The Opperman Foundation Renders Its Award (and Itself) Irrelevant

RBG is not amused.

The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation began awarding the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Women in Leadership Award in 2019; it was presented annually to an exceptional woman who has been an exemplary leader in her chosen field. The first recipient was Agnes Gund, a philanthropist, art collector, and arts education and social justice advocate. After (one presumes) a COVID-induced hiatus in 2020, subsequent winners have included Queen Elizabeth of the UK, fashion maven and philanthropist Diane von Fürstenberg, and EGOT winner Barbra Streisand.

We can quibble over whether those women were the best available choices, and we can notice that “stinking rich” seems to be at least as important a criterion as leadership, but at the very least we can understand the rationale behind those selections. Gund has made significant contributions (monetary and otherwise) in a variety of fields. It has become increasingly clear of late that Queen Elizabeth pretty much single-handedly held together not merely the British monarchy, but the country. Von Fürstenberg not only rose to fame and fortune in the fashion world, she has made significant charitable donations in a variety of areas; her DVF awards, established in 2010, honor women “who have had the courage to fight, the power to survive, and the leadership to inspire.” Streisand is not merely a world-renowned artist; her contributions to cardiac research in particular are no less significant for being relatively speaking under-publicized.

OK. Fine. But why is Curmie writing about these awards now? Well, this year, the  Opperman Foundation decided to change the rules. Big time. First off, they decided to give five awards instead of one. OK, fine; it’s their award, after all. Then, they decided to include men: “Justice Ginsburg fought not only for women but for everyone,” quoth Julie Opperman, the Chair of the Foundation named for her deceased husband. That’s enough to raise an eyebrow, given that RGB herself was involved in establishing the award and presumably wanted to restrict the recipients to one woman (not one woman and four men) per year.

But it was the list of recipients that really got people’s attention. Opperman was, after all, a venture capitalist, and this year’s slate was a wet dream for those of a similarly predatory, hypocritical, and malignant disposition. The fact that Curmie regards the least objectionable of the five honorees to be Sylvester Stallone, a mediocre-at-best actor who managed to build a career around portraying the exploits of a pair of inarticulate “patriots,” and who has little if any history of philanthropy, rather says it all.

One step up would be the two convicted felons, Michael Milkin and Martha Stewart: the former convicted of securities violations and tax evasion, the latter of insider trading. But it was the other two awardees, Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch, that made Curmie choke on his coffee.

Curmie would have trouble naming many people less deserving of recognition—well, Donald Trump, maybe Mitch McConnell or Clarence Thomas… The point, however, is that who Curmie might choose to get an award couldn’t be much less relevant. The Opperman Foundation is giving the award; they choose the recipients. Ah, but no. The award is intended to honor Justice Ginsburg as much as the annual award-winners, and there is literally no doubt that RBG would have been horrified at a minimum of three of this year’s awardees.

It’s not just Curmie saying that, of course. It’s the Ginsburg family, as well. Justice Ginsburg’s daughter actually indulges in a bit of understatement in declaring that “This year, the Opperman Foundation has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.” “Straying,” after all, suggests a lack of intentionality, and this action by what has become a right-wing propaganda outlet was anything but accidental. But Jane Ginsburg’s assertion that the choice of honorees was “an affront to the memory of our mother” is simultaneously less polite and more accurate.

Ginsburg’s son, Jim, wrote that apparently the newly adopted criteria mean that “people like Murdoch and Musk who are antithetical to everything Mom stood for, qualify…. Speaking only for myself, I would say that those who foment hatred and undermine democracy do not stand for the ideals of equality, respect, and engagement my mother strived to advance.”

Please note here, Gentle Reader, that the fact that the Ginsburg family regards Murdoch and Musk (at least those two) as abhorrent, or that Curmie regards them as among the most detestable creatures ever to slither across the cultural landscape, doesn’t mean that the Opperman Foundation should be prevented from giving them awards. But to invoke the name of Justice Ginsburg in the process, without even notifying the family of the change of direction prior to the announcement of the recipients, is as ham-handed as it is hubristic. It’s a good way to bring about the end of the awards altogether… which is precisely what happened after both the family and last year’s winner, Barbra Streisand, made some rather scathing remarks about the process.

In announcing the cancellation of this year’s awards (or at least of the awards ceremony; it’s unclear which), Julie Opperman declared—Wait, Gentle Reader, put down that beverage, lest your spit-take cause damage to your phone or computer—that “We thought RBG's teachings regarding EQUALITY should be practiced. We did not consider politics.” Ms. Opperman thereby sets the new world record for disingenuousness.

