I'm glad Kentucky lost too. It's just not right for a team and coach that played the system to go undefeated and be considered on par with Larry Bird and Indiana State. Sure the system Calipari came up with is brilliant in this day and age, but I think it ruins it for the fans of every other school.
A Kentucky-Duke final, on the eve of Syracuse losing out on Bryant and being treated like criminals, might have been the final thing that would've really soured me on college basketball altogether.
I've been a fan since 2000-2001, I picked up college basketball later than I become a fan of hockey and football, plus Syracuse is two hours from Buffalo, so I've never been able to share in the Syracuse excitement like the people on this board. However, I've watched 95% of all games the last 15 years including non-conference games on TV. I've been a big fan and repped the team in every state I lived. But with how corrupt the NCAA system is, the cronyism, the select treatment of certain schools, the witchhunts of Syracuse, the lower quality of talent across the country, all the best players go to the same few schools. It's just all really souring me, the NCAA despots, the injustice of not paying the players. The game last night was the first one I've watched since the tournament started. I usually watch every game. My desire to watch has really gone down. It's just tough to be a fan and stay loyal to a team that plays in a corrupt system. It's like rooting for regular people in a casino, the odds are against you.
We'll see how I feel when next season starts but it feels like Syracuse is about to go in a downward cycle for the next 5 years, the opposite of what we experienced the last 5 years. Life tends to go in cycles so this makes sense. I'm fine with that but I really want to see some changes with the NCAA before I'll feel like how I felt as a young fan 15 years ago, before I understood how the game off the court is really played.
