Teardown, rebuild of ‘collegiate system’ is underway
The world according to Jim:
■ It’s funny the things you stumble across in the archives. I ran across a column from late in 1999, part of a special section meant to welcome the new millennium (and likely timed to make sure it published before the Y2K bug was to wipe out all of our computer systems on Jan. 1, 2000).
Ah, the things we worry about . ...
■ The column was a forecast of what sports might look like by the year 2020, and no, I did not predict a worldwide pandemic. (Or, for that matter, the cacophony that is today’s social media.)
But there was this line about big-time college sports, written in past tense: “(By) the autumn of 2020, the only difference between ‘college’ and ‘pro’ was the size of the paychecks . ... Basically, revenue sports at big schools became independent businesses, using college facilities but operating independently of the academic side of the campus. Things weren’t any different; the schools were just more open about it.”
I also predicted that college football and basketball players would eventually unionize, and while my timing was off just a bit, Dartmouth’s basketball players may have opened the floodgates this week . ...
■ One outgrowth of the new economics of college sports is that the mid-majors, in addition to being disrespected in so many other ways by the power schools, are being plundered by the big kids thanks to NIL and liberalized transfer rules. But while UC Irvine, for example, lost its top two scorers from last year to the portal, coach Russell Turner sees no problem with the new way of doing things.
“The changes in college basketball are changes that should have been made a long time ago,” he said last weekend. “I said to a donor group, the paradigm was off and the players
were not appropriately respected before. Now they will be and I’m happy for them on that.
“And I also know that what we have here is really special. It can be great for a lot of guys. So we just need to keep finding guys who want what we are, and we need to keep trying to be better at what we are. And so that’s what we’re doing. At the end of the season, many of these guys will have a chance to go somewhere else if they want to. But I also think many of these guys will make a choice to stay here if they think that’s best for them. That’s the greatest thing in the world, on both sides.” ...
■ Still, consider this: According to
John Ourand of Puck, Fox — the network of the Big Ten — contemplated “reaching out to other networks” to assemble an NIL package that would persuade Caitlin Clark to return to Iowa for her last year of eligibility. The moment passed and Clark declared she’s going to the WNBA, but consider the precedent that would set and the possibilities, especially with Fox (and Nbc/peacock) aligned with the Big Ten and ESPN with the Southeastern Conference.
And you thought schools and conferences fought dirty on their own . ...
■ For those who (a) are fans of the Beautiful Game and (b) have really, really long memories, the Kicking + Screening soccer film festival next week in New York will feature a documentary that actually was released last September: “When L.A. Wolves Conquered the U.S.A.” The focus is on 1967 and the United Soccer Association, one of two competing startup leagues which launched using full teams from other countries. The Los Angeles franchise, owned by Jack Kent Cooke, won the league’s first championship with England’s Wolverhampton Wanderers. (Now, that club in the Premier League is simply known as “Wolves FC.”)
If you can’t make it to New York, the half-hour documentary is available for viewing on Youtube. (And, if you really want to do a deep dig, there’s also video on Youtube of their championship game victory at the Coliseum in July, 1967, with none other than Chick Hearn on the call.) ...
■ Today’s exercise in reader participation (you supply the punch line): After the Denver Broncos release Russell Wilson this coming week, they will still be on the hook for $39 million in salary this season (minus what he’ll get from another team), will have a record $89 million cap hit over the next two seasons — more than twice the previous record — and aren’t getting back the three players and four picks they sent to Seattle for Wilson in the first place. Worst trade in NFL history?
Bonus points if you can work the Raiders into the punch line. Wouldn’t it be fun if Wilson went to Las Vegas and got two chances next season to embarrass Sean Payton? ...
■ We lost one of the good ones — correction, one of the very best ones — this past week when Chris Mortensen passed away at the age of 72. But while most remembrances focused on Mort’s work with ESPN as its NFL Insider, I still think of him as a South Bay guy and part of a very good collection of writers covering the Dodgers in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
On a beat then covered by 10 different Southern California papers in the days before media consolidation, Mort kept getting scoops for the Daily Breeze, including the revelation by pitcher Bob Welch in the winter before the 1980 season that he’d visited a rehab clinic for alcoholism. It was a, shall we say, lively bunch of individuals on the beat — I can vouch for it; I was there — and he was right in the middle of it. And as Mort himself told the story years later, he kept beating the competition so decisively on stories that L.A. Times sports editor Bill Dwyre convinced Atlanta Journal Constitution sports editor Van Mckenzie to hire Mort for the Braves beat, just to get him out of town . ...
■ Back in 2017, when he was in the early stages of his battle with throat cancer, Mort mentioned to Peter King, then with Sports Illustrated, that he’d been watching the Dodgers-astros World Series and had a flashback. “I can see Sandy Koufax to my left in the Vero Beach Dodgertown lounge a few feet from our media work area, having a cold draft beer,” he said, “and me shaking my head like, ‘Am I really living this?’”
He did, and he was among the best, no matter what sport he was covering. Rest in peace, Mort.