She continues in the self-congratulatory and defensive vein: “Keeping in mind that our goal is only to do good, the Foundation is not interested in creating controversy. It is not interested in generating a debate about whether particular honorees are worthy or not. And while Justice Ginsburg's concept of EQUALITY for women was very controversial for most of her life, the Foundation does not intend to enter the fray.” Translation: “We got busted, we have no legitimate defense, and we’re going to sulk for a while because if we say anything more we’ll be shown as the partisan hacks we truly are.”

An award honoring Justice Ginsburg makes sense. Recipients needn’t be liberals; indeed the non-partisan approach the selectors pretend to have taken (but obviously didn’t) has much to recommend it. The honorees should, however, be folks who wouldn’t send RBG screaming into the night. The reactionary yahoos at the Opperman Foundation chose a different strategy and rendered their awards irrelevant at best. It’s a shame, but it’s the way it is.

Is the NCAA Selection Committee Stupid or Corrupt? ¿Por Qué No Los Dos?

Zillionaire basketball coaches who have been fired for corruption even by a university not known for scrupulous ethics tend not to be at the top of Curmie’s heroes list.  Rick Pitino is one such creature.  But when he’s right, he’s right.

Pitino made headlines recently when he savaged the selection committee for the NCAA basketball tournament for not giving a bid to his St. John’s team.  He then refused an invitation to the less prestigious NIT tournament.  Thing is, there is no conceivable way the Red Storm should have been omitted from the “Big Dance.”

Readers who know Curmie personally are familiar with his “Totally Objective But Not Necessarily Accurate” rankings.  Of course, these rankings have proven to be rather accurate, indeed.  This year, they predicted outcomes considerably better than did either the AP or Coaches’ polls.  Curmie has had a bracket in the top 10% nationally (on the ESPN site) several years in a row, and was in the top 1/10 of 1% a couple of years ago. 

The most respected national ranking system is Ken Pomeroy’s KenPom.com.  Other rankings are the BPI (Basketball Power Index) and NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool).  All of these systems are based on objective criteria: the location of the game, the outcome, the quality of the opponent.

All told, then, there are five different ranking systems Curmie is referencing here (his own system has both a “right now” ranking and a “for the season” ranking).  Curmie would have St. John’s as a 5-seed in the “right now” rankings, as an 8-seed for the season.  KenPom would have them as an 8, the BPI as a 6.  Even the massively problematic NET, which Pitino blames for the snub, would have the Red Storm as an 8-seed.  In other words, literally every statistically-based system has St. John’s not merely in the tournament, but comfortably so: they’re no lower that 32^nd in any of these rankings; the top 42 are in.

Indeed, St. John’s ranked higher than no fewer than seven teams receiving at-large bids—Clemson, Florida Atlantic, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas A&M, Utah State, and Virginia—in all five categories!  There were a couple others that barely edged out the Red Storm in a single system.

Of course, Florida Atlantic was last year’s Cinderella team, so they get in; South Carolina was picked to be near the bottom of the SEC and their great start made them (for a while) a successful underdog (and their women’s team is really good), and Clemson and Virginia are from the ACC, which always gets preferential treatment.  Usually, it’s Duke; this year, the Blue Devils’ 4-seed is about right. 

It’s apparently North Carolina’s turn to be absurdly over-rated.  Curmie had them as a 3-seed for the season; KenPom and the BPI agree.  The NET and Curmie’s “right now” ranking have them as the last 2-seed.  Who should be the last 1-seed may be up for discussion—Arizona, Auburn, Iowa State, and Tennessee all have a reasonable claim—but it sure as hell isn’t the Tarheels.  What’s worse, they also get a first-round play-in game (overall #1 UConn doesn’t), and they have by far the easiest bracket. 

In Curmie’s “right now” ranking, UConn and Iowa State are the top two teams in the country; they’re in the same quadrant, so only one can make the Final Four.  Meanwhile, UNC is #8, and can get to Glendale without having to beat anyone better than #12 Arizona.  (All four other systems, including Curmie’s ranking for the season, have Arizona ranked higher than North Carolina, so there’s that…)

None of this, of course, means that those teams Curmie is calling over-rated won’t win some games, or even the tournament, but seedings should reflect the past and the present.  There are a lot of teams that don’t belong at all, and St. John’s has plenty of company in feeling… erm… screwed.  Ken Pomeroy has seven teams that didn’t make the tournament ranked higher than South Carolina.

