Weekend Editorial -
MARCH SADNESS
By JROCK
For the last week plus we’ve been inundated with the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Many of you know this as March Madness, but to me, it’s March Sadness. I like basketball, though I have no real affinity for the college game. In fact, I have prided myself in having only watched ONE game of college basketball this entire season prior to the Big Dance, but its second-class citizen status changes every spring time when the tournament rolls around. For me, March Sadness bracketology is the rare combination of excitement and loathing.
Like a child on Christmas morning, I waited for the finalized brackets to be released so I could start the arduous process of filling out my 25 brackets. Sadly, I’m not kidding – I really fill out that many brackets. 10 on ESPN, another 10 on Sportsline, plus anywhere else I can find them. It’s a strange addiction for someone who could care less about these teams and even stranger given how truly exhausting the process is for me. Having to remember if I took Gonzaga over Northeastern Louisiana Tech University State in the last bracket or if Creighton is going to be my sleeper #7 seed to sneak into the Sweet 16. Maybe this doesn’t sound like the true coma inducing process that it is, but I assure you I suffer it like a true addiction. I hate it, but I can’t stop myself. Living and dying with every game nearly puts me into rehab every time.
Of course there’s always the casual office pool, which is no more casual as it is painful when I have to watch the biggest know-nothing person win because they went with which schools mascot could defeat the other in a make-believe fight. I have to deal with that when I’m researching and sweating every pick I make, only to have Betty from accounting sweep the pool and render my hours of research as time, energy, and money wasted.
The oddest thing about the whole process is that suddenly I gain conviction about schools I know NOTHING about based on God knows what. “Yea, yea Milwaukee-Wisconsin can really knock down the 3. I can see them upsetting Villanova this year in the 13-4 seed matchup.” That’s the other thing, I make assessments about teams based on past history or at least how I perceive to be even if they’re close to correct. For instance, again having watched only a single game this year, I could already definitively say that these things would be true –
- Stanford will have a set of twins at forward/center.
- There will be a team with a 4 ft, 10'' point guard and a 6'9'' 350 lb. guy off the bench.
- Wherever coach John Calipari is, he will have the best players on the court but we won't seem them next year because they'll have either left for the NBA or been caught in a cheating scandal.
- Georgetown will have a giant center whose name we can't pronounce.
- Utah will have a white 7'0'' power forward that can shoot but can't do anything else.
- Villanova is comprised solely of guards no one is over 6'4''.
- Duke will have the "spark plug" point guard. See: Bobby Hurley, Steve "Wojo" Wojciechowski, or Greg Paulus.
- LSU will have several guys who can jump over the backboard but can't shoot.
- Someone on Tennessee will have a slightly askew headband.
- There will be an Ivy League team running the backdoor cut and the announcers will make references to how their Ivy League educations makes them smarter on the court.
- West Virginia and Vanderbilt have the exact same player at Power Forward (6'10'', knocks down 3's, etc.) except one guy is literate and the other one isn't.
Despite all the stress and exhaustion, there is a silver lining to March Sadness for me. Every year there is a new crop of schools I’ve never heard of making the tournament. How else am I going to learn that the mascot for Siena is the St. Bernard, if it’s not for this tournament? I’m not sure how that’s exactly beneficial to me yet, but when it comes up at a random dinner part I’ll be there ready to pounce with this bit of useless knowledge.
Best mascot of all time.
After the first week of games, my brackets, though numerous, quite rapidly started blowing up like a fireworks on Fourth of July and my habitual routine of second guessing my gut instincts has been just overwhelming, “How could I be so stupid? Of course Northern Iowa beats the #1 overall seed, Kansas! How could I not see that?!?”. This is the sad truth of my tournament experience; I know I will be riddled with guilt and anguish even before these games begin, but I still have to go through it - much like a prostate exam. So even though this experience has and will continue to be just awful for me, next year I’ll do it all over again…and I’ll love/hate every moment of it.
The views and opinions expressed in this column are claimed by the author, JROCK, and not the rest of the JimmyConrad.com Staff or Jimmy Conrad. If you want to ignore JROCK, then please don't email him at jrock@jimmyconrad.com.
