I have to admit that I've always had a soft spot for "Sparky," the pitchfork-wielding imp, who until last season, was emblazoned on the Arizona State University Sun Devil's football helmets. It wasn't because he was particularly demonic. On the contrary, Sparky looked pretty harmless; despite his weapon, he appeared to be wearing a red Hoodie Footie Snuggle Suit and bore a passing resemblance to Jon Lovitz's Mephistopheles from Saturday Night Live. But what he lacked in ferocity, he made up for in biography. Legend has it that, in the late 1940s, Bert Anthony, an ASU alum and former Disney employee, modeled Sparky's mischievous face after his former boss, Walt Disney. I'm not totally sold on that tale, but regardless of its veracity, it's still a great story. The possibility that a school's mascot may actually be a satanic caricature of one of America's most beloved entertainers is part of the romance that makes college sports special.
Apparently, Arizona State's not much for romance. Last week, the school effectively put a pitchfork in Sparky, opting for an Arena League-esque football uniform (and complete range) designed by repeat uniform desecrator Nike. Sparky has not been consigned to the underworld--he'll remain the mascot and will appear on one side of the back of the football helmet--but it's a pretty big demotion. And for what? ASU traded 65 years of homegrown history and a good urban legend for a trendy redesign (complete with obligatory, all-black alternate strip) authored by a company started by a famous alum (Phil Knight) of a conference rival (Oregon University). Talk about selling your soul to the devil.
In deference to tradition, most schools celebrate the uniqueness of their outdated or obscure nicknames and uniforms. That's why we still have Elis, Hoyas, Cornhuskers and Boilermakers. Thankfully, that's why we don't have any schools nicknamed the Mighty Ducks or Raptors. That same reverence of the past is also the reason why we have ancient uniform designs like those of Alabama, Michigan and Princeton. Lately, though, thanks to the remarkable turnaround enjoyed by Oregon University's football program, which roughly coincided with its adoption of gaudy, DayGlo unis, schools like Washington State and now ASU seem more willing to forsake history in an attempt to "shake things up" or inject a "new attitude" into a flailing program. Schools are obviously free to remake their image, but dodgy uniforms and esoteric nicknames are part of the charm of college athletics.
The more that kind of tradition is eroded, the further college sports creep towards professionalism, where, except for a handful of franchises (e.g., the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox) it's really just the product on the field that counts with most fans. The problem with that is, as the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Final suggested, the quality of college athletics, even at the highest level, isn't all that good. Different colored fields,ridiculously designed basketball courts and gimmicky uniforms are all masking an ever-widening gap in quality between the professional and collegiate athletics. When all that's left to college athletics is the product on the field, there won't be much of a reason to watch. Each time college athletics loses a Sparky, it takes one step closer to its own kind of purgatory.
Regardless of what happens during Chelsea's remaining Premier League fixtures, the first chapter of Roman Abramovich's Fernando Torres Experiment has to go down as an epic failure. As someone who had been scrounging for the positives in Torres play with the Blues (such as his passing ability, his header v Manchester United in the first leg of the Champions League tie and his good work with Yossi Benayoun v Wigan), his wholly anonymous and inert display in the second leg v United on Monday finally deep-sixed to my fading optimism. For most disinterested observers, only one conclusion can be drawn from the first half of Tuesday's capitulation--Fernando Torres is not the same talismanic presence he was for Liverpool and Spain from 2007-2009. In fact, he looks a completely different and vastly inferior player.
A couple of chalkboards (courtesy of the fantastic Total Football iPhone app) underscore just how ineffectual El Niño was on Monday.
Though Torres was playing in his preferred position as a solo striker, it can reasonably be argued that Torres' dearth of passes received during his 45-minute shift was down to poor service and Chelsea's overall lack of creativity in the center of the park. However, it's notable that Drogba dropped into deeper, more central positions to get on the end of almost twice as many passes. Most importantly, his deft chest control at the end of Essien's assist (in yellow) is exactly the kind of skill and composure in front of goal that Torres has failed to demonstrate. One gets the feeling that if Torres was in the exact same position, he would have miscontrolled the pass or fluffed the shot. He doesn't just seem out-of-form; he seems like the victim of a alien abduction. Gone is pacy, explosive and ruthless striker who once terrorized the likes of Nemanja Vidić. In that player's place, is a sluggish, tentative simulacrum.
The chalkboard on the left speaks to the Torre's crisis of confidence. His one attempt to actually run at an opponent was a tame, unsuccessful effort in his own half. He just never looked like troubling United's back four, while Drogba was far more aggressive with the ball at his feet. An Uncertain Future The danger of any transfer for or free agent acquisition of a struggling superstar in any sport is that the acquiring team is actually paying for the player whom they remember rather than the player who currently exists. Abramovich, envision as the oligarch from the DirecTV commercials who I now reflexively envision as the oligarch from the DirecTV commercials, clearly paid for a player who he fondly remembered skinning Premier League defenders to the tune of 56 goals from 2007-10, rather than the guy who looked indifferent and aimless at times for Liverpool this season. It's possible that Torres could recover his world class form, but it's possible that he might not. If he doesn't, Chelsea will need a manager with a personality big enough to finally abort the Torres Experiment.
