by Kent Sterling

Moments like this against Kentucky are consigned to the dusty bins of history now that Cal has weaseled his way out of the IU vs. UK series.

Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari won a National Championship, and decided to flex his muscles by picking up his ball and going home.

People achieve some success, and they get to decide to stop doing those things they feel are unpleasant, and the prospect of the Wildcats losing at Rupp Arena against a loaded Indiana team was a little bit too much for Calipari to bear.

Kentucky will re-load as always, and barnstorm with their freshmen rentals who enjoy life in Lexington for seven months while awaiting eligibility for the NBA Draft, but Cal’s intractable reluctance to continue a series that has been an annual rite of passage since Rupp dueled Knight for bragging rights will rob those kids of a entertaining challenge.

There used to be a great rivalry between those two states whose basketball traditions outpace all others.  The high school all-star series devolved into a farce years ago as youth basketball in Indiana has exploded.  The college rivalry languished for years as IU’s signature program withered under the putrid and sinister lack of leadership of Mike Davis and Kelvin Sampson.

Now, as the Hoosiers emerge from their self-induced slumber, John Calipari is content to turn his back on history, and the most challenging opponent on their schedule.  There is a word for that – cowardice.

Indiana fans will miss the game because in the midst of a non-conference schedule filled with D-1 bottom feeders, the Kentucky game provided a meaningful test.

Kentucky fans will miss the game because they hate Indiana basketball, and because on many occasions it gave them a chance to blather and crow about their superiority as a basketball program.

Cal robbed the kids of a chance to battle, and the fans of their joy in mocking the Hoosiers.

I’ll miss the fun of pointing out the obvious flaws in the Kentucky way of exploiting an idiotic NBA rule that mandates high school graduates spend a year in limbo before allowing kids to be draft-eligible.  By their own admission, at least in comments to posts here, Kentucky fans don’t give a damn about anything but winning – not the student half of student-athlete, not the methods of acquiring the hard-court services of a five-star recruit, and not the reputation of their program.

Just hang banners, baby.

And now when the going might get tough, the Wildcats get going.

Kentucky fans will side with Cal as they always do because he wins.  The first sign of trouble, and Cal will wonder where his friends went, just as Joe B. Hall and Tubby Smith did when the championship droughts both authored lasted too long for fans to tolerate.

Fans will say that the UK vs. IU rivalry is pointless because of the recent record between the teams.  Despite IU’s win last December, the five wins in Indiana’s past 22 efforts fueled the fire that the series had become irrelevant.  On the verge of both schools being ranked in the top five, Calipari decides to pull the plug.

Indiana is responsible for refusing to continue the series on a neutral court, and good for them for doing that.  This game should be played in front of the students, not the cigar chomping alums who like to preen around arenas as though their donation to the athletic fund provides the basketball, backboards, and jerseys.

College is about the students, and college basketball is about the players.  The players will miss this game more than the fans, although given that the incoming class of Kentucky freshmen likely can’t find Lexington on a map, it may not mean a whole lot.  That’s a problem for a different post.

For Indiana players, coaches, and fans, it will be missed because – let’s face it – these programs operate on different ends of the student-athlete continuum.  It might not be good vs. evil, but it’s certainly diligent vs. expedient.

When coaches believe they are more important than the players and school itself, decisions like this one are made.  When schools pay a coach more than $4-million per year while history professors like Kathi Kern make $95,000, what the hell is he supposed to think?  And when the core players are recruited each and every year, what coach can claim more importance.  Without Cal’s recruits next year, Kentucky would be lucky to win six games.

Want to know what Kentucky will be once Cal leaves – or is asked to leave?  Look at Memphis.

A great series will end because of the hubris and insecurity of a basketball coach not up to playing Indiana now that the rosters are roughly even.  Running from a fight doesn’t become Calipari.

by Kent Sterling

There is a major league reporter working on the Carmel Basketball Assault story, and I know it will be hard to believe, but he’s having trouble finding someone who knows what happened to come forward with anything resembling the truth.

Shocking.

The alleged victim has spoken, but without some measure of corroboration or denial, that really isn’t much of a story.

If you were in central Indiana a couple of years ago, you remember this unpleasantness.  Four Carmel High School varsity basketball players were accused by a younger member of the program of assault.  There were stories of heinous acts in the locker room used by the team, and then something horrid happened on a team bus as it returned from a game at Terre Haute North High School.

