Another Anointed Coronation in Paradise
So, here we go again. The machine rumbles down to sunny Florida, all smiles and fresh new sneakers, ready to put on another show for the cameras. They call it the ‘Fort Myers Tip-Off.’ A cute name for a pre-packaged, sterile, corporate event designed to fill a programming slot on a Tuesday night. The University of North Carolina, the bluest of blue bloods, the No. 16 team in the nation (a ranking bought and paid for by decades of media fellatio), is set to face St. Bonaventure. Both are 5-0. Oh, how exciting! The illusion of parity. The drama of two undefeated teams clashing under the manufactured lights of the Suncoast Credit Union Arena.
Don’t make me laugh. This isn’t a basketball game. It’s a transaction. It’s a foregone conclusion wrapped in slick marketing and sold to you as genuine competition. It is the perfect microcosm of everything rotten and corrupt about the NCAA and the industry it laughably calls ‘amateur athletics.’ This is a public execution of a smaller school’s hopes, televised for your Thanksgiving-week consumption.
The Myth of the Undefeated
Let’s talk about those 5-0 records, shall we? UNC’s record is a carefully curated masterpiece of scheduling cowardice. They’ve spent the first few weeks of the season beating up on teams with the athletic budgets of a high school chess club, padding their stats and building false confidence before the *real* season starts. It’s a time-honored tradition for the Power 5 conferences. Schedule nobodies, get your five-star freshmen some easy minutes, and make sure your record looks pristine for the selection committee come March. It’s a sham. An absolute sham.
And St. Bonaventure? Their 5-0 record was likely earned through blood, sweat, and genuine coaching against teams on their own level. They clawed their way to this point, only to be offered up as the sacrificial lamb at the altar of UNC’s national brand. They get a nice paycheck for their troubles, of course. A little bit of ‘exposure’ on FS1. That’s their reward for playing the part of the designated loser in this stage play. They fly down to Florida not with a real chance to win, but with a mandate to look respectable enough in their defeat to make the broadcast seem worthwhile. It’s pathetic.
This isn’t a clash of titans. It’s a corporate behemoth preparing to swallow a small business whole. And the worst part? We’re all expected to watch and pretend it’s something noble. Something pure.
The Carolina Way… Is Paved with Gold
You can’t talk about UNC without talking about the brand. The ‘Carolina Way.’ Michael Jordan. Dean Smith. The baby blue uniforms that are practically sacred relics. It’s a powerful narrative, and it’s been weaponized to build a billion-dollar enterprise on the backs of unpaid (or, now, NIL-era ‘sort-of-paid’) labor. This isn’t a college team; it’s a subsidiary of Nike, a content provider for ESPN, and a marketing arm for the university itself. The players are just temporary assets, interchangeable parts in a machine that has been humming along for decades.
Think about the resources. The private jets. The state-of-the-art training facilities that would make an NBA team blush. The army of tutors, trainers, and PR flacks whose sole job is to keep the machine running smoothly. Now compare that to St. Bonaventure, a small Franciscan university in rural New York. Their entire athletic department budget is probably less than what UNC spends on recruiting and travel for a single season. This is not a level playing field. It was never designed to be. The system is built to protect its kings, and UNC is royalty. This game in Fort Myers isn’t a test; it’s a coronation ceremony. It’s a reaffirmation of the established order, a brutal reminder to all the little guys out there: know your place.
And while the basketball machine gets all the ink, what about the real accomplishments? The school’s own newsletter buries the lede. Reese Brantmeier, a tennis player, wins a national championship—a ‘Natty.’ A genuine, difficult-to-achieve pinnacle of a collegiate sport. But where’s the prime-time TV slot for her? Where’s the Florida tournament? It doesn’t generate the same revenue, so it’s a footnote. An afterthought. Meanwhile, the football team ‘falters,’ which is code for ‘failed to meet revenue expectations,’ and it’s treated like a national crisis. It tells you everything you need to know about the priorities. It’s not about education. It’s not about sport. It’s about the bottom line. Always has been, always will be.
How the ‘Game’ Will Unfold
I can already see it now. The broadcast will open with a shot of the beach, some generic uplifting music, and announcers talking about the ‘magic of college basketball.’ They’ll praise St. Bonaventure’s ‘grit’ and ‘tenacity.’ They’ll talk about their coach and how he ‘gets the most out of his players.’ It’s all patronizing nonsense. Code for ‘they have no five-star talent, but they try hard.’
The first ten minutes might even be close. St. Bonaventure, fueled by adrenaline and a ‘nothing to lose’ mentality, will hit a few tough shots. The UNC players, maybe a little bored, will be going through the motions. The announcers will feign excitement. ‘We’ve got a ballgame here, folks!’ Then, the first media timeout hits. The UNC coach (a CEO in a tracksuit) will calmly remind his future NBA draft picks that this is embarrassing. They’ll come out, turn up the defensive pressure just a notch, and the floodgates will open. Suddenly, St. Bonaventure can’t get a clean look at the basket. A few turnovers lead to easy fast-break dunks for Carolina. A 2-point game becomes a 12-point game in the span of three minutes. And that’s all she wrote.
The entire second half will be garbage time. A glorified scrimmage. The UNC starters will play just enough to keep their stats looking good before giving way to the benchwarmers. The St. Bonaventure players, bless their hearts, will keep fighting, but their body language will show the brutal reality of the talent gap. They’ll get on the plane back to New York with their paycheck and their moral victory, while UNC marches on to the next made-for-TV event. The system works. The machine is fed. And the audience is sold a lie.
The Pointless Future
This is the world we live in now. A world of NIL collectives run by shadowy boosters, a transfer portal that has turned college sports into a chaotic free agency frenzy, and conference realignments that destroy decades of tradition for a few extra million in television rights. This game is just a symptom of the larger disease. It’s a sterile, soulless product designed for maximum revenue extraction. Gone are the days of genuine regional rivalries and student-athletes who actually attended class. Now it’s about brand management and marketability.
So when you tune in on Tuesday night, don’t root for a team. Root for a meteor. Root for the whole corrupt, hypocritical, exploitative system to come crashing down. Because what you’re watching isn’t a sport. It’s the slow, televised death of an ideal, played out on a shiny court in a town where no one really cares about the outcome. They just care that the check clears.
