March Madness
Sorry it’s been so long since I posted. Here are some quick (mostly basketball related) things that have been rattling around in my head lately.
The entire basketball program at the University of Michigan (mens and womens) is a disgrace and it should be the lowest funding priority for the athletic department. The women’s team is monumentally horrible, I don’t think they’ve won a big 10 game since the Carter administration and the men’s team is an embarrassment. We’ve never won without cheating, and I don’t see that changing. Michigan wins, or regularly competes for, national and big ten titles in softball, hockey, swimming and diving, wrestling, gymnastics, mens and womens soccer, womens lax, football, cross country, golf…the list goes on and on, but basketball will never make it. We missed our chance by not hiring Perry Watson and going with the "best Detroit has to offer" line-up when Steve Fischer was run out of town, and now we’re stuck with a crappy coach and bad players. We’re in the NIT again and they seem to be proud of that. My cousin refers to the NIT as the "best of the worst" tournament, which is ironic because he attends some sort of honors program at Michigan State University, previously known as Michigan State Agricultural College, but ultimately he’s right. Take the money away from the basketball teams and let them
compete with a bunch of walk-ons.
This (see picture) is a dunk?!?!?!?
ESPN Page 2/Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock has submitted a decent column that makes the case that the 2 recent so-called dunks by Tennessee forward Candace Parker could prove detrimental to womens basketball. Here’s a link, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=whitlock/060323. Mr. Whitlock’s point, in short, is that the mystique of the slam dunk, or slam lay-in in Ms. Parker’s case, has the potential to ruin the quality of women’s basketball, much in the same way it has hurt the men’s game at every level* . Anyway, it’s a good column and you should check it out.
On a semi-related note, my employer sponsors an annual race that also has a special heat for corporate teams of 9 people. Turns out that big corporations, and even little ones, love to compete against each other and they take it very seriously. The team that won the last corporate race was all men and some of the more gender diverse teams thought that an all-male team represented an unfair advantage and they requested we change the rules to address this. The staff at my office (9 women, 2 men) came to the conclusion that making a rule that every team had to have 3 women and 6 men made the most sense. At one point in the conversation I raised the possibility of allowing teams to compete with whatever combination they wanted, but to penalize them a certain amount of time if they didn’t have enough women. Ideally, the penalty would make it seemingly impossible to win without women. I didn’t really think it was the best solution, just wanted to put it on the table for discussion. It was immediately poo-pooed by one of my coworkers because, "we don’t want to send the wrong message". I’m usually smart enough to know when to shut up, so I didn’t push the issue, but my first thought was, how is that message any different than the one we’re sending by mandating that women have to participate in order to slow down the winning boat?
* I love to play hoops. A nearby outdoor court was a big selling point when we bought our house a few years ago and I like to try to get out there as much as I can. I’ll play with anyone, neighborhood kids, high school punks, old men* * , guys on break from their gigs at the nearby old folks home, so I can usually get a game going without much effort. The vast majority of my hoop time has come on the playground (I played a little in high school), but I’ve played enough basketball to know how to run the simple plays, the high-low post stuff, pick and roll, give and go, etc. Now it seems like no-one under the age of 25 knows how to do anything besides dribble drive to the hoop. My, brother, my friend J, and I played against these high school punks on Sunday and it was really sad. They all stood around the perimeter, and nary a pick was set unless one of them wanted to launch an ill-advised 3. These kids would just pass it around and then one of them would drive to the hoop. Kind of like the crappy teams of the NBA (Lakers, Hawks, Knicks, etc) without the dunking. This is all these kids know because that is all they’ve seen because the dunk has dominated highlights for so many years. After the punks from New Trier hit the bricks we matched up against 3 guys on break from the old folks home. Same story. We ran those guys off the court just by running simple plays. I hate to sound like Norman Dale, but come on fellas, you’ve got to pass the ball, set a screen, roll to the hoop, at least every once in awhile.
* * There is a 75-year old guy that lives in my neighborhood that is always up for a game. I know it sounds ridiculous, but he’s not too bad. The worry we all have is that he is going to have a grabber out there while we’re playing. The truth is that it’s probably more likely that one of my friends or I would pass out before the dartman (his name, we didn’t give it to him). As a matter of fact my friends and I were playing last summer when it was in the high 90’s, maybe 100, against the advice of our wives, girlfriends, and in-laws when the dartman shows up on his bike. We tipped off a little game of 3 on 3 and the dartmans neighbors start stopping as they drove by to implore him to stop playing in such harsh conditions. Wouldn’t you know it, we had to stop the game because someone almost fainted and had to go lie down in the shade. The only catch is that the dartman was fine, it was my 33 year old, marathon training, rollerblading, friend B that needed the break. The dartman just casually played some horse while we warmed up the paddles for B. Another one of my weak-ass friends decided that he also needed a break, and the game continued as a 2 on 2 tilt, without the 2 wusses.
