Sports Media Review

Hold the Mayo

There's been more OJ Mayo discussion the past few days but, at least in the blogosphere, the battle has been joined. Bill Simmons penned a screed against Mayo on Thursday, and several bloggers, including Dwil and Stop Mike Lupica hit back hard. Simmons' piece (aptly titled Down with the OJ Mayo Era) juxtaposed OJ Mayo to Kevin Love, the (white) power forward who's on his way to UCLA and is regarded by many as the best high school player in the country (of course, many others give that label to Mayo). Here's Simmons:

With Mayo joining a loaded USC team and Love playing 20 minutes away for a Final Four team, that's looming as a dynamite rivalry and the most intriguing media subplot for the 2007-08 season. After all, Love represents everything good about basketball (unselfishness, teamwork, professionalism) and Mayo represents everything we've come to despise (showboating, selfishness, over-hype). If Love were black, this would be a much easier topic to discuss. But he's white. So even though there's a natural inclination to embrace Love's game and disparage Mayo's game -- you know, assuming you give a crap about basketball and care about where it's headed as a sport -- there's also a natural inclination to hold back because nobody wants to sound like the white media guy supporting the Great White Hope over the Black Superstar Du Jour.

Simmons goes on to criticize Mayo's now infamous final dunk in his final high school game, compares Mayo to the "me-first" superstars Stephon Marbury and Vince Carter and, for good measure, notes that Mayo represents "a certain demographic" and symbolizes everything that is wrong in our attention-seeking culture. And, like Doug Gottlieb peddling his AAU-Kids-don't-care-about-winning-theory, Simmons says that today's generation of player, whether his beloved but hapless Celtics, or the unbeloved Mayo, just don't care about wins and losses.

Stop Mike Lupica is, as I mentioned above, all over Simmons, including this concluding paragraph, responding to Simmons' criticism of Mayo supposed lack of desire to win this week's McDonald's All America game:

Yeah, you're right.  Mayo should care more about winning an ALL-STAR GAME.  What a selfish prick.  Oh, you might want to fail to mention that on March 17, 2007, Mayo led Huntington High School to its third consecutive Class AAA basketball championship in the state of West Virginia with 103-61 rout of South Charleston. Mayo finished with a triple-double: 41 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists.   

You might want to leave that out, because the winning three championships in a row thing might make it seem to ignorant people like me like Mayo cares about winning somewhat.  Or those 11 assists in the championship game might make him seem like an odd choice to criticize as selfish.

Dwil zeroes in on what he regards as Simmons' trafficking in racism. It's clear from the first paragraph above that Simmons is self-conscious about the charge, and it's not the only time in the column that he feels it necessary to point out that his love for Love and antipathy toward Mayo is not racist. Dwil's having none of it:

I’m tired of reading Bill Simmons (and others of his ilk, as Michael Wilbon would say) and his depiction of black athletes - and black people. However, somebody has to make absolutely sure that the watchers are watched, that people of all colors can see racism, even when it might be “unintentional.” Yet, with Simmons, who appears to be intensely self-aware. it’s difficult to believe that he’s not just trying to cloud his racism with some pithy rhetoric. And since Simmons is so well-known it is important to point out his racist tendencies. It’s important because others might just begin to perceive the same in themselves; because some people might just begin to recognize it in other circumstances; because some people might begin to articulate something that can be subtle enough to go unnoticed.

I share SML's and Dwil's criticisms of Simmons here, but I wanted to try to sort out these issues a bit also. To be clear, liking Kevin Love and disliking OJ Mayo is not, in itself, racist. The problem is not with preferences for individual players (nor do I think SML and Dwil are suggesting otherwise). The problem is with representations. We no longer live in an era in America where direct, overt expressions of racism are acceptable in mainstream discourse. You can't any longer say that Black people are inferior, or less intelligent, or whatever, without being condemned by most Americans (see Michael Richards). In her brilliant book, The Race Card, the political scientist Tali Mendelberg shows how we live in an age where the overt norm in our society is an egalitarian one but that this norm has only pushed still-existing racism into a more complex semi-conscious (for many) arena. And, in that arena, indirect appeals to race can have a powerful affect on people. Mendelberg's book focuses on the 1988 presidential campaign and how strategists for Bush the elder utilized such indirect appeals to charged racial representations in their successful bid for the White House.

Now, Bill Simmons is not Lee Atwater (who played Karl Rove to the current President's father). But, wittingly or not (I personally would argue for the latter) he's trading in highly charged representations that have inescapable racial content. Simmons has managed to attach Mayo to everything scary about American culture today for many (white) Americans: rap music, disrespectful teenagers, contempt for tradition and proper structures of authority. And, that's why this conversation isn't really about the state of basketball, as Simmons puts it. It's deeper than that. It's about America - the kind of society we live in, the values we hold, the prospects for our future well-being - those things are all implicitly at stake in this hand-wringing about OJ Mayo who, incredibly, is already symbolic of an entire era.

What are Mayo's actual crimes? Well, like Terrell Owens, only less so, when you line them up end to end, you can work yourself into a nice little lather, but cumulatively they amount to nothing. Nobody's been hurt (unless you count the referee who appears to have taken significant artistic license with his flop when Mayo brushed against him in a game earlier this season), nobody's life has been materially affected. Mayo's been vilified for his decision to take matters into his own hands, by choosing USC instead of passively waiting to be courted by colleges. But, this, it should be obvious, was not the act of a self-seeking self-aggrandizing individual given that much of the corruption in college sports undoubtedly comes when top recruits are weighing multiple offers and incentives abound to sweeten the pot for those recruits, including under the table.

Now, Mayo's decision to choose college rather than wait for colleges to choose him and the reaction to that fact is also not inherently racial. There are all sorts of examples of athletes, Black and White, getting slammed for refusing to play for the team that drafted them (JD Drew being a classic example), and part of that has to do with the expectations that fans of American team sports have about how athletes should show their gratitude for their great good fortune.

But, the problem with branding an entire era the Mayo era, in addition to its obviously absurd, over-the-top character, is that it plays on still simmering racial resentments felt across the length and breadth of this land, wherein a better, more orderly past is giving way to a more uncertain and dangerous future and the face of that future is, for many, a menacing face that looks different from the faces we associate with tradition, order and the good in America. It's easy to stir people's racial and ethnic animus when one preys upon their anxiety and uncertainty in this way, even if one doesn't mean to.

I want to step back here and say something about playing the proverbial race card: writers who raise the issue of race, whether in sports or politics and culture more generally, often get accused of inflaming passions by unnecessarily bringing race into the conversation even where it's not appropriate. Jemele Hill, the African American woman who writes for Page Two, gets accused of this alot, though she often frankly bends over backwards not to. And, if you listen to enough sports talk radio, you'll hear regular complaints from hosts and callers about "playing the race card." But, raising race where it's appropriate, even if not overt (and, as I've said, overt expressions of racism have been largely marginalized in mainstream culture), is not playing the race card. If you want a good example of doing so, of gratuitously making an issue of race or ethnicity when it's obviously not relevant to the situation at hand, just consider Rush Limbaugh, who is now pathetically arguing that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has obvously repeatedly lied about his role in the unfolding scandal about fired US attorneys, is being attacked because he's Hispanic. Limbaugh is transparently a racist, so there's reason to be skeptical about any such claims he makes to begin with. But, furthermore, historic stereotypes of Hispanics have played absolutely no role of any kind in discussions of the scandal generally, or Gonzales' conduct specifically. And, given that Gonzales is the top attorney in the United States, the power dynamics that often make racial appeals so insidious (imputing to marginalized minorities - or high school teenagers - a degree of power over society that they obviously don't have) is just not in play here. Limbaugh's just reaching - lacking any better explanations for why the administration he's shilling for would be under such fire for yet another crystal clear display of its shameless corruption, Limbaugh's throwing a hail mary pass. That's a classic example of playing the race card.

