It is not every day that I find myself siding with a coach over a commissioner, but for once the coach is right.Sonny Lubick was reprimanded by the Mountain West Conference (yes the conference with the 11:59pm tip-offs on Monday nights during college basketball season) for speaking out against a league decision to change the kickoff date of Colorado State’s game against Air Force.
The game was originally scheduled for October 1, but because ESPN wanted the game, has the ability to hold the MWC by its balls, and has too many games already for October 1, it decided to move the game to Thursday night, September 29.
Alright, this isn’t anything new. Basically every week the MWC has had at least one weeknight game, and if not the game would be Friday night. ESPN has been castrating the league since its inception in 1999 and the MWC recently decided to leave ESPN, the first conference ever to leave ESPN after being kidnapped by the menace.
But despite the bitter feeling against ESPN and its policy of showing the league when only zombies and teenagers are awake, commissioner Craig Thompson still sided with the media giant and allowed the move and reprimanded Sonny Lubick.
NOBODY reprimands Sonny Lubick and expects me to let it go. Especially considering Sonny Lubick is half the reason the league has survived this long (ESPN is in fact the other half). Without Sonny Lubick, the conference would be even more crap in football. At least a Sonny Lubick team can beat a good team every year (Utah did for one season……) and play big-time matchups without knowing they’ll be slaughtered.
So the game was moved back two days.
Remember when I said ESPN likes to show this conference at obscure hours? The Air Force Academy and coach Fisher DeBerry has a game the previous Thursday, thus they get a full week. CSU? They have a game Saturday.
Five days later they are dueling again.
Five days later they are putting their hearts on the line against a traditional conference powerhouse.
Five days later they are going against their intra-state rivals, who have had an entire week to prepare.
And you reprimand a coach for calling this unfair?
This is by the same guy who believes it perfectly acceptable to have a 9:59pm local time tip-off at the beginning of the school week. His priorities are surely obvious.
But that is sad.
It is better to back up a television network that you have just dumped than to back up your own hard-working, respectable, class-act citizen coach?
That is just sad.
I’m not blaming ESPN for this. They have a contract and they have to honor it and this is the best way for them to do it and they are a business. But Craig Thompson has to step in and set a limit. He has to make a stand.
But he never will.
This conference is financially strapped and cannot afford to say anything to anyone offering them even a penny, even if after the year they won’t be offering them any more pennies.
So Sonny Lubick, one of the greatest coaches in all of college football, gets reprimanded to back up a decision made by ESPN that is completely unfair to half the individuals involved.
It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two
mockeries of a sham.
Sonny Lubick had every right to speak publicly about this decision. Even if Craig wanted it to be kept private and even if Mr. Lubick did so, it would never have been resolved and the decision would have gone forward without anyone raising an eyebrow.
But Mr. Lubick did mention it and it brought forward some eyes and ears onto the injustices caused not just to his team’s chances of winning, but (inadvertently) onto the educational pursuits hampered by the league allowing this game to be played during a school night when it originally was not scheduled to have been so. Craig did not have to allow this unjust, out-of-the-blue change.
But he did.
Thanks for allowing your league to become so screwed up Craig.
Now apologize to Mr. Lubick.
