Maybe I'm just old. I don't know. Watching the major sports in college, the professionals have long since been in the dumpster as far as I'm concerned, has become almost unbearable.
The rampant walking, the fouling that goes uncalled, the double dribbles that get ignored, and the entire atmosphere around major college sports is tainted with corruption and big money. The officiating is abysmal, the coaching, except for a few good ones, is nothing but streetball, the legal bribery of college players today in NIL, the transfer portal mess, the media that doesn't care about anything but hype, and the bloated conferences with realignment have all contributed to my complete disdain with the genre I used to love.
I'm not a fan of regulations constricting the freedom of movement for teams or players, but somewhere prudence must have a say. The latest catastrophe occurred as a result of Oklahoma and Texas exiting the Big 12 to go to the SEC. But that just kicked things off. Then you had the Big 10 and ACC poaching the PAC 12, causing a conference from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. This means all of those schools' teams will have to travel continental just to play a game. Maybe for the big-money sports that works, but for everything else? It is silly.
So, there is no way a school that isn't in the Power 4 has much of a chance at competing against the Power 4 conference teams; after all, it used to be the Power 5. Now, those are actually football terms, but they apply even more in basketball. The money just makes it even more uneven. To be honest, I don't get how they find so many donors to give to these NIL Syndicates for schools, the donations are not tax-deductable. Does Alabama need MORE money to pay players?
What is even worse is that smaller colleges are having trouble getting people to attend the games. They are mostly empty, even if all of the seats are sold. People just don't attend anymore, unless you are UK, KU, IU, UM, UofA, and so on. A university like Western Kentucky University that has had a successful sports tradition over many years has trouble getting the students to attend unless there is a Greek function going on. Diddle used to be full at 13,000 +, but now, after they reduced the capacity for the Sky Boxes, the capacity is just around 7,000, and the Tops are lucky to get over 5,000 in attendance. So, if you can't sell 5K seats for cheap, then how are you going to support a basketball program?
I digress.
The real problem for me is the lack of respect for the sport of basketball. There are basically 3 general rules to basketball:
1: You must dribble the ball; you can't walk with the ball. Give me a break with the "Gather step". There is no such thing. Geez.
2: You can't dribble, pick up the ball, and then dribble again; it is called double dribble. If you touch the ball, it hits the floor, and you pick it up and dribble again, it is double dribble, whether it is accidental or not. Related to these two is palming the ball, and this has been rampant for years. This is when your hand doesn't dribble on top of the ball.
3: You can't touch the opposing player; it is called a foul. This rule has completely gone off of the rails.
You hear people say "Let em play!" Well, yeah, but we aren't talking about some vague rules here. Dribbling the ball is "THE NUMBER 1 RULE IN BASKETBALL". It is what makes basketball basketball and not handball.
The purpose behind these rules is so the game wouldn't go off the rails and become a chaotic mess. Naismith designed a great game. But, what we have now is a chaotic mess. It looks like a bunch of 3rd graders playing, running up and down the court jacking up shots they shouldn't be taking.
It's not like I go to pick on this stuff when I watch the games. You can't unsee what is going on. How can you not see it?
Here is the trouble with this. Everyone knows this rubbish is going on, but coaches don't complain because it may affect their teams' W/L record. So, everyone is out there just Euro-stepping their way to la la land. It's a farce.
In college sports, I don't think it is fair that some players make more money than their teammates. Leave that up to the pros. I think it would be fair if every team paid all of their players equal money from the same fund. What used to be illegal has now become standard, and it is ruining college athletics...for me.
My previous post was about complaining...there you are!