HOOPS TRIANGLE

NCAA, ESPN favor Duke.

Throughout history there have been famous triangles. Two of the most notorious are the Bermuda Triangle and the love triangle. Neither are for the faint of heart and both have swallowed the unsuspecting. There are renown triangles too, such as geometry’s famous 30-60-90 triangle. The outside walls of the architectural wonders known as the Egyptian pyramids are triangular.

Triangles circulate in sports as well.

Tex Winter, one of basketball’s greatest innovators, made the triangle offense the cornerstone of six Chicago Bulls NBA championships. The triangle offense was so effective Bulls Head Coach Phil Jackson took it, along with assistant coach Winter, to the L.A. Lakers, won more championships, then tried it again with the New York Knicks who simply did not have the personnel to make it work.

Pocono Raceway is a famous super-speedway located in, yes, the Pocono mountain area of Pennsylvania. Also known as The Tricky Triangle because of three distinctly unique turns, the racetrack stands apart from the world’s famous racetracks. Pocono is not a pure oval like the Milwaukee Mile. Nor a rectangular oval like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Pocono is not a road course like Monaco. It’s a triangle!

Amen Corner at Augusta National Golf Club, while not a triangle, is a trifecta representing one of golf’s most hallowed sequences. For more than 80 years, the 11th, 12th and 13th holes have combined to make and break the dreams of professional golfers seeking the fame and glory that comes with winning the Masters (cue the music and Jim Nance, speaking softly, “A tradition unlike any other”).

Too much footsie

Recently, another sports triangle appears to be coagulating. It started to surface years ago, during the NCAA Tournament’s much-anticipated Selection Sunday show, formerly broadcast exclusively on CBS, now alternating between CBS and TBS.

Barely noticeable early on, but now debated among many fans, is the observation the 10-member Selection Committee appears to favor Duke (this has caught the attention of fans who are paying attention). Ask any knowledgeable hoops fan this side of Durham, North Carolina and many agree something seems, if not fishy, very accommodating toward Duke when the brackets are unveiled each spring.

Duke is regularly given what is perceived as a comfy draw, i.e. some say East Coast bias, some argue is the easiest path to the Final Four. To their credit the Blue Devils, who no one is accusing of infiltrating or untoward influencing of the committee, have taken advantage of their preferred placement, making it to the Final Four five times the past 20 years, winning the championship three times. In this sense Duke is an innocent bystander reaping the benefit of a convenient Selection Committee.

By way of comparison, Michigan State has more Final Four appearances the past 20 years (seven) and one title. However, on several occasions MSU has “upset” their way to the Final Four appearances.

The last time both MSU and Duke made the Final Four, in 2015, bears this out. Duke, a #1 seed, was placed in the comparatively easy South Region, while #7 seed MSU was in the tougher Midwest Region. MSU won their first game against #10 seed Georgia, then needed upset victories over #2 seed Virginia, #3 seed Oklahoma and #4 seed Louisville to make it to the Final Four. Duke beat #16 seed Robert Morris, #8 seed San Diego State, #5 seed Utah and then finally played a team with pedigree, beating #2 seed Gonzaga. Duke then beat #7 seed MSU and #1 seed Wisconsin for the title.

(It is worth noting that in 1976 Indiana, the last men’s college team to go undefeated, won the title by beating teams who all were ranked in the final regular season Top 20 poll. During the tournament the Hoosiers beat 18th ranked St. John’s, 6th ranked Alabama, 2nd ranked Marquette and in the Final Four beat 5th ranked UCLA and 9th ranked Michigan.)

In years Duke is not a #1 seed, the committee finds a way to either place them in the South Region or East Region, enabling Duke to play opening round games closer to home, or they send Duke to a softer side of the bracket in the West Region or Midwest Region. And on occasions Duke does not get a #1 seed, the Blue Devils are often placed in a region featuring the weakest team among the four #1 seeds.

ESPN channeling CNN

The network that led and exemplified the broadcast component of sports’ modern era, and did a damned great job of it, these days too often loses its way. From dull Sunday Night Baseball coverage (hiring admitted steroid cheater Alex Rodriquez to provide analysis is inexcusable) to lackluster Monday Night Football coverage, ESPN has lost a bit of its edge, as has CNN, the former innovative leader on the cable news side.

ESPN often tries too hard to be cool rather than letting cool happen organically, as they did when they were the lead arbiter of sports media “cool.” Then it was cool not because ESPN said so but because their audience believed it. Pushing the talented Jemele Hill out of ESPN did not help in my opinion.

As sometimes happens with music artists (for example, Kanye West), ESPN crossed into the realm of trying to be cool. The first time I noticed this was when ESPN gave us the morning show Cold Pizza on sister network ESPN2 (the show ran from 2003-2007). It felt too manufactured.

Ditto, ESPN coverage of NBA All-Star Weekend, compared to TNT coverage. ESPN feels constrained while TNT naturally captures the fun of the weekend.

To it’s credit, ESPN does produce outstanding shows such as Pardon the Interruption. And ESPN bringing us the independently produced 30-for-30 documentaries is monumental.

But back to the story at hand.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2018 and, in collaboration with Duke, ESPN gave us an eight-episode, all-access extravaganza documenting the Blue Devils as they prepped for this season.

Titled Earn Everything and airing on ESPN+, the show followed players from the time they arrived on campus last summer and provided an inside look at Duke basketball. Legendary Coach Mike Krzyzewski was shown coaching his team in practice, in the locker room and during an exhibition game tour in Canada. The series ended showing us Duke preparing for their season opener against Kentucky.

Is this even fair?

Perennially a magnet for Top 10 recruits, Duke and Coach K run an exemplary program and need no help attracting the best high school players. To borrow from the equal time concept, which says media should cover political candidates fairly in terms of non-advertising exposure, there is an argument against Duke receiving this hype. Should any college sports team be the beneficiary of ESPN promoting their program with an intensive, inside look such as Earn Everything? Should the NCAA stand idly by and allow this?

During the recent ACC-Big Ten challenge, ESPN split the screen while Duke’s game against Indiana was in game action, promoting Earn Everything by showing excerpts of the documentary. Does anybody believe a big-time recruit, who has Duke among his final few teams, is not influenced by seeing Duke and Coach K at practice and in the locker room and travelling to play exhibition games in Canada?

Yes, Duke was blowing out Indiana at the time, in a game that never should have been played, the scheduling of which serves as an example of the VIP treatment often afforded Duke.

The premise of the ACC-Big Ten challenge is to match the top teams in each conference against one another, the middle pack teams against each other, and on down the line, with the bottom teams in each conference playing each other. Somehow Duke, ranked #3 in the nation when they played Indiana, was matched against a Hoosiers team that was not even ranked in the Top 25.

There were four or five other Big Ten teams ranked in the Top 25, any one of whom should have been matched with Duke. But Duke got their table set with unranked Indiana, at home in Cameron Indoor Stadium, and dutifully feasted on the Hoosiers. And ESPN pushed Earn Everything on its viewers, not in the form of promotions during timeout breaks, but via split screen while the game was in progress.

The opinion here is programming like Earn Everything should not be permitted by the NCAA.

For sure, Coach K and Duke will get their share of McDonald’s All Americans. But should any school be given the enormous advantage of ESPN acting as the university’s unofficial network? (Full disclosure, several years ago ESPN covered a few days of Kentucky practices while the Wildcats were in the Bahamas, creating an unfair advantage for Kentucky.)

Look, if a conference network, e.g. Big Ten Network, wants to cover all its conference team’s preseason drills equally, so be it. But a national cable network, like ESPN, producing a behind-the-scenes documentary about any school should be prohibited by the NCAA.

Unfortunately, when it comes to oversight and common sense, the NCAA proves time and time again to not be up to the challenge.

Douglas FreelandDecember 6, 2018