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Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Thursday morning readaround
Bill Simmons, ESPN's self-appointed Sports Guy, has a plan to save Holy Cross.
Simmons shares his plan in a piece for ESPN The Magazine, where he laments HC not winning an NCAA Tournament game since 1953 and suggests the solution is, among other things, bringing in a new coach who is willing to cheat.
Not quite sure whether Simmons, who also did a stint writing for Jimmy Kimmel Live, is one of that well-recognized segment of Holy Cross alums who are still pissing and moaning about the school not joining the Big East, or a comedy writer using his alma mater for easy column fodder.
He starts the piece like the former, complaining, among other things, that joining the Patriot League ("a homeless man's version of the Ivy League") has turned HC "into a D1 school with a D3 mentality."
His suggested fixes sound more like a shot at the big time schools who will do anything to win.
Were we convinced he is serious, we'd take issue with some of the arguments he makes about his alma mater's program. We'd argue that Ralph Willard has done a helluva job and that any alum not proud of the program should have graduated from someplace like Memphis, where winning is more important than graduating.
We'd also point out HC was not exactly setting the hoops world on fire when it joined the Patriot League. We'd mention that as a 1992 grad, the glory he longs for is not from his days on Mt. St. James, but from days before he was even born. We'd remind him that the Crusaders had been to the NCAA Tournament exactly twice in the period between Ike Eienhower's second inauguration and his last undergraduate kegger (and not once in his four years as a student, although there was an NIT loss his sophomore season).
Simmons also whines about the "gutting" of the school's football program, conveniently forgetting its glorious gridiron past consists of a 1946 Orange Bowl loss and a 1983 loss in the first round of the NCAA Division I-AA playoffs.
Yes Holy Cross has a proud athletic heritage. But it has an equally, if not superior, academic reputation. There is no shame in striving to find a proper balance between the two.
That has been the Patriot League experiment, one that is still ongoing. The recent move to allow athletic scholarships shows the experiment is far from complete. Give the league credit for being willing to tinker with its formula in an effort to find that balance, even if it only did so at gunpoint when Holy Cross threatened to bolt.
It is easy to do things the wrong way, much harder to have the courage to try to set an example for all of college athletics. It is even tougher to lead when nobody else has the courage or willingness to follow.
For all its faults, and there are many, the Patriot League has the right idea. Ever see those NCAA ads about athletes going pro in things other than sports? That is the norm, not the exception, in the Patriot.
Still, Simmons is not completely off the mark -- not so much in his criticism of Holy Cross (though we can only imagine what he'd have written had he known about the band-can't-miss-classes charter flight fiasco), but in his criticism of the rest of the league (he grants Bucknell an exception). No doubt Crest and Aquafresh probably could have gone close to .500 in the Patriot this season had they actually fielded a team.
Simmons didn't even mention the Division III-style playoff system that replaced the conference tournament this season.
And we absolutely love his "Girls of the Patriot League" idea. Matter of fact, we might just start selling such a calendar in the Hoop Time store.
Stay tuned.
BONUS LINK:
Youth to be served next for Bucknell (Tom Housenick column in The Daily Item)
Bill Simmons, ESPN's self-appointed Sports Guy, has a plan to save Holy Cross.
Simmons shares his plan in a piece for ESPN The Magazine, where he laments HC not winning an NCAA Tournament game since 1953 and suggests the solution is, among other things, bringing in a new coach who is willing to cheat.
Not quite sure whether Simmons, who also did a stint writing for Jimmy Kimmel Live, is one of that well-recognized segment of Holy Cross alums who are still pissing and moaning about the school not joining the Big East, or a comedy writer using his alma mater for easy column fodder.
He starts the piece like the former, complaining, among other things, that joining the Patriot League ("a homeless man's version of the Ivy League") has turned HC "into a D1 school with a D3 mentality."
His suggested fixes sound more like a shot at the big time schools who will do anything to win.
Were we convinced he is serious, we'd take issue with some of the arguments he makes about his alma mater's program. We'd argue that Ralph Willard has done a helluva job and that any alum not proud of the program should have graduated from someplace like Memphis, where winning is more important than graduating.
We'd also point out HC was not exactly setting the hoops world on fire when it joined the Patriot League. We'd mention that as a 1992 grad, the glory he longs for is not from his days on Mt. St. James, but from days before he was even born. We'd remind him that the Crusaders had been to the NCAA Tournament exactly twice in the period between Ike Eienhower's second inauguration and his last undergraduate kegger (and not once in his four years as a student, although there was an NIT loss his sophomore season).
Simmons also whines about the "gutting" of the school's football program, conveniently forgetting its glorious gridiron past consists of a 1946 Orange Bowl loss and a 1983 loss in the first round of the NCAA Division I-AA playoffs.
Yes Holy Cross has a proud athletic heritage. But it has an equally, if not superior, academic reputation. There is no shame in striving to find a proper balance between the two.
That has been the Patriot League experiment, one that is still ongoing. The recent move to allow athletic scholarships shows the experiment is far from complete. Give the league credit for being willing to tinker with its formula in an effort to find that balance, even if it only did so at gunpoint when Holy Cross threatened to bolt.
It is easy to do things the wrong way, much harder to have the courage to try to set an example for all of college athletics. It is even tougher to lead when nobody else has the courage or willingness to follow.
For all its faults, and there are many, the Patriot League has the right idea. Ever see those NCAA ads about athletes going pro in things other than sports? That is the norm, not the exception, in the Patriot.
Still, Simmons is not completely off the mark -- not so much in his criticism of Holy Cross (though we can only imagine what he'd have written had he known about the band-can't-miss-classes charter flight fiasco), but in his criticism of the rest of the league (he grants Bucknell an exception). No doubt Crest and Aquafresh probably could have gone close to .500 in the Patriot this season had they actually fielded a team.
Simmons didn't even mention the Division III-style playoff system that replaced the conference tournament this season.
And we absolutely love his "Girls of the Patriot League" idea. Matter of fact, we might just start selling such a calendar in the Hoop Time store.
Stay tuned.
BONUS LINK:
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