As the subway train settled at its first stop this morning, a voice rang out. “Dyckman St! This is a downtown A Train to Lefferts Boulevard. Next stop is 190th St. Stand clear of the closing doors. Please!”

The voice did not come over the PA however. It belonged to a child. I scanned the faces of the other riders, some hadn’t flinched, no trace of amusement. But many others were smiling, a few even chuckling.

Each successive stop the little boy bellowed the information. Starting at 168th St, it gets complicated. He included all the transfers. His only slip up came when he started his 125th St call a few seconds too early. He stopped, regrouped, and delivered again in full when the train finally arrived.

At each stop he lost some support. A few of the initial smiles disappeared. New passengers were more suspicious, maybe because they weren’t present at the outset and weren’t sure how to respond.

There was one man, however, sitting with his back to the boy, and he was delighted. He was an older Black man, with a graying beard, a slim face and one of those fashionable knit driving caps that looks way cooler on him than on me. He braced himself for each stop and when the kid began shouting he broke out in a big grin. He nodded his head along with the accuracy of the information, like a proud teacher.

When there was a thinning of the crowd at one stop, I leaned over to catch a glimpse of the orator. It was one of my neighbors, six years old, named Jack. Thanks for the laugh this morning Jack. And for one guy at least, you made his day.

I can’t relate to pitchers. I had to take the ball from the second grade up through freshman year of high school and I hated it most of the time. I could hit, though, until it was too dark out to see the ball. If my dad’s arm didn’t get tired, we might still be out there.

On a basic level, hitting is reaction and pitching is initiation. I’ve always had trouble getting started. I’d rather get a feel for something first and join in progress. And the precision required to throw it exactly where you intend every time? Screw that, let me just hit the ball as hard as I can and we’ll see what happens.

Maybe this prejudice influences the way I envision a baseball roster. The lineup is the body, the pitching staff is the wardrobe. The appearance of the team changes game to game based on the pitcher, but the core is the same. The ace is your best suit, your best reliever could be your smoking jacket. (I guess A.J. Burnett is your kid’s urine-soaked PJs)

So when I heard Jesus Montero was traded for Michael Pineda, I felt like we were trading a neck for a necktie. Sure, the tie is important, but without the neck, what’s the point?

Even without the catching, I’ll take Montero’s simple, solid bat over the complex musculature of Pineda’s throwing arm. You can watch Montero hit every game, all season long. There’s no better way to interface with a team than through a star hitter, especially for a young fan, because he’s always in the lineup.

I understand that having Pineda in the rotation probably makes the 2012 Yankees a better team than they would have been with Montero as the DH. But in 2013? And 2014?

Arod and Teixeira are already fractions of what they once were and they will be declining in the lineup for years to come. The Yankees have one big hitter in his prime, Cano, who is fierce but not flawless. You don’t have to squint too hard to see a Yankee team desperate for hitting.

The more I think about the trade, the more comfortable I am with Cashman’s logic and his vision. But I am firmly on the Montero side of the debate. It boils down to this: if they both become stars, I’d want Montero to be a Yankee.

Prizzi’s Honor lives that most uncomfortable space – the black comedy. It’s uncomfortable because to set and maintain the proper tone, the entire production operates on a razor’s edge. If any part of the process falters, from John Huston’s direction all the way down to the selection of condiments at the craft services table, the delicate artifice collapses.

Most important of all is the acting. For a black comedy to succeed, the actors must maintain constant earnestness with the comedy not coming from punch lines but from something inherent in the character himself.

When a black comedy fails, it’s almost always easy to pinpoint the culprit. But when it succeeds, it’s possible to glide right past the great performances that made it so. Jack Nicholson’s Charley Partanna in Prizzi’s Honor is just such a performance.

Partanna is gruff, almost monosyllabic. But he’s not stupid, he just knows that talking too much often leaves you overextended. He’s a competent gangster on the way up and he’s centered in that world with a heavy anchor. And as the movie unfolds, and absurd situations ripple the surface, he never strays far enough from the boat to get lost. He surprises us with literacy, curiosity, passion and ingenuity along the way, but without deviating from his solid base.

Bouncing off Jack’s steady foundation are Angelica Huston and Kathleen Turner. Irene Walker (Turner) pretends to be an outsider, but she’s busy trying to run scams on gangsters. Huston took home an Oscar for turning the screws behind Partanna’s back as Maerose Prizzi. Maerose is the one character in the movie that really seems dangerous.

