Michelle Voepel reprising the bad for basketball argument

[fomalhaut]

Yawn... Was Tiger Woods bad for golf? Serena Williams bad for tennis? New York Yankees, Montreal Canadiens, Boston Celtics, Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bulls, LA Lakers, New England Patriots, New York Islanders, Edmonton Oilers, ...

As great as Connecticut is, and has been for most of 25+ years, they're not a new phenomenon in sports, and no other sport has ever been ruined by a dominant player or team.

 

[#12in21]

In the history of spectator sports it's been the dominant teams that have grown the sport. I think Michele confuses popularity with competition. She sees building the sport as having more successful programs around the country. But pro basketball took off in the Jordan era when there really wasn't anyone to challenge them. Would pro football be better without the NE Patriots all these years? Or the Cowboys of the 70's? Baseball regained it's popularity during the 90's when the Yankees dominated?

I had to laugh after ESPN's Twitter page was inundated with howls about one bad call the other night. It answered a question. I always wondered what happened to all the UConn trolls who lived on the old ESPN wcbb message board. Now I know, they moved to Twitter. Don't think for one second that ESPN wasn't thinking about them when they hyped that non-call while ignoring all the other non-calls that happened throughout the game. They are pandering to a large block of fans who want UConn to lose more than they want any other team to win.

I'm sure that Voepel, Creme, Hayes et al truly want to build wcbb from the inside but their employer (Disney/Hearst) only wants more viewers watching and if it's hatred for UConn that gets them to watch then D/H is OK with that.

Just wanted to point out that the NBA actually 'took off' a few years prior to the Jordan era. Rather than during a time of no competition, it actually was a period of intense competition featuring the rivalry of Magic/Bird, Lakers/Celtics that has most often been credited with the skyrocketing popularity of the NBA. Having said that, as a UCONN wcbb fan I love watching my team win every game, but can see the advantage, to the growth of the game beyond UCONN nation, of some legitimate rivalries. It's good to have a worthy opponent just fall short of beating us every year!