I’ve been ripping on the NCAA Final Four “cup rule” for years. It’s not just the for the NCAA Final Four, but the entire NCAA Tournament. It’s absurdly Fascist. When you cover the NCAA Tournament, anything you drink has to be in their cups with their branded corporate logo and their cups only. THIS IS NOT NEGOTIABLE. EVER.
That’s why whenever you see the press conferences on television, the coaches and student-athletes employees are always drinking out of their corporate branded NCAA Final Four cups. Likewise for the journalists, you’re sitting in view of television cameras. Therefore your energy drink branded NCAA Final Four cups are in the direct shot for those watching on the boob tube.
I know, I know it’s funny to see a picture of DePaul Coach Oliver Purnell at an NCAA Tournament, but as the picture shows, it’s clearly from his Clemson days.
Anyways, Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay is taking up my cause for me. And since he’s got a much larger megaphone than I, I’m glad he’s getting the word out against the NCAA.
The NCAA Final Four fascism took away Jason Gay’s kitty cat mug. Here’s the link to the full story, but below you’ll find this excerpt:
College basketball can be a lot of fun, but the NCAA can be a bit of a trip. Like other people in the media, I have been amused for a while at a strictly enforced NCAA policy regarding cups. As in paper cups. The NCAA forbids outside cups at tournament games. It requests that beverages are consumed in official NCAA cups with a logo of a Prominent Hydration Drink. It takes this rule seriously; there are a lot of jokes about the Cup Police, and at the floor-level entrances to the court there are signs in capital letters that remind you of this rule. ONLY NCAA CUPS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT, the sign reads. Next to the sign, there’s a stack of NCAA cups with the Prominent Hydration Drink logo, ready for your obedient use.
Jason Gay also wrote about this Draconian measure by the NCAA in a previous column; which details the NLRB ruling on Northwestern football. Hey Go Cats!
it is essential to the business of college athletics that it does not come off completely as a vulgar business, that it at least tangentially feels connected to agreeable qualities like amateurism and passion and loyalty and that its participants are viewed not as mercenaries but as “student-athletes,” a term the NCAA vigorously enforces like the language police. (The NCAA is big on brand patrol—there are fearsome signs courtside in the Garden admonishing attendees: ONLY NCAA CUPS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT, so someone doesn’t undermine the whole thing with an unsanctioned I LOVE MY LABRADOODLE mug.)
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. He’s also a frequent guest on national talk radio. Banks is a former contributor to NBC Chicago and the Washington Times, who’s been featured on the History Channel. President Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)