With the deadline for players to file papers as early entrants for the NBA draft having passed on Sunday, it’s time for the annual handwringing over the policies of the NBA and the NCAA on how this is handled. This year, the focus has been on the so-called “one-and-done” rule. Thoughtful pieces on the policy and its effects have come from Bruins Nation, Conquest Chronicles, Doug Lesmerises of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer), and surprisingly, Gene Wojociechowski at tWWL. (Even a blind squirrel finds a nut.) Contrast these thoughtful pieces to, say, a certain famous “real” journalist. Tell us which are better, Mr. Bissinger.

To a man, though, they seem to endorse one shared policy of the NBA and NCAA – the “testing the waters” loophole that allows players to attend pre-draft workouts sans agent to figure out their likely draft spot and weaknesses, giving players until ten days prior to the draft to withdraw their names and return to school. (Though everyone seems to hate the term “testing the waters”.) Team gets more information. Player gets more information. Everybody is happy, right?

Not Jay Bilas – no no no. He doesn’t like this one bit, and writes a few pages of scrill saying that players should either stay or go pro, no takebacks. (Insider, natch. Stupid tWWL.) What was fantastic, though, was this:

To me, there are three reasons why an underclassman should declare for the draft: (1) if the player is truly ready to be an impact player on the next level, (2) if the player is in dire financial need, or (3) if the player is a fraud and wants to enter the draft and be selected before he is found out.

That’s what seven years with Coach K and three years at Duke Law teach you, apparently – fraud is a-OK! (Though we would have expected such a stance to come from Doug Gottlieb.)

In seriousness, we take no strong stance on such issues – after spending far too many hours drunkenly debating such points with friends, we’ve come to the conclusion that whatever rule you have screws somebody, either by being too paternalistic or by giving young men just enough rope with which to hang themselves, so the particular rule in question matters little so long as it is consistent. (Needless to say, law school has worn us down.)

We promise (well, sort of) that this will be our last Psycho T post for a while. In yesterday’s Roundup, we featured a picture of Sen. Obama driving on Tyler Hansbrough during their pickup game in Chapel Hill Tuesday, with Hansbrough in a clear position to block his shot. Our caption – “This likely won’t end well.”

Well, video is now available from the pickup game … and it didn’t end well for either man. (Key clip at the 0:40 mark.)

Hansbrough gave Obama a free look at the basket instead of swatting him like a fly, and Obama couldn’t finish the deal. Both lose points for the fiasco, though Obama gets them back for (a) recognizing that Hansbrough went easy on him and (b) playing the post despite being way undersized against the Tarheels.

Seriously, no more posts involving Psycho T for a while. Unless he does something really funny.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
End of Semester Rules at Chapel Hill

As seen yesterday at Rush the Court with 850 the Buzz, some Carolina basketball players spent the end of the semester blowing off some steam earlier this week with a little roof hopping. Now, it was enough for Ol’ Roy that his presumptive starting point guard for next year, Bobby Fraser, was diving from two stories up when he is supposed to be rehabbing his knee. But we have to imagine that seeing his All-American take the high-gravity dip would send him into a tizzy:

For Tyler’s sake, we hope the pool is filled with Chi Omega girls.

In case yesterday’s conversation with his brother didn’t do it for you, that picture above is all the evidence you need of why Psycho T is staying in college as long as he can. (HT for the photo to the Deadspin commenters, you profane bunch of cellar dwellers.)

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By now, you have assuredly heard of the kerfluffle on Costas Now on Tuesday night – Buzz Bissinger, he of the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and the best-seller and best-fucking-football-book-ever in Friday Night Lights, went on the offensive against blogs, and we mean offensive in the most literal way.

I would repost the YouTube video, but Awful Announcing went through the trouble of collecting it and deserves the hits, so please go over to his site to see both Costas’ introduction to the segment and the roundtable “discussion” itself. Come on back when you’re done.

So, just to be clear – Bissinger says that bloggers: (1) are full of shit, (2) dedicated to cruelty, (3) professionally dishonest, (4) dedicated to speed, (5) uneducated and poorly read, (6) unable to evoke a moment, (7) causing the complete dumbing down of our society, (8) have a disgusting voice, and (9) contribute nothing to sports discourse.

He then attacks Will Leitch with cherry-picked evidence and scant knowledge of Leitch’s actual writing. He curses up a storm, ends up fuming and frustrated, having done little besides scream his opinion and sneer at Leitch. In other words … (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), and (9). Nice job, Buzz.

Beyond Leitch’s simple but polite defense of blogging on the air, there have been numerous, truly thoughtful posts in response to Bissinger’s attacks on the medium. Leitch penned his own after appearing on the broadcast. Michael Schur of FJM did the same. Shanoff defends his brethren. Awful Announcing had words on top of the video. And our own blogfather has a response in two parts over at the mothership and The Sporting Blog.

We have nowhere near the qualifications of these fine gentlemen, seeing as how we’ve kept up residence in these quarters for a scant two months. (Plus, unlike the linked authors, we still cling to our relative anonymity for professional concerns, as we fall into Orson’s Group 5 and we haven’t had “The Talk” with our firm yet.) So we’ll let their words stand for now.

The thesis statement of all is simple, though – the Buzz Bissingers of the world notwithstanding, blogging is doing just fine. It is not journalism, nor does it pretend to be. It is commentary from the perspective of people who watch and read about the sports, but don’t have the privilege of talking to them while they stand naked in the locker room. If said commentary is funny, it will get readers. If it is not, it will not.

And to that end, since we want readers, we will return to the pursuit of funny with our next post. Enjoy.