On the other hand, pointing out that an 18-year old kid from extremely humble origins might be unfairly branded as the worst exemplar of a hopelessly lost generation because of lingering racial resentments - that's in an entirely different category.

 

Odds and Ends - March 29

1) While watching the UNC women punch their ticket to the final four the other night, I was thinking about Jackie Stiles. Stiles, some of you may remember, was the star of the Southwest Missouri women's team that made an improbable run to the women's final four in 2001. She was the most exciting woman I have ever seen play the game, with the possible exception of Sheryl Swoopes when Swoopes was at Texas Tech. Stiles was not especially tall, I think about 5' 8", much shorter than some of the rangy women who've dominated the women's game, like Cheryl Miller, Chamique Holdsclaw and now Candace Parker. But, she had a tremendous all-court game - an ability to drive hard to the basket and a deadly jump shot. And, she's the only woman I can think of who had a deadly step-back jumper a la Bird or Jordan, the result of uncommon upper body strength and coordination. Stiles was a treat and, for two weeks in March of 2001, a national sensation.

It happens that Page Two's Jeff Pearlman was on the case, with a piece ten days ago on Stiles. Pearlman describes Stiles' magical 2001 tournament thusly:

She played for a school that everyone pooh-poohed, and with good reason: What the hell was Southwest Missouri State? And did it even have a women's basketball team? So when opponents faced the Bears, they were really facing Jackie Stiles. Stop her -- you win.

Stop her -- yeah, right.

Stiles, who remains the only woman to score more than 1,000 points in a single season, is the best college basketball player I have ever seen. Not the best female. The best -- period. Stiles created her own shot unlike any guard around; found open spaces with a mouse's intuition. In that 2001 NCAA Tournament, she scored 32 points in a second-round upset of Rutgers, then torched top-ranked Duke for 41 in an 81-71 shocker. She followed that up with 32 against Washington to reach the Final Four. Though the Bears lost there to Purdue 81-64, Stiles still scored 22.

"It was the most amazing ride of my life," Stiles says. "The best time I've ever had. I mean, who thought we could beat Duke? Nobody. Who thought we were a Final Four team? Nobody." Stiles still recalls arriving at the airport in Springfield, Mo., after toppling Washington to advance to the Final Four. "People were packed wall to wall," she says. "It took us three hours to get through a 10-gate airport. There was so much … love."

But, as Pearlman tells it, It's a sad story, actually. Stiles was WNBA rookie of the year in 2001-2002, but had so beaten up her body playing basketball that, despite thirteen surgeries over three years, Stiles never played a WNBA game after August of 2002 and has struggled to come to terms with the premature end of her career since. It's a nice piece.

2) Mike Wise has an article today in the Washington Post insisting that:

For all the retro references and nostalgia Georgetown's NCAA tournament run has produced, the Final Four has one underlying old-school message:

College makes big men better.

Wise elaborates:

Three of the four universities playing this weekend in Atlanta start bona fide low post men who quantifiably improved their games by remaining in school. They also developed an appreciation for the pivot almost nonexistent for young players at the next level. College, not the NBA, made Florida's Joakim Noah and Al Horford, Georgetown's Roy Hibbert and Ohio State's Greg Oden the rarest of centers: big men who actually play like big men, who want to be big men.

You can eventually learn footwork and when to shoot a baby hook at the next level; you can't learn how to be an ogre, how to be a beast underneath, how to physically dominate the competition.

How much Kobe Bryant or LeBron James would have gotten out of college from strictly a basketball perspective is debatable; their games translated almost immediately. But there's no question Kwame Brown and Eddy Curry would have learned something -- for instance, how to play their position.

A few points. One, it's not clear to me that Eddy Curry's problem is that he doesn't know how to play his position. If there's one thing Curry is obviously good at, it's his ability to plant his posterior in the low post and score very effectively from that position. HIs indifferent defense and poor passing skills may have been improved in college, though I am unconvinced. But, he's about as traditional big-man scorer as there is in the NBA today, so not a very good example. As for Kwame, I don't know whether he would have developed had he gone to college, but neither does Wise. But, I can think of a number of big men who have done just fine bypassing college - including three of the best in the NBA - Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett and Amare Stoudamire. Now, Wise might argue that Nowitzki and Garnett aren't classic big men, in that they play facing the basket as much as they play with their backs to it. But, one would be hard-pressed to put Stoudamire in that category and, besides, though Oden and Hibbert are more classic center types, I will be very surprised if Noah is a classic low-post player at the next level and I am not sure Hibbert is going to be that good. What's the point: that Wise is playing very loose with his categories. If he's arguing that big men can't go straight to the NBA and do well, he's obviously wrong. If he's arguing that classic low-post players can't go straight to the NBA, he's included in his final four list one and maybe two players (Noah and Horford), who don't really fit that definition. (Noah and Horford are certainly not more classical bigs than Stoudemire or Dwight Howard who's also been a terrific NBA player). And, if like many people in the past few days, he's taking this opportunity to lament the lack of classic big men in basketball today, that strikes me as having nothing to do with whether kids are going straight to the NBA or not. Since Tim Duncan entered the league ten years ago, can you name a classic big man who's come into the league one way or another? The game has evolved, and classic post seven-footers have become more and more rare. Why is that? I don't know. But, with sample sizes approaching zero, it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusions about whether lack of college is a culprit.

Furthermore, maybe Hibbert needed the time in college to develop, but to insist that Greg Oden's twenty odd games in college is the make or break reason behind his presumptively big future in the NBA is to take hypothetical reasoning beyond the breaking point.

It's of ongoing fascination to me that so many pundits are so convinced, on so little evidence, that skipping school is such a detriment to future NBA players. And, I can't help but note, too, that much of the nostalgia we're hearing this week about how nice it is to see the return of the classic centers and how their passing represents one more sign of decline in American basketball, seems to directly contradict one of the most common laments about why the US doesn't do well any longer in international competition. We all know that the rest of the world isn't producing traditional low-post players. Instead, their bigs all play facing the basket and shoot effectively from the outside and the fact that we don't have such versatile big men is our downfall.

When a notion takes hold - like the supposedly imminent crisis facing social security - no amount of pointing out how thin the evidence is can dislodge it.

3) Fire Joe Morgan does a really nice dissection of a lame cheap-shot column on Monday by the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy on Curt Schilling. Schilling has started his own blog, and Shaughnessy's column is a mock rendering of what some of the submissions to the blog might look like. In addition to being a tiresome grump, Shaughnessy's guilty of one of the worst sins a journalist can commit - thinking that he's the story. Shaughnessy's taken this to such an extreme that he can't even see anymore that his personal feud with Curt Schilling just has nothing to do with what Shaughnessy's job should be - to actually talk about the baseball team he's supposedly covering, rather than wasting whole columns grinding embarassingly petty axes that have no baseball relevance at all.