I remember this movie from my childhood because of William Hickey’s strange voice. His Don Prizzi stretches words like hand-pulled noodles until the innocuous is threatening. But Jack’s Partanna isn’t just holding up the tent for these fine supporting characters.

He seems a poor match for Irene on the exterior, but his devotion, shot straight, wins her over. We’re not sure where Partanna fits in the hierarchy of the Prizzi family at first, but his intelligence and resourcefulness prove his worth.

Alex loves Jack’s line, “Marxie Heller so fuckin’ smart, how come he’s so fuckin’ dead?” Not only is it a fantastic reading, an argument ender but spat out of the side of his mouth, it’s also the start of the slow leak leads to disaster for Partanna and Irene. Partanna has killed Irene’s husband, Marxie Heller, before learning of the connection. Irene swears she was going to leave him anyway, but she has enough nice things to say about the guy to get under Partanna’s skin and cause that great line.

Partanna could never trust Irene completely. Did she come with him because she loved him or because all her other plans were turning to crap and he represented her best chance at survival? He couldn’t answer the question satisfactorily so when stab came to shoot, he hurled a knife through her throat.

The movie works because Jack is great. But Jack is great without doing a lot of the things that he’s usually great at. He’s neither hip, cool nor sarcastic. He’s a lug. And he plays the lug straight up and down the edge without ever missing a step.

Another morning, another increasingly desperate search for the metrocard. I just can’t seem to get it under control.

I feel like a little kid who can’t think ahead so he keeps running into the same problems. An adult should have created a system to keep this from happening long ago, yet here I am looking for the damn card again.

Yesterday’s pants? Nope. Yesterday’s jacket? The spot beside the stove where we put things? Nope squared. The spot on the shelf, that graveyard of insufficient fares? I hope not, that would have been an insane place to leave it. But better check. Nope. Not next to the computer. Not next to the bed. Not on the vanity in the hall. Holy crap, am I infantile, senile or just the laziest dumbass on the block?

Here’s my problem. My wallet is magnetic, so keeping the metrocard in my wallet murders it. I learned that the hard way with a plump card, maybe forty bucks down the drain. So I keep my metrocard as far away from my wallet as possible. In the summer, that means my metrocard is in my pants pocket and my wallet is zipped up inside my bag. In the winter, there’s the additional option of coat pockets.

When I get home I cannot train myself to think about the card. Either it stays in my pocket, which would make for a relatively easy search, or I absentmindedly place it on the first open surface I encounter. The latter tendency spices up the mornings.

And everytime I say to myself, this is the last time I’m doing this.

[Photo via mynewyorkworld.com]

For me, this is close to the fantasy of Reggie Jackson returning to play for the Yankees in, oh, say July of 1987. And then stepping in as a pinch hitter in his first game back, a scoreless tie in the bottom of the eighth, and blasting one into the upper deck in right field.

After changing his number from 44 to 42.

For fans, teammates and coach, the reaction was unbridled joy. But for the player himself, I can’t even imagine how it felt. This wasn’t a goal that won a trophy, but as William reminded us recently with Don Mattingly’s game winner from 1985, the best moments in sports often take place outside the narrow pursuit of a championship.

What could the 2014 Yankees get for $189,000,000.00?

C: Jesus Montero, $0.5 (24)
1B: Mark Teixeira, $23.2 (34)
2B: Robinson Cano, $23 (31)
3B: Ryan Zimmerman, $23 (29)
SS: Derek Jeter $8 (40)
LF: Yoenis Cespedes $7.5 (28)
CF: Brett Gardner $9 (30)
RF: Mason Williams $0.5 (22)
DH: Alex Rodriguez $26 (38)

$120.7

Free agents required: 3 – Cespedes, Cano, Zimmerman, $53.5 million

Leaps of faith required: 2 – Jesus Montero is a catcher, Mason Williams, or someone else currently in the system is a Major Leaguer

Other concerns: Derek Jeter at SS at 40, but if he chooses to play, I don’t know how that can be avoided

BUC: Austin Romine $0.5 (25)
MIF: Eduardo Nunez $2 (27)
OF: Slade Heathcott $0.5 (23)
UTIL: Corban Joseph $0.5 (25)

$3.5

SP: CC Sabathia $24.3 (33)
SP: Cole Hamels $23 (30)
SP: Ivan Nova $2 (27)
SP: Manny Banuelos $0.5 (23)
SP: David Phelps $0.5 (27)

$50.3

Free agents required: 1 – Cole Hamels, $23 million

Leaps of faith required: 3 – Nova is good, the Yankees currently have 2 Major League quality pitchers in their system and will identify the correct ones and will not destroy them in some weird way

CL: David Robertson $4 (29)
RP: Hector Noesi $0.5 (27)
RP: Dellin Betances $0.5 (26)
RP: Jairo Heredia $0.5 (24)
RP: Chase Whitley $0.5 (25)
RP: Jose Quintana $0.5 (25)
RP: Nik Turley $0.5 (24)

$7

Fifteen league-minimum guys on the rest of the 40-man roster: $7.5 million.

