Category Archives: For Women

WNBA bitch factor & AI queries

Posted on by

Bitch factor (noun): Something to never ignore or underrate. If you do, it will emasculate you– viciously.

Girls, it’s okay to get a technical foul for your team, if it’s remembered like this. Unfortunately payback is a bitch, and it came to Indiana Fever teammate Caitlin Clark the next time these two teams met– two days later. Sophie Cunningham later stated her 22-second finger point was a stupid thing to do, and that is why. DeWanna Bonner would have kicked Sophie Cunningham’s ass if they had fought is the other reason.

Disclosure: Sophie Cunningham is perhaps the most beautiful women in the WNBA. To me, Azzi Fudd (pic below) is her closest rival for that princess crown. I like Azzi Fudd as a person better, but both are basically physically irresistible to any straight man or lesbian, so there it is.

The point is the WNBA doesn’t want DeWanna Bonner messing-up Sophie Cunningham’s pretty face, or Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas throat-punching their ‘great white hope’ Caitlin Clark.

There are serious racial tensions among the WNBA players. It’s rooted in economics, meaning media attention & endorsements versus quality of basketball performance. The best WNBA players aren’t necessarily the best-known or highest-paid by endorsements. You have to be white and have a pretty face for that. This rubs many black veteran players, who aren’t as physically attractive, the wrong way. This is supposed to be about basketball, right?

Wrong. It’s about money, and beauty sells. This is why Sophie Cunningham, who averages 8.0 PPG in her career is known by so many people.

There were serious legal discussions about logoing that Sophie Cunningham finger point. It’s how to become the Jerry West of the WNBA. Bitch factor in play, no question. It’s been officially decided the WNBA will not logo or license Sophie Cunningham’s viral finger point.

——

I queried Google AI, “Reasons for Angel Reese playing with a weave?”

Google AI: Court versatility: High ponytails and secure protective styles keep her hair manageable and out of her face during intense WNBA games. Fashion expression: She matches her hair colors and textures—such as blonde highlights, bright statement colors, or custom units—to pre-game outfits and high-profile fashion events.

Me: Could it possibly hinder her game?

Google AI: Generally speaking, playing with a weave or extensions does not hinder Angel Reese’s game…

But I’m specifically asking and you’re giving me generalities. Google AI does list some “Potential Minor Disadvantages” such as, “Heat retention: Thick extensions can trap extra heat around the scalp, which might feel slightly less breathable during intense conditioning. Maintenance overhead: Sweat and friction can loosen the style faster than normal, requiring frequent salon upkeep to prevent shifting or pulling on her natural hair. Ultimately, the psychological boost of feeling confident and authentic on the court far outweighs any minor physical adjustments.”

Me: How can you be authentic with fake hair?

Google AI: Being authentic means aligning your external actions with your true internal identity, not just showing what grows naturally from your body. For Angel Reese and many other women, changing their hair is a genuine expression of self.

Me: Why can’t she just love herself as she is?

Google AI: Choosing to wear weaves or extensions is an expression of self-love, not a sign of lacking it. For Angel Reese, loving herself “as she is” means embracing her freedom to change her look, celebrate her culture, and define her own beauty.

Me: Isn’t covering up your natural beauty a fundamental sign of self-loathing or lack of confidence in oneself?

Google AI: From a psychological perspective, altering your appearance is not fundamentally a sign of self-loathing or a lack of confidence. In many cases, it is actually a reflection of high self-esteem and creative confidence.

Me: Then why is she only averaging 14 PPG game in her WNBA career and considered such a disappointment as far as a wining player goes?

Google AI informs me I’m wrong, she is a winning player, etc…

Me: The Chicago Sky traded her because she didn’t help them win and brought too much drama to the team. She led that team nowhere in two seasons, before being dumped to Atlanta for draft picks. What kind of franchise gives up on a supposed game changer so quickly?

Google AI: The Chicago Sky’s decision to trade Angel Reese to the Atlanta Dream was driven by a toxic combination of building internal locker room tension, friction with organization legends, and a mutual desire to separate. While it is historically rare for a franchise to give up on a 23-year-old reigning All-Star on her rookie deal, the situation in Chicago had deteriorated past the point of a workable relationship.

Me: [!!!]

——–

* A weave excessively pulling on natural hair during basketball competition could lead to follicle damage & female baldness. It could create unpleasant odors & such. It could also be a high-maintenance turn-off for men who mostly prefer natural hair. Thankfully, I didn’t query Google AI on that.

——-

I was going to query Google AI on long fingernails affecting shooting touch, dribbling, etc, but I’ll let others try that. “Is making a fashion statement negatively impacting WNBA play?” Do we have any hard data on this? It’s never been a problem in the NBA. The problem is Google AI never played the game, and the people in control of Google AI have a well-targeted virtue-signaling agenda.

I don’t capitalize black or white when referring to skin color, or what’s referred to as “race”. There is only the human race. There is no reason to capitalize except to emphasize one over the other, in which case it’s a White racist or Black racialist– but in either case, a racist. Ignorance, fear & hate are what motivate racists.

…………<><><><><><>………….

The US Soccer Inquest

Posted on by

When a national team is defeated in the World Cup before expectations are met, there is traditionally an inquest. This consists of intense media & fan scrutiny of what happened. Inquests in Brazil & Germany are quite harsh to say the least.

Alexi Lalas is part of the problem and the sporting media (which should have known that a long time ago) is finally figuring it out. “Cultural factors” are also being cited. What’s meant by that is upper-middle class kids are the only ones who can afford to ‘pay to play’ in the US. It costs $20,000 and up per year for a kid to play on exclusive traveling teams & youth clubs which supposedly have the expertise & resources to teach kids how to play.

The best football players around the world typically grow up in poverty. They see football as a way out, it’s their life’s dream. In the US, soccer is mostly about getting an advantage for an already-privileged child. Sports academies are expensive. The rich kids aren’t so interested, it’s the upper middle class that dominates the strata of US soccer. Getting a NCAA scholarship is always a primary goal for the kids/parents in these families. No team spirit can be build with this failed model.

Soccer moms have yielded to identity politics, which only produces disappointing World Cup teams that are disjointed & whine too much. There’s no toughness or grit on these soccer teams, with too little football talent.

The USMNT needs a complete rebuild from the ground up. It’s going to have to start with a new manager. I don’t see Mauricio Pochettino wanting to stay when it’s time for him to go. He did a great job, but this position needs a long-term commitment to US soccer which I doubt Mauricio Pochettino is willing to make. He is Argentinian, with dual Spanish citizenship. This USMNT needs an American manager for a lot of reasons including name recognition, stability & trust.

The italicized paragraph below was written near the end of my last World Cup piece, and I’ll repeat it here:

If Mauricio Pochettino leaves as USMNT manager, my top replacement candidates are Landon Donovan & Carli Lloyd. If I’m the head of the US Soccer Federation, I’m getting those two in a room together and presenting this, “We need an American manager for the long-term. We understand there are serious issues at all our levels. Therefore the contract for USMNT manager will be through the 2034 World Cup. I would love to hear both your thoughts & ideas on this, so we can work it out together and pick the best person for the job.”

I also wrote earlier:

Carli Lloyd is there as an analyst to remind the US men that they have never won anything at the World Cup. She usually just sits there smiling, and it’s written all over her face. It’s great. Carli Lloyd was the linchpin in the second golden era of the USWNT with Alex Morgan & Megan Rapinoe that won two World Cups. The original Michelle Akers-Mia Hamm USWNT (1991-1999) won two World Cups also. Those are the great World Cup teams Americans remember with joy.

Landon Donovan needs to be offered the job out of respect. He’s our best men’s player ever, as far as players who can’t touch the ball with their hands go. He’s still loyal to the USMNT, but he’s not a cheerleader like Alexi Lalas. Landon Donovan knows the game well, and was a coach type of player. He has the qualities to be a great manager, but I’m not sure he wants to leave the broadcast booth to manage the USMNT. I sense he’s content with what he’s done & where he is.

