The Side Line
One sport, college basketball, has got it right. No, perfect. The NCAA basketball tournament is by far the best in any sport, for several reasons.
First, the selection process takes into account the regular season as well as each conference tournament. Teams that dominate in the regular season can coast in their conference tournaments, because they’ve earned the right to. On the flipside of the coin, teams that struggled all season can play their way into the Big Dance with a stunning stretch of games.
Second, the bracket is well-designed. 65 teams have at least a snowball’s chance in hell of taking the title, but the elite teams are given the best chance in the four-region system.
Third, the elite teams have to navigate a minefield if they hope to win it all. The field is loaded with talent, each and every year, and college basketball, especially in March, is the most unpredictable sport of all. Last year’s occurrence of all four No. 1 seeds reaching the Final Four won’t happen again for a long time.
Finally, the schedule is perfect for the event. The first two days are insane, with 32 games cutting the field in half and providing hours and hours of fun. Then, as contenders are separated from pretenders, the games are more spread out and thus become almost mini-championships of their own. The whole process takes three weeks, but has an entire year’s worth of entertainment.
The single-game elimination, all-or-nothing pressure of the tournament provides some of the greatest moments in sports, as Cinderella teams knock off high seeds with last-second threes, and previously unknown players from tiny schools become household names.
There is nothing like the NCAA basketball tournament, and with the 2009 edition just around the corner, my blood is pumping just a little quicker.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Mar 13 2009. Filed under Sports.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
