by Kent Sterling
Isiah Thomas has done a hell of a lot with his life – all of it following his career as a player has fallen short of the expectations of the employers who have sent him packing. He was a fierce competitor on the floor, graceless in defeat and jubilant in victory.
Florida International University fired Isiah today, not surprising given his record there – 26-65 in three years. He allegedly campaigned for other positions while under contract, and there was not discernible progress from his arrival to his exit.
While Isiah’s termination shocked only him, the thing that will shock everyone but him is that he will be hired again by someone to run something. Success as a player doesn’t necessarily bring similar results in a suit. Just ask Isiah’s rival Michael Jordan.
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Tiger Woods looks concerned, and that’s not good for golf. Gone are the days when that swagger caused contemporaries to concede they were playing for second. The aura that gave all those watching the notion that Tiger knew something no one else did has faded into ordinary.
That’s what happens when a supremely successful adolescent decides to become a man of balance and decency. Tiger acknowledged the error of his ways, and decided to modestly address them. Uh-oh.
Imagine Donald Trump looking in the mirror and concluding that he is an asshole who needs to moderate his self-righteous bloviation, thinking, “My God, maybe I should admit that what I know about humanity isn’t any more profoundly accurate than anyone else. I’m just so damn loud and obnoxious that people assume I know what the hell I’m talking about.” Trump would be ruined.
We don’t have any use for an ordinary Donald Trump, and while Tiger might be a better father and man after intense therapy, his golf has suffered irreparably. You can’t crack open the noggin of greatness, rewire it, and hope for similar results.
He will win as often as most of the other winners, but the days of Tiger on the prowl are over. The shadow he casts at Augusta is the same size as the others. He may win again, but when winning off the course became as important as winning on it, he became ordinary.
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Kentucky won the NCAA Basketball Tournament, and if anything positive can come from it, it’s the conversation that has been brought into focus that college football and basketball are a sham. To continue to view these kids, all of whom dream of playing in the NFL and NBA, as amateur ‘student-athletes’ is ludicrous.
Bob Costas hosted a phenomenal town meeting on NBC Sports Channel (unfortunate no one is aware of the show or the network) discussing NCAA basketball with luminaries like Jay Bilas, Sonny Vaccaro, Frank Martin, and many others. There were many solutions advanced, but all agreed on the problem – kids deserve cash for generating over $6 billion each year for the NCAA and its member schools.
How in the hell can a scholarship for an education many kids don’t want or need to deemed acceptable compensation for their role in filling the pockets of so many coaches and administrators. When Michael McNeely was hired as the director of athletics at Indiana University in 2001, reports shortly thereafter claimed McNeely spent over $400K to remodel his office.
Sure, the AD gets fancy digs, but the kids have to fend for themselves for Sunday dinner and at Abercrombe at College Mall. Not that the ADs don’t deserve a legitimate salary, but that the people doing the toiling 60 hours a week to prepare to play, play, and travel get an opportunity to major in what their coach decides is the ‘right’ educational path to allow for them to reach their zenith as competitors.
Does anyone really think that Nick Saban is going to encourage an academic path that will force an Alabama football player’s attention away from the gridiron when his $6-million salary is at stake?
Jay Bilas told the story of his nephew who is the student body president at Kentucky. He receives $5,000 for his work in that role. Anthony Davis – THE reason Kentucky is going to hang a banner – gets nothing but one year of 100 level classes at a state university 379 miles from his Chicago home and a meal plan. That is assuming that no cash came from agents, a shoe company, or boosters.
Paying the kids whose work leads to all that money won’t turn off the illegal flow of cash to collegiate athletes, but it will start to make just the dispensing off the rewards for athlete success. And it might bring down the obscene salaries paid to those who are charged with imbuing young men with the behavioral skills needed to function as adults in an increasingly complicated world.
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I normally don’t watch “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO because his answers for complicated political questions are far too simple and reflexive to be taken seriously. The audience cheers any implication that republicans are buffoons, and laughs at cheap shots that fail to acknowledge any measure of circumspection.
Politics are boring to me because in truth, neither side is right. There are plenty of ways to view the world, and few allow for a determination of right and wrong.
That said, I watched most of the show last night, and the occasionally funny James Carville quoted former Georgia governor Lester Maddox when talking about the republican battle for the presidential nomination. Carville paraphrased, but the correct quote is, “We’ll get a better grade of prisons when we get a better grade of prisoners.”
That’s funny.
