The 65th Team: Stop the Madness!

March Through Madness

RSS

Authors

Mark Coatney

Devin Gordon

Mark Starr

Featured Postings

Though it's March Madness, We Know April is the Coolest Month

1:17 PM, April 1, 2008 | Comments (0)

March gets all the ink, and the fancy "Madness" nickname, but as a top-to-bottom sports fan, I'm finding myself much more partial to April. We get the Final Four and the national title game, then the Masters just a few days later. And wrapped all around...

The Ivies Muscle Up

4:12 PM, March 28, 2008 | Comments (0)

Teams to Root for--and Against

11:11 AM, March 27, 2008 | Comments (0)

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Devin Gordon

There were two noteworthy basketball games on television last night--the NCAA play-in game between Mount St Marys and Coppin State, and the NBA contest between the Boston Celtics and the streaking (until last night) Houston Rockets. I'm not sure about you, Coatney, but Starr and I bailed on college hoops and watched the Celtics end the Rockets' 22-game winning streak. Or at least I did until I fell asleep during the 3rd quarter. I bring this up for two reasons: first, the play-in game is a mean-spirited waste of time, and it needs to go. Second, the NBA is having a much, much better year than college basketball.

Let's start with the NCAA play-in game, which is the classic example of an organization trying to please everyone and, as a result, satisfying no one. Isn't it cruel to force a team that earned an automatic tourney bid to win yet another game before they can actually PLAY in the tournament? What's "automatic" about that? Last week, the players for Mount St Marys and Coppin State had one of the most exhilarating moments of their lives--until Sunday night, when they found out that, sorry, they're not quite in the door yet. Win one more game, and THEN you've earned the privilege of getting steamrolled by Carolina. I'm sure the NCAA would say that the play-in game IS part of the tournament, but I'd like to see them do it with a straight face. I understand the desire to get more big-conference schools into the tournament, but wouldn't it make more sense all around to force THEM to fight for the opportunity? There was no way I was watching Mount St Marys vs Coppin State--but I definitely would've tuned in for a few minutes of, say, Villanova vs Arizona State, with the victor getting slotted in as a 12-seed. Somebody tell me what's wrong with this scenario. Who is it unfair to? I suppose you could argue it's unfair the other three 12 seeds, but so what? The selection committee ranks within seeds anyway, so what's the harm in admitting that one of the four 12 seeds is "better" than the other three in the eyes of the committee? And more importantly, what a game!

Right now, the play-in game is a failure in all senses: it's cruel, it's pointless, and it's unenticing to everyone but the most diehard sports fan... which means it's bad business, too. Stop the (March) madness!

Onto the Rockets-Celtics game from last night. I don't have much to say about the contest itself, other than to note that it's bad news for college basketball when a regular season NBA game is much bigger news than the tourney. I think most NCAA fans would agree that this has been a down year for college hoops. There are no great teams and hardly any superb upperclassman players, aside from Hansbrough and Georgetown's Roy Hibbert, who's probably not even the best player on his own team. The freshmen are the big story of this NCAA season, and personally I find it hard to think of them as college players. They're more like lottery picks who are just killing time. This wasn't the case last year, when Greg Oden and Kevin Durant had to share attention with a transcendent Florida team. Not this year. What does it say about this season in college basketball when the most eagerly anticipated first round game is between two teams, USC and Kansas State, that probably won't make it through the second round? There's no way that pairing happened by accident, but in its pursuit of short-term goals like creating a marquee TV match-up, I wonder if the NCAA is cutting off its nose to spite its face. The more that college basketball becomes like the NBA--prioritizing individuals over teams--the worse it'll be for the long-term health of the product. Or maybe I'm just being an old fuddy-duddy. Starr? Coatney?

Tag(s): The Men

You must be a registered user to comment. Click here to register. Already a user? Click here to login.

Member Comments

No Comments