Now, I don't want to go out on a limb and say that after the offseason of no impressive player acquisitions and billion-dollar lawsuits against the ownership the Mets suffered through, that after six innings it looked like the Amazins were about to suffer through the worst possible start to their season.
But, uh, it looked pretty bad.
Not only did Mike Pelfrey's Opening Day start fall apart on an unexpected grand slam by that immortal slugger John Buck in the fourth inning, but the Mets were actually on the short end of a no-hitter by Florida ace Josh Johnson through six innings before finally breaking the spell and ultimately succumbing in a 6-2 loss in at Sun Life Stadium. Seriously, the best part about the whole night for a Mets fan was that Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band played the National Anthem on his sax.
So that happened.
I know getting my knickers in a twist over this is, of course, a fairly foolish thing to do. After all, there are 161 games left to go this season, so getting antsy when there is plenty of time to change is irrational at best. But should I even bother to believe that there's a chance things will get better than they were Friday night? I mean, they ought to. I have a hard time believing they'd get much worse.
But that's why they play the other 161 games, so here we go in about seven and a half hours for Jon Niese and Ricky Nolasco, which should be a ripper, or something. If the Mets can pull off a win that'll be exciting even though an awful team does that 60 times a year or so, but if they CAN do that maybe we'll forget the mediocre that lies ahead over the next six months. Or at the very least, perhaps fans can make more hilarious ticket sales pitches like this one.
But even if the Mets are awful, life isn't all bad in the sports realm today.
For one, while all of us were sleeping Geelong kicked some ass in a closer-than-it-needed-to-be affair in Perth in an eventual 89-78 win over Fremantle, which puts the Cats at 2-0 before their big NATIONALLY TELEVISED GAME AGAINST PORT ADELAIDE NEXT WEEK. And by "nationally televised" I mean "in the United States on ESPN2". See? I didn't make up that this sport existed. It may be at midnight on a Saturday night, but since I have to be up early for work the next day anyway, I'll be in front of the TV. Also, I might be tired from my impending trip to Detroit, but more on that later.
In other news, the New Jersey Devils' season is probably over, but there is a minor lift coming tonight when after missing nearly all the season with a torn meniscus, Zach Parise will be back on the ice when the Devils host the Canadiens. The actual impact of his return on this season is probably close to nil, but it'll at least make the Devils fans among us a little happier for the night.
Truth be told though, I probably won't be watching much of either the Devils or the Mets tonight, because rumor has it there are some "basketballgames" of minor import. So yeah, most of my attention will be focused solely on the Final Four, which, while I stand nothing to gain as far as brackets or survival pools are concerned at this point, is still, you know, interesting. Or at least fun.
Besides, if by some chance Butler wins the National Championship or even, heaven's to betsy, Virginia Commonwealth, we'll all have a fun little story to tell our kids about, right? Right?
The answer is yes. We will. More fun than I'll have talking about the 2011 Mets anyway.
I do not like Duke. I believe that's what makes me most like the rest of America. In fact, I'm fairly certain the only non-Duke graduate who actively roots for the school is my cousin Geoff, who told me this morning, "Never bet against the Blue Devils." Of course, that seems particularly odd to say today considering Duke was rather surprisingly bounced from the NCAA Tournament last night by Arizona in the Sweet Sixteen. I won't get into the peculiarities like how it could be fair for a No. 1 seed to host a school from Tuscon in Anaheim, or how Duke could have seemingly forgotten to play basketball in the second half when the Wildcats went on a very impressive run.
But I will say this. I was not betting against the Blue Devils. In fact, I was betting on them. And after letting me down the one time I was actually rooting for Duke, it could be a while before I do it again.
As I alluded to in my last entry, I was in a survival pool for this year's Dance in which I fared far better than my actual bracket -- which I haven't even looked at in days -- did. In fact, after a wild Sunday night, I was one of just five people remaining, and I had assumed that of the games Thursday night, Duke was the one sure bet to win. And so, with the chance of winning a $700 prize on the line, I put my hopes with the Blue Devils and watched.
And then that happened.
So yeah, I was out of the running for $700, and even the considerable silver lining of "But Duke lost, which makes everyone happy" wasn't going to comfort me.
Then, there was a window opened about 15 minutes later in New Orleans. I have a soft spot in my heart for the Wisconsin Badgers since several of my friends, my sister and my grandmother are all alums, and if Northwestern is out of the running, which, uh, they were, I'll usually throw my lot with Bucky. But when I noticed that all the remaining participants in the pool had Wisconsin advancing, and that a win by Butler would knock everyone out, I changed my tune.
