For some last week was the greatest sports weekend of the year as college basketball’s playoff system kicked off its championship tournament, rendering the previous four months of basketball as meaningless. Seriously, Pittsburgh was good enough all season long in the RUGGED Big East to nab a No. 1 seed but was beaten on a fluky final seven seconds and sent back to the land of Roethlisberger to wish they had been good during the only three weeks of the season that matter.
Both local sports radio stations were knee deep in tournament coverage, with 680 The Fan fanning out at Tilted Kilts across Atlanta while 790 The Zone set up camp at its usual spot: The Cheetah. Different stations, different approaches, and one eye-rolling broadcast decision that was repeated from years past. Radio personalities have characters they play, whether it is the party-guy, the funny-guy, the black-hat, the local-homer, or the religious-guy. Last Thursday Pollack & Bell did a split broadcast with point man Mike Bell broadcasting live from The Cheetah while David Pollack was back in a “sin-free environment” as Bell called it back at The Zone headquarters. I am sorry, but this split-broadcast is a bit tired. The first year it was funny. The second year it was an “oh, yeah, he did that last year,” thing. This year? Really? You cannot sit on a broadcast stage and do your job while loud music is played and folks watch basketball…and strippers strip? Just go and do your job. Be out among your listeners and be a professional. You aren’t a huge fan of strip clubs? That’s cool, but you still should take part in your employer’s broadcast. Take one for the team.
All season long I kept hear about how great the Big East Conference is in basketball. They are SOOOO good. They got 11 teams into the Big Dance. Notre Dame COULD have been a No. 1 seed! Syracuse could take out UNC and Ohio State! Pitt’s Jamie Dixon is the best coach never to have won the big one! Blah blah blah to quote Ke$ha. I realize that we should look at the regular season, but in college basketball, don’t you HAVE to look at the tournament for ultimate success? I actually watched some of the Big East regular season this year and simply thought, “Is this it?” It was tight defense, but nothing was outstanding about the brand of basketball. I shuddered to myself and thought, “Is this what non-SEC football fans think when they tune to CBS on a Saturday afternoon and see LSU/Alabama?” I can’t be. You can SEE how good the SEC is both when the teams play each other AND when they go outside the conference and play in BCS bowl games. The SEC has won the last five BCS national titles. The last Big East school to win the Big Dance was UConn in 2004. I am sorry but I cannot really say that the Big East is the best because of its rugged play. No, it has 16 teams. If you add four more schools to the Big Ten, then I bet you’d hear that the Big Ten (or in that case the Big 16) is just as good as the Big East in basketball.
I ran across an interesting sentence in Sports Illustrated last week when I was reading an article about the Kansas City Royals. The piece took place in the future and was a “look back” at 2011 when the Royals were bad. The article was clearly meant to trumpet the arrival of the young Royals prospects, but the one line in question was “back when President Jeter was still the shortstop for the Yankees.” I wondered to myself if that was even possible. Could a modern-day athlete go on to hold the office of the President of the United States? We have seen throughout the last few decades that some athletes have gone on to seats in the House of Representatives or in the Senate. Heath Shuler, the former Tennessee Volunteer QB and first round Washington Redskins draft pick is currently a Congressman from North Carolina. J.C. Watts was a long-time Congressman after leading the Oklahoma Sooners to a national title. Tom Osborne, the former Nebraska head coach and current AD took a break in between each gig to serve in the House for six years. Bill Bradley served in the Senate for three terms. But it seems the Senate and the House might be the cap as far as former athletes go. The highest a “real” athlete has ever gotten was perhaps when Congressman Jack Kemp was named to Bob Dole’s ticket as a VP candidate. He of course did not win.
Could any current athletes really have a chance at becoming the President of the United States? You don’t need to go back that far into the history books to discover the chapter where Minnesota elected a WRESTLER as its governor. If Tom Brady or Peyton Manning wanted to run for office, wouldn’t each receive some serious numbers? America seems to love Phil Mickelson.
I doubt any local athletes have a chance right now. Matt Ryan is too young and Jason Heyward may get there one day but he isn’t there just yet. Could any local coaches/players run for a Georgia office though? Vince Dooley it was rumored considered a Congressional run. I remember a time when Mark Richt could have run for governor of Georgia and won. Right now he is just hoping he won’t be impeached next off-season. I doubt Mark Fox could get much traction after just two seasons and Tech football coach Paul Johnson probably could have run 365 days ago but not right now after losing to Georgia yet again and finishing sub-.500. Bobby Cox, Hank Aaron and Herschel Walker would probably be the most likely candidates to win a state-wide election of some sort. Crazy things have happened at the polls; we may in fact see President Jeter before all is said and done.
Can You Believe He Said That
“I feel bad for (Bruce) Pearl.” That was 680 The Fan’s Perry Laurentino the morning after the Tennessee men’s basketball coach got the ax. Really? You seriously feel bad for the guy that could have saved himself by simply telling the truth, yet brought all of this upon himself for lying to the NCAA? He saw what happened to other folks that lied. And after he lied, he violated more rules. If you want to feel bad for someone, feel bad for the players, but don’t feel bad for the guy that lied and got himself fired.
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