BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Did you do it for love or did you do it for money? Another sardonic anecdote about the state of Philippine college hoops.

You remember that scene from the film Miracle where US Olympic Ice Hockey Coach herb Brooks asks each and every one of his players who do they play for? The players mention the the name of the different schools they play for. Brooks seems unimpressed and continues to put them through a meat grinder of a training until someone says that he plays for the United States of America and not for his school. I've written before that college hoops is actually a pro league in an amateur setting. The lack of rules regarding recruiting are one reason that make it so. From the time I first learned to kick a football or hit a baseball in Ateneo, I  was taught to play for the school and its community. It has always been said that playing for my school is a labor of love. And I could go on and on about that. So when a college team (I won't say what  team or league it belongs to) offers its players 10K each to win a game it disgusts me -- I have nothing with post-match or even post-tourney bonuses because that is different and it is never dangled like a carrot for the teams. What ever happened to school pride or love for one's institution? And this team won that game. Yes I know, they have to win. They've got 10,000 reasons to do so. 

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