The same kid was allegedly held down and digitally raped.  That was the story, although no one would go on the record with it.  Four seniors were charged in two counties with several crimes, and the mayhem dissolved under a veil of silence despite healthy skepticism from the Indianapolis media.

There are still many more questions than answers, and the silence surrounding whatever happened is still unbroken.  But there is still interest in the truth, and some recent interest from a respected and substantial national network is digging to exhume whatever shred of decency might be left within those who have access to the truth and the stones to stand tall and say it out loud.

The buffoons running Carmel Clay Schools were never interested in the truth, only the maintenance of their careers regardless of the damage done to the district, students, and respect for the truth as a valued institution.  That these people are trusted to educated future generations of youngsters is beyond comprehension, but that is a gripe for a different day.

This is a plea for someone – whether it is one of the four kids who crossed the line between simple hazing and abject violence or someone sitting next to them as it happened – to tell the truth.  Whether the consequence is positive or negative, we live in a world where the truth matters.  With the landfill of obfuscation and deceit that comes from respected and wealthy scum in our society, this story allows a window for someone to tell the truth for the very best reason to do so – because it’s right.

Honesty is a concept that has withered in importance among the boobery who values material wealth over decency, and it’s time for someone to take a stand if only to remind the rest of the kids at Carmel High School that the truth will find a way to the surface despite the efforts of self-important and useless toads like Carmel Clay Schools superintendent Jeff Swensson to control the message and suppress it.

Adults who believe that reality doesn’t exist if no one reveals it are horror shows of human beings, and there is a young adult out there who can uncloak that amorality.  No amount of cash or stature can make the truth less valuable, and someone can make this right by talking.

There are those who are very happy to have this story continue its residence in the very backs of our minds, but by continuing to indulge in that silence, those who might illuminate what happened to that poor kid two years ago do a disservice to him, his family, and anyone who values honesty.

It’s time to trust and talk.

And this isn’t about vilifying the kids who perpetrated whatever happened.  In fact, I would be thrilled if one of them told their story.  Own your actions, and get on with your lives.  Stop listening to those who continue to live ensconced in the very ends-justify-the-means Watergate-esque fraud that permeates America’s financial and political landscape.

Email me at kentsterling30@me.com, and I’ll put you in touch with a person who will treat the truth with the respect it deserves.  If you want a story to truly die, tell it so we can put it behind us.  And as a wonderful side effect, make miserable those who continue to profit from your silence.

Carmel Basketball won a state championship a month ago, and they should be applauded for that, but when people think of Carmel hoops, the faces that pop to mind belong to the four players who were charged in the assaults.  That’s shameful, and only one thing can fix it.  The Truth.

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.

************

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.

************

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.

************

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.

by Kent Sterling

Lots to think about.  After spending a couple of weeks steamed over the state of college basketball – specifically the way the University of Kentucky sells out to put great freshman on the court for one year – it’s time to look at some other issues that all deserve some discussion.

********

The IHSAA staging a series of town meetings to discuss a change back to one-class basketball is as absurd as it is a waste of time.  There is no way that the IHSAA is going to act on the wishes of an aging group of angry men who yearn for a return to the golden era of the greatest basketball tournament in America.  It’s disingenuous scheme to coddle some well-meaning cranks who the IHSAA would like to shut up once and for all.

The change to a four-class tourney was foolish, wrong-headed, and the embodiment of the ‘everyone gets a ribbon’ society where mediocrity is rewarded on par with excellence, making the two indistinguishable to easily duped parents.  The female administrators who voted for it to try to drag boys basketball down in popularity to seemingly hoist girls athletics up in stature should have been outed for being dolts instead of being allowed to drive policy.

The days of “Hoosiers”, Milan, Plymouth, and Delta are long past, and it’s time to accept the bureaucratic silliness that ended the tournament that invited everyone, and let the players sort out who’s best.  Changing back is not a movement that administrators would embrace, and pining for it is a simple waste of time.

Show up for these dog and pony shows, if it makes you feel better, but a better use of your time would be to read a good book, hug your kids, eat a good meal, or catch a nice nap.

