Other than taking the Mini in for an oil change there were no cultural activities on his calendar for today so he had time to root around in the archives for a while and find an ancient column somewhat appropriate for the season, to wit:
March Madness
Uncle Jack will bet that he is not the only person on the
Outer Banks who is glad that March---the longest March in the
history of weather---is finally over. Coming on the heels of
what had to be one of the worst Februarys ever, this March
was nasty enough to make even Canadians grumble.
As usual there was something bad about March besides the
weather, to wit: the NCAA basketball tournament which never
fails to turn Uncle Jack into a quivering pudding of guilt as
he wastes hour after hour watching sweaty young men in short
pants engage in ferocious dunk-to-dunk combat in an effort to
establish the supremacy of their respective "institutions of
higher learning" as colleges and universities are still
laughingly referred to in some circles.
Each year the spectacle gets a little harder for Uncle
Jack to enjoy even though he knows he is watching some of the
finest amateur athletes that money can buy---many of whom will
soon be earning more money in one week than he has amassed in
his virtuous lifetime of incessant toil. (If they are not already
getting it under the table, stuffed into their capacious Nikes
by greedy agents and overzealous alumni).
If Uncle Jack sounds jealous it is for good reason because
he knows full well that had he been born 40 years later he,
too, might have a shoe contract to fall back on in his old age.
It is an incontrovertible fact (anybody who might have
controverted it is already dead) that at one time Uncle Jack
owned the deadliest two-hand setshot ever seen in northern
Wisconsin. He stood at the threshhold of fame and fortune but
only briefly because unbeknownst to him in a gym in faraway
Indiana Oscar Robertson had invented the one-hand jumper and
rendered Uncle Jack obsolete overnight.
But that was long ago and Uncle Jack has long since
adjusted to the fact that he will never amount to anything.
His problem with the NCAA tournament, that which causes him
to writhe in his Barcalounger, his hair shirt soaked with
the sweat of guilt, is his knowledge that the whole thing
has become such an embarrassing travesty in the name of
higher education.
Colleges and universities, many of them actually worthy
of the name, have been sucked into the sordid business of
recruiting and maintaining semi-professional teams of so-called
"student athletes", most of whom never see a diploma much less
earn one. (A few probably couldn't read it if they did get one).
The reason for all this chicanery, of course, is money--vast
amounts of money derived primarily from lucrative TV contracts.
College basketball sells products---with a vengeance as any
frazzled survivor of "March Madness" can tell you.
For this reason even prestigious universities like Duke
and Stanford are willing to prostitute themselves to hucksters
and world-class windbags like Dick Vitale, who has single-
mouthedly done more to turn off intelligent basketball fans
than anyone he can think of.
Uncle Jack is not kidding when he says that if anything
ever goes wrong with his "mute" switch he will never watch
another basketball game on ESPN.
Anyway March and the NCAA tournament are over and now
Uncle Jack can look forward to doing his taxes. This is something
that always makes him angry but at least he won't feel guilty
and he doesn't have to listen to Dick Vitale while he does it.
No comments:
Post a Comment