(upbeat music) - Hey, Steve Adubato here.

Sometimes I get to do a show, a program about things I'm fascinated, and I hope you're fascinated as well, because a guy you're gonna listen to knows more about sports at every level than anyone I know.

He's Steve Politi, sports columnist for "NJ Advance Media."

You can read him on NJ.com, "Star-Ledger," a bunch of other places.

He was just voted, Steve, check this out, the number one, did you know that you were selected as the number one sports columnist for the second year in a row by "The Associated Press?"

Did you know that?

- I'm aware of that.

Thanks.

Yeah.

- Congratulations, my friend.

- The big award is I get to keep this job and keep doing it, which I love so much.

- Hey, when we get to keep our gig in media, that's a good thing.

- It's a good thing.

- Can we do this?

I'm gonna go through a bunch of things with you.

I do wanna talk to, can we start with the significance?

I wanna talk to you about college sports, the Devils.

Mary Gamba runs our company, is a Devils fan.

I'm a Rangers fan.

We're doing this show, when we're doing it, it'll be seen later.

Sorry to the Devils fans out there.

You write about the Devils, the Giants, College sports at every level.

Rutgers, we'll talk about all those things.

NIL, transfer, portal, all that.

Can we start with this wacky March 7th game, Manasquan High School against Camden High School basketball game.

What the heck was the game?

Why does it matter?

And you wrote about it and got a lot of attention.

Explain what happened.

- Sure.

I mean it became a national story.

Camden was winning the game late, state playoff game, and Manasquan hit a shot that beat the buzzer, clearly beat the buzzer, ruled correctly by the referees on the court that it had beaten the buzzer.

And that's when all hell broke loose because one referee wasn't sure about this decision.

They huddled up, changed the call to the incorrect call, so that awarded the victory to Camden.

You know, within minutes, I think the referees realized their mistake, but it was too late.

They walked off the court and the decision was made.

So it became just a viral national story.

Manasquan of course, what we do in these situations as parents in the school districts sued and brought the case to court and there was all sorts of outrage across the nation about it.

But, you know, the decision was made and nothing changed.

Camden won the game.

- Why do you think the story became a national story that everyone was talking about, Steve?

- I think the video was just so, you know, you see bad calls all the time.

It's part of sports.

There's the human error in all sports.

It's just that the fact it was just such a glaring error to make the call correct and then go back and reverse it.

- Camden, sorry to interrupt, Steve.

As I watched the video, I was trying to understand this, and by the way, Camden's an extraordinary great basketball program.

Manasquan, I mean, the fact that they were even in that game and potentially winning it at the end is amazing.

We'll talk about that in a second.

Did the Camden coach go up to the referees and lobby for the call to be changed?

- I mean, I think there were certainly words that were said in the heat of the moment.

You know, this is what coaches do when there's a close call, you're always gonna say, wave it off.

That wasn't good.

From what I understand, it had nothing to do with what the referee was doing.

He was unsure, he was gonna seek out his partner.

What the referee should have done, and all referees agree, you make the call, you leave the court, you make it with authority.

You had the best view of it.

You're the one who should be the one who made it.

But clearly he wasn't sure of it and went through his partner and that's what happened, yeah.

- Last question on this, Steve.

The fact that Camden, urban community, disproportionately black, I think all the players are black on that team, Manasquan, Jersey Shore, white kids.

- Yeah.

- In your mind, sports, we love sports.

I'm obsessed, like a whole bunch of other people.

Is there a racial component to this story at all?

And if so, what do you think it is?

- Man, I hope not.

- I hope not either, but I don't know.

- Yeah, I mean, people brought up the fact the referee was black.

I thought that was very unfair.

I mean, the man made a mistake.

I don't think you can besmirch him that way.

And this is what sticks with me, Steve.

After all this happened, people were calling on Camden to reverse the decision, to come forward, to forfeit.

- Yeah Camden, say you didn't win the game and give it to Manasquan.

Who would do that?

Who would do that?

- Derek Jeter when he hit the home run in '96 and the ball, no he didn't go, "Well that wasn't good."

- What was the kid's name, something Maier?

- Jeffrey Maier, yeah, - Jeffrey Maier, Jeffrey Maier went out there and reached, it wasn't a home run.

Jeter's like, "I guess it's a home run."

Now the Yankees are gonna go, "Sorry, you win now."

- What I loved is the Manisquan players, they were at the game when Camden won the state title.

- Were they rooting for Camden?

- I don't know if they were rooting for Camden, but when Camden won the game, they stood and gave them a standing ovation.

And that to me, that stuck out to me as a great sign of sportsmanship.

You know what, you're unhappy.

You were robbed.

Everyone knows you were robbed, but you were there to support them.

The massive gone girls team happened to be playing in the game after that.

But you were there, stood up, gave a standing ovation.

That's the takeaway.

That was what stuck with me.

They rose above it.

- Shift gears 'cause there's so many things I wanna talk to you about.