********

Tough to imagine what would prompt Kansas State to hire former Illinois coach Bruce Weber to take over for Frank Martin, who left to become the coach at South Carolina.  Fans in Manhattan are not happy, and why would they be?  They say it on the K-State Basketball message board better than I can:

Not cherry picking the negative.  As is usually the case on message boards, the post are all negative.  In this case though, what could be the positive?  After Bill Self left for Kansas, Weber had some success with his recruits.  Then, Illinois became entrenched in an unescapable mediocrity.

********

Indiana went to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time in a decade a couple of weeks ago, returns all five starters, and will welcome a heralded recruiting class.  Green grass and high tides, right?  Yep, but not without some growing pains.

There are only 200 minutes per game to be allocated to all these players, and that will cause some chafing.  An unwillingness to start freshmen will hurt Crean in recruiting, and starting a bunch of freshmen will disenfranchise kids who have busted their asses to rebuild Indiana.  Something or someone is going to have to give, and negotiating those choppy waters will be coach Tom Crean’s biggest challenge.

And what if Maurice Creek returns to health and Matt Roth decides to return.  You won’t be able to fit all the Indiana wings in a Ballantine Hall classroom.

********

Speaking of Bloomington, my wife, son, and I drove to the Bloomington Sportsplex last night to watch Ryan play in the semifinals and finals of a league tournament.  It seemed a little silly, but I still love watching Ryan play just as much as I did when he was a teenager.  He’s 23, and a college graduate, but watching him do things on the court successfully is joyous for Julie and I.

A bonus was that also on the team was Ryan’s best friend Kyle.  They played together from the fourth grade through the end of summer basketball and incoming high school seniors.  They always had this weird connection on and off the court from the first time they met.

There was an open house at Fishers Elementary before the start of fourth grade, and on the drive there, I wondered whether Ryan would ever find that one friend that would be the touchpoint for all the great memories of his youth.  After three years in that school he made some friends, but had not yet found that one kid.

Ryan wore a tanktop to the open house, and as we spoke briefly to his new teacher, Mrs. Jarrett, Ryan stood in the middle of the room.  Next to him was another kid we had never seen before – also in a tanktop.  They weren’t facing each other, but had the same posture and disconnected look on their faces.  I poked Julie and pointed.  I thought that had to be the kid.

For the next five years, they were classmates, teammate, and best friends.  They played for competing high schools, but always hung out together.  While a lot of people moan about the importance of athletics in a kid’s life, they need to understand that the most positive thing that comes out of them is the kind of friendship Ryan and Kyle enjoy.

Watching those two kids become men who still find time for each other and the game they love has validated all that is good about sports.  Last night was a bit of a valedictory.  They won the games, but more importantly, they played together again.  For two people in the nearly empty bleachers, it was a chance to smile and remember a time that will always be special, and rejoice in the occasional purity of sports and friendship.

by Kent Sterling

They guarantee victory against Indiana tonight, and the rest of the way in the tourney.  They say everyone does what they do.  They claim UK is every bit the university that Indiana University is.  They say that it doesn’t matter if the current Wildcats get their degrees or not because they are going to the NBA.  They say I’m an ass.

What they forget is that this is fun.  College basketball is a diversion for the student-athletes, not their primary purpose.  One of the reasons I love Fred Glass (the AD for Indiana), is that he and his staff developed the Excellence Academy, which helps develop the character and intellectual abilities of student-athletes.

To make a basketball program a player mill for the NBA is so fundamentally shortsighted, I am stunned that Kentucky fans don’t demand a more balanced perspective be employed in Lexington to provide kids much more than what they get for the $4+ million given to John Calipari in exchange for the oncourt excellence that dwarfs the development of adolescents into quality young men.

Hard to do that kind of heavy lifting in nine months.

I don’t pretend to know what will happen tonight in Atlanta.  I have no idea at all.  There is no doubt that Anthony Davis is the most dynamic defensive college basketball player in my memory.  His length and athleticism is very difficult to prepare for.  Back in the day, assistant coaches wandered around holding brooms to help acclamate players to dealing with a physical freak like Davis.  Now, I think coaches try to get the kid in foul trouble or run the offense away from him.

But this post isn’t about basketball strategy or who will win the game.  This is about doing what’s right on behalf of the kids who are entrusted to your care, and building a legacy of great adults.  For all his warts, Bob Knight did that.  Coach K has done that.  Countless others serve as lifetime role models and confidants for those they coached.  Some choose to serve as Blake, the Alec Baldwin character in “Glengarry Glen Ross”.

