Super Bowl Week is here, and I have one thing to say:
I don’t appreciate all the attention being paid to this “first neutral-site championship being held in Las Vegas” narrative that’s going around, with all the focus on the transformations around how we approach sports betting as a society. I was told, by Cinema, that being really cool means being really exclusive. There’s an estimated 330,000 people going to Las Vegas for this thing. The NIT brought about 1% of that number to town.
College Sports Needs a World War
There’s been a lot of talk of Civil War online lately, which is a funny sentence to type. “All these politics losers who spend all day on Twitter on their iPads are talking about fighting people.” Anyway, this—combined with the SEC and Big Ten kicking the ACC and Big 12 out of their dinner party rotation—has me thinking:
Should college sports have a World War?
My guess is that this would have to be the SEC vs. Everybody Else, with a few rogue states (Washington State and Oregon State, most plausibly) joining the axis in exchange for the promise of riches if it turns out well. It might help, though. From what I know, the last time humanity tried it, we had to do it twice, but after the second go-round we got forty years of fears of nuclear war followed by fifteen years of a fairly peaceful situation followed by it all backsliding towards hell again. What I’m getting out of that is that when a mess is too big to unravel, you should start a World War. In exchange for the misery, you will have a happy 15% of your future 100 years. (We’re going to talk about a similar approach in the D Block today.)
NIT or NOT
A few NIT-adjacent results from the weekend, and whether they point towards the NIT or away from it:
- Kentucky keeps losing: NOT. The quantity is rising a little, but it’s not as high as it feels like it is, and the quality of the losses is mostly fine.
- Indiana keeps losing: NOT. Indiana has been too bad to make the NIT. This isn’t 2019, folks. The Big Ten isn’t great anymore.
- Penn State won two road games in a row: NIT. There’s a big caveat here, which is that the Nits had a horrible start to the holiday season, but if they can steal a few down the stretch, they could be in the mix. At long last, they’re moving in the right direction. Sneaky auto-bid contender.
- St. John’s got smoked by UConn: NOT. The Johnnies aren’t there yet, but they do have some attractive opportunities coming up. While their overall win–loss is in the NIT range, they still have to play DePaul and Georgetown each twice. Lose one of those four and we might start talking.
- Providence broke Villanova’s losing streak: NIT. Honestly, with Bryce Hopkins out, an NIT berth would be a pretty great result even by conventional evaluations for first-year Kim English.
- Texas won another road game: NOT. I don’t think we’re getting the Horns, guys. I hate to say it, but that’s how it appears.
Do the Bulls Have a Bankruptcy Option?
The Bulls are in a hopeless position. One of the most hopeless in all of professional sports. Let us count the ways.
They are the most medium member of a league that rewards being one of the best teams and rewards being one of the worst teams and does not reward being anywhere in between those poles.
They have an impressively stupid front office, but it might be better than the last one and it was hired by an owner who is always liable to hire Tony La Russa for any open job, making it unlikely that any replacement would be an improvement.
They chose to build a roster around a luxury scoring accessory, defying economic fundamentals by giving out what was already possibly the worst max contract in NBA history only to see the guy get hurt. Now, they’re stuck with Zach LaVine and his price tag for another three and a half years.
Given all of this, I would like to make a proposal:
What if there was a bankruptcy option for pro sports teams, but one in which the currency was hope? The Bulls could disband, buy out all the contracts, and get a clean slate. Do an expansion draft. Get a fresh salary cap situation. Just a big fat do-over. Given all the other gimmicks the NBA tries, I think we might have a chance here.
Etc.
ToNITe:
- Kansas State, Miami, and Virginia are our three teams in action tonight. Not a bad crew. K-State hosts KU, Miami’s at Virginia. Best Big Monday of the year? (Did they stop calling it Big Monday? I’ve been getting funny looks with this.)
Chicago:
- Bulls lost.
Joe Kelly, Burnley, and the Sens:
- Brady Tkachuk was the Sens’ lone all-star and he made the most of it (I assume). He was on Team Hughes. Scored a goal.
- The Burnleys mounted a furious comeback against Fulham to at least get a point on Saturday. Things remain grim, but by going down 2–0 early, the lads managed expectations effectively. That’s all you can ask for.
- I’m unfamiliar with the PosCast, a podcast hosted by Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur, but the aggregator industrial complex has alerted me that Dave Roberts was a guest on it last week and talked about Joe Kelly’s remarkable mindset. Our guy knows himself. Socrates would be so proud.
