Hey small Gawker sports fan readership, can you believe Memphis lost that game last night? Derrick Rose looked like he was scared to take it to the hole or something. Probably practicing for when he gets drafted by the Knicks. Unfortunately I had Memphis picked to win it all in my New York Times bracket. Now I'll never own that iPod. [Earlier]
Rupert Murdoch's investment in hard news at the Wall Street Journal is paying off—the paper recently covered the fact that that three Spaniards are the unlikely team behind HoopsHype.com! (Embarrassing silence.) Okay, explanation: Hoops Hype is the most closely read website of rumors and news among NBA insiders, and the fact that it's written by some random guys in Spain who had never even been to an NBA game until recently is indicative of the power of the internet to open the media's frontiers. The guys sold it for millions! Remember James Kurisunkal, the college kid from Illinois who turned out to be the writer behind Park Avenue Peerage, the socialite website that had New York society all atwitter last year? Yep, he was indicative of the same trend. This is probably all part of that Long Tail we've been hearing so much about. But Hoops Hype does have one advantage that Park Avenue Peerage never did: a blog by former Charlotte Bobcat Gabe Muoneke, in which he opines on religion and linguistics. Witness the power of the web at work:
"Mark Harwell knew he was on to a good idea when he brought the Los Angeles Lightning, an International Basketball League Team, to the hoops-crazy City of Angeles." That's the first sentence of a press release that, if Mark Harwell has more sense than his decision to buy an International Basketball League Team would indicate, will prompt him to say, "God, I need to fire this fucking flack."
The Times' "Editorial Notebook" section is the box on its Op-Ed page that invariably contains a pointless, grating rumination about life on the farm in Connecticut or something equally inapplicable to NYC life, written by someone who should be unemployed but is, instead, rich and a member of the Times editorial board. Today the section offers the opinions of a Harvard man. Kudos to the Times for luring an Ivy Leaguer into the dirty, ink-stained corridors of journalism! So what important topic is Philip M. Boffey, '58, so eager to explain to the nation? Harvard, of course!
Last week we tried to explain higher-education hoop dreams in terms of higher-circulation news teams. Sixty-four squads (65 including Niagara's vanquished play-in foe Gawker) started out on the quest for media supremacy (and our famed dog-hugging-cat trophy), and now only eight remain. Surely, there's a lot of money riding on your bracket, so without further delay, a recap of the last week's action.
Americans are going crazy this weekend talking about underdogs-this and office pools-that. Good thing you don't live in America! But in case you find yourself waking up in an Irish stupor west of the ol' Hudson, remember that college basketball can be totally fun...if you imagine all those teams are actually media outlets! Here, we see the tenacious Marty Peretz of eighth-seeded Marquette/New Republic battle for a rebound against a nicely bronzed Katrina vanden Heuvel of ninth-seeded Michigan State/The Nation in a hard-fought East regional game. Your interest looks piqued. Still, you want to see a full bracket, right? A full bracket follows, plus first-round analysis.