Just coach ‘em up so the wins come and your contract gets renewed.  That’s the job – make the cash register sing.

What a tragedy that a man requires a $4+ million reward for the privilege of mentoring 18-to-22 year olds.  Whether college athletics in big business or not, the job is to help educate kids.  Winning games is the price that alums demand for continuing to earn the right to do it, but the job itself is not to win games.

For writing all that because it’s what I believe to be true, Kentucky fans puke the kind of verbal bile that 20 years ago would have been hailed as a symptom of psychological derangement.  It’s part of the game in writing what I know to be true, and the consequence for wasting my time in trying to convince a selection of twits and tools that their way is morally bankrupt regardless of the outcome of a silly basketball game.

Too bad for the kids who play.  They are pawns for the schools, coaches, NBA, agents, alums, and virtually every other person with whom they come into contact.  The only representation they have at the tables where decisions are made is similar to what high school students have when they are elected to the student council, “Longer lunch periods, and teachers have to be cool, okay?”  Yeah, okay.

The schools that give the kids an honest leg up over their competition for job are to be applauded because their isn’t much money in that without wins.  The evil and decrepit souls who squeeze the talent teet of these kids until it’s dry and then toss him onto society’s scrap heap should be expelled from the profession forever.

Today, those guys get eight-digit extensions.

You want to know why America’s economy is squirrelly?  Coaches get millions.  Players get squat.  Money market managers get millions.  Retirees get bilked.

The poster child for this suspension of morality/flip the economic dynamic on its head in college basketball?  Yep, the same program so vehemently defended by ‘winners’ who see it as good business.

Enjoy the game tonight, but don’t forget to look up where these kids are in five years.  Kentucky fans, how about sending a check to Antione Walker who helped Kentucky to a National Championship in 1996.  He left school after his sophomore year for NBA riches.  He’s now broke and playing for the Idaho Stampeders of the NBDL trying to repay debt.

Nice legacy.

by Bert Beiswanger

After it was reported this past weekend in the Muncie Star Press that Ball State basketball head coach Billy Taylor would be retained, I couldn’t help but think…

At a recent tribute to legendary Ball State announcer, Morry Mannies, President Jo Ann Gora said the following:

“As president of Ball State University, I speak annually to many groups about the key role that intercollegiate athletics plays in bringing us all together. Athletic events are among the most integral to Ball State’s campus life, because they provide a way for everyone affiliated with the university — students, alumni, faculty and staff, parents, and community members — to share in a rich tradition and form bonds that last across the miles and throughout the years.”

Right now the only bonds being shared are the butts of 3,000 dispassionate fans and their seats. Yes, that’s the approximate average attendance at Ball State basketball games these days.

What’s worse than fans who are fed up? Fans who simply don’t care. I’m as big a homer for my school as there is and I admit, it’s starting to be a lot easier to be the latter than the former.

Athletic director Tom Collins is on the way out the door after resigning earlier this year, and it’s Collins who ultimately was left with deciding whether to keep Taylor after having the most disappointing season in recent memory, so we were told. Now, I’m not necessarily suggesting Taylor should have been fired (though, performances don’t lie), but do you think Collins was going to fire a coach on his way out the door? How could he possibly be in the position to make such an important decision?

I don’t trust the leadership of my university to make such important decisions right now.

This team was supposed to be poised for a run at the NCAA tournament. Anyone associated with the team would tell you that. They had the best big man in the MAC in Jarrod Jones and plenty of supporting talent.

And what was the result?: An embarrassing, horrific non-conference schedule that failed to prepare this veteran team for Mid-American Conference play. They fell flat on their faces. This team was as talented as any in the MAC, yet, I can’t think of a worse season-long performance, from the coaching down. There are plenty of documented obstacles the team had to overcome, but excuses only get you so far. The coach has to keep his team focused and prepared – often, the team wasn’t.

The problem is, I don’t trust this administration to make the right hire for anything – A.D., coach, you name it. This is the same administration that hired the complete disaster that is Ronny Thompson, who lasted all of one year before the university had to suck it up and pay him to go away quietly (if you’re not up to speed on this fiasco, just Google Ronny Thompson Ball State. BSU’s own, Jason Whitlock, covered it quite well).

