By Jay Barnes
Hello To You All,
This is for friends I know who have a love of college basketball and are patient enough to read this. All of the other collegiate sports are tied to this email as well by association but college hoops, my real true love, is the subject I will concentrate on. Selected friends I have known on this list represent those who have either attended or graduated from or grew up loving their school’s basketball programs scattered across the country.
Image above of Independence Square, Charlotte, NC, 1955… See More: https://www.bygonely.com/charlotte-1950s/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
My friend’s schools here on this list include love of North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, NC State, Virginia, Baylor, Kansas, Kentucky, Auburn, Ohio State, Tennessee, Georgia, UCLA, Minnesota, Florida State, Boise State, Boston College, Missouri and New Mexico State. You represent twenty schools that not a one of you has failed to be devoted to and failed to express that to me. All of our love has equal weight, no school better than another so as I describe my particular experience it is intended to include and remind you of yours.
Forgive this personal vent on the insidious attention and greed that accompanies the legal tender. My experience with it starts with the attached ticket to the very first college basketball game I attended, a UNC-Duke game at Reynolds Coliseum during the iconic, now defunct Dixie Classic which had a rich history of gathering the Big Four of the Atlantic Coast Conference; Wake Forest, NC State, Duke and Carolina against four different invited ‘outsider’ schools from across the country each year.
Schools like Cincinnati with Oscar Robertson, West Virginia with Jerry West, St Bonaventure with Bob Lanier and Michigan State with Jumping Johnny Green. Each year brought fresh and new outstanding competition. The conference always prided itself that no one outside the Big Four ever won the tournament even though many of the outsiders were favorites to win their particular year. I grew up in Charlotte where six Eastern regionals were held over the years. I remember watching Bill Bradley score 46 points in a game, and Jerry West scoring 37 for West Virginia.
Editor’s Note: Some links below to see more about the great athletes Jay mentions above. –DrWeb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bradley
Image above from “Dean Dome,” opening… See More: https://www.on3.com/teams/north-carolina-tar-heels/news/history-the-smith-centers-grand-opening-unc-basketball-duke/
Like many kids in the Carolinas, at age twelve I followed the Tar Heels in 1957 as they marched to a 32-0 season and national championship behind the talents of Lenny Rosenbluth and five other New Yorkers brought down south by Frank McGuire along with an unknown golf coach from Air Force University hired as an assistant from Kansas named Dean Smith. For kids in my area of the country it was impossible to forget because an undefeated season had never been accomplished. It was also memorable because of who Carolina played, Kansas University which was the birthplace of college basketball.
Their star player, and national player of the year Wilt Chamberlain made the game larger than life, no pun intended. The Final Four was conducted in Kansas City so it was a home game for the Wildcats. Sprinkle in two Final Four games that produced TWO triple overtimes that were required to win it all. After that my father began a long tradition of placing tickets to the Dixie Classic tournament under our tree each Christmas which started two or three days after between Christmas and New Year’s. He followed that up with a birthday gift of a backyard basketball goal where I wore down the grass into dust in a matter of weeks. That year really hooked me for life. I’ve attended thirteen Final Fours and a larger number of regional Sweet Sixteen tournaments. Not all of the Final Fours included UNC as I just loved the tournament.
So to the reality of what every one of us must know. Our talent is the engine we use to navigate our way through life. We use whatever we possess that gains advantage and make it easier to guide our path and the others we love and bring along for the ride. The questions that can’t be avoided:
Is it right for athletes to be included in the rewards of athletic program accomplishment? Yes, absolutely. Does your son or daughter have the right to hawk chicken or hamburgers because they have a sure three point stroke? Of course. Have our athletes over the years been exploited for the benefit of university athletic program coffers? No question. Is the movement to compensate our athletes a beginning to make up for being used for many years? Yes, it’s the right thing to do.
So then it’s fair to make right of these wrongdoings over time. At the same time we watch what this action produces, at first modestly, then a tsunami emerges. The whispers of AAU agents, marketing managers, advertising agencies, then many of the parents whose ears are being packed with the idea of opportunity and grabbing it while you can. These are finite special times, never to be repeated, so be smart and act now. And so they do. A highly recruited athlete, professing a life long love of a school, commits to that school, securing a generous sum to bring their talents to that school. And then someone else is in their ear. You’re being exploited. Your talent is way beyond what you are being offered. So and so University will give you twice that amount. Don’t be foolish. Is your loyalty to them worth three million dollars?