$120.7 + $3.5 + $50.3 + $7 + $7.5 = $189

This version of the 2014 Yankees has the lineup and rotation to be strong contenders, but the weak bullpen is likely to betray them when it matters.

The overall point is that the Yankees have leeway to invest in three superstars for the 2014 roster and they absolutely should do that. I have them re-signing Cano and getting Hamels and Zimmerman but’s that’s just cherry picking the best free agents from the next few classes. To make room for those three superstars though, the 25-man roster needs to have 13 league-minimum players (two in the starting lineup, two in the starting rotation, three on the bench and six in the pen).

It’s recipe for disaster, but an entertaining one like 1987 or 2008. And the other route, eschewing the superstars in favor of a several medium-sized contracts, seems like a worse idea. The 2014 team might be better if they spread the money around (and it might not) but where will they go from there if they are constrained by a bunch of middling contracts? If this has to be the way they proceed, I say grab the stars when they appear and fill in the rest later.

So the topic to Banter, which three stars should be Yankees before 2014?

(A note on methodology. I used Cot’s as the basis for the Yankees 2014 obligations. And I used the following quote from the AP for the basis of payroll calculation in general:

Payroll figures are for 40-man rosters and include salaries and prorated shares of signing bonuses, earned incentive bonuses, non-cash compensation, buyouts of unexercised options and cash transactions, such as money included in trades. In some cases, parts of salaries that are deferred are discounted to reflect present-day values.

“Hold on for a second, I’ll get you a tissue,” I said to my son after I heard him sniffling on the couch.

I scanned the desk and there were no tissues. I headed to the kitchen, snagged two from the box and turned back. He was still sitting on the couch, but he now wore a devilish grin.

“Did you eat that booger?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Boogers are hard.”

“What are you saying?”

“I didn’t eat a booger.”

“What did you eat then?”

“Snot.”

Trying to maintain low expectations about the Yu Darvish bidding, I wondered what the Yankees could do with all that money when they don’t get him. It would be nice to get both Cespedes and Soler in the system as the Yankee outfield gets very thin very fast after this year.

Perhaps because I’m in the process of finding presents for the extended family and because there’s a lot of talk around the coffee machine this morning about the Mets terrible financial situation, I thought about how the Yankees could help their fellow New Yorkers.

The Mets need money. How much? More. When? Yesterday. So here is a Christmas gift to the Mets: $22,000,000.00. The Yankees trade A.J. Burnett straight up for Johan Santana.

The Yankees rid themselves of the annual Burnett headache. By ERA, Burnett was the second worst starting pitcher in baseball since 2010. But ERA can be misleading. Don’t worry though, by FIP, he was the third worst.

Johan Santana from one point of view, was even worse than Burnett. Santana broke down in 2009 and then again in 2010 and didn’t pitch at all in 2011. And he’s coming off surgery to repair the anterior capsule of his left shoulder – one of the nastiest surgeries a pitcher can undergo. His level of performance for the rest of his contract, the same gauranteed length as Burnett, is a total mystery.

In this deal, the Yankees would give the Mets the gift of 22 million dollars (Santana’s gauranteed $55 million over the next two year and while A.J. Burnett will get $33 million over the same time span) and a reliable innings eater (reliably bad, but hey, count that money again) for the gamble that Johan Santana can bounce back into something special, or at least into a shadow of something special.

I have no idea if Santana will be any good as he tries to come back. But if he gets on the mound and he’s among the worst pitchers in baseball next year, he can only be two or three rungs below where A.J. Burnett has taken up residence.

I know there are better ways to spend $22 million than on a roll of  the dice on Johan Santana’s recovery. If you can’t believe in a little magic during the holiday season though, when can you?

UPDATE: A report has the Toronto Blue Jays with the winning bid for Darvish.

Winning anecdotes about my two favorite Yankees in the same wonderful career retrospective?

And Happy Holidays to you, SI and Walter Iooss JR.

This has to be the Reggie shot he is talking about, right?

