The Manufactured Myth of the Tuneup Game
They call it a tuneup (a sanitized corporate word for the ritualistic slaughter of a lesser program) because admitting the truth would hurt the ticket sales and the fragile egos of the NCAA scheduling committees. Providence is not traveling to Columbia to win. They are traveling to be the grindstone for a No. 3 ranked machine that eats programs like this for breakfast before the real SEC bloodbath begins in the coming weeks. It is disgusting. We sit here and pretend that the holiday break was about rest when we all know it was about recharging the batteries of a monolithic sports industry that demands constant content regardless of the competitive integrity of the matchup. The Gamecocks are elite (obviously) and that is exactly the problem with the current state of women’s college basketball where the gap between the top five and everyone else is a yawning chasm of despair. You can see it in the eyes of the mid-major coaches who walk into Colonial Life Arena knowing they are about to be featured on a highlight reel of their own demise. Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Money. That is the only answer that matters in this godforsaken landscape of amateur athletics that is anything but amateur. If you think for one second that this game is about ‘growth’ or ‘experience’ for Providence, you have been drinking the Kool-Aid of the athletic department’s PR wing for far too long. It is a paycheck game. It is a way for South Carolina to shake off the rust of Christmas ham and expensive gifts before they have to actually try against teams that have the same budget and recruiting pipeline. It’s a farce.
The SEC Elitism and the Death of the Underdog
The SEC is a hungry beast that requires smaller conferences to feed its pride and its win-loss record (mostly the former). South Carolina is the crown jewel of this greedy conglomerate. When Dawn Staley’s squad steps onto the court, the outcome is already written in the ledgers of the betting houses and the hearts of the disillusioned. We are told to watch for ‘five things’ as if there are actually five variables that could change the cosmic inevitability of a Gamecock blowout. There is only one thing to watch: the scoreboard as it ticks up into a territory that should make any proponent of parity weep openly. The narrative is always about how the top teams are ‘building something’ but they are building it on the broken spirits of teams that never had a chance to breathe the same rarified air. Parity is a myth. The NCAA loves to talk about the ‘growth’ of the game while simultaneously ensuring that the power remains concentrated in a handful of zip codes where the donors have the deepest pockets. It is a rigged system. If you aren’t in the club, you are just a stepping stone. Providence is currently the stone. Tomorrow it will be someone else. The cycle repeats because the fans are conditioned to cheer for the steamroller rather than the pavement. We love a winner so much that we stop caring if the race was fair in the first place.
The Post-Holiday Hangover and the Illusion of Choice
Returning from a break is always a gamble for a high-ranked team (or so the analysts want you to believe to keep the broadcast interesting). They talk about ‘who will play’ as if the bench of the Gamecocks isn’t more talented than the starting five of half the teams in the country. It is a joke. Even a sleepy, post-Christmas South Carolina team could sleepwalk through this matchup and still win by double digits. The ‘tuneup’ narrative serves to protect the brand from the embarrassment of a slow start. If they play poorly, it’s just ‘shaking off the rust’ but if they win by fifty, it’s ‘dominance.’ They can’t lose in the eyes of the media. This is how the sports-industrial complex maintains its icons. You create an environment where the elite are shielded from criticism by the very nature of their scheduling. Providence is the sacrificial lamb on the altar of the SEC’s pre-conference schedule. We should be demanding better. We should be asking why these games even exist in a world where we claim to value competitive sports. But we won’t. We will sit in the stands, eat our overpriced popcorn, and pretend that we are witnessing a sporting event instead of a scripted execution. The reality is that the gap is widening. The rich are getting richer via the transfer portal and NIL deals (which I actually support, but let’s not pretend they help the small schools) and the poor are relegated to being the ‘tuneup’ for the giants. This isn’t basketball. This is a business meeting with a round ball.
Predictions of a Bored Analyst
What happens next? South Carolina wins. Obviously. Then the media will spend three days talking about their ‘momentum’ going into the SEC season as if beating a team they were supposed to beat by forty points is an achievement worthy of a Peabody. It is a cycle of nonsense. We will see the same tired tropes about ‘leadership’ and ‘execution’ when the real story is just the sheer mathematical impossibility of Providence overcoming the physical and financial advantages of the Gamecocks. The future of the sport depends on breaking this cycle, but the people in charge are too busy counting the gate receipts to care. We are heading toward a world where only ten teams matter and the rest are just extras in a movie they didn’t audition for. It’s a grim outlook. But hey, at least the Gamecocks get their tuneup, right? Everyone wins except the soul of the game. Watch the game if you must, but don’t let them tell you it’s a contest. It’s a statement of power. Pure and simple. The SEC doesn’t want competition; it wants submission. And on Sunday, it will get exactly what it paid for at the Colonial Life Arena.
