In a blow to vendors, concessionaires, and local restaurants today, grateful and down-to-earth professional basketball players rejected a 50/50 split of income with team owners from the National Basketball Association.

“It’s not like fans come to see us in really nice, well-stocked, underwritten, and climate controlled arenas with the help of mass marketing campaigns,” said one informed player. “Fans come to games because they know the precise dates and times that we’re on the court. They don’t care about teams, community, or a good time. They just come to watch our amazing skills, like they have in droves on the blacktops we grew up playing on.”

Whatever the case, the real losers in all of this are tattoo artists, experts say. “Inking these walking billboards up is like 70% of my non-drug related business,” said one parlor owner from Los Angeles. “Most players are still only 50% covered, so this work stoppage really impedes us from not only increasing our invoice per customer, but contributing to society in a meaningful way, like tanning salons do.”

When asked for comment, a player’s union representative said his constituency is “crawling in their skin to get tatted up,” and that the union is considering making NBA owners pay for all future tattoos, since they’re “very becoming” to the overall product on the court.

Variety show host Jimmy Kimmel and his bit about “suffering tattoo artists” contributed to this report.

Interesting story by USA Today on how ESPN allegedly enticed the ACC to poach Pitt and Syracuse from the Big East, after the latter conference refused a TV deal from ESPN.

I suppose it’s only logical that profiteers would move to high school basketball, having already compromised professional and collegiate hoops.

That said, the below is a must-read summary for any athletic parent, youth coach, or sports fan:

A jarring look at youth basketball: Part 1 | Part 2

Note: The above story is a review of the eye-opening Play Their Hearts Out by George Dorhrmann.

Notable feature stories I’ve written recently:

• How visitors beat the home team (Deseret News)
• How fantasy sports have changed how we cheer (Seattle Times)
• Perhaps unintentionally, Internet bringing down cost of higher education (Fox News)
• Gaming pioneer on gamer abandonment, masterpieces, and approaching death (IGN)

Similar to Madden NFL, the cable sports network now highlights the playmaker with a under-ring (as seen 1:05 into video). Me likey.

From NPR’s book review of Scorecasting:

When they examined attendance data for the Cubs, one of the unluckiest teams in professional sports who have not won a World Series in 102 years, the authors found it to be remarkably stable — around 90 percent — no matter if the team was at the top of the league or on a losing streak. Fair-weather fans, it seems, actually incentivize a team to win; team owners and coaches will work harder to win games so they can sell more tickets.

Not only are fair-weather fans better for the organization, though. Being one is better for oneself, as fair-weather fans are more at liberty to chose entertainment options that “work for them,” as opposed to staying involved with a mediocre (aka boring) team.

In other words: Go, Cougars! (So long as they’re winning.)

Self-Correcting Golf Balls That Always Fly Straight (Fox)

Quote: “In the 75-year history of the wire service era, CBSSports.com research showed that it is nearly impossible to win a national championship at the highest level in major college football without cheating. Among the schools that have won titles since 1936, when human polls became the accepted form of determining the sport’s champion, only Penn State and BYU have never had a major violation in football.”

Go, Cougars!

With the 10th pick in the NBA draft, a lot of people became Sacramento Kings fans last night. I’m one of them.

Above is the kings.com homepage, updated a couple hours after Jimmer was selected. Nice welcome.

“See Jimmer live all season!”

But if it’s anything like the book, Moneyball should be a good movie.