In Bergman’s damning special now available on PBS’s “Frontline” website, viewers are shown the side of “amateur” athletics that’s almost never discussed inside the beery bubble of sports media. We see, for instance, an NCAA that makes billions off television contracts, while student athletes receive only a tiny fraction of that revenue in the form of scholarships. We see coaches making millions off long-term contracts, while players remain perpetually at risk of losing their meager financial aid. We see, in short, an Athletic-Industrial Complex that turns schools into support systems for sports — rather than the other way around.

Commenting on the perverse situation, fellow investigative journalist Michael Lewis told Bergman that the typical fan “shouldn’t care unless you have some weird obsession with justice.” But that’s not true in the age of strapped budgets and skyrocketing tuition. Fan or not, justice fetishist or otherwise, the scandal should concern every American taxpayer because we’re all paying a price.

Today, the vast majority of college athletic departments run operating deficits. In 2009 alone, that meant “about $1.8 billion in student fees and university funds went to cover gaps,” according to USA Today — and much of those fees and funds are those of taxpayer-owned public universities. These deficits are particularly stunning considering A) the NCAA is raking in so much TV cash, B) those NCAA revenues are tax exempt — i.e., tax subsidized — under higher ed’s nonprofit status and C) federal taxpayers are additionally supporting athletic departments by classifying boosters’ donations as tax exempt.

Some of the deficits, of course, come from schools funding non-commercial sports that are net money-losers. But many of the budget gaps come from exorbitant pay packages, as high-profile coaches regularly make six- or seven-figure salaries. Indeed, while politicians have lately demonized $40,000-per-year grade-school teachers as the education system’s overpaid greedheads, college coaches are often the highest-paid government employees in our public school systems, with USA Today reporting that “among public schools in the NCAA’s top-level Division I, coaches’ compensation is now the biggest hit on the budget.”

The NCAA champion University of Connecticut Huskies exemplify the problem. The New Haven Advocate reports that as the school continues pleading poverty to justify raising tuition on the state’s residents, an audit found those student fee increases are annually back-filling $7.5 million of the athletic department’s budget. That public subsidy goes to pay the $10.5 million the university spends on coaches‘ salaries, including basketball coach Jim Calhoun’s $2.3 million annual haul. And that’s on top of the millions taxpayers shelled out on the university’s football complex.

As Bergman’s PBS report documents, UConn’s story is being replicated all over America. It’s a story of unbridled avarice that gives the NCAA basketball tournament’s “madness” motto a double meaning — a story you may not hear beneath the cheering throngs, a story you may not want an old-school gumshoe like Bergman to tell you about, but a story we’ll continue to pay for unless we wake up and end the insanity.

The Bulldogs shot a Final Four-record low 18.8 percent from the field (12 of 64). The 12 field goals were the second-fewest ever in a championship game.

It wasn’t as if the Huskies were lighting up the scoreboard themselves. They shot 34.5 percent for the game (19 of 55) but made 10 of 24 shots in the second half (41.7 percent).

“Sometimes shots don’t go in, and that’s basketball,” Butler coach Brad Stevens said. “But I don’t want to just say shots didn’t go in, because UConn had a lot to do with it. … Great teams give themselves a chance to win even when they’re not shooting well, as UConn did.”

Shelvin Mack hit a 3-pointer with less than a second to play in the first half to give the Bulldogs a 22-19 lead, and Chase Stigall hit a 3 just 22 seconds into the second half to put Butler up by six. After that, it was all UConn.

Butler managed five field goals the rest of the way.

The Huskies have always been defensive-minded under Calhoun, but this was above and beyond what anyone could expect.

Calhoun didn’t just get his team going defensively with the halftime speech.

“Going into halftime, I didn’t have any points. My teammates just encouraged me, saying, ‘We need you.’ My coach just encouraged me, saying, ‘We need you. Pick it up,’” said freshman Jeremy Lamb, who finished with 12 points. “After I saw it go in a couple times, I got my confidence back and knocked down a couple shots.”

His teammates were knocking away Butler’s shots. The Huskies finished with 10 blocked shots, four each by freshman Roscoe Smith and sophomore Alex Oriakhi.

“I thought they challenged shots better than any team we played all year,” Stevens said.

Connecticut had been one of the best defensive teams in terms of field goal percentage over the past decade, leading the country in that statistic three times in the last seven years.

“We made some technical adjustments, switching some things we don’t normally switch, to chase them off the 3-point line,” Calhoun said, referring to Butler making five 3s in the first half. “And I ended (the halftime talk with) something my assistant told me, ‘You’re better than this.’

“I said, ‘If you play faster on defense, we’ll get faster on offense.’ And quite frankly, it worked out like that.”

Butler had two long stretches without a field goal in the second half. The first lasted 7:07 and the Bulldogs missed 13 shots during that span as Connecticut took a 33-26 lead.

The second lasted 6:09 and they missed nine shots in that one as the Huskies went ahead 41-28.

“They’re a great defensive team,” said Shelvin Mack, who led Butler with 13 points and was the Bulldogs’ only double-figure scorer. “They’re very athletic. They would contest shots that people normally wouldn’t be able to contest.”

Years from now people will see the final score and say it had to be a great defensive effort.

It was. For one team for one half after one heck of a halftime speech.

