I actually watched part of this college game. Other than watching some of OU’s games this is the sixth college basketball game I’ve watched this season. It’s stunning for me to admit this because during the Billy Tubbs era in Norman… it was rare for me to miss a Sooner home game.
I loved those years. Billy’s arrogance. The Jack Nicholson schtick. The rivalries with Norm Stewart and Jerry Tarkanian. Ed Hightower. The Big Eight tournaments in Kansas City at Kemper. Chanting in unison to the Kansas fans in 90′ at Kemper, “Don’t come back,” on the Saturday evening game when OU had the Jayhawks down by twenty-six points after the scene of the crime game in the ’88 national championship final.
Those were the days.
These aren’t those days for college basketball. Nobody except for maybe half or so of the iconic programs in the country seem to care all that much about college basketball anymore. The ratings are down while the NBA ratings have climbed and are now second only to the NFL as the most watched of the four major professional sports.
College basketball is a dirty game. A game with no real identity anymore. Ask Billy Donovan off the record why he lost his luster for coaching the Gators in Gainesville. It’s not a good sign when the FBI is spending as much time trailing men’s college basketball programs as they are following Trump and his Russians.
But then again…Billy Donovan was a Rick Pitino disciple and in all candor Pitino’s exit from Louisville is about as dirty as it gets without having Russians peeing all over themselves in a Moscow hotel room.
I hope Bill Self is okay…I really do. We’ll see.
Interest in the college game is down. In reality it’s only a relevant sport when March Madness swings into gear before the Masters in Augusta.
Some might say the one and dones have ruined the game. Personally…like so many things in life I think it was monetary greed by all concerned which has ruined the sport. It’s a dirty money game. This would be the perfect subject for the next Michael Lewis bestseller. The title would be easy…’Dirty Money’.
So last night with no NBA hoops I decide I’m going to watch Duke vs. North Carolina with President Obama sitting courtside and not one minute into the game it was over for me as the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft, Zion Williamson, hurt his knee by blowing out his tennis shoe.
It was eerily symbolic of college basketball’s fall in the pecking order of sports.
Zion Williamson shouldn’t even be playing college basketball. He should have gone straight from high school to the NBA. Who does the NCAA think they’re kidding here?
Fans have smartened up. Even in rogue right dumb Oklahoma. Every Thunder game sells out while both OU and O state play in half empty arenas. Nobody cares.
College basketball has some serious soul searching to do if it has any designs of being relevant other than just in the month of March.