See, if anyone advanced to Friday I was done completely, but if the five remaining participants all lost in one night, we would have a five-way tie and a split pot. I wouldn't quite be getting $700, but a take of $148 wasn't too shabby, and my decision was made despite the overwhelming temptation to cheer for a team that would offer a basketball scholarship to Christopher "Kid" Reid of the early 90's hip-hop duo Kid N' Play.
What moxie.
Fortunately for me, Butler answered the call in a win that really was never in doubt until Wisconsin made a late rally, which led me to two conclusions, a) While it wouldn't be quite as satisfying as a $700 take from this year's pool, I still managed to win an extremely satisfying $148 -- my best take from a March Madness pool ever, and b) Butler probably shouldn't really be an eight seed.
Granted, the Bulldogs did go a relatively paltry 23-9 this regular season with five losses in the Horizon League, but their comfort and determination on the big stage has become clearly evident in big tournament wins over No. 1 Pittsburgh and now No. 4 Wisconsin. On almost gets the sense that even without Gordon Hayward, Brad Stevens and his boys were simply biding their time until it was March.
At this point, seedings aside, I can't see how one wouldn't give them a fighting chance at knocking off Florida Saturday and landing in their second consecutive Final Four. And once they're there, playing like they are, all things are certain. All I know is that from now on, when I watch, I won't be doing so with so much anxiety.
After all, despite losing, I made my money. It's almost like playing for the Mets.
I'm guessing when I said last week that this was by far the least research I had ever done before filling out my NCAA bracket that I must not have been lying. The first four days of the Tournament this year were outlandishly exciting, but also, uh, not what I predicted. On the first day alone I lost three teams from my sweet sixteen, one from my Elite Eight and wound up a mediocre 9-7. While that didn't inspire much confidence, at least my Final Four was still intact.
You know, until the second round, when my National Champion spit the bit against Butler on an utterly bizarre series of fouls in the games final seconds. But that's cool -- it's only the second year in a row that my eventual champion was sent packing in the round of 32.
Now don't get me wrong. Butler, obviously, has some experience, so I suppose in general, it's not really that crazy for them to be making another deep run in the NCAAs, but I have to be honest. I thought I'd do a wee bit better than this At this point my bracket is so shot that I have nothing to watch for except pure love of the game, which, really, is utterly silly.
Then again I'm still alive in my survivor pool, so at least there's that.
Of course, that I'm watching basketball at all after Northwestern's utterly bizarre loss in the NIT quarterfinals last night/this morning at Washington State, might just be a testament to my own intestinal fortitude. This was a game that featured a shockingly intense student crowd for an NIT game, the Wildcats doing something they've done maybe once in my life ever by rallying from a double-digit deficit to take a lead in the second half on the road, a potential walk-off foul after a game-tying goal tend in the final ten seconds and then someone missing both of those potential walk-off free throws which prompted this statement from me.
I then realized that if God was a Wildcat, Northwestern would have been to the NCAA Tournament once in the past seven and a half decades, making my statement patently ridiculous.
The Cats would go on to lose in an equally as bizarre overtime that nearly saw them get the ball back down 1 with 20 seconds left simply because the Washington State player lost his handle on the ball, before Alex Marcotullio missed not one but two three-pointers to tie the game at the final buzzer to end what is -- I'm not making this up -- the deepest postseason run Northwestern has ever had.
Seriously, why do I watch college basketball anymore? Or at least why Northwestern?
Oh, and the winning team had a player who had been suspended and had his suspension lifted within 12 hours.
Fun times.
So that's how college basketball has treated me in the past week, but fortunately I get the distraction of Aussie Rules Football finally being back this season after Carlton topped Richmond by 20 points this morning. Of course the season doesn't really start until Geelong has its first bounce tomorrow morning against St. Kilda, which I'm sure you're all waking up at 4:30 a.m. for.
Ok, I can sense that I'm losing all of you at this point. Perhaps it's time to go. Hopefully this weekend's basketball goes better than last.
March Madness, generally, is a hell of a tournament. Often I consider the first two rounds of the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship to be the four best sports days of the year, and usually I can't wait for them. In college the first two rounds always fell during my spring break, and I recall each year that my friend Duane and I would sit down on his couch at 11:50 and not move until midnight, keeping our laptops with our brackets open all the while. In short, it was exciting, amazing, thrilling and for much of March it's almost always been all I can think about.
