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Jay Bilas takes NCAA to woodshed

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by NDJournalist, Aug 6, 2013.

  1. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    There is no difference.

    ESPN is aiding and abetting the very crime Bilas has been screaming about from his soapbox.
     
  2. Steak Snabler

    Steak Snabler Well-Known Member

    The NCAA announces it will no longer sell team-specific merchandise:

    http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2013/August/NCAA+fan+shop+to+no+longer+offer+school+merchandise
     
  3. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    Ah crap, I was hoping to buy the Paterno 400 victory shirt from the NCAA.

    You know the 400 wins that were partially vacated by the NCAA but that didn't stop them from the selling the shirt!

    Poopsticks!
     
  4. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    And Jay really loves following no one on Twitter. Arrogant and a social media hog.
     
  5. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    The problem is not that Jay Bilas's love for college basketball is insufficient. It's that he is a hypocrite of the highest order.

    If it were not for big time college basketball, Jay Bilas would be an unusually tall lawyer. The system that he decries as indentured servitude is the same system that has made him so wealthy that he stepped away from a law firm partnership to devote himself to being a college basketball analyst. His livelihood is based on those massive TV rights deals that players get no direct payment for; it is his job to hype Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker and Julius Randle so people watch college basketball (and make ESPN and the NCAA a boatload of money). He perpetuates the very system that he decries, but will do nothing to stop it beyond snarky tweets. As long as he is getting his, the system is working good enough for him.

    At this point, he is the anti-prostitution columnist for Backpage.com
     
  6. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    To take it a step further, he doesn't get a Duke education without the very system he decries.
     
  7. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I made a living covering college football.

    Was I a hypocrite for critcizing ... college football?

    (Maybe the answer is "yes.")

    What is the threshold of money one has to make covering a beat before he sacrifices the right to criticize said beat? Is Michael Lewis a hypocrite when he criticizes Wall Street? Is the problem that Jay Bilas works for a network that has a business relationship with college basketball? Would it be easier to stomach if he was making seven figures writing about college basketball for a newspaper instead? (I know, I know. Work with me here.) Don't we frequently criticize ESPN for pulling punches when it comes to its broadcast partners?
     
  8. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    Jay Bilas works for the TV rights holder and his job is to promote college basketball and help bring in ratings to justify and profit from the rights deal. His employer directly generates that massive pot of money for the NCAA, which doesn't go directly to the athletes. He is not merely covering the system that he decries; he is an active participant in that system in a way that even other ESPN employees are not (an ESPN mag writer would not necessarily be a hypocrite because it is not that writer's job to *promote* college basketball).

    And Michael Lewis left Wall Street before he covered it. If he was writing about the greed of Wall Street while simultaneously directly profiting from it, he would be a hypocrite.
     
  9. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Yeah, that helps. (I had edited the post as you replied to ask if that was the problem.)

    Is it Bilas's job to "promote" college basketball? Maybe he thinks he is promoting it this way? He's promoting the players. Why does he necessarily have to promote the system? Or the NCAA?
     
  10. PopeDirkBenedict

    PopeDirkBenedict Active Member

    Bilas is a game/studio analyst. He is not a journalist any more than Dick Vitale or Charles Barkley or Terry Bradshaw are journalists.

    Promoting the players perpetuates the system. If he promotes Andrew Wiggins and makes Wiggins into a household name/star, Wiggins can't directly financially benefit from his stardom while in college. He can't sell his autographs or sign with an agent or appear on a Wheaties box and keep his eligibility at Kansas. This is the system that Bilas decries as being indentured servitude, but he plays a direct role in creating this inequity and he personally profits from it.
     
  11. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I don't know what "promotes" means. Was I "promoting" them when I was covering college football? Or high school football, for that matter?
     
  12. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    Wrong.
     
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