Was it Ernie Banks who said, “It’s a gorgeous day for a murder! Let’s waste two!”?
Brandon Miller — the star 6-foot-9 freshman forward for Alabama — scored 41 points in an time beyond regulation win at South Carolina on Wednesday night. He was well worth the price of submission.
Did it matter that police in Tuscaloosa, Ala., had described Miller as entangled in a shooting murder near the university campus, claiming in testimony at a hearing that he delivered to a ’Bama teammate the gun that was used to shoot a 23-year-old mother, Jamea Harris, to death?
Obviously not. At 24-4 and with the NCAA Tournament coming, the Crimson Tide had no time to fret about trivial “distractions” reminiscent of murder. In any case, it wasn’t, thank goodness, a high ankle sprain.
You’re now likely aware of the “broken windows theory,” often utilized by urbanologists to explain how neighborhoods descend from small crimes to larger ones, until they irreparably rot from terminal blight.
Nevertheless, the overall theory — that small problems beget larger problems — might be applied to explain anything — from pizza joints, to hospitals, to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
And to Division I college basketball.
Here comes the NCAA Tournament, and with it an all-day, all-night flow of excited, pandering, TV-delivered niceties and accolades — some pure fantasy — wedded to a college-fronted business installed behind so many broken windows that they’ll now not hide the blood that escapes on the ooze.
Ya wanna be real or do your Punch-Your-Ticket Big Dance brackets pools?
Winning college basketball games in any respect costs — filling the gyms, maximizing TV value, recruiting the subsequent cadre of players who otherwise don’t have any legit business being enrolled in any college — is not any longer contingent just upon the standard fraud.
Academic and financial fraud won’t, by themselves, do what they used to. Neither will crooked coaches, sneaker company payola and wink-and-nod college presidents who’re rewarded by the win-and-play silly.
Almost with a rush, though you can see it gathering offshore, colleges have chosen to disregard the warning signs by recruiting players who potentially pose a transparent, present and escalating danger to real students, those with legit reasons to be on campus. No disqualifiers for young guys with guns.
Increasingly, the one thing a full-scholarship-plus-cash-perks recruit must pack for college is his illegally bought, carried or otherwise transported gun. Or simply a gun. Or fully loaded assault rifle, serial numbers scratched out. Doesn’t must be his one-in-the-chamber gun, it may well belong to his friend from home.
What has gone on of late on the University of Alabama, until recently higher often known as a college that recruited felony-inclined football players, was the residue of what seeped through the broken windows down the hall, where the basketball department resides.
All the weather were in place, but none so apparent to stop offering full rides plus money to whomever and from wherever — so long as they might help win basketball games, no other qualification wanted, explored, needed or requested.
So ’Bama’s star 6-foot-9 freshman, Miller, a projected NBA lottery pick now averaging more that 20 points per game, played Wednesday for the Crimson Tide. His former teammate, Darius Miles (who claims his “friend” from hometown Washington did the actual near-campus shooting after, in keeping with investigators, Miller delivered the gun to Miles) was charged as an adjunct to murder, and thus was quickly dumped by Alabama. He was a scrub, anyway, dig?
As for freshman star Miller, coach Nate Oats — just weeks ago the toast of the state with a latest multi-year, multi-million-dollar per deal to stay at ’Bama — has, for the reason that murder, been tripping over his tongue.
Of his star freshman’s alleged role within the murder:
“We knew about that. Can’t control every thing everybody does outside of practice. No one knew that was going to occur. College kids are out, Brandon hasn’t been in any form of trouble neither is he in any form of trouble on this case. Incorrect spot on the incorrect time.”
However the “spot,” on this case, was a murder scene at which at the very least two of Oats’ recruits are alleged to have delivered the murder weapon. Just bad luck, Coach?
Moreover, Alabama selected to not discipline Jaden Bradley, one other Tide basketball player investigators claim was on the scene of the shooting. Unlike Miles, Bradley averages 22 minutes.
But this — not that you simply knew from watching college basketball games on TV or will soon be told in the course of the tournaments, SEC or NCAA — has been a season marked by guns and death.
Coban Porter, a Denver University guard, has been charged with a DUI death of a 42-year-old woman. What in hell happened during and after Latest Mexico State forward Michael Peake was “lured” right into a situation that resulted in a shootout and the death of a University of Latest Mexico student? NMSU’s program has since been suspended for a separate hazing incident, because a deadly player-involved shooting wasn’t enough.
Recruits to Pitt, Canisius and Eastern Michigan, amongst others, have been charged with illegal concealment of guns.
There is no such thing as a recruiting standard or danger that schools will obey to deprive them of a basketball win that, within the short and long term, is price nothing of intrinsic, useful academic value. Yet don’t expect Jim Nantz, Ernie Johnson or Clark Kellogg to even bring that up. Expect them to be more along the lines of Crimson Tide fans, who gave Miller an ovation to start out ’Bama’s game Saturday.
But as Alabama’s Oats might now say: “Being within the incorrect spot on the incorrect time can cost you a gun-toting recruit, or two, now involved in a murder.”
Radio making listening difficult
My fondest wish for local baseball fans this season is for Yankees’ and Mets’ radio producers and sales force to one way or the other sell more sufferable, creative and effective per-innings industrial packages.
What has occurred the past several seasons, especially to Yankees radio, has turn out to be an in-game assortment of scores of hit-and-run, distracting ads which can be heard read by voices from Suzyn Waldman to Howie Rose as a systematized annoyance to them and us.
Baseball on radio, once a cherished art form, has been, like a lot of The Game, scarified or abandoned for nickels and dimes. Any improvements — any —can be a giant one.
Hey Jim, refunds for MSG viewers?
The incontrovertible fact that MSG Network has determined its Rangers announcing crews will now not make West Coast trips with the intention to cut costs is great news!
Jimmy Dolan has the machinery to know, by face if not name, every one in all MSG’s subscribers and each nickel of savings on those Rangers road games, thus all will probably be returned as one more show of excellent faith!
Provided that the whole lot of the Yankees’ TV and radio crews have long been in the necessity of a makeover because the last of George Steinbrenner’s lick-my-boots legacy, nothing we’ve heard of or from Justin Shackil would prevent a welcomed change.
Well, Aaron Rodgers has nearly attained Kanye West status: Diminished returns on those that even care a bit of bit.
Again, so who won Terry Bradshaw’s $1 million?