Saying no to hoops ... for a few more weeks

The first and foremost question to ask in coverage of anything is if it serves the public.

If it's a video of a rat pulling a slice of pizza down steps in a New York subway station, yeah, I guess. If it's going to a college basketball media day in late September or early October, I'm leaning toward no.

So it is that I have boycotted last week's Northern Iowa men's basketball media day, and done likewise with Iowa State's Tuesday and Iowa's today. The Cesar Chavez of sports bloggers, right here.

OK, so nobody cares if one dope skips press conferences of basketball teams. If you do care, you have more to worry about than which freshmen will contribute to the Hawkeyes this winter.

No, this is written more to complain about college basketball season being tooooo looooong.

Keep in mind, I like basketball. I like it a lot. I even watched several minutes of the Milwaukee Bucks-Chicago Bulls exhibition game Tuesday night, but only because It was Fred Hoiberg's first game as the Bulls' coach.

His team shot 39 3-pointers, by the way. It missed 11 of its first 12, and I stopped watching. I mean, it was an NBA exhibition game. You have to snap back to reality at some point.

The Bulls made 10 of 19 threes after halftime, and won, 105-95. Doug McDermott chucked 11 threes, and had 23 points. Like Hoiberg, he is from Ames.

'It's a blast,' McDermott said after the game. '(Hoiberg) makes it fun, he makes it a lot of fun for us. We move the ball real well, real unselfish, get open looks, he's not going to pull you out if you have a bad shot. It's one of those deals where he just lets you play your game.'

Iowa State has a lot of interesting angles remaining for the season ahead under its new coach, Steve Prohm. So does Iowa. So does UNI. And I'll get to those when the season begins ... in 35 days!

We're in football season now, and my uneducated guess is that you the sports fan are a lot more locked into in-season football than in-the-distance basketball.

Iowa's first two games are Nov. 13 and 15 against Gardner-Webb and Coppin State. So the Hawkeyes' real season doesn't start until Nov. 19, at Marquette.

But if the Hawkeyes' football team still is rolling by then and that week's home game against Purdue is very important, Marquette won't be marquee around here.

That Purdue-Iowa game is Nov. 21. Which is the same day as North Carolina plays at Northern Iowa in basketball. Which is unfortunate for me, since I can't be two places at once. One is difficult enough sometime.

That's because getting a visit by Marcus Paige of Linn-Mar and the Tar Heels is a huge deal for a mid-major. To have those guys to come to Northern Iowa, that should have a day of its own on the Iowa sports calendar.

No one's to blame for it being played on a football Saturday. You take North Carolina when North Carolina says it can come. And, it's not like it won't be a sold-out deal in Cedar Falls with a fantastic atmosphere. But if only it were the night before, or the day after ...

Anyway, the state's loaded with good senior players. Georges Niang, Mike Gesell, Wes Washpun, Naz Mitrou-Long, Jarrod Uthoff, Matt Bohannon, Jameel McKay, Adam Woodbury, Paul Jesperson, Abdel Nader, Anthony Clemmons.

Wow. Writing that, I'm kind of getting a little cranked up for hoops.

But we'll have from mid-November to maybe as late as April to write about these guys, talk about these guys, enjoy watching these guys play ball. Can we at least wait until college football season is half over?