[Photos by Walter Iooss Jr.]

Where’s that bus? I don’t want to miss the train show.

Where’s that bus? There’s a cold rain falling.

I might fall asleep and miss my stop.

I’m thirsty and the water bottle is empty.

CC will throw the first pitch soon.

I need to make dinner for the boys.

I don’t want my wife to walk home in the dark.

He’s already held it in for so long.

I’m gonna end up in the first fucking row and my neck’s gonna be sore for a week.

Where’s that damn bus?

Technology exists underground, for most of New York, that tracks the trains along their route. Screens display the time of the next arriving train. And then the next one after that. No such service on the A Train. Nothing doing at the bus stops. You wait unknowing or you walk.

I guess the Blue Line doesn’t utilize that technology for the same reason that A and C Trains are the oldest, crappiest trains in the system. Nobody wants to spend any money on the A and the C. And I’m sure there is some preposterous reason why the MTA can’t develop an app that will track a bus as it inches through traffic as the frozen darkness descends upon your stop.

But c’mon, man. In this day and age, there’s no way we should be helplessly wondering where’s that bus.

Let’s all agree that before you write an article about trading Jesus Montero for a starting pitcher, that starting pitcher needs to be better than current free agent C.J. Wilson.

For the last two years, C.J. Wilson has been better than Gio Gonzalez in almost every way. Wilson pitched more innings, kept balls in the park at a better rate and walked fewer batters. They whiffed guys at close to the same rate, but Gonzalez jumped up in 2011 to claim a slight edge. That’s in raw numbers. When you look at the home road splits, it becomes clear we are talking about two different animals. Wilson is stellar outside the harsh environs of the Ballpark in Arlington. Gonzalez is ordinary once removed from Oakland and its acres of foul territory.

The main knock against Wilson is that he has walked 167 men in the last two years. Gonzalez has issued 183 free passes in 25 fewer innings.

Gio Gonzalez is five years younger than C.J. Wilson and still under team control for several years. His explosion in strikeouts in 2011 bodes well for his future. Those are huge points in his favor, no doubt. He’s projectible and cheap and certainly may be better than C.J. Wilson in a few years when Wilson gets older and Gonzalez is in his prime. But Jesus Montero is under team control for six more years. Which sounds better, Jesus Montero for six years and C.J. Wilson for whatever it takes to sign him? Or Gio Gonzalez for four years and whatever bat they have to sign to replace Jesus Montero?

The Yankees are not making headlines during the Hot Stove season, so the writers are left to make their own heat. Hey, I’d love to see Gio Gonzalez at the back end of the staff while he tries to get those walks down and learns to pitch to Death Valley in Yankee Stadium. But not at the cost of six years of a bat like Montero’s. Not when a better version of the same pitcher can be obtained on the free agent market.

Getting sick on a train is tough business. I’ve seen people pass out and throw up, usually in tight quarters. One time on a crowded train, a woman feinted into the unsuspecting lap beneath her. The person attached to the lap made a move to quickly give up his seat, but in his haste to make space he dropped her on the floor.

I’ve never been that kind of sick, but I’ve felt a fever creep over me in those hellish depths. It was winter, hat-and-scarf winter, and that icky warmth spread out from the center of my thick jacket. It traced the outlines of my shoulders and neck until it erupted in sweat down my back and out towards my hands.

I wrenched my scarf free. I would have left it for trash on the floor if there was enough space to let it fall. I jammed the wool hat in my bag and wedged the bag between my legs. I unbuttoned the jacket. Even the warm, dank subway car air was welcome inside the jacket.

I pivoted slightly so I could wiggle one arm free of its sleeve. And then the other. The jacket slid down into my arms and I folded it over and over until it looked more like a pillow. I tied the scarf around the jacket like a sweaty parcel. Then I reached down to reposition my bag over my shoulders.

I thought to myself, if there is snow on the ground when I get out of this subway, I am going to bury my head in it.

I stood there sweating for a few minutes, holding the jacket package and feeling eyes on me from all over the car. The train slowed down to approach 125th St. I had about a hundred blocks to go.

By 168th St, I was shivering.

 [Photo by Lesley Steele]

Anybody down with the McRib? It scares me, but there are devoted fans.

This, via the consumerist however, makes a McRib look like filet fucking mignon.

I know Taster’s Cherce is typically about food turn-ons, but it’s stuff like molded meat that can help us appreciate the good stuff all the more.

[Featured image via MSNBC]

This is exactly what I would do if I was an astronaut.

