Give Me the Pros

In what will be remembered as a classic national championship game, Kansas came back from a nine-point deficit with 2:12 remaining to force overtime and then defeated Memphis 75-68. I will remember it as a thoroughly dreadful debacle of a title bout, void of quality play, intelligence, maturity, and entertainment value. I will end up remembering it as another negative turning point in my appreciation for NCAA sports.

There was a time when college football was my favorite sport to watch. The CU Buffs were consistently eating at the top of the food chain and had a fantastic rivalry with the Nebraska Cornhuskers; the big games were mostly on CBS and ABC on Saturday afternoons where and when I could watch them (we didn’t get cable till I was in high school); the Daily Camera did a good job with their college football coverage. Eventually I realized college football’s postseason was a farce, archaic and preposterous, so nonsensical that it rendered following the game frustrating and pointless. Imagine reading 500 pages of Faulkner, only to pause a month and a half right before getting to the climax, then reading a final chapter written by Danielle Steel. That is college football.

This past season, in fact, was the wildest in the history of the sport, but its ending was so random, convoluted and disattached that no one cared about or remembered the conclusion.

Unlike college football, college basketball has an efficient and logical system for ending its season and determining a champion. The most casual of fans are drawn into March Madness – it’s fast-paced and to the point, and the ingenious bracketing and seeding puts nonchalant fans on the same ground as hardcore viewers.

Gradually I have become frustrated by the weaknesses of college basketball. It’s not fair to compare it to the NBA, but it can’t be avoided. It is hard not to view major conference college basketball as an unofficial development league for the NBA. This national championship game featured Derrick Rose of Memphis, likely to bolt college in a few days to be the #2 pick in the next NBA draft. Memphis also has a host of potential bargain-bin NBA backup types, players like Chris Douglas-Roberts, Joey Dorsey, and Shawn Taggart. Most of the Kansas Jayhawks have NBA aspirations. Probably 5 or 6 of them will end up there.

But the college product is so inferior to the NBA. There are players like Rose who will eventually be studs in the NBA, but would hardly be useful right now. Even the best players, like last year’s national player of the year Kevin Durant, come into the league no better than the average player. The most entertaining and likable of the college stars, players like Dee Brown, Adam Morrison, and Stephen Curry, may not even make it in the pros. The NBA is a collection of freaks, and once you watch enough sports and grow older and all ideas of imagining yourself competing anywhere near that level have gone out the window, you really come to appreciate those freaks. You wouldn’t think it, but watching someone like Dwight Howard dunk just gets better and better with age.

It should also be remembered that Memphis coach John Calipari, one of the best in the college game, was a complete failure in the NBA with the New Jersey Nets, much like Rick Pitino, Mike Montgomery, Leonard Hamilton, etc. The NBA standard is just so much higher.

The trouble with a game like Memphis against Kansas is that it comes off as an NBA game without the NBA quality. I know I’ll see most of those guys in the big leagues, but none of them (except Rose, who played poorly in the championship) will be stars. I also know that most of those guys don’t give a flying fuck about the education. If they did, they probably wouldn’t have chosen to use a full scholarship on Memphis or Kansas (personally I would have chosen Duke, Stanford or Davidson), they probably wouldn’t be majoring in sports and leisure management, and they wouldn’t leave for the NBA before graduating. Finally, I know modern college basketball is surrounded in shady dealings.

There are always nice stories like Davidson in college basketball, but in the end these teams always lose to the Kansases and North Carolinas. The best college basketball teams are the ones that have players who came there with the end goal of reaching the NBA; that’s the inherent problem with the game.

If I want to watch an NBA game, I’ll watch an NBA game. When I don’t have a Davidson to root for, it just feels like watching a development league. The NBA has its problems too, of course – but it’s so much more hygienic without the mirage of education, with the knowledge that these men are professionals and are treated as such.

The national championship game was one of the dreariest, most depressing games I can remember watching. It was played poorly from start to finish, both teams making far more sloppy mistakes than good plays. Stupid fouls plagued both teams, including a late one on senior Joey Dorsey that may have cost Memphis the game. Both teams shot the ball poorly and turned the ball over continually. It was a gloomy reminder that most if not all of these players will soon be forgotten.

The greatest pleasure I got from this game was a perverse satisfaction watching Memphis, so celebrated as the best team to ever shoot free throws so poorly, blow all those big ones when it mattered. This was a game that was lost, not won.

The NBA Playoffs start in less than two weeks.