Friday, March 20, 2015

John Calipari is far more refreshingly transparent than Jeff Gahan.

Meme from John Oliver's video. Follow the SB Nation link to watch it.

Great opening from the New York Post's Phil Mushnick.

The refreshing transparency of education-shunning Kentucky

Finally, after all these years, we have an NCAA Tournament favorite we can root for without moral compromise, a team so steeped in unconditional, conspicuous integrity that right-headed folks can cheer as one. Go tell it on the mountain!

Ladies and gentlemen, sports fans of all demographic ages, Nike jersey and sneaker sizes, your University of Kentucky Wildcats!

Finally, a team without false collegiate pretense, a team that plays on courts stripped of scholastic varnish. Finally, a team fronted by a major university that knows we know that this team now annually has the same relationship to college as pigeons do to stone soldiers standing in town squares.

"This whole system seems fundamentally flawed," says John Oliver, and of course he's right. It is, and that's why Mushnick's snark is gospel. In turn, that's why for the first time in 25 years, I'm rooting for a team in this year's tournament: UK.

Who better than Calipari to achieve immortality by recording an undefeated championship season for the first time since IU's sainted Bob Knight did it during the Ford administration? By leveraging a dishonest system, Calipari is rendered scrupulously honest. It's the system you crave, so how can anyone among you begrudge him working it to the maximum degree?

Go Wildcats. Not that I'll waste any time watching games.

John Oliver went all in on NCAA for shameful March Madness commercialism, by Michael Katz (SB Nation)

On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver set his premium cable warpath on March Madness. Oliver ~destroys~ the NCAA for insisting college players are not employees while the tournament rakes in so much cash.

"All this makes it even harder to swallow when some coaches like Clemson's Dabo Swinney, a man who makes over $3 million a year, insists that his players not get paid."

Previously at NAC:

Finally tackling "the hypocrisy at the root of the big-time college sports system."


REWIND: A labor theory of basketball value.


Down with the NCAA? Sounds wonderful to me.


Weekend reading update: College sports reform, J. Edgar Hoover and hypocrisy.

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