Reputation over consistency

Metta World Peace, formerly Ron Artest, is about to get the hammer dropped on him NBA commissioner David Stern.  There have been predictions all over the internet since his knockout elbow on James Harden and the consensus seems to be multiple games, as high as eight to ten.  This would definitely make life difficult for them in the playoffs.  They need the minutes he gives them at the small forward position, and can't afford to have to send Matt Barnes out there  for 30 to 40 minutes against Kevin Durant in the second round of the playoffs if things hold up as they currently appear.  Now don't get me wrong; that elbow was terrible and Peace should get some kind of suspension for it.  Accidental or not, that was above and beyond the level of contact that is allowed out there.  Similar actions by other players have almost always resulted in a suspension of some kind.

But here's the problem: the suspension dished out to other players, even those in the more closely called games of the past few years, have been for much less than eight to ten games.  Kevin Love got two games for stomping a guy's face.  Guys from Kobe Bryant to Trevor Ariza have gotten one or two games for similar actions to Peace's Saturday folly.  Andrew Bynum literally knocked JJ Barea from the sky during last year's playoffs and got four games.  So why is there a call for such a long timeout?  Reputation, that's why.  As soon as the replays of Peace's elbow started running, announcers Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy started referencing Malice at the Palace, the infamous Pistons-Pacers brawl from almost eight years ago (which ESPN could or did not include in a montage of 'Metta Moments' they ran last night).  As if anything he does is an attempt to start a brawl.  Breen was sounding as if he'd witnessed a mask-and-gun armed robbery in broad daylight, channeling his inner Jim Ross to describe an elbow during a basketball game.

The boss of BSO pointed out on Twitter earlier that Kobe Bryant has over twice as many techs as Peace in a just three more seasons played, and that Dwight Howard has more technical fouls in five fewer seasons.  A lot of Peace's reputation is wildly overblown.  But the gruesome visuals from the Palace brawl (which was largely set off by the opposing team and their fans), and some colorful comments by Peace throughout his career (not to mention changing his name from Ron Artest) have given the media and many fans a license to put Peace in a Mike Tyson-esque category, and demonize him twice as much when he's actually been better behaved than many of the league's so called good guys (Okay, Kobe's not one of the 'nice guys' but he gets that MJ super competitive pass that lets him get away with some major jerkish acts).  And if the league hits him the way people expect them to, it will be for a act that was very wrong, but no worse than many others have done with less of a penalty.  Reputation matters, and that very well be the deciding factor here.

You don't care

You don't care about athletes. You really don't. No big deal really, because they don't care about you either. And really they shouldn't; fans and athletes (or any other entertainer) have a mutually abusive and very dysfunctional relationship. We need them to entertain us, and we engage in all kinds of vicarious living through their exploits. At the same time, they make a living off of the attention we pay them as much as they do off of their own skills. If we didn't value athletic exploits to the degree that we did, we wouldn't watch the games enough to warrant them getting the money that they do.  And if they didn't things we can't do we wouldn't have any reason to watch.  And the minute we're not getting what we want from them, we move on without any regard for the rest of their lives.

What am I getting at here?  Namely, the bellyaching about the increased safety measures being implemented and proposed in sports like football and hockey.  In hockey, there's been some chatter about the harsh scrutiny on what used to be considered playoffs hits.  An earnest effort to cut down on concussions has led to some suspensions and in game penalties that old school commentators are shaking their heads at.  And on the NFL side we've seen several new rules (or more stringent enforcement of existing ones) that have led to suspensions and fines for plays that were very recently considered routine.  And like some hockey commentators, the cries of 'put a skirt on them!' are just as loud.

Here are my questions for all of you.  How much do you care about safety?  Will you really stop watching football altogether if they get rid of kickoffs or call roughing the passer more frequently?  And if not, then just what is your objection (if you have one)?  If you know just how bad these guys are getting hurt, do you really want the league to let it keep happening to the extent that it currently does?  What if it were your Dad, your brother, your son out there?  Would you want them protected to the highest possible degree, or you would be fine with their future brain health up for grabs?  I know what I'd want. 

Bye Bye Bobby

So Petrino is gone. I'm honestly surprised that it happened; I figured that SEC Football would rule the day and value 21 wins over the last two years and a top ten finish in 2011-12 over honesty and integrity. But I was mistaken. The athletic director decided to come down on the side of integrity and do the upstanding, moral thing....yeah, right. He decided to save his own skin is what he did. If Petrino stayed on they were looking at potential lawsuits, maybe over 100, from all the job applicants who were passed over so that Petrino could hire his mistress. There is also the possibility of a state investigation into the $20,000 in cash that Petrino gave her. That's way too much heat for a guy who already had a reputation and who has only been on campus for a few years. There's also this: you let Petrino stay and he keeps winning, in a year or two he's untouchable. He's King of the Campus and will one day be crying crocodile tears as you pack your bags when he gets you forced out as athletic director. This was all about self preservation for the AD here.

