It will all be over by Friday.
A goodie but an oldie.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...-ncaa-for-now/
Pompous no doubt but I have an objection to him being called an idiot. He's not. He has a perspective with which I disagree vehemently but to suggest that there's no logical basis for his opinion is off the mark. His allegiance begins and ends with the players and the greater sin is to use their talents without fair compensation. To speak hyperbolically Bilas sees college basketball as a construction of indentured servitude an unfairness far more egregious than any cheating scandal and the further construction of "student-athlete" is equally absurd. IMO there are several fundamental flaws in this line of logic but his basic perspective from what I can tell is that the fish rots from the head down.
Last edited by CameronBlue; 08-12-2017 at 11:39 AM.
Jay Bilas is acting like a pompous idiot. Period.
Is that better?
What sanctions for prior conduct do not harm some "innocents" - every time a program loses eligibility for postseason play or scholarships the current players are harmed
Maybe Jay Bilas thinks the answer is to limit sanctions to monetary penalties which can be treated as a cost of doing business
He has become an actor playing a character online and on TV
Or, the simpler explanation: Jay wants to keep his boss happy. Slurping all over unc and bashing the NCAA does just that. How else does one explain his periodic forays into (and I choose this word carefully) lying? As when he said the
allegations against unc did not specify men's hoops when in face they did.
Jay may be guilty of exactly what you are accusing. Not knowing him beyond his public persona I can't say. He doesn't strike me however as the type of person to fear what his superiors think of his opinions if they are within his purview. As I posted above I think Jay feels the NCAA is corrupt in its essence and any controversy that stems from that corruption is inconsequential and missing the point.
Last edited by CameronBlue; 08-12-2017 at 12:37 PM.
Obviously only Bilas knows his own motives, but I tend to think he's deluded by his hatred of the NCAA, not that he's intentionally trying to delude others to please his boss. The NCAA certainly is an easy entity to hate. It's corrupt, inconsistent, and it exists to keep money flowing into its own, and its member colleges, coffers while maintaining an illusion of a student/athlete ideal that is a joke. But I think Bilas errs by insisting on attacking ONLY the NCAA, a choice which leads him to defend the indefensible (UNC and Louisville, for example). UNC doesn't have to be innocent for the NCAA to be guilty, or vice versa.
Bilas, however, having become Don Quixote charging windmills, has entered the theater of the absurd in his attempts to always portray the NCAA as the dragon, which he apparently thinks requires him to portray UNC, or Louisville, as the fair princess.
Well said! I don't think it's fair to accuse Bilas of taking a position with which he doesn't agree for the sake of making ESPN happy. I've seen no evidence to support that theory. The simpler explanation, as DK and others have argued, is that Bilas is blinded by his hatred of the NCAA. Whatever the cause, I stop listening when Bilas starts talking about the NCAA. The occasional valid point about NCAA corruption and exploitation is buried in a haystack of apologia for universities and coaches who deserve condemnation in their own right. For me, the kicker is Jay's style when talking about these issues. When the topic is the NCAA, Bilas is at his lecturing/moral preening worst.
i agree - my first reaction is to take him at face value and think, "what a fool." but he's not a fool, and, knowing that, i think the next obvious explanation is that he's morally crooked. somehow things got messed up. whether it is an intentional or unintentional desire for personal gain, a misplaced sense of loyalty, an ingrained sense of rebellion toward the man, or whatever. sure i would love to know why jay has lost his integrity, but that doesn't matter - he has lost all credibility in my eyes because he cannot identify an obvious right from wrong and is summoning his resources for the benefit of evildoers. it is a shame someone whose lacks character has such a powerful platform, but this is the world we live in. i wish someone with true integrity had his pulpit.
interesting point. tangential to that, does your view of the ncaa extend to its member institutions? does duke athletics deserve criticism for being corrupt and maintaining the illusion of student/athlete ideal for money? logically it's hard (but politically and emotionally easy) to disaggregate the two.
IMHO (where the H has been AWOL for many years), this is a gross over-reaction, Bob. Jay is a smart well-trained lawyer. He believes the athletes are getting a bum deal from the NCAA. Think of him as a trial lawyer, which is what he has done. "...morally crooked..." --oh, my! Isn't the easy way to kowtow to the NCAA, the conferences and the schools, like every single one of his confreres?
He has a different approach to the UNC scandal -- that many of the sins were academic not athletic. OK, Jay, I think the NCAA will stand firm. But, if the COI agrees with you, you will have been prescient -- although wrong. "Morally corrupt?" No.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
actually, the easy way out (if one is looking to feign the high moral ground) is to attack the ncaa - it's one of the easiest targets on the planet - and continue to kowtow to everyone else (i.e. what bilas is doing). you risk basically nothing - there is no motivated constituency you offend when you attack the ncaa. its all reward and no risk. to attack the ncaa and not the schools/conferences/coaches/etc. is substantially hypocritical. of course, going after any of these groups would actually incite a real backlash - that would be not taking the easy way out.
i don't understand your trial lawyer point - perhaps because that's not my field. could you clarify?