The great Steve Politi, identified as the number one sports columnist second year in a row by "The Associated Press."

How about this one?

College sports, I just had this conversation with your colleague John Fanta over at Fox Sports, who's terrific.

I asked him about college sports today, where we are with the transfer portal, kids being able to go to one school after another, four years in college, four different schools.

The NIL, name, image, likeness, who's got the big money?

Who's ever got it, come to our school.

What the heck is college sports becoming and what does it mean for New Jersey based institutions of higher learning competing, particularly in basketball and football?

Please, Steve.

- I mean, it is hard and I understand traditionalists.

If you love the way college sports was 50 years ago, five years ago even, it's hard to watch.

And Seton Hall is the perfect example.

They go to the NIT final, win the championship, hang up banner, months later, the entire team, not just gone, but the star player of that team is taking money.

So Kadary Richmond leaves and goes to a competitor over in Queens at St. John's.

Nothing to do with money?

- Of course everything to do with money, and they admit it.

And I think that that's part of it for years.

I mean, we're talking a hundred years of college sports, athletes couldn't capitalize on the fact that they're a billion dollar industry.

For the first time, they can.

That's a good thing.

But it's really up to the people in charge of college sports to figure this out now and to give us some sort of structure.

- Steve, athletes were getting the shaft for years.

Universities and coaches making, you know, big money, money coming in.

You wanna try to compensate the athletes.

Is the pendulum, has it gone too far the other way where you can't keep a kid and there's hard to create any loyalty or chemistry with the team?

- I mean, you could certainly say that.

I think the bigger problem is that these kids know they have a small window to earn money and there's just no structure.

There's no rules, there's nothing to say that they shouldn't move.

And I think that's where the NCAA's gotta figure this out.

There's gonna be a settlement in a $20 billion lawsuit that'll give back money to money owed to the NCAA players in the past.

From that, they must come up with something that gives some sort of structure.

- Yeah, I just found out that the United States House of Representatives is dealing with that issue of past athletes wanting their share.

How dare they?

And they should get money.

But balance is the thing.

So how about this, I'm a Giants fan.

You write about the Giants.

Two things.

Saquon Barkley, you wrote in a column, did you not Mr. Politi, that it was good that the Giants were not engaged in the emotion of keeping Saquon Barkley, whom I love, number 26.

I got a big poster.

I love this guy.

Works hard, in the community, terrific.

And you said, don't let the emotions and don't let the fans who want him influence your decision.

Like, what's that?

We're the fans, Steve.

We'll let him go to Philadelphia?

- Do you enjoy winning championships?

If you enjoy winning championships, you shouldn't overpay a running back when you don't have an offensive line to block for 'em.

They shouldn't have drafted them, number two overall.

They made a mistake to do that.

I mean, it was too high.

He was a great player, but let's be honest, I mean they were six and 11 with them.

They've been bad with him.

They have so many other needs.

I think they made the right decision not to do what they've done so many times in the past, with by the way they did with Eli Manning, which was, they loved Eli, they thought he had some gas left in the tank, gave him a contract when clearly, he was past his prime.

And that set this franchise back to where it is now.

- You know, you're talking about paying people and you shouldn't pay Saquon Barkley.

Look at what they're paying Daniel Jones.

And you don't have to go into the weeds in this.

You don't have to be a Giants fan either.

But come on.

Daniel Jones, you think he's worth the money, the Giants are paying him?

What has he done on the field?

- Well, if you look at some of the contracts they're giving to other quarterbacks, he's gonna be underpaid at the rate he's going.

But I mean, they paid what the market gave him.

I totally agree with you that it might turn out to be a mistake to give the money they gave to Daniel Jones.

But at least now, what I like what they did in this draft, they gave him a receiver, a deep threat in this draft, someone they could throw the ball to.

Maybe if they can block for him, that'll help.

- All right, I'm gonna ask you about the Devils in a second.

When did you become obsessed with sports writing?

- I became a sports writer when I was working for "The Nutley Sun" in the 80s, my town paper in New Jersey.

- Are you talking about the Orechio's "Nutley Sun?"

Yes indeed, Orechio family Nutley Sun.

Yeah, where you get $4 an hour covering high school sports.

- Stop it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You worked with Carl Orechio?

I think he was the publisher over there.

- Frank Orechio and Carmen Orechio.

- Frank Orechio, oh my God.

"The Nutley Sun."

The building over by the stadium, right across by the Nutley Stadium.

- And right by the La Roche, yep, right down there.

Yeah.

- So hold on, so you write for "The Nutley Sun" but how do you wind up making a living as a sports writer?

- You know, I went to college for it, North Carolina, just kind of fell in love with it.

Got my first job down there and just been doing it ever since.

You know, I mean.

- Where'd you grow up?

- I grew up in Nutley, yeah.

I lived in town.

Yeah.

- Wow.

All right, Devils.

I'm not just doing this for Mary Gamba, who runs our company on a day-to-day basis.

