It's March 1. A few thousand men who have spent the last few months eating too much barbeque and sitting in their La-Z-Boys are learning how to play baseball again in spring training camps. The NBA is, ho-hum, watching the Bulls walk all over everyone and their mother. Big news in the NHL is that the guy who used to be really good, but isn't anymore, got traded. (Big whoop.) But that's okay. We're about to enter the finest month of sports known to man.
Two words.
March.
Madness.
This year has been a weak one for college hoops. What do you expect when you lose Jerry Stackhouse, Joe Smith, Rasheed Wallace, and Antonio McDyess for their last two years. Kentucky and UMass have been amazing, UConn, Villanova, and Kansas have been great, and everybody else has been, well, eh. When the most important game of the year was the first (Kentucky vs. UMass, back in November) you know there are problems.
But the beauty of March Madness (a.k.a. The Big Dance, The Whole Enchilada, or The Big Hot Dog) is that none of that matters at all. The tournament is the perfect time for the sport to pay penance to its fans for a poor season. From start to finish, you get what you expect from a sport-excitement, drama, tension, the whole deal.
The best games are always in the first two rounds, when a team can come out of nowhere to topple the big guns. There are always the Ball States, the Coastal Carolinas, the Richmonds, the teams whose entire seasons can be made memorable with a single win over a Georgetown, North Carolina, or Duke. And just about all the games after the second round are exciting. Hell, this year's Super Bowl was considered one of the most thrilling ever. The Steelers lost 27-17. In the NCAA tournament, that's a blowout.
CBS's coverage will be, of course, abysmal. A man can take only so much of Jim Nantz and Billy Packer. And the network (slogan: "Still more popular than The Nashville Network") has the annoying habit of constantly switching from game to game just moments before winning shots and thrilling plays. Admittedly, it's tough when you've got so many games to show in a short time, but it takes a special skill to make as sorry a showing for yourself as CBS has for the last few years.
"I know!" screamed the high-level executive in the CBS Building a couple of years ago, the guy who last touched a basketball when the PhysEd coach made him in ninth grade. "We have all these games to show. Let's show two or three-or even four-at the same time on the same screen. Let's reduce the sizes of the players until they can be contained in individual pixels on the screen!" So now, when there are two interesting games going on at once, we get to watch them both at the same time in sizes suitable for dwarves.
For years, fans have argued for the return of the first two rounds to ESPN, where the 48 games of the first four days of the tournament could be shown in their entirety. (The wonders of tape delay, don't you know.) But that's unlikely to happen as long as ESPN is run by Disney, which also owns ABC.
So, what can we expect this year? It's difficult to imagine someone stopping Kentucky. UMass may have done it back in November, but that was before the Cats had settled on a rotation.
Having so many talented players can cause problems with egos fighting for playing time. (For example, look at North Carolina in 1994, when one of the most talented teams ever faltered when then-freshmen Stackhouse and Wallace complained about playing behind seniors like Eric Montross and Brian Reese-and lost in the second round to Boston College.)
But Kentucky has finally gotten its players in order. When you're deep enough to play nine players without a significant drop-off in talent, you're probably going to be good. Kentucky has figured out how to play them, and the Cats are great.
There are other good teams, to be sure. UMass ain't bad, but they're going to choke before the Final Four again. Edgar Padilla will start playing like a mortal again, and playing in the soft Atlantic-10 conference has yet again left them unprepared for tough competition, although a tough early schedule helped. UConn has Ray Allen, who can take over a game when he feels like it. Kansas has balance up the wazoo, but not much of a go-to man. But no one will be able to stop Kentucky.
But still, no matter who's playing, don't expect to see me in classes that Thursday or Friday. You've got to have your priorities straight.
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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