Without any real sports going on, the sports-only media have taken to tossing out questions and polls to create views.
It's a massive hot-stove league. Pick a topic, form a question and toss it out to the masses to debate. Hell, we're all stuck at home anyway, so this is taking the place of the more traditional "tavern talk".
ESPN recently fueled one on it's twitter account (I am not a tweeter, by the way) when it put together a 64-player field to determine who was the "Greatest College Basketball Player Of All-Time".
The age of the voters seems to have skewed this, as Michael Jordan was the pick. Truly one of the greatest professional basketball players of all-time, no doubt. But college? Hardly.
That honor goes to Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), the 7-foot center who dominated at UCLA. Hell, even before he took to the hardwood, he had changed the face of basketball when the NCAA banned the dunk shot.
This was a time when college freshmen were NOT eligible for varsity competition. As a frosh, Alcindor's games (played before the varsity contest) had bigger crowds. And when he did hit the varsity? Boy, howdy, that set the bar.
Alcindor's teams went 88-2 in his three seasons (he lost both games by less than four points). They won three national championships, with Alcindor being named player of the year, along with the Final Four's most outstanding player, all three seasons.
Seeing his signature skyhook shot? An unstoppable thing of beauty. I confess I copied that shot, as a height-challenged guy -- and it was pretty darn successful for me.
So Alcindor is, and should forever be, the Greatest College Basketball Player Of All-Time.
I welcome & encourage your thoughts on this!
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