Well, yes, that Tony has left, but I’m talking about the Tony Bennett who was the head coach for the men’s basketball team at the University of Virginia.
Why? Not because the game on the court has changed, but because the game off the court has changed.
“Nil” means nothing… but NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) means college athletes are cashing in, big time. Good for them… but bad for the sport. Tony knows that:
I think it’s right for players… student-athletes… to receive revenue. Please don’t mistake me, I do….
But the game, and college athletics, is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change.
“I was equipped to do the job the old way. That’s who I am. But there needs to be change. It’s going to be closer to a professional model. There’s got to be collective bargaining. There’s got to be restrictions on a salary pool a team can spend. There has to be transfer regulation restrictions. There has to be some restrictions on the agent involvement on some of the young guys.”
— from his retirement press conference
He’s absolutely right. it’s no longer about Xs and Os… it’s about dollars and cents. And under the current system, there will be “haves” and “have nots” based on how deep the boosters’ pockets are… and unsavory agents… and teammates caring less about the team and more about WIIFM, and willing to leave one program at the drop of a hat (or at the promise of more cash).
Kudos to Tony for speaking up. Managing to turn a bunch of teenagers and early 20s kids into a high-performing team was tough enough in a pre-NIL world. Now you have to focus more on salary demands. You have to spend every waking hour thinking about the transfer portal (incoming and outgoing). You have to spend more time fundraising than you do coaching.
It’s sad. But it’s the current reality. And when you grew up the son of a coach, as Tony did, it’s gotta be tough when “coach” is about 12th on the list of your priorities at a major college b-ball program.
I hope his plea for changes doesn’t fall on deaf ears. The game needs it, ASAP.
Growing up in Arkansas, I had no geographic affinity for any professional sports teams. I was free to pick and choose my favorites based on such key criteria (for an 8-year-old) as “cool helmets” (hello Oakland Raiders) and “unique court design” (Boston Celtics). In those prehistoric times, the only exposure to televised baseball was the NBC’s Saturday afternoon “Game of the Week” with broadcasters Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek.
The Cincinnati Reds were on the Game of the Week quite often back then — it was the era of the Big Red Machine — and I fell head over hillbilly boots for Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Davey Concepcion…
But my favorite player by far was Pete Rose. A gritty grinder, tough as nails. “Charlie Hustle.” I remember when he was Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year.
The accompanying article in SI mentioned how Pete was so obsessed with getting better at the game that he had a satellite dish installed at his house so he could study opposing pitchers. (With the gift of hindsight, we now know the satellite TV was just a way for him to track his bets.)
My friend Ned and I were at Riverfront Stadium in September of 1985 when Pete broke Ty Cobb’s record.
All hail the new Hit King!
Less than a year later, I got my first real job, working in the marketing department at Turfway Park, a thoroughbred racetrack in Northern Kentucky. Imagine my sheer elation when Pete Rose showed up in the press box where I worked. The 8-year-old inside me was doing cartwheels: “OhmygawditsPete! Pete! Right here! Be cool! Don’t say anything stupid…”
My joy lasted about as long as a six-furlong race. I realized Pete was a bit of an entitled jerk, and clearly hooked on gambling. My bosses allowed him and his cronies (muscle-headed butt kissers – and as we later found out, Pete’s errand boys for booking his bets) and their pneumatic girlfriends/spouses to hang out in the press box, with free food and beverages, because they were really good at increasing the track’s daily receipts. Finally, their loud, boorish behavior got to be too much for those of us trying to earn a living at the track the hard way, so management moved them to another smaller spot (“The Rose Room”) adjacent to the press box. (We could still hear them hooting and hollering, but it was muffled.)
A few years later, Pete was back on the cover of Sports Illustrated, but for a totally different reason:
I didn’t need the results of the official MLB investigation. There was NO doubt in my mind that Pete bet on baseball while he was the manager of the Reds.