You think Kelvin Sampson was bad? Ronny Thompson shredded an entire program in ONE year! And Ball State folks have no one to thank but Team Gora. Most A.D.s wouldn’t survive a debacle like this. But Tom Collins did, which really says all that needs to be said. Because if Tom Collins was responsible for hiring Thompson in the first place (any competent due diligence would’ve ended the pursuit of RT early on), one would think he would have been fired, right?

Right now, it’s Collins who is on his way out after resigning. He’s sticking around until June so, in theory, he got to make the call on whether Taylor stayed?…

Honestly, if I wasn’t crying right now, I’d be laughing.

Before hiring Taylor, the program was in such disarray and a laughing-stock,  from lack of pay to lack of morale in the athletic dept.  Attracting the next solid mid-major coach (like a John Groce, now at Ohio) wasn’t going to happen. The administration screwed up so bad with Thompson that Billy Taylor was a safe hire…decent track record but more importantly, outstanding class and character.

There was no way they were going to get the next Brad Brownell (a solid mid-major coach at UNC Wilmington who went to Wright State before ultimately landing at Clemson). The word was on the street: BSU doesn’t pay and the culture isn’t good.

Now understand, Taylor had to pull a Tom Crean. He basically had to gut the program and start all over. It was as if BSU and IU received death penalties. Taylor had to work with very little and had to re-build the many fractured relationships BSU had with state high school programs. While he was probably the right man for the job at the right time, it’s a very fair question as to whether he’s the man for the job moving forward, especially if there’s an ounce of weight in the words of President Gora that opened this column.

Before uninformed non-BSU fans look up Taylor’s records the last three years and think I’m being a little hard on him, understand that Ball State’s non-conference strength of schedule has gotten progressively worse. Actually, as I mentioned previously, it’s downright embarrassing. It was one of the very worst in the country. In addition, if the MAC West division (Ball State’s division) was its own conference, the champion would probably have drawn a 16 seed.

Also understand that, along with Taylor’s players rarely developing or improving, his teams collapsed. Two years ago, all Ball State had to do to win the MAC West and #2 seed in the conference tournament was win one of it’s last three games (including one against what was possibly one of the worst D1 teams of all time: Toledo). Ball State lost all three. Last year, Ball State was in a similar situation, but lost three of four down the stretch to lose the MAC West by one game. This year, the team lost nine in a row and here is what assistant coach Bob Simmons had to say at the time:

“The good news is we haven’t played our best basketball, yet.”

Whaaa???

Here is a short list of teams immediately ahead of Ball State in recent Sagarin ratings:

Wofford
North Florida
Louisiana Lafayette
Northeastern
Portland State

Wow; I knew there was a northern part of Florida…I just didn’t realize there was a North Florida in Division I basketball. But, hey, they’re ranked higher than my Cardinals so it’s a little hard for me to pile on them.

This was the fifth year of the Taylor regime and this was supposed to be a Western Division title contender and overall conference title contender. It was NCAA tournament or bust, and they failed by every measure.

It’s easy to blame it all on the coach. But in this case, that wouldn’t totally be fair. You know what they say about a fish rotting from the head down?

by Kent Sterling

Time to go back to the presses for tee shirt makers in Monroe County. The date changes to March 23rd, but the spirit remains.

Rarely does sport, outside the suite in Indianapolis where the pairings are decided for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, give fans so obvious and perfect a matchup of polar opposites.  Indiana vs. Kentucky is the Cold War of college hoops, and as Kentucky ponders abandoning the annual rivalry, the wonderful knuckleheads in Indianapolis decided to give fans one more bite at this apple.

Indiana, minus a two year abdication from 2006-2008, has embodied the purity of collegiate athletics that should be the standard at which all programs aim.  Kentucky, minus the Tubby Smith/Billy Gillespie era, has been a renegade program unafraid and unapologetic about doing whatever it takes to post wins for a fan base that values banners above all else.

Kentucky provides a comfortable purgatory for kids who are certain they are only one year from pursuing their NBA dreams.  Coach John Calipari prospers to the tune of four-plus million per year on the backs of kids who need someplace to cool their heels before being eligible for the NBA draft.

The draconian and racist NBA rule requiring a year of separation between the completion of high school and draft eligibility has been the best friend to a program that laughably portrays itself as an arm of an institution of something other than hoops glory.

There are exceptions to the rule, like Patrick Patterson who earned his degree, but the majority of the Wildcats go to Lexington because Calipari sends one-and-dones to the NBA like it’s his job – because it is.  The truth is that John Wall would have been the #1 player selected in the NBA Draft out of high school, and would have been #1 after the year of collegiate limbo had he enrolled at Wyoming, Drexel, or Coastal Carolina.

