The Final Four Is Set

I’ll start today with capsules of the Tournament games from Friday through Sunday:

• Tennessee handled Kentucky comfortably leading me to wonder how the Vols could have lost to the Cats twice before.
• Unless you are an Ole Miss alum or had Ole Miss on the Money Line as part of a 5-leg parlay, you had to love the Ole Miss/Michigan St. game or else you just don’t like college basketball.  It was a close game throughout with total hustle by every player all the time.
• Michigan stayed close to Auburn for about 25 minutes but could not keep up at the end.
• Houston 62 and Purdue 60.  The winning basket came on an inbounds play with 1 second left on the clock.  What else do you want?
• Duke dominated Alabama with its defense.  Bama scored 113 points on Thursday and was held to 65 on Saturday.
• Florida needed a strong second half comeback to beat Texas Tech.  I said I wanted to see Duke/Florida as the Final Game; that preference is still possible.
• Houston’s defense held Tennessee to 15 points in the first half and went on cruise control for the second half and a comfortable win.
• Michigan St. could not get the ball wet if they shot it from a rowboat in the middle of the ocean for the first half.  Sparty never gave up but could not make up for that shooting scourge losing to Auburn  last night.

The Final Four is pure chalk – – all four #1 seeds in the four brackets are still alive.  So, here is the question:

• Was the Selection Committee prescient?  Should they all be patting themselves on the back?  OR …
• In these days of NIL money and universal transfer potential, is this going to be the new normal where “big programs” get the “big money” and the “best players”.

I lean more towards the latter …

Moving on …  There has been an ongoing “war of words” between LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith for several weeks now and I have ignored it because it seems almost contrived to me.  If you have not been following that saga, consider yourself fortunate.  Having said that, Sally Jenkins decided to comment on this “feud” last weekend; and as usual, she got to the bottom line quickly.  The headline for her column was:

• LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith are shouting over their insecurities

Here is a link to her column which I commend to your reading – – and just to entice you, here is her opening paragraph:

“They are large public figures with the wealth of pharaohs, and yet LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith display the egos of eggshells. Their yah-yahing has gone on for a month now, first Stephen A. with his armchair braying and now LeChosen One on a show with an even louder rasp, Pat McAfee’s, trading what we are to understand as manly barbs in an argument over honor. But the true, if cynical-sour, amusement lies in watching their duel of fragility. You can crack either one of them with one hand for an omelet.”

Switching gears …  There is change afoot at CBS relative to color commentators for football telecasts starting in 2025.  Gary Danielson announced that he will retire after the end of the 2025 college football season and CBS said that Charles Davis will replace him.  Normally, that would mean CBS could take a year to find someone to take Davis’ place on NFL telecasts, but CBS also announced that JJ Watt would take Davis’ place starting this year.  What the CBS mavens have in mind for Charles Davis remains a mystery.

What we do know is that JJ Watt will be teamed with Ian Eagle as the play-by-play guy.  I have been a fan of Ian Eagle for decades; I still think that he and Jim Spanarkel provided the best coverage of college basketball ever.  His ability to excel in covering a variety of sports sets him apart from many other great broadcasters over the  years.  Unless JJ Watt turns out to be a complete clunker on the microphone, he and Eagle will be an outstanding pairing – – maybe preferable to the CBS #1 broadcasting team of Nantz/Romo?  [Aside:  Having seen/heard Watt in a studio setting for a year, he is not going to turn out to be “a complete clunker”.]

Next up …  While we are in a part of the year when the NCAA is a tolerable institution because it presents us with March Madness, that same bumbling institution found a way to be Debbie Downer one more time.  Colorado wanted to hold some joint practices with another school and to play an exhibition spring game with that school.  Syracuse raised its hand figuratively and it seemed as if that paring might be the start of a new trend in college football.  For reasons that are not totally clear to me, the existence of that exhibition game and the joint practices required the blessing of the NCAA.  And of course, the NCAA said no to the request.

[Aside:  Actually, the reason “blessing” was necessary is that there is a rule prohibiting teams from scrimmaging in the spring.  Why that rule was imposed in the first place is what is not totally clear to me.]

The NCAA cited three reasons for the denial; here they are:

1. The timing of this request was too late.  Other schools have already set their Spring schedules and have even begun spring practice.  So, Colorado and Syracuse may have gained an unfair advantage if permission was granted.  OK, that is a plausible excuse.
2. Colorado and Syracuse might gain an unfair recruiting advantage because other teams would not have a Spring exhibition game this year.  This one is pretty thin …
3. The potentially negative academic impact on the players who might need to miss classes to prepare for the exhibition game.  Give me a BLEEPING break!

Finally, as March Madness 2025 nears its conclusion, let me close with this from Al McGuire:

“The only mystery in life is why the kamikaze pilots wore helmets.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………