This leads us to Carli Lloyd, who appears (to me) to be somewhat unfulfilled as a Fox analyst. I see her as the best candidate for USMNT manager. The men will play harder for her. I know I would. She has the resume as a winning player and understands the game. Player selection & tactical cohesion are the USMNT manager responsibilities. Carli Lloyd can probably do that better than anyone. This is a revolutionary idea. No other country in the world could consider this, but I believe it actually makes sense in the US.

Name recognition matters, and if the US Soccer Federation were to make this bold move, it would re-energize the USMNT at two minutes to midnight. This World Cup which began with so much promise, ended in disaster & humiliation for the USMNT. Never again can that be allowed to happen. That needs to be resolutely resolved, and it should be done while everyone is still watching the World Cup. Now is the time to act bravely & decisively in order to turn an embarrassing showing into an ultimate victory.

Carli Lloyd has the requisite resolve. She also had the vision to see the USMNT was walking into a buzz-saw after the Trump-FIFA red card intervention went public. She said it on Fox before the US-Belgium match, when just about every other American was still cheerleading the USMNT. An inquest should start with self-examination of the inquisitors– meaning the corporate media. What role did they play in this disappointment? Are they part of the problem?

A broader inquest needs to come from American football fans, and that’s what this is about. We lost badly because of all these issues which are so deeply woven into US soccer. There is no hope for recovery without massive wholesale changes in the entire US program. Carli Lloyd as USMNT manager sends that message. This doesn’t mean we replace men with women at every position, but instead it means we now judge things on merit. It’s based on respect and that is earned, not bought. If you can’t get on board with this, then you get left at the side of the road.

Freeloaders, carpetbaggers, and hangers-on need to be rooted out at all levels of US soccer, and qualified replacements need to be found. Gender, sexual orientation & race are of no matter. It’s about the game of football, which doesn’t value those distinctions, but only if you can play.

……………<><><><><>……………..

Final WNBA scouting report on Caitlin Clark

Posted on by

This is the third essay in a series on basketball. Part one is here. Part 2 is here.

I watched the Indiana Fever-New York Liberty game on CBS, and everything I’ve mentioned about Caitlin Clark’s poor defense helped lose a game the Indiana Fever should have won. Beyond that, Caitlin Clark’s offense is limited in ways that aren’t being discussed by WNBA announcers & analysts.

For starters, Caitlin Clark has no left hand– weak dribble, weaker passing, and won’t even try finishing in the paint with her off hand. For a guard, that needs to improve. She’s a good passer with excellent vision, but tries to make too many passes that aren’t really there. She’s trying to make her teammates batter with her passing, but it’s still too much of a mixed bag. No left hand (off hand) limits her as a player.

Beyond that, Kelsey Mitchell needs to be the one with the ball for the Indiana Fever, and Caitlin Clark needs to learn to play without the basketball. Playing effectively without the ball is an advanced offensive skill which requires complete court awareness & better spacing on Caitlin Clark’s part. She’s not the best player on her team anymore, so her game needs to adapt for her to be a winning player in this league. Learning to play on the weak side and being a spot-up 3-point threat is how her offensive game needs to develop. In short, her defense must improve; along with her left hand, and playing without the ball.

Reggie Miller

I’ve mentioned Steve Alford as Caitlin Clark’s best NBA comparable. The NBA player she needs to emulate to be successful in the WNBA is another Indiana basketball legend– Reggie Miller. As the Pacers shooting guard from 1987-2005, Reggie Miller was a master at coming off screens & moving without the ball. It takes patience & discipline to stayed properly spaced, until the time comes to shoot or move quickly & intelligently without the ball.

All her career Caitlin Clark has had the basketball in her hands, but her weak off-hand is leading to too many turnovers in the WNBA. She’s not quick enough, nor does she have the handles to be a point guard. Reggie Miller had to work hard just to become an average NBA defender, but that effort made him a Hall-of Famer because it kept him on the floor. He didn’t let his defensive effort become a liability that kept him off the court at crunch time. He didn’t often get into foul trouble, which would put him on the bench and the other team on the free throw line. Individual & team defense are separate, essential skills in basketball.

2008 Celtics

Caitlin Clark isn’t cut out to be the team leader, she’s not good enough, so she needs to channel Ray Allen with the Boston Celtics behind Kevin Garnett & Paul Pierce. For the Indiana Fever, Kelsey Mitchell needs to be their primary facilitator & scorer, with Aliyah Boston as their option in the paint if there is a mismatch, and Caitlin Clark being a roving 3-point shooter. That’s (maybe) a championship formula that can eventually work if everybody does their part. It starts with having the game to compete, and then playing connected as a team, which isn’t happening on either end of the floor with the current Indiana Fever roster.

Team defense basics: As I mentioned in the first essay, A’ja Wilson is (far & away) the best player in the WNBA, the only player who needs to be double-teamed every time she touches the ball. To beat the Las Vegas Aces, opponents need to pressure the ball to deny her an easy entry pass, then come with a quick, hard double-team when she does get the ball and force her to pass out of it. WNBA teams all know how to double-team & rotate to open shooters on defense. Not all WNBA teams can actually execute it well, but all the coaches & players at least know what they should do, and that’s a measure of growth in the women’s game.

Rotating out of a double-team is objectively measured by who gets the open look and for how long. If the opponent’s second-best scoring option gets a clean look, then the rotation is poor. If the third option gets a look, it’s average at best. If the 4th or 5th option is the one made to shoot, then the defense is dictating and doing its job. If no one gets a look, or a turnover is created, that’s elite team defense. Team defense is five players on the floor, connected together, each busting their butts to cover for each other in order to prevent the opposition from scoring. A scouting eye sees this better than analytics.

Team defense is hard to measure & evaluate, largely because there are a lot of players (boys & girls at all levels) who don’t give much effort on defense, and have learned ways to blame others in order to deflect criticism. Your teammates can make you look bad in basketball, by not being there for you when you need help in recovering, etc. All kinds of egos are clashing in basketball, and trash talking is how a lot of it gets worked out amongst the players. Learn the game (old school), and your trash talking (new school) will take care of itself.

Team defense means you get on board, or you’re benched or traded. Team defense is an old school ethic, with new school science & applications. For example, in today’s game you can’t give up an open corner 3 to a good shooter, at any level, as that’s like giving up an open lay-up in the pre-3 era. For every player, team defense & playing without the ball are about being efficient & effective with angles & spacing to help your team win on both ends of the floor.

………<><><><><><>……..

New school & old school

Posted on by

Preface: This is a continuation of previously published essay– WNBA mediocrity

I’ve used these terms a lot when discussing basketball without fully defining them. Old school is Red Auerbach. This means the coach/GM runs the organization and is considered the most important person. In old school, no player is above the coach or management. What they say goes, and players who complain or object are benched and/or traded away. Old school was too rigid & deeply unfair to the players, especially star players before free agency. The best players never had any leverage in salary negotiations, and that had to change– hence new school.

New school begins with free agency in any sport, and in basketball it really started with Michael Jordan who was the first player to be above his team because he was so, so great. The Chicago Bulls stunk when Michael Jordan was drafted in 1984, and he immediately made the Bulls the league’s hottest attraction. His Air Jordan shoe deal with Nike and the phenomenon it spawned made Michael Jordan the most popular athlete on the planet. That was the ESPN/cable-TV era of sports, pre-internet.

When I write that Michael Jordan was new school, it doesn’t mean he didn’t have any old school in him. Michael was a team player, who valued winning first, which are old school attributes. New school emphasizes self promotion & getting paid as the priority. Michael Jordan wanted to get paid, so he invented new school to take care of himself. In a pre-sneaker deal era, Michael Jordan would have been reduced to just being the best player, without him being the cultural icon he became in the 1980’s & beyond. It’s a combination of being ready to meet the moment, and society being ready for someone like Michael Jordan in the NBA.

