I Miss Al McGuire

WHAT'S UP with college basketball?  Basically a sport you can play for free on playgrounds has become almost unwatchable on television. 

I was among the faithful who were glad to see March Madness back on track, after a year lost to Covid safety.  The scenes took me back to 1977 when my alma mater Marquette, then the Warriors, beat North Carolina to win the tournament in Al McGuire's last game as coach.  He cried as the clock ran down, overcome with his team becoming the best in the country. 

Al's gone now, and so is the veneer of equal competition.  March Madness is a lucrative televised event, customized for sports bars, with its own set of rules and suspenseful scenarios.  It's become such a money pit -- generating more than $900 million for broadcasters and institutions not players -- that colleges see little room for change.  Yet change is what we need:

What's with all the timeouts? As veteran sports reporter John Feinstein has counted, tournament basketball teams each get ten "media" timeouts in addition to the four each team gets by NCAA basketball rules. That's 12 timeouts in 40 minutes of timed play.  The televised game is stretched so long that you cannot only grill brats during timeouts and commercials, you can go out to buy the buns.

What's with all the video reviews?  Added to the timeouts are the invariable reviews of balls tipped out of bounds, charging or blocking fouls, or any number of other "close calls".  Few of them look close in slow-motion replay, yet referees still take an inordinate amount of time to make a decision.  Meantime, players and coaches can catch their breath, talk over strategy, visit the rest room. We can go out for brats.  

What's with the half-time show?  Rather than run a string of commercials that would eliminate the need for game-time media timeouts, viewers are treated to the Ernie, Ken and Chuck show, or something similar.  They're fun and knowledgeable guys, but way over the top in self-promotion and inside jokes.  Not much analysis or insight, beyond the stat sheets which any viewer can review.  Use the halftime -- you guessed it -- to grill more brats.

What's with the coaches?  Some of the highest rated coaches -- Michigan State's Tom Izzo, for one -- literally freak their players out with their frenzy, shouts, shoves and WTF's.  This approach might work when your team is stacked with future pros (unlikely since less than 2 in 100 make it).  But the gung-ho, tough-guy approach fizzles badly when your players are just trying to do their best, and come up short.  The coach looks like a jerk who cost his team more than the game.  

What's with the team rankings?  Men tournament teams are seeded by an NCAA committee of mostly male college athletic directors and conference commissioners.  This year they were infatuated with teams that bit the dust early. Like those from the Big Ten.  The Sweet 16 now left standing are those who "upset" the favorites.  In reality, the teams left to fight it out are those with coaches who don't need a timeout every two minutes and confident players who can actually shoot and defend as a team.  I know this from seeing Gene Hackman in "Hoosiers".

What's with all the brackets?  More than 70 million brackets -- including millions generated by computer programs -- are filled out, and this year all of them got busted in the first or second round -- including the brainiac behind "bracketology", the supposed rocket science of predicting winners.  Sports apps, websites, casinos, and Warren Buffet want you to fill out brackets multiple times, alone or in pools.  In turn, they profit and entrants can have fun.  But treat the official bracket challenge like the championship game.  One official entry, one official winner. 

All this opened my eyes wider to the women's basketball tournament.  It looks and feels like a throwback to a faster paced, less commercially manipulated game.  Instead of halves, there are four quarters, for example, with media timeouts sandwiched in between. And it's still played horizontally, where technique is everything.

But then the women's tourney is not marketed as March Madness.  It's treated as a stepchild by the NCAA, which decided the tourney did not warrant the trademark, financial backing, or even equal gym facilities.  Guys get Technogym, women get yoga mats.  A player's Twitter feed spotlighted inequalities, and put the NCAA on notice.

Change is going to come, for the men and the women.  Maybe even before Marquette wins another basketball tournament.

Postscript:  Al McGuire died from leukemia at 72 in 2001, after successful years as a college basketball analyst and speaker.  He told his players to graduate, and then to work for six months as a bartender and six months as a cab driver to better prepare themselves for life.  As for himself, he said he retired from coaching because he didn't want to spend the rest of his life "running around with guys in short pants."

Marquette paid McGuire less than six figures as a champion in 1977.  Marquette's recently fired coach earned millions, and made a mess of the university's basketball tradition.  I take it as a good sign that the new coach is named Smart.