Obama’s predictions have become a bit of a political Rorschach test. Think Obama’s become cautious to a fault since his midterm shellacking? Well then, you probably noticed that he placed every single No. 1 seed in the Final Four — not exactly an act of predictive derring-do. But, more to the point, the segment seems to have sharply divided the president’s supporters and detractors. To many, Obama’s bracket exercise was nothing more than a pleasant, if inconsequential diversion. But another vocal group of commentators have spun the display as nothing less than a dereliction of duty. 

Take, for example, the more outspoken conservative pundits. Glenn Beck wondered if Obama had been hit with a “stupid stick.” Big Government’s editor in chief Mike Flynn, similarly,  chastised the very idea of Obama participating in the bracket tradition: 

Japan is suffering from a natural disaster that threatens to turn into an existential crisis. Colonel [Gadhafi] has unleashed a blistering assault on pro-democracy rebel forces. Large swaths of the Middle East are in turmoil. The federal government is bleeding red ink, with absolutely no end in site. The economy sucks and is getting battered by skyrocketing commodity prices and a volatile oil market. Near-record numbers of Americans are leaving the work force. If the world isn’t quite on fire … it is at least approaching a slow burn. But what’s all that against a little MARCH MADNESS!

Martin Bashir took to the president’s defense, pointing out that Obama did begin the segment by urging viewers to donate to Japanese relief efforts. The MSNBC host went on to argue that everyone, even the president, needs a diversion every once in a while:

Now, given what the president has said, it would be churlish to condemn him for wasting time, particularly since much of the nation is transfixed by these games. And that’s the point: people need some diversion, some entertainment, particualrly at times of stress. And the president doesn’t have many outlets … So, with our own commander in chief, spending a few minutes on his favorite sport — let’s give him a break, and hope that he too gains some benefit from a small diversion away from the huge challenges that still demand his attention every waking hour.

Watch Bashir’s full segment:

The White House defended Obama’s decision to fill out a bracket in a press conference this afternoon. Press secretary Jay Carney explained the president was fully capable of juggling several issues and that using the broadcast opportunity to ask for donations made sense.

Which side are you on? Did the few minutes the president set aside to share his bracket picks with the nation distract him from more important duties? Or should we give him a break because, well, the man loves basketball. Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section.

And by the way, President Obama thinks Kansas will win.

The notion of highly compensated athlete putting his professional dispute in the same league as slavery immediately set off a waves of disgust across the Internet. The story has already racked up well over 6,000 comments on Yahoo, many of which feature the words “jackass,” “pompous jerk,” and “@#$%.” At a time when nearly nine percent of all Americans are unemployed, working class labor disputes are front page news  and human trafficking is a real and horrifying epidemic, it’s easy to see how Peterson’s remark would seem not just spectacularly tone deaf but outright hurtful.

Even some of Peterson’s peers were taken aback, responding quickly to distance themselves from the sentiment. Green Bay’s Ryan Grant tweeted, “I have to totally disagree with Adrian Peterson’s comparison to this situation being Modern day slavery..false.. Their is unfortunately actually still slavery existing in our world.. Literal modern day slavery… That was a very misinformed statement.” [sic] And the Saints’ Heath Evans tweeted to his followers, “I agree w/ most all of your comments on AP! We are all blessed to even strap a helmet on in this league!”

But writer Doug Farrar himself saw the remark differently, as an unfortunate but off-the-cuff flub. He soon updated his story to note, “Based on the context in which the comments were made, I do not believe that Peterson was actually equating his current position in the NFL with any kind of slavery. I will update this piece if he clarifies his statement.” And on Wednesday morning Peterson’s agent Ben Dogra issued the statement that “People should not just take his statements per se word by word. It’s a difficult time. He would love to play… He’s soft-spoken but if he has something on his mind he’ll speak it. But I think nobody should really look at those words and take them out of context.” So, he’s speaking his mind but don’t take it literally? That doesn’t exactly clear it up. How about just, sorry?

The incentive to say sorry can be pitifully small when the Internet is such a wildly unforgiving place. Sure, the idea that anything can ever truly be scratched from the record has always been a fiction – as anyone who’s ever had their most inane, drunken, heat of the moment outbursts thrown back in their faces can attest. But there has to be more to any given day than taking excessive umbrage over every idiotic thing a public figure is apologizing for. We’re at the point now where far more words are spilled for explanations and qualifications than the original sentiments themselves.

Peterson’s comment was unmistakably dopey. But the sum of an individual is more than the dopiest of his remarks. And there’s got to be a difference between saying something stupid about labor disputes or the economic markets after an earthquake and the revealing display of a genuinely hateful mindset. Sometimes, it’s entirely possible a person is just grasping clumsily for the right metaphor, and chokes. We’ve all done it, and at some point, we all need to be forgiven for it. Because if a foot, once placed in one’s mouth, remains there irrevocably, pretty soon none of us are going to be able to carry on a meaningul, ungarbled conversation.

Moreno said he did not know the bird was a good-luck charm.

“I want to apologize to the fans,” he said after the game. “I was not trying to hurt the owl. I did it to see if it would fly.”

Pereira club president Francisco Javier Lopez said the player would be punished. Moreno also could be disciplined by soccer’s governing body in Colombia. Animal welfare officials said there are no animal cruelty laws in Colombia.

“It made me very angry that he kicked the little animal,” said Atletico Junior player Luia Paez, who scored a goal during Atletico’s 2-1 victory. “It was already injured by being struck by the ball. I said a bunch of awful things to him. I was really angry.”