More unpopular opinions

If the competition is genuine and fair, losing is almost always more instructive than winning. Failure is rarely fatal, and winning breeds complacency. The winner celebrates and moves on; the loser has the opportunity to reflect on the fact that there is always someone bigger, faster, stronger and/or more determined and prepared.

That said, I did not see U. Conn coming, and my bracket is well and truly busted.

Every person contains multitudes, and people can hold in their minds multiple truths about individuals, but I still have trouble with the wholesale lionization of Kobe Bryant, whose legacy ought to at least be complicated. To see him presented as an unalloyed hero in an otherwise excellent Disney movie like “Chang Can Dunk” is dispiriting.

That the University of Alabama did not cancel the remainder of its basket season after the shooting death of Jamea Harris that involved the team’s players is shameful and inexcusable.

That Alabama football coach Nick Saban actually did and said the right things should not in itself be surprising, but it goes to the reputation of the man that so many found it so.

Nobody really wants parity in college sports—we will tolerate Cinderellas who know their place, but week in and week out, we want familiar heroes and villains and easily digestible storylines. Duke should not be just another program; it should be the

Evil Empire coached by Palpatine.

For a few years John Roche was my favorite college basketball player. But I think even he might admit Charlie Scott got snubbed in the ACC Player of the Year awards in 1969 and 1970.

The National Basketball Association is better than it has been in any time in its history, including the Celtic dynasty years and the Showtime ’80s. Never has there been so much freakish talent on display, and the perceived lack of defense in the game is an illusion caused by the sheer excellence of offensive talent.

College basketball is worse than in any time in my life, but blaming NIL and the transfer portal for that is a bit like blaming the abolition of chattel slavery for making plantation owners less profitable. That’s true as far as it goes, but most economists agree that the U.S. economy as a whole became more prosperous as a result of abolition. It wasn’t good for slaveholders, but just about everyone else—especially former slaves— benefited. The unconvinced should do their own research, beginning with economist Scott Sumner’s article “Ending slavery made America richer” on the econlib.com site.

(Because some will be triggered by the website’s URL, we should probably explain that the site is published by the conservative Liberty Fund, the group Al Gore attacked in his 2007 book “The Assault on Reason” for “not providing unbiased judicial education” but “giving multi-thousand-dollar vacations to federal judges to promote their radical right-wing agenda at the expense of the public interest.” They also did their bit to get Ronald Reagan elected.)

The best way to watch golf on TV is to pick one of the offered featured groups and follow it shot for shot. You’ll understand exactly how good these players are, and how poorly they can sometimes hit it.

I’m not in favor of having the professionals play a different golf ball than the rest of us; I am in favor of almost everyone moving up a set of tees. Golf’s more fun when you have a chance to be hole-high in regulation.

Just because I am predisposed to dislike the sport-washing LIV tour does not mean it doesn’t make for deathly boring television.

Practical jokes are neither sensible or funny.

Electric guitars are getting to be like bourbon: it’s hard to find a bad one. The Squier Classic Vibe series is better than the full-blown American Stratocasters of my teens. I hear some Epiphones are nice too. If you can find a used Yamaha Pacifica, you can have as good a guitar as Hendrix ever owned for less than $200.

Speaking of bourbon, I suspect the current trend to hoarding will be self-correcting, but there’s absolutely no reason to spend three to eight times retail price for a $40 bourbon so long as there is Old Grandad in the world.

A colleague recently offered the common-sense opinion that anyone who chooses to own a large dog or other animal capable of killing or maiming a human being should be held strictly liable—i.e., should face monetary and possibly criminal consequences should that animal harm another person. He wrote that it was “a simple matter of one being personally responsible for their actions.” I concur.

Now to firearms.

Charles Portis was not kidding a little bit when he wrote—when he was 24 years old —“Show me a reporter and I’ll show you an arrested cretin.” (I’d read that quote before I read Will Stephenson’s remarkable essay on Portis and Little Rock, “Signs and Wonders,” in The Atlantic, but I still want everyone to read Stephenson’s piece.)

There are few things that feel nicer than a car with a clean interior.

One of the worst things about social media is the way it allows us all to cos-play at being vapid celebrities concerned with promulgating our personal brands online. While there are legitimately wonderful things about most social media apps—which allow for both connection and visibility— they are moral and psychological hazards, especially for young people who are by and large growing up online.

I love Bruce Springsteen and he’s earned the right to make any kind of music he wants, but I listened to his last record exactly once. But I would listen to him being interviewed every day.

More or less the same thing goes for Elvis Costello. (As Levon sang of Spike Jones: “I can’t take the way he sings/But I love to hear him talk.”)

Two pieces I really want to write are about the 40th anniversary of Marshall Crenshaw’s debut album and the 50th anniversary of Elton John’s “Honky Château” (which actually came out in 1972).

I would have the best job in the world if all I had to do was write.

A person’s real work is getting happy. (Thank you, Stephen King.)

Human beings can write poetry a lot worse than AI can, but I’ve yet to see an AI-crafted poem or song lyric that really works. Or if I have I didn’t know it was AI-generated.

Sally Jenkins is a bona fide contender for best sportswriter in America. And Mina Kimes might be the best pro football analyst working today.

Grantland Rice really couldn’t write worth a damn.