WCC IRS Report

A short breakdown of the West Coast Conference’s 2014 IRS report .

Financial Category	Subcategory	Amount ($)
Total Revenue		12,020,042
	Contributions and grants	3,294,125
	Program Service Revenue	8,660,661
	Investment income	57,148
	Other revenue	8,158
Total Expenses		11,042,169
	Grants and similar amounts paid	3,741,989
	Salaries, other compensations, employee benefits	1,633,472
	Other expenses	5,666,708
Distribution to members
	Gonzaga University	501,383
	Loyala Marymount University	280,560
	Pepperdine University	381,384
	University of Portland	331,384
	Saint Mary's College of California	334,909
	University of San Diego	331,383
	Santa Clara University	361,384
	Brigham Young University	507,383
	University of San Francisco	383,147
	University of the Pacific	314,072
Salary of Commissioner (Base compensation)
	Jamie Zaninovich	434,017
Highest paid Employees (Base Compensation)
	Jamie Zaninovich (Commissioner)	434,017
	Lynn Holzman (Senior Associate commissioner)	146,250

Story Ideas

One story idea I have for the L2M reports is a stats-heavy numerical analysis of how accurate NBA refs are throughout the games. I could see if the refs get better or worse as the game goes on.

Another story idea is to see how NBA players of draft eligibility perform based on age they are when drafted. (The NBA recently changed rules on when players who declared for the draft could renege on their decision.) I could look at the performance of players based what age / year in college they were when they left college. (Milwaukee Buck rookie Thon Maker evaded the one-and-done rule by going to prep school after he graduated high school. He said he avoided going to college because he wouldnt be focused on grades. The fact that was eligible at 18* in itself could be a story . )

The NCAA changed a few rules before last season (shot clock, 3-foot arc). I could go back and look at how the rule changes affect pace of play, TV ratings and how how long the game were before and after rules, as well as player and coach reactions.

My final story would be to examine how close gap in becoming between USA basketball and the rest of the world. Although the Olympics are over, I could look at how many international players have joined the NBA and NCAA since ’92, as well the performance of international players in the NBA, NCAA and in international youth competitions.

Story Questions

When looking the Last 2 Minute reports, some questions that could drive the reports are:

How accurate are refs on a given night?
Does any other professional sports league reveal this type of information?
Will Commissioner Adam Silver continue to release the reportS?
What will the NBRA (National Basketball Referee Association) do if the NBA doesn’t meet their demandS?
How do coaches and players feel about the reporting?

This story on NBA.com show the NBRA’s reaction the reports after the season. The union wants the NBA officials to at least make reforms to the process if they won’t abolish it.

Here the NBA defended the referee’s after a two controversial calls after two different playoff games. The article even gives a few statistics about how accurate referee’s are (which is about 90% of the time).

Charles Barkley shared his opinion about the L2M report, saying its one of the stupidest thing the NBA has done. Barkley point out how slow motion replays make the refs job easier but they also make them more prone to scrutiny when they miss a call.

This column in The Washington Times goes in depth on how the L2M reports undercut the referee’s jobs. The article says the practice is pointless because we already know that mistakes happen, that refs make bad calls and miss good ones throughout each game, not just at the end.

The referees missed five calls in the last 13 seconds of a NBA Playoff game decided by one basket, but this article says the refs are not to blame. It points how the whole game is just as important as the last two minutes.

School Days – Dacula High

The piece I’m looking at (for Dacula High School) is a feature from 2009 on the team’s star basketball player Brian Cole. I almost called Cole the team’s best player, but I was freshman at the time the article was written, I remember he was not the team’s best player.

After all, a piece on your team’s best player shouldn’t call him lazy in the first sentence:

DACULA – Brian Cole will admit it – he’s lazy.

The dude was like 6’9 version of Napoleon Dynamite, with a haircut. He also had a deadly hook shot, which his coach mentions, the helped his average a cool 19 points per game that year. I remember guarding him at practice watching him put it to work. The oaf would lumber down the block, seal with with arm, and toss the ball over his head. The hook wasn’t sexy, but money nonetheless. Have you ever even tried to shoot a hook shot before? It’s practically impossible to aim for everyone who’s not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

It’s funny the article mentions him dominating everyone until they caught up to him in height. He ended playing Division 1 for UNC-Greensboro, but couldn’t carve out a role. He never really developed a game outside of the hook shot because he was, well, lazy.

Saving String

Google Drive holds the key to success when I prepare notes and info for a story. A bare bone online for the story comes first, with a layout of what info I need and where to put when it comes times to write the story. Each person gets a Google Doc with interview quotes transcribed. Those transcripts sit in a folder called ‘interviews”. Then I have another folder, call facts/stats, with background facts/stats about my main characters on separate Google Docs. No real, upper-level management when it comes to keeping my files organized.