The same is true this year for Anthony Davis.  Michael Kidd-Gilchrist will likely be a top five pick.

Families looking for the big payday see the tidal wave of talent pouring from Calipari led teams, and they choose to buy into the bill of goods that he has something tangible to do with that success.  The other reasons for their pledging UK are up for discussion, but there is no doubt that Kentucky Basketball is about nothing other than Kentucky Basketball winning games and championships.  Look up the term “the ends justify the means” and there is a picture of Richard Nixon and a Kentucky Wildcat logo.

Indiana does it the right way.  Kids go to class.  They succeed in the classroom.  The academic facility used by Indiana student athletes speaks to the priority Athletic Director Fred Glass places on education.  Glass is dedicated to Indiana Basketball doing it right, and his edict that coaches adhere not only to the letter of the NCAA rulebook, but the spirit as well is made clear both in words and deeds.

The creation of the Excellence Academy is a great example of Glass’s vision for Indiana Athletics as an extension of the learning experience student-athletes enjoy in Bloomington.

Coach Tom Crean has recruited to Indiana a collection of great kids who talk about their plans after basketball with the same enthusiasm as they use when describing their basketball dreams.  These Hoosiers are great kids who are very good at basketball.

There are winners in basketball and there are winners in life.  Indiana is committed to helping build winners of young men who play basketball.  Kentucky is committed to winning basketball games.

The magnificence of athletics is that every once in a while, the good guys get a chance to show that rewards are occasionally earned by those who do it the right way against those who are successful only because they crave it enough to abandon all principle to get it.

Friday night provides just such an opportunity for Indiana Basketball.  Christian Watford’s three-pointer on December 10th was a flesh wound to a seedy and wicked dragon that must be slain in order for the good in collegiate athletics to flourish.  For 40 minutes on Friday, Indiana will have in its hands a dagger that if wielded correctly can permanently scar this insidious beast.

by Kent Sterling

The face of the city and franchise will be asked to leave his security card at the front desk tomorrow.

So the day that Colts fans dreaded most is nigh.  I never thought I would see it.  Peyton Manning is going to be waived tomorrow at a joint press conference that will do its best to portray the split as a mutual decision that is best for both parties.

It might be best for the Colts to say goodbye to Manning and hello to the $28 million bonus Manning was due Thursday if not for this hap-hap-happy divorce, and it might be best for Manning who has no desire to carry a clipboard for some rookie out of Stanford.

Jim Irsay, the guy who would have had to sign the giant check for Manning, says that the decision was not financially based.  Really?  Ezactly what brand of moron does Irsay take us for?

I’m not saying Irsay wouldn’t be willing to pay the best quarterback in NFL history for his services, but to say that the decision has nothing to do with financial consideration is ludicrous.  The ding (and continued dings) against the Colts salary cap is a hell of a good reason to waive Manning.  The pain of paying Manning $28 mil after paying him the big number for watching Curtis Painter and Dan Orlovsky lead the Colts to a league worst 2-14 record is another great reason.

That said, if any player in the history of the NFL has earned the right to part a team on his own terms, it’s Peyton Manning.  The list of tangible improvements to both the Colts and Indianapolis would fill its own post.  It would start with stadium, hospital, and not moving to L.A.

Manning has had four back surgeries, including spinal fusion makes him a tremendously risky wager for any team.

From a human perspective, when people talk about the physical consequence of a 320-pound man hitting Manning in the back at 21 miles per hour, anyone with respect or affection for Manning winces.  That isn’t the reason for the separation, and Irsay would never say it, but if not financial, and if not fear of watching Manning on a backboard in a horseshoe jersey, then why?

Does Irsay believe Manning can’t throw the football effectively?  Does he believe Andrew Luck will be an improvement over the best ever?  Is he anxious for the next chapter to begin?  As is usually the case, none of us knows what Irsay is really thinking, and we won’t get answers other than platitudes from both he and Manning tomorrow.

Manning wants to get back on the field, and Irsay doesn’t want him back on his field.  So they will hug tomorrow, and part ways.  That will give the Colts a bunch more money to rebuild their once-proud but foundering franchise, and Manning the freedom to be a potential short-term answer for a team a quarterback away from contention.