There is always, of course, some controversy surrounding Selection Sunday.  This year seems worse than most.  Curmie can’t recall a year when a team that all of those ranking systems agree should be an 8-seed or higher can’t even get a play-in game as a 10, or one in which a 1-seed wasn’t ranked higher than 8^th in any of those systems, while two other teams from that same conference got bids (or at least seeds) they didn’t deserve.  Curmie’s old, though… maybe he’s forgetting something.

As for the former: maybe Pitino is being punished for past transgressions? Or he stole someone’s girlfriend?  Or committee members are dumber than the proverbial sack of hammers? 

As for the latter: It is true that once upon a time, the ACC was the best college basketball conference in the country.  It is also true that bell-bottom jeans were once considered stylish.  Today, the only plausible explanation for the over-ranking of teams from the fifth-best conference is that the ACC Commissioner has compromising photographs of committee members and barnyard animals.

Wishing for a Little Less Painlessness...

Last week, Curmie attended what he suspects will be his last professional conference, as he has now retired from a leadership position at an organization that holds its annual meeting there.  But that’s just the background for this essay.

I drove to this one, although it was nearly 500 miles from Chez Curmie; that meant that on arrival I was both very tired and searching for a place to get a good meal… and an adult beverage.  It’s not uncommon for the kind of hotel I was staying at to have room service, or at least a nice on-site restaurant.  This turned out not to be the case, however, as the in-house eatery was a chain sub shop… and it was closed, anyway.

This prompted me to break out the laptop and look for a good restaurant I could walk to.  It turned out that such a place existed in one of the other conference hotels: indeed it was the one where all three sessions I knew I was going to attend were to be held.  And I knew exactly where it was, because my GPS, which had done an admirable job of directing me around the flooding on the shortest route to the conference city and getting me on the right street, decided to direct me to that hotel instead of my own.  Walking a couple of blocks was no problem, in other words.

I had a very good meal that cost a little over three times my per diem for a dinner in that city, paid with my Discover card, and was on my way.  Ah, but there’s a step missing there: I apparently didn’t collect my card and put it back in my wallet.  This was on Wednesday night.

Breakfasts were included with the hotel room, and both lunches and dinners on Thursday and Friday were “working” meals, paid on the organization’s debit card.  That meant it wasn’t until Saturday morning, when I played hooky from the conference to check out the city’s art museum, that I noticed my card was missing.  I called Discover, and the customer service rep handled the situation admirably: she told me the last time the card had been used was at that restaurant, and gave me the choice between freezing the account while I searched for the card or cancelling it, setting me up with a new card and a new account number.  I chose the former option.

When I got back downtown (the art museum is outside the city center), I checked at the hotel, and sure enough, they returned the card to me with minimum hassle.  So now it was time to call Discover and get the card unfrozen (thawed?).  I first got the robovoice, which told me the call might be monitored or recorded, and that they might use some sort of voice recognition to make sure I was who I said I was.  (Really?)  Robovoice also told me they didn’t have a record of my cell phone number and asked if I’d like to include that in my profile.

I was then connected to a person who, like his colleague from the earlier conversation, was affable and efficient.  I identified myself by the last four digits of my Social Security number, my date of birth, and my zip code.  Then, presumably to prove I really did have the card back, I had to read a number on the back of the card—not the security number, a different number in smaller print.  And then I was good to go.

Except…

What if, instead of my card being left at a restaurant, my wallet had been stolen and I didn’t know it (I thought I’d left it in my office or something)?  My SS card is tucked away in there, and my DOB and zip are right there on my driver’s license.  Maybe, maybe, they have a record that the call to freeze the account and the call to unfreeze it came from the same phone number… but it’s certainly possible that one of those calls could have come from my office or home phone (or my hotel room).  And they didn’t have my cell number on file, remember, Gentle Reader?

One of my other accounts requires the answers to not one but three questions—mother’s maiden name, best friend in high school, that sort of thing.  Another first demands a password and then will send a security code to the email address they have on file.  Not so to get my card re-activated.  Indeed, I had to jump through more security hoops to report the card missing than I did to get the account unfrozen. 

I’m grateful that the process was as painless as it was.  I also kinda wish it had been a little less painless.

(Side note: Curmie’s actual Discover card has a shamrock design.  It was good to have it back to use on St. Patrick’s Day.)

 

 

Dartmouth's Basketball Team Embarrasses This Alum, But Not as Much as the NLRB Does

The men’s basketball team at Curmie’s undergrad alma mater, Dartmouth College, is an embarrassment.  No, not because they’re terrible, although they are: they have secured last place, alone, in the not-exactly-elite (in basketball terms) Ivy League.  They didn’t win a road game all year.  As of this writing, they’re 337^th (of 362) in the NET and 339^th on KenPom.  They haven’t had a winning record in 15 years, and currently sport the longest active streak (dating back to 1959) of not participating in the NCAA tournament.  They weren’t very good back when Curmie was a student there; they’re worse now.