The entire basketball program at the University of Michigan (mens and womens) is a disgrace and it should be the lowest funding priority for the athletic department. The women’s team is monumentally horrible, I don’t think they’ve won a big 10 game since the Carter administration and the men’s team is an embarrassment. We’ve never won without cheating, and I don’t see that changing. Michigan wins, or regularly competes for, national and big ten titles in softball, hockey, swimming and diving, wrestling, gymnastics, mens and womens soccer, womens lax, football, cross country, golf…the list goes on and on, but basketball will never make it. We missed our chance by not hiring Perry Watson and going with the "best Detroit has to offer" line-up when Steve Fischer was run out of town, and now we’re stuck with a crappy coach and bad players. We’re in the NIT again and they seem to be proud of that. My cousin refers to the NIT as the "best of the worst" tournament, which is ironic because he attends some sort of honors program at Michigan State University, previously known as Michigan State Agricultural College, but ultimately he’s right. Take the money away from the basketball teams and let them
compete with a bunch of walk-ons.This (see picture) is a dunk?!?!?!?
ESPN Page 2/Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock has submitted a decent column that makes the case that the 2 recent so-called dunks by Tennessee forward Candace Parker could prove detrimental to womens basketball. Here’s a link, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=whitlock/060323. Mr. Whitlock’s point, in short, is that the mystique of the slam dunk, or slam lay-in in Ms. Parker’s case, has the potential to ruin the quality of women’s basketball, much in the same way it has hurt the men’s game at every level* . Anyway, it’s a good column and you should check it out.
On a semi-related note, my employer sponsors an annual race that also has a special heat for corporate teams of 9 people. Turns out that big corporations, and even little ones, love to compete against each other and they take it very seriously. The team that won the last corporate race was all men and some of the more gender diverse teams thought that an all-male team represented an unfair advantage and they requested we change the rules to address this. The staff at my office (9 women, 2 men) came to the conclusion that making a rule that every team had to have 3 women and 6 men made the most sense. At one point in the conversation I raised the possibility of allowing teams to compete with whatever combination they wanted, but to penalize them a certain amount of time if they didn’t have enough women. Ideally, the penalty would make it seemingly impossible to win without women. I didn’t really think it was the best solution, just wanted to put it on the table for discussion. It was immediately poo-pooed by one of my coworkers because, "we don’t want to send the wrong message". I’m usually smart enough to know when to shut up, so I didn’t push the issue, but my first thought was, how is that message any different than the one we’re sending by mandating that women have to participate in order to slow down the winning boat?
* I love to play hoops. A nearby outdoor court was a big selling point when we bought our house a few years ago and I like to try to get out there as much as I can. I’ll play with anyone, neighborhood kids, high school punks, old men* * , guys on break from their gigs at the nearby old folks home, so I can usually get a game going without much effort. The vast majority of my hoop time has come on the playground (I played a little in high school), but I’ve played enough basketball to know how to run the simple plays, the high-low post stuff, pick and roll, give and go, etc. Now it seems like no-one under the age of 25 knows how to do anything besides dribble drive to the hoop. My, brother, my friend J, and I played against these high school punks on Sunday and it was really sad. They all stood around the perimeter, and nary a pick was set unless one of them wanted to launch an ill-advised 3. These kids would just pass it around and then one of them would drive to the hoop. Kind of like the crappy teams of the NBA (Lakers, Hawks, Knicks, etc) without the dunking. This is all these kids know because that is all they’ve seen because the dunk has dominated highlights for so many years. After the punks from New Trier hit the bricks we matched up against 3 guys on break from the old folks home. Same story. We ran those guys off the court just by running simple plays. I hate to sound like Norman Dale, but come on fellas, you’ve got to pass the ball, set a screen, roll to the hoop, at least every once in awhile.
* * There is a 75-year old guy that lives in my neighborhood that is always up for a game. I know it sounds ridiculous, but he’s not too bad. The worry we all have is that he is going to have a grabber out there while we’re playing. The truth is that it’s probably more likely that one of my friends or I would pass out before the dartman (his name, we didn’t give it to him). As a matter of fact my friends and I were playing last summer when it was in the high 90’s, maybe 100, against the advice of our wives, girlfriends, and in-laws when the dartman shows up on his bike. We tipped off a little game of 3 on 3 and the dartmans neighbors start stopping as they drove by to implore him to stop playing in such harsh conditions. Wouldn’t you know it, we had to stop the game because someone almost fainted and had to go lie down in the shade. The only catch is that the dartman was fine, it was my 33 year old, marathon training, rollerblading, friend B that needed the break. The dartman just casually played some horse while we warmed up the paddles for B. Another one of my weak-ass friends decided that he also needed a break, and the game continued as a 2 on 2 tilt, without the 2 wusses.
posted by QDogg at 12:46 PM
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