Cinderellas and the real winners
One of the local five-- the University of Northern Iowa Panthers-- have played the role of Cinderella in the NCAA Tournament this year, but the team came to a crashing and historic thud last night in the round of 32. The 11th seed team from the Midwest's Missouri Valley Conference blew a 12-point lead during the final 44 seconds of regulation, a feat that staggers the imagination and marks the worst collapse, not only in the history of the NCAA tournament, but in the 123-year history of college basketball.There's a lot of sadness going around locally today on behalf of "the kids," but I'm not having it. Number one, the players are not kids. If I hear that phrase one more time to describe grown adults that entertain us for free and make other less-talented men extraordinarily wealthy, I'm going to commit a charging foul of my own. Number two, here's the book on the Panthers. They were in that particular marquee game only because they, first, won their conference tournament with a buzzer-beating 18-foot shot that bounced off the back of the rim. Then they beat Texas in the first round of the tournament on another buzzer-beater, this one a half-court bank shot. When the Panthers blew their lead Sunday night, they then banked in another three-point shot in the opening seconds of overtime. By then, I had seen enough. The team, I decided, had gone as far as I wished to see them go. They're a distraction to the Iowa State Cyclones.
What is our fascination with Cinderellas anyway? It's all explained in the name, I guess. They're fairy tale stories. But they're not for me. I root for excellence. An upset in the first round only deprives us of better basketball in the later rounds. Everybody but the Spartans fans loved to see Middle Tennessee State knock off Michigan State Friday afternoon in what may have been the greatest first-round tournament upset ever, but the result of that game, by extension, means we have a mediocre Syracuse team cruising into the Sweet 16.
UNI head coach Ben Jacobson should have taken 100% responsibility for a strategy that had the team inbounding the ball repeatedly into the corner. This led to four UNI turnovers in just 29 seconds. (Iowa State had six turnovers during their entire second round game Saturday.) Jacobson can't shoulder the full blame for the cameras because it would be bad for the Northern Iowa program if he did. He "loves" these guys, but he'll be there a while and the principal players will each be gone right away or very soon. He has a ten-year deal that pays him an average of $900,000 annually through the 2024-25 season, double the market rate or more since it gets sucked away from the people that would actually be making the most money based on their skill and hard work. It's better for recruiting if the players take the heat on this. I haven't heard a single commentator blame the coach. But yikes, if you are the coach, how does something like that happen?
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I heard an ad on ESPN Radio today, voiced by one of the conglomerate's best known personalities, for Werner Podiums. That manufacturing company is-- did you know?-- the official ladder this year of celebratory net-cutting at the NCAA Tournament. The money is coming from virtually everywhere! The money is almost attacking the NCAA. The Atlantic Coast Conference, which put six of its 15-member teams into the round of 16, will make $30 million just from a pool set up by the NCAA for conference payouts. CBS and Turner are in the middle of a 14-year, $10.8 billion television contract that pays the non-profit NCAA a $740 million rights fee for 2016. The players get nada.
posted by CM @ 7:06 PM
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