But “disappointing” isn’t the same as “embarrassing.”  Not being very good basketball players is one thing; being narcissistic little assholes is something else again.  The reason the Big Green’s hoopsters are in the news, alas, falls into the latter category.  The players voted today (as I write this on March 5) to unionize (!), thanks to a heightened sense of self-importance by some rather mediocre athletes and a remarkably inane decision by the NLRB’s Regional Director, declaring them “employees.”  All 15 players signed the initial petition to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, and 13 of them voted to unionize.

The Regional Director in question is Laura A. Sacks of the Boston office.  (Curmie believes people who do remarkably stupid things in their professional capacities shouldn’t be able to hide behind an important-sounding title.  Walking lawyer jokes like Jake Krupski ought to be similarly disgraced.)  The decision itself is inane on its face, but the rationale is even worse.

Here’s the decision; let’s look at a couple of key points.  First off, there is no argument with the college’s position that financial aid is offered exclusively on the basis of financial need; indeed, four players on the team receive none, whereas one gets a full ride.  Athletes don’t get special housing or other such perks.  Again, no one claims otherwise.  A fall term message to players “encouraged” them not to schedule courses during potential practice times, particularly between 2:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon. 

Conversely, that message told players they should “[F]eel free to register for courses in the following time slots: 8S/8L, 9S/9L, 10, 10A, 11, 12.”  Here’s where Curmie’s experience becomes relevant, because he knows what that means.  About 90% of all the courses I took as an undergrad were in one of those time slots.  Afternoons, certainly after 2:00, were almost always free.  One doubts that much has changed, even given the considerable interim.

Remember, too, that since Dartmouth is on a quarter system, students take only three courses at a time, so there’s less likelihood of scheduling conflicts at all; unless a particular course necessary for a player’s degree plan was offered only in the afternoon and only during basketball season, problems are rare if not altogether absent.  It’s also unclear why the team couldn’t practice in the evening, as there are multiple places on campus with basketball courts, and much of “practice” is film study or time in the weight room.

Also worthy of notice is the fact that NCAA and Ivy League regulations prohibit teams from requiring too much practice time: “In-season, student-athletes may participate in a maximum of four hours of CARA [countable athletically related activity] daily and a maximum of twenty hours of CARA weekly….  When a sport is not in-season, student-athletes may participate in a maximum of six hours of CARA each week.”

Yet, curiously, Sacks and her minions based part of the decision on the bizarre belief that athletes should be treated differently because the demands on their time exceed those required of participants in, for example, music, theatre, or journalism.  In a word, BULLSHIT.  First off, those activities are year-round; there’s no “off season,” and certainly no time cap.  Curmie was required to spend more than four hours a day and more than 20 hours a week not infrequently (especially but not exclusively during tech weeks) when he was in school, and he's certainly expected that kind of commitment from students throughout his career as a director and technical director in college and university settings. 

The other variation on this theme was that Curmie realized early on that if he was going to be an active member of the debate team, he was going to have to spend a lot more than 20 hours a week.  He opted instead for doing research to help the team when he could, administering one of the divisions of the high school invitational tournament hosted by the Forensic Union, and occasionally brainstorming with more active team members.  But those active debaters spent dozens of hours a week working for the team.  Same with the editors (at least) of the college newspaper, the directorate of the radio station… the list goes on and on. 

It’s also frankly nuts to claim that the Ivy League is taking students out of classes willy-nilly.  Virtually all league games are played on Friday night or Saturday.  Wanna guess, Gentle Reader, how many road games Dartmouth will play this year on a Monday through Thursday while classes are in session?  The answer is… wait for it… one.  Yes, one.  Another came between the end of classes and the end of finals.  Yet somehow, we get an official NLRB ruling with nonsense like “if, for example, the team is traveling on a Monday…”  Is Sacks incapable of looking at a schedule?  Furthermore, there was no rebuttal to the coach’s testimony that players sometimes missed road trips, with his blessing, because of class responsibilities.  In the Ivy League, education matters more than sports.  It really does.

So the whole “taking them out of classes” business is nonsense.  Moving on.  OK, get this: Cade Haskins, one of the students who keeps getting quoted, says that although the college makes it clear that “it is understood by both the faculty and coaching staff that class attendance takes precedence over participation in athletics,” he often prioritized basketball.  The fact that he can’t abide by the rules is an argument in his favor?

