Rosters show college hoops more business than schooling

SATURDAY night on ESPN, after Texas punched its ticket (ugh!) to the NCAA Tournament by defeating Oklahoma State, Texas guard Matt Coleman III, into an ESPN microphone, declared, “This is what I came to school for!” Hmmm.

What does it take to make the NCAA Tournament? It takes whatever it takes. And that’s top seeds through to the lowest.

Let’s look, for example at the roster of a 16th seed, the Hartford Hawks. Its recruits include two players from the Czech Republic, one each from Slovakia, Australia and New Zealand. The roster further includes several transfer players and studentathletes majoring in “Undeclared.”

Such used to be the exception, but is now trending the rule.

No. 1-ranked Gonzaga, for the past several years, has succeeded on the backs of players recruited via Rand McNally.

This year’s Zags came to Spokane, Wash., from Mali — a 7-footer — Lithuania, Russia and France.

Not that anyone on CBS or Turner is going to say so in the coming days, but schools represented in the NCAA Tournament have, by applied logic alone, grown further and further from their campuses in terms of legitimate or even intended academic achievement.

The foreign studies departments within many of these schools have a smaller percentage of foreign students than their basketball teams. The colleges continue to serve as false fronts for basketball programs. In other businesses, that’s called racketeering. It’s a felony.

➤ ESPN simply can’t do enough to destroy sports in service to reprobates.

Sunday, during a four-man panel discussion about the

NCAA Tournament, a clip appeared of a near pregame brawl erupting at center court of that day’s Alabama-LSU game.

For some reason, which went unexplained, this clip was accompanied by the sounds of two of the panelists, off camera, laughing at what was seen. Yeah, a near brawl! Funny! As is the ESPN standard, they found it delightful — or at least felt as if we should.