MAAC Attack: The Madness of March
Last week Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall played gracious host for the fifth consecutive year of the Mid Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) basketball championship tournament. For the uninitiated, the winner of this tournament earns an automatic bid to the “Big Dance”, the NCAA basketball tournament. Soon, interoffice bracket mavens and neophytes, fans of Men’s or Women’s basketball, and bettors looking for an edge will catch the madness. The MAAC Conference Championship is therefore a telling window into the bracket busters and undervalued underdogs. It seems nearly yearly a “mid major” conference team upsets a Final Four favorite to fit a glass slipper at the dance. This tournament is a pre-tremor for the following week. A place and moment in Atlantic City where you can get the jump.
More powerful than a dozen orchestras…
Boardwalk Hall, like many places in Atlantic City, is dripping with such history that it is hard to fathom. Following construction in 1929, Boardwalk Hall commissioned the largest pipe organ in the world, “more powerful than a dozen orchestras”, completed in 1932, which remains the largest musical instrument in the world. Tours are available to see the organ in demonstration throughout the tourism season. The Miss America Pageant, founded in 1921, crowned its annual queen here for the better part of a century. Mike Tyson battled for heavyweight titles in the hall’s ring, while the stage welcomed leading acts across generations, stretching from Judy Garland, to the Rolling Stones, to Madonna, and Beyoncé.
“When he shall die, take him and cut him out into the stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene II
Boardwalk Hall was at the pinnacle of its prominence in 1964 when it hosted the largest Beatles show on their first American tour, and the Democratic National Convention that went “All the way with LBJ”. This set the stage for Beatlemania, a virus that eradicated DooWop, and the Great Society, the second great investment in the public in the 20th Century following the New Deal. While everything would be different in four short years, that summer night the audience erupted in a reported 22-minute standing ovation for Robert Kennedy, who eulogized his assassinated brother by quoting from Romeo and Juliet: “When he shall die, take him and cut him out into the stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” Boardwalk Hall is also the setting for a truly haunting scene from Neptune, NJ’s Jack Nicholson’s 1972 classic King of Marvin Gardens, for the cinephiles. (I give it a rating of five bags of popcorn and a horse on the beach.)
Mid Major Papal States and Orders
The MAAC Conference comprises eleven teams from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and an interloper from Maryland. Of these eleven schools, eight are Catholic, three Jesuit, with plans in 2024 to add two additional Catholic schools, Merrimack and Sacred Heart. While players on these teams are unlikely to ever reach professional competition, they are, bien entendu, undoubtedly the best player in any pickup game on any court and could perhaps play in an internationally expanding sport in China or the Balkans.
A Brief History of Cinderella and Lady Tremaine
The MAAC Conference tournament was squarely installed into my purview last year, after legendary and infamous basketball coach Rick Pitino led the Iona Gaels to tournament victory. Pitino is arguably the greatest college basketball coach of his generation, and the most scandalous coach of all time. At the advent of the three-point line, Pitino was an early adopter to his teams’ advantage, pairing long-range shooting with his trademark full-court press defense. His early career as an assistant was tarnished by paying for meals, cars, and flights in Hawaii (mildly bad), before embarking on a career as head coach in both college basketball and the NBA. Pitino is the only coach to have led two schools to win the National Championship, Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013), and three separate schools to the vaunted Final Four, the aforementioned along with Providence (1987).
Pitino’s 2013 national championship with Louisville was vacated by the NCAA following the convergence of two separate scandals, a 2015 escort sex scandal followed by a larger 2017 bribery scandal. The former is salacious and venal. The latter scandal implicated eight college athletic programs with bribery and fraud charges as Adidas (and others) paid player expenses and provided gifts to assist Pitino in recruitment of high school prospects in exchange for his players representing Adidas when they turned pro. One assistant coach implicated in the investigation offered the following colorful picture of Rick “Coach-2” Pitino during deposition: “No one swings a bigger dick than Coach-2 at Company-1. . . . All [Coach-2] has to do is pick up the phone and call somebody [and say], ‘These are my guys.’ [And then] they’re taking care of us.”
These two scandals were fixed in the milieu of National Collegiate Athletic Association v Alston (2021), when the US Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that the NCAA was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by contending their competition was purely amateur, subsequently opening the door for college athletes to receive compensation and sponsorship for usage of their “NIL” (name, image, likeness). Following the Court’s holding, the NCAA introduced interim NIL policies, while states and President Biden have rushed to pass legislation and endorse a mandated student athlete right to compensation as long as the NCAA itself is profiting. The NCAA earned $1.28 billion in revenue in 2022-2023, with about $1 billion coming from March Madness alone. An interesting wrinkle here is that under long established Title IX, female student athletes have a right to the same accommodations and compensation as their male counterparts. Iowa’s Caitlin Clark broke the all-time scoring record for men’s and women’s NCAA basketball, and has secured $3 million in annual compensation. Congress has introduced multiple bills to legislate a federal policy on student athlete compensation. This is a New Frontier for college sports where the more they rightly compensate current and future players, the more they reveal their shrewdness to past players.
