SOUTHERN CONFERENCE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT
My son Tom had free VIP tickets to the two semifinal games in the Southern Conference Basketball Tournament at the Harrah’s Asheville Civic Center and he invited me to come along. The $9 parking was free, snacks and beer were free, dinner was free and the tickets were free. We were Very Important People in the VIP room although we had done nothing to deserve it.
The first game between Samford and Furman wasn‘t very exciting, but the second game between the University of Tennessee at Chattangooga and East Tennessee University was. Tom decided to pin his hopes that ETSU would win and so that is who we rooted for. But at the half they were 20 points behind, hopelessly beaten, and we almost left early. But then they showed signs of life and with a furious finish they tied the score at the end of regulation and barely won, by one point, in overtime. It was great fun.
But even as the game was going on I wondered at the whole spectacle. Maybe it was because I had just returned from India and was seeing everything through foreign eyes. Why do American universities have sports teams in the first place? It makes sense for young men to be able to play sports for exercise during their college years. An afternoon basketball league would give them a way to work off their extra energy. But why have one college compete against another although that seems innocent enough?
But how do universities attract alumni to games but also gain a huge fan base of people who have never visited the college. Teams like the University of Carolina basketball team seem to represent the whole state of North Carolina. This calls for huge stadiums filled with people on a Saturday afternoon and then becomes a huge business, with exorbitant ticket prices leading to coaches being paid more than anyone else at the university with multiple coaches for every team with all of this attracting huge amounts of television money and fancier and fancier facilities. And now even the players are being paid thousands of dollars to play and shifting from university to university as hired players going to the teams who pay the most with the greatest likelihood of winning and then, hopefully, becoming professional players for major professional sports teams.
At the games we watched each team had a travel band of perhaps 50 college students as well as another 30 cheerleaders, mostly young women in skimpy costumes who danced and did acrobatics at every pause in the game. Each team of maybe 15 players had another 15 coaches, trainers and managers. This entire entourage of over 100 people had to be transported and housed and fed at every game. While it is a university team it has no connection to the functions of a university and classroom learning beyond the name. Practice requires hours each day. There is really no time to study. Most players are students, learners, in name only.
All of this was going through my mind as I ate the VIP snacks, sat in the VIP courtside seats and cheered for a team that I would have had trouble locating on a map.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 