Canadian Teams to Enter NCAA?

The NCAA is admitting a Canadian university, Simon Fraser, to Division-II athletics. While this is only the first time that a Canadian school has been admitted to play in the NCAA, it could be a bellwether of a larger trend to come. Will more Canuck schools try to get into the NCAA, or will the CIS (Canadian Interuniversity Sport), try to get more competitive with their southern counterparts, the NCAA?

Typically, the best Canadian college basketball players try to get into American universities so that they can play in the NCAA. Most of the larger schools in the United States grant full scholarships to college athletes, meaning that the basketball player will have his tuition, fees, room and board payed for while he’s attending the college full time. In Canada you can get scholarships for tuition and fees, but not room and board. Financially, it makes more sense to come to America. Plus, you can play against more competitive teams and potentially get more exposure. Everyone wants to be the next Steve Nash, who grew up in Canada, went to school in the U.S. and then made one hell of an NBA career that’s still going strong.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on August 6, 2009 - Post a comment

Looking at the Early Season Tourneys

One of the best part about the early college basketball season is the small tournaments. Usually these tourneys, such as the Coaches vs. Cancer, NIT Season Tip-Off and Great Alaska Shootout, give fans a chance to see some excellent teams play against one another in a tournament-style event. The teams oftentimes travel long distances, so you get matchups that don;t happen regularly.

ESPN.com has a page dedicated to sorting out these tournaments. As you can see, teams are lining up to play in them already, and some of the brackets have already been set. These kinds of tourneys are great for both large and small schools because of the diversity of the competing teams and the oftentimes exotic locations where they play.

So which early-season tournament will you buy tickets to see? They all have merit, but some seem better than others. Consider the Great Alaska Shootout. Alaska is a picturesque place to make a trip out of, and you’ll at least see Oklahoma and Washington State, two tournament-contending teams last season. Two more teams are yet to be announced.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on August 5, 2009 - Post a comment

Should You Be Allowed to Bet on Hoops in Delaware?

The NCAA, along with Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League have joined together to sue the state of Delaware to stop them from betting on sports. The sports leagues think that if the state is allowed to bet on sports the integrity of the games will be in jeopardy. The state of Delaware says, “yeah right, we’re just trying to make a few bucks in some down times.” Well, not literally, but you know what we’re saying.

In case you didn’t know (and we didn’t until reading this Associated Press article), the United States has four states that allow betting on professional sports. You can probably guess the first two, Nevada and Delaware. But did you know that Oregon and Montana both allow betting on sports? Interesting stuff. Apparently Delawareans couldn’t bet on single games, but they’re trying to pass legislation to allow it. The NCAA and all major sports leagues are up in arms.

So do you think that betting on sports in Delaware will negatively affect college basketball. There is the potential for corruption, but then again with Vegas and online betting, that has always existed, and will exist so long as there are some places where you can gamble. In fact, plenty of gambling goes on illegally. It’s very hard to irradiate it.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on August 4, 2009 - Post a comment

Interesting Class-Action Lawsuit Against the NCAA by Former Players

The NCAA is getting sued by Ed O’Bannon and thousands of other former college athletes. O’Bannon and the plaintiffs allege that the NCAA should not be allowed to use their images, likenesses and other personal information in business ventures for the purpose of profit. For example, several video games use the image of Ed O’Bannon in their for-profit industries. NCAA athletes are forced to give away their rights to their images and likenesses when they sign on the doted line to play in college. But that’s not fair, especially for players who have been out of the college hoops game for decades.
 
On the other hand, the NCAA has a good and honest interest in keeping NCAA athletes armature. If players are allowed to license their own images, they could effectively become professional players. The issue is vast and has many different facets to it. If you have a few minutes and are at all interested in the law, this Michael McCann article will be a good read this afternoon.
 
To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on August 3, 2009 - Post a comment

UCLA Charging Half A Million Dollars for a Seat

 

Greg Doyel has a scathing article at CBSsports.com about the new ticket price for courtside seats to the UCLA Bruins men’s basketball games. Apparently the Bruins are charging over half a million dollars, over $500,000.00 for a courtside seat to the games. Doyel lets the Bruins have it pretty bad in the article, but there are some good counterpoints to his arguments.

 

First off, the Bruins are trying to renovate their arena, Pauley Pavilion, which will take a lot of money to do- somewhere near $200 million. The State of California isn’t exactly rife with cash right now, so the University is trying to raise funs its own. If there are fans out there who are willing to pay the ticket price (knowing that it’s pretty high so that they can help support the renovations), then let them. It’s their money, they can do what they want with it. Will the tickets sell? I guess we will find out soon enough.

