There couldn’t have been a more fitting end to the 2010-11 NCAA revenue producing sport season than what went down in Houston. In a town dominated by Halliburton, graft and corruption was again king as Ohio State Buckeyes Athletic Director Gene Smith, who presides over a suspended college football coach (Jim Tressel), handing the trophy to a soon-to-be suspended college basketball coach (UConn’s Jim Calhoun). The program being sanctioned beat the Butler Bulldogs, who are ostensibly clean.
And Calhoun got to this game by defeating a Kentucky Wildcats program run by coach John Calipari, who had his two previous trips to the Final Four (1996 at Massachusetts, 2008 at Memphis) vacated due to violations.
The trophy presentation was preceded by NCAA president Mark Emmert‘s quote, “What A Wonderful Championship!” Given how it was literally the ugliest title game in college basketball history, it’s fair to say he was probably lying with that statment.
But that’s nothing compared to how he came off in his interview for HBO Real Sports. In that segment, he almost seemed like a college sports version of Bernie Madoff.
By Paul M. Banks
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