As first mentioned last week, you had the Jim Boeheim whine over scheduling and TV. What’s been funny has been the intolerance of it this year. It started almost immediately. It just keeps coming. It’s as if sportswriters have collectively announced that they have had enough of coaches whining about how hard their schedule is.
Paul Zeise sort of cuts Boeheim some slack, but then lays into BE coaches collectively:
The Big East may be the best conference in the country, but it also seems to have become a cradle of whiners.
In recent weeks, at least 10 of the league’s coaches have been quoted in various media outlets complaining about the conference’s schedule and how difficult it is. The other six probably have as well. We just missed it.
Most of the complaints have been centered around the fact that because there are so many teams in the league there are only a few opportunities for home-and-homes (two to be exact), and that makes it more difficult to prepare for opponents because teams only get one shot at them.
Duh!
That’s the price of being a part of a 16-team league, and it is a major reason why many observers have said it is too big for scheduling purposes.
Seth Davis at SI.com is also sick of the various coach whining,
3. The we-shouldn’t-do-everything-TV-says-we-should whine. Boeheim is certainly not the first one to make this complaint. Bob Knight has been doing so for centuries. We can all pretend that these decisions should be made “for the players,” but the reality is, college basketball is a big business. And like any business, it must constantly look for ways to grow revenue. Otherwise, it might go out of business.
Boeheim should be proud of what the Big East has done to his schedule. The league did it because Boeheim has built a marquee program that people want to watch. That has also made Boeheim a very rich man. If he and his coaching brethren would like to reduce the influence of television on their sport, perhaps they could volunteer to cut their salaries in an effort to hold down expenses. Because it’s all about what’s good for the players, right?
Uh, yeah.
