Sanity from Madness

I have finally managed to cobble some semi-comprehensible thoughts together about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, which holds the Nation in a viselike grip almost unremittingly for three weeks a year, more if you count the various entry tournaments. Here they are.

If you believe in the Law of Attraction, you probably understand that there is energy in every single thing. The keys on the computer I am typing this on have energy; the floor that the basketball game I am listening to while I type this has energy. If you don’t have energy, you, dear Reader, are dead. With all that in your back pocket, I don’t understand why the NCAA has insisted on installing new courts in certain of the venues where these games are being played. The energy level would be considerably higher if the games were played on the courts that were already there, and not the bland, pale, standard-issue floors that were installed for these games. It’s a picky point and I’m sure the way I’ve brought it out, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to Floyd Six-Pack. For the Final Four, it’s more than understandable to build a special court, and in fact it’s necessary to create magic. For the preliminaries, where nearly every court looks the same, the energy and the magic are considerably duller.

I note that the NCAA has several “Corporate Champions”, among them State Farm Insurance, Coca-Cola, Pontiac, and AT&T. So how come we’re allowed to see all of their products on display during the games, and all the other signage in the arena has to be covered over? It’s a double standard. God forbid we should see a single corner of the Budweiser sign on the scoreboard. I’m just looking for a little consistency here. There’s very little room for the purity and virtuousness the NCAA is trying to put on; they know damn good and well that sport as we know it would not exist were it not for the corporations. Incidentially, don’t you just love that blue carpet laid down at some of these places? Couldn’t it be red? Or magenta? I’ve seen black carpet in some of the bigger arenas, but all the same, we wouldn’t want the star forward to trip on a shoelace on his way to the court and fall on the concrete floor, now would we. It’s bad for business.

In the first two days of the tournament, four games apiece are played at four sites. Do you know who I feel the sorriest for? The network radio broadcasters. Their rat-a-tat has to last them from noon to midnight, and at least one group doesn’t get to take a meal break. That has to stink. But that said, those network radio guys are a special breed. They’re there for fifteen hours, delivering brilliant performances in most instances, not giving a damn who wins or loses, and they are so seldom appreciated for that brilliance. Think of that when the drunken, shameless old homer who eats, sleeps and breathes Wossamotta U. goes into aimless delirium at a jump shot.

One other thing: when the NCAA started holding women’s basketball championships, it used to be that their Final Four and Championship games were held on the day prior to those of their male counterparts. Ladies first; that’s how it should be, and should always have been. Now these events are done the day after the men’s championships. Do I really need to go into what a sad commentary on the roles of men and women this belies?

All carping aside, I think I have finally found a more philosophical slant on the whole tournament thing. For three weeks in March, extending into April, we watch as boys who are in the midst of becoming men are asked to become gods. Could it just be because their coaches, gelled hair, pinstriped suit and cynicism firmly in place, orders them to so they can have an extension on their contracts? Could it be because the alumni of their universities begs them to so they can taste the glory that they never did? I don’t know. I think about a line in a French film called Ma Mere, spoken by a teenaged boy: “Why are sons always asked to be gods?” The winners of these become false gods, names chiseled into stone only to be looked at once and, in many instances, forgotten. Maybe this NCAA Tournament, as insubstantial pageants go, is a whopper.

I admit that this diatribe hasn’t made a lick of sense. But this is the sole thing that does. No matter how many shoes squeak and how much sweat drips, no matter how many buzzers get beaten and how much confetti flies at the end, this bears repeating over and over: Love’s the best game in town, and don’t you know by now that love always wins?