New school means you have your own voice in the media. Media is defined as corporate outlets & social media. All professional athletes have a social media profile and manage it seriously. It’s how they speak directly to their fans & critics. It’s how they express their displeasure with the head coach over minutes, shots, and usage. There is no going back to old school on that.

The best athletes in any sport are the ones who maintain a healthy combination of old school & new school. You need to be able to express yourself publicly, but you also have to look yourself in the mirror first. If you aren’t putting in the work and your performance isn’t meeting expectations, then it’s best to shut up and get to work. This means going back to an old school mentality by listening to the coaches, accepting criticism, taking responsibility, etc. It’s taking an attitude that no one is bigger than the team or the game.

In the old school NBA days, if a ‘star player’ underperformed and started being a crybaby to the sports writers, a team enforcer would find a moment alone in the locker room to set that problem straight. Players simply weren’t allowed to throw a coach or a team under the bus without violent repercussions. With hazing now frowned upon in locker rooms (new school), these issues get handled differently today– for better or worse. The worse is when team drama gets dragged out because no one wants to have an uncomfortable discussion. Too many overpaid snowflakes being enabled is a new school issue.

The WNBA is all about drama. It’s just as much a soap opera as an athletic competition these days. This is different from all other sports leagues that have risen to prominence. The NFL, MLB & NBA all have drama going on behind the scenes, but the game remains the main attraction for the fans. In the WNBA, drama over Caitlin Clark dominates their daily narratives. More people know about that, than the defending WNBA champs. The primary narrative & financial driver for the WNBA is an unremarkable player named Caitlin Clark, and it represents new school at its worst.

Whatever temporary boost her popularity gives the league, in the long run the WNBA will be worse off for hyping Caitlin Clark as a great player. The issue here is all the basketball fans who recognize this garbage and call it out. The WNBA isn’t getting those fans back any time soon. What the WNBA has done with Caitlin C;lark is fundamentally disrespectful to the game, prioritizing hype over performance.

Up until Caitlin Clark came into the league in 2024, the WNBA was solid growing. Ownership embraced Caitlin Clark because she has caused franchise values to skyrocket. The Golden State Valkyries, a second year WNBA expansion franchise is now valued at $1B. The average WNBA franchise value is $460M according to Google. Ten years ago there wasn’t a single WNBA team that could get $100M in valuation.

The WNBA is a financial bubble, with insanely overestimated franchise values, and Caitlin Clark has been a tool for that. The WNBA needed a ‘great white hope’ and so they manufactured one in her. The element of racism that underlies all this is the elephant-in-the-room that can’t be discussed in the corporate media. It’s too uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, WNBA critics are labeled misogynist, racist or whatever semantic inversion they prefer in order to silence any discussion on the matter. The WNBA owners are the ones profiting from this hype, and when Caitlin Clark finally crashes, it will be perceived by them as the fault of those who correctly analyzed this from the start. Because myself (& others) have been critical we’re all slandered as ‘woman haters’, as that’s easier to understand than all the facts & issues involved. That’s NIL new school.

Thu 04 Jun 2026 10:00 AM CDT

Update: It’s been reported that the Indiana Fever revoked the press credentials for Scott Agness, the reporter who broke the story of Caitlin Clark not playing due to a sudden “back injury” on May 20. The team violated league rules by not reporting it on time, and was reprimanded by the WNBA for it as her unavailability was announced just before tip-off. All professional sports leagues take this seriously because of the wagering going on. Tanking (new school strategy) wasn’t the issue here. The Indiana Fever organization claims Scott Agness had his team credentials revoked for spreading “inaccurate and unsubstantiated information,” by referring to load management as the reason for the unavailability. What’s actually going on here is blatant retribution by snowflakes for reporting the truth, which isn’t popular with corporate institutions & their concocted narratives.

Along with this is a new article in the Athletic that is critical of Caitlin Clark’s defense, referring to her as a “sitting duck during hunting season.” None of this is untrue, yet the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark fans are (again) in a tizzy over this. It’s been branded a “hit piece” by Caitlin Clark supporters, when the fact is she is a poor defender and a liability to her team for it. The flak from her adoring sycophants is the head coach has the wrong scheme, and isn’t protecting her on the court as she should, etc. This comes mostly from people with money & influence who aren’t experienced enough to coach a JV basketball team, yet insist know best. Ball players counter that if she stinks on defense, that’s her fault and when her coaches call her out Caitlin Clark throws tantrums instead of sucking it up and improving her effort.

Fact: The WNBA still doesn’t make a profit, with annual revenues of only $300M and operating costs being much higher. Now that the CBA has been settled, franchise valuations are what matter most to the league. The hype over Caitlin Clark, and the extreme sensitivity over any criticism of her performance is part of this. The ‘chosen one’ has to be protected (enabled) to maintain these wildly inflated WNBA franchise values. That’s the source of all this media hysteria.

This is nothing more than new school nonsense taking over the game, in which performance doesn’t matter so much, as there’s always an excuse to protect its top attraction. If the Indiana Fever don’t do everything in their power to deflect criticism of Caitlin Clark, then her head coach will be fired, other players will be traded, or perhaps Clark will finally demand a trade. She has all that leverage, simply by being in the right place at the right time. Those are the new school rules in play, and it rubs many in the game the wrong way. Old school would involve what’s been discussed above, and apparently Caitlin Clark isn’t interested in that. This is just the latest dramatic episode in As the WNBA World Turns. It won’t be long before this tired act gets tuned out, which spells big trouble for the WNBA. That’s the Faustian bargain they’ve made which will eventually come home to roost.

To use a NFL analogy sports fans can appreciate, if you are Ryan Leaf instead of Peyton Manning, fans will learn the difference– sooner or later. That may feel extremely harsh to Caitlin Clark, but it’s much closer to the truth than the narratives being floated through the corporate media and onto social media. All this protective enabling isn’t doing Caitlin Clark, the Indiana Fever, or the WNBA any good. The sugar high of inflated franchise values will eventually turn into diabetes of the WNBA, meaning it will cost the league much more than it has gained. This lying & racist ‘great white hope’ campaign is hurting the league’s credibility.

Old school means you work for your rewards, making them sweeter when they are finally achieved. And if you fall short, at least you gave it your best. New school is demanding the reward up front, then deciding if you want to put in the work or not. It’s turned the WNBA into an exercise in projections & speculation. Caitlin Clark isn’t measured by her performance, she’s measured in futures. Like the derivatives market in finance & investing, all the money thrown at her is about image & what bettors believe her future will bring. To honestly assess that, one needs to objectively look at her current professional track record which isn’t favorable. With these examples drawn out in ~1,800 words, lies the difference between old school & new school.

Post script: Defense is half the game. That’s actually an understatement of fact. Good defense leads to easy offense, while bad defense gives easy offense to the opponent. One energizes and the other demoralizes. Defense wins championships. Everyone in basketball knows this. All your teammates & coaches care about is are you an asset or liability on the floor? If you give up too many easy looks & baskets then you are a negative on +/- player rating. That’s a losing player. People who try to spin the truth on basketball don’t discuss defense seriously. For more on old school defense, read this.  For new school defense, read here.

…………<><><><><><>………..

WNBA mediocrity

Posted on by

The expansion franchise Portland Fire are currently the 5th seed, while the Toronto Tempo are currently the 7th seed in the WNBA standings. Second year franchise, the Golden State Valkyries are tied for the second-best record in the WNBA early in the 2026 season. Expansion teams, from the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc, are historically awful in their inception, so what explains this?

