Friday 02/23/2024
Took a short walk in the morning. At 10am I went and set up for an AV event, the “Buddies” meeting. The Buddies are a group of residents who regularly go and spend time with people in assisted living in the Lee center, keeping them company and socializing. It’s a highly worthwhile cause. The Buddies meet monthly, and Ian usually does their AV, but he is away visiting a daughter who is ill, and he asked me to fill in.
I was a bit surprised at the amount of content; two members of the Lee center staff attended and did presentations on the activities program and the snack program — yes, they have a planned snack program.
Then I changed to my red docent shirt, had a quick lunch, and went to the museum to lead a tour of 30 Japanese exchange students studying at Stanford. They were adorably cute, such a nice bunch of kids. Thirty is a very large group for a tour. There really should have been 2 docents, I don’t know why there weren’t. But I instructed them carefully that if they felt crowded, or weren’t interested, just to wander off, there was plenty to look at. Which some of them did. By the end I had a group of 15 or so, with kind of a cloud of another 6 wandering in the vicinity. Anyway, they were appreciative and I think got a good experience.
At 6 the carpool met to drive to the SWBB game. Not a good game; Arizona had very good defense and Stanford was missing its star center. And they lost, going from a 10 point lead with 3 minutes to play, to losing by 5.
During this game I began to feel quite strongly that I am done with SWBB as an enthusiasm. This has been building for a while, starting with the destruction of the PAC-12 last fall. Then on the way home, David G pointed out the new court ruling that came out today, effectively ending all NCAA restrictions on paying student-athletes to transfer to other schools. In other words, college athletics — at least the major ones, football and men’s basketball — probably Fencing and Lacrosse won’t be affected much — are no longer amateur sports. The athletes are free to bargain and the booster organizations are free to bid up their offers, and it is basically now a free-agent market for young professionals. And I don’t care. I’m not going to be around to watch it after this season. Maybe not all of this season. There are only a few games left. Probably Stanford will host the first/second round weekend of the NCAAs, and I might attend those, but that’ll be it.
Codgerville 