 

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 31, 2009 - Post a comment

Wooden Best Ever Says Sporting News

The Sporting news, one of the most respected journals and national magazines in the nation, has declared John Wooden to be the greatest coach of all-time. John Wooden received the honor at a luncheon in Los Angeles in a room, probably not so coincidentally called, the john Wooden Room. Many of Wooden’s players and assistants were there. Brad Howland, the current coach of UCLA, where Wooden won 10 national championships, was also on hand, saying:

“It was really very easy, I think, for the people on the panel to vote for this award. He was the greatest teacher ever. His integrity, the way he lives his life, is a model for all of us.”

In other coaching news, you ought to read this Luke Winn story. To read it is to get a deeper understanding about what it was that made Bobby Knight such a good coach. Despite his fiery temper, he was a keen teacher and one of the best motivators of all time. No John Wooden, but up there.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 30, 2009 - Post a comment

The Mountain West and Western Athletic Conferences

Is Colorado State or New Mexico State in the Mountain West or the Western Athletic Conference? Which one is considered to be a Mid-Major conference? The WAC and the MWC get confused quite a bit, so it’s up to use to help clarify the situation. They both use the word West, and they both inhabit the same basic region, so it’s pretty easy to see how these two conferences could get confused, especially if you live in the East. Here are the rosters. Memorize these teams!

Western Athletic Conference:

  • Boise State
  • Fresno State
  • Hawaii
  • Idaho
  • Louisiana Tech
  • Nevada
  • New Mexico State
  • San Jose State
  • Utah State

Mountain West Conference:

  • Air Force
  • Brigham Young
  • Colorado State
  • University of New Mexico
  • San Diego State
  • Texas Christian
  • UNLV
  • Utah
  • Wyoming

High Major and Mid Major:

Which one of these two conferences is considered to be a mid-major by college basketball terms? According to the Mid-Majority, a blog dedicated to mid-majors, the Western Athletic Conference is actually considered a mid-major. They rank the conferences by athletic budget and see which ones have the real power in the game of hoops. The Average athletic budget of the Mountain West was roughly $241,000, while the average athletic budget of the Western Athletic was roughly $185,000, technically dipping it below the mid major status line. Football is another story altogether, as both schools can send teams to compete in the BCS Championship.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 29, 2009 - Post a comment

College Basketball Quick Hits!

We went to Fox Sports this morning and picked out a few of the stories and articles that grabbed our interest. Here they are in no particular order. Enjoy!

The top ten returning college hoops players are chronicled in pictorial form right here. You can probably name quite a few. Somewhat surprisingly there are no players in the slide show from Michigan State.

A Memphis recruit is going to forgo the college game and play in Europe for the cash. A top young prospect named Latavious Williams has made the decision to enter the European workforce, rather than the American college system, joining other prep recruits like Brandon Jennings and Jeremy Tyler. Will the trend continue?

Jim Calhoun has survived broken ribs, cancer and controversy after controversy. He’s 67 but he still plans on going into the next season full-force. Who wouldn’t considering the money he’s making at his state job? Just kidding, Jim!

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 28, 2009 - Post a comment

Arena War: Rupp Arena vs. Freedom Hall

Which arena is better, Louisville’s Freedom Hall or Kentucky’s Rupp Arena? CBSsports.com is pitting one arena against another to determine who has the best home court advantage, which arena is the best as far as fan experience and which characteristics are the best to have at a college basketball arena. This week it’s a battle between natural Bluegrass State rivals- Kentucky and Louisville.

It seems as though this one is an easy selection, not because Freedom Hall is so bad (it’s really one of the better arenas in the country), but because Rupp is such a classic place. They still have bleacher seats, people! Everyone loves that the arena is meant to maximize the number of people they can cram in there- they even forgo luxury boxes. Not many other big-time schools can boast such a commitment to the common fan, the starving student and the cheering section.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 27, 2009 - Post a comment

Great NCAA Basketball Posterizations

The talk of the basketball world these days is the release of the LeBron James posterizatoin video. Xavier’s Jordan Crawford was the one delivering the famous dunk over LeBron, but there have been plenty of other famous dunks in recent years. Thankfully SportsIllustrated.com has provided a nice little feature that documents about half a dozen high-flying dunks that you might have seen recently.

Speaking of dunking on people, the whole LeBron dunk video has raised some questions from the Final Four Blog. For example, what constitutes getting dunked on, and what makes it particularly embarrassing? Why is getting dunked on such an insult? It seems to be that, if you play basketball for any amount of time, you’re going to end up in a situation where you have bad positioning down low, or someone is coming in hard to the hoop and you just plain can’t block the dunk. This happens with smaller guards and wing players sometimes, making getting dunked on relatively hard to avoid. The SI videos show Greg Paulus getting dunked on a couple of times. But he’s what, 6-1? For a 6-8 guy like Danny Green, dunking on Paulus when he has his feet planted shouldn’t be that impressive.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 24, 2009 - Post a comment


 Page 5 of 72  « First  ... « 3  4  5  6  7 » ...  Last »