Friday Basketball Epigrams
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If a sports broadcaster cannot hype betting expectations that can be exploited by Big Gaming, can he really be said to be doing his job?
The fiduciary responsibility of the director of the NCAA appears increasingly to be to find everything legal that is in anyone’s self interest except the players.
The NCAA increasingly appears to honor this maxim: where there’s smoke, there’s revenue.
Has John Calipari ever heard of an alumni infraction he knew about?
An NBA commissioner appears to be to college basketball what Nosferatu would be to Bryn Mawr.
Without the media-gaming complex, college basketball would suffer the hardships of unpredictable winning margins, more players attending class, more players graduating, referees calling fouls symmetrically, star players being kicked out of games for cheap shotting, plus coaches that would get to see their wives more. It would be intolerable.
A Division 1 head coach will always draw the line at hiring an OAD’s AAU coach…to replace himself.
Mike Krzewski appears to have developed the cheap shot to such an extent that it should now be called a solid gold shot.
Correlation may not be the same as causation in no calls and point spreads in the last ten minutes of an NCAA tournament game, but I would want some points to bet on it.
Just as a ref cannot call fouls, if everyone is fouling all the time, an NCAA director cannot give the death penalty, if everyone is committing death penalty violations all the time.
Arguing that a PetroShoeCo-Agent complex is not influencing where players go, because we cannot yet explain how and why it is done, is like arguing that the sun is not attracting planets, because we cannot yet explain gravity.
The NCAA tournament has become as suspect as an electronic voting machine in a poor neighborhood in a battle ground state, when it is a republican’s turn to be selected unitary President.
Today, amateurism appears necessary largely for the abuse of amateurism.
(Note: all satiric fiction. No malice.)
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When you first posted the concept of shoe wars I have to admit I was amused. Yet after researching the concept it’s a no-brainer. These kids are tied up in the shoe wars long before they even pick a college.
I can’t prove it, but I willing to bet these kids already know where they are going because they are told where they are going. Nike isn’t dropping millions in the AU because they love kids and basketball.
That’s why I’m willing to bet UK doesn’t do so well this time in reloading. Coach Cal, Mystery man WW won’t matter to Nike and it’s billions. Coach Cal made a huge mistake in not respecting his opponents. Becoming the most hated program in college basketball, and not winning the big one is bad for shoe sales. Americans maybe fickle but they hate arrogance and anything associated with them. To Nike this is bad for business and sales.
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@DoubleDD You’re right on the money. From a marketing perspective, Cal’s inability to get NC is one of the worst PR failure that will cost Nike. Nike’s strategy back fired & agree Americans can see & when they find out UK & AAU are the marketing arms for Nike, they will turn away. Hope it won’t hurt the college Bball when that happens.
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I keep trying to modify the hypothesis as more information surfaces. Alas, it remains only a hypothesis. Big Shoe appears to be one element with a three brand regime emerging. But there seems to be an agent element also. I initially conceptualized the agents as a highly diversified service market of individual entrepreneurs, but I am starting to wonder if there may be one or two dominant agents, or agent organizations, that constitute a regime and serve athletes from AAU to the professional levels.
I am beginning to hypothesize a dynamic between the shoe brand regime and the agent regime that is triggering clumping of draft choice grade players, whether they are OADs, or TADs, at certain basketball programs. This clumping seems to be greater for a small number of Nike programs, and smaller for a certain number of adidas programs. The clumping seems to occur one program to a power conference. Sometimes the program is a traditional elite program, but other times a lesser program appears to be transformed, or at least resuscitated, into a new elite program.
I have a hunch the hypothesis is still insufficient to explain the phenomenon; that there is a third, or fourth element that has not yet surfaced in the news.
One key thing I keep reminding others about is that my hypothesis assumes that nothing illegal is going on; that this clumping phenomenon can occur without illegality. Put another way, it may not be fair, but it is assumed to be legal.
Regarding UK, like and dislike of UK probably depends on lots of things that are too complicated for me to even try to hypothesize.
But I do think it is going to be interesting to see whether Cal and UK will continue to be able to sign lots of OADs after failing the last few seasons to “getter done.”
Rock Chalk!
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@jaybate-1.0 Im not so sure all of it is fiction. Satyrical? Yes.
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@jaybate-1.0 @Lulufulu @HawksWin @DoubleDD
Did you guys watch Sole Man?
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I decided to look up World Wide Wes and found this interesting nugget from a 2011 article on him.
"John Calipari was the subject of a lengthy feature by S.L. Price in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated.
As part of the profile, Calipari’s relationship with William Wesley is included.
“He’s become the bogeyman,” Calipari says.
Calipari first became associated with Wesley when he was recruiting Kevin Walls in the mid-1980s for Kansas. Walls eventually chose to play for Denny Crum at Louisville and eventually quit as a sophomore. Milt Wagner and Billy Thompson, close friends of Wesley, also had less than positive experiences at Louisville.
“The kid should’ve gone to Kansas,” Wesley says of Walls."
So did the whole WWW and Cal thing start at KU? Sounds like it.
On an unrelated note, you wrote: “Coach Cal made a huge mistake in not respecting his opponents” I just read something yesterday that Kentucky watched no film of Wisconsin in their week of preparation for the game. I think you’re on to something there!