Anyway, here's FJM's take:

Shaughnessy wrote this column because Curt Schilling has started a blog, 38pitches.com, so that he can communicate directly with his fans. Seems like a good thing to do. Why not? Unfortunately, Shaughnessy, it appears to me, has now seen the writing on the wall for muck-raking journalists like himself, who have careers mostly because they get access to athletes beyond that of the general public and thus get to poke and prod them for quotes and then write articles detailing their every move. If the athletes get to talk right to their public, what use is there for middlemen like ol' Danny? Some real estate agents are going to disappear eventually because of on-line video tours of houses. Brokers took a hit from e-Trade. Brick-and-mortar bookstores suffered from Amazon. The internet is a highly effective middleman reducer.

Now, far be it from me to downplay the role of journalists in sports reporting. There are many good ones, and I personally enjoy the old-timeyness of the on-site reporter. And, just as in politics, I believe that the public does benefit from professional prodders professionally prodding athletes. (I wish they had prodded more over the last 20 years, when it must have been blindingly clear that everyone in the league was juicing and not one single journalist had the guts to report it. Or even raise it as an issue. Their fancy journalism degrees didn't serve them -- or us -- very well then, did they?) But I also, as you might imagine, see the great benefit in the personal blog. It simply cannot be a bad thing to have more outlets for athlete-fan communication, if for no other reason than giving the average $80 ticket-buyers a chance to speak directly with those whose services we are paying to see.

Shaughnessy thinks differently. He thinks blogs are for nerds who live in their mom's basements. He thinks Schilling is just an attention-seeking glory hound. (Which I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact that Schilling has been critical of the media in Boston.) He thinks this whole blogging business is something to sneer at, deride, dismiss, and ridicule. And that is why he is a dinosaur who will grow up to be more bitter and miserable than he already is.

I'll let you read the rest for yourself, but FJM does an especially nice job of comparing Shaughnessy's mocking implication that every one who writes to Schilling must be a sycophant to many of the actual questions Schilling gets on his blog, which are good, incisive questions that demonstrate a level of familiarity with newer approaches to understanding baseball that, as I have suggsted previously, Shaughnessy has not bothered to keep up with.  (Since, after all, he's too busy thinking that his beef with Schilling is more important than his bothering to learn anything new about the game of baseball itself). 

Quickie

Just a quick one for now. I know how much I harp on this, but as long as the sports media use the weakest, dumbest arguments imaginable to pound home their "kids today" trope, I am going to keep calling it out.

I normally like ESPN analyst Doug Gottlieb, but he's got this new argument, which he trotted out on ESPN radio last night that is just so mind-numbingly dumb, at least as he portrayed it, that I don't know where to begin. HIs argument is as follows: the current generation of basketball player is part of the "AAU generation." That is, the top high school players are all playing tons of games in various AAU tournaments being held around the country. And, apparently, in some of these tournaments, you can lose some games and still move on in the tournaments, partly because the tournament organizers want to make sure that the highest profile teams with the highest profile players get as much face time as possible.

And, because these kids are playing so many games - maybe three or four in a given day, according to Gottlieb, and so many overall, that, you guessed it - they don't care whether they win or lose anymore. This is true even compared to ten years ago, though I promise you that if we were listening in on a sports radio conversation circa 1995, we would be hearing a different variant on the exact same argument - that kids today don't give the same effort, they don't have the same values system when it comes to competitive athletics, etc.

As with all such arguments, there has to be some evidence, however thin and lame. And, what's the smoking gun "proving" Gottlieb's point about the AAU generation: this is my favorite part. It's the fact that UNC point guard Ty Lawson took two terrible shots in the final minutes of the UNC collapse against Georgetown Sunday, even though, as Gottlieb and an ESPN fill-in host asserted, Lawson is a "terrible" three point shooter.

Let's get a couple of facts straight. First, Lawson is not a terrible three point shooter. He shot just under 36% from three point range this year. That's not great - but it's definitely good, clearly above the threshold for being a worthwhile thing to do. If you shoot 36% from beyond the arc, you're being as efficient with your shots as someone who shoots 54% from two-point range. That is indisputably good. Compare Lawson to Georgetown point guard Jesse Sapp. Sapp went 2 for 4 from long range on Sunday (Georgetown shot an out-of-their-minds 8 for 14 overall), whereas Lawson went one for four. But, Sapp shoots just under 30% from distance, which is poor. I don't think I need to explain why extrapolating from two shots in a regional championship on Sunday to an indictment of Lawson's three point shooting in general is dumb. But, it's worse than that. Isn't every player of significance in this tournament part of the same generation as Lawson? Gottlieb has, of course, implied that Lawson jacked up two bad shots on Sunday because he doesn't care whether he wins or loses so, what the hell. Of course, anybody who's watched Lawson play this year knows he's an intense competitor who obviously cares about winning. But, beyond that, is Gottlieb suggesting that Roy Hibbert, Jeff Green, Greg Oden, Mike Conley, Jr., Al Horford, Aaron Afflalo and every other participant in the final four - all members of the same "AAU generation" - don't care about winning. And, if he is saying that - what proof does he have? Two shots by Tywon Lawson, from which Gottlieb has built an argument indicting an entire generation of baksetball players.

This is just ludicrous stuff.

Baseball, Drugs and Race

Some of you may have noticed that I stopped talking about my brackets ten days ago. That's because mine sucked. I had Texas A&M going to the Final Four; not a bad pick, but they went out in the Sweet Sixteen. Ditto for Pitt. (that was a dumb pick). I had UNC going to the Final Four and I still can't believe they're not. That leaves me with one final four team - Florida - about as easy a pick as there was in the tournament.

Anyway.

Thanks to Katie for sending me along an interesting article by Tim Marchman of the New York Sun. The Sun is a wacky paper,  but Marchman is a terrific sportswriter. On Friday, he offered a take on why baseball receives so much scrutiny about steroid use compared to basketball and football. One key reason, according to Marchman, is relatability:

At root, the reason is probably that every male fan thinks on some level he's a ballplayer. Few watch a strong safety hauling down a running back and think, "I could do that," but it's easy to watch a ballgame and think that if you'd tossed the pill around in your backyard a bit more often when you were younger, you could take the mound at Shea Stadium. I'm a small guy — 5-feet-10-inches, 160 pounds — and Pedro Martinez, Roy Oswalt, Mariano Rivera, and Tim Hudson, to name a few, aren't much bigger than I am. David Wells is a few months away from turning 44 and has struggled with gout and diabetes, and he's still a damn good pitcher. Young, old, skinny, fat, fast, slow — anyone, it seems, can play baseball. This isn't, of course, true. Baseball is the most difficult of the major team sports. It seems true, though, and a lot of baseball's appeal is tied up in this perception.

Marchman also suggests that this story has an important racial component to it:

All of this is especially true when comparing baseball to football and basketball for another reason — race. The percentage of black players in the majors today is around 9%. In the NFL, the number is around 65%; in the NBA, 80%. That matters. Go into any sports bar or listen to any call-in talk show, and you'll hear people talking incessantly, passionately, about racial grievance. They often do so in code ("I can't stand it, these players with the hipping and the hopping and the rap music and the gangs"), but you can't mistake the visceral hatred of end zone celebrations, baggy shorts, and so on for anything but a fear of or fascination with young, aggressive black men.

