Durant is a great kid. If left to develop in college, he could one day become one of basketball's all-time great players and winners.
If he leaves Texas now, it's almost a certainty he will never reach his full potential as a basketball player. Kevin Durant doesn't know the first thing about winning.
His Texas team, although young, underachieved this year, losing 10 games and bowing out of the NCAA Tournament in the second round after an embarrassing performance against USC.
Basketball players learn how to win and how to prepare to win in college. It's not a coincidence that the greatest NBA players over the past 25 years -- Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and Hakeem Olajuwon -- were all huge winners in college.
Kobe Bryant is the only straight-from-high school NBA superstar to win multiple championships. Of course, Shaquille O'Neal was the true star of those Lakers teams, and Kobe's snotty, child-star-spoiled attitude tore apart that Lakers dynasty.
You realize it's nearly impossible to control or even reason with the average know-it-all teenager? Imagine trying to coach a relatively uneducated, unsophisticated 18 to 22-year-old with several million dollars in his bank account. It's impossible.
NBA players don't want to be coached. They grow up playing winning-doesn't-really-matter AAU ball and being "coached" by professional butt-kissers who are far more interested in a payoff than bending young minds to team concepts.
Michael, Magic, Larry, Isiah and Hakeem all benefited from participating and succeeding in college. Had they not attended college and instead been given multi-million-dollar contracts at 18 or 19, I contend they would not have been as successful as professionals.
Here's another downside to a significant number of players leaving college after one or two years: It prevents the players from evolving socially.
It used to be that 95 percent of NBA players spent at least three years in college. What happens to most people when they're in college? They develop a totally new social group. The friends you thought you couldn't live without in high school get replaced by the friends you make in college.
So what happens now? Your boys in grade school and neighborhood opportunists identify a high-profile athlete as a possible lottery ticket and dig their hooks in deep. Guys carry their high school posses right into the NBA.
Some of the athletes call it "keeping it real." For the most part, it's keeping it real stupid. The hangers-on are leeches, people determined to prevent the star athlete from seeing the big picture or evolving past street culture.
Big-time athletes rarely say or do anything important now because a Dr. Harry Edwards never gets a chance to get inside their head. The athletes visit college campuses for a year or two, but never experience what's really happening on those campuses because their entourages won't allow it.
They're also less likely to develop friendships with people who don't have a financial interest in them. They don't develop peers -- young people their age who are headed for professional careers.
It used to be that the NBA drafted 21- and 22-year-olds who entered the league with relatively well-developed fundamental skill sets, an understanding of what it takes to win and a passionate fan base. The players were marketable. Beyond potential, a bad attitude, a sense of entitlement, a tattoo-graffiti-stained body and a posse, what does the typical American-born, early-entree basketball draftee bring to the NBA?
The players are a lot less valuable, but they're being lavished with far more money than Magic Johnson received when he entered the league. Magic and Bird had to elevate the entire league and become ultimate winners to earn millions.
Kevin Durant just finished 25-10 without elevating the performance of one of his college teammates, and he'll be seduced with a shoe contract from Nike or Reebok that will dwarf the 25-year, $25-million "lifetime" contract the Lakers once offered Magic after he'd made the Lakers and the NBA the rival of the Cowboys and the NFL.
Yeah, the game has changed and the rules that govern the game must dramatically change.
The current setup is failing the game. We play an inferior brand of basketball. The NBA is virtually unwatchable in the regular season. Shaquille O'Neal won't be the last NBA star to get in the habit of skipping the first half of the regular season and deny season ticket holders of what they paid for in November, December and January.
The setup is also failing the athletes. Their educational opportunities are compromised the moment they enter high school and are identified as a prospect. By the time they enter college, almost no one in authority over them has a genuine interest in their education. The interest is in their eligibility and their ability to meet the demands of TV networks.
The money and fame are turning out the athletes the way Hohabits (drugs, poor work ethic, gigantic egos, etc.). We see the finished product. If they sold tickets to watch a star make a movie or television show and invited the media to write about what transpired on the set every day, we'd be repulsed by the behavior and snotty attitudes of Johnny Depp, James Gandolfini and Sandra Bullock. The same would be true if we watched Madonna or Usher record an album.
OK, this a good place to stop. I have lots more to say. Check back on Monday, Tuesday at the latest. Also, send me e-mails with your thoughts. [email protected].
llywood and the music industry turn out their child stars. Dennis Rodman = Michael Jackson. The problem is sports fans have different expectations from music/movie fans and child entertainment stars don't have to go to high school or college.
