11 New Year's Wishes for Sports

The universe owes us one. We will have thrust upon us at the beginning of this year by a comatose American electorate a sociopathic, clinically narcissistic, utterly unqualified, willfully ignorant, despicable, lecherous, shallow, juvenile, jackass-in-chief.*

I hope that wasn't payback for the Cubs and Indians in a thrilling seven-game World Series. Assuming the former was the common people knowing what they want and getting it good and hard, and the latter just good luck, it's only fair that one of the following occur this year to improve the sports universe.

1. Put the N-Scam-A-A out of our misery -- its member institutions admit that they are, in

collusion with various television networks, in the for-profit sports entertainment business. They agree to treat revenue generating sports -- big time football and men's basketball -- as the business franchises they are, bidding for players with actual cash and offering everyone who wants one a scholarship to matriculate and graduate like regular students. They maintain the limits on practice time and provide time for all athletes to attend classes, but in every other way continue to treat them like the employees they are. This is the only formula that allows the member institutions to move forward without lying through their teeth every day about their athletic programs.

2. Slash the NHL and NBA playoffs in half -- so that the regular season actually matters. With only the eight best teams qualifying, most every game will count.

3. Enforce MLB's rules designed to move the game along and limit the number of pitching changes. Committee meetings are stultifying, even when they take place on the mound.

4. Have a foreign network provide the telecast of the next Olympics to the U.S. -- It's not all about us.

5. Limit the NCAA hoops tournament to a league's best teams -- No team that loses more games in its conference than it wins should be allowed in the tournament, period. We'd all much rather see a 25-4 squad that lost in the Southern Conference semi-finals make the tournament than a 16-12 powerhouse that finished 10th in the ACC. The latter did not have a successful season and the former did, and they should be likewise rewarded.

6. Begin every televised NFL game with a warning to fans: Though the officiating will not be perfect, it doesn't matter. Luck is 30% of the game. Don't sweat every call; don't worry about three inches that can't be discerned without super slow motion, stop action and three camera angles. Enjoy today's action by freakish athletes who are maiming and killing themselves for your entertainment.

7. Sometimes, tell replay to shut the @#$%&! up -- Baseball players who dive safely into a base but bounce over it while still being tagged shall be deemed safe. That's not what replay was for.

8. Eliminate crappy bowl games -- Division 1A college football post-season contests played in

Detroit, Birmingham or Charlotte, or featuring contestants with losing records in their conference, may not be called "bowls." Instead, each of these contests shall be called the "NIT," as in, the "Pinstripe NIT" and the "Armed Forces NIT" to distinguish it from a real bowl game. There shall be 12 bowl games, -- the Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Peach, Outback, Citrus, Sun, Alamo, Music City and Liberty -- pitting only ranked teams or league champions.

9. Remove the remaining dolts from baseball coverage -- Require everyone requesting a press credential to a Major League Baseball game to pass a test demonstrating that they understand why the old measurements no longer pass muster.

10. Screw the plane. Get into the end zone for a touchdown.

11. Admit it already: sports gambling is legal. They scroll stats under football games for fantasy league players and list point spreads in newspapers. Every office and bar advertises an NCAA tourney bracket. Forty-nine states participate in lottery operations. Your bookie is just a click away. So let's ditch the self-righteous hypocrisy and end the remaining prohibitions. Good idea? You bet.

* This blog remains non-partisan. This is not an endorsement of the other major party's nominee, who, though qualified and generally adult, was also a miserable candidate. Contrary to what the news media told you during its 25/8/366 coverage of the election, there were actually more than two candidates for president, one of them an actual Republican, all of whom more qualified, mature and dignified than the ultimate victor.

A Foundation of Hypocrisy

There's been a Hurricane of discussion about cheating in college athletics following a report, complete with documentation, that the entire city of Coral Gables has been consorting with a professional scumbag and violating NCAA rules -- not to mention the bounds of good taste -- for most of the last decade. 

These allegations are not shocking; they are inevitable. Major Division 1 sports programs make seven- and eight-figure profits on their men's football and basketball teams, not to mention the millions in alumni support that follows. In addition, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of lackeys, hangers-on wannabes and of course TV networks with opportunities to participate in the monetary orgy by spreading their largess advantageously.

That there has been massive cheating recently in revenue sports, that there is now and that there will be in the future is as mundane as old slippers. We'd better not hear any self-righteousness from any other BCS-level sports program. Their time will come.

Sports talk radio has been abuzz with solutions for the NCAA to implement, but they are all about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The NCAA is the problem. 

The simple, underlying truth is this: The entire structure of the student-athlete industrial complex in men's basketball and football is built on a foundation of hypocrisy. Division 1 men's football and basketball programs are not extracurricular activities; they are for-profit minor-league sports arms of their universities. Their sole purpose is to fund other activities at their schools and to drum up alumni support. As long as the NCAA -- or anyone else -- attempts to regulate revenue sports as if they are merely part of the fabric of the schools for which they raise money, they will continue to fail utterly.

In case you doubt that revenue sports are simply for-profit minor league sports franchises whose purpose is to generate profits for their sponsoring institutions -- does anyone still? -- ask yourself these questions: Why are college football and basketball coaches the highest paid state employees in most states? How do college-age athletes who can hardly read, but who make quarterbacks weep, get into some of the great universities in our country? Why do football and basketball seasons overlap into Christmas break, final exams week and even beyond the academic year? If football and basketball players aren't employees of their teams, why can't they hold jobs while they are undergraduates? (They are often the students most in need of paying jobs.)

Like someone in psychotherapy, the first step to change for the NCAA is to admit the problem. The very instant universities acknowledge that they are running for-profit minor league sports franchises their issues go away. The players can work as minor league athletes without falsifying transcripts, attending phony classes, paying stand-ins to take tests or generally acting like the scholars they aren't. The exchange of money will move above the table, draining it of its corruptive abilities. Boosters and other human annoyances will be free to throw around their coercions with reckless abandon and no once will care.

Some complain that under a more honest system, the richest schools will pay the highest wages and get all the best players. Pish. The richest schools already pay the highest wages and get all the best players. The payments are either under the table or in non-monetary form: peak athletic instruction, pipelines to professional sports rosters, TV exposure, bowl game travel, top quality training facilities, shiny new stadiums and arenas, etc. 

Others bemoan the demise of the student athlete. But nothing about this system prevents schools from providing college scholarships as part of the package. Nothing prevents them from agreeing to limit practices to non-class hours. 

The bottom line is that the current system doesn't work because it's a gigantic, steaming pungent pile of lies. Admitting the truth would make all of the corruption disappear. Poof! In revenue sports, as in most of the rest of life, honesty is the best policy.

b