MIAMI — The silly Reese/Clark taunting controversy. A warning for Miami and FAU. The rise of the women’s game. The real reason LSU is tough to like. The White House gaffe. And personal gratitude.
Reflections from the NCAA Final Fours:
— LSU’s Angel Reese taunting Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and the controversy that followed was funny; no, hilarious. Was the gesturing after the NCAA women’s championship game disrespectful and unsportsmanlike? Sure. But no more so than Clark doing the same thing with the same gesture to opponents she had beaten this season.
Clark is a major trash-talker. Better than you and not afraid to show you — then remind you. She gives it good, this time she got it. Clark to her credit didn’t cry or complain but in fact has defended Reese. Only the outraged media whined.
Male athletes get to be loud and talk smack with impunity. It has seen a badge of confidence.
But when Reese gives some back to Clark it’s an outrage? Nope.
Black athletes who taunt ought not be vilified if we aren’t doing the same with whites.
And women athletes have the same right to show the same spark, fire, passion, personality — and power — that they see from NFL cornerbacks and on NBA courts and elsewhere.
Should be encouraged, as a matter of fact.
— It was an unprecedented season of success in South Florida college hoops, with Nova Southeastern winning a first Division II national title, the Miami women getting to the Elite Eight for the first time, and of course the Hurricanes and FAU reaching the men’s Final Four for the first time.
But what now?
It’s too easy to think there’s no turning back — that this means the start of ongoing top-tier stature.
History warns us that’s a risky bet.
There is a long parade of schools that reached the men’s Final Four for the first time, surely believed that was just the start .... and never got back.
Jim Larranaga’s George Mason in 2006, Seton Hall 1989, Georgia 1983, Notre Dame 1978, Florida State 1972, St. Bonaventure 1970, Drake 1969, Dayton 1967, Wake Forest 1962, Penn State 1954, Iowa State 1944, Wyoming `1943. .Those are just a few.
The Final Four is the hardest ticket in sports for a school. There are 490 college men’s teams and 369 women’s team trying to funnel to the Final Four.
What the Hurricanes and Owls draw from this experience and where they go from here is all that matters now.
— The two NCAA Final Fours saw a major closing of the gap between the men’s and women’s games in terms of popularity.
The UConn-San Diego State men’s final drew 14.9 million viewers on CBS, the fewest ever, while the LSU-Iowa women’s final on ESPN drew 9.9 million, the most ever. By a lot.
The women’s finale drew as many eyeballs as the last NBA Finals Game 7, and more than any Stanley Cup final game ever, more than any MLB postseason game other than the World Series, and more than any NASCAR Daytona 500 for at least six years.
Anecdotally, I was at Houston’s Hobby airport during the women’s final and saw throngs of folks watching anywhere the game was on, which was everywhere.
Could be an anomaly: a 4 vs. 5 seed men’s final vs. an extra-good women’s. But hopefully it signals a deserved surge in the women’s game. And, by the way, low WNBA salaries and increasing NIL deals in college make it more likely top female players will stay with the college game longer.
— The real problem with LSU’s Reese getting too much negative attention for her taunt of Clark is that it has taken away the scrutiny and heat Tigers coach Kim Mulkey deserves.
I don’t mean for the feathery, sparkly, garish, look-at-me courtside outfits she wears. No law against tacky.
I don’t even mean that she’s always on the court in the middle of play and the referees inexplicably allow it because she’s an all-time great coach or because they’re afraid to get too near what she’s wearing that night.
I mean the side of Mulkey that invites the belief she leans homophobic. In an otherwise gay-friendly women’s game that included three openly gay coaches in the women’s Elite Eight (Miami’s Katie Meier one).
Mulkey (also anti-science during COVID-19) notoriously insists gay players remain closeted. One, at Baylor, was Brittney Griner. When Griner was detained month after month in Russia, Mulkey was silent.
(That makes somewhat ironic the idea that Mulkey’s courtside outfits would fit nicely among the stage wardrobe of a drag queen.)
Reese and LSU are easy to cheer for. Mulkey, not so much.
— Quit playing the Final Four in football stadiums for the money grab. Quit making the basketball court a tiny rectangle engulfed by 80,000 people. Quit taking the players, nervous enough already, out of their element. College basketball’s biggest event doesn’t need football’s help, thanks.
— I’m sure Jill Biden meant well in mentioning that runner-up Iowa should join champion LSU in being honored at the White House ... before walking that back after the reaction.
A dumb idea in general. Also a move that would have set a dumb precedent. This isn’t first-year T-ball, where nobody is out and everybody gets a trophy. It wold have been an insult for LSU to have share that White House stage and honor with the team they just defeated.
Biden also invented a tone-deaf, race-tinged interpretation by thinking the mostly white Hawkeyes should share the stage with the mostly Black Tigers who’d beaten them — especially after that Reese/Clark controversy.
— A personal note to finish: Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cups, college football and NASCAR championships, The Masters — I’ve been lucky enough to cover all of that and more in a long career. But never a Final Four, until this past one, when both Miami and my alma mater, FAU, stunned to make the men’s surviving quarter.
I traveled to Houston with my son, who also went to FAU, and the Herald was kind enough to allow me to attend the games as a fan and also write from the event. I even bought an Owls T-shirt (which cost almost as much as a ribeye steak at Morton’s).
A great, unique experience be among four fan bases all co-mingling in (mostly) sportsmanlike revelry.
No other sport’s final four merits the capitals letters. In football it’s all about the Super Bowl, not the AFC and NFC title games. Likewise in baseball, hoops and hockey.
But in college basketball the Final Four is a quantum leap from the Elite Eight. It is when the America not obsessed with brackets and office pools starts paying attention. The Final Four is when the spectacle starts, as I’ll testify from visceral, immersive experience for the first time.
Being in the middle of it with my son made me feel grateful for what I do for a living — grateful, period.
