The Tar Heels won the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, and I’m not happy about it. This makes the umpteenth time that they have come out on top, and it’s just not fair.
Michigan State has never won the tourney and neither has Mizzou. One would think that this inequality of outcomes would motivate a self-proclaimed fair minded university to step aside and give other schools a chance to enjoy the limelight. That’s the neighborly thing to do.
In fact, the entire tournament set-up is drenched in unfairness. The University of Missouri lost to U-Conn partly because U-Conn has taller people on their team. This is manifestly an unfair advantage, and the game could have easily been height-normed by lowering the basket at one end of the court or possibly prohibiting players over a certain height (perhaps defined as all players over 3 inches taller than the average of all players on all teams) from entering the key on the offensive side of court.
That might result in a few minor added investments that the NCAA would need to make for additional referees, but that can be financed through a special assessment on tickets prices, which would ensure that fans from both teams would pay their fair share without impacting any academic bottom lines. An alternative might be to apply for stimulus funds. This proposal, after all, would result in added jobs for unemployed referees.
Fundamentally, basketball in general and college basketball in particular are unfair sports. Fairness should inform us that a short, pudgy Italian guy like me is at a distinct disadvantage in the game of basketball through no fault of my own. I missed out on my chance for a basketball scholarship and maybe even an NBA career after high school, not because I didn’t work hard and play by the rules, but because my legs aren’t long enough. It was a dream denied me because the system has undue respect for those who by accident of birth have the genes to be taller, faster, and stronger than I even though I worked just as hard.
The lottery of life is not fair. This type of discrimination must stop!
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