But not this year.
Don't ask me why, exactly, because I can't quite tell, but for some reason I'm just sort of ambivalent this year. Perhaps it's because I missed the actual selection show while in the U.S. for the first time in years so I could have dinner with my cousin in Georgetown on Sunday, or perhaps it's because a busy schedule at work has kept me from seeing the bracket until this afternoon, or just maybe it's because the only basketball game that really matters this year happens to be Wednesday night and not in the NCAA Tournament at all.
It could be any of those reasons. In all honesty, I really have no idea, but for some reason, I'm just not overly excited, to the point that I filled out my bracket this afternoon as almost more of an obligation than a joy. And it also happens to be a highly unresearched bracket. Just how unresearched it is, you ask? Well, a year ago, I was in Israel, and hastily filled out a bracket on a timed computer terminal in the southern desert city of Eilat, and that bracket performed, er, terribly.
That bracket, filled out in a span of forty seconds because the time purchased by my five shekels was expiring, was more well thought out than this one.
Really!
So yeah, I have no idea who is going to win or if I picked anything even remotely close to what could or will happen, but you can see the uneducated misery to the left yourself. I decided to go with a tried and true method of picking a few upsets early and mostly going with the chalk later. Not that it matters since with the pointlessly expanded bracket this year, the odds of getting the whole shabang right were a tidy 9.25 quintillion to one back in the old format and I don't have nearly the energy required to figure it out in the new one. Apparently, I have a better chance of winning an Olympic gold medal, which I supposed means... I have a chance of winning an Olympic gold medal.
Essentially, as the numerous other brackets to be found on the internet prove, we really have no idea what will happen. You may as well hand in a bracket to your pool where Princeton wins. Or ones that don't bother with basketball, but instead seek to answer the really big questions that plague philosophers.
In my bracket, you'll notice that, among other things, I've picked Pitt to win the whole thing mostly because a) they got a joke of a No. 2 seed in Florida, b) I think they'll be driven by their early exit from the Big East Tournament, c) I didn't want to see Duke win. Not that that matters since I have UNC coming out of the Blue Devils' bracket, but I have the feeling they're going to get picked off somewhere.
And speaking of getting picked off, you better believe I don't have No. 1 Ohio State reaching the Final Four. And how could I pick against a team with the versatile Jared Sullinger, you ask? Well the answer is simple. I don't care how good your record is. No team -- none -- gets taken to the final minute by Northwestern not once, but twice, including once on a neutral floor, and then makes it to the Final Four. Sorry. It ain't happening, and just because I didn't see it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
My word is as good as gold here. My bracket is brilliant. My bracket will rule the day. My bracket will almost certainly get every single game right. Just imagine how perfect my bracket would be if I were actually into it this year.
Don't worry, I'm sure I will be come Thursday. Happy basketballing.
If you went to Northwestern, and I'm guessing since this is mostly read by my friends then the proportion is higher than usual, you might have noticed that the Wildcats got bounced in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament today by No. 1 Ohio State. What you might not have noticed is that Northwestern had a lead in the final minute that it let slip away before falling in overtime. Not only could this have been the single greatest moment of Northwestern's rather thin basketball history, but it also would have kept the highly faint hopes NU had of reaching the NCAA Tournament for the first time, hopes that it would seem rested solely on claiming the Big Ten's automatic bid by winning the conference tournament.
The Wildcats are likely to get an NIT bid, but that seems small consolation for coming so close to knocking off the No. 1 team in the country, a feat that just might have invigorated what has been a steadily improving but nonetheless fledgling program. What makes the loss all the more frustrating, however, is that this is second time this season Northwestern has taken the No. 1-ranked Buckeyes to the final minute with a chance to pull off the monumental upset. It feels like something greater than the season at large has been lost when two narrow chances to make a bold statement to the world of college basketball both slip through the Wildcats' fingers.
What was most frustrating for me, however, was that being a dedicated alum and a Northwestern fan, you'd think there was no chance I'd miss what could be the greatest moment in the lackluster history of NU basketball. And you'd be wrong. For you see at the exact moment Northwestern had shockingly taken the lead in the waning moments this afternoon, I was somewhere in northern Maryland on a bus bound for D.C. where I will be seeing the Blackhawks and Capitals Sunday afternoon.
