While the NCAA men’s model of basketball languishes on a Curacao beach inhaling trade wind petrol fumes and drugstore Rum leftover from Prohibition, the brand of March Madness has reached an impasse, in regards to the intrigue involving the end-user experience far removed from the glory days of Phi Slama Jamma, and the original version of “One Shining Moment”.
As the tourney was culminated by the menagerie of highlights set to an adult contemporary soothing genre, major college basketball finally aligned with the trajectory of soft rock, as flops, posturing, and baleful emotional displays have replaced grit and 8-bit character graphics brandished in the height of the broadcast television era. With the trajectory of society on a clear pathway to the beta, while admonishing the alpha, the women’s roundball experience has achieved a level of fringe savageness as a direct result of the younger generation of males pushed towards opting to exist has herbivores, as their female counterparts identify as feral leaders embracing brutality and winning in the absence of excuses and participation trophies. It is all about the demand of shimmering digital porn comics, over actually pursing the ritual and carnal inclinations of mating.
While University of Iowa student athlete Kaitlin Clark is a once in a generational talent and a triumvirate ballet of scoring, passing and overall dominance on the basketball court, the phenom has a literal target on her shoulder, which every pure champion secretly strives for in pushing the bounds of excellence and harvesting the precious endorphins that drive the rare combination of the pristine and rugged.
As a member of the younger generations and the Ostriches of individuals perpetually interfaced within what has become normalized as device softscreens of devices providing comfort, the Hawkeye star has faced an onslaught of unwarranted criticism of keyboard warriors protected from the direct backlash among the digital dreamworld of no consequences and unsolicited attacks on a stranger’s character. While the ecosystem of social media continues to enable and entitle, yet fails to foster at least a base level of accountability, the actors amid major college women’s basketball are only contributing to the despicable angst, as so-called purveyors of female empowerment, have turned their back on Clark in both a reprehensible display of lacking compassion, and a testament to the high level of competition intermixed into the franchise of modern women’s basketball.
In the aftermath of a slurry of sports media personalities and “experts” demanding Clark operating at an historic optimal of level earn a national championship, various coaches joined the feeding frenzy of vultures feasting on the warm corpse of heaping criticism and the self-doubt associated with attempting to live vicariously through an athlete competing in the rarified air of excellence. Included within this veritable lineup of crass dignitaries is LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey, who makes Gloria Steinem look like traditional wife material, with her aggressively poignant soundbites in backhanded attacks on Clark, and battling the justifiable criticism from the corporatized press. Ironically, the rampant cannibalism between Mulkey and the media epitomizes the modern day future shock of the Information Age as allies and adversaries are interchangeable within the lighting fast volatility of the news cycle and 15-second attention span afflicting the audience and the insatiable lust for instant gratification.
While not conjuring any of competitive grace of the late Pat Summitt, the LSU head coach is a product of the current bout of societal insanity, where confusion is spawned, as women in the role of leadership have adopted the characteristics of domination instead of delegation through behavior that recalibrates for decades of men being emasculated. On a singular positive note, women’s basketball has reached the apex of a golden age, yet ever other facet of the framework and environment is teeming with negative connotations through a manufactured divisiveness and a bi-product of opaque tendencies in culture.
The television ratings will indicate that women’s basketball is setting a precedent, while the men’s game lingers in a comfortable and profitable apathy, however the reactionary nature promoted by social media, combined with years of social engineering, taints the entire sporting world. The spirit of the hunter is no longer relevant in a sea of passive aggressive, enabling rather than sculpting. Winners are no longer measured by accomplishment.