Not sure that this post will earn me many friends, especially after my first post under this new name had so much rambling. This one will too.
I don’t have an opinion on this question that I feel committed to. There are some things that happen in college basketball that make it sometimes feel like the whole damned thing is a reality show designed to remove bills from our wallets.
The egregiously bad reffing is a good case in point example. There are plenty of games each year where you feel the refs have to be getting kick backs. The lack of oversight or consequences fuels that suspicion. Then you have the way some teams are treated vs the way other teams are treated when it comes investigations and punishments. Kansas, UNC, and Duke have all had very public cases of wrong doing, with indisputable public evidence, and yet faced no real consequence. On top of all of that, you have the accuracy of Vegas, almost as if Vegas knows the outcome before many games, and is only wrong sometimes to keep us guessing. Lastly, for now, sometimes teams play/lose so badly that it seems inexplicable.Sometimes players blow plays that the average person could make in their backyard.
The other side of all of this is that a lot of conspiracy theories aren’t really conspiracies at all, but instead the result of gross incompetence. Look at your local government…now take those people and put them in charge of national politics or nationwide entertainment. Huge conspiracies would take a whole lot of complicit people who aren’t going to speak up. Instead, maybe some refs just don’t like certain teams and certain coaches. Some governing officials have close ties to certain programs and conferences. Vegas has some of the best statisticians in the world. A lot of knowledgeable and invested fans influence those betting lines. Players and coaches are human.
My question is, are we all being hoodwinked or should we just trust the game because of the scale of it?
I don’t have an opinion on this question that I feel committed to. There are some things that happen in college basketball that make it sometimes feel like the whole damned thing is a reality show designed to remove bills from our wallets.
The egregiously bad reffing is a good case in point example. There are plenty of games each year where you feel the refs have to be getting kick backs. The lack of oversight or consequences fuels that suspicion. Then you have the way some teams are treated vs the way other teams are treated when it comes investigations and punishments. Kansas, UNC, and Duke have all had very public cases of wrong doing, with indisputable public evidence, and yet faced no real consequence. On top of all of that, you have the accuracy of Vegas, almost as if Vegas knows the outcome before many games, and is only wrong sometimes to keep us guessing. Lastly, for now, sometimes teams play/lose so badly that it seems inexplicable.Sometimes players blow plays that the average person could make in their backyard.
The other side of all of this is that a lot of conspiracy theories aren’t really conspiracies at all, but instead the result of gross incompetence. Look at your local government…now take those people and put them in charge of national politics or nationwide entertainment. Huge conspiracies would take a whole lot of complicit people who aren’t going to speak up. Instead, maybe some refs just don’t like certain teams and certain coaches. Some governing officials have close ties to certain programs and conferences. Vegas has some of the best statisticians in the world. A lot of knowledgeable and invested fans influence those betting lines. Players and coaches are human.
My question is, are we all being hoodwinked or should we just trust the game because of the scale of it?