How about the fact that the WNBA really isn’t that good? The WNBA talent level is a mediocre mish-mash across the board, which allows expansion teams with rosters that are only a few months old to be competitive at the highest level of women’s professional basketball. Sad, but true. Remember there was a WNBA labor impasse due to the protracted CBA negotiations this past winter, so the WNBA expansion draft wasn’t held until April 3. These expansion teams have been together for less than two months, and yet the Portland Fire just rolled the Indiana Fever with Caitlin Clark. That’s not supposed to happen, as it creates an uncomfortable narrative for the WNBA.

While the Indiana Fever were getting pounded on CBS, real basketball fans were watching the Spurs-Thunder Western Conference finals, game 7 on NBC. The Portland Fire-Indiana Fever WNBA game was a sellout with 19,347 people at the Moda Center. Not one person in attendance at the Moda Center can claim to be a real basketball fan because if they were, they would have been watching the Spurs-Thunder game. It’s about respect for the game of basketball, as the Spurs-Thunder is as good as it gets, making it “must see.”

This leads to an important discovery concerning the WNBA– the quality of basketball doesn’t matter because the WNBA isn’t about basketball. The WNBA is about money, hype & promoting its feminist/DEI agenda. Caitlin Clark is the poster-girl for the WNBA bubble that has sent franchise values skyrocketing. The WNBA is all over TV at this point, replacing MLB & NASCAR which have largely gone to paid subscription & Amazon Prime, etc.

During breaks in the Spurs-Thunder game (and there were quite a few), I switched to the Fire-Fever WNBA match-up. When I watch Caitlin Clark play I think to myself, “This girl is not committed defensively, turns the ball over too much, and doesn’t help her team on the boards. She doesn’t connect with her teammates, who are probably jealous of her promotional earnings and frustrated with her inability to be a leader and help them win. She’s weak in her core & upper body, which probably accounts for her re-occurring back problems that have limited her games played & production in her 2+ years in the league. She’s also slow afoot with poorly-developed legs. If she doesn’t dedicate herself to getting stronger and more ‘basketball fit’, she’ll never be a great player. Caitlin Clark is still basically the same player she was when she came into the league in 2024, which is a red flag. I think she cares more about promoting herself than being a great basketball player.”

That’s my capsule scouting report on Caitlin Clark, and if I can see this, then surely management and the Fever coaching staff know this too. The problem is they can’t say it. Caitlin Clark isn’t even the best player on her team. Aliyah Boston is the best Indiana Fever player, or else it’s Kelsey Mitchell. This is a problem for the Fever because the face of the league can’t be your third-best player on a mediocre team, but that’s Caitlin Clark & the Indiana Fever.

Normally, if a star player in the NBA is under performing on a bad team, he gets traded. But in the WNBA, the Indiana Fever have ‘the chosen one’ in Caitlin Clark, who by herself has taken the league to new heights in popularity, largely based on white racism & corporate hype. It comes down to ownership priority, do the Indiana Fever want to win– or make money? It’s an easy choice, all they have to do is keep Caitlin Clark and they will continue to make money. If the Fever trade Caitlin Clark, they might get better but they will lose financially, and making money is the name of the WNBA game.

Inconvenient fact: the WNBA is 70% black, but 8 of the top 10 “most promotable” WNBA players are white. What explains that?

Caitlin Clark has parlayed an outstanding NCAA career at the University of Iowa into promotional gold, and it’s largely because she’s white. Everyone knows this, but no one is allowed to say it publicly. If you’ve noticed, WNBA crowds are mostly upper-middle class whites. There is a strong element of voyeurism in every WNBA crowd. Fans aren’t there for the quality of basketball, otherwise they would be watching the Spurs-Thunder, they are there to dream about themselves and their kids being on the court, making WNBA money, etc…

It starts with NIL deals in high school, then a NCAA scholarship to a Power 4 conference school, and then the WNBA. It’s so easy these days, and there is so much expansion going on now that you don’t have to be that good to play in the WNBA. It’s all there right in front of the fans to dream about, and that’s what they are doing most of the game, as they certainly aren’t watching these games critically.

Feminist, black racialist, and lesbian narratives rule the WNBA. There is a large segment of the sports-watching population that is hostile to the WNBA for this Democratic Party politicking that has infiltrated the women’s game. Support for the WNBA is strong, but the backlash is perhaps stronger. People watch sports to forget about politics, and yet the WNBA throws it in everyone’s face over & over. And when Caitlin Clark doesn’t live up to the hype, it’s always someone else’s fault, etc. The apologetics in her name are embarrassing.

This type of enabling is the opposite of compelling sport. It makes sports lovers cynical to the point where they change the channel in disgust, because none of this is real, much less good. To a certain degree, the WNBA has boxed itself in with its success. It can’t deliver on what it is promising. The league is mediocre, as regular season winners (see the 2025 Minnesota Lynx) are often eliminated early in the playoffs, while expansion teams are immediately competitive, revealing the flaky nature of success in women’s professional basketball.

Conclusion: A’ja Wilson is the undisputed best player in the WNBA, and her Las Vegas Aces are the dominate team of this era. But who are the new players that will transform the WNBA? They aren’t Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese or Paige Bueckers who all fall into a level of mediocrity that defines the current WNBA. NCAA glory doesn’t always translate into professional success as today’s game is physically demanding and has more foreign players than ever. The heavily-favored US women’s Olympic team was lucky to beat France in the finals at Paris 2024, so I no longer buy the ‘American superpower theory’ in women’s hoops.

Caitlin Clark dominated at Iowa largely because women’s NCAA hoops is still thin compared to the men. When facing consistently tougher professional competition, Caitlin Clark’s limitations are revealed, so I don’t blame her for doing so many promotions. It’s easy money compared to competing against better players. Anyone would take it. It’s those who are offering her all that money who are to blame. The root WNBA problem is that its most promoted players aren’t close to being their best players. It’s all being done for the wrong reasons and this level of enabling is new in sports. How long this lasts and how the WNBA will evolve remain very open to question.

Final game notes: The game of basketball is about respect. Michael Jordan always said he considered Madison Square Garden to be the “Mecca of Basketball” because that crowd appreciates greatness & can spot a phony. The true performers will rise to the occasion on the biggest stage, so to say. In contrast, during the Spurs-Thunder game 7, All-Star Chet Holmgren looked like he wanted no part of MSG as he was on the bench as the OKC Thunder season ended. That’s what Wemby did to him. Everyone in basketball respects that, and is excited for the Spurs-Knicks finals.

As mentioned above, the only difference-maker in today’s WNBA is A’ja Wilson. For perspective, in an all-time WNBA draft it’s either her or a young Cheryl Miller at #1. Without A’ja Wilson, France would have won gold at Paris 2024. The rest of the WNBA is a group of players with differing levels of ability, but none are difference-makers. That’s the overall mediocrity of the WNBA that allows one player to dominate.

As for Caitlin Clark, if you are overrated & overpaid this hurts your team because respect at the professional level is (more than ever) measured in dollars– salary & endorsements. The hysterical (and all-too-easy) solution for the Indiana Fever is to fire their head coach in order to protect the underperforming “star player.” This allows a temporary reset, but doesn’t fix the underlying problem, which is Caitlin Clark’s performance & commitment to the game, teammates & organization. Her commitments to be the face of the WNBA are clearly more than she can handle.

Steve Alford is Caitlin Clark’s best historical comparable in the men’s game. All-American under Bobby Knight at Indiana University when the Hoosiers won the NCAA tournament in 1987, Steve Alford didn’t have the physique or game to be a successful NBA player.

Caitlin Clark needs to publicly admit that she is currently the third-best player on her team. This would help take the pressure off her head coach and earn some trust from her teammates by taking responsibility for not being the player she has been hyped to be. I believe Caitlin Clark can be a helpful piece on a championship WNBA team because shooters are always needed, but she isn’t a team leader or primary option. She doesn’t have that game.