But she's an obsessed Devils fan.

I am a Rangers fan.

As we speak, the playoffs are going on, the Rangers are in it.

The Devils never had a chance.

- No.

- What are you making a face for?

- That they never had a chance.

That's an accurate statement.

- But there are a lot of Devil's fans watching right now.

Give them reason or what reason do they have to be hopeful, moving forward?

- Well, I think that you still have a very young, talented Corey.

You've got Jack Hughes.

I mean, you've got Luke Hughes's brother, an excellent defenseman.

You know, they were starting a couple kids who were teenagers, all season on defense.

The biggest problem, everyone knows what it was, the goal tending was terrible and they didn't identify it early enough.

They didn't fix it until it was far too late.

You know, now they go into this off season, they've got to at least get to a point where they've got average tending.

They had the worst goal tending in league this year.

That with a couple of rookie defensemen playing, it makes it very hard.

- Real quick, do you care about the World Cup coming to New Jersey?

- Of course.

- Okay, but why does it matter?

- I mean, because it's the biggest sporting event in the world and we're gonna have access to I think nine different games, including the final, which will be at the Meadowlands.

Which is just, I mean, you know, what I love about the World Cup is those teams live in our communities, during this.

I mean, I'm not sure you're gonna run into 'em while you're getting your bagel on the way, but who knows?

Maybe Messi will be sitting there in Jersey City.

You have no idea where these guys are gonna be.

- Hold on, speaking about incredibly popular and well-known athletes.

I'm a struggling golfer and I'm obsessed with women's golf mostly because of Nelly Korda.

She played two tournaments back to back in New Jersey for the LPGA, the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

How much impact does a Nelly Korda have on women's golf and people being interested in it?

- You know, sadly not to the level I thought it would have.

And I went there and talked to her when it was in Upper Montclair at the end beforehand, and she's great.

She's American.

She's good looking.

She's incredibly talented.

She's got everything you think you would want from your star player.

You would think she'd have a Caitlyn Clark kind of effect on the sport, and she hasn't.

- Not, not.

- It hasn't taken off.

Maybe it's just the fact it's golf.

A little bit harder to make an inroads like that.

But you would hope that the LPGA would be able to capitalize on her ability and her talent, - Can we try this one?

Hall of Fame baseball?

- Okay.

- You've written that the cheaters being denied into the Hall of Fame, otherwise known as Alex Rodriguez.

I'm not saying he's a cheater.

I'm saying others have said that.

- I think you could say that.

- This is public broadcasting and we don't take a stand.

So here's the question.

To what degree, and you've written about this, Steve, do you believe that the baseball, the Hall of Fame of baseball is totally hypocritical or partly hypocritical in who they're letting in and who they're not letting in and what it has to do with steroids?

Talk about that, 'cause you've written about it.

- No yeah, I'm a voter and I've kind of looked at it this way.

- You have a vote in the Hall of Fame?

- I do, yeah.

And I look at it, can you write the history of the sport without these players?

And the idea you could have a hall of fame for baseball not have Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to me is just sort of absurd.

Alice Rodriguez as well.

And the other part of it is, as we're keeping out some players who have used steroids, I think it's almost a certainty that we've already let in several players, David Ortiz.

- You said Barry Bonds should be in?

- Absolutely.

- He should be in?

- Seven time MVP.

I mean, this is the home run record holder.

How do you keep someone out like that?

I mean, I understand what you're saying about people who say, "Well, he cheated and used steroids."

It was pretty prevalent at that time in baseball.

- Should ARod be in?

- I vote for ARod as well, yes.

- You did?

- I did.

Yep.

And this is my little moral code.

- Go ahead.

- If I think steroids needs you as the great player, I won't vote for you.

If I think you are already a great player and you've used steroids, that's my line in the sand.

- Last question, Rutgers football, I'm a Rutgers alum with so many others.

I'm a Seton Hall basketball fan, but I do root for Rutgers football team.

Can, in your opinion, they ever compete in the Big 10?

- I think so.

I think this year they're gonna compete in the Big 10.

The key is that this- - Did they just lose a quarterback?

- Well, that's the question.

- To the transfer portal?

- They finally have a quarterback from Minnesota, Ethan Cali of MACIS.

Hopefully he'll be the answer.

But the big thing is for the entirety, the first 10 years in the Big 10, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, always on the schedule.

None of those three teams are on the schedule this year.

Even if you're replacing with Southern Cal or Washington, it's a chance finally for them to get out from underneath those three powers.

- Hey Steve Politi, this was a guilty pleasure for me and I hope it was valuable for all of you watching.

Steve Politi, a sports columnist with "NJ Advanced Media."

As I said before, "The Associated Press" voted him, the number one sports columnist second year in around the country.

Steve, you are a pleasure every time I talk to you, and you're terrific.

Wish you all the best.

Thanks Steve.

Thanks Steve.

Appreciate having me, thank you.

You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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