[Photo via fffound.com]

When I’m trying to get to sleep, I solve little puzzles to wind down my brain. Lately, I’ve been working on how the Yankees could acquire the best player at every position. Quickly, it becomes logistically impossible. There’s no way to pry Tulowitski or Longoria or Kemp or Braun away from their current teams.

However, changing the criteria slightly to acquiring the best available players at every position, things become doable. Absurdly expensive, but doable.

At first base, Albert Pujols, that’s easy. Keep the rest of the infield. Cano is the best second baseman for me over the last two years anyway, and close enough to the best overall that there’s no reason to upgrade. Jeter is required to maintain the idea that this is indeed the Yankees we’re talking about. And Arod, even that close to dreaming I can’t imagine some other team wanting to deal with him.

In the outfield, Granderson and Gardner might be the best outfielders available for their spots. For the other outfield spot, I’d gamble on the Cuban star, Yoenis Cespedes, though I guess Beltran is the best established player available. For DH, sign Prince Fielder. Note, every acquisition at this point is just a matter of money.

Now the hard part. Catcher. Perhaps this is the result of a midnight haze, but I think the Yankees could get Joe Mauer with Montero and others (Nova, Banuelos, etc). Mauer is now ridiculously expensive, has never been an Iron Horse, and has, for the first, time, turned in a stinker of a season. I think that the Twins could be persuaded that his contract is no longer in their best interests.

So that lineup is now something like Granderson, Mauer, Pujols, Fielder, Arod, Cano, Cespedes, Jeter, Gardner. Teixeira will DH against lefties and have to learn how to play 3B again to back up Arod. Russell Martin will be the back up catcher. Swisher is the fourth outfielder. To back up Jeter and Cano, and eventually replace Jeter, sign Jose Reyes.

The rotation is even easier. Sabathia is back. Send the rest of the Yankees staff to the pen (figure Nova is headed to Minnesota in the Mauer deal) and sign Wilson, Darvish, Buerhle and Oswalt, or the four best pitchers according to you.

We already have the best closer and possibly the best set-up man in Robertson. At times, Soriano is among the top relievers in the game. Add in Heath Bell, I guess, if he’s any good. I am always asleep before I get to the bullpen, so this is not as well considered. The demoted starters will pitch in where they can. Too bad Pabelbon signed elsewhere.

The 2012 Yankees would cost around, what, $350 million? Why not? It’s not my money so I won’t lose any sleep over it.

[Picture via Onion Sports Network]

I’ve tuned into the Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest a few times. I’d never consider joining an eating contest, but I like a good gross-out as much as the next guy.

Eating challenges, on the other hand, those intrigue me. The Old ’96er for instance. There’s a whole show dedicated to them on the Travel Channel. The few times I’ve been to places that offered a challenge, I was tempted to try it.

Up all night on Monday at a concert in Newark, I was empty this Tuesday at lunch. I ordered this:

That’s a Grand Slam from Go Go Curry. A chicken cutlet, a pork cutlet, an egg, two sausages, a fried shrimp all covered in a thick, brown curry. There’s a pile of shredded cabbage on the side. And underneath all that is a mountain of rice. With nothing on the line but my pride and my 12 bucks, I bid adieu to all but the rice. The rice just kept coming and I ended up leaving about a handful on the plate.

Maybe if I wasn’t headed back to work and if I didn’t have to play basketball that night, maybe I could have taken it down. But I was happy I left it there.

How about you guys – what was your biggest eating challenge?

I wonder what they used for the Bantha fodder?

I was too young to appreciate Fisher in the gold bikini. Even to this day, that outfit does nothing for me. But this one…

I know this movie sucks in a lot of ways. But when Luke started wreaking havoc on the skiff with that green light saber, I’ve never been more thrilled in a movie theater.

Check out this guy who stumbled on them in Buttercup Valley.

[Photos by Mike Davis]

Sunday was Marathon Day. My wife Amelia was running so we went full out with t-shirts, posters and banners. At 124th St and 1st Ave, my older son sat on my shoulders and we yelled out to every runner we could while we waited for her to pass. The runners were psyched to get cheers, but when they came from the squeaky voice of a four year-old, their smiles were double wide. It’s a special day in New York, but I’ll let our runner explain how it feels from inside the ropes:

I am proud to live in New York City every day, but today showed me why ten times over. The support and enthusiam from EVERYONE, in EVERY Borough was just mind blowing and made me so proud to be a New Yorker!!!!

A helluva town.

