


by Tom Weppel
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
With the college basketball regular season essentially completed, we now get into the conference tournaments, with the more minor conferences having already begun theirs. Every conference, with the exception of the Ivy League, has a season-ending tournament, with the champion advancing into the NCAA tournament, which will begin March 15th. Teams will also get chosen to play in the NIT as well.
Interestingly enough, there really isn’t one dominant school/team out there right now. The past few weeks have proven that, with upsets galore of teams ranked in the Top Ten each and every week. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is certainly worthy of debate.
Of course, so far this season there are a number of teams with only a couple of losses that are leading their respective conferences, including Kansas, Ohio St., and Duke. There is a strong chance each and perhaps every one of those schools will garner a #1 seed in one of the four regionals when the NCAA tournament draw is announced.
Then you can look at the Big East, which has had as many as ten teams having been in the Top 25 polls this season. These teams have been having fun beating each other up, leaving them all with multiple losses. Even Notre Dame and Pitt, the two team at the top of the Big East as we speak, have suffered a number of losses. The strength of the conference will make things very interesting, during the conference tournament, and then of course in the Big Dance.
There are also a couple of schools from the West who we’ve rarely seen play this season. Arizona, San Diego St., Saint Mary’s, and BYU all have had good seasons, and so we’ll see how they all play out.
For BYU, though, it doesn’t look too promising, after they suspended their leading rebounded and solid Forward, Brandon Davies, for breaking an Honor code with the college. The story is that Davies had sex with his girlfriend!
And my response to that is, ‘You gotta be kidding me!’.
Nonetheless, the next ten days or so should be interesting, as everything starts to get more intriguing in college basketball. Then we’ll REALLY start to take notice with the field of 68!
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
After days and weeks of discussion, consternation, negotiation, disagreement, and other whatnot, we’ve finally gotten to the witching hour within the travails of the National Football League!
Unless there are massive changes of heart, it looks like the NFL Owners and the NFL Players Union will not have a collective bargaining agreement in place with which to continue operating, as we all have grown to know them. Obviously, things aren’t going the way ANYONE involved with this mess wants it to. No one is getting what they desire. And it seems like each side will have to give in order to get, somewhere and some time, for things to change. When that will be is anyone’s guess.
Here’s a statement I’d like to make, though…with everything that is going on within this deal…and it all seems like a giant reality show to me!…I would be willing to bet there are PLENTY of NFL players, and at least an Owner or three, who doesn’t have a damn CLUE as to the specifics or even the general outline as to where things stand, for even their own side, much less that of the opposing faction!
In a way, you’d have to shake your head and smile! From one angle, this can all be looked upon as a very intriguing case, much like the various dramas and soap operas we all get to see on network TV!
And then on another angle, you can simply consider it all a bunch of ridiculous CRAP!, all over billions and billions of dollars.
So, we shall observe the daily happenings, all because that’s our job as Media, and we’ll see how things progress…
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