“Never meet your heroes” is the old adage, and in this case it certainly was true. Pete was always unabashedly, and unapologetically, Pete, for better or for worse. And it was usually worse. If he could’ve just walked away from the seamy underbelly of sports, he might’ve earned a bit of forgiveness from both MLB and the general public. But that same hard-nosed persistence that made him such a tough out on the field worked against him off it. He set up camp at every casino and race track in the country, selling autographs so he could wager that money right back to his hosts.
Yes, as countless others have already mentioned, now MLB is in cahoots with the gambling that was once so verboten.
But rules are rules, and Pete broke them, and lied about breaking them… he only came “clean” when it helped him sell more books.
I DO think Pete belongs in the Hall of Fame for his feats on the field. This Substack post from Mark Whicker does a nice job profiling a warts-and-all version of Pete. Money quote:
The baseball Hall needs Rose the way the country music Hall needs George Jones or the chess Hall needs Bobby Fischer. It’s not the Hall of Well-Adjusted People. It should be the place where players of impact are recognized. There is no question that baseball was a brighter, richer place because Pete Rose was at its core, or that people who didn’t know a slider from a playground slide knew who Rose was, and that if we all loved what we did the same way Rose loved the game, our national GDP would be unmeasurable.
R.I.P. Charlie Hustle. I’ll always admire your baseball skills, but your off-the-field antics took the bloom off the Rose.
My buddy Rob does PR for the Hamilton Joes — “Ohio’s Premier College Summer Baseball Team.”
He likes to have a bit of fun with the press releases. His most recent one is a prime example:
It’s smart. “I’ll take ‘Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution’ for $200 please, Ken.” (BTW, today I learned that Button Gwinnett has the first signature in the upper left corner of the Declaration of Independence.)
The press release is funny. Especially the line about “crumpet-nibbling fancy-boys.”
And it gets your attention. Which is exactly the point. Rob could’ve played it straight and just mentioned the game and the fireworks. But adding a bit of flair and frivolity makes the release a heck of a lot more interesting.
It’s a kids’ game, for crying out loud.
Oh, that’s right, there’s no crying in baseball. But laughing is always allowed.
Basketball is a young person’s sport. The average NBA career is 4.5 years. The average WNBA career lasts just 3.5 years.
But then there’s Taru Tuukkanen. Not only still playing in her native Finland, but winning championships… and being named the MVP of the finals with her 13-point, 13-rebound, 14-assist triple-double. Not bad for a 46-year-old.
Yes, Taru’s been blessed with good genes – she’s never had a major injury. But she also has the will to keep going.
“I have the passion and a crazy mind that I cannot get enough basketball, I understand it’s not normal at all for someone to still be able to do this.”
Taru Tuukkanen
It’s not normal. But it’s certainly admirable. Taru found something she loved, and she kept at it. The games are the easy part… it’s the long hours of practice, with no cheering crowd, that require a higher level of commitment.
Most of us never play in front of a crowd. But whatever we do, we can only get better through the hard work. The long hours. The practice. Yes, we talkin’ ’bout practice…
You’ve gotta be willing to put in the work. And you will, if you love it enough.
“I’ll know when it’s time. I don’t want to play if I’m not good. As long as there’s a team that wants me and I feel like I can give something to them, then why not keep going?”
Why not keep going? Words for every middle-aged person to embrace. And be the MVP in a league of their own.
Last Thursday, Mrs. Dubbatrubba and I went down to Keeneland with our freighbors (friends/neighbors) Whit and Barb.
Keeneland is a horse racing track in Lexington, KY. A fancy one. Pastoral. Fewer folks betting their rent money, and more well-heeled folks with designer clothing and “fascinator” hats. Bluebloods in Bluegrass country. But they still let in riff-raff like us, as long as we pony up (ha!) the $7 general admission fee.
My wife and I have a mini bucket list with Whit and Barb. It started during pandemic. Nothing elaborate – no overseas excursions, no skydiving. Just random stuff nearby that we’ve always wanted to do. Like take a weekday off from work to go bet on the ponies.
