Dribblings 12/17/2004 (Op-Ed Edition)

No recap-worthy games or newsworthy news in the college hoops world on Thursday, so we're really "faking the funk" today.

In August 2003, the Connecticut Post printed a story based on an anonymous letter that charged that Fairfield's basketball program was a cesspool of cash, third-party schoolwork and other people's pee. Now, the school appears to be off the hook and will not be sanctioned by the NCAA. The Kansas attorney who led the independent investigation was left to wax Zen-like in a tree-falling-in-the-woods kind of fashion.

"Two individuals can view a set of facts and come to completely different conclusions as to what they have seen. They might have observed something that caused them to believe a violation has occurred, when in fact there was an explanation that doesn't fall outside of NCAA rules."

Matt over at the Patriot League Blog is saying that John Feinstein was singularly responsible for Holy Cross and American being listed as "other teams receiving votes" in recent weeks' writer's polls. Vote with your heart, Johnny!

Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg thinks the RPI is an absolute joke, and expresses a strong preference for the Mid-Major poll. I share his concern that no ratings system currently exists that takes into account players who break up with their girlfriends on game days.

The more coach-columns I read, I'm increasingly convinced that coaches treat the Internet much the same as we bloggers do - as a great big receptacle in which to deposit ideas of varying quality once spare time presents itself. But blog pieces are generally the beginnings or continuances of conversations, and most coaches don't have direct-feedback links, comments boxes or message boards. But that's probably because they don't have the time to deal with people telling them what idiots they are, and those of us in the sticks can't get enough of that stuff.

It's like death and taxes - no matter how hard you try, no matter what your credentials are, somebody somewhere thinks you suck. I'm reminded of this when I try to balance editorials that slag Joni Mitchell fan Rick Majerus' TV skills against the effusive love the big guy's work received here in the blogosphere. I was also reminded of it yesterday, when a goodly 10% of our traffic came streaming in from a Villanova board post pointing directly at my shovel job in a recent 100 Games recap. I'm sure they're working me over pretty good over there, but I can't see what they're saying - access to this elite message board costs ten bucks a month. (Which, in an odd sort of way, furthers some of the points I made.)

And no op-ed fly-by would be complete without a visit to ESPN.com, where you can't tell the think-pieces from the news stories anymore. There are several power conference teams that are depressing Jay Bilas, but it's nothing a pint of Ben & Jerry's and some White Shadow reruns won't snap him out of.

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