Monthly Archives: March 2013

1987, Assembly Hall, Bob Knight, Calbert Cheaney, Damon Bailey, Digger Phelps, Gene Keady, Indiana Hoosiers, NCAA College Basketball, Steve Alford, Tom Crean

This is (the new) Indiana


What I’ve learned in all my years watching college basketball is this: it is lacking all logic and rationale and cannot be explained.
So many inexplicable things happen, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory and vice-versa. Buzzer beaters, blown leads, comebacks, brain freezes. What makes sense, what looks good, depth, balance, defense, offense, can all change radically within a week, a road trip or even a game.
But we all know why. These are just kids.
They have classes on the History of Southern Cooking, bowling, Advanced Triple Trigonomics and the Economic Impact of the Sudan on Western Civilization. In one semester. They eat their weight in Cookie Crisp and don’t gain a pound. They stay up all night and sleep half the day. They may or may not shower regularly.
And they are going to be as perplexing to us, especially while playing a game, as they are to themselves all the time. In college basketball, perfection is rare, predictability even more so – that’s why it’s called March Madness, after all.
Indiana basketball cannot be rationally explained, either.
Why is it so important to fans that Indiana University basketball return to a place of actual relevance and championship contending status? Why is this night, Senior Night against Ohio State with the outright B1G title on the line special? Why is this important?
Does “it just is” suffice for those questions? No? OK, well, that’s a shame, because that’s kind of the best answer. We don’t even really know what a “Hoosier” is – and it’s a good time to mention it’s 2013.
But that’s the best answer because, really, it would simply take too long to explain Damon Bailey, 1976, Martha the Mop Lady, Calbert Cheaney, Brian Evans, Alan Henderson, Scott May, the Abernathy twins, Branch McCracken, candy-striped pants, The Shot, Alford, Darryl Thomas, The Rim Recker, Greg Graham and his brother from another mother Jeff, Evans arm sling, The Chair, The Sweater, The General, A Season on the Brink, 1987, 1981 and the missed opportunity in 1993, Haston, Guyton, Lyndon Jones and Jay Edwards, Uwe, Kent Benson, Steve Green, Mike Woodson, Keith Smart, Isiah, The McGlocklins, Laz, Chuck Marlowe, The Indiana Classic, The Hoosier Classic, “Socks, Shorts, 1-2-3”, Bracey Wright, Joby Wright, McGinnis, Buckner, Wittman and really, a hundred other moments, names and games.
What we have is a grassroots style of support for a game long entrenched in the fabric of the state. From high school to college to pros, we live and breathe this stuff. In 1998, the state’s high school athletic sanctioning body, the IHSAA, changed the format of the state tournament to multiple class basketball and it was nearly Armageddon. The backlash is still going on, somewhat. People still talk about it.
But you have to understand how deep the roots are. It’s tribal.
Counties of four, five and six schools, like the six or seven that surround Indianapolis, are deeply rooted in rivalries between schools of diverse enrollment and socio-economic class. It’s 1990 Duke-UNLV or 1992 Michigan-Duke, in a way. Then, there’s Marion County, home of Indianapolis and home to a hoops hotbed. The City and County championships are legendary.
Every game is March Madness in Indiana high school basketball. At least it was. I played in both the final single-class tournament and the first multi-class tournament. It felt like they were trying to find a way to make the small schools feel important, but we already did. A sectional championship might as well have been a state championship. It meant that much.
Now take that, let it age a few years. Let the lived and lost dreams of former players, coaches, cheerleaders and fans permeate.
In Bloomington, they have five national title banners swaying softly in an oddly shaped building that can get very, very loud. It’s loud because it’s filled to the brim with diehard fans of the game. A former high school star sits next to a former high school cheerleader next to their parents, who went to every game, drove every trip for AAU games in Fort Wayne and Evansville when they lived in Batesville, Rushville or Jasper.
Nature vs. nurture? How about both.
In Indiana, this basketball stuff goes deep and it’s like a cult. Nearly everyone did have a basketball goal and dreamed of taking the last second shot. Magnetic – and usual – personalities like Bob Knight, Gene Keady and Digger Phelps ran the state for nearly 30 years. They brought in the local boys, the hometown heroes we had watched through puberty and made them men – championship men. Some went on to the NBA, others just back to their hometown. But all basically legends.
Knight himself was a force of nature, and when he slipped and finally lost it, it was like a giant falling. The crash left collateral damage, bruising the school, the state, the game, our tribes. And as often happens when eras end, there is a hangover, a decay, a funk. Then, to make matters worse, Kelvin Sampson started using a cell phone. Those hometown heroes started leaving the state.
When you don’t have a deep connection to your high schools and your counties, when specialization in sports during this era means fewer kids participating as they get older, when your state divided by enrollment, when your legendary college coaches retire (or get removed) and some hotshot comes in from out of state, you lose your bearings a little bit.
The thread of the fabric unravels.
But just like with most things in life and in history, with proper attention and care, things can be repaired or made new again. These things just take time. It took the right guy – someone like Tom Crean – to fully submerge himself in the process of not just picking up the pieces, but building a new foundation from scratch.
It was good that Steve Alford knew all these years what many couldn’t see: IU didn’t really need him. Oh, they wanted him. What a story, right? The prodigal son returns. To do what exactly? Just winning would never have been enough. He would always be compared to Knight. He’d be living moment to moment, with no joy, dying with each loss, with each recruit he didn’t get. He’s better off building something new in New Mexico than trying to relive the past in Bloomington.
No, Indiana needed Tom Crean, someone without history here, but someone with passion for the history of the state and obsession for basketball, not the other way around.
Truthfully, honestly, full restoration may never occur – it’s just a different time, both in the state and the sport. We might never see the dominance of Indiana basketball again for an extended period of time, just like we might never see the level of obsession again.
Think of it as the new Hoosier Hysteria. It’s realistic, slightly tempered, built better for the modern age, with a nod to history. We like Tom Crean, but he hasn’t consumed us, blinded us as Bobby did. And yes, that’s a good thing. It shouldn’t matter if Knight wants to come back – for the first time since he left, the program is bigger than he is.
It’s the name on the jersey, not the coach on the bench.
Does Indiana, now after regaining credibility, being ranked No. 1 most of the regular season and capturing the school’s first B1G title in years need to win it outright tonight? Does it need to win the NCAA Tournament this year to fully return to glory?
Does it matter?
Sometimes to appreciate where you are, you just have to realize where you’ve been.
Standard
Dan Patrick, ESPN, Keith Olbermann, SportsCenter

