College basketball was apparently broken.
Then, because magic happens in March, it is now fixed.
You have seen the tweets, Facebook messages, and other social media posts by lovers of the game: “College basketball is fine” or the sarcastic “But college basketball needs fixing” messages after retweeting the great rating the Thursday games brought CBS and Turner.
None of that makes any sense. Using the sport’s grandest stage, the NCAA Tournament, to push the idea that college hoops is fine is rather baffling. I mean, of course the ratings are high right now. Of course people are talking a lot about the game. Naturally there are vines, GIFs, and other posts circling the Interwebs at an extremely awesome rate. It is March! It is always that way.
We don’t judge many other things solely through the window of their (or its) finest moments. Do we talk about Nicolas Cage’s acting career only through the lens of his great movies while ignoring that time he once wore a bear costume in The Wickerman? Does his now straight to VOD career not count against (or towards, you Left Behind lovers — Kirk Cameron Left Behind trilogy > Cages, in my opinion) his credibility and achievements as an actor?
If you ask folks who blindly adore all things college hoops, though, they will tell you that Nic Cage is the greatest actor ever because of Raising Arizona (or whatever Cage movie is viewed as good). They see nothing else. They view no other issues in this debate because he has gotten praise in the past while pumping out box-office draws, despite imposing wretched abominations of films on us for quite some time.
I mean, Nic Cage does good things from time to time, just like college basketball does the NCAA Tournament well. So, naturally, Nic Cage is March Madness…?
College basketball is not Nic Cage (damn it!). At least I don’t think it is. All things being equal, at least the horrible Cage flicks have some unintentional humor in them. There’s no humor in the many issues nearly every media member has mentioned concerning the flaws of college basketball. The tempo, too many timