The New York Times has a heartbreaking article today on the decline of high school basketball in Indiana. I've followed this story for years, and I really think the Hoosiers here were victims of their own decency and sense of fair play. In Kentucky, we are much quicker to assume that the Powers That Be are incompetent, or corrupt, or wicked in some other profound way. And so we are much more vicious and truculent in fighting against them. That's how we ended up with John Calipari -- a hire the U.K. Athletic Department did not want to make -- and how we've managed to keep one-class basketball, a policy I'm certain the KHSAA will change if it ever gets the chance.
But in Indiana, where they think of themselves as fair-minded and good-hearted, proposals for change are not met with the same sort of instant opposition and rage. The Hoosiers like to hear things out, give everyone a chance, let voices be heard. And that's just the wiggle-room that the elites need to do things like put Mike Davis in charge at IU, ruin the Indianapolis 500, and destroy the Indiana High School Basketball tournament. Of course, in today's article the elites have lots of good explanations for why interest in Hoosier Hysteria has plummeted. And the New York Times carefully passes them all along. It's the economy. And football. And the decline of G.M. And interest had been declining for years anyway. Yeah, that's the ticket. It's certainly not that everything played out exactly as the folks who wanted to preserve one-class basketball predicted. No, that couldn't be it. A lot of those people didn't even go to college.
That's one of the great things about belonging to the elite; you always have good explanations as to why things didn't work out. And that's why, if you want to stop an elite-driven policy, you have to stop it before it gets into place. They didn't do so in Indiana. And now they're paying the price.
No comments:
Post a Comment