NBA L2M Report – Question

When the NBA started its Last 2 Minute Review program in February 2015, the goal was to increase transparency in officiating. The reports tell you what calls the referees missed in the last two minutes of a close game. In essence, they retroactively assess what should’ve happened without actually righting any wrongs.

Here are some questions the league should consider before the start the 2016/17 season regarding the practice:

Why not let the referees talk to the media after the game? If the goal is transparency, why not let the refs speak up for themselves over controversial calls.
Would you consider retroactively changing the outcome of a game decided at the buzzer?
How is this improving the quality of the NBA product?
Can the refs appeal any call deemed incorrect after the reports are handed out?
Who are the individuals reviewing and editing report ? Do they have extensive officiating experience, like Steve Javey?

NBA Last 2-Minute reports

Over the summer, The National Basketball Referees Association asked the NBA to stop releasing its Last Two Minute Reports. The Last Two-Minute Reports which tell everyone accurate and inaccurate calls and non-calls in all games within five points in the final two minutes of regulation and during overtime. The fact that the NBA tried out at all is surprising.

I bring this up for 2 reasons. First, as we all know, nothing will change retroactively, and I think the playoffs have shown that the refs aren’t exactly improving because of it. We don’t need a report to tell us a call was wrong (most of the time the 6-10 angles and slow-mo replays tell us that) and most of the calls they review are either innocuous or things that are never called (travels, illegal screens) anyway.

Second, I am a firm believer that a foul call in the first quarter can have just as much of an impact as a foul call in the final minute. So rather than do a L2M report of every little thing (we don’t need a report telling us that an intentional foul to stop the clock was a foul), why not do a report of just the controversial or borderline calls in a game? 95-98% of the average game is not controversial, so just break down the remaining calls and non-calls and let us know if they were right.

Sandusky Reaction

“Who’s Joe Pa? and who’s Sandusky?”

Those were the main two questions floating in my head when the Penn State news broke. At the time, I didnt care for NCAA football. So while it was a big deal that a coach was molesting his players – children – for decades, I didn’t know who the hell he was (which made it a bigGER deal.) Ran a wiki on him, and I had questions.

– Why?

– How did he get away with this for so long?

– How do you convince someone you’re not a child molester ?

Child molesters come in all forms. As a player, you don’t think “I hope my coach doesn’t touch me at some point.” He broke a sacred code. And the fact that he looks like he could be the Pope made it more damning. Or weird.

The most surprising part was hearing Sandusky try to describe what he doing to the players as anything but sexual. Like he couldn’t find the right word for it, but ‘sexual’ didn’t fit the bill.

Stories like become personal to people, and their back stories to come out. Abuse against children are prevalent, but aren’t spoken on.

Vox – 7 Myths about Isis

I knew what ISIS was – is – before reading the cards. I just didn’t know myth from facts.

Like the idea that ISIS is crazy and irrational. In theory, ISIS isn’t irrational. The rationale behind all it’s activity : “to establish a caliphate governed by an extremist interpretation of Islamic law”. Violent methods? Sure. Psychopathic? Yes. But not irrational.

Or the myth (i didnt know was a myth) that ISIS is afraid of fighting all-female military units. The theory is that ISIS fighters believe that if a woman kills you, you don’t get to go to paradise. ISIS actually has its own female brigades, and the group uses them to push its misogynistic ideology.

The information was succinct, yet info-packed. Detailed, yet streamlined. Easy-to-read, but long enough to skim.

Not sure when Vox started this, but it has a good thing going.

Journalists I Admire – Frank Isola

Frank Isola, Knicks beat writer for the NY Daily News, is hand-down my favorite sports journalist. Like Grantland’s Shea Soranno (more an author than journalist) and Bill Simmons (more sports-entity than journalist), Isola’s got the best blend of sports breakdown and wit in his writing. Frank Isola started on the Knicks beat for the New York Daily News in the fall of 1996, when he was 29 years old. Now, at 48, he has been covering the team longer than anyone else. He keeps his reporting straight-up, and doesn’t pull punches on his Twitter either.

In his article declaring the ’96 Bulls would beat the ’16 Warriors, Isola calls out a whole generation of basketball weighing in a debate they weren’t even alive to watch — in the first sentence. As for his actual analysis, he breaks down the match up, from starters, to bench, playing time, travel and rule differences between the two teams. He’s got quotes from players on both sides of the debate (like Steve Kerr, who is literally on both sides of the debate). The article ends with Isola pointing out that if LeBron, by himself, took the Warriors to six games, the Warrior wouldn’t stand a chance.

Isola is also known for his trademark sneak-disses towards Knicks management in his writing. When addressing the NBA trend towards resting star players , Isola point out how Knicks president Phil Jackson took a break during the middle of the season to visit Woodstock for a few days. Over his time covering the Knicks, he got on the team’s bad side. Isola has said the Knicks will not allow his or anyone else from the News to conduct one-on-one interviews with players or coaches. Still, Isola finds a away to deliver fair, balance and in-depth coverage of the team, all year.