Priorities

In my previous post, I pondered the possibility of our relentless tuition hikes somehow ending up in the hands of Alabama football coach Nick Saban. This is what's known as a rhetorical question; a question one poses without really expecting an answer.

So it was interesting that a related story emerged shortly thereafter.

College football fans will recognize the University of Nebraska as a traditional gridiron powerhouse. But the gluttony of twelve-win seasons, high-profile bowl games and season-ending finishes among the collegiate top ten that used to constitute the diet of Cornhusker fans hasn't been a thing since Tom Osborne's retirement following the 1997 season.

Don't get me wrong. There have been plenty of fine seasons in the nearly quarter-century since. But the Nebraska Cornhuskers haven't provoked terror in the hearts of opponents since the Clinton administration. And if that weren't bad enough, the 'Huskers have enjoyed just one winning season in the last seven. Their five-straight losing seasons is something not seen in Lincoln since the late-fifties and early-sixties.

So yes. All things being relative, this is a program in need of a pick-me-up.

And Scott Frost was the coach entrusted to do that. But the thing is, only one Nebraska football coach has a worse won-lost percentage. And a chorus of impatient fans, nervous alumni and (I presume) a toxic media have been begging for his removal. Following a home loss to decided underdog Georgia Southern, this has come to pass.

None of this is much of a surprise, is it? Especially given the elevated expectations Nebraskans have for their football team.

But what is fascinating is that had the University waited until October first, the penalty for the early-termination of Frost would've been cut in half, from fifteen-million dollars to seven and-a-half. But what's $7.5 million-dollars to a humongous university?

A national championship is not at stake. Nor is a season that would find the 'Huskers winning as often as they lost. What's the big rush? 

There isn't one. At least, not one a sentient human being would understand. But I think we have a window into the kind of thing mad tuition money often fuels.

Thankfully, tomorrow's gifted electrical engineer or barrier-breaking medical researcher is being denied access to higher education for a good reason. Ditto a nurse, an urban planner or an accountant. And that reason is the restoration of a football program.

It's the pattern we see in many aspects of life these days. Self-serving ego, shortsightedness and display overriding the more understated virtues of purpose, long-term growth and commitment to the greater good. 

But that's so easy to do when the money you're spending isn't yours, isn't it?

Sudden Loyola-ty

Basketball is a beautiful game made ugly by ego. 

In its purest form, it requires only getting the ball to the guy who's open; the guy with the best shot. Done consistently, this will yield an equal-opportunity offense more difficult to defend than the one commandeered by a single player.

And every once in a while, a team capable of this emerges.

In a game better known for egocentric displays of showmanship comes five players who understand and embrace the beautiful simplicity and inherent wisdom of ball movement and spacing.

Not to mention a coach capable of selling it to them.

There are no stars. No celebrity-based sizzle. No whispers of going high in the draft or of guaranteed contracts. Just five guys who win.

The opposition is forced to defend the entire court as opposed to a five-by-five-foot patch inhabited by a me-first superstar driven to take on three opponents every time down the floor in a gambit the house wins nine times out of ten.

(Think Kobe Bryant or a pre-championship Michael Jordan.)

Sharing the ball might lack the adrenaline-spike of a LeBron James dunk over two hapless defenders. But when that dunk is on the losing end of a final score, who really cares? There is nothing spectacular about ending the day with an 'L'.

It's a joy to watch ball movement. It's a joy to watch the team with the ball make the team without the ball rotate until they miss. Or get picked. Then it's ba-BAM! Two points.

Run 'em til they're ragged, indeed.

And on defense, they rotate. They fight through screens. They keep their hands up. They work. They suffocate the opposition's offense. They are a thick, wet woolen blanket. To their opponents, they are no fun.

Earlier in this century, the NBA ran a series of promotional spots that utilized slow-motion isolation of the routine plays that occur in every game: a perfectly-executed bounce pass. A gorgeous give and go. An ankle-breaking crossover dribble.

And of my turnaround jumper.

(OK. Kidding.)

They were brilliant. They were inspired. They illustrated the abundant and poetic beauty to be found in the most-basic, everyday elements of the game. Of beauty flashed before our eyes and gone before we could fully take it in. 

So before this meandering post goes on any longer, let me say that team ball is beautiful. Team ball has rhythm. And that team ball rocks—and rolls.

Go Ramblers!

A Potpourri of Peevishness

What a month. And that's not even counting the personal drama.

First off, Martin Shkreli has been arrested. Is it really a surprise that a bag of shit from Wall Street would turn a pharmaceutical business into an extortion racket? Or that the hedge fund he once managed wasn't exactly above board?

No wonder Bernie Sanders has an audience.

A year and-a-half after her conviction, the execrable Heather Mack has suddenly remembered why she had her boyfriend whack her mom in the head with a blunt object and stuff her body in a suitcase: mom was stealing her inheritance.

In an attempt to prove she has a particle of humanity left, Mack expressed the wish that in spite of mom's sticky fingers, she hopes the deceased is resting in peace.

Only because of you, Heather. Only because of you.

Then there's the once-honorable college football bowl game.

In the everybody-gets-a-trophy fashion that is, well, fashionable right now, the NCAA seems unable to resist adding a few more every year, even past the point of relevance. (Not that football fans would know the difference.)

Unless you're journeying to one because it's being played in a locale where wind chill is defined as what happens when the air conditioning hits you after you step out of the shower, I pity you.

Finally, is anyone disturbed by the sight of our electronic media further corrupting our electoral process by relentlessly airing the latest episode of What Did Donald Say Today?, as opposed to kinda-sorta discourse on actual issues?

Or coverage of those other candidates from that other party?

The Republican party has willingly turned its nominating process into a circus side show, and I say fine. Great. Whatever. But by breathlessly broadcasting every syllable Trump spews into a TV camera, the media are aiding and abetting his cheapening of the process.

What's that? The ratings and the advertising revenue are off the charts?

Oh, okay.

Leave it to us to put a price on what was once priceless.