So your university decides to say no, you won’t be leading this discussion. You won’t hold us for ransom. You are talented and we want you but your price is too high. You’re eighteen, we’ve been here forever. So you go enjoy your millions somewhere else. And so he is gone, along with his long forgotten love. And it is replaced with the continuing need of a player whose skills drove him to another school. And your school is doomed to repeat the process and decide if they are desperate enough to give a large sum of money to another player and hope he sticks.
So flash forward sixty eight years from 1957 and here we are with the introduction of the three point shot, the thirty second clock, the advent of two and done, then one and done, the elimination of tied up jump balls and the proliferation of tv time outs.
The tsk tsk of calling out almost every Division I school alumni for shoving hundreds into players pockets after games seem trite by today’s standards. The inclusion of NIL and the transfer portal seems to have transported the game to an almost unimaginable game of wet behind the ears teenagers hawking tax advice who haven’t had the displeasure of recognizing a 1040 form until recently. Now a much admired recent graduate of UNC bought a Ben and Jerry’s franchise on Franklin Street before his senior year. A number one pick from last year’s high school rank turned down a four million dollar offer to take a seven million commitment to play a single freshman year of ball at a less known Division I school who has an alumnus willing and able to underwrite the entire basketball budget into perpetuity.
See More: https://www.tarheelblog.com/unc-basketball/46475/seth-trimble-now-owns-ben-jerrys-in-chapel-hill
Above all the rest is the growing disconnection between the players/coaching staff and the loyal fan and alumni base on some level. The money has diluted the importance of history and experience and a long period of loyalty to programs who for the most part are, if not the front door of the university experience, is certainly deep rooted in the experience of human beings in those formative and freedom producing years of seventeen to twenty four. Those years that for the great majority of us are never forgotten and are considered some of the most enriching years of our lives. Those years that grow in value as we age. Those years that reflect a more meaningful sense of order. The kind of sense that our parents reflected on when they told the stories of how the big band era made them jitter buggers following the depression and the war.
Money is a diluter of experience. It waters down meaning and the joy of a committed communal experience by adding a distraction of self interest. Yes, we want kids to share our perceived value of the experience we have had. But that value is a lonesome one inhabited only by ourselves more often than not. A kid may not know what he wants but there are plenty of voices in his impressionable ears tell them your offered gifts are fleeting. You’d better grab it. And who among us might honesty understand that enticement and see why a kid can change his mind. Would you give up the love of a school for three million dollars that comes from a school you care nothing about? Maybe yes.
And if you don’t you can still understand why someone would make that choice. And in the rubble of the results of that decision lies the reason they are where they are. The money. I just hate what it’s doing to the game I love. I confess that sixty eight years of devotion to a sport that is changing so quickly, so drastically is taking away some of the love and devotion to the sport I sometimes find hard to recognize. I am starting to care less and I’ve never thought that could ever happen.
Good wishes to you and your family, no matter where you are, Jay
Editor’s Note: This is Jay’s email. I edited minor spacing, but the words are his. I added some photos and links for more context. You can reply and comment, and I’ll let Jay know your comments. Or, when I post this on Facebook, comment there too. –DrWeb (aka Jay’s 50-year plus friend)
Additional Voices on College Athetics and Sports, via ChatGPT
1. Dick Vitale
- ESPN columns: Dick Vitale on ESPN
- Background / credibility reference:
Dick Vitale profile - Shows primarily his ESPN commentary and recurring opinion pieces. He’s been a central college basketball voice at ESPN since 1979.
2. Jay Bilas
- ESPN author page (articles, analysis, commentary): Jay Bilas on ESPN
- His written analysis + TV commentary clips. He’s a long-time ESPN analyst and frequent contributor across platforms.
3. Seth Davis
- Primary current platform: Seth Davis at Hoops HQ
- Additional background / credibility:
Seth Davis profile overview - This is probably the strongest modern source—he now runs Hoops HQ, a dedicated college basketball media platform, and also writes for major outlets.
4. Fran Fraschilla
- ESPN bio / media page:
Fran Fraschilla ESPN bio - He’s more broadcast-heavy (less long-form writing), but this page anchors his ESPN presence and credentials as a regular analyst.
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