This presented a number of issues.
I was hoping to follow the game on my laptop using ESPN3.com, which I have remote streaming set up for. However, when you're on a bus internet can be, diplomatically speaking, "shitty". In the case of the M31 Megabus from New York to Washington D.C. on March 11, 2011, it was utterly nonexistent.
I spent most of the game following on my phone and on twitter, refusing to believe that my Wildcats would actually make a game of it, let alone take the lead late in the game. Then I glanced at my phone and saw it was a one-point game in the second half.
It was time to break out the big guns. I got out of my seat, rifled through my luggage and pulled out my laptop in hopes of connecting to the bus's mobile internet. Connect I did.
And then: Nothing.
Apparently being connected to the internet isn't the same thing as actually getting to use the internet, and despite the comments of the young man next to me that on his bus to New York earlier this week he was able to watch the Big East tournament, I wasn't able to so much as load my homepage. Though when I consider that he also told me Rocky IV was the best of the series, perhaps he wasn't the man to trust.
Either way, the inevitable outcome was clear. I was not going to get to watch the magic or lack thereof happen in live streaming video. Instead I had to resort to painstakingly reloading the score on my iPhone's ESPN app, where I saw that not only did Northwestern let its late lead slip away, but the Wildcats got beat up in overtime in what eventually would be a season-ending 67-61 defeat. Sometimes it just isn't meant to be.
And sometimes you aren't meant to see it, regardless of what it is.
Luckily, the whole reason I'm here is to see the Blackhawks and Capitals this Sunday and cross team No. 39 off the list. While there are still some questions as to whom, exactly, will be seeing the game with me, I do know that at least I'll be there in person. I will actually witness that game.
I'm not going to be the first person to obnoxiously congratulate Oregon on its retroactively awarded 2011 BCS Championship for a few reasons. A) The BCS National Championship Game was already two days ago and I clearly wouldn't be the first, and B) It is, in fact, quite obnoxious.
Let's be frank for a minute. The NCAA is a complete joke and just about every major football or basketball program that contends for national titles -- and many that don't -- are at the very least fudging the rules and at worst, not so subtly breaking them. There is a very valid argument that many of these players who solicit money for their services should, in fact, be allowed to do so through more legitimate means because the money they bring into the school they represent is remarkable deluge of cash that by rule can't see its way into the hands of those responsible for it. And anyone who tells me players are rewarded with their educations can stop deluding themselves.
College football and basketball athletes are not students. They are employees.
That said, however, rules are rules, and the fact that Auburn's season is yet to be nullified or that star quarterback Cam Newton was allowed to play in the National Championship or SEC Championship games is an absolute joke. That Newton's father allegedly shopped his son's services around the SEC when he was looking to make a transfer is reprehensible, but not that surprising given the modern state of college football. The fact that Cam Newton has continued to tow the line that his father did this without his knowledge despite prior reports -- and plain ol' common sense -- is simply unbelievable. That the NCAA bought it is simply mindboggling.
Now, I know in the grand scheme of things, this is really not the worst thing to happen in the world, and as recent events have shown, not even the worst thing to happen in Arizona this weekend. But simply put, with the rules as they are, and the fact that Cam Newton almost certainly lied to NCAA investigators, there is no way on Earth that Newton should have been in uniform Monday night for Auburn's National Championship victory over Oregon. The fact that Newton's father Cecil was at the game despite assurances that he was to keep his distance from the Auburn program is just another sign that the Newtons didn't feel the need to conform to the rules throughout this entire process and considered themselves above the fray.
Also, am I the only person who thought that for a three-point game decided on a last-second field goal to win the National Championship that this game was actually, well, kind of boring?
Either way, that Auburn won the whole thing, aside from the obnoxiousness that is the SEC, just leaves something of a bad taste in everyone's mouth. For one thing, it seems patently obvious that the program was not on the level, though that could be said of any program. As well, on a personal level, it is irritating to see a team that probably should have lost to Northwestern in the Outback Bowl last year lift the silliest looking trophy in American sports. But perhaps what drives me most angry about this whole thing is, this isn't a particularly likable program to begin with.
If it were, how could one rationally justify that Gene Chizik, with his, um, less than stellar 5-19 career record as a head coach with Iowa State should get the head job at Auburn two years ago over the eminently more qualified Turner Gill? Yes, Gill's career record was a losing mark, too, one that stood at 15-21 over three seasons. But Gill inherited a Buffalo program that was deader than dead can be and in those three seasons turned it into a conference champion.