The precedent for this action is a decision a few years back when the Northwestern football team successfully convinced the NLRB that they were employees, but because they compete in a league that includes state universities (Dartmouth doesn’t), federal law apparently makes it impossible for the NLRB to make a ruling against the university in this instance.  Of course, unlike Dartmouth or indeed any other Ivy League school, Northwestern does give athletic scholarships, so, arguably, players are indeed employees, doing a job in exchange for financial considerations.  Still, it’s ironic that it would be Northwestern, a school far more noted for its academics than its athletics, that would be the target for such a unionization effort.

There are more ironies at play, too.  It would be impossible to name an athletic conference that cares more about the importance of education relative to sports than the Ivy League does, and there are few teams in any sport in the Ivy League more inept than Dartmouth men’s basketball… well, with the possible exception of Dartmouth women’s basketball.  If these folks are “employees,” Curmie would hate to see the amateurs.

Oh, but alumni contribute to the college because of the basketball team!  (Seriously, that’s an argument!)  Luckily, Curmie had put down his mug before reading that part, or coffee would’ve come out his nose.  There’s an alumni group, you see, Gentle Reader, that contributed over $300,000 to improve the basketball facilities!  Curmie got a missive from the alumni fund the other day.  That $300k for basketball would amount to about 7/10 of 1% of the unrestricted giving to the college last year (that doesn’t count the tens of millions of dollars designated for other specific uses.) 

It goes without saying that the basketball team at Dartmouth loses a lot more money than it brings in.  Don’t expect to see games televised except on ESPN+, and whereas Curmie’s other American school (his MA is from a British university), the University of Kansas, has sold out 16,300 seat Allen Field House every game for the last 22 years, Dartmouth can’t fill 2100 seat Edward Leede Arena even half full for Senior Night. 

The fact that according to the NLRB decision, “[N]o current members of Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team participate in NIL activities” sort of tells it all.  They’re eligible to do so, but local businesses don’t care enough to pay them as spokesmen.  Why?  Because they aren’t going to attract positive attention.  Curiously enough, the “whiny loser” image isn’t one that advertisers choose to foreground.  They’ll do their own ads or hire actors who know how to read a line. 

But if NIL threatens merely the idea of collegiate sports as we know them (see Curmie’s commentary here, here, and here, for example), the prospect of having to remunerate student-athletes will—nay, should—spell the end of intercollegiate sports altogether.  Many colleges are considering cutbacks to athletic programs as it is.  Curmie wrote last year that another Ivy League school, Brown, “had to cut some varsity sports a couple of years ago: losing money on athletics was one thing; losing that much money was untenable.”  

Whereas part of Curmie says “Good!”, the fact is that cheering on the home team is, or should be, very much a part of student life.  Curmie saw dozens of athletic events—football, baseball, basketball, hockey, lacrosse, ski jumping—as a student and doesn’t want future generations of students to be denied that opportunity. 

But if pampering a cohort of mediocre narcissists will cost even more time and/or money than it already does, the tipping point draws nearer.  There are some outstanding colleges and universities that don’t have athletics teams at all, or who play only in Division III or the NAIA: Brandeis, CalTech, MIT, NYU, and the University of Chicago come to mind.  Brooklyn’s St. Francis College recently eliminated all its Division I athletics programs, citing finances.  Indeed, only a handful of athletic departments break even; most lose millions of dollars a year, the shortfall made up by increased tuition and fees borne by other students, a goodly number of whom couldn’t care less about whether the basketball team is any good.

It's also probably worth mentioning that the two players quoted in the Politico article linked above are, predictably, not among the best players of even the remarkably unsuccessful team on which they play.  They’ve totaled 153 points and 50 rebounds in 26 games (let me save you the math, Gentle Reader: that’s less than 6 PPG and 2 RPG between them); both have more turnovers than assists.  They… erm… have little hope of a career in professional basketball.  Yet they seem to be at the center of the self-glorification.  Figures.

To be fair, there will be appeals after appeals, and it’s unlikely that college officials will have to negotiate for the services of hoopsters in the near future.  That doesn’t make the initial Regional NLRB ruling any less ludicrous.  Ultimately, the argument comes down to this: are athletes are treated significantly differently from participants in other extra-curricular (or co-curricular) activities?  If the answer is no, then there’s no case.  If it’s yes, then the rationale is that because jocks have been coddled in the past, they should be even more coddled in the future.  Color me unimpressed.

Curmie is loath to quote Donald Trump with anything even bordering on approbation, but on this one, he’s got it right.  If these guys want to be considered employees, the correct response is “You’re fired.”  Laura Sacks ought to hear those words as well.