Catching Up

 Wanted to blog yesterday, but ended up having a TV night; first, an interesting documentary on TCM about Churchill, his friendship with Alexander Korda, the filmmaker, and their role in making films about...well, the need to be strong/confront Germany.  Then, Dr. Pimple Popper, who is back making episodes and reshaping lives.  After that, I settled in to one of the books I got for Xmas:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+last+temptation+of+rick+pitino&crid=19UTB8PN4YBUF&sprefix=the+lat+temptation+of+r%2Caps%2C197&ref=nb_sb_ss_sc_1_23

It's pretty good; I knew most of the stuff but not all, of course.  One caveat is that the author has written a couple of books with John Calipari, the UK coach (one not unknown to scandal), so I can imagine he might he have some bias... anyways, one thing that struck me was that for all of the emphasis on Coach as CEO (and thus responsible for everything that happens), it's really not true.  I mean, that is the case in a lot of places, but I would argue that in the world of college basketball recruiting, it would seem that a lot of decisions are made before any coach/assistant/university staffer meets a player; a lot of the access and such is handled by people far removed from any semblance of "institutional control."  The book devotes a couple of chapters to this, and while it doesn't exonerate the coaches... in some ways they are sailing on an ocean they did not create and certainly cannot control...

One thing I think has been under-mentioned in the debate about the Electoral College vote tomorrow:  most of the people objecting to this are GOPers who, I think, are simply going through the motions to either 1) preserve future political options and (more importantly) 2) are trying NOT to be primaried the next time around.  Even if the Trump campaign apparatus/bully pulpit is much less than will be expected, there will still be plenty of GOP voters who will remember if a guy was less than robust in supporting President Awesome.  You'd think some people -- seasoned, cynical reporters, perhaps -- would be mentioning this point, but I haven't seen much of it...which seems odd.