Football and basketball are played mostly by young black athletes with whom the middle-age white men who account for most of the audience for team sports have nothing in common, and this has a lot to do with why no one cares about drug use in those sports. If the phrase isn't by now completely discredited, you might call it the soft bigotry of low expectations. Doubly alienated from the athletes, fans of the sports, many of whom view the players as no different than gang members, aren't outraged by drug use because they don't expect anything better. Baseball's different. People don't find the players threatening. One may as well say it — the sport is culturally white and middle class in a way football and basketball aren't. Partly for this reason, baseball players are more widely expected to conform to ethical norms by its fans.

Marchman isn't breaking new ground in his assessment of the code by which race still figures so prominently in sports discourse, but this is a particularly eloquent formulation of how it works.

There's one very large hole in Marchman's argument, though: Barry Bonds. By Marchman's logic, the White players in baseball ought to be subject to a higher level of scrutiny than African Americans. And, of course, white players, like Mark McGwire, certainly have been treated harshly in recent years by sportswriters, culminating in McGwire's getting crushed in this year's Hall of Fame balloting. But, no player in any sport has been as condemned, vilified, demonized and hung in symbolic effigy the way Barry Bonds has. And, I would argue that Bonds' treatment speaks to a larger point: that professional Black athletes are not, in general, held to a lower behavioral standard than White athletes. It's true that no one has much to say about performance enhancement drugs in the predominantly NBA. But, on every other count, basketball players are repeatedly condemned for their myriad real and perceived attitudinal and behavioral transgressions. All one needs to do is consider the difference in how the national media covers an NBA fight (as rare as they are) and how they cover fights in the virtually all white NHL.

Marchman may be right that fans don't care as much about how the hardbodies of the NBA and the NFL came to be because those are consistent with stereotypes about physically over-developed African Americans who, as Marchman notes, dominate those leagues. But, it's hard to argue that fans don't pay any mind to the ethics and character of African American athletes. Whether you think it's warranted or not, Barry Bonds is without a doubt public enemy number one in baseball. And, when it comes to the major sports leagues in America, it's hard to deny that the NBA is public enemy number one.

I think Marchman is onto something when he argues that baseball's perceived accessibility sets it up for a different standard of judgment than other sports, though I've argued before that the power of the baseball players union has a lot to do with fans' and commentators' anger at baseball's drug policy. But, I think he's off base in his understanding of the racial dimension of the issue.

Something in the Water

A mild obsession of mine has been the degree to which sports commentators show themselves to be aware of sabermetric analysis. I have mentioned before that Mike Francesa has clearly learned something from that analysis, while his partner, Mad Dog Russo, has been more resistant to it. But, that appears to be changing. Mike and the Mad Dog have adopted the Pirates as one of their teams for 2007, so they had manager Jim Tracy on the show Friday, and Mad Dog showed me something a couple of times. First, in discussing the Pirates' poor record in one-run games during the first half of last season, Russo asserted that records in one-run games tend to even out: if a team does poorly in that category in one season, they tend to do better the next. It may seem like a trivial point, but that notion, first advanced by Bill James 25 years ago, goes to the heart of Sabermetrics: the degree to which baseball outcomes are driven by chance and are, therefore, better understood in terms of statistical probabilities than presumably innate qualities like "heart" "will" "desire" and "clutch." This is especially noteworthy coming from Russo because so much of his belief system about sports performance is embodied in those character-driven assessments.

I was, therefore, frankly shocked to hear him say that.

But, that's not all folks. A few minutes later, Russo raised the question of whether the Pirates' speedy center fielder, Chris Duffy, could hit enough in the leadoff position. Russo granted that Duffy would get his share of infield hits, but added that  "I know he can run, but can he hit, can he have an on-base percentage of .350?"

Shocker number two. Not only did Russo utter the phrase "on base percentage" - which I am not sure I have ever heard him do before, but more impressively he nailed the line at which it would be acceptable to leave Duffy in the lead-off spot. I don't know who's been talking to Russo or what's he's been reading, but this was a stunning display. Tracy, answered Russo's question by saying that OBP is what they would be looking for in Duffy, a sign of how much conventional understanding of the game really has changed in the past 10-15 years.

As an aside, Duffy's chances of achieving that level are not great. He turns 27 in April, so he's already about at his peak, and in 440 career majorleague at bats, he's got a .336 OBP, which appears to have been driven primarily by a fluky .340 batting average in limited action in 2005. Last year, in over 300 at bats, Duffy's OBP was .317. He has no power at all, a poor walk rate and, in a sign that only so much has changed, appears to be in the leadoff spot because he can run, whereas the most important task for a leadoff hitter in any inning is getting himself to first base. His minor league suggests he can do better than .317, but not necessarily better than .340, which makes him marginal for the leadoff spot.

But, kudos to old an dog for learning a new trick. This is the same guy who, I recently pointed out, once believed Rico Brogna to be a better player than John Olerud, which is sort of like believing that ten pounds is heavier than twenty pounds. He's apparently come a long way, baby.

OJ Mayo

Dwil of Sports on My Mind gave me a heads up on some of the recent reaction to OJ Mayo, the star high school basketball player who is on his way to USC. In Wednesday's New York Times, Lee Jenkins profiled Mayo, focusing on the bizarre "recruiting" process that led him to the University of Southern California.

Here's Jenkins' account of the cloak and dagger tale:

It sounds like a fairy tale.

A stranger walked into the  University of Southern California basketball office one day last summer and asked to speak to the head coach. The stranger did not make an appointment. He did not call ahead. Tim Floyd, the U.S.C. head coach, cannot explain why he agreed to see him.

Nine months later, as U.S.C. prepares for the regional semifinal of the N.C.A.A. tournament, Floyd recounted his version of that conversation.

The mysterious man got right to the point. “How would you like to have the best player in the country?” he asked.

Floyd tried not to roll his eyes.

“Have you heard of O. J. Mayo?” the man asked.

Of course Floyd had heard of him. Everyone in basketball had heard of him. Mayo was first mentioned in Sports Illustrated when he was in the seventh grade. He was considered a future lottery pick by the time he entered high school. He once talked trash to Michael Jordan during a pickup game at Jordan’s camp.

Mayo was entering his senior season as a point guard at Huntington High School in Huntington, W.Va., but Floyd said he did not bother to call him. He did not even send him a U.S.C. brochure.

What was the point? Major universities had been courting Mayo for four years. Floyd had been at U.S.C. for fewer than 18 months. Besides, Floyd had only recruited two top-100 players in his life. He had no business going after Mayo, the No. 1 player in the country, especially being from a football college that was 3,000 miles away.

“O. J. wanted me to come here today,” the man told Floyd. “He wanted me to figure out who you are.”

Jenkins went on to note that when Floyd asked for Mayo's cell phone number, the mystery intermediary told him that Mayo doesn't give out his cell phone number and that Mayo would call Floyd. When Mayo did call Floyd, he again refused to give him his number, but assured Floyd that he wanted to come to USC. As Jenkins tells it, Floyd remained skeptical:

Mayo had not been on an official campus visit. He had not seen the new arena, the Galen Center. He did not know anything about the current roster.

Floyd did not believe it was possible to get a verbal commitment from a player he had recruited for less than one day, especially when that player was a 6-foot-5 sharpshooter with blue-chip strength, quickness and passing ability.