Oh but Turner Gill's wife is white. And Turner Gill ain't. And Auburn is in the heart of the Old South, you know.
I don't want to bring out harsh provocations or take anything away from Chizik, who, while it seemed obvious didn't deserve the job, clearly did well with it and doesn't have any evidence pointing to him being a racist. But it didn't seem to be a secret that Gill's position as a black man with a white wife wasn't expected to sit well with the boosters in Auburn, Alabama. And at the time, some prominent alums weren't afraid to come out and say so. Call me an idealist, but I cannot in good conscience take an optimistic point of view with a university that may have allowed one of its major economic decisions to be guided by a racist auspice.
Some of you, I'm sure, think I'm reading too much into the situation, but it's simply unacceptable to me that a segment of society might still rely on a man's skill color as an unspoken justification for denying him a job he is entirely more deserving of. To put a finer point on it, I have a hard time believing that Cam Newton, hero to Tiger Nation, hasn't had the opportunity to nor taken advantage of the chance to spend some quality time with some of the more attractive coeds at Auburn University. I should note that I wouldn't blame him for doing so. I'm not sure what college athlete wouldn't relish that opportunity.
But I'm sure that some of those coeds have been white. And I can't see why it's ok for your quarterback to be a black man who sleeps with white women, but not your head coach. It simply isn't right.
This is one of many reasons why I won't be shedding a tear when Auburn has to inevitably relinquish its 2010 National Title. Until then I'll just have to take solace in the fact that in order to become the Yankees of college football, Auburn apparently has a long, long way to go.
I'm sure you all caught wind of the big sports story yesterday, the end of a dynasty that had dominated its realm like no other. Yes, that's right, the Northwestern Wildcats' streak of five consecutive NCAA Women's Lacrosse Championships came to a stunning halt in Towson, Maryland yesterday at the hands of the Maryland Terrapins.
Sure, this seems like a less than exciting story for most of you, and true, Women's Lacrosse is not exactly the big money-maker of college sports we Wildcats would like to make it out to be, but at our school it is something special. Northwestern hadn't won a National Championship of any sort in 64 years when the lacrosse team took its first title in 2005. Our last championship was in men's fencing, a sport we no longer have a varsity team for. Winning one was special. Winning two was exciting. Three was almost overwhelming.
Five was gravy.
I don't like being arrogant or cocky in the realm of sports and often don't rest on my laurels simply for the major reason that "there is always tomorrow". I make this very clear on a regular basis. Hubris always pumps up that pride before the fall, and, at least as far as my sports teams go, I always try to keep myself in check. Now, I should point out that doesn't mean I'm happy we lost. That would just be nuts. But perhaps losing a bid for a sixth straight title despite zooming out to a 6-0 and later an 8-3 lead only to watch both of them slip away may serve as a useful check on all of us who don purple.
You know, because at Northwestern we're just so used to winning all the time.
I know Mondays are usually reserved for stories of visits to stadia past, I don't blame the five of you out there who read this regularly for being miffed that I'm taking a week off, but as I've said before there are only so many stories to fill the next three decades.
I'm going to take a week off once in a while to keep myself from running out of material. Particularly since I assume you're all distracted by that preview for tonight's Blackhawks-Predators game.
An expansion to 96 teams would have been awful for a number of reasons -- and I wasn't the only one who thought so -- but fortunately for anyone who loves college basketball or loves filling out their bracket according to which mascot they think is cutest, it won't be happening. Not immediately anyway. Instead the tourney will be expanding to a 68-team format, which is not ideal, but still the better option. And once again, I'm not the only one who thinks so. Of course, I already think the 65-team tournament we've been treated to since 2001 is a little silly anyway. While everyone adores the 64-team bracket, and rightfully so, the play-in game that pits the 64th and 65th teams in the field against one another is a worthless piece of television drudgery.
I don't think anyone bothers to watch what the NCAA calls the "Opening Round Game", and even fewer people think typical entrants like Coppin State or Morehead State have any chance of actually doing anything once they make it to the 64-team field. In fact, this game is so pointless that I'm fairly sure the only time I've watched it was when I was stuck in O'Hare airport my junior year of college. And I watch anything that can call itself a sport. Hell, as I write this, I'm staying up until 3 a.m. to watch and Aussie Rules Footy match between Geelong and Carlton FC.