This essay has been a critical analysis of the WNBA, something that has been sorely lacking in the corporate media. Most critics of the WNBA simply hate on it. My critical approach is that of a recreational basketball player who respects the game and can differentiate good play from poor. You have to base every critical judgment on performance & numbers. What are you doing to help your team win? What aren’t you doing that you need to be doing, etc? True leaders are accountable in all situations. Too many people running the WNBA don’t want to be accountable, they just want to be paid.

Handling the media is a component every modern professional athlete must deal with. As the saying goes, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame.” Throwing coaches under the bus is what players do in the modern NBA. Kyrie Irving, James Harden, Ben Simmons come to mind as legendary coach killers. Old school NEVER allowed that, but this is new school. Shoot the 3, and if it doesn’t go in, then complain about the coach not using you correctly, etc. Players in all leagues are paid much more now, and thus the head coach has to regularly take bullets for his players in the media to stay solid with them. It’s part of the job, and for which the coach will eventually be fired. In this NIL era, talent & marketability rules the game.

…………..<><><><><><>…………..

 

Beatles Evolution & Revolution

Posted on by

If you are going to be successful as an act, you need management & a producer.

Brian Epstein was an ambitious music entrepreneur who managed the Beatles from 1961 until his death in August 1967. Epstein signed the Beatles with EMI’s Parlophone label, which became Capitol Records, and today is owned by Universal Music Group. Beatles songs were all produced by George Martin and remain a huge money maker, testifying to Brian Epstein’s ability to recognize talent, which itself is a talent, and then pair it with the necessary recording talent.

For the record, Brian Epstein was gay and like many stars & others of his era he died young (age 32) of a combined alcohol & barbiturate overdose, ruled accidental. Being gay is a difficult lifestyle, because apparently at some point there becomes an overwhelming need to separate from the mainstream. None of that conventional stuff satisfies. Beyond that, much of the conservative mainstream rejects gay, openly declaring its hostility.

Drugs & alcohol can become a refuge. Gay parties are different from straight parties. In my experience, there are much more drugs & sex going on at gay parties. Much of it is reckless & unprotected, as the attitude among many who are gay is to live it up today & die young. Many don’t want to live into old age, as they are in pain over their sexuality, and once it diminishes, their mental agony can become excruciating. Sadly this emotional pain leads to many early deaths.

Relationship building is an area where many people have issues. It’s especially hard for gays who have come out of the closet to trust straight people, because all straights said or did something offensive to their sensibilities at some point. It’s tempting for gays to become snowflakes on this, which doesn’t help anyone. Rehabilitation & education need to work together for there to be progress in sexual healing, but currently that is being cut out in favor of quackery, prejudice & identity politics. The real work that needs to be done is being actively resisted by all this.

After Epstein’s death, the Beatles attempted to manage themselves with Apple Records and it was a disaster. It wasn’t until after they officially broke up in the spring of 1970 that the Fab Four got they legal & financial issues in order so they could all get paid. Northern Songs was the famous Lennon-McCartney publishing company created under Epstein’s guidance. This got John & Paul paid equally on all their compositions.

George founded Harrisongs in 1964 which ensured he would get paid for his music. Ringo founded his own music publishing company, Startling Music Ltd, in 1968 after his deal with Northern Songs expired. Before the Beatles had begum to disintegrate as a band, each member was legally taken care of as far as songwriting, publishing & royalties. Those are the typical issues that break-up successful bands, and the Beatles showed the world how to handle it as it happened. “Creative differences” between band members is often rooted in legal issues that affect the commerciality of the act, along with who gets paid.

I’ve written in earlier posts that the Beatles wouldn’t be allowed to be successful in this 21-century era. The music industry has learned from the Beatles, punk rock, and 1990’s alternative rock/hip-hop. Those were times when popular music got out of their control and the industry doesn’t like that, even though it makes them billions of dollars. The industry wants to bottle everything up and endlessly sell it back to new generations of consumers, while never allowing another revolution in popular music. Historically, losing Frank Sinatra’s audience to rock & roll in 1955 started all this upheaval for the music industry. Charlie Parker & Sun Ra did the same in jazz.

You can’t stop history, which is metaphorically a raging river with unstoppable momentum & overwhelming power. Rock & roll is here to stay, and you can’t kill it. Same for reggae, rap, salsa, electronica, etc. Once a genre conquers the world, it becomes immortalized and can’t die because too many people, particularly kids, love it. It just keeps growing & flowing, increasing its influence as it goes along. All one can do is attempt to direct the flow. A revolutionary artist finds the best channel and directs all his/her energy into that historical task.

If the Beatles came along today and got their big audition on American Idol, Simon Cowell & company would listen for a bit, then insist to Paul that John be fired. Brian Epstein would be pushed out over a drug/sex scandal, etc, and Universal would handle all management through one of their preferred star agencies. This means Paul would be represented by CCA and be recognized as the undisputed band leader who gets all the songwriting & publishing money, while George & Ringo are a step above session musicians in this gig. If either protest they can easily be replaced. Drum machines that sample Pete Best & AI guitarists work much cheaper, making these new & improved Beatles more cost-efficient to the industry. This is the only way these new Beatles could be economically viable.

George Martin’s talents wouldn’t be applicable to these Beatles. Industry braintrust would surely prefer the guy who produced the Black Keys or Foo Fighters. New Beatles music would need that production edge with everything they’re missing, and George Martin is too subtle and respectful towards the artist to work in contemporary rock music which is now a top-down corporate-controlled project.

Under these conditions, John will struggle to get another opportunity as he’s too outside-the-box for this corporate era of music. He’s not sponsor friendly, so how can you market him? This is how all the gatekeepers & industry experts would understand a young John Lennon today. In this industry-created world, Paul McCartney & his New & Improved Beatles could become more popular than One Direction featuring Harry Styles. Of course, there wouldn’t be 1/10th the great songs from this new UK supergroup, but that’s just a cost of doing business.

Conclusion: There are great aspiring artists with the ability to make meaningful music, but it’s all being suppressed by ruling-class corporate which controls marketing, distribution & sales through its network of business partners, to which outsiders have no access. If you’re reading this, then you’ve discovered a real musical artist of the 21st-century. We’re all underground, censored & blacklisted by the establishment which has near-complete control over TV & the internet. It’s all dirty politics & big money that keeps us suppressed. Eventually the river of history will wash away all their detritus. This will happen when youth & working people unite in action, using music as a tool for revolutionary inspiration.

………..<><><><><>………..

My life with gay

Posted on by

Beauty is blessing with a curse. Physical beauty attracts the opposite sex & gay. If you are attractive, you are going to have to deal with gay.

For the record, I’m 100% straight. Don’t believe that nonsense which declares everyone has gay in them. I have no desire for gay sex. That doesn’t make me anti-gay, it’s merely my sexual preference. Some snowflakes get jealous and attempt to persecute me for that. Anti-gay reactionaries are always looking for political cover for themselves, and a scapegoat to point their dirty fingers at. When you’re a real socialist, you get attacked from all sides politically.

I grew up in the 1980’s, when ‘coming out’ starting becoming in vogue. MTV & Madonna were a big influence on that, and it was certainly needed. I had Wisconsin high school friends (boys & girls) who came out after graduation, and I was among the first of the straights to be told by them. The gay boys were attracted to me, and the lesbian girls knew I was cool and would still be their friend. The ex-jocks & elitists were always the most reactionary towards gay, often claiming they were “betrayed” when they found out so-and-so was gay. That’s why most gays move out of the small towns and to the cities.

Those homophobic bigots were the people I soon lost touch with after high school, as they went on to become cops & local attorneys according to their aptitude. I soon lost touch with my new gay friends too, as that world became a culture that organically excluded straights who were unwilling to “experiment.” The only reason I was being invited to gay parties was because they wanted to have sex with me, not to be my friend.