It seems we don’t know a lot, but we do know this – the NFL is a hell of a lot more fun to watch with Manning playing, and the potential for Manning to stick it to the Colts in a future matchup will make for great drama.

Tomorrow, we’ll be treated to Irsay orchestrated platitudes, and typical Manning obfuscations.  Next year, fans will hide their eyes every time Manning gets hit, wonder at his incredible skill, and await another season of match-ups between Manning and Brady and/or Manning and the team he brought from the bottom to respectability and near greatness.

Who’s right doesn’t really matter on the day when Manning says goodbye.  Someday, Irsay and the city of Indianapolis will honor Manning with a statue.  If size is a measure of what Manning has met to the team and city, it will dwarf the skyline.

by Kent Sterling

Kids, step right up and grab your ribbon - same as all the other ribbons identifying all of you as purely mediocre.

Every sectional week, the cries among the elderly and becoming elderly start ringing in the ears of the IHSAA’s headquarters on North Meridian Street – “BRING BACK THE ONE CLASS TOURNAMENT”.  No one in a position of power listens.

The change to four classes was made before the current seniors participating in the tournament began kindergarten, so they don’t remember the occasional madness that accompanied small schools to Indianapolis for their turn as descendants of Milan High’s great run in 1954.  They don’t care.  It’s important to them just as it is.

It probably never occurs to Indiana University bound Yogi Ferrell that his Park Tudor team might have a hell of a chance to make some history this year, if not for the silliness the IHSAA perpetrated 15 years ago.  Same was true last year for Big Ten Co-Freshman of the Year Cody Zeller.

And it’s too bad because it would have been very cool to for them to attempt and us to watch.

Adults have made a critical error in logic during this generation – because the chance to achieve greatness is so small, they have removed it in favor of a ribbons for everyone mentality that pushes everyone into an ever expanding middle where no one truly succeed and no one fails.

The flaw in the logic is that success and failure are truly the outcomes of winning and losing.  Anyone who graduated high school with a group that won a lot of games or a championship knows some from those teams who became highly functional adults, and others who died too young, went to jail, or both.

Four champions is not better than one, and 400 losers are not better than 403.  It’s not the winning and losing that matters, but how kids respond to a challenge.  Winning and losing are fleetingly relevant report cards for the effort made to compete.

By eliminating the opportunity to compete with all comers, the IHSAA sends the message that it’s the result that counts, and that’s as asinine as educators should be allowed to get.

It’s not about ticket sales, which truthfully aren’t too bad.  It’s not about trophies or Trester Awards.  It’s not about tears pouring from the eyes of those who invested countless hours honing their ball handling skills only to fall a little short, or the glee of those who succeed.

It’s about the message adults send to kids about winning being the measuring stick that separates great from pathetic because, after all, if we need to level the playing field, it must be winning that matters.  Seventeen year-olds making or missing shooting shooting a game deciding basket does not have a damn thing to do with whether a kid is going to be a great dad, son, employee, president, CEO, or postman, and to rig the game to allow more to win reinforces the opposite message.

The debate gets no more complicated than that.  Adults in positions of power believe it matters that 12 kids from a school with 200 students might be at a disadvantage playing against a school with 3,600.  No doubt that there is a disadvantage, but as we grow older as adults, we all faces massive challenges and disadvantages.  Wouldn’t it be nice if adults who are supposed to set an example for kids understood that it’s the effort to prepare and compete that defines us.

How we respond to failing is a little hard to discern when we are shielded from failure.  Life is difficult enough without bureaucrats removing meaningless obstacles from our paths.  The response to meaningful obstacles is often learned from our response to those that don’t change the world one little bit.

It’s shameful that school administrators would back a measure that confers a powerful misinterpretation of life’s meaning to impressionable young adults.

Bring back one-class basketball not because it matters to a bunch of people with little better to do than watch teens hoop, but because it doesn’t matter at all.  The Class of 2012 and beyond will figure that out soon enough with or without class basketball, but let’s not make it more difficult for them.

I love high school basketball as much as anyone.  New Albany’s run to the state championship game in my senior year was thrilling.  Watching my son play in four sectionals was the highlight of the year despite the results – all losses.  I watched HSE’s Gary Harris battle gallantly against North Central last year, and love watching the kid knock down a great half court shot to win a sectional game last week on ESPN every day since as the reigning play of the day.