And I was planning on it.
And yet, I've never been bothered to watch the Opening Round Game of the NCAA Tournament, and this expansion to 68 teams is likely to simply add three more such games -- one for each region -- to the mix. But I'm fine with this. I still think the play-in games are silly, and don't particularly plan on watching them, but the integrity of the rest of the tournament, which retains its basic structure, is still in place, and that is a massive sigh of relief to everyone from fans to reporters, who nearly universally disdained the idea of a 96-team setup.
Aside from avoiding the massive expansion, the new television contract negotiated by the NCAA also has one intriguing and overlooked benefit to its new deal. Lost in the discussion over the muted expansion is the fact that the NCAA's new 14-year $10.8 billion deal is not just with CBS, which has broadcast the NCAA Tournament since 1982, but also Turner Broadcasting System. This is, for the fans, an awesome development. Starting next year, the days of keeping CBS on the TV and hoping they might switch to the tight game that may make or break your bracket in the Dance's first round or being forced to watch out of market games on your computer will be long gone.
Instead, the first round will be broadcast on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. I haven't the slightest clue if I have truTV on my cable package, but I'm guess by next March I will. The benefit of this is obvious. Instead of waiting for the CBS control room to move its slow trigger finger, all 32 first-round games will be broadcast live across the four networks, meaning we can watch whatever game we damn well please. This might be the best development for college basketball fans since Dick Vitale.
What might even be more interesting is that starting in 2016 the National Championship Game will alternate between CBS and TBS, which must make this the first time the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship Game hasn't been on basic network television -- a wild development in its own right.
Of course, we ought not to delude ourselves. For the NCAA, this whole deal is still about money. NCAA interim President Jim Isch stated in the press release announcing the deal that, “This is an important day for intercollegiate athletics and the 400,000 student-athletes who compete in NCAA sports... This agreement will provide on average more than $740 million annually to our conferences and member schools to help student-athletes in 23 sports learn and compete.” Now, if you do the math, were this contract actually distributed amongst those 400,000 athletes, each would receive $27,000 a piece, which isn't too shabby, but I'm guessing the vast majority of that money won't actually directly filter down to supporting the costs participating in college athletics. Someone's paying the piper. And someone's getting paid by the piper.
That said, the constrained expansion is a huge relief to most fans around the country, and on a personal note, I'm extremely relieved that making the tournament will still be an accomplishment. This was of particular importance to me because my alma mater, as I've noted before, is the only BCS school to never go dancing. Were the the tournament expanded to 96 teams, next season would likely spell the end to that drought -- Northwestern has made the NIT, which would likely be enveloped by the expansion, each of the last two seasons. However, making the Dance at long last would feel cheap to me if it came about only as part of an expanded field.
Or at least Kevin Coble does. Regardless, all of us can breath a deep sigh of relief, particularly if we pull for the Wildcats. Despite our worst fears, the integrity of college basketball's grandest event seems to be intact for at least one more year, with a major improvement to boot. The only negative that could come from this is if another Northwestern collapse drops them from the 2011 field and makes me wish we were, in fact in a 96-team Tournament so I could taste the Dance just once.
But hopefully that won't happen. Because if it does, I'll look like quite the hypocrite.
Yeah, I know. That's a pretty vulgar title, and certainly a number of you are displeased and perhaps confused as to why I'm making that the title to this entry. I rather enjoy the work of Salvador Dali and spent most of college with a poster of "Soft Watch At The Moment of First Explosion" over my desk, but ruining an artistic masterpiece in such a foul manner is pretty much the only way I can accurately describe what the NCAA is apparently planning to do. Reports came out yesterday that Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney believes an expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams is "probable".
The issue will not be determined until the NCAA board gathers to vote on the matter on April 29th, but the thought of altering what, to this point, has been possibly the most intrinsically perfect of American sporting events is wholly unpalatable to just about everyone who watches college basketball, with the exception of coaches and college presidents. And why would they bother expanding the tournament field from 65 to 96 teams? Well, you don't have to be an Ivy Leaguer to figure that one out.
Money. Duh.
This summer the NCAA has the option to opt out and renegotiate its television contract with CBS, and with 30 more games potentially on the docket, that contract becomes a whole lot more valuable. For the coaches perspective, being the skip for a lower-level college team that can now make the dance allows you to burnish your laurels a little more than an NIT berth would, and as for the big program coaches, soft first-round matchups lend the prestige of saying you've made it to the second or third round more often than you used to.
