Where has all the Madness Gone? - March Madness Part 2
by
Dan Salem and
Todd Salem (3-8-13)
[Part One]
DAN:
Let's see how your Final Four stacks up against my own from January. I will say, I may have jumped the gun a bit on my picks, but there's no going back now! Here they are:
Todd's Final Four - Missouri, Michigan, Ohio State, Syracuse
Dan's Final Four - Duke, Texas, NC State, Syracuse
I have a feeling we both may have missed on Indiana. I also enjoyed listening to Colin Cowherd talk about how overrated the Big 10 is this year. They so are! He made a strong case for St. Louis and Gonzaga as dark horse picks as well, which I love. I'm sticking by my predictions though. Never bet against Duke.
I can't help but feel much of the drama is sucked out of the tournament this season though. Where is the hype? What happened to the anxiety surrounding bubble teams? This years tournament crop is being shunned by ESPN and the like. What gives?
I want so badly to love March Madness, but its getting harder and harder each year as hardly any of the best players from last year are still around to watch. I'm not knocking them for hitting up the NBA, but damn has it hurt the casual fan here. My Boston University Terriers (Go BU! BC Sucks!) barely sniff the tournament, let alone win anything and your Virginia Tech Hokies get their bubble burst annually it seems. Where do we go from here? I want to get excited about it again!
TODD:
I hate listening to Colin Cowherd because everything he says is simply for the sound bite. There's no logic or sense in his words. Really, the Big 10 is overrated? Michigan is undefeated against teams out of their conference this year. Indiana only has one loss to non-Big 10 schools. Illinois and Minnesota were flying high before their Big 10 schedule kicked in; they each have only one out-of-conference loss and are now getting beaten up by their Big 10 peers. This conference probably has seven of the top 30 schools in the country.
And he likes St. Louis and Gonzaga as dark horse teams?? St. Louis garnered 675 votes in the AP poll this week (reported by Sports Illustrated), meaning they are ranked as the 16th best team in the country, AKA a 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament. If they lost in the first round of the Big Dance, it would be an UPSET! And Gonzaga? Is he serious?? Gonzaga is number one in the nation right now! They are going to get a one seed if everything stays like it is. A ONE SEED!
For the uninitiated, i.e. people who listen to Colin Cowherd, a one seed is favored to make the Final Four. If they do not, someone upset them!
A dark horse team? Really, Colin? Nice picks. My sleeper is Florida; they're way down at 11th this week in the national rankings.
As for your concern about the drama being gone, it really has a lot to do with four-year players being non-existent but also that everyone on top keeps losing this season. The perennial powers are still playing very well (Indiana, Michigan State, the aforementioned Duke) but the elite school (singular) doesn't exist. There is no one for other teams to target on their schedule. No one is running away with the season. No school is separating themselves from the rest of the country to make a huge storyline. Everyone at the top is just kind of playing reasonably well, ho hum. The good thing is that this should make for a wide open and exciting March Madness.
Really the only way to get back to what you once had, where you can be excited about seeing certain players and knowing rosters around the country is to play a simple game:
Get to know your Freshmen.
There are a ton of amazing freshmen this season: Marcus Smart, Ben McLemore, Shabazz Muhammad are just a couple that pop into my mind. The game has swung young, kind of like the NBA, since one is a cause of the other. Huge college basketball fans these days follow high school recruiting and Rivals rankings of incoming freshmen. Rather than perusing last year's All-Conference teams to find out who will be good for an upcoming season, it is time to thumb through lists of the best recruiting classes. That is where the game has gone.
DAN:
Colin Cowherd is tremendous and a great prognosticator. Perhaps his excellence at predicting games and outcomes is due in part to his sleepers actually being top teams to begin with, just ones we're talking about a bit less than the others. But his record stands and he is pretty awesome at making picks. Hold your tongue when St. Louis faces the Zags in the Sweet Sixteen. And what makes him great IS that he's polarizing, says what no one wants to hear, and yells at idiots for over played opinions. I could go all day.
Back to the game at hand. What you're saying is that college basketball is becoming more and more like college football. This is definitely a good thing for its overall success and popularity. Getting people interested in recruiting classes and high school standouts is a positive if it works. I'm calling BS. Football is leaps and bounds ahead of basketball in popularity and interest. The NFL draft is amazing to follow even if the show is lackluster. And this all trickles down into college and National Signing Day being a huge deal. I don't know any of those guys, but I now know which teams are on the up and up in the sport. The problem for college basketball starts with the NBA. The NBA draft stinks. It is god awful! Before it even starts you know basically who the top five picks are, and beyond that who cares. Its just a bunch of complimentary players or bench guys. Teams are smaller and its a star driven league. All the stars are in the top five, top ten max in the draft. If I don't care about the draft, then why do I care about college basketball or its equivalent to National Signing Day? I don't, and its hard to imagine a situation where I do care.
The NBA is putting on a great product right now and I think March Madness will be interesting. But as an outsider to the college game, I see no way I garner any interest in a tournament team outside of my Alma-mater. Yes, yes, I can play the simple game of getting to know my freshmen. But that's what the NCAA tournament use to be for. Now they want me to watch regular season college basketball. Not happening. Sorry.
TODD:
The last thing I'll say on Cowherd, because he deserves even less time than we're giving him right now, is that if St. Louis and Gonzaga do meet in the Sweet Sixteen, it won't even be that surprising! They are both top 20 teams! Maybe he just doesn't understand what "sleeper" means.
You're right about the NBA draft. But it seems to me that should help aid your frustrations, not exacerbate them. Only the top five or so guys matter because it is a star driven league, sure. But 80% of those top five guys might be freshmen this season. It is even more paramount that you follow signing day and recruiting classes in basketball because one guy can shift an entire team's fortunes. That usually is not the case in football. So by seeing who nabs the top recruits, you'll have a pretty good idea of what teams might make a leap into contention during the season, and also have an eye on who will go near the top of the NBA draft. The turnaround on that information in football takes two or three years wherein basketball it all happens in one season! This should make it all easier and more exciting to follow. You just have a mental block against college basketball. That's on you. Don't blame the game!
As for the Big Dance, its always exciting just because of the built-in drama. Whether you know any players involved or not, the games are heart-pounding and you learn about stars (both freshmen and small-school seniors) during the tournament games. I guess your real problem is around this time, early March, where the tournament hasn't begun yet but you know nothing about the national teams and cannot dutifully fill out your bracket with any semblance of first hand knowledge. Sucker! This, I am sorry to say, is again, on you. Good luck with your bracket though. That was sarcasm, just to be clear.