It was raining buckets when we left in the morning. And the forecast called for severe thunderstorms in the afternoon. But a soggy day at the track beats a dry day at the office.
On sunny weekend days, Keeneland is packed with the “see and be seen” crowd, along with a heaping helping of University of Kentucky frat boys and sorority sisters. Great for people-watching, but stuffed and stuffy. (Those giant hats really block your view of the track!) Weekdays are a better — pardon the pun — bet.
We tailgated in the parking lot… which is actually a field. (Joni Mitchell would love it!)
The “Thunderstorm Thursday” weather kept a lot of folks away, so there were no lines at the windows (and at the beer booths). We could be true “railbirds.”
We met an elderly man from Dayton and his two middle-aged sons, who were there on a father/son trip. Nice folks.
And despite the ominous forecast, the sun actually broke through in the afternoon for a couple of hours.
We cashed a few tickets… it was usually enough to recoup the $8 that we bet on one race and spend it on the next one. We probably went home $20 lighter. And 1,000% richer for having spent a fun day with good friends.
Not every vacation has to be elaborate. Not every bucket list item has to be exotic. Sometimes a random, rainy Thursday is all you need for some rejuvenation.
(These jockeys didn’t make any money for us, but they were super-friendly.)
Tomorrow is Opening Day in Cincinnati. The official start of the Cincinnati Reds baseball season has been an unofficial civic holiday for decades. [Back in my day, the Reds, the oldest team in the majors (founded in 1869), used to open the season a day before any other team… ]
It’s a big deal, with a lot of pomp and ceremony, including an Opening Day Parade organized by the merchants at Findlay Market, a public market that’s been around longer than the Reds have.
This year’s Honorary Grand Marshal will be Jim Scott, a Cincinnati radio legend. It’s a fitting honor, as Jim has participated in the Opening Day parade for 56 years, usually walking the entire route and smiling, waving, and high-fiving folks along the way.
Jim walking the parade route with his wife Donna
For Cincinnati Baby Boomers, Jim has been part of the soundtrack of their lives, starting in 1968 at WSAI, an AM station that played pop music, brought the Beatles to Cincinnati, and garnered nearly 50% of the radio audience back then. He moved to WLW-AM in 1984, as the morning host, and stayed in that time slot until 2015. If you’re keeping score at home, the final tally is nearly 47 years in Cincinnatians’ ears.
I had the privilege of working with Jim, as his morning show producer, back in the mid-90s. At a station with a bunch of talk radio blowhards, Jim was the friendly voice who started your day with a smile. Among a subset of the staffers, he caught a lot of flak for being “too nice.” But I worked with Jim long enough to know that his radio personality wasn’t shtick, it was just a heightened version of Jim. WLW-AM was part of a radio conglomerate that owned 8 stations in the market (if you’re looking for Reason #1 of why I got out of radio, consolidation is the correct answer.) Jim did more charity work than the rest of the on-air personalities at all the stations, combined. Charity auctions. Golf outings. Fundraisers of all sorts. And if there was a speaker’s fee, Jim donated it back to the charity. Sure, all those public appearances helped his name recognition and his ratings. But that’s not why he did it. He did it because he truly was, and is, a nice guy.
In the March issue of Cincinnati Magazine, Steven Rosen wrote a nice feature about Jim’s decades-long involvement with the parade, and his positive attitude in the face of one of the cruelest fatal diseases. Check it out at the link above.
“Being in the parade to me will be a statement that I’m not going to quit. I’ll probably be in a wheelchair, but I probably won’t be the only person there in a wheelchair.”
Jim Scott, in the article linked above
This parade may be the last chance for us to show some love to Jim Scott. He deserves every smile, wave and cheer we’ve got. It shouldn’t be a somber send-off; it’s a victory lap.
Legendary baseball player and manager Leo Durocher famously said “nice guys finish last.” Leo got it wrong in this case, because Jim Scott is the people’s champ.
Illustration by Remi Geoffroi for Cincinnati Magazine
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