Of course, if these seem like particularly material or vain reasons to expand what is, theoretically, a purely scholastic event about the love of sport, that's because, well, it is. Now I'm not naive. I know this event stopped being about pure competition long ago. Now fortunately, the NCAA is unlikely to pull an Avery Brundage and continue to insist that Division I college sports are all about the love of the game when they clearly aren't. It acknowledges that the bottom line rules here.
And while money is clearly the governing factor, and the likely reason that this will almost certainly happen, it's not ridiculous to express frustration over what will change the greatest weekend in sports. And I'm not the only one who's doing it. The first two rounds of March Madness are a phenomenal show, and every sports fan is so well versed that they can reel off the automatic seed pairings -- 12 vs. 5, 11 vs. 6, 14 vs. 3 -- out of second nature. Two proposals I've read have either the first round expanding to four brackets of 24 teams each or, even worse, the top 32 teams in the country getting a bye to the second round.
The top thirty-two teams!
Hell, we only rank the top 25 during the course of the season. Why should an unranked team with eight losses get a day off? Moreover, if a 16 seed has never beaten a 1 and a 15 has only knocked off a 2 a handful of times, what chance does a 24 seed have of taking out a 1 seed in the opening round? All this does is create dozens of games that will be uncompetitive blowouts or give a day of rest to a team that didn't deserve it. The only upside I could see to this would be if the NCAA decided to share some of the profits with the players of those sacrificial lambs of mid-major schools that are being put out to slaughter, and I'm not the only person to think the idea of paying the athletes has merit. But if you think the NCAA would ever pool money to be distributed among the athletes of its revenue sports, you probably also think expanding this tournament is a good idea in the first place.
What's more, expanding the bracket to 96 teams would cheapen the accomplishment of dancing for smaller schools or throw in bigger programs on off years. I don't need to see this year's UNC freshman-palooza in the tournament, and as an alum of a school that has never made the NCAA Tournament -- and breaks my heart in its failure to reach it year after year -- seeing Northwestern finally break the field because the tourney became more inclusive would feel less like an achievement and more like condescension. I don't want my school's first berth to be gift-wrapped. I want the Wildcats to earn it.
Remarkably enough, Northwestern coach Bill Carmody, who could become a hero in Evanston if the Cats finally get an invite to the ball, is also against expansion.
In the end, fighting the inevitable is pointless, particularly since we will continue watching next year and filling out our brackets like the slaves we are. But perhaps just once, it might be nice if the NCAA listened.
As for the tournament still going on, Saturday's Final Four could be wholly uninteresting if Duke makes its way to a championship, which Vegas has them pegged to do, but I'm still holding out hope that West Virginia can save us from the most reviled school in college basketball winning its first title in nine years.
In other news, another team that went nine years without a championship has officially lost a major part of its history, as the demolition of the original Yankee Stadium is nearly complete. The last parts of the upper deck were torn down yesterday as you can see in pictures here and in the video below.
Color me sentimental, particularly considering I'm a Mets fan, but even I think its odd to see those walls come down. And the one show of the hollowed out old Yankee Stadium next to the new one is just a bizarre site to behold. It still makes me feel strange to know that in just six months, Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium (I) and Giants Stadium will all be figments of my imagination rather than physical structures (On a side note, the NFL announced yesterday that the new Meadowlands Stadium will be opened by a preseason Giants-Jets game on August 16th. The Jets will be home.).
Yankee Stadium is expected to be replaced by parkland that was lost when the new stadium was built, but the idea of taking your kids to use the swings where Babe Ruth honed his craft is at times awesome and at times, well, strange. At least for me. My kids will never understand it.
On a final note, one that is happier than the rest of this post, I'm pleased to announce that Team No. 32 is officially on the docket, and that lucky team is going to be the Atlanta Braves. I've never been to Atlanta and not gone outside of the airport, so I think a stop at the Coca-Cola factory might be necessary, but the big occasion will of course be seeing the Mets visit their division rivals on May 17th and 18th at Turner Field. I don't have tickets yet, but I'm not anticipating that being a problem and my flight is booked.
My college roommate Sam, an Atlanta native, is likely to be among my companions to the ballpark, and upon hearing that I was a Mets fan, his father thanked me for paying for Tom Glavine's retirement. Sam repeated this mantra throughout college.
I wholly expect to hear it again. And I'm awfully excited about it.
