Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990 TAG: 9003202770
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On Friday, UVa dispatched Notre Dame to go on to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. But the film of the final seconds of UVa's game Sunday against Syracuse will need a spot of editing before it will play well in the commonwealth.
Down by two against strong Syracuse, point guard John Crotty brings the ball upcourt; crosses the mid-court line; sensing his 12th assist of the half, whips the ball to his left, to teammate Kenny Turner. Turner, standing behind the three-point line, goes up . . .
Denouement A, as edited for Virginia consumption: Turner shoots, hits; UVa wins by one. Or, Turner spots star Bryant Stith closer to the basket; he passes inside; the Syracuse defense sags; Stith kicks it back outside; Turner shoots, hits; UVa wins by one. Or even, Stith takes the pass, squares up for the short jumper, hits it; overtime.
But denouement B, wherein art imitates real life: Stith takes the shot, it's blocked by a Syracuse defender, UVa's season is over.
Before getting too disconsolate, though, UVa fans - a group that for the moment perhaps included even followers of Virginia Tech, which didn't have a good enough season to go to the tournament - might note that disappointment at some point was virtually inevitable. The tournament's sudden-death format generates excitement; the trade-off is that, among the better teams in college basketball, only one can end the season with a victory.
And there also should be a satisfaction that goes deeper than any particular game, even one with so gritty a comeback as UVa turned in Sunday. In his 16 years as basketball coach, Holland and the university did more than prove they could be competitive in the tough Atlantic Coast Conference. They proved it could be done at an academically reputable school, and without breaking the rules.
Holland and UVa are not alone in doing that, of course, though the number of others is not nearly so big as it ought to be. But Holland did do something that's unique, or very nearly so, in the final year of his UVa coaching career.
Before the season began, Holland announced that he would fill out the final year of his coaching contract, then move to Davidson College, his alma mater, to be its athletic director. Oh no, said the skeptics, he'll have the new job on his mind and won't give the UVa team his full attention. Oh no, said the skeptics, it'll be a wasted recruiting year.
Clearly, the skeptics were wrong. UVa played well and hard, and UVa landed a reasonable share of good high-school players to enter the program next fall.
The skeptics were wrong, because they forgot that the old-fashioned virtues are not gone entirely, even from big-time college sports. They failed to take into account Holland's integrity, which would not allow him to shirk duties for which he had contracted. And they failed to take into account the notion that some high-school athletes actually might choose a school on the basis of the school itself rather than on who'll be the coach, which at UVa is still not known.
Talk of integrity seems out of place, to put it mildly, in any discussion of baseball's labor dispute. The word that jumps to mind is "greed." The new contract will enable a few young players to get extraordinarily wealthy, via arbitration, a year earlier than before; the money will be pocket change to the game's zillionaire owners.
Yet in an ironic way, there is a certain integrity about it. Professional baseball is, after all, a for-profit business. Those who profit don't particularly care to emphasize the fact: The product's appeal rests on fans' willingness to suspend disbelief, and think of the game solely as a sport built on civic pride and a storied past. The labor dispute was a reminder of the game's true nature.
Labor troubles of earlier years - not even the horrid strike of 1981, which occurred in the middle of the season - seem not to have mattered. Each has been followed by ever higher attendance figures, ever more lucrative TV contracts.
Repeat it too often, though, and the message might finally register. The best thing to be said of this year's version is that it's settled; fans have lost most of spring training, but only a week of the regular season. But for how long can baseball chip away at the mystique that surrounds it, without eventually reducing the revenues from which the game's practitioners reap such rich rewards? In his 16 years as basketball coach, Holland and the university did more than prove they could be competitive in the tough Atlantic Coast Conference. They proved it could be done at an academically reputable school, and without breaking the rules.
by CNB