I was kidnapped into a gay house sleepover in college. I thought I was being taken back to my dorm in downtown Milwaukee, but was instead taken to a rented home in Menominee Falls. I was introduced to all these new gay friends of my high school classmates, and was told we are having dinner & sleeping over here. [!!]

After this deception, I was uneasy about drinking alcohol, or anything else I didn’t serve myself. The meal was well-prepared, but hardly enjoyable. When it was time for bed, I slept alone on the living room couch, while everyone else went into a bedroom to have gay sex. It was my job to deal with all this like a man by waiting until morning to be taken to my desired destination, and not be a jerk about this. That’s a tough spot to be put in.

When gays are amongst themselves, they speak much more openly. After dinner, my just-came-out-of-the-closet male high school friend is examining the CD collection and is excited to see the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, etc, well represented. The flaming-gay home resident says loudly to me with a wink & a laugh, “He’s going through his fag rock stage.”

Since then, all that 1980’s goth music has been ‘fag rock’ to me, because that’s what the fags call it– I heard it myself. That doesn’t make me anti-gay, it means I understand gay MUCH better than most straight people. Gay people need a few more straight people like myself who are honest about all this sexuality, because everyone else it lying about it for their own purposes.

For the record, my ‘gaydar’ is exquisitely sensitive, as it needs to be. I am usually the first straight man in the room to know there is a gay person in the area. This has been happening to me since I was a child, so what’s speaking here is a lifetime of experience & learning. If you are attractive, gay is going to find you. It’s all about how you deal with it. What you must do is:

1) Determine your sexual preference and don’t allow any unnatural forces to influence it
2) Determine you social attitude towards a group with whom you are not sexually attracted
3) Set healthy boundaries & limitations and maintain them

This is pretty advanced stuff for most people, as much of today’s society is failing Sex Ed 101. If you aren’t physically attractive, then you don’t have this problem of gay kidnappings, or being lured to their parties, gay bars, etc. Many heterosexual reactionaries are jealous of me because they are ugly. They want to pretend they know better, when in fact they know nothing on this. They claim to be protecting the public interest, when in fact they are fascist haters looking to scapegoat artists & leftists so their crimes can stay hidden from public accountability.

Jealously is the most dangerous emotion. It leads to contempt & uncontrollable rage. Nothing good can come from that. When politics get hyper-sexualized, everything gets distorted because most people are out-of-control when it comes to sex. Most people are never comfortable with their sexuality, and that becomes a root of many disorders– mental, physical, social, economic & political.

I have always turned to music in the face of such difficult & substantive issues. If you love the Velvet Underground & Nico produced by Andy Warhol (1967) they way I do, then you can’t be anti-gay. If you respect David Bowie, etc, in your music listening, then you are a friend of the gay community. With these tools at your disposal, you have all you need to connect with gay people on amenable terms– anytime, anyplace.

………..<><><><><><><>………..

NCAA hoops finals previews

Posted on by

Pro-Michigan bias predicted for UM-UConn men’s hoops finals. Danny Hurley has his hands full here. UConn is a basketball school, that’s why they’re in the Big East. They are an original Big East basketball school, along with Georgetown, St Johns, Providence, Seton Hall & Villanova.

Times have changed, and Syracuse, Boston College & Pittsburgh are gone, with the likes of Marquette, DePaul, Creighton, Butler & Xavier now part of the expanded Big East. These are all basketball schools as far as NCAA recognition goes.

We all know football rules, as it draws-in the most viewers (television & streaming), sponsorship money and betting action. The NCAA favors Power 4 conferences, particularly the Big 10 which is run by the University of Michigan. As U-M alum QB Tom Brady says when it’s championship time, “Bet Michigan.” This is tacit recognition (from a true expert) that there’s more going on than the players on the field. There’s officiating, replay officiating, announcer & media commentary all feeding into this bias. Is this prejudiced & unfair? To ask the question is to answer it.

As I stated earlier, UConn coach Danny Hurley has his hands full. First, acknowledge that he’s a great coach and that deserves respect, but he can be a hothead who loses it when he’s been pushed too far with the officiating in a close loss. See Marquette v UConn on 2026 Senior Day at the Fiserv Forum. Marquette got favorable whistles in a nationally televised game on Fox, which kept the Golden Eagles in it and they pulled it out. It was their signature win in a dismal season, and Danny Hurley exploded at the refs on a good no-call at the end, aggressively confronting a bad referee immediately after the buzzer. He was fined $25,000 by the Big East for his outburst. As a Marquette alum, I thought that was ruling fair and moved on with no grudges.

UConn doesn’t make a distinction between men’s & women’s basketball, they are both strong NCAA traditions winning multiple national titles and producing countless NBA & WNBA stars & good players. Danny Hurley supports Geno Auriemma and vice versa. Jim Calhoun started the UConn basketball excellence, and Kevin Ollie is also revered as one of the great coaches in the UConn tradition.

Geno Auriemma has coached at UConn for 41 years, won 10 national titles, and coached the USWNT to basketball Olympic gold in 2012 & 2016. Geno Auriemma is perhaps the greatest women’s college hoops coach ever. It’s either him, or Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (1952–2016).

Yet South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley felt the need to disrespect Geno Auriemma by making him wait in front of everybody for 3 minutes before shaking hands pre-game at half court when announced over the PA system in the arena. When the names are announced, the coaches are supposed to shake hands as a sign of respect for your opponent, the game, as well as the fans in the stands who have paid to see a fair sporting event.

Clearly this was a punk power-play slight towards Geno Auriemma, and Dawn Staley still hasn’t explained it. She insisted he initiated the bad blood and she’s speechless, praise god, his will was done tonight, etc. Of course she’s allowed to get away with this clown act in the media, as they cover for her and don’t press her on anything important in the matter.

The Democratic Party controlled corporate media amplifies red herrings, and insist these are the “facts” that matter and nothing else is to be discussed. Sports fans now recognize this garbage instantly and comment on social media, where their most pointed & critical thoughts are removed by moderators and right-wing attack algorithms. AI bots spam “Fire Geno!!”, etc, and if your didn’t know better you would think this is how people actually feel.

But of course we all know how identity politics creates the narrative in situations like this. A while male heterosexual head coach angrily confronted a black, female head coach after a heated game, AND she praises God. Case closed for the #MeToo & #Black Lives Matter campaigns on that.

The video on this has been turned into propaganda by every fake left outlet, so I won’t post the video– I’ll describe it and you can compare for yourself. I’ve seen the original end game video a few times and I concluded I saw an upset legendary coach giving a foul-mouthed winning coach a taste of her own abuse. Then I see the winning coach going ballistic, hysterically screaming at the losing coach, requiring her entire staff to stand around her and separate her from going after him while hiding her face from the cameras. That’s how they have each others back at South Carolina. You can see how they’ve practiced that.

For context, since it matters, the reason Geno Auriemma had words for Dawn Staley was her pre-game slight, and also the officiating, where Dawn Staley was allowed to berate & abuse the officials, to the point where Geno Auriemma got into it with her & the refs in the second quarter. It was a 62-48 final score, where South Carolina went 18-22 from the free throw line, while UConn went 4-6. I didn’t watch the game, and it is primarily this reason I tune-out the NCAA these days. The officiating crew was Brenda Pantoja, Fatou Cissoko-Stephens & Katie Lukanich; and they should have to answer some questions here, don’t you think?

The UConn men’s team defeated Illinois to reach the finals last evening, but the Geno Auriemma-Dawn Staley dust-up was still their ticker lead, with UConn’s win over Illinois not even in their ticker. Only after Michigan beat Arizona in the second semi-final was Danny Hurley’s big win a story on the ESPN website. Over a thousand words on Geno Auriemma’s apology, etc, with prejudiced writers & numbskull analysts all asking “Is it enough?”

