March Madness

MADNESS

Ah yes, March Madness. How close can you come to TV / sports heaven? HD, beer, ESPN, multiple games, three pointers, funny ads, Bob Knight on ESPN....

Let's be honest: The Tourney is one of the best times of the year to watch sports, besides the Super Bowl, NBA playoffs, or even the Masters (yes, golf is awesome). Beer in hand, you have hours of awesome games with ESPN coverage to tide you over during commercials. And when ESPN breaks to woman's figure skating, you have decent ads to watch or even the roomofzen to waste your time. (sidenote: Babcock's post on Cancun was epic).

For once, you have a rock-solid reason not to be social or spend time with your girlfriend / significant other. All you have to do is turn on CBS (hopefully in HD) and relax. The games fire off in rapid succession and before you know it, your favorite team either won or lost down the stretch. Even better, by the time you realize that you're team lost, you're busy watching Duke get beat or Stanford narrowly escaping with a W (more on this later). The games just keep on coming and CBS just piles it on like salsa on nachos. (here I'm reminded of the nachos at Winners and the surely waitress who always bought Nick and I shots...)

What makes March Madness so awesome? Aside from the usual platitudes such as, "I love how hard college kids play in contrast to the pros," or "the upsets are so thrilling and fun to watch," March Madness, to me, is the best time to think about why you like college sports. I won't go into the typical reasons (the teams play like teams, the players hustle, coaching has more of an effect on gameplay, more threes are made, the game is shorter).

For me, it's simple: TV companies (CBS) team up with the highest advertising bidders (Pontiac) to display one of the best exhibitions of team sports and coaching known to man. What follows over the course of the tournament is a torrential downpour of ill-advised 3s, unexpected good games from middle seeds, Bryant Gumbel acting like an ass, and announcers trying their best to keep up with the action. Here are my observations from Madness so far....

The Games

The best game so far has to be the UCLA win on the back of Kevin Love. Not only does this guy have a sleazy line-beard, he has a sick fade-away jumper and ridiculous ups for a white dude (7 blocks that game...wow). Collison's tomahawk at the end of regulation sealed the deal for me. I had goose-bumps when I saw that.

Another good game was the Duke loss since I hate Duke or anything in the ACC that's not Maryland. WVA, as we saw in their league play, plays well when Alexander stays out of foul trouble. The only reason they lost was because Alexander had 10 points during the BE tourney.

The Stanford game was also pretty good and I think they deserved to lose that game due to lack of hustle (in other words, sheer talent won the game for them, not heart). A few notes on this game:

1. I now hate the Lopez twins because CBS couldn't stop talking about them. In fact, CBS's announcers during the Stanford game couldn't bother to remember any one's name except the Lopez twins. That really annoyed me. And Brooks should get a hair-cut for christ-sake.

2. Does anyone else agree with me that Stanford shouldn't be allowed to have a good basketball team? Either your school is good academically or you school is good for sports. They shouldn't be allowed to have both things at a school if you ask me. It would make the cosmic order better in my opinion.

3. Did anyone wonder why the Lopez twins' mom was taking notes during the game? Was she going to coach them up afterwards?

4. Did anyone notice how CBS kept showing the same washed-up 45 year old dude in the stands? They probably showed him cheering 9 times.

Other games I enjoyed were the Michigan State and Louisville games. Coaches like Pitino and Izzo are truly legendary....Izzo gets his under-performing senior to finally play well in the tournament (when it counts) and Pitino's Cardinals play amazing defense every minute of the game. Both of these teams are awesome in my opinion and they have coaches who somehow find a way to inspire their players to new heights. Izzo should be considered one of the greats, especially if they continue this play).

(As an aside...while I'm sad to see Georgetown lose, it's always fun to see a team like Davidson pull the upset. I can also tell you without a doubt that Roy Hibbert won't be very good in the NBA. I watched him play in HS and it still amazes me that he even got to Gtown on a basketball scholarship. He could barely run down the court in HS, let alone shoot a three like he does now.)

CBS Coverage

The CBS coverage was excellent this year. My one complaint was this: why do they take you away from the final three minutes of a game in order to see the tip-off of another (and oftentimes less important) game? But CBS mostly got it right. Gumbell was slightly annoying, but Clark had some good insights and the way they kept showing games with minimal commercials was very good.

ESPN coverage

Bob Knight was simply hilarious in an unintentional way. Whenever Digger and the other commentator would crack jokes or share a moment of excitement, Knight would just sit there scowling or barely smile. Nothing seemed to faze this guy on TV, but he would make fun of Digger or say something obnoxious from time to time. I also loved his ESPN green coaching sweater. Where can I get one?