Well, that particularly embarrassing revelation aside… let’s kick this pig!
awesome: upsets, gambling, brackets
No bones about it – there are a SLEW of awesome things about March Madness. Who doesn’t love a good upset? Watching Duke’s current batch of WASPs get their asses handed to them by a plucky Devry school? A highlight of a grossly undersized white point guard making an improbable three at the buzzer that will undoubtedly be the highlight of his inevitably mundane life? The triumph of the human spirit? OK, two out of three ain’t bad. Regardless, upsets are the games we always remember from year to year, not the miserable 7-10 seed matchup in the Midwest region that makes you want to end your own life. And hey, its not like Bryce Drew will ever have to pay for a meal in Gary again.
You know what’s great about upsets? They go great with the second awesome thing about March Madness… gambling! As a card-carrying degenerate, there is literally nothing better than waddling over to a sportsbook at 9am on a Thursday, withdrawing a grand of hard-earned (wink) cash, constructing a series of ludicrous parlays that have worse odds than the Spears-Federline children, and spending a solid eleven hours reaffirming the fact that you have a serious, serious gambling problem. Everyone has their own favorite gambling memories of March Madness. I remember hitting a parlay of three underdogs that was particularly amazing at the time, but nothing matches the Duke-UConn Final Four game several years ago. With the game out of reach and Duke down by four, Chris Duhon hit a half-court shot to narrow the gap in an inconsequential manner. I still remember immediately thinking to myself – there are some pissed-off mofos in Vegas right now. Yes, that was my first thought. What can I say.
Finally, March Madness rules for its prodigious usage of brackets. No other sports event is better set-up for office pools, unless you count the Tour de France. Who do you have in your peloton? Nothing beats picking your bracket like a standard dude, meaning tons of upsets, while the chick in accounting with the huge knockers picks straight chalk and pulls out a convincing win. I inevitably always choose one monumentally stupid Final Four team, and it warrants mentioning that once again, I am easily inhabiting the cellar of my pool all by myself. None of these issues affects the awesomeness of these brackets, though. Even if you do pick yours by which teams have the best mascots.
[shaking head]
sucks: whining about bubble teams, the fact that there’s 65 teams in the first place
If there’s anything that sucks about March Madness, it’s the fuss over who gets in and who gets shown the door. Seriously, we’re arguing about which team is going to get a 12 seed, maybe hit a couple of lucky breaks in the first round before being ass-rammed by a legit team some way along the road? Just ridiculous. There are several terrible facets of these fruitless arguments, which never change:
- Acronyms like SOS and RPI are rammed down the gullets of the American sports viewing public like a Peter North video (c’mon, you get the reference. We’re all friends here.)
- People with job titles like “Bracketologist” get major airtime on ESPN and other sports shows, despite no clear expression of tangible skills and limited job prospects should this position cease to exist
- Syracuse is inevitably on the bubble
awesome/sucks: watching your team win the NIT
This one hits especially close to home. As you may well know, basketball was officially killed the University of California, Berkeley by former coach Todd Bozeman, who basically handed the keys to the program and undoubtedly several nice vehicles to former player Jason Kidd. Keep in mind, I’m not referring to Mr. Kidd as an alumnus because as far as I can tell, he never graduated from the university. I will say that at the very least, he is the author of one of my favorite quotes ever by an athlete, saying he wanted to come in and change the culture of a losing locker room and transform things “360 degrees.” Went to UC Berkeley, ladies and gentlemen. One of the finest institutions on the planet.
[audible sigh]
But I digress. Cal’s basketball program has thus been woefully inept since the inevitable sanctions assigned to us, as well as our penchant for recruiting players who might as well book their flights to Europe ahead of time to save on the airfare. I would say that Cal’s current coach, Ben Braun, couldn’t coach his way out of a paper bag, but given that he is familiar with recruiting paper bags, he’s probably attuned to their tendencies (the one caveat would be Leon Powe, who is one of my all-time favorite Cal athletes ever and is actually a genuinely good human being).
Anyways, the Golden Bears won the NIT in 1999, shortly after I signed my letter of intent to go to Cal (amid very little fanfare). Now, it’s great to win things in general. The NIT, however, is not one of those things. Sure it was great to string together a few wins over a bunch of middling Jesuit schools, but it’s not something to write home about. Ask the Onion. And as great as it was to demonstrate our school’s ability to pass effectively to teammates, score consistently, and play fundamental basketball (minus the three-man weave), nothing can erase the humiliation of looking up the rafters at Haas Pavilion and seeing this banner.
As a frequenter of Pauley Pavilion down at UCLA, that's just pathetic. Now excuse me while I prepare for football season.
awesome/sucks: vid of the day
In honor of the start of baseball season, I give you... the Dodgers.
And though not a vid, I couldn't find anywhere else to link to this. May be my favorite news article of this young year.
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