Yes, it’s enough. Now it’s Dawn Staley’s turn to answer for all her misconduct. But I don’t see that happening and neither does anyone else with any political & sports sense. The truth is both Geno Auriemma & Dawn Staley are to blame for this, but this system of “justice” says if we create a scapegoat, then he can be assigned all the blame, when actually it is cartoonish & a false reduction.

But that’s how it is with these people. Facts don’t matter and the truth isn’t welcome for a class of gatekeepers. In reality these are the functionaries & henchmen for fascism, who will to do anything to satisfy their masters. Universities represent capitalist ideology– through curricula, research & the NCAA. The top brands are always favored, just as the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox & Dodgers in baseball. Just as the Lakers, Knicks & Celtics receive favorable bias in the NBA.

It used to be called East Coast Bias, but it’s really big market bias. The top brands are always favored because it is perceived by elites that these brands carry their sports and nothing else matters. So if UConn wins over Michigan tomorrow night, that’s considered a huge blow to what the NCAA is trying to do, which is build its brand by making sure its signature brand (University of Michigan) wins the title.

The South Carolina-UCLA women’s hoops final is this afternoon, and I am making sure I’m published before the game starts. I feel I’m taken more seriously when I predict what’s going to happen in advance and am vindicated by events.

Severe U-M bias all down the line in the final is my prediction on the men’s side. UConn will have to hang in there and try to outlast the unfairness they will be facing. It’s probably too much, with Michigan much more likely to win in a blow-out than UConn, as the Wolverines are getting at least 8-12 points from the refs. It’s in Indianapolis, the NCAA HQ, so it’s basically a home game for Michigan.

As I’ve stated above, the only thing that really matters about the women’s game (to real sports fans) is what Dawn Staley says about Geno Auriemma and her own unsportsmanlike conduct before, during & after the UConn game. Winning isn’t more important than that, because if you have to cheat & abuse others to win it’s no longer a game, it’s a dirty political war.

………….<><><><><>…………

The NIL Frankenstein

Posted on by

The NCAA Power 4 conference commissioners & athletic directors will attend a White House roundtable discussion hosted by Donald Trump on March 6. Invited guests include: Tiger Woods, Nick Saban, Mack Brown, Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow, Condoleezza Rice, New England Patriots president Jonathan Kraft, NBA commissioner Adam Silver, Fox Sports president Eric Shanks, and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro.

The issue is NIL (Name Image Likeness) spending for top athletes, which has quickly turned into a Frankenstein for the NCAA, which was caught flatfooted from the start and has never come up with a fair & rational system to regulate NIL spending & the transfer portal, so they are now seeking Congressional & Presidential intervention. It seems like there is an athlete suing the NCAA every week now over eligibility, etc, and it’s become a right-to-work issue beyond its institutional control.

The NCAA’s “Power 4” is about football money, most of which comes from television & streaming. The Big 10, SEC, ACC & Big 12 are the Power 4– in that order. SEC commissioners & AD’s are upset because they collectively feel their athletic programs are vastly superior to those of the Big 10, but the NCAA is staffed at every level with Big 10 alumni, so they get favorable rankings, seedings, officiating, national television exposure, etc, which creates friction between the top dogs.

The ACC has suffered greatly in football during this NIL era of the transfer portal and conference expansion/reshuffling, so their school officials aren’t happy. The Big 12 had to rebuild itself after losing Texas & Oklahoma to the SEC a few years back. The Big 12 is doing better with Texas Tech committing $28M to its football program in 2025, which yielded them a coveted CFP playoff spot. But most schools can’t spend like that, and those that can’t are upset about competitive imbalance.

Everything is about football, as it generates the most viewers & largest wagering handles. Therefore, a basketball conference like the Big East has become irrelevant to the NCAA. UConn is still a top national men’s basketball team, but it won’t be able to recover its glory of just a few years ago when it won back-to-back national championships because it doesn’t have football revenue coming in to pay for top NIL basketball athletes like Power 4 conferences can.

On the NCAA agenda now is expanding its football playoffs from 12 teams. Sixteen teams makes the most sense, and always has, but it appears the NCAA is looking at possibly jumping to 20-24 teams for their playoffs. Top Big 10 officials (University of Michigan) insist on byes for Power 4 conference champions, etc. This makes it easier for their teams to win the football championship (as Indiana University did in 2025), versus having a 16-team playoff with no first-round byes.

Understand that the NCAA doesn’t want a fair & level playing field, it wants the Big 10 to win every year and put as many of its teams into the big tournaments (football & basketball) as possible. Generally speaking these days, the SEC qualifies & wins a lot because it spends the most money on NIL athletes, coaches & infrastructure. Everyone is lobbying for rules that give them the biggest advantage, so in the end their is little agreement. Money wins is the bottom line, and there is no way to change that fundamental under capitalism.

The Winter Olympics just concluded and the US had its best medal count ever. The last two Olympic games, Paris 2024 and Milan 2026, excluded Russian athletes, which affected medal totals. NIL spending, particularly for summer games sports such as track & field, swimming & gymnastics means these sports are now NCAA dominated, which is pushing up US Olympic medal wins.

Foreign athletes now get visas to come to a US university and train in their particular sport so they can get paid. Ed O’Bannon v NCAA in 2016 changed everything. College & high school sports are now openly professionalized as the concept of a “student-athlete” has been largely obliterated in bigtime NCAA sports. Today, the top girls high school softball & volleyball players across the country have a NIL profile. That’s how far it has proliferated.

AAU hoops & traveling soccer teams are corporate sponsored and the spending is only going up. The next tennis & golf prodigies are nurtured at ING academies and the like. Everybody wants to win, and seemingly every parent wants their son/daughter to get an athletic scholarship to a Power 4 school where they can play on TV & get paid.

Major universities have become sports factories more than institutions of learning. Back in the 1980’s, SMU and the University of Miami were outlaws in this regard in the eyes of the NCAA. Today they would be heralded as models of excellence in this age where winning in football is all that matters.

So how is Donald Trump going to fix this? To ask the question is to answer it– he won’t. Donald Trump & many of his invited roundtable guests are at the heart of this corruption that is destroying athletics. They don’t care about the athletes or the integrity of the game, they only want to profit & accumulate power from sports.

Conclusion: The issue for the NCAA is that college athletes are now paid free agents and this is getting very costly for universities that want to compete in sports. Power conferences dominate the NCAA because they have the deepest pockets and thus monopolize the top talent. What used to be hidden booster activity to avoid NCAA sanctions is now organized into university NIL collectives. Alabama will still win at football because their alumni are willing to spend whatever it costs to win. Whatever rules spending limits the NCAA sets, they will be covertly by-passed by universities that want to win– everyone knows that.

This mechanism change of paying athletes through NIL rules allows all schools to do what only the most competitive did in the past– pay their players. But the amounts are what matter, and just because Marquette can now pay its basketball players doesn’t matter so much when the University of Wisconsin can pay theirs so much more. The result is the Wisconsin Badgers are a NCAA Tournament team in 2026, while Marquette stinks. Marquette doesn’t have football so that program won’t have the revenue to rebuild through high-school recruiting or the transfer portal. Marquette was a consistent men’s Tournament qualifying team as of a few years ago, but that era is over.

These NIL issues have filtered up to the WNBA and have affected CBA negotiations which are currently at an impasse and are threatening the start of the upcoming season scheduled to tip-off on May 8. Top women’s collegiate players are now well-compensated through NIL deals, and this has raised expectations for the current WNBA players. WNBA owners still want to treat the WNBA players as “lucky to have a job,” so CBA negotiations have been non-productive thus far.

Every adult has the right to work and be paid. The question is: who gets the most money from their labor? This NIL era has transformed athletics and how young people look at sports. It’s now more of a business than ever, and at a younger age. This is double-edged in that it can take away the youthful love of the game, but also raises the level of consciousness of the young athlete in regards to what sports are.

