April used to be about the games. Now it is about the bets. From March Madness to the NBA, sports gambling is turning shared spectacle into private transactions. iPINIONS argues that when every play becomes a wager, the communal ritual that once defined sports begins to die… Read my full take on Substack: https://ipinionsdaily.substack.com/p/sports-are-the-last-public-rituals Read more.
March Madness
Hey Nocera, Paying College Athletes Is Good Mess
Joe Nocera is right that paying college athletes has created a mess. But as iPINIONS argues, this is good mess… the kind that exposes old injustice, shatters NCAA hypocrisy, and forces long-overdue reform. The chaos around NIL, transfers, and athlete pay is not the problem. It is the moral bill finally coming due. Read my… Read more.
March Madness: College Women Are Playing Too
March Madness remains a cultural rite of passage. But sports media still treats the women’s tournament like an afterthought, even as its stars shine and its bracket players outperform the men by a mile. iPINIONS calls out the chauvinism, the coverage gap, and the gambling culture distorting the whole spectacle. Read my full take on… Read more.
NCAA Bracketology: The Madness Isn’t the Upsets — It’s the Gambling
Every March, Americans pretend they’re just in it for the love of the game. But iPINIONS contends that, when office pools, online betting apps, and billion-dollar bracket challenges flood the airwaves, it’s clear: March Madness isn’t about basketball — it’s about the high. And like any addiction, it doesn’t matter how impossible the odds are… Read more.
The End of March Madness: Hail, Women of Baylor, Men of Virginia!
Organizers hype the annual NCAA Division 1 Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments as “March Madness.” They do so to exploit “the thrill of victory and agony of defeat” of watching low-seeded teams (a.k.a. Cinderellas) upset top-seeded ones — often with buzzer-beating hail marys. Unfortunately, the tournaments rarely live up to this hype, respectively. True to form,… Read more.
March Madness 2018…
Is thinking Sister Jean has anything to do with Loyola’s miracle. Organizers hype the annual NCAA Division 1 Basketball Tournament as “March Madness.” They do so to exploit “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” inherent in low-seeded teams (a.k.a. Cinderellas) upsetting top-seeded ones — often with buzzer-beating hail marys. Incidentally, I decided years… Read more.
NCAA March Madness — and Then There’s the Women of UConn
Organizers hype the annual NCAA Division 1 Basketball Tournament as “March Madness.” They do so to exploit “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” inherent in low-seeded (a.k.a. Cinderella) teams upsetting top-seeded ones — often with buzzer-beating hail marys. Except that this year’s tournament hasn’t quite lived up to that hype. After all, the… Read more.