“I want to be different,” Floyd recalls Mayo telling him. “I want to leave a mark.”

Mayo said that if he did not go to U.S.C., he would probably enroll at an African-American college. Such colleges are renowned academically, but they do not typically produce pro basketball players.

Mayo’s mind was apparently made up. He was already looking ahead. “How many scholarships do we have for next year?” he asked.

Floyd stammered. “After this,” he said, “I guess we have three.”

Mayo went through the priority list in his mind. “Don’t worry about recruiting,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

The Big Lead wrote a couple of times about the Jenkins Mayo story, and drew very unflattering conclusions about Mayo from it. The first was this post on Wednesday, which linked to youtube video of Mayo throwing down a vicious dunk at the end of his final high school home game, a rout against a hapless opponent, and then chucking the ball into the stands.

TBL writes:

This video’s been making the rounds for a few days. It’s OJ Mayo’s final high school moments. There’s a dunk, hurling of the ball into the crowd, and a technical. You half expected the guy take of his jersey, fling it into the crowd, grab his nuts and point at women and leave for the locker room, groupies in tow.

More cocky than the video? His entitled attitude toward college basketball, courtesy of the NY Times.

It’s incredibly sickening, and we truly wish Tim Floyd the best in this endeavor (first though, PLEASE cover 8.5 against UNC). Why Floyd would want anything to do with someone who lives by this credo, “O. J. doesn’t give out his cell … He’ll call you” is beyond us. Mayo is the anti-Kevin Durant, and exemplifies everything that is wrong with American youth basketball. Increasingly, it’s trickling up to the NBA.

The above-mentioned Dwil went off on media coverage of Mayo on his blog - Sports on My Mind.
Dwil noted that, though it was never reported nationally, according to one observer at Mayo's final game, the West Virginia State Championship, the 18-year old sensation did not merely fling the ball into the crowd following his notorious dunk. Instead, he was tossing the ball to his father. Furthermore, as dwil tells it:

Tim Floyd was a guest on ESPN’s “Cold Pizza” this morning. Floyd told Cold Pizza interviewer Dana Jacobson that the reason Mayo didn’t share his number with Floyd is because he is the son of a single mother who pays his phone bill. Mayo didn’t have the money to pay for continuous west coast-east coast phone calls. Floyd also said that though he has Mayo’s cellphone number now, they don’t talk with each other that often, but Floyd says he knows he doesn’t need to communicate with Mayo often because of the high schooler’s maturity.

He welcomes the fact that Mayo doesn’t need daily phone calls or text messages as many other recruits do. Floyd also admonished PTI’s Michael Wilbon for the derogatory statements Wilbon made on PTI yesterday.

Additionally, after USC athletic director Mike Garrett met Mayo he indicated to Floyd that Mayo was the most mature recruit to ever walk into his A.D. office.

Dwil also credits Mayo with understanding how the "game" is played:

What O. J. Mayo knows more than any young man coming into the NCAA meat house is that he is a one-man corporation. He knows the system is set up to make billions of dollars off the backs of young men black and white, the vast majority of whom will never parlay their athletic talent into performing in professional leagues, and many of whom will never walk the walk to receive their undergraduate diplomas.

Speaking of Wilbon, when he and PTI partner Tony Kornheiser discussed Mayo Wednesday evening, Kornheiser introduced the subject by recounting elements of the Jenkins story, and his voice rose with emphasis when he recounted how Mayo refused to give Floyd his phone number.

Wilbon said:

I wouldn't even let this kids' plane, and it might be a private jet land in the city where my school is, because what's next for Caoch Floyd, is OJ gonna say "coach, run out and get me a samich (sic)," is he gonna say coach "I'll take care of the timeouts," "coach I don't want to practice today." He has turned himself over to some kid, he's turned his whole program over to a kid who says, "no, I don't want you to be able to call me," it is insane.

Wilbon also asked "how would coach Knight handle this" in reference to the fact that Mayo has been upfront in saying that he wants to attend USC because Los Angeles is a media capital that will provide a good spring board for him to market himself. Wilbon fairly dripped with content for Mayo and for the circumstances surrounding his decision to come to USC, arguing that "no self-respecting coach in America" would take on a kid like Mayo.

Now, I don't know that, just because one observer says so, that Mayo was throwing the ball to his father. And, maybe Floyd is just covering for his future player in explaining Mayo's refusal to give out the phone number, since Guillory could have just as easily explained to Floyd that he should only call Mayo rarely, since his single working mom pays the bill.

So, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Mayo refused to give out his # at first for unclear reasons and that he was just tossing that ball into the crowd for no particular purpose. It still boggles the mind that Mayo's actions could generate this level of vituperation. That TBL regards Mayo's "attitude toward college basketball" as "incredibly sickening" is fascinating, for two reasons. One, the Jenkins article isn't really about Mayo's attitude toward college basketball per se - it's about his decision to come to USC. And, according to that article, Mayo chose USC over UCLA because he wanted to make a mark by helping establish a new tradition. What's so objectionable about that particular desire is unclear. Furthermore, according to the Jenkins piece, as noted above, Mayo was only interested in USC or an historically Black college. It's not clear how this shows greater contempt for college basketball than any other blue chip recruit - almost none of whom can really be said to basing their school choice on the quality of education they might receive or any other consideration outside of how it might affect their basketball careers. That Mayo is more up front about that appears to be his most serious transgression.

But, more striking still is the fact that an 18-year old is being attacked for an institutional decision over which he has no control. Mayo is going to college because the NBA is leaving him no choice. And, Wilbon, in invoking Bobby Knight's name here, appears to have failed to grasp Knight's own criticisms of the new rule. Knight specifically said that he wouldn't blame any coach who recruited a one-and-done player like Mayo (or Kevin Durant) because that's what the rules allow for. And, Knight didn't comment at all about the decision-making process of the kids themselves for the transparently obvious reason that the blue-chip high schoolers don't have a choice but to go to college in their first year after high school.

Wilbon is essentially blaming Mayo for a decision made by the NBA. He is also vilifying Mayo for maintaining a set of priorities that - when pursued by large, powerful, institutional interests - namely the desire to make as much money as possible - passes almost without comment. If Ohio State wants to run a $100 million athletic operation with a questionable commitment to academic integrity, that's worthy of a flattering magazine-length profile in SI. If an 18-year old kid wants to make the most, from a business standpoint, of his enforced year without an income to which he would otherwise be entitled, he shouldn't even be allowed in the same city as the poor, beleaguered coach and university that he's planning to attend. So, it's the 18-year old son of a single working mom who had Mayo when she was sixteen who has all the power, and the innocent victims here are USC - a sports behemoth, Tim Floyd, a highly paid professional, and the NCAA, whose spotless integrity is being sullied by the kid.

Black is White, Up is down.

The reaction to Mayo's refusal to give out his cell phone at first is reminiscent of the reaction to Stephon Marbury telling a reporter a few weeks back that he answers to no one, when Marbury was asked whether he can really afford to do a TV show during the middle of a basketball season. Mike and Mike were prompted by this threat to national well-being to devote a lengthy discussion to it, in order to understand how bad people like Stephon Marbury came to be. When athletes fail to defer to rightful authority, when they fail to recognize their proper place in the social pecking order, they are a menace to society. They're not merely 18 year olds with a little attitude - instead, they are exemplars of "everything that is wrong" be it with youth basketball or American culture more generally.

