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| The Huskies were a few free throws from the NCAA Tournament. |
Did you know that the Washington Huskies are 3-5 all time in the NIT? I didn't either until today, when the field of 68 was revealed for this year's "amateur" collegiate basketball tournament. The Huskies, despite winning the Pac12 title in the regular season, were left out of the NCAA Tournament. In the week leading up the selection they went from a predicted #8 seed to out of the field based, essentially, on their first-round lost in the Pac12 Tournament. Colorado went on to win the Pac12 post-season title, and the automatic bid, and Cal somehow got an at-large bid despite finishing behind Washington in the regular season. Conventional wisdom is that Washington had to win just one more game to be a lock for the tournament. One game against Oregon State is the difference between a 10 or 11 seed and being out completely?
Now, I'm not enough of a homer that I am blind to the fact that the Huskies aren't very good. They can't hit free throws and they lost a few games they should have won. But there is no way they are worse than all 68 teams in the field. Their exclusion from the field was a combination of national basketball writers who have been putting down the Pac12 all season as "soft" and the NCAA Tournament selection committee making an example of Washington. The message? The regular conference season doesn't matter. Win out of conference, have a hard out of conference schedule, and make a run in the conference post season. This is the first time the regular season Pac10(12) winner has been left out of the tournament in...ever.
Again, I didn't think the Huskies were a tournament team. I like to watch them, and I hoped they would get in because they're the sort of team that could throw together a great game or two and upset a few higher seeds, but they had a chance to force the NCAA to take them, and they blew it.
All that said, the bad taste in my mouth here is the same as the one I get every winter when the BCS bowl games are played. Adding games, consolidating leagues, creating complex ranking systems, and developing playoff systems are all serving one purpose: making money for the leagues, the schools, and the NCAA. And all of that revenue is made on the backs of amateur athletes who are expressly forbidden to make a dime from any of it. And because many of these athletes know it's a scam, and they know their lifespan as an athlete is already precariously short as 19 year old college stars, we may only get a couple more changes to see the likes of Tony Wroten on a college basketball court.
The reason for the Pac12 tournament is to make more television money. And the existence of the Pac12 tournament fundamentally devalues the Pac12 regular season. This is a separate issue from the fact that the Huskies tanked it at the end of the season (and against Marquette earlier in the year, and against South Dakota State, and...).
More on Social Networking
It took me a few years to figure out the point of Twitter. I get it now. I get it in large part because of my iPhone. Twitter makes sense on a smartphone. I'm sitting in a meeting, more bored than during a wedding of someone I barely know, and none of my Words With Friends opponents have played a word in 10 minutes. I open my Twitter app and read little bits of linguistic joy from some of my favorites. In addition to following me (@GregVanBelle), try these Twitter faves:
For Brief Clips of Satirical Genius:
- @TheOnion
- @BorowitzReport
- @SarahKSilverman
- @HuffingtonPost
- @CuraOrphanage
- @TheDailyShow
- @CNN
Some many years ago I wrote something about the fact that printer ink was the most expensive liquid per gallon a general consumer could buy ($8,000 per gallon!, and yet we still have three ink jet printers in our house and we still march obediently to the local Staples to buy more every other month or so.
And we have recently added another unnecessarily expensive liquid to our household. No, not the good scotch I have hidden in a super-secret lock box. No, we have fallen head over heels for our new Keurig single-serving coffee maker. We are effectively paying about $1.00 per cup of home brewed coffee (which works out, according to some, to about $25 a pound).
We spent about a week rationalizing this purchase and the cost associated with it (it was wasteful to make a whole pot and throw it out...I drink less coffee now than I used to!...it's still much cheaper than going down to Starbucks or Tullys!). That's all bullshit, of course. We just like the cool space age machine and the variety of little coffee and tea pods we can buy. And the coffee is actually good.
(2 minute break while I make a second cup of coffee)
Yeah. That's good stuff...cha ching!
50k is 31 miles. No Way Around It.
This Saturday is the Chuckanut 50k. I have the course map on my desk and I stare at it often. I still haven't decided whether to attack this one or not. My Achilles tendons are still fighting me a bit and they kept me from my last long run. I can do the mileage, and I'm not in bad shape otherwise, but I'm worried already about blowing up. Not a good feeling.
So I'm stuck in this spot between the desire to get my first ultra under my shoes and not wanting to have to drop out of the race after it starts.
I've done 31 miles on trails before (last summer's epic 'Round St Helens adventure) but it took me 11 hours. That's my only comparative baseline.
I have no real reason to write this other than to bitch about my first-world problem of having to decide whether to spend a Saturday running around in the forest for recreation.
Stay tuned for more of same.
1 comment:
OK, I am scratching my head at the UW decision too. Did they just roll dice?
As to Chucknut. I suspect that that course is actually easier than Mount Saint Helens. Certainly softer and there will be some support. Cooler too. If you are worried then "Start off slow and back off if you have to" as an aquaintance of mine once said. :-)
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