NCAA Tourney: UNC Asheville v Syracuse, And The Erosion Of Credibility

It was exciting to see UNC Asheville hustle and keep things close with Syracuse, truly one of those games that everyone can enjoy.

Then, it became obvious that the outcome had been decided in the referees' locker room before the game began: No matter how ugly, Syracuse must win. Too much money on the line, too many viewers in those 'large-market' slices of the TV audience. The western bits of North Carolina don't have enough people to begin to make up for the losses of market share if upstate New York switches off the tube.

The goal-tend call that wasn't, the lane violation that maybe occurred but would have never been called unless the refs needed a way to turn the tide, and then the obvious blatant missed call of the out-of-bounds handed to Syracuse. Followed by CBS spinning and spinning, trying to tell us we and the entire crowd didn't see what we actually saw, followed by John Adams of the NCAA officiating office magically on hand to tell we didn't see what we saw--after all these are great guys doing a great job under tough circumstances and nobody dare question our competence much less our integrity. Talk talk talk spin spin spin.

It is becoming endemic, and OS has refrained from writing on it, thinking perhaps he was simply not seeing what he was seeing up to this point. But now, it has become blatant, shameless, unapologetic.
The Final Four must include at least two top seeds from large markets, no matter how ugly the process.

In 2010, OS noted the shameful conclusion of the PGA Championship, where he noted that professional golf had that day become just another professional sport, where officials decided who they wished to win. That day has long come and gone for the NCAA.

In our culture, since about the late 1960's, almost all trust has eroded. Sports matter a lot to people, because it gives respite from the greyness of so many lives, and there is that knowledge that a Tom Watson will penalize himself a stroke for an inadvertent infraction; that even though everyone is human, balls are balls and strikes are strikes; that players will refrain from the temptation to deliberately injure one another; that officials will let the game unfold and not attempt to enter into it.

This is all going away in the NCAA. Someone will end up getting badly injured in a game this March, OS fears, and the NCAA will not have enough credibility to handle the situation, OS knows.