The earlier one learns what sports are, the better that young athlete can decide whether it is worth it to compete seriously. It’s just as important to know what you are up against, as it is to know what you are competing for. It quickly becomes about a lot more than the game itself.

………….<><><><><><>…………

Milan Winter Olympics observations & thoughts

Posted on by

The perils of promoting oneself as a “Quad God” before taking the ice in front of the world became an Olympic reality for US figure skater Ilia Malinin, who entered the free skate 1st, but placed 8th after two falls during his long program.

It’s painful to watch.

This was Olympic pressure cracking a very talented young man. NBC’s evening coverage from Milan, which is tape-delayed, featured two retired US figure-skaters who mentioned Olympic pressure as nothing an athlete can simulate or be completely prepared for. Tara Lipinski won gold in 1998, and she admitted her knees were shaking going into her long program– which won.

So we can see that every athlete feels the pressure, even those who prevail as champions. It’s all about managing oneself and focusing on the tasks of the competition. When you put yourself under more pressure because you have promoted yourself as a Quad God, then you are setting yourself up for failure. That’s all one can say to the athlete on this.

I’m of a firm belief that figure skating & ice dancing are art-forms that should be appreciated as performance, instead of graded as competition. I feel the same way about diving & gymnastics at the summer Olympics. I understand this opinion is in the minority, but there are points to be understood, even if it doesn’t change your mind.

Let’s start with the ridiculous notion of music being an Olympic event and “best rock concert” wins the gold. The Beatles rock the house, followed by the Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, the Velvet Underground, the Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, James Brown, and finally Jimi Hendrix. Judges (trusted old people) will rate their performances, based on criteria defined by them, and determine a winner & podium.

That may sound silly, and it is, but Rolling Stone magazine has been doing this since it started in 1967. More than anything, criticism of music & film and the judging of athletic performances are vehicles to promote personal favorites & devalue disliked acts. They act as political & social filters.

For the last 25 years the corporatized “music Olympics” has transformed from Rolling Stone magazine into American Idol reality TV, and it’s why music sucks so hard today. When industry gatekeepers control every aspect from development & finding talent, to access to resources & media promotion, it becomes nothing more than a popularity contest & pet projects among executives, instead of the kids deciding what they like & get to hear.

Back in the 1960’s, kids loved the Beatles & Stones, and demanded more from the record labels, and what followed was its classic rock era. Today corporate heads manipulate everything you see in the media. The last thing they want is another Bob Dylan revolutionizing things. Today. one must pass through the corporate filter of reality TV before one can be anointed a star.

The Beatles & Rolling Stones wouldn’t be allowed to exist and become famous these days. Their type is too wild & dangerous, too exciting & influential with the kids, and that can’t be allowed to happen. That’s been the corporate philosophy on music & entertainment post-Nirvana.

It’s the same process in sports, which is big money these days because it’s live entertainment brought to the viewer through traditional television & now internet streaming. Sports harvest eyeballs in all demographics, which advertisers love & networks cash in on.

Thus, I don’t get caught up in this Olympics ice dancing judging controversy.

Unfair judging has been part of the Olympics for decades, as these are political slights intended to project power towards an antagonist nation. The actual effect is to degrade an athlete’s performance while raising suspicions of dirty politics undermining the spirit of “fairness & international goodwill” at the Olympics.

Curling is a little known sport, and this is historically my first commentary on it. Team Sweden accused team Canada of cheating during their competition. Video shows illegal touching by Canada, but the sport is not subject to replay review officiating– yet. Cheating at a “gentleman’s” sport which most people don’t even understand or care about reveals that we have a competition problem at the Olympics.

The problem is everyone lies, and the more money that goes into winning, means more cheating & lying to become the “best”. This can raise the pressure to a breaking point for many athletes. “Cracking” happens in many different ways– bad performances, rules cheating, hidden PED use, etc. The drive to be the best involves making difficult decisions and managing serious expectations. Failure can derail a career in minutes. Sponsors want a winning face that pops. Silver medals don’t get it done, as an Olympic athlete needs gold to have a successful post-athletic career in broadcasting or whatever.

Of course, I understand the need to recognize the best in sports, and in competitions where the event is decided by time or some other objective measure, or on the field played by a predetermined set of rules that is officiated on the field, then it is a sport where Olympic medals can be fairly awarded.

X-game events are largely subjectively graded, and should be appreciated as athletic-artistic performances, instead of judged for medals in competition. Let the fans & viewers argue about who is top-tier & best, etc. These performances would be better if they were considered as such. Music, art & entertainment are competitive, so there would be no lack of motivation to be recognized as the best. What would be removed would be tainted judging & corporate dominance in messaging, and sports fans would appreciate that.

Conclusion: I’m not an athlete, I’m a musical artist. The two are similar in that managing your performance is more mental than physical. World class athletes train a lifetime for Olympic competition. Unless there is an injury, it’s typically not physical issues that concern when the time comes to compete. It’s the same in music, as the performer knows how to play, but it’s nerves that can wreck it. Learning to control oneself and be calm in front of an audience is an advanced skill for any performer– artistic and/or athletic. It’s not something anyone is born with, it’s something that can only be learned through hard experience.

It involves breathing, taking in the moment, and realizing where you fit in as far as the bigger picture is concerned. It actually helps to have a bit of contempt for all this crap & people’s expectations, etc. If you feel the only expectations you need to meet are your own, then you are at peace and ready to perform. If you can’t do this, then it is easy to be overwhelmed by the situation, which creates self-doubt & performance slippage.

Lindsey Vonn crashed out of her skiing event (pic above), after trying to compete with a torn ACL. That was her choice as a professional athlete in an individual sport. Team sports are different, where competing injured can set an organization back in the long-term. In those cases, team physicians & management must make the final call, for the safety of that player, other players, as well as the interests of the organization & league. But in individual sports such as skiing, it’s the athlete’s choice.

These athletes consistently push their bodies beyond the breaking point to be the best and amaze the world. All this competition (music, art, sports) falls into the category of entertainment.

You do push yourself to (& beyond) the breaking point when you attempt to be the best in these fields. People admire & are inspired by great music, art & sport, but often don’t really understand the sacrifices, or the heartbreak of coming up short, getting injured, having to retire. No one can sustain the greatness to be the best in any of these entertainment fields for more than a few years. It’s too competitive and always progresses into the future, favoring the next generation.

Old judges & seasoned critics contribute nothing useful or progressive to entertainment. They act as a brake on development & innovation, invariably favoring conservative corporate & political interests. Too much of these Olympics, along with all other sports, is about satisfying the demands of people who put themselves above the athletes in competition.

And finally: Russia & Belarus are once again banned from competing as nations in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina. Both nations were banned from the 2024 Paris summer games due to the ongoing war with Ukraine. This ban was a political decision made by western imperialism backed by its International Olympic Committee. Only a limited number of individual, pre-vetted athletes from Russia & Belarus can compete as neutral, non-represented participants– and most choose not to. This drastically affects: figure skating, cross country skiing, ice hockey, biathlon & speed skating.

The US is able to run up its medal count at the winter games due to: 1) new (X-game) events which largely favor US athletes; 2) banning Russia from the competition; and 3) massive sports spending in America linked to the NCAA, etc. World politics & corporate sponsorship are the unspoken elephants in the room as far as any international competition goes these days.

It’s not the Russian athletes’ fault that Russia & Ukraine are at war, yet they lose their opportunity for which they have trained a lifetime due to the rulings of corrupt politicians & their puppet institutions. This NATO-provoked proxy war in Ukraine is the work of US, UK & German intelligence, supporting fascists in Kiev in an effort to carve up Russia. None of that has any rightful place in influencing Olympic competition. Imperialist institutions are responsible for unfairly banning Russian athletes, stripping them of their opportunities for Olympic glory. Those are the real politics that underlie all the official lip service on internationalism & the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together.”

………….<><><><><><><><><>……………