The UConn Huskies won it all last night. Since January 1, 2023, UConn has scored 80 or more points in 9 games; San Diego State “held” the Huskies to 76 points but UConn showed impressive balance by putting on a defensive display of its own; the Aztecs only shot 32.1% from the floor because uncontested shots were few and far between. At one point in the first half, San Diego State had turned the ball over 6 times and had only made 4 field goals; there are not a lot of paths to victory under those circumstances. UConn won six tournament games to claim the championship and they won all six by double digits.
Anyone who has been reading these rants for a while must know that I love the NCAA Tournament. It is because I love it that I am worried about it. I have this nagging sense of doom that the combination of the “transfer portal” plus “booster pools of NIL money” are going to ruin college basketball and therefore the NCAA Tournament too. Basketball is much more easily influenced by the transfer portal than is college football; as few as two transfers can change a school’s basketball fortunes; getting four major transfers will become the gold standard of the off seasons. Yes, there were always “blueblood programs; now the disparities are going to be even worse.
I hope I am wrong here. However, I feel like Cassandra from Greek mythology. She had the gift/curse of being able to see the future and at the same time, no one ever listened to her when she prognosticated.
Another college basketball story unfolded over the weekend. Bob Knight was hospitalized and then released to home care over the last several days; he is reportedly resting at home this morning. Knight is 82 years old so any news about him that involves the word “hospital” must be taken seriously. Bob Knight is about as polarizing a figure as there is in the world of college basketball but even his most severe critics must concede that he was an outstanding coach.
Switching sports … MLB has no salary cap; it has something called a “Luxury Tax” which is more complicated that I would want to try to explain here. Basically, if a team’s payroll is over a certain total value, it must play an additional tax on the overage and the percentage of the tax increases as the disparity increases plus the tax increases if a team is over the luxury tax line in sequential seasons. With that backdrop, I read that the NY Mets had an Opening Day payroll of $334.2M which is way over the line and so the Mets also had to pay $110.9M as its “Luxury Tax”. [Aside: Luxury Tax money is used as a revenue sharing pool for the so-called “small market teams”.]
That Luxury Tax figure caught my eye because I thought there were probably a half-dozen teams whose total Opening Day payroll was not as much as the Luxury Tax payment by the Mets. After only a few moments of searching, I learned that I was incorrect:
- There is a full dozen teams whose total Opening Day payroll is less than $110.9M.
- 40% of the teams in MLB have a total payroll less than the Mets’ Luxury Tax assessment.
- The lowest team payroll on Opening Day belonged to the Oakland A’s; that total payroll was $42.4M.
- For comparison, the Mets signed Justin Verlander to a 2-year contract in the off season at an average annual salary of $43.3M.
And that is why MLB needs a salary cap plus a salary floor…
Switching gears … Remember back in the Fall of 2022 when a couple of guys were accused of cheating in a fishing tournament on Lake Erie by stuffing fishing weights into the stomachs of fish they caught during the tournament? Well those anglers avoided a trial on several felony charges by pleading guilty to cheating (a fifth-degree felony in Ohio) and unlawful ownership of wild animals (a fourth-degree misdemeanor in Ohio). Here is what they get in exchange for their guilty pleas:
- One of the defendants will forfeit his bass boat to the Ohio Dept of Natural resources and that boat is worth $100K.
- Both will have their fishing licenses suspended for up to three years.
- Both will be on probation for six months and any sort of criminal behavior could get them sent to jail for up to a year on these two charges.
- Prosecutors dropped more serious felony charges such as attempted theft (presumably of the $28,000 prize for winning the fishing tournament) and possession of criminal tools (not sure what these were).
These two gentlemen had won a string of tournaments that were characterized as “unprecedented” which could lead to the conclusion that they had engaged in this sort of behavior in the past. However, there was no evidence of cheating then so nothing about previous tournaments was part of this prosecution.
Finally, let me close today with this entry from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:
“Year: Three hundred and sixty-five days. Or, as it is known in Montana, half an hour,”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………