My
favorite part of March Madness were those self-serving commercials the NCAA
loves to run, about the student-athletes who get out of bed at five in the
morning to work on the balance beam and then stay up past midnight to tackle
the big paper. What a joke. What about a commercial showing a different
bunch of NCAA athletes, the ones who get stinking Saturday-night drunk and/or
sport neck tattoos? The camera could
zoom in to show “Citius-Altius-Fortius” inked in Latin across an adam’s apple.
For
no particularly sane reason, I’ve volunteered to score the Elmhurst softball
games this spring. Yesterday, we traveled
to North Park College on the northwest side of Chicago. Two teams played before a crowd of 34
people. Where was the NCAA to film the
kids showing their love of the game in the 41-degree chill and mist?
Today,
Michele and I are driving up to Madison to watch Valpo take on the U of W (a
nice working definition of parental love, that). The crowd may be a little bigger, but I don’t
expect to show up in the background of another student-athlete promo. The NCAA only cares about its image when
commercial time is at a premium. That’s
next to never in D III and not often in D-I women’s sports. For that matter, baseball doesn’t draw a
whole lot of attention, either. And that’s
just fine by me. Leave the hypocrisy for
the big and the tall.
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