Musings

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Time for a random collection of thoughts and this episode feels like an airing of grievances (“I have a lot of problems with you people!”). Most of the focus is on college basketball:
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–  College Basketball is slowly getting harder to watch and that’s difficult for me to admit of my favorite sport. What is driving the game into the ground is the ridiculous need to review every single potentially malicious foul. The idiot officials gather up and go to the monitor, spend three minutes over multiple replays when the first is usually clear cut…then the dummies convene for awhile before talking to the coaches, making the call and then going on. Are we that sensitive about a push or elbow that everything needs to be looked at. I’ve noticed this so much during conference tournament season and it slows the game to a crawl. Add in the way too many five timeouts per half per team AND the need for each team to have a mini-timeout after every foulout AND the newfound interest to also replay clock stoppages under a minute….this sport is becoming very hard to sit through.

–  Speaking of hard to sit through, I could not watch the Mountain West Tournament on CBS Sports Network Friday. Why? Doug Gottlieb. This self-absorbed, stuck-up twerp is the first commentator to actually force me to change the channel. I’ve always loathed him as have many others (just google “Doug Gottlieb idiot”), but it seemed that he was even pissing off play-by-play man Rich Waltz. If it was me, I probably would’ve decked him after the twerp’s two-minute spiel on how Rich wasn’t doing a tease and didn’t properly know what one was. CBSN, you lost at least one viewer.

–  Since it’s the season, one more college basketball item of note. This has gone on for years, but I can’t believe how seemingly acceptable it is that ESPN regularly uses Bracketology like it is the actual thing. While I’m sure it’s on SportsCenter (I don’t watch the show), I happen to see on the annoying bottom ticker during games, where they not only provide “Last Four Teams In”, but they will even go to the extent of saying if “Team X wins, they are in the tournament”, with ‘according to Joe Lunardi’ casually mentioned at the end. This is all make-believe!!! It’s amazing that announcers will even follow suit and act like a team is in because Bracketology says so. I don’t want to discount Lunardi, because I like him and the initial concept is cool (though I don’t follow it), it is just the machine in Bristol that runs haywire with it.

–  Lastly, a note on Free Agency and Trade Deadlines, where the last few weeks have seen a couple longtime franchise players leave; Steve Smith of the Carolina Panthers and Ryan Miller of the Buffalo Sabres. It happens every year and no matter the team, it always makes me sad, though in the case of Miller, it was particularly hard after watching him come through the minors in Rochester and following him with my favorite team in Buffalo. There’s something refreshing about loyalty and seeing a team and player go his whole career together, however those scenarios have become remarkably rare over the last few decades.
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