March Madness is Almost Here!
By Mark Nagi
Pound for pound, the best sporting event in the country is almost underway.
I’m talking about March Madness. And except for The Masters, I don’t think there is very much competition in this category.
The college football playoff system has so much potential. But not surprisingly, the powers that be expanded to too many teams, don’t have enough playoff games on campuses, and the seeding breakdown is a mess. And it gets lost a bit in the NFL playoff stratosphere too.
Major League Baseball is the haves and have nots when it comes to the postseason, with the LA Dodgers’ payroll worth more than the Gross National Product of Peru.
The NBA and NHL playoffs are too long. The Daytona 500 is significantly delayed by rain 99.9% of the time (or it feels that way). The Super Bowl typically gives us good games and is the most-watched television show of the year, but that’s become more of an excuse to party than a sporting event.
But the NCAA tournament … man, that’s still special.
That doesn’t mean the powers that be aren’t trying to screw it up.
Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey continues to press to expand the NCAA’s men’s and women’s basketball tournaments from its present state of 68 teams.
This is … well … madness.
Why do you want to water down a regular season that is already watered down? Why do you want to tinker with a tournament that is already wildly popular? The reason is simple. He’s trying to see more representation for major conferences. If the tournament expands, you’ll see the 13th best SEC teams and the 11th best Big Ten teams and the 12th best ACC teams get in.
There’s no way expansion will give us what we would want most to see … and that’s more underdogs. The 2nd best teams from the Ohio Valley or Big South aren’t finding their way into the brackets if they expand to 72 or 76 or (baby Jesus forbid) 80 teams.
The magic of the NCAA tournament is that first week, when UMBC upsets top-seed Virginia, or Siena beats Stanford, or Oakland over Kentucky. You never know when the little guy is going to have their moment, but it happens a few times every year.
Yet Sankey wants to give us Oklahoma versus Minnesota.
Hard pass.
This year we will have the Tennessee Vols and Lady Vols each in the postseason, which obviously make things even more fun. The Vols have had a terrific regular season, with eight wins over nationally ranked opponents. They are in the mix to earn their first top-seed in program history, as they continue to try to make their first Final Four in program history.
Last season, the Vols got to the Elite 8 for the second time ever before falling to Purdue. And even though Zach Edey is now in the NBA and not taking 66 free throws against UT, let’s hope the Boilermakers are far away from Tennessee’s side of the bracket.
The Lady Vols did not play their best basketball late in the regular season, but Kim Caldwell has turned things around in this, her first season in charge of the program. Can they make a deep run?
It’s almost tournament time … get your brackets ready.
