March Blandness

Nothing against those of you who do partake in the exercise of filling out NCAA hoops tournament brackets, but it's just not for me anymore. it's not just that my interest in the sport has dropped a bit in recent years. I just don't have the patience for all the rigmarole. There are two reasons I see to make the effort worthwhile: money and bragging rights. I don't like gambling a lot of money, and I can't stand people bragging about their brackets, so that leaves me out. I guess if I did better and I got to brag a bit more, I might feel differently.

I like to enjoy the tourney just on its own merits without worrying about how I'm doing in any of 10 different brackets I filled out. I like to see coverage, too, without talking heads giving us their incessant accounts of how they picked this and picked that and so on. I understand that it's a fun format, and people enjoy it, but I get weary of the contest aspect of it. What matters to me is who wins the games on the court, not who wins the office pools.

I get a kick each year out of the weak sister NIT for also-rans, and for years, as part of my recurring desire to make life as much like old-school pro wrestling as possible, I've said the NIT winner should declare itself the "real" world's champion, telling the NCAA winner, "You may have won your own little tourney, but you never beat us, and until you do, you're just a PAPER CHAMPION!" Then all offseason long, the NIT victor could go around challenging the NCAA counterpart to a game to settle it once and for all.

This year I see there is yet ANOTHER tournament, the College Basketball Invitational. So if you're not good enough for the NIT, fear not, there's room for you here. I think it's great in its own ludicrous way. I don't want to see the NCAA field expand to 64 teams. No, just keep adding second-rate tournaments until everyone gets into at least one postseason competition.