Now that about a week has passed since the UConn Huskies won The Worst NCAA Basketball Final Ever, I figure I have enough perspective to look back and try to address the question of whether someone who, like me, has been a fan of men's college basketball for almost three decades, should derive any joy from watching their alma mater win a game that basically bombed college basketball back to the Stone Age. Without hesitation, I have to say the answer is unequivocally "Yes." And the reasoning is simple. It's much better to win The Worst NCAA Basketball Final Ever than it is to lose The Worst NCAA Basketball Final Ever. Just ask Butler.
Granted, that doesn't mean that I actually enjoyed watching the game. In fact, as someone who has long appreciated not just March Madness, but also the long slog of the regular season, Monday's re-enactment of Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketballwas a sad and shambolic reminder of just how far the state of men's college basketball has fallen since the introduction of the NBA's "one-and-done rule" in 2005. The merits of "one-and-done"--which states that high school players must be 19-years-old as of the end of the calendar year of the NBA Draft and one year removed from their high school graduation to be eligible for selection--have been debated ad infinitum, but the argument UConn and, especially, Butler made last Monday is almost irrefutable. During the telecast, NBC's usually anodyne Clark Kellogg noted repeatedly that the teams' performances were "inexplicable," but the elephant in the room was that there was, in fact, an obvious explanation for Monday's travesty--over the last couple of years, the quality of college basketball has generally been pretty poor, and it's getting progressively worse. That's why Butler, a team that won ugly throughout the whole tournament, got as far as they did. It's not that the Bulldogs didn't deserve to be there, they probably did (thanks to a truly farcical ending to the Pitt game). And therein lies the problem.
The Rise of the Mediocre Mid-Major
As Charles Barkley opined during Monday's post-game show, this won't be the last time we see schools of Butler's ilk in the Final Four. What he didn't add is that well-coached, veteran teams comprised of NBDL-level talent will soon be able to compete with the traditional powers from the "major" conferences that are still fielding a collection of highly-touted strangers who have been recruited for a one- or two-year layover in college ball. This paradigm shift greatly advantages the mid-majors who don't bother trolling for McDonald's All-Americans with the likes of John Calipari. Rather than take Calipari's day-trading approach of trying to annually restock a program with lottery picks, the mid-majors can take a more conservative, recruit-and-hold approach. The gamble small schools are willing to take is that four years down the road in March, no-names who've played 100 games together will be able to give blue-chippers that have only played 35 a run for their money.
If it Ain't Broke
The problem with this kind of parity is that it's fundamentally regressive. Mid-majors aren't ascending to the major's level of play; instead, the majors are backsliding to mediocrity. The tournament, as a contest, is more competitive, but the quality of the contest itself is suffering. Most people, though, don't really seem to care, as the tournament's record-breaking ratings suggest. Now that March Madness is a cultural meme that has introduced terms like "buzzer beater" and "bracket buster" into the national lexicon, its sheer drama will continue to generate impressive Nielsen ratings. That's why it seems unlikely that there's going to be a big push from the NCAA to undo the one-and-done rule. And I guess that's good news for UConn and Butler, because given the direction college basketball is heading in, this won't The Worst NCAA Basketball Final Ever for too long.
I have to admit that I’m inclined to snigger whenever I see the stadium of a SEC football factory teaming with fans who I’m inclined to believe have absolutely no personal affiliation with the school other than a shared state of domicile. It’s one of the most shameless forms of what Kurt Vonnegut called “granfalloon.” Naturally, as a Connecticut native, when it comes to UConn men’s college basketball, I tend to look right past this inconvenient truth. In other words, I’m a pretty big hypocrite.
Granted, I actually graduated from UConn Law, but I have plenty of friends whose only experience with the state university is a lost weekend at Storrs sometime in the late Nineties and that doesn’t stop them for shouting themselves hoarse when the Huskies are on television this time of year. And if I’m honest, I was a UConn hoops fan long before I made the mistake of going to law school, so I’m not any better. Really, I’m not a fan because I went to law school there; I’m a fan in spite of the fact that I went to law school there. It’s pathetic, I know, but you have to realize that as a kid growing up in The Constitution State during the late-Eighties, there wasn’t much going on. The Hartford Whalers were laughable, the Yankees, save Don Mattingly, irrelevant and the Internet nonesistent. If you were Gen-Xer without a driver’s license, you’re options were limited because, eventually, even Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! got old. And I don’t think the situation was too much rosier for adults. After all, much of Connecticut was a giant bedroom community marooned between New York City and Boston. On its own, the state was a cipher, affluent but anodyne, and in desperate need of a collective identity.
