During the month of March, I enjoy watching the NCAA Basketball tournament. This year I have the added incentive of rooting for Michigan State which is a scant 30 minute drive from where I live. So, for the past couple weeks I’ve watched a number of tournament games that have involved hundreds of NCAA college Basketball players. Now, during the tournament games the cameras will sometimes focus on those in attendance. Maybe the camera will pan a coach’s wife during a particularly dramatic point of the game. Maybe the camera will locate a celebrity in attendance.
I must admit though that one thing that is driving me mad with curiosity is why the cameras keep panning the parents of Oklahoma Stars Blake and Taylor Griffin. With the exception of once seeing the cameras pan the father of UNC star Tyler Hansbrough the only parents I’ve seen the cameras focus on are the parents of the Griffin brothers of Oklahoma. The cameras have been on these parents so often during Oklahoma games I’ve begun to think that the Griffins were starring in some kind of bizarre reality Television show.
Now, naturally, I’ve found myself asking why the cameras have focused so much on the Griffins. I mean, after all, if there are 10 guys on each team that is potentially twenty set of parents that cameras could pan. But lets reduce the pool by 16 sets of parents and suggest that the cameras are only interested in showing family members of star players and coaches. That would reduce it to a far more manageable handful of people that the cameras might pan. Still, even by those reduced numbers the Griffin parents are getting far far more face time on camera proportionally then any other family members. Indeed, one begins to wonder if all their camera time is designed.
So why do the Griffins get all this camera time? Are they the only family members in attendance supporting their star basketball player sons? Is it because they are more telegenic then other people? Or is it because CBS is subtly communicating that inter-racial marriages are something to be esteemed and aspired to?