From: marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski)
Subject: Re: Georgia Tech over Duke by 1! / 9 m.seeeerious.p
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 01:23:29 GMT

In article <1iqampINNm09@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu> 
metzler@pablo.physics.lsa.umich.edu (Chris Metzler) writes:

>Helluva game, folks!
>
>What did people think?  I was very impressed with Travis Best.
>...

Well, I enjoyed the game, and here is my analysis from the vantage point of
the 9 most seeeerious problems in college sport, the tenth being trash talking.
 
1. alumni giving money/cars/favors to players.

There was no evidence of any alumni giving any cars to players, at
least on the live feed shown by CBS to the country and carried in Chicago.
There is an outside chance that some money and cars, not to mention favors,
were exchanged at half-time, but we have no evidence.  I did see some free
Cokes being handed out behind the GaTech bench and I thing ACC might want
to look into this when they get around to it.

2. alumni of rival schools doing (1).

See above.  Come to think of it that Coke might have been paid for at the
concession stand by a Michigan alumni trying to get the ACC in trouble and
cause both teams to be suspended form the NCAA tournament.  One never knows.

3. ugly school colors (yellow and blue, blue and silver, yellow and black...).

As much as I hate to admit it, my Mitsubishi TV (paid for by a well-meaning
alumnus of my school) proved resistant to correcting GaTech's school
colors.  Try as hard as I could, I just could not bring on an acceptable
compromise that would not in turn render Duke's colors surprisingly close
to the colors of Illinois.  As for Duke's school colors, you can hardly go
wrong with blue and white, a tasteful third best after the violet and white
of Northwestern University and the white and red of Indiana/Polish national
flag.

4. ugly floors (usually too much paint with disgusting amount of writing.)

The floor was exceeddingly overpainted with cartoons, self-assuring logos
that the home team still belongs to its conference, and acres of disgusting
yellow paint below the baskets and around the edges.  One *good* though
enigmatic feature was a fat black bullseye in the middle of the court.  I
think this was a first-order approximation to the essence of engineering,
possibly an abstraction of a nut, the emblem of mechanical engineering,
GaTech being a decent engineering school.  Um, do they teach graphic design?

5. cheerleaders wearing excess clothing (hyperthermia).

What cheerleaders we saw were definitely overdressed.  I think NCAA should
look into this before anyone dies of hyperthermia.

6. the absence of a free natonal television network dedicated to Indiana.

With CBS actually telecasting this game, there was one less national
network to show the rerun of the 1953 and 1940 NCAA championship victories
of Indiana over Kansas (one of them *in* Kansas City).  If the film is
unavailable, we should have been treated to a docudrama.  Still, CBS by
itself will not solve this problem so there is no point faulting them.

7. the coaches wearing ties and suits as if they were working for a living.

Everyone wore ties and suits, and one assistant coach was even positively
dressy.  This is really uncalled for.  Someone buy this guy a sweater.

8. the exponential growth of time to play remaining time as t approaches 40.

This was not a problem.  I checked on my HP programmable calculator and,
according to linear regression over last several televised games in my
area, this one went down the tubes for Duke in record time.  The growth of
time was bounded by a low order polynomial with a small coefficient.

9. intensional foul -- should be replaced by a fee not to exceed the last car
   given by the alumni or the last car given my the alumni of the rival
   school, whichever is less by the blue book value.

I am happy to report that no one lost his cars.

-----

Over all, from the vantage point of the 9 most seeeerious problems in
college sports, this game as above average and a credit to NCAA.

				-- Marek


Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college