Reality, checked

 The Blob is no fan of Rick Pitino, and not just because he once lied to my face. But you can't fault the guy's vision.

It's 20/20, at least where college basketball is concerned in this year of our Lord 2024. He sees where it is, and he sees where it's headed, whether any of us like it or not.

This after he came out the other day and said, look, it's time Power 5 college buckets stopped pretending it's 1930 and there are still laces on the ball. Which is to say, it's a business now, has been for a long time, and the fuddies who cling to the fiction that it's still sis-boom-bah and get-that-degree need to clear out and let the grownups have the room.

"Do away with letters of intent, make athletes sign a (two-year) binding contract, no different then professional athletes -- which they are," Pitino tweeted, advocating for a salary cap decided upon by the various conferences, who would take over running the sport from the NCAA.

"I believe the NCAA should be taken out of the equation and the (conference) commissioners put into it as the NCAA loses more cases than the defense lawyers on "Law & Order'," he tweeted.

That's not hyperbole. Courtroom reverses have already led to the transfer portal and NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) deals that have irrevocably altered the college athletics landscape. And not for the good, given the haphazard way the NCAA has implemented both.

In the seeming blink of an eye, after all, the organization has gone from "You'll play where we tell you to play and here's your college education in lieu of pay" to "Aw, hell, go to however many schools you want and make all the bank you can while you're at it."  The result has been not so much freedom but anarchy, a far wilder West than even the most egregious cheaters of years past could have envisioned.

And it's still, for some, about trying to be what you no longer are and never will be again. The latest blow to all that came at the top of this week, when the National Labor Relations Board ruled Dartmouth men's basketball players are employees of the school, and as such should be allowed to be recognized by a local union. 

Thus the door has been cracked for the unionization of  college athletics. And the schools and their ruling athletic bodies have brought it on themselves, because the first time they signed some chunky broadcast or apparel deal they were declaring themselves open for business, with the "student-athletes" the employees of that business.

You can love that or you can hate it. Doesn't really matter either way, because reality is reality and this is the reality now. 

Which is kind of what Rick Pitino, to his credit, was telling us this week.