Fun With Data

There's an article in the New York Times today lamenting the passing, if you will, of the great passing guard. This is the latest installment in the longest running series in sports journalism - the decline and fall of western civilization, as told through sports.

I'll get to that in a minute, but I did want to respond to a couple the comments about my Dungy post yesterday. I think it goes without saying that only an exceptionally active imagination could get from criticizing Dungy for his position on gay marriage to fascism, but this is an unfortunate feature of our contemporary discourse. Many who see themselves as great defenders of our liberty are extremely disingenuous - insisting on the one hand that to criticize a particular point of view (whether it's the President position on Iraq or someone's position on moral issues) is tantamount to destroying America and its basic institutions, while on the other annointing themselves as defenders of democracy. This is a consequence of a fundamental failure to understand the meaning of dissent and debate in a democratic society. But, so be it. I think any honest reader knows I wasn't suggesting that Dungy be thrown in jail or, contrary to his own position, advocating the denial of anyone's basic rights because I disagree with them. In fact, that's all I did - disagree with Dungy and challenge the basis of his arguments.

On that point, the second commenter writes:

First off, where is Tony Dungy suggesting that we use the Bible as the basis of our public policy? The Bible itself does not command us to do so, indeed quite the opposite. All Dungy is doing is taking a stand on a public policy issue, which last time I checked, we are allowed to do in a democracy. If we are no longer a democracy, and people are only allowed to publicly state certain stands on certain or all issues, then you would have to let me know when that changed.

Yes, and speaking of classic intellectual dishonesty, this paragraph is nothing but. First, Dungy said he held his position because it was "the Lord's position." Guess, how Dungy knows that? Because the bible tells him so. The commenter suggests I am either two standard deviations below normal intelligence, or I am dishonest. I would suggest that anyone who knows anything about the views of IFI, or Focus on the Family (of which IFI is a state affiliate), knows that when Dungy says it's the Lord's view, he means that it came from the bible, which is understood by many Americans to be the literal word of God. It's not serious to argue, therefore, that Dungy's position is not informed by the bible and I promise you that Dungy would acknowledge as much, without any defensiveness or embarassment, because it's transparently true. And, he's entitled to. Just as, in a democracy, people who disagree with him are entitled to disagree with him. This is why the abject whining quoted above is so absurd - how one could possibly argue that criticizing someone's stand on an issue (which I did) could be interpreted as "denying" that person's right to take such a stand (which I obviously did not do) is simply beyond comprehension. Only because our political discourse is what it is are these points even necessary to explain, so obvious are they.

And since Dungy does, of course, believe that his position on the issue of gay marriage comes from the Lord (and,hence, the bible) it is, of course, fair to ask, why the bible doesn't inform his position on the other issues I mentioned. Of course we are all selective in our interpretations and the conclusions we draw. But, Dungy's assertion is very clear: I oppose gay marriage because the Lord does. That rationale begs the question: why on this issue, and not on others? Dungy may have a rationale for singling out gay marriage for legal prohibition on the basis of the Lord's position. I'd be interested to know what it is. But, there's no denying that the movement to bar gay marriage is singling it out. And, as distressing as it is to many, as long as we live in a democracy, people are going to challenge the rationale behind individuals' positions on public policy issues. Last time I checked, that is still "allowed." And, some people are going to treat skeptically arguments that merely assert "because the Lord (or bible) says so." Such skepticism, distressing as it is, is also "allowed." Welcome to the modern, democratic, world.

OK, enough of that. According to Thayer Evans and Pete Thamel:

Players like Acie Law IV, Kevin Kruger, Mike Conley Jr. and Ty Lawson have led their teams by looking to set up teammates for scoring opportunities, rather than by scoring themselves. Those players, however, have become more the exception than the rule in recent years.

Coaches, N.B.A. scouts and talent evaluators say there are a variety of reasons why the pass-first point guard seems to have gone missing. But the primary reason they point to is that a generation of players weaned on Allen Iverson crossovers does not value passing as an art.

“No one wants to set the table anymore,” Mount St. Mary’s Coach Milan Brown said in a telephone interview. “Everyone wants to eat.”

The selfish, modern player rears his ugly head yet again. Evans and Thamel cite one piece of data to back up their argument:

But the less publicized and perhaps even more meaningful trend in the college game has been the absence of pass-first leaders at the point-guard position the past few years.

Traditional point guards like Bobby Hurley, Kenny Anderson and Mateen Cleaves, who dominated past N.C.A.A. tournaments, have become as rare in college basketball as thigh-hugging shorts. Since 2000, the number of players averaging more than seven assists a game has decreased from 11 to 2.

And, so the point is not lost, some people believe that this trend is ruining the game:

The Utah Jazz scout Troy Weaver, a former Syracuse University assistant, said the definition of a point guard for younger players had been clouded by those who looked to score first.

“I think Allen Iverson messed up the game,” Weaver said in a telephone interview. “All these little guys dribble around instead of passing the ball.”

It's no surprise really that Iverson's name would appear here - he's single-handedly responsible for so much of what is wrong with America today, so why not blame the entire way basketball is played on him, too.

Maybe it's true that there has been an increase in selfishness among point guards because of Allen Iverson and that is messing up the game. Or, maybe, this is a paper thin argument, so consistent with the prevailing zeitgeist that the authors barely considered challenging their own pre-conceived notions (as an aside, there's probably no sports journalist I have more regard for than Pete Thamel).

But, there are other possibilities here. One, when reading this, I wanted to know whether passing itself had declined in college basketball. Maybe the point guard gets fewer assists, but does it automatically follow that this is a sign of selfish play. Maybe more aggressive on-the-ball defense requires point guards to pass off more than they used to, so that made baskets are more likely to be the result of multiple passes with the final one (the assist) coming from someone other than the point guard.

I couldn't find NCAA statistics going back before 2001-02 for teams, but i did look at the rankings of assists per game by team from 2001-02 to 2006-07. In 2001-02, the top assist team in the country - Kansas (which made the final four that year) - averaged 20.7 assists a game. Maryland, the defending national champ, was second at 19.8. That's the best 1-2 tandem over the six years in question. But, as one moves down the list - comparing the fifth best team in assists each year, the tenth best team, the 20th best team and the 30th best team, one is hard pressed to find a change in total assists per game per team. The fifth best team averaged 18.1 assists per game in 2001-02, and 18.0 in 2006-07. The tenth best team averaged 17.3 assists per game in the earlier year, and 17.4 assists per game in the later year. (you'll find similar data for the years in between).

In other words, focusing on the decline the number of individual players who averaged seven assists a game masks a larger reality - that there is no obvious drop off in team assists. And, on the question of what statistic better reveals the overall quality of play and level of selfishness, the latter stat is, for my money, the more significant one. To repeat, maybe defenses are making it harder for point guards to simply dribble down the floor, pass to an open player and ring up an assist. But, that doesn't mean that the point guards are shooting more, or that the overall ball movement on the team is compromised.

I am not saying I am right about this. I am saying there is an alternative explanation, one arguably better substantiated by the data, that happens not to re-affirm the decline-of-civilization thesis that is at the heart of so much sports coverage these days.