“Winning is the most important thing in my life.” -Rick Pitino
After Pitino was fired by Louisville, he went on to coach the Greek National team, before landing in 2020 at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY. By 2023, he was back to his winning ways, and led Iona to victory in last year’s MAAC conference tournament before an early bounce from the Big Dance. “Winning is the most important thing in my life,” Pitino told the Press of AC (“Iona gives vintage Rick Pitino performance to win MAAC Conference men’s championship”, Press of Atlantic City, March 2023.) Ever the bon vivant, Pitino celebrated his tournament win with a chicken parm at Chef Vola’s in the Sinatra Room, before divorcing Iona for St. John’s in the offseason.
Cinderelly, Cinderelly, night and day it’s Cinderelly!
But college sport isn’t just bribes and boosters! In 2022, Saint Peter’s squad won the MAAC Conference Tournament and rode the wave all the way to the Elite Eight, becoming the first 15-Seed to ever advance that far into the tournament. (Ironically, they upset No-2 Seed Kentucky, Pitino’s old team in the first round, facing arguably weaker subsequent opponents after cracking through.) Coach Shaheen Holloway, a former standout point guard who turned down the venerable Coach K and Duke to play closer to home with Seton Hall, captured the attention of the nation with his unapologetically New Jersey savoir faire. When questioned by national media if he is fearful of the physicality his team would face in later rounds, he replied through a raspy voice with a quintessentially tristate bon mot. “I got guys from New Jersey and New York City. You think we’re scared of anything? You think we’re worried about guys trying to muscle us and tough us out. We do that. That’s who we are.”
Open the Book
While friends of mine dabbled in the sportsbook from Illinois to ride the March 2022 Saint Peter’s run, 57% of New Jersey voters elected via ballot referendum in November 2021 to not permit collegiate in-state sports betting. My vision for attending the MAAC Basketball Tournament was to observe the players and momentum shifts to bet in-game accordingly, however the regulation against college sports betting extends to any competition IN New Jersey, not just among NJ players and teams. Dear reader, I pay attention to these things like ballot referendums and casino regulations and was nonetheless caught flat footed during Fairfield, CT vs New Rochelle, NY. “I thought I just couldn’t bet on Rutgers!”
This seems like a structurally compromised dam ready to burst. Smart phone betting has taken root in every sport, aided greatly by the massive spending among online sports betting companies (casinos) for promotion throughout sports broadcasts from regional to national. Even the casual observer can recognize the shift from picking pregame winners to discussing the spreads and lines before and during competition, while blatantly promoting parlays. Taylor Swift’s entry into the realm of the NFL was not just a boon for football, as DraftKings notably leveraged her popularity to send push notifications, prop bets, and immaculately composed promotional parlays in the parlance of the Swiftverse. One can understand this imperative; sports betting increases viewership of less competitive games much in the way fantasy football did (and does), Swift represents the lecherousness of online casinos to break into the female demographic.
With the broad and rapid adoption of sports betting by the American public, professional sports have found themselves in a profit crazed predicament — when nightly broadcasts promote sports betting, how can a sports commissioner or athletic association regulate against players gambling?
The baseball world is reeling presently at the thought Shohei Ohtani may truly be their Michael Jordan as his confidante and translator has been fired for “massive theft” to place bets with an offshore bookie. NFL wideout Calvin Ridley was suspended for the 2022 season for violating the league’s gambling policy for betting $1500, while just this month this writer’s own beloved Phillies posted to official social media a clip of their backup catcher jawing up his prior night at the casino with his teammates. In fairness, he was talking about three hours at blackjack before an elite turn at the roulette wheel. Innocent stuff for guys to get into! Nonetheless, the genie is out of the bottle in a “yuge” lingering cultural impact of electing a real estate robber baron and casino charlatan as Commander in Chief.
If one accepts the notion that “what’s good for the casinos is good for Atlantic City”, then legalizing sports betting on the highest level of field competition that the city can muster to host would and could become a major draw for this event and city, recreating a “day at the races” experience for local in-state sports bettors. That notion should be critiqued, and surely the city’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority can perform greater service to its hometown when casinos post multi billion yearly profits even through the pandemic. It seems silly to regulate out of experience smart phone betting on college sports from a casino resort town. And the losers aren’t even the gamblers or players, but city residents.