As for Bobby? Well, he was both wrong and stupid. Everything he did wold have been just as bad if he were single. Hooking up with a an engaged woman, giving her a job and cash. Using his work phone to communicate with her after hours and during work hours. None of that is OK under any circumstances. This is not a Rick Pitino situation; Pitino cheated on his wife but had the sense to not do his dirt in a way that made his employer liable for anything. That's why he's still at Louisville. This is closer to Dave Bliss, who involved his school and members of his staff in trying to slander a player of his who'd been murdered by a teammate. For the time being Petrino is unemployable; he'll probably catch on as an assistant somewhere but I don't think anyone will trust him as a head coach for a while. He didn't break NCAA rules in an effort to win, which I think most people would be willing to let go if they thought he could win for them. He acted in a way that put his employer in jeopardy. That's a whole different thing.

Bobby fell victim to the need every man has to be considered a stud, whether it be on the playing field, the job, in public, or in the bedroom. He was already getting that feeling in three of those things, but he had to go for number four. And it did him in. I bet having Ms. Dorrell riding on his bike and doing who knows what else made him feel awesome. Now it probably just feels stupid, and not worth it. He lost his job and he may lose his family. A wise man told me once that you don't risk your head for a piece of tail. Petrino apparently never got the memo.

Really?

Congratulations to the Kentucky Wildcats for winning their eighth NCAA title and their third going back to 1996. And congratulations to coach John Calipari for getting his first title after two previous unsuccessful trips to the Final Four. But shame on you Coach for ushering in the professionalization of college basketball. At least that's what Chuck Klosterman thinks. And for the record, Klosterman is out his mind for thinking this. In a piece from a few days ago on Grantland.com, Klosteman said the following:

Calipari has professionalized college sports, which is great for him and good for his recruits. It's just discomforting for anyone who likes NCAA basketball, assuming they're drawn to the same game that lives within their memory.

That is crap. Klosterman is saying that, by being upfront about what the deal is and not shying away from the best players just because they don't stay long, Calipari has turned college ball into a quid pro quo, where players get a clear path to the NBA and Calipari gets a winning team in return. Instead of a relationship with their coach, Calipari offers a business deal. He doesn't wax poetic about college life in an effort to get players to stay for three or four years; he puts them on display in a way that makes them attractive to pro scouts and counsels to go pro if and when the demand for their services is there. He doesn't try to sucker kids into staying on campus while he collects his multimillion dollar salary; if there's money there for them, he tells them to go get it. But that doesn't sit well with purists who want their college basketball magical, full of tales of freshman who fall short and redeem themselves as upperclassmen. Calipari has apparently ushered in a loss of innocence because he doesn't lie to his players about what the real game is.

That's nonsense. College basketball has been professionalized for decades. John Wooden fielded teams that were beneficiaries of the generosity of booster Sam Gilbert. Schools began scheduling late night games, knowing full well that their players had class the next morning, to accommodate television networks need for primetime programming. Conference tournaments, once a determinant for a conference's sole representative to the NCAA tournament that several conferences did not bother to hold, are now universal money grabs that the best teams don't even worry about winning anymore. And the sacred NCAA tournament has begun a creep to 128 teams not in the interest of fairness but of providing more television programming. College basketball became a business when it began to generate money, not when Calipari got hired at Kentucky.

A musing of Klosterman's later on in the piece gives away the game. Comparing what Calipari is doing to a certain NBA team, he laments:

It's not unlike the way most NBA observers are predisposed to root against the Miami Heat: You should not be able to succeed in this way. You should not be able to arbitrarily construct a Super Team that automatically achieves Super Greatness. It cheapens the experience. It feels cold and uncreative.

This is more garbage. Assembling superteams has been an NBA way of life for decades. The only difference is that before Miami it was always done in the front office by executives and not by players themselves. And the same way that many in the media considered that such a tragedy, people are apparently aghast that a college team was not built the old fashioned way, by a coach who was able to hit the pavement and convince kids to come to his school, beating out the temptations of all those who were looking to exploit the poor kids. Whatever. Coaches have always gotten players by offering them things. Minutes, starting jobs, shot opportunities, a showcase for pro scouts, a clear path to the NBA, you name it. Other either actively or passively offered up perks like money, cars, etc. You don't get kids from warm weather areas to go play in the Northeast, or to leave L.A. to come to some small Midwestern college town, without giving them or someone connected with them, something. No one cares about pipelines to certain cities or school systems that coaches used to stock their teams with all the good players from that area. But what Calipari does is somehow unbearable. Right.....

This is another case of middle aged male paranoia over the loss of the good old days, where everyone knew their place and dared not challenge it. The schools make the deals and the big money, the coaches deliver winning teams for a piece of the action, and the players freely offer up their labor for three to four years after having been sold on the value of staying in college and playing for free when you could be making millions. We got to see dynasties, where teams went to multiple consecutive Final Fours and maybe even multiple championships. We got to see Lew Alcindor graduate from UCLA and be replaced by Bill Walton, Duke and UNC teams with as many as eight future pros, and coaches turned into demigods for all their success. And now that's all gone awry. Coaches like Calipari accept that they are both using people and getting used, and don't hide the facts anymore. And people hate that because it means that can't play innocent anymore; it means that they have to look at the mirror and see that they are a part of the problem and not the solution. It means that that they have to accept that the coaches that they have elevated to the point of being all knowing icons full of virtue and wisdom are cogs in a machine, trying to survive the best they can.

The travesty isn't that Calipari has figured out how to win the one-and-done game; it's that others would rather feel warm and fuzzy as they watch their hoops than for the kids to be empowered to do what's best for themselves.