In a couple of weeks, when a new men’s college basketball champion is crowned, CBS will air its annual montage of tournament highlights over a song called “One Shining Moment.”And you can bet that one of those moments will be the one where Georgia State coach Ron Hunter having already torn his Achilles tendon celebrating his team’s entry into the 68-team field the previous Sunday, fell off the office chair rigged for him to roam the sidelines.
You’ll also undoubtedly see the moment where Hunter and his son, R.J., the star player on the Georgia State team, embrace after the Panthers’ Saturday loss.
Those two vignettes and all the buzzer-beaters and crying piccolo players and dazzling end-to-end lay-ups are all part of what many consider the best annual moments in American sports. To get to the shining moments, however, you have to step through the sleazy ones, which, don’t get the same kind of coverage, but are critical to your understanding, if not your enjoyment.
Take the moments where academic pursuits are virtually ignored in the name of athletic glory, or, did you really think the young men and women who don the colors of your alma mater are actually going to class during all of this?
Just Sunday night, for instance, the Maryland and West Virginia men’s teams did battle in a game that tipped off in Columbus, Ohio at 8:40 p.m.
Think about that, for a moment. Two teams, whose campuses are located deep in the Eastern time zone, played each other in a game, also in the East, that would not end before 11 p.m. That may have kept you up late, but think of what it did to the quote student-athletes.
The Terps and Mountaineers would likely not leave the arena before, say, 1 a.m., and probably wouldn’t get back home before 3 or 4 a.m., so, with a decent attempt at sleep, any thought of making a class before noon, would probably be out of the question.
In order to enjoy this madness of March, you also have to ignore the incidents of academic fraud being perpetrated.
Already, the NCAA hammer has come down on Syracuse, which took itself out of this year’s tournament and whose vaunted coach, Jim Boeheim, will be suspended for nine games next year.
And there’s wide-spread speculation that North Carolina may have to vacate its 2005 title amid reports of rampant examples of systemic and ongoing academic dishonesty.
Then there’s the money and there is a lot of it to go around in this tournament. The NCAA is getting more than $700 million of CBS and Turner’s dollars to air this year’s games.
Companies are ponying up millions to be the official soft drink, automobile and even ladder of the tournament. And the coaches are drawing million dollar plus salaries to mold and guide young minds through these perilous three weeks and beyond.
Yes, everyone is getting paid except the people who make it possible, the players.
These are definitely shining moments, so long as you don’t ask where the shinola comes from.