The best journalists in all of sports, in our opinion, are Bryant Gumble, Bernie Goldberg, and the others on the cast of HBO’s Real Sports. They just aired a special on corruption in big time college football and basketball. Star players are routinely given cash, and many say the NCAA and coaches look the other way.
The NCAA, the universities, and the coaches feed off of the billions in revenue made possible from television rights and sports apparel deals. The players that drive it all get paid a few thousand under the table. They are banned from any sort of outside financial deal with local business. Also, players cannot hold part-time jobs or sell any personal memorabilia.
As the revenue grows, each punishment handed out to the small players becomes more hypocritical. For example, during the 2010-2011 football season, the NCAA declined to punish Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton. Doing so would have taken away lucrative money from Auburn, tarnished a memorable year good for the entire sport, and hurt a good individual.
Where does the NCAA go from here? Currently, money talks. The top teams in the NCAA are significant sources of tax revenue and jobs for the small towns such as Auburn, Ann Arbor, Lincoln, etc. If Wall Street can seemingly function without real reform as too-big-to-fail entities after bringing down the world economy, can we expect reform at the NCAA?
Ivy League Athletics Commissioner Jeff Orleans and Billy Packer made the most poignant comments. The NCAA 2010 revenue was at least $760 Million, yet it pays no taxes masquerading as a non-profit. Likewise, the cash to players goes untaxed. If lawsuits challenge that, it will be a whole different ballgame for the NCAA.
NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman gets it wrong when she tells America that they are essentially dumb for buying potassium iodide pills to prevent possibly radiation exposure and thyroid cancer.
Related, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly singled out ABC pundit Michio Kaku for “hyping” the Japan reactor situation. Time will tell, but Dr. Kaku’s suggestion will likely be exactly what is required.
“Doctor” Drew Pinskey has given up all pretenses of professionalism and is now diagnosing celebrities based on short TV sound bites. Most notably, he did this with Charlie Sheen recently. The academic psychiatry community frowns upon this.
So, in fair turn, we thought that we would diagnose Drew. He suffers from Narcissistic personality disorder in our opinion
Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien are not on speaking terms, but Conan should be blaming himself for why his Tonight Show failed. A chart of the ratings lat year showed a huge dip once Conan took over. Now, the latest ratings for the 11:30 time slot came out and Leno boosted ratings 41% from one year ago when Conan ran the show (3.868 million this period vs. 2.753 million one year ago) and is back in the #1 slot, to Howard Stern’s dismay.
HBO’s Bill Maher suggested to guest Arianna Huffington that President Obama has the 2012 election “in his pocket” because the list of GOP wannabes is so lame. She correctly replied that the high unemployment rate is untenable to an Obama second term.
The Glee actress Lea Michele had a total meltdown in front of the world as she botched America the Beautiful. At the 1:40 mark of the video, she seems to repeat “sea to shining sea” over and over as if she did not know the lyrics. If this was planned, then they created a new song and it is not America The Beautiful at all.
Then, moments later, Christina Aguilera (looking a lot like Snooki these days) messed up the biggy, The Star Spangled Banner
On February 4, Bill Maher made an interesting observation on his HBO show. He said that Glenn Beck’s comments on the spread of unrest on Northern African were embarrassing even for Fox viewers and that Sarah Palin “Has jumped the shark”. He asked, “Do you think the fever has broken on crazy in this country?”
We also liked the comments by the new Carl Sagan of popular science, Neil deGrasse Tyson, about his support for a mission to Mars. For some reason, even though NASA is a bureaucracy, the left does not like to fund NASA. NASA has been blacklisted by the left.
There was a rare Harvest Moon a few days ago, so it is fitting to show this montage of images from the 2010 season in the BPC Community Gardens. See if you spot any gardens you know.
This is also a small tribute, in ways, to 9/11 victims.
The #1 film at the box office this weekend was “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps”, the sequel to the Academy Award winning film of 1987, Wall Street. Most of the film was shot in Downtown Manhattan, and much of that was in Battery Park City. Due to the new Goldman Sachs headquarters being in BPC now, Director Oliver Stone chose to show numerous aerial panorama views of BPC from Goldman HQ all the way south to the park. Your apartment building is almost certainly in view.
We give the film an enthusiastic “thumbs up”. The casting, acting, screenplay, and directing were all excellent. Shia LeBeouf’s portrayal of a prop trader was spot on accurate, and Charlie Sheen’s cameo with Michael Douglas was truly nostalgic. Given Michael Douglas’ real life struggle with stage 4 throat cancer, the scene transcended the film.
The film also does a good job of explaining the complicated financial instruments that led to the crash of 2008 and the global depression that ensued. Schools will show this to students for educational purposes. Sadly, the clear message about the corruption of global finance is truthful, which may be too depressing for some viewer’s tastes.
The upcoming masterpiece of film called “Jackass 3D” will feature a BMX daredevil, Mat Hoffman, who has broken more bones than Evil Knievel and has suffered at least 70 concussions. He wears a shoulder harness because his arm was almost amputated.
Mr. Hoffman was right here in BPC last April for the Tribeca Film Festival. See below.
April 24, 2010
The public “drive in” movie tonight at the Tribeca Film Festival is “Big Air”. To promote it, BMX set up a half pike and has skateboarders and BMX bikers making big air.
Film Theater and TV, In the News, Op-Ed, Schools | admin | 
March 31, 2011 9:01 pm | 
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