March 15, 2009

Is It Really Madness if Everyone has It?

Today is "Selection Sunday," which (for the uninformed) is the day they set the field for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament... or, as it is more commonly known, March Madness. In my personal life, this marks the start of the annual three week period where I ravenously follow a sport that I largely ignore for the other 49 weeks of the year. Mind you, I do occasionally check in on my adopted team, Villanova, to see how they are fairing through the conference season, and this year I have been reading Mark Titus' "Club Trillion" blog, which documents his experiences playing for the Ohio State basketball team [by the way, I recommend everyone check this blog out, especially if you enjoy hilarious, well-written, sometimes informative blogging... which is why I assume you're here in the first place]... but the point is that my love of college basketball is generally contained within this single three week window every year.

I'm not going to waste your time with some drawn out treatise on why this event captures my attention like it does... especially when anyone who has ever experienced March Madness can tell you the reasons can be summed up in a few simple words: brackets, miracle shots, Cinderella stories, Gus Johnson, and trying to figure out which school has the most attractive cheerleaders (surprisingly, Arizona often cleans up in this category). Those things, combined with the shear volume of basketball one gets to watch in a condensed timeframe, are what draw people to the madness. Actually, now that I think about it, another underrated aspect of the tournament is the strangely surrealistic experience of watching someone like Butler play and seeing five white guys on the court for one team at the same time... it gives you a good chuckle anyway.

I'm digressing, so, like I said, I'm not going to waste your time with that. Rather, I prefer to waste your time in another way... I'm going to tell you about a yearly ritual I have that coincides with the madness. In a nutshell, I use the three weeks of the tournament as a condensed scouting season for my beloved Raptors. As I have no influence whatsoever in the decisions of that organization, how this usually plays out is that during the course of the tournament I generally fall in love one or two guys and desperately hope that the Raptors will draft him... then invariably get crushed when draft day comes and the Raptors decide that they'd rather take their chances on Rafael Araujo (I'm not even going to waste my time checking if I spelled his name correctly). Past examples of my "tournament crush" include (chronologically) Antawn Jamison (who the Raptors actually did draft, but immediately traded for some guy named Vince Carter), Kirk Hinrich, Delonte West, Chris Paul (in only two games, as Wake Forest lost early and destroyed my bracket), Jordan Farmar, Randy Foye, Luc Richard Mbah-a-Moute, and Stephen Curry (everyone who watched March Madness last year can feel me). I have a couple guiding principals for picking my tournament crush; first of all, you're automatically disqualified if you play for Duke or Kentucky... and you're going to really have to impress me if you play for UConn. You get bonus points if you play for Villanova or UCLA, or if you have an awesome name (see Mbah-a-Moute). It generally helps to be 6'-3" or under and you have to have at least an above-average jump shot (Mbah-a-Moute is the exception here, but see above about the name thing). I also tend to drift towards scrappy players who can single-handedly will their teams to a win. Most importantly, I like players who bring more things to the table than they take off. In short, they're players who play the way I wish I could play. Anyway, for whatever reason, even knowing it's going to lead to heartbreak at the draft, identifying and rooting for this player is my favourite part of March Madness every year.

The word out of Bracketville is that Davidson is not going to make the tournament this year, meaning no Stephen Curry, meaning there is a large hole in my heart waiting to be filled by any player who is willing to step up to the challenge. So James Harden, Eric Maynor, Jonny Flynn, Scottie Reynolds (bonus points for playing in Philly and having the same last name as characters from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), and all you dark horse candidates out there... the torch is ready to be passed... feel free to come and take it.

Still Looking for the Perfect Sign-off...
Caleb

1 comment:

  1. Caleb, I am excited for the blog. But after this becomes huge, as we know it will, I think you need to start making your own podcasts. And whenever you need, you will refer to me as your cousin paul and can call me in the middle of my work day unannounced and I will ALWAYS have a good 60mins free to talk about sports and pop culture, exchanging meaningless theories about the nature of everything. It will be very original. I think we are on to something.
    Paul

    ReplyDelete