Rapid Fire Week-in-Review: Tournament Edition 2011
It’s Friday, so it’s time for a Rapid Fire Week-in-Review:
• It took less than a week of being locked out for NFL players to say something stupid. I mean, we knew it was coming, but it took less than seven days! C’mon, guys, pace yourselves. Rashard Mendenhall apparently didn’t want Adrian Peterson, who compared the NFL “modern-day slavery,” to feel lonely as the biggest idiot of the lockout so far. He reportedly tweeted, “Adrian Peterson is correct in his analogy of this game. . . . It is a lot deeper than most people understand. . . . Anyone with knowledge of the slave trade and the NFL could say that these two parallel each other.”
Actually, no, it’s not deeper than most people understand, nor parallel to slavery in any possible way.
• In the worn out debate over whether or not players should be paid, on Sunday morning Jay Bilas actually said, “So what?” when the point was made that players receive college educations. This may seem like a contradiction, and maybe it is, but as much of a disgrace as the comment was, the above has me finally agreeing that they should just abandon the amateur status of college athletes. It’s still hypocritical to blow off the idea that a college education has a value of a college education under the current system, because guys like Bilas are the first to bemoan schools not educating the kid who blows out a knee. But if that’s really the attitude, coupled with the NCAA’s obvious greed in expanding the tournament . . . the hell with it. Let schools sponsor teams, keep the athletes out of the classrooms, let the schools pay whatever they want to the athletes, and move on.
• To all of the sanctimonious coaches that don’t want to foul in the waning seconds of the game to avoid getting beat by a three-pointer, meet Louisville. Down 2, Moorehead simply held the ball and drained a trey with about two seconds left. Louisville started the game without a point for four or five minutes. Foul, and the worst case scenario was going to OT with an inferior team. Or, gamble the season on a kid who knows he has nothing to lose missing the shot.
• Tweet of the Week: It comes from Tim Kawakami, “Superstar lawyer David Boies joins NFL legal team per @judybattista. Well, there goes another $1B off the top.
• Is there pressure on Jay Wright now? Zero tournament wins this year, Big East and NCAA combined.
• I think it’s time for President Barack Obama to give up his annual air time doing a bracket. Four number one seeds in the Final Four?
• Is Temple the best team in the city? They’re the only ones still dancin’.
• The Sixers needed to do better than 2-2 this week after beating Boston on Friday night, followed by Milwaukee, Utah, and the Clippers.
• Halfway through March the Flyers have 3 wins for the month. I think we can stop planning that parade.
• It took less than a week of being locked out for NFL players to say something stupid. I mean, we knew it was coming, but it took less than seven days! C’mon, guys, pace yourselves. Rashard Mendenhall apparently didn’t want Adrian Peterson, who compared the NFL “modern-day slavery,” to feel lonely as the biggest idiot of the lockout so far. He reportedly tweeted, “Adrian Peterson is correct in his analogy of this game. . . . It is a lot deeper than most people understand. . . . Anyone with knowledge of the slave trade and the NFL could say that these two parallel each other.”
Actually, no, it’s not deeper than most people understand, nor parallel to slavery in any possible way.
• In the worn out debate over whether or not players should be paid, on Sunday morning Jay Bilas actually said, “So what?” when the point was made that players receive college educations. This may seem like a contradiction, and maybe it is, but as much of a disgrace as the comment was, the above has me finally agreeing that they should just abandon the amateur status of college athletes. It’s still hypocritical to blow off the idea that a college education has a value of a college education under the current system, because guys like Bilas are the first to bemoan schools not educating the kid who blows out a knee. But if that’s really the attitude, coupled with the NCAA’s obvious greed in expanding the tournament . . . the hell with it. Let schools sponsor teams, keep the athletes out of the classrooms, let the schools pay whatever they want to the athletes, and move on.
• To all of the sanctimonious coaches that don’t want to foul in the waning seconds of the game to avoid getting beat by a three-pointer, meet Louisville. Down 2, Moorehead simply held the ball and drained a trey with about two seconds left. Louisville started the game without a point for four or five minutes. Foul, and the worst case scenario was going to OT with an inferior team. Or, gamble the season on a kid who knows he has nothing to lose missing the shot.
• Tweet of the Week: It comes from Tim Kawakami, “Superstar lawyer David Boies joins NFL legal team per @judybattista. Well, there goes another $1B off the top.
• Is there pressure on Jay Wright now? Zero tournament wins this year, Big East and NCAA combined.
• I think it’s time for President Barack Obama to give up his annual air time doing a bracket. Four number one seeds in the Final Four?
• Is Temple the best team in the city? They’re the only ones still dancin’.
• The Sixers needed to do better than 2-2 this week after beating Boston on Friday night, followed by Milwaukee, Utah, and the Clippers.
• Halfway through March the Flyers have 3 wins for the month. I think we can stop planning that parade.
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