Of Biscuits & Baskets


Well, well, well.
Looked what the cat dragged in. Why, it’s Keith Olbermann, looking for a job.
According to a story in the New York Times, Olbermann’s throwing rocks at the window of ESPN. I can visualize Olbermann with a boom box held over his head ala John Cusak.
If this seems strange to you…well, you’d be right. This oozes of desperation, the kind where self-loathing is only trumped by one’s willingness to have their voice heard, even if nobody listens anymore.
Olbermann has become the bigot in Henry Fonda’s “12 Angry Men”, where everyone just ignores him now.

His first time around, Olbermann spent five years at ESPN (1992-1997), pairing with Dan Patrick to create one of the greatest broadcast teams in sports. During an era when ESPN and SportsCenter were both simultaneously growing and peaking in popularity, everyone watched the 11pm SportsCenter. And for that hour, Patrick and Olbermann were your witty, snide and insightful co-hosts of sports highlights.

They were a fantastic team and SportsCenter became must watch viewing for males 14-450. Everyone watched. They were creating catch phrases and making athletes themselves watch “The Big Show.”
But then Olbermann lost his mind. He was suspended for going on a former colleague’s show and calling ESPN a “Godforsaken place”. He might as well have burned down the Bristol campus the way he left town. He spent the next decade either verbally eviscerating ESPN or half-heartedly apologizing.
Meanwhile, Olbermann continued his erratic professional behavior at Fox, MSNBC and CurrentTV have all parted ways with him, mainly because he just kept saying things that would cross the line. It’s hard in the current political landscape to actually say enough against another party to lose one’s job, but Olbermann keeps finding ways to do it.
Perhaps it’s because it’s so venomous, spiteful and angry. Or, it could be, as Rupert Murdoch once said, “I fired him…he’s crazy.” He even found a way to make Al Gore hate him and Gore is of similar political leanings. He’s a master of professional and journalistic arson
Either way, Olbermann’s reached a point where no one credible will hire him. He’s one step away from using his catchphrases in a fast-food drive thru.
Which is why, short of toying with him, I can’t imagine why ESPN would even entertain this. I picture ESPN as something akin to Henry F. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, when George Bailey comes to him for help after “misplacing” the money:
“Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world.”
But Keith Olbermann is no George Bailey.

He’s smarmy, arrogant, incendiary, rude, unyielding – a reckless force of nature now. He’s grown to think his importance and stature are above that of the topics he covers. It’s all background noise to the Keith Olbermann Show itself. His ego is bigger than the state of Connecticut.

And there’s just no way ESPN can put him back out there. First, ESPN isn’t big on big stars. Second, there’s the whole Keith Olbermann “I Hate ESPN” campaign that was only missing some bumper stickers and its own Super PAC.
Perhaps most importantly, nobody cares about what Keith Olbermann has to say anymore. When he has dipped his right holier-than-thou toes into the sports scene, it’s clear he considers it to be a somewhat silly attempt to lower himself to that level of commentary again.
In other words, Keith Olbermann thinks he’s too good for sports. And can you imagine how his 1990s catch-phrase style would come off now?
For the time being, ESPN is wisely staying away. Then again, they are doing just what I said they might, which is toy with him. Like an executive took Olbermann out to dinner and then made it known to other media outlets than Olbermann was looking for work, but that it’s ESPN and ESPN doesn’t need him.
On second thought, maybe they deserve each other. Because I can’t think of anyone outside of Olbermann who thinks higher of their own self-importance than ESPN does.
ESPN’s biggest problem is has all the angles covered: SportsCenter isn’t just highlights and brief analysis. Now it’s on all the time, with 10 minutes devoted to the Jets backup quarterback situation on a Tuesday in February.
There’s a blur between opinion, journalism and commentary. What’s factual isn’t always so clear, due to the instant analysis nature of the brand now. And maybe that’s where Olbermann fits, in this style of telling you, oh lowly viewer and impressionable mind, what to think about a topic. But instead of politics, it’s sports. We aren’t allowed to judge or develop our own narratives, it’s done for us now, by former coaches and ex-players and never-weres like Olbermann. ESPN News, when it’s actually on, is what SportsCenter used to be 10 years ago.
So this is what we’ve been reduced to: stories about two massive egos who value themselves as entities so highly that they deem this a news story. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t cover this whole thing themselves, further blurring the line.
Come to think of it, we’d be better off if we just ignored them all together. Since that’s not going to happen with ESPN, we can at least all agree to ignore Olbermann.
Keith, just go away. Your 15 minutes is up. After all, it’s not 1997 anymore. 
Standard