That HSE ultimately lost against Carmel in the sectional championship doesn’t make Harris any less a warrior, and he’s smart enough to know that.  He’ll handle the disappointment as most functional adults do – by working hard in preparing for the next challenge.

Therein lies the great lesson of organized sports that is ignored by the dolts who insist on handing ribbons to participants, and leveling the field for schools facing a systemic disadvantage.

If one class basketball makes some old farts smile, all the better.

by Kent Sterling

IU Basketball Coach Tom Crean points, and the players follow.

There is a weird vibe to Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean.  He’s always seemed just a little bit strange to me – like he was constantly eager to prove to people that he knew what the hell he was doing, instead of just doing it.

Appearances are big with me.  Some coaches look like they are in control, and others look like they are trying to convince everyone that they are in control.  Others don’t bother.  They know they are overmatched, and decide cashing checks is the only act worth their time.  Crean always appeared to be in that middle group.

Tonight, as the Hoosiers thumped Michigan State 70-55, Crean looked like a guy who is very comfortable in his own skin, and very confident in his ability to get the best out of his players.

When I lived in Indiana and visited the Hoosiers many times, the players all looked me in the eye and spoke of their belief in one another, Crean, and the future of Indiana Basketball.  I would walk away puzzled.  This was a team that won only 28 games overall, and eight in Big Ten play.  Why would Jordan Hulls, Verdell Jones, Maurice Creek, Derek Elston, Victor Oladipo, Will Sheehey, and the rest of the Hoosiers walk around like they were on their way to an oasis in this desert of competitive poverty when there was sand to every horizon?

The answer always came back to Crean.  He sold the kids a bill of very goods.  They worked and worked and worked, and again and again they lost.  But they never lost faith.

The look in Oladipo’s eyes as he spoke about his love of his teammates was inspiring.  The way he spoke about his own ability was not cocky, but left no doubt that he knew something about the level of help he would bring.

With any kid, when you talk to him, you walk away either believing he is special or ordinary.  There was no doubt – none – that Oladipo was a special kid, and there was no doubt that he knew it.  To ascend from the valley Indiana has been in for three years to the heights of this season, kids better believe they are special.

Dan Dakich, who is the best analyst in the game, kept talking during tonight’s ESPN broadcast about how Oladipo played like he believed he was the best player on the floor.  He spoke the same way a year and a half ago before he played a game.  No arrogance, but the kind of confidence that can win championships.

That quiet matter of fact confidence was echoed by the rest of the Hoosiers.  There was never any talk about accepting the doormat status that Kelvin Sampson thrusted upon Indiana Basketball with his amoral indifference to NCAA rules and basic decency.

It was odd.  Either the Hoosiers had been gulping kool-aid Crean had been serving, and developed a collective psychosis based on the imaginings and dreams of a kook, or they were being led by a visionary who knew exactly what he was doing when he accepted the position as captain of a ship that was going to be fortunate to remain afloat.

His game plans have been seemingly complex, and he asserted himself into an equation his players might not have needed.  Tonight, Crean matched up Christian Watford on Keith Appling.  It worked.  He went to a 2-3 zone for three possessions, and then abandoned it.  He put Watford on Draymond Green in the second half, and while Green scored often, nothing Crean did took the game out of the kids’ hands.

The players, who seemed to trust Crean with little justification, were suddenly being trusted by Crean.  The reward was a win over the fifth ranked team in the country that was never in doubt.  The Hoosiers allowed the Spartans to cut the deficit from 16 to six before blowing it back up to the final 15 point margin.

Coaches and teams that pull on the same end of the rope tend to be successful in March, and as we are less than 28 hours from that wonderful month, the Hoosiers appear to be a group operating as one.

That is a credit to Crean, who put this team together, and most importantly kept them together.  He’s done the job of motivating, teaching, imploring, cajoling, and recruiting.  From where they came, that might have been one of the top five toughest jobs in college basketball history.

I’m still not sure I would want to sit down with Crean over a beer and talk about life, but as far as the coach I saw quietly and surely lead the Hoosiers tonight, I’m glad he saw something four years ago few others did when he took the job in Bloomington.

People are going to paint Indiana as some kind of Cinderella in a couple of weeks.  They sure didn’t look like a group searching for glass slippers tonight.  They wore work boots, like they have for almost four years.  And Crean is a hell of a good foreman.