Thursday, August 1, 2024

What happens in Vegas ...

 ... shouldn't be in Vegas.

Hat tip for this one belongs to my friend and fellow journalist Andrew Smith, who noted the other day on the Magic Twitter Thingy that the Big Ten men's basketball tournament is scheduled to be held in Las Vegas in 2028. Andrew wanted to know (correctly) if he'd missed the announcement that a Nevada school had joined the Big Ten. Otherwise, why on earth would the Big Ten play its men's tournament in Vegas, which has no connection to the Big Ten?

This is a very good question.

Another question is how you can with a straight face continue all that high-falutin' garbage about prioritizing education when you keep prioritizing cash grabs like this one? What message are you sending about education, or the legitimacy of your product, when you take your conference tournament to the gambling capital of America?

Our conference values academics. You can BET on that!

Welcome to Vegas, student-athletes! Now stay away from those blackjack tables (wink, wink)!

For the love of God. Can these people get any more clueless? Or more venal?

All that junk about academics left the station the first time the Big Investment Firm reached beyond its footprint for East Coast TV money. Revenue streams are all that matter now, not graduation rates or optics. If that weren't true, the Big Investment Firm wouldn't have snapped up four members of the defunct Pac-12 (West Coast TV money!). And it for damn sure wouldn't be taking its tournament to the gambling capital of the world when, little more than a year ago, 26 current student-athletes at Iowa were implicated in a betting scandal.

Optics? They don't care about no stinkin' optics! 

Not when it's Vegas that awaits. And of course the accompanying new conference motto.

The Big Ten: Where Opportunity Is Spelled "Loose Slots."

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