With the season over, I'm thinking of things to start for the offseason. There will be a basketball season in review coming in the following weeks. There will be some things about football and a lot of general nonsense. Like today for instance. There are a couple of topics that I want to talk about, but none of them deserve a full post. So I'll touch on them all at once. Well, I'll touch on them all separately but in the same post. Let's get to it.
Mike Rice
As a lot of you know by now, Mike Rice was fired by Rutgers for the horrible practice video that was released to the public yesterday. When Rice was suspended earlier in the season, I remember there was some talk about him being more severely disciplined. But without seeing the video, it was hard to be outraged. Until yesterday, Rice was probably going to skate by and be the coach as Rutgers moved to the Big 10. The outrage about Rice was warranted. Not just because Rice slammed his players by dropping f bombs, no the other one, on them, but he also slammed them with basketballs. I forget who pointed this out, but one of the most disturbing things about the Rice video was that he fired basketballs at his players and the assistants handed him a new ball instantly. Things like this were happening for his entirety at Rutgers judging by things like that. Some of the former Rutgers players have said that it wasn't that bad and the tape was taken out of context. But just because they didn't think it was that bad doesn't mean that it wasn't bad.
Acting like an asshole in any capacity is still acting like an asshole, no matter how much respect or regard you hold the person with. Mike Rice was an asshole. I think that even if Rutgers made the final four, Rice would have been fired for this. Winning and losing has a difference on perception. Mike Rice was a losing coach at Rutgers. He was an asshole. 1 + 1 = 2 in this scenario. People can talk about tough practices and players getting cussed at, those things are fine. There is a line in sports. When you cross it, you deserve to GTFO. I hope that Mike Rice can get his life in order. He'll probably get another chance in coaching. I hope that he doesn't succeed because I don't like him, but I also hope he gets over his issues.
Women's Basketball
I've watched under 10 women's basketball games in my life. I got sucked in the other night with the Louisville-Baylor game. Some of it was because of Baylor's historic streak, Brittney Griner and Game of Thrones didn't start until 9. What I saw was very different. I know the rules between women's and men's hoops were different. There is a shorter shot clock for the ladies, there is no 10 seconds call, set shots are encouraged, and so on. The shorter shot clock was interesting. Why do they have 30 seconds for the women but 35 for the men? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I think a 30 second shot clock is coming sooner rather than later. The sport needs it. That's another topic completely. 10 seconds should be a thing though, get on that, women's hoops.
The thing that jumped out to me about women's basketball had nothing to do with the actual games. Those were just women playing basketball. What stands out is the officiating. People joke about men's officials being awful, being biased and being the worst, but good lord does women's basketball take it a whole new level. The seemingly random whistles, calling touch fouls that went uncalled the whole game, the technical on Louisville's coach, the non technical on Baylor's coach when she tore her jacket off like she was in biblical times and her first born had died, the awful charge call that led to that call, the seemingly random nature of the games makes it hard to watch. It's also hard to watch if you aren't use to the game. There are some people who can't watch college basketball because it is inferior to the NBA. I feel this way about women's basketball. Trying to get into it with the officials being picked from the local YMCA makes it even harder.
College sports are a big enough money making industry that it is time to sink some of the money back into officials. Just like the pro sports are going to full time officials, college should do this as well. Incompetence at all levels seems to be at an all time high. With the technology we have to see what's right and wrong in half a second, this is something that can be fixed. The thing I never understood about the human element argument in baseball was that if we can help the humans get the calls correct, wouldn't that help them get the calls correct more often? It doesn't in some parts, because like the NBA and NFL, the officials can rely on replay to help bail them out. Getting things correct is important. College officials do not do this. Especially in women's basketball. I gave women's hoops the ol' college try, but unless I one day have a daughter that plays college basketball, I will not be partaking in this sport very often as a protest about the officials. Taking a stand.
Baseball
Something happened to me between October and Monday where watching the game of baseball live did not satisfy my interests. I was not really looking forward to Opening Day, that could have had something to do with it. My interest in baseball itself hasn't waned because I have watched a handful of games the past 2 days. What has happened is that I have become spoiled by my DVR. Baseball is the ultimate DVR sport.
Before I get into this topic, I will acknowledge the people who hate watching sports on their DVR. It can be very hard to ignore score updates, especially in the age of twitter. It can be hard to not just fast forward to the end to see what is happening live. I have done that before. Most recently when Homer Bailey threw his no hitter. I was not watching that game live, but heard about the no hitter so I skipped right to the end. That's more of an issue for other sports. With football and basketball, the end is the most important part. The first 58 minutes don't matter as much when Peyton Manning has the ball down 4. The first 43 minutes of an NBA game are nice, but you want the last 5 minutes when LeBron or Kobe or Durant is going to take over. The end is the most important part of those sports.
Baseball is different. If you miss the first inning, you could miss all of the scoring. I suppose you could miss all the scoring in a football game if the score after the first quarter was 42-0, but that is very rare. No first quarter lead is safe in basketball. The other events are timed. Baseball is not. That really helps with the DVR case. The game could be 3 hours, 3 and a half hours, or even roughly 4 hours like opening day, you never know what to invest in baseball. It's not the 3 hours 10 minutes of NFL action. It's not the 2 and a half hours of basketball. That could be one of the reasons that someone loves watching it live. I enjoy DVRing baseball because I know that the time of the game doesn't matter, I'm getting that puppy watched in about 40 minutes.
There is a lot of dead time in football, but at least they are huddling. In baseball, all the dead time is spent standing. The pitcher stands, the batter stands, the catcher squats. The fielders get ready for the pitch. Sometimes all of this happens for 20 seconds and the pitcher steps off the rubber or the batter steps out. The reason the crowd boos when these things happen is not because of the flow of the game, but because they are wasting our lives with this. Do you know what the most boring time on earth is? It's the time between when a batter gets ready for the next pitch after he hits a foul ball that makes him start running towards first base. He walks back to the batters box, picks up the bat, does practice swings, steps back in and waits on the pitcher. It seems like this takes an hour.
This could be a sign that I'm becoming ADD and I'm a product of the technology overload that we are all experiencing. When I watch off the DVR though, I don't look at my phone, I don't check twitter, I just watch the game. If anything, I'm becoming more focused. I've used some weird justifications today, but that one might have been the biggest stretch.
Final Note
I've been thinking of starting a podcast. If anyone knows a good host, drop a comment or leave me a note on twitter. Thanks.
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