From the Sidelines: Waiting for the Madness to begin

By Aaron Lichtig

TIM BOYLE/NEWSMAKERS As March Madness draws near, team defense will get tougher, and the intensity of NCAA play will reach fever pitch.

I need CBS. I don't care if Comcast takes away every other channel. When I turn on my suitemate's Sony, the NCAA tournament had better be there. It's the most exciting sporting event in the world, from the tipoffs in the first round to the last seconds of the championship game.

Legions of sports purists will argue that the World Cup is more exciting, the NBA Finals showcases better athletes, and the WWF Royal Rumble is more thrilling. But I disagree. The NCAA tournament showcases the world's (or at least America's) greatest game played in its purest form. College hoops players practice long hours, all working toward the same goal. Every team has a shot at the game's highest level of competition. Other NCAA sports, like football, freeze smaller schools out of the title picture, even if they have incredible years. If college football had such a system instead of the flawed Bowl Championship Series, we might have seen Shaun King '99 and Tulane take on Tennessee and become an underdog champion.

All sports fans have grown up with the NCAA tournament and feel connected to it. It's the last major sporting event that lets the little guys in. Throughout my time in high school, I only watched two "non-educational" things on television during class time. One was the O.J. Simpson trial. The other was Penn State's first-round victory over UCLA in 1991. In 20 years I'll have forgetten the bloody glove, but I'll never forget the smile on tiny, unknown PSU guard Freddy Barnes' face after hitting a jumper over two future NBA players to get the win.

Even when your school's team is not in the field of 64 (here at Yale, we have had that problem for almost 40 years), resident hoops nuts can always find a team to root for, since there are underdogs aplenty who all have shots to win it all. No byes, no home-court advantage. And because of this, the team that plays best at the end of the year gets rewarded. This year, I've already picked out my surprise team. It's St. Francis of New York, led by Ray Mineland '99, the nation's third leading scorer. Another team to look out for is Auburn, which has been schooling the rest of the SEC, but is still looking for respect. Look for them to earn it with a Final Four berth. It doesn't look like a good year for a surprise champion, though. Duke, Connecticut, and Michigan State may be too strong to beat during the later rounds. Veteran teams are also tough to stop, so don't count out experienced Stanford either.

Too often, the fun of Am-erican sporting events is lost amidst gaudy commercials, high salaries, and solicitation arrests. Outside of Chris Herren '99 and his Fresno State teammates, the NCAA tournament field has none of these problems. The announcing is great, too. We get Billy Packer and Brent Musberger broadcasting us gems like "Simon says championship." No Marv Albert. No Dan Dierdorf every other year.

The NCAA tournament is more about images than scores. Jimmy V looking for someone to hug. Bryce Drew '98 hugging his father after sticking a deep three to beat Mississippi. Jerry Tarkanian biting his towel after his undefeated, illegal recruits lost to a scrappy Duke squad. And don't forget Christian Laettner, who has more NCAA tourney buzzer beaters to his credit than Shawn Kemp has illegitimate children.

It's about emotion, it's about youth, it's about fun. People bet inordinate amounts of money on teams that they've never heard of, just to add to the excitement. It's one of those things that's distinctly American. Grandmothers do it and 10-year-olds do it. A study done a few years ago proved that Duke fans became more sexually aroused after watching Laettner's last-second jumper to beat Kentucky than they did after viewing explicit pornography. That's why I'd rather have CBS than the Spice Channel this March.

Maybe this year I'll see Mineland hugging his father after knocking off an ACC powerhouse in the first round, or watch Chris Porter '00 and the Tigers cut down the nets during the "One Shining Moment" video montage. Or maybe I'll return to Yale to find that they've taken away CBS. Well, I guess I can always catch Monday Night Raw instead.

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