Well, here it is: March Madness.
The time of year ordinarily healthy folks “get sick,” men and women get together over the water cooler to talk about their office pool and some coaches are angry for being left out of The Big Dance.
There are some that might have a legitimate beef — Herb Sendek at Arizona State, for example: how was he to know that usually good teams like LSU were going to fall flat on their face?; Illinois State; and maybe Thad Matta at Ohio State — but I believe it was Digger Phelps on ESPN that made the observation that these teams not only had the regular season but the conference tournaments to make their case and didn’t get it done.
How many of them were left out when Georgia (SEC) and Coppin State (MEAC) — teams that weren’t going to go to The Show unless they won their respective conference tournaments — did exactly that?
There was talk — as there always is at this time of year — on the ESPN shows about expanding the tournament. I don’t know if that is a good idea: in college football, don’t we already have too many bowls and seemingly more every year? Yet there are some teams that don’t get in The Dance that should.
To show you how serious this all is, Billy Donovan, the coach of the 2-time defending champion Florida Gators who did not get an invite, told his players they were not allowed to wear any Gator stuff nor use the usual practice gym until they “earned” that right again.
This from a man who lost all five starters to the NBA and several key backups from last year and relied on tons of freshmen. The Gators are in the NIT, which used to be The Show decades ago.
Now we have the College Basketball Invitational, theoretically taking the next-best 16 teams after the 65-team NCAAs and the 32-team NIT.
What did you think of Bobby Knight’s debut as an ESPN studio analyst? He got in his jabs but I thought it went well; he actually respects Digger, Dicky V and Jay Bilas, so they can “control” him.
He knows the game of college basketball.
One of his suggestions is that there be NO automatic bids to the NCAAs. I had never considered that as a possibility. Likely, OSU, ASU and some others from power conferences that did not make the Dance would go for it this year but where would it leave the mid-majors and others not in the Big Tens and the SECs?
It’s an intriguing idea — I used to believe that conference tournaments were a plague on mankind that needed to be exorcised but have changed my mind — but I think the powers-that-be will have to think things through.
Perhaps in the end, this is the best way to do it. After all, if things were perfect, what would we have to argue about in sports bars and on sports radio?