 

Dungy Comes Out

As noted by Deadspin this morning, Tony Dungy spoke to the Indiana Family Institute and embraced their opposition to gay marriage. According to the Indianapolis Star:

"I appreciate the stance they're taking, and I embrace that stance," Dungy said.

And:

"IFI is saying what the Lord says," Dungy said. "You can take that and make your decision on which way you want to be. I'm on the Lord's side."

The coach said his comments shouldn't be taken as gay bashing, but rather his views on the matter as he sees them from a perspective of faith.

"We're not anti- anything else. We're not trying to downgrade anyone else. But we're trying to promote the family -- family values the Lord's way," Dungy said.

This issue originally arose at the end of January, during the Super Bowl festivities, when it first became public knowledge that Dungy was to appear before the IFI. But, that was before John Amaechi came out and Tim Hardaway made his remarks and the issue of sexual orientation received two solid weeks of discussion in sports media.

And, it's fascinating to ponder the differences in the reaction to Dungy's position compared with Hardaway's. One of Hardaway's no-nos was that he said he "hated" gays. Additionally, Hardaway also failed to couch his arguments in religious terms. Hence, his anti-gay sentiments lacked the credibility that religiously based opposition to homosexuality still enjoys. But, is the difference in their positions really significant? One arguable point of difference is that Dungy can still say, and presumably believes, that one can "hate the sin and love the sinner." Hardaway, though he has now repeatedly backed off his original comments, could not stand on similar ground. That difference aside, there's little credible in Dungy's sentiments. The notion that the IFI isn't "anti anything" or trying to "downgrade anything" is obviously false on its face. It's the very purpose of the anti gay marriage movement to downgrade or, more properly, to prevent from attaining equal status, same-sex marriage alongside opposite-sex marriage. That insistence on codifying the greater status of one over the other is the raison d'etre of the movement.

And, the contention that anti- gay marriage advocates are not anti gay is similarly unserious. Almost all cite the bible, as Dungy does here, to support their position. But, the bible, of course, does not condemn gay marriage specifically. It condemns homsexuality in toto as "abomination." So, Dungy is simply being disingenuous to cite the bible as the authority for his position on gay marriage while insisting he's not anti gay, when the bible's specific prohibition is against homosexuality, not gay marriage per se.

Furthermore, the notion that the handful of biblical references to homosexuality amounts to a credible defense of a discriminatory public policy position in contemporary America is also deeply flawed. The bible prohibits many things, including: charging interest, dishonoring parents (penalty: death), having sex with a woman during menstruation (penalty: death), adultery (penalty: death) and allows other things (like slavery) that we find abhorrent and unacceptable. How it is that gay marriage has been raised to the position of the practice most needing condemnation and legal prohibition is unclear, because nowhere does the bible rank order condemned practices (For a good discussion of some of the problems in using the bible as a basis for contemporary public policy debates, go here).

Dungy's entitled to his position, of course. But, I stand by what I have said about him previously: given the endless harping on character that is a staple of sports discourse, it's frankly bizarre that someone can maintain such a clear and blatant prejudice without any questioning his character when, by contrast, Tim Hardaway was absolutely vilified for his remarks. To repeat, I understand that a distinction can be made. But, the fact is that Dungy has lined himself up with forces that do, in fact, preach hatred of gays and have promoted an issue that has the effect of further marginalizing and vilifying an already marginalized and vilified group.

I am inclined to think that Dungy is not acting with willful malice here. But, he's fully responsible for his prejudice, whether or not he cites the bible to back him up. Slaveowners did the same thing 150 years ago.

Tid Bits (long ones) - March 20

1) I am catching up on a backlog of Sports Illustrateds. The March 5 issue, mainly devoted to the behemoth that is the Ohio State Athletic department (with $100 million in gross revenues, it's the largest in the country), also has an interesting athletes' bill of rights, penned by Alexander Wolff and Dick Friedman. Given the increasingly ungodly sums of money that coaches, universities and networks are making off of college athletics, the question of the players' compensation becomes more and more of an issue.

Wolff and Friedman propose five articles:

One - Athletes have the right to transfer once after their sophomore year without having to sit out a year.

Though they don't mention it, it has always struck me as especially egregious that coaches can come and go as they please, often motivated only by the prospect of a bigger contract elsewhere, or by the desire to walk away from the burning wreckage of a program in trouble (as Eddie Sutton did when Kentucky basketball imploded in the late 1980s), while players have to sit out a year. The double standard in this case is glaring.

Article Two - Scholarships should be "iron-clad, five year deals with full medical coverage and adequate stipends."

Wolff and Friedman point out that, among other abuses, a football player might injur himself during a "voluntary" summer workout and not have his medical treatment covered. And, scholarships are only one-year, renewable agreements. Among the benefits, Wolff and Friedman say would be to "protect athletes, boost graduation rates and decrease the risk that players would seek money through boosters and other illicit means."  An additional benefit the writers don't mention: if a scholarship is a five year commitment, coaches will have to be much more careful and conscientious about whom they want to make that commitment.

Article Three - Colleges should not limit the right of athletes to profit from sports in "ancillary ways" or pursue professionally a sport they're not playing in college.

Wolff and Friedman note that "college stars' cashing in would mock Etonian notions of amateurism, but where's the amateur spirit on campuses awash in naming rights deals?"

And, amateurism itself is an anachronistic notion. When it emerged as a lofty value in athletics in the 19th century, it did so among upper crust competitors for whom compensation for competition was unnecessary. Professionals back then where understood as mercenary low-lifes who disdained athletic excellence for the crass pursuit of cash. Such a notion, given the privileged station of the people making such arguments was bad enough. But, invoking notions of amateurism in the context of an era in which athletics are a multi-billion dollar endeavor is just perverse.

Article Four - protect the athletes from performance-enhancing drugs.

As I have written before, I think the subject of performance-enhancing drugs - both the health and ethical issues - is far more complicated than the simplistic moralizing that characterizes most discussions about it. But, Wolff and Friedman are right to zero in on the conflict inherent in a 'strength coach who sends a signal to a red-shirt freshman lineman to get stronger by any means necessary" and "to punish enablers as harshly as users."

Article Five - "colleges shall make every effort to ameliorate the disruptive effect that athletics have on academics."

They elaborate: "This means not steering kids into classes just to accommodate practice" and note that Big Monday can mean players missing an entire day of classes.

Among my responsibilities at UNC is as an academic advisor and I can say that among the most frustrating things I deal with during summer orientation is trying to help an athlete register for classes when they can't take anything after one or two p.m. They have fewer options as freshmen to begin with (because a lot of classes are already closed) and now we're trying to cram everything into a tight window on top of that. The result is often a very unappealing schedule, only likely to reinforce the sense that the kid is at UNC more to compete in a sport (and this is not only true of the revenue sports) than to have a meaningful educational experience.

Anyway, Wolff and Friedman have provided a great practical agenda for advocating reform in college athletics.

2) Sports Media Watch had a very interesting post a few days ago about why guys like Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and Tim Duncan fare so poorly in the endorsement game, despite their transcendent greatness on the court:

In sports, clean-cut athletes are marketed differently than edgy athletes. Athletes like Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, and Peyton Manning are usually not going to be seen in commercials with hip-hop or any type of mainstream music in the background. Their ads range from humorous (Peyton Manning's advertisements especially) to more upscale (the Movado watch ads that feature Brady and Jeter). Clean-cut ads feature clean-cut athletes in clean-cut settings (Manning's commercials take place in a supermarket and a suburban living room) and are generally tailored to more mainstream audiences. These ads don't play nearly as well with the M 18-34 demo as a fast-paced ad with bold, aggressive music and an in-your-face style.