Enter the Huskies
Mercifully, that began to change a little more than 20 years ago during the 1989-90 “Dream Season,” a campaign that initiated one of the most dramatic and improbable transformations of a NCAA Division I athletic program in what we might call the “ESPN Era.” In honor of the program’s ascension and this current squad’s Final Four appearance, I’ve given some thought to my top 5 UConn men’s basketball memories, so, in chronological order, here’s what I’ve come up with:
1)UConn 70 Georgetown 65 Big East Regular Season (January 20, 1990)—While UConn had won of NIT the preceding season, I had the feeling that most people figured that was a good as it was going to get. They were just satisfied that somebody from Connecticut had won something. The prospect of actually dislodging the real beasts of the Big East, like Georgetown, Syracuse, Villanova, St. John’s and even Seton Hall, simply wasn’t realistic. On this night, though, while watching this game with a group of classmates at a friend’s fourteenth birthday party, you could sense things might be beginning to change. We were all sitting there, just waiting for the Hoyas, who were undefeated and ranked second at the time, to make a run and overwhelm the unranked, upstart Huskies. They never did, and UConn celebrated a famous victory.
2)UConn 71, Clemson 70 NCAA Tournament regional semifinal East Rutherford, N.J. (March 22, 1990)—A friend’s father had just dropped me off at home after basketball practice. We had been listening on the radio, and I literally sprinted from the car to my parent’s door to make sure I didn’t miss anything. While I barged through the door, I asked my father what happened. “They lost,” he said, walking upstairs. I didn’t respond until I got in front of the screen. Then, relieved, I shouted “No, there’s still one second left.” He didn’t respond. Then I watched this happen:
I didn’t know how to react; I was as shocked as Elgin Campbell (2:16). Without taking my eyes off the screen, I just yelled, “They WON.”
3)Duke 79, UConn 78 (OT) NCAA Tournament regional final East Rutherford, N.J. (March 24, 1990)—This time, it was a basketball game—rather than a practice—that kept me from watching most of this Elite Eight classic. Right around halftime of my game, somebody who had been listening to UConn in their car came into our middle school’s gymnasium and reported the score to someone sitting in the stands. Soon, the entire crowd was abuzz. Sensing the urgency of the situation, the referees suggested we take an impromptu time-out to try to catch the end of the game that really mattered. And so, all the sweaty players and most of the anxious crowd repaired to the school’s library, where someone had manipulated the rabbit ears on an old RCA so that CBS’s snowy picture gradually came into focus. As someone who had been watching (and hating) Duke since 1985, I just knew Christian Laettner and his floppy, pretty boy bowl cut were going to do this (at 2:18):
Cruelly, just like that, the Dream Season was over. I swore under my breath, and we went back to finish our game. I don’t remember who won; I don’t think too many people cared.
4)UConn 75, Washington 74 NCAA Tournament regional semifinal Greensboro, N.C. (March , 1998)—My college friends (most of whom were not UConn fans) and I watched entirely too much college basketball, and all of us were sure that this talented UConn squad was going to win this match-up handily. Washington, though, just refused to go away, and, with 10 seconds left, somehow found themselves in the lead. Still, I was irrationally confident that UConn were going to find a way to win. That is, I felt that way until a Jake Voskul's shot rimmed out excruciatingly with 6 seconds left. What followed next was a communal experience that couldn’t have been more antithetical to the one Laettner inflicted upon me eight years earlier. Amid a hail of indignation and expletives, we watched Rip Hamilton chase down a rebound and do this:
A minute later, we were still going nuts and still swearing, but for an entirely different reason. I'm pretty sure people waste their time watching sports for moments like this.
5)UConn 77, Duke 74 NCAA Tournament championship game St. Petersburg, Fla. (March 29, 1999)--The state of Connecticut couldn't have scripted a more satisfying way to win their first NCAA men's basketball championship. To do it in such dramatic fashion against a perennial angstgegner felt like a realization of the Dream Season Laettner deferred nine years earlier. While watching the wild celebration that accompanied the final buzzer, I couldn't help but think back to a night in January nine years before when a bunch of kids watched an unranked Uconn take down the mighty Hoyas.
Like any 20-year relationship, there's been some speed bumps in the state's love affair with this team, and, as recent NCAA sanctions suggest, UConn lost Cinderella's glass slipper long ago. Still, if Husky Nation tends to look the other way when the dark side of the program is revealed, I can sympathize. It's not right, but a state that was teased by the New England Patriots and betrayed by the Whalers is always going to give the program that has given them something to cheer about for over two decades a second chance.
