I’m spent News flash: Big-time sports are all about the money BY SAM PFEIFLE

It was pretty crappy out this past Saturday, so I watched a lot of sports on TV, mostly basketball — no NASCAR, but a bit of golf (until it was clear Tiger was out of it). Thanks to Maine PBS, I was able to watch a lot of the high-school basketball tournaments, boys and girls, all classes. I even got to watch the Lady Catamounts of UVM (my alma mater) beat up on UNH. Loyal UVMers know that the boys lost Taylor Coppenrath to a broken wrist earlier in the week and that our dreams of back-to-back tourney appearances are pretty much dashed. So we should follow the women.

From about 2 p.m. on, I switched back and forth between UConn/Notre Dame and Valley/Hyde, and between Stanford/UCLA and Georges Valley/Jay.

It was slightly encouraging, but I couldn’t quite bring myself out of the major funk I’ve been in when it comes to national sports lately. Everything’s just so increasingly about money (yeah, yeah, tell you something you don’t know). A-Rod goes to the Yankees, the Red Sox cry about a salary cap — without irony, apparently. It’s all about money. Maybe 20 percent of the dialogue surrounding this deal was about how the teams would be improved. The other 80 percent was about how the money would change hands. That’s great baseball talk, something the Rangers should use in recruiting fans — hey, our team still sucks, but now it costs less money to put on the field. Come pay $50 for a ticket to watch it.

Major colleges are recruiting players using strip clubs and sex parties. Blue-chip recruits make money for their schools, so they can pay their coaches lots of money, so they can win more games and sell more merchandise and make more money for the school. These same coaches look the other way when their players are being raped by other players. They don’t want to lose money.

Maybe all D1 college football coaches should be forced to watch the Maine Metro Soccer Club’s coed training sessions at the Portland Sports Center via satellite feed. Sports journalists would never suggest something like this, though. They’re too busy pretending like incidents are isolated and acting shocked.

That is, if they’re not giving us the latest line. Our local sports radio is increasingly dominated by talk of gambling. Saturday and Sunday mornings, as I go to the dump, I’m listening to "Mr. Vegas" Scott Wetzel, who talks about nothing but gambling. Money. Even our own Shoe, WJAB morning co-host, now shills for his "friends" at some online gambling service. They gave him some money so they could make some money off people who think they can make some money off of betting on sports.

Sorry, Shoe, I know you’ve got to keep the station running, but it still gives me the creeps.

I don’t have a problem with gambling, though. People can do whatever foolish things they want, as long as they’re not stealing my credit-card number to do them. But I do have a problem with people who argue that games are boring if you don’t have some money riding. That must be a sad existence, only being able to root for a team if they can make you a buck.

UConn, who avenged an earlier loss by beating Notre Dame by 11 on Saturday, has become a team I can root for because Emeka Okafor, UConn’s star center, despite being an economics major, is clearly not about money. He has bona fide lottery-pick potential, but he’s also got a 3.8 PGA, and if he comes out after his junior year it will be because he’s already graduated — a year early. Plus, I’ve watched him improve his game amazingly over the past three years. There’s no question he has an incredible work ethic.

Just like the kids at Valley and Hyde, Georges Valley and Jay. The Valley/Hyde score was very low. Valley won, 43 to 36, to take the Western Class D championship. But the lack of scoring didn’t make the game boring. These kids were intense. To see defense played with this kind of passion was amazing, with such commitment to the team’s strategy. It will be interesting to see how Valley handle Eastern winner Calvary Christian, who doubled Valley’s output, scoring 86 points to beat Central Aroostook.

They play this Saturday, February 28, at 2:30. You should watch on Maine PBS. Or better yet, go to the Augusta Civic Center.

Jay versus Georges Valley was equally low-scoring, and even more thrilling. Jay’s Marc Kelvey tipped in a miss by Sean Fry at the buzzer to win 40 to 38. Again, defense dominated. Favored Jay’s thrill at the buzzer may have been as much relief from getting out from under the stifling blanket they’d been under all game as from winning.

On Saturday, in a battle of #2-seeded, 19-2 teams, Jay will tackle Houlton for the Class C championship, also in Augusta, at 8:30 p.m.

No question, it’s tired and cliché (maybe naive) for me to make note of it, but these high-school basketball players don’t even come close to playing for money. None will play major college basketball, let alone have a sniff at pro ball. They might get athletic scholarships, but even that is unlikely. They play because they love the game, love their teammates, admire and respect their coach, hope that maybe they can impress some girls in the stands.

It’s sad to think somebody couldn’t watch them play because he or she couldn’t find a bookie to take a bet on the over/under.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com