That special place in hell will be too crowded to remain special.
Now what?
The PSAL top-tier boys basketball finals have been canceled due to adult corruption and moral corrosion.
But where is the outrage? The angry condemnations? The sorrow-filled follow-up coverage on our TV and radio news broadcasts? The scolds of sports radio hosts who otherwise would holler over a dropped pass or a throwing error?
Where are the famous PSAL progeny to publicly express their dismay?
Or is this the way it is, and shall remain? Our sports, starting with children at play, are now so hideously disfigured by shameless adults that it’s hardly unexpected or unusual when the once unthinkable makes brief, so-what? news.
The PSAL, founded in 1903, is now, officially, just another con posed as sports.
Its annual gem — the top boys basketball championships — last week was found to be a fake. The finalists were aided by fraud, as in ineligibility and academic fraud — the stuff that awaits those headed for college, on or off the school’s payrolls, to do nothing more significant than extend their ball-playing careers until it’s time, or too late — to actually wake up.
In the highly unlikely case that the high school coaches and ADs didn’t know the rules and “kids” didn’t realize they were too old to be and/or too academically deficient to be eligible for their high school teams — note the word, “school” — this year would be different. The PSAL had mandated random inspections of rosters be resumed to curtail rampant fraud.
But bad habits die hard. Several finalists were ruled to have committed flagrant offensive fouls.
NYC’s Schools Chancellor David Banks put it plainly and painfully: “In simple terms adults put the long-term future of young people second for momentary high school glory on the court. These adults are not helping students. They are only helping themselves.”
Noting that there is now a “special commissioner of investigation” — how proud schools must be to need such a paid position — Banks added, “we will not shy away from taking appropriate disciplinary action against any staff who chose to cheat in our athletic contests.”
But it’s all a con and it flows from the top.
In 2014, when Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West Little League team won the LLWS U.S. bracket and was celebrated as America’s darlings — even posing with pictures in the White House with President Obama — the team would soon be stripped of its title as it was loaded with ineligible players from throughout Chicago.
Some Little League coaches knew it before and during the Little League World Series but chose to lay low as the national media, especially ESPN/Disney, had already declared these poor kids from mean-streets Chicago to be extra special. Why should they risk the hatred of telling the truth?
When the whistle was finally blown, it might have served these kids as a valuable life’s lesson on fair play, especially in view of namesake Jackie Robinson’s deeds.
Instead, Rev. Jesse Jackson, without even a flake of evidence, declared the kids to be victims of blatant racism. And the media, rather than refute such a charge as Jackson choosing to ignore fair-play rules, ran for the hills. Or seconded his nonsense.
Well, Chancellor Banks is black as are many of the kids whose PSAL programs were revealed as corrupted in order to win basketball games — for crying out loud! — plus the favored attention of sneaker companies, merchandise-enriched AAU teams and ask-no-questions college recruiters.
How would Rev. Jackson explain Banks’ call to legal, fair-play order? Racist?
It’s all a con, no longer a matter of wrong or right but too often a matter of black or white. Who does that help? Not a soul.
But the PSAL boys basketball championships will not be contested this year as a matter of Banks and his inspectors choosing right over wrong.
Now back to the NCAA Basketball Tournament, so many of the “college” programs predicated on academic fraud, financial fraud and now above-the-table payola that opens wide cross-country transfer portals.
It’s all a con. Yet we still generously call it sports.
Will these college hoops games ever end?
Rooting for close games throughout the NCAA Tournament? Be careful for what you wish.
Last Saturday, as seen on Fox, newly conditioned viewers knew what to expect when Wisconsin and Purdue were tied with 60 seconds left.
The game had been a compelling watch. Good, action basketball.
But, predictably, with one minute left the plug would be pulled in deference to institutionalized lunacy — save-until-the-end per-possession timeouts, commercials, replay reviews and whatever else it takes to drain the life from an action sport that once favored teams coached to think for themselves.
And so the final minute of regulation — it went to OT — lasted 14 minutes, plenty of time during stoppages to see what else was on to combat the boredom.
If the PGA is now negotiating an alliance with LIV, obscenely over-funded by the Saudi government, the PGA’s reps should register as foreign agents. Seriously.
While we’re at it, NBC is another firmly tethered to “Look What We Can Do! Stupid TV.”
Throughout the last two rounds of last weekend’s TPC, NBC posted putting percentage graphics — “11 percent chance of making,” “26 percent chance” — as if all putts and those doing the putting are the same robot.
Yep, exact same line, exact same speed, exact same individual ability, exact same circumstances, exact same distance.
How NBC still doesn’t realize that such stat graphics are ludicrous, exposing NBC, especially to golfers, as fairy-winged fantasists is tough to reconcile. No production exec plays golf?
Finally, while I’d never advocate that No. 1-ranked Scottie Scheffler be someone he’s not, his dry and rather dull public personality surely must frustrate the desperate-for–good-attention PGA Tour as the world’s current best produces minimal attention.
Brady betting ads are bad look
Tom Brady must be broke. Why else would he take/need the dough to appear in commercials encouraging suckers to lose their money betting on bad-odds sports?
Notes from Wagner’s NCAA play-in win over Howard: 1) Howard’s 6-foot-9 Seth Towns is 26 years old and just finished his eighth year of eligibility. 2) Staten Island’s Wagner College is on Howard Ave.
Fox’s Wisconsin-Purdue included a closeup of a middle-aged man in the stands, rising and pointing to angrily holler that a call was [expletive deleted]. Given TV’s love of such “fans,” who knows if it was live?
Seems odd that the Eagles, with running, gunning Jalen Hurts their successful QB, would sign QB Kenny Pickett from the Steelers. Pickett was lost in Pittsburgh as he’s not a rush dodger. In college — Pitt — he was a superior classical pocket-passer. He needs a team willing to play to that strength.
Student-Athletics: Ahkil Nasir Crumpton, a full scholarship WR at Georgia in 2017-18, has been sentenced to 30 years after he was convicted of multiple charges in the 1:30 a.m. shooting murder of a gas station attendant in Crumpton’s hometown, Philadelphia. Oh, well.
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Phil Mushnick