By Jon DeRosa

Just like most other genres these days, successful horror movies spawn franchises. The studios have indulged lengthy strolls down Elm Street and at one point, seemed to have taken great care to make sure there was a fresh installment of “Friday the 13th” every time the calendar dictated.

I’ve never seen any of them, but does the number of times people wanted to sit through the same basic story to be scared in the same basic way tell us something of ourselves as a species? I’ll leave that for someone who watched those movies to decide.

In fact, to be a successful horror movie franchise, the film doesn’t even have to be a true horror movie. Both “The Evil Dead” and the “Scream” movies are horror-movie derivitives, distilling or reducing the elements of horror movies and packaging them up with laughs for a new twist.

“The Evil Dead” is a horror movie that has mostly discarded plot, writing, acting, sound, editing, cinematagrophy, and lighting. All that is left is gore, suspense and comedy. It’s poorly made but still spectacular – I challenge you to look away during a screening. The efforts appear earnest, and it’s hard to believe the people responsible for “The Evil Dead” (Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert) would someday create the best super hero fight on film (Raimi’s Doc Ock vs Spiderman on a skyscraper) and torment our hero John Schulian (Tapert).

That’s not to say the movie just a bucket of corn syrup dyed red and an eerie score. There’s a lovely moment where Ash, played by cult hero Bruce Campbell, holds a gift for his girlfriend, Linda, and pretends to be asleep. Linda wants to to grab the gift, but she suspects he’s faking. The camera catches just their eyes as she looks between him and the gift and Ash takes occasional peeks to see if his ruse is working. And then of course when Linda dies, Ash tries to bury her before she can turn into a zombie-monster. He’s too late, but she fakes him out with the same game, pretending to be dead while he digs her grave, sneaking peeks to see if her ruse is working.

When he slices her head off with the shovel, there’s an extra pang between the chuckles. The movie rightly has a devoted following for it’s knack of being bad in just the right ways. And now a remake? I wonder…

On the other side of the same coin are the “Scream” movies. These films are loaded with everything modern Hollywood does best, and then polished to a sheen. The derivative nature of “Scream” lies within the plot of the film as the psychotic killers and the hapless victims of the film are themsleves horror film fanatics. They know how horror movies work inside and out, and when they find themselves inside one, they keep track of what is happening like play-by-play commentators at a sporting event.

Most of them still die, but it’s a lot funnier when the victim does something stupid a few minutes after she discussed the universal stupidity of female horror movie victims.

Like Alex, I don’t seek out a lot of horror movies. However, consuming American popular culture for over thirty years ingrains horror movie formulae in the brain. So it doesn’t take an expert in scary movies to enjoy seeing them turned in on themselves in ingenious ways. And with all the laughs “Scream” and “The Evil Dead” bring to the table, suspense is such a potent ingredient that even these horror-comedies will take you to the edge of your seat before you’re rolling in the aisles.

The Big East fell apart this year. I have a lot wrapped up in that conference, since I went to a Big East basketball school and grew up watching Thompson and Boeheim take on the Roman Catholic Coaches Association (Carnesecca, Massimino, Carlesimo, Pitino). Watching the disintegration, led by Syracuse of all places, made me realize my experience with college sports was done.

Over at Grantland, Charlie Pierce thinks the NCAA is coming down.

Every few years, some angry, stick-waving prophet would come wandering into the cozy system of unpaid (or barely paid) labor and start bellowing about how the essential corruption in the system wasn’t that some players got money under the table, but that none of them were allowed to get any over it. Sooner or later, these people said, the system would collapse from its own internal contradictions — yes, some of these people summoned up enough Marx through the bong resin in their brains from their college days to make a point — and the people running college sports had best figure out how to control the chaos before it overwhelmed them. Nobody listened. Very little changed, except that college sports became bigger and more lucrative, an enterprise of sports spectacle balanced precariously on the fragile principle that everybody should get to make money except the people doing the actual work.

What comes after that? Someone is going to have to stuff steroids down these teenagers’ throats to get them big enough for the NFL, right? If athletes were employees of their universities, would anybody want to watch? And if we removed colleges from the equation entirely, would anybody tune into watch whatever intermediary staging area develops?

The best example of what would happen to the NCAA is probably the current baseball model. There is scant interest in NCAA baseball and Minor League baseball. All anybody cares about are the Major Leagues, because the best talent in the world, from all ages is on display there and only there.

Compare the incredible amount of revenue surrounding the NCAA title games in basketball in football to whatever will be available after the NCAA cracks like an egg and you can see how ugly this is going to get.