Anyone who knows anything about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is well aware that there are a fair share of surprises every year, some more than others.
But this season – hot diggity dog. I would have my swear jar filled to the brim with quarters at this point had I decided to enter a pool.
It’s not even about the fairly insignificant amount of money most people plunk down. Nobody really cares so much about 5, 10 or even 20 dollars that they should react as though they just found out they were one wrong digit away from a winning mega-Millions lottery ticket.
It’s about the frustration with finding out how wildly inaccurate your thought processes were when making your picks. This is especially true for self-professed sports nuts (right here!). Hell, I covered sports for a career at one time. I should know more than the average bear!
Dead wrong. Big mis-perception right there. Sure I might have certain insights into particular sports that are lacking in others who could care less about it. But when it comes to predicting winners of games, tournaments or other competitive endeavors? Please, spare me with the whole ‘research’ angle. It’s probably 85-90 percent dumb luck, and anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themselves.
This year’s NCAA Tournament is a perfect example. Kansas losing in the second round to Northern Iowa? Georgetown biting the dust in the first round against the University of Ohio? Cornell taking out Temple in Round One? Old Dominion and Saint Mary’s College advancing into the second round by knocking out programs such as Notre Dame and Villanova, respectively? Say WHAT? Eleventh-seeded Washington, from the one major-conference-that’s-getting-no-respect-this-year PAC 10 into the Sweet 16 with wins over Marquette (No. 6) and New Mexico (No. 3)?
See, we all know upsets are going to happen, but who the hell can pretend they have any well-researched, surefire theories as to which games will actually produce these upsets? It’s all anybody’s guess. And it’s not rocket science to predict things like “Oh this higher-seeded, major conference team has 2 starters out, so they might lose,” or “Gonzaga might be a number eight seed from a non-major conference, but we all know they’re capable of beating anyone at any time.” And those scenes don’t even always seem to play out as consistently as they used to. Traditional logic just doesn’t work anymore.
I enjoy the NCAA Tournament MUCH more when I don’t have a dog in the fight, and when I’m not checking my bracket sheet more than actually watching the games as I’m attempting to calculate whether or not I’m mathematically eliminated from winning some sort of prize, or trying to validate my sports acumen by holding up a mostly successful bracket sheet by the time the dust all settles.
College hoops is just insane. Too many alpha dogs are fleeing straight to the NBA after just one solid year of collegiate experience, as per the NBA’s one-year-of-college-minimum rule enacted a few years ago. And before that rule, it wasn’t at all uncommon for the best young players to go straight from high school to the big time, bypassing college hoops completely. I mean – can you blame these kids? Like Steve Miller said so many years ago, go on take the money and run. Right?
This leads to a scenario where accurately predicting March Madness success is much more difficult and tedious than ever before. The playing field is more level consistently now. We still have the landmark programs winning national titles for the most part (teams like Kansas, North Carolina, Florida, etc.). But the rest of the country has caught up in recent years. Murray State, George Mason and the U. of Ohio never seemed to make it as far as they do now when I was a young buck.
It’s fun as a spectator, but the opposite of fun if you’re trying to be a bracket expert.
Oh and by the way, I technically lied. My last entry indicated that my next would be about hip hop (you know, playa president and all). I promise that’s coming next. The 13th anniversary of Biggie’s death recently came and went without so much as a shout out, and that’s sad.
The art form of creative, boundary-pushing hip hop is as under-the-radar as it’s ever been. And that’s my word.
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