Commentary: March Madness is all about the fans

By Greg Cote - Miami Herald     Mar 16, 2007

You have cannonballed into an office pool and are a master of bracketology.

You delight friends with a spot-on, shouting Dick Vitale impression.

You are aware that Winthrop is not an English butler, but a team.

And know what team has the ridiculous nickname Great Danes.

You can speed-spell “Krzyzewski” on demand.

And recite the formula for the Rating Percentage Index.

You have been involved in at least one heated “Oden vs. Durant” debate.

And have this week alone used the name Cinderella roughly 10 times in conversation.

Thursday’s 16-game launch of the NCAA Tournament’s 64-team opening round trails the birth of your first child among your most anticipated, cherished days, but beats easily the birth of your second child.

If any of this sounds like you, it’s official: You are one of them.

You are what makes this three-week festival – March Madness, “the Big Dance” – the national phenomenon it is.

It isn’t the event itself, the games or results.

It is the way the event is embraced by enthralled, enamored and enraptured fans.

There is nothing like it in American sports. Hard-core NASCAR fans might come close. Golf fans seem to hold some of the same reverent feelings about their hallowed Mecca, Augusta, and The Masters.

But it can’t match how college basketball fans feel about this. From Selection Sunday to the Sweet Sixteen to the Final Four, this rivets national interest in a way rivaled only by Super Bowl Week.

Long before March Madness became so overstuffed it bilged into April, I have been both intrigued and at odds not with the event – college basketball is great – but with the religious zeal of its idolaters.

I also marvel at how Madness-ites act as if the “one and done” format is unique to the NCAA Tournament. Have y’all ever watched a U.S. Open or other tennis tournament? Brackets! One and done!

Hoops fans drifting Thursday into their three-week Nirvana don’t want to hear it, but the NCAA Tournament isn’t perfect and can be improved. A few thoughts …

1. Fewer teams. Do we really need a play-in game and 16th seeds? Should such reward attach to being the 64th-best team (maybe) in the country? If you haven’t spent a single week in the season’s Top 25, chances are you don’t deserve to be Big Dancing With the Stars. Halve the field. Thirty-two teams means a more quality-laden tournament that cuts to the chase quicker.

2. Get the best teams. Some of these automatic-bid from lesser conferences need to go. The NCAA field should be the best in the nation straight through, but isn’t now. Who thinks Niagara and Miami of Ohio are better than Syracuse and Florida State? Hands, please. Even Dickie V admits half dozen teams relegated to the NIT could make a run at the Sweet Sixteen if given the shot. Contrarily, USA Today oddsmaker Danny Sheridan puts 16 teams, a quarter of the field, at 1 million-to-1 odds or longer. Which brings us to …

3. The Cinderella Myth. Huge, stunning upsets rarely happen. A No. 1 regional seed has never lost in the first round. You get a true Cinderella – Gonzaga, once, George Mason last year – maybe once a decade. They’ll make a nice charming run, but hardly ever do they cut down nets. Anything can happen, but what usually does is what’s expected.

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