I love this time of year. For those of you who read this blog on a regular basis, you’re probably surmising I love any time of the year if it has to do with sports. Conversely, I fall into the dark abyss of melancholy when the calender signals a sports lull. This supposition is not entirely true. I am grateful for each day and the promise it holds. However, sports do brighten my mental landscape. With that being said; when an annual athletic event of great importance - to me and the rest of the sports loving world- occurs, I become a bit giddy with anticipation.
I have previously voiced this sentiment concerning sports “perfect storm” of early fall. When college and professional football are in full swing, Major League baseball reaches its crescendo staging the World Series, and college and professional basketball are just getting started. While not as much in terms of sheer volume happens in early spring, the import of the competitions is no less noteworthy. The March Madness of the NCAA basketball tournament and the start of a new Major League baseball season happen in a three week span.
I had to type that last sentence three times before I got it right my hands were trembling so with excitement. Before you pass judgment on what brings me pleasure, think of what interests aside from your families that floats your boat. I thought so. Unless your hobbies are stem cell research or oncology let’s not be rash in our opinions shall we? I know some of you may think who cares about an over hyped competition of pituitary cases? Let me say, Luther Halsey Gulick might be if he were alive today. I’d venture to say he’d more than care; he’d be ecstatic.
You see, it was Mr. Gulick who instructed a student of his at the Young Men’s Christian Association Training School that Gulick headed, to come “up with a game that could be played indoors in the winter and integrate the YMCA’s holistic principles of mind, body and spirit.” The students name was James Naismith; the game he came up with was basketball.
The hooligan Irish and German immigrant youths of nineteenth century Boston needed something to occupy their time other than their normal shenanigans. I love using “hooligans” and “shenanigans” in the same sentence. These incorrigibles couldn’t very well play baseball in the snow could they?
Theodore Roosevelt didn’t like what he saw was happening to America’s middle- and upper-class younger generation of boys. Roosevelt coined the term “sissies” when he referred to these lads spoiled by the comforts of urban life. Roosevelt felt they hardly seemed prepared to take over industries their more “manly” fathers had worked so hard to create. “Only aggressive sports can create the brawn, the spirit, the self-confidence, and the quickness of men essential for the existence of a strong nation,” Roosevelt asserted. Christ, his head would explode if he saw the “mere animal sloth and ease” and “the gradual failure of vitality” of today’s video game playing couch potatoes.
Unlike baseball, basketball was relatively inexpensive to play. Naismith hung peach baskets to crossbeams. All that was needed was a pair of shorts, a pair of athletic shoes, and a ball. It is this aspect that makes the game so appealing for university athletic departments on a budget. As I’ve said before; nothing brings a university notoriety like success in a major sport.
Academics are great, but no one hears of great academic schools without doing some research. Sure, aside from the Ivys and the Academy's, there are ten or so schools known primarily for their academic standing. Even a couple of those schools, like Stanford for example, have outstanding athletic programs. The University of Chicago was known for its sports before it was known for its academics. For small schools, funding a football or baseball program can be cost prohibitive. But a top notch Division I basketball program can exist even at the most obscure minimal enrollment institution.
The NCAA has made the format for entrance to the “Big Dance” as the NCAA tournament is sometimes referred, quite enticing for smaller schools. Most DI conferences, no matter minuscule, have their own tournament at the end of their regular season. The winner automatically qualifies for the “Big Dance.” That’s how schools like St. Mary’s (enrollment 4300) or Quinnipiac get in to face juggernauts like Kansas or Kentucky. Not only does this bring recognition to the school by being on national television, but every once in awhile one of these lesser programs emerges victorious. Because it occurs only every once in awhile, Greg Cote, that paragon of sports insight who writes for the Miami Herald, lobbied in his column prior to the start of this year’s tournament, to do away with automatic entry for the smaller conference winners. What an asshole. Almost as if his piece served as the motivation, several schools were able to give Mr. Cote a collective middle finger salute.
Small schools’ beating big schools is one of the main reasons why I become immersed in the tournament. Another reason is the thrilling finishes. This year I got both.
In the first round: Murray State defeated Vanderbilt. How many of you know in which state Murray State - since there isn’t a state called “Murray” though maybe there should be- is located? I thought so. It’s Kentucky by the way. Cornell, yes that Cornell, beat Temple. Ohio University, not Ohio State, soundly defeated a heavily favored Georgetown team. Old Dominion beat Notre Dame. Anytime a Notre Dame team loses anything I’m thrilled. Wofford nearly upset Wisconsin who would lose to Cornell in the next round, and BYU needed two overtimes to beat the underdog Florida Gators. If you want to know what state Wofford’s in, look it up.
The University of Washington squad not only upset Marquette in the first round, they duplicated the feat by beating favored New Mexico in the second. St Mary’s of California with its forty-three hundred enrollment, beat powerhouse Villanova, officially fucking up my bracket. But the biggest story was UNI, or the University of Northern Iowa for you laypersons.
Not only did UNI beat UNLV (I like typing that too), but they beat the overall number one seed of the tournament and the top ranked team in the country Kansas. This was all the more exciting because UNI plays on Robert J. McCoy Court. This thrills me no end because my son was once roommates at the University of Florida with Robert J. McCoy Jr. the elder member of The Brothers McCoy previously mentioned in past blogs. The hero for UNI was guard Ali Farokhmanesh whose specialty was shooting three-pointers from the parking lot. He also played with gonads the size of bowling balls and as tough as titanium. Take that Greg Cote.
CBS did a wonderful job keeping me abreast of all that was happening. Only a couple of too soon cutaways and an errant selection of the featured game for my region caused by producer brain farts kept the coverage from being nearly perfect; those missteps and Gus Johnson, one of the CBS announcers yelling about everything. I didn’t purchase the DirecTV package. I think had I been able to watch each game in its entirety, watching multiple games on fifty inches of splits-screen HD television, I may have popped a blood vessel due to sensory overload.
I think the NCAA tournament should stay exactly the way it is…unless I have a stroke. That would be bad.
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