Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Madness all the time.

The onslaught of March Madness has begun. My reaction is "YAWN". It's worse than the months before an election; constant broadcast and newspaper publication on a single subject!

I may stop listening to news and throwing away the sports section of the newspaper until the first of April.
High schools and universities should be about education. I don't have a dog in this fight because we never had children, but my taxes go to support the schools like everyone else. School should be about teaching and learning. Maybe also a bit of socialization but public schools and my tax dollars should not in any way support the insanity of sports.
You want a paid college sports program? Start a minor league for all the major sports and run it like a business.
This is not a popular opinion but it's mine. I discuss this with my friend Reginald and he agrees college sports teams are professional warm ups for the NBA and NFL but doesn't see any harm in it. He says all the sports programs are self-supporting. I might agree to it if they were kicking back a major part of their revenue to the educational process in the school, but they're not.
The governor of Indiana told the Floyd County Board of Education to cut $6 million from their annual budget. The school board promptly closed four schools over the objections of the parents, i.e. taxpayers. The governor, who wants to be the GOP's next Presidential candidate, stands up and says it's dumb to close schools. They should have cut all the extra curricular programs. I'm sure no one would say that might include basketball or football.
The local Jefferson County Kentucky school board saw what their neighbor Floyd County did and now are trying to "subtly" reverse the desegregation plan because of money. They're wanting to close schools, increasing class size and laying off teachers. This is insanity. It's like the local and only mass transit system in Louisville, TARC. They run the thing like drunken sailors and now are going to cut at least 20 routes, some of which have packed buses on express routes during rush hour! How do you run a mass transit system by cutting popular routes? Why you run it into the ground!
I think instead of the major profession of politicians being lawyers, they should all be accountants and be paid by the number of citizens they serve.