It is rare to find any of the star 'clean-cut' athletes in edgy advertisements. One isn't likely to see Alex Rodriguez turn to the camera and say "You a fool", or see Manning and Brady in a "Second coming" type ad. Edgy advertisements aren't for mainstream audiences, instead tailored to young, generally male viewers.

Nowitzki and Nash are far from edgy, which may play a bigger role than any racial dynamic. Being clean-cut hurts them, as the NBA lacks the mainstream appeal of Major League Baseball or the NFL. The league doesn't necessarily need to appeal to mainstream audiences, and doesn't necessarily need the approval of Joe Sixtysevenyearold in Boston. Instead, the league, and its advertisers, need to look 'cool' in order to appeal to the people who are actually watching.

Nowitzki and Nash are great players, and likely Hall of Fame players. However, like Tim Duncan, they are too clean cut for an edgy sport, and thereby not attractive to advertisers.

SMW's analysis here prompts me to reproduce here something I wrote during the summer Olympics in 2004 for Mid-Atlantic Sports. It's a little lengthy, but bear with me:

Sunday night, during NBC’s Olympic coverage of the semifinals and finals of the 100 meter men’s sprints, Tom Hammond, the normally low-key play-by-play (foot-by-foot) announcer for track, had a hissy fit.  As eventual gold medallist Justin Gatling and his training partner Shawn Crawford approached the tape ahead of the rest of the field during the first semifinal heat Crawford, who was slightly ahead, motioned Gatling with his hand, as if to say, “cross the line with me.”  To my untrained and apparently uncivilized eye, it was a gesture of exuberance and friendship toward Gatling, mixed with the extraordinary adrenaline that flows through athletes at this level of competition.  It hadn’t occurred to me that anything egregious had just taken place.  But, as the runners ran through the finish line, analyst Lewis Johnson demurred that he could do without the “antics” and then Hammond had his little outburst, saying “will someone please tell them that this is the Olympics – a little dignity please!”  It’s a favored lament of many who cover our sporting events these days that there’s too much showboating and not enough sportsmanship and that these dynamics fundamentally diminish the competition itself.  I might agree with the former, but the latter requires a leap I am unprepared to make, implying as it does certain supposed character-based attributes of world class athletes.  It’s nice to think well of our athletic heroes, but all that’s really required to be a world class athlete is world class athleticism.  In any event, this is a matter of taste, and my tastes are different from those of many of our sports punditry.  But, what’s more annoying is that many of our sports talking heads fail to recognize or acknowledge how the media organizations for which our decorum police work promote the very attributes that Tom Hammond and others fitfully decry.

    Not ten minutes after Crawford’s and Gatling’s apparent breach of sporting etiquette, NBC ran a profile of then reining Olympic 100-meter champion Maurice Greene.  Greene is a brash fellow.  He has always been a talker, an in-your-face competitor who is not shy about pronouncing his greatness.  Among the features on his tattoed left arm is an abbreviation, G.O.A.T., which stands for Greatest of All Time.  Hardly a modest sentiment.  The NBC piece, about two minutes long, was set in the now familiar montage style of contemporary sports biography/promotion, in which the editing and music is supposed to emphasize the athlete’s cool and elusiveness.  Clearly, NBC (and they’re not alone) has decided that this is the form in which its athletic products (the athletes) are most marketable – in your face, a little self-absorbed, with a chip on their shoulder, and with a pro-wrestling, grudge-match angle to competition.  Bombast may be annoying to many spectators and commentators, but the networks believe it sells.  Marketing anti-heroes has worked well for Vince McMahon and the rest of the sports production world appears willing to follow suit, at least to some extent.  And, though there are particular currents that run through media portrayals of African American male athletes, like Greene, NBC portrayed Svetlana Khorkina, the Russian gymnast, in similar terms, both in the comments of the analysts covering the gymnastics competition and in the bio-profile of Khorkina that ran during the women’s individual all-around competition.

    I happen to find these promotional bios uninteresting.  I think we learn a lot less about the athletes than we might from a straight narrative that had a bit more substance.  But, I don’t watch sports for this stuff anyway.  However, given the clear promotional strategies of the media, you’d think that those who make a living off of the athletes and the way in which they are marketed would display a bit more awareness of the implications of the form the marketing takes.

3) Finally, in a preview of coming attractions, I do plan to say something soon about some of the coerage of the passing last week of long-time baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

Quick Follow-up

In my post on Saturday, I rolled out a pet theory to explain, at least in part, why there might have been so few upsets in this tournament - namely that the NBA age rule, which woud require the best high school talent to spend at least one year in college, would widen the gap between the BCS schools (where that top talent, almost without exception, is going to end up) and and the mid-majors. I also noted that the trend toward mid-major competitiveness is a phenomenon of the past decade or so and that it may well end, or weaken significantly, because of the new rule.

Pat Forde has an article on ESPN.com today in which he mourns the passing of Cinderella from this tournament:

Cinderella, the plucky princess of March Madness, died a quick and undramatic death over the weekend. She was 12.

Check the chalk outline of her body, produced by the chalk-heavy outcomes in this NCAA Tournament: This marks the first time since 1995 that the Big Dance arrived at the Sweet 16 without at least one double-digit seed along for the ride.

Pause with us while we mourn Cindy's passing for a moment.  

Goodbye, Virginia Commonwealth. Sorry you couldn't come along another round, but beating Duke and taking Pittsburgh to OT made for a pretty swell weekend.

Adios, Winthrop. At least you'll always remember your first NCAA victory.  

They were the last double-digit seeds standing. Without them, the tenor changes.  

There is no George Mason or Bradley left in this dance -- no mid-major school that barely squeaked in and never was given a chance to win even a single game, much less two. No Wisconsin-Milwaukee of '05 (although that team's coach is here, now dressed in orange). No Chattanooga or Valparaiso or Miami (Ohio) or Missouri State or Kent State, to name a few double-digit seeds that played into the second weekend in recent years.

But the fracturing of the fairy tale didn't stop there. The big boys have eliminated every team seeded outside the top half of the 65-team bracket -- every team outside the top 28, in fact.

It's too obvious to belabor the point that the dominance of the top seeds in this tournament is not solely attributable to the new rule. And, it's true that a couple of the Sweet Sixteen are both top 28 teams and mid-major schools, though the dominance by the BCS conferences and other well-established programs is obvious. But, what's noteworthy here is the timing that Forde highlights - 1995. 1995 was the year that the freakishly talented Kevin Garnett, already committed to my Alma Mater (the University of Michigan) decided to forego college altogether and enter the NBA draft. That was followed by Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O'Neal entering the draft straight out of high school in 1996, Tracy McGrady in 1997 and an ever larger stream of talent ever since.

2007 could, of course, turn out to be a flukishly bad year for mid-major/cinderella schools but, I'll repeat what I said the other day - I think the new age rule augurs a reversal of the trend of the last decade and I am surprised no one else has commented on it. Now, depending on your point of view, this is not all bad, of course. It may make for a pretty uneventful first two rounds (though there were good games over the weekend). But, it should make for a hell of a second week.