Peacock Pride
This year’s competition stretched from Tuesday’s first round to Saturday’s championship matches. I first attended Wednesday to see Fairfield take on Iona in the 9pm game. Fairfield senior Caleb Fields, a product of nearby Wildwood Catholic, was having a dominant homecoming, making decisive plays every appearance for the Stags. Fields led Fairfield through a 2nd Half rally, as they overcame defending champ Iona with a score of 68-63.
As a local, I sought to circumvent the Ticketmaster fees, but arrived after the box office closed for sales. A friendly attendant instructed me to simply attempt to walk in, so, cloaked in my Philadelphia Inquirer hat as a “credential”, I did just that. Setting aside the gameplay, watching a mid major basketball tournament is kind of like attending a minor league baseball game. You are closer to the action, can feel the kinetic energy of the game, sense which team has momentum, and monitor which coach is closer to an aneurysm.
On my second night attending the tournament, once again “sneaking” in, I saw an all-NJ matchup— Saint Peter’s versus Rider. Rider sent a full band, while Saint Pete just sent a dance squad. This game was a low scoring affair, with a final score of 50-48 but once again a narrow margin down to its conclusion. In Friday’s semifinals, Saint Peter’s upset first seeded Quinnipiac in a dramatic buzzer beater finish. Fairfield, led by Fields, handled their business against Marist, setting them up to square off in the championship finale.
The championship match was markedly different from the weekday events. Instead of a few hundred attendees, the last game drew several thousand (officially 2,477), with a palpable presence of fans from Jersey City dwarfing the Fairfield contingent that had attended all week. Fairfield had a more consistent season, and built a comfortable seven point lead at the half, before extending it to 10 points early in the second half. But Saint Peter’s remained undeterred and tough. Much of their scoring deficit was linked to Fairfield’s ability to force turnovers and steals, as Saint Peter’s adjusted and relied upon shot blocking and strong field goal conversion just as the Fairfield Stags went cold. With 11 minutes remaining in the contest, Saint Peter’s drained a three point shot from Brett Bland and a layup from Michael Hogue to take a one-point lead. From there, Saint Peter’s extended the lead all the way to nine, as you could feel the wheels fall off the Stag Wagon. Fairfield’s Caleb Fields refused to give in, and delivered impressive play in the final minutes as his team clawed back to a three point, then a single point deficit with 1:07 left in play.
Every single game I attended in the MAAC Tournament featured a one to three point difference with 90 seconds or less of play, providing for a truly exciting series of nightly competitions. Saint Peter’s made their free throws down the stretch, while Fairfield fought tenaciously. The difference maker was two missed three point shot attempts by Stag shooters in the final minute, allowing for Saint Peter’s to prove their Jersey toughness, secure the tournament victory, and punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament, which is now underway with the first rounds of play this weekend. The Peacocks are once again the No 15 Seed in this year’s tournament where they will face the Top Ten Tennessee Volunteers in the first round of play. Let’s see if the slipper fits again…. (Editor’s note: Saint Peter’s 2024 season ended March 21st in a First Round loss to Tennessee.)
A Note on Fairfield’s Women’s Team
One unfortunate reality of holding down a day job and the perceived lesser interest in women’s competition is that the best team in the tournament posted game times as early as 10am. Fairfield Women’s team has won 29 straight games in a row, including their tournament championship run, to post a remarkable 31-1 record on the season to earn them their first-ever Top 25 national ranking as they enter the NCAA Tournament. They faced tough competition from Niagara in their MAAC Championship game, who forced them into overtime before the Lady Stags responded to win by 8 points. Despite owning the 2nd longest winning streak in Women’s basketball behind Dawn Staley’s South Carolina juggernaut, they enter the NCAA tournament as a No-13 seed, set to face No-4 seed Indiana on Saturday March 23rd in their first round of competition. (Editor’s note: After hanging tough through the first half, Fairfield’s 2024 season ended in a First Round loss to Indiana.)
As the nation renews their Paramount+ and YouTube TV accounts to view March Madness and prepares to gloat or scratch a few coins in their pocket, we await this year’s surprise stepsister. America loves Cinderella. Perhaps again it will be a MAAC school that draws national attention to a mid-major upset of a powerhouse that will eliminate a majority of bracket builders. I applaud the MAAC Conference, the Fairfield Women and Saint Peter’s Men, and the great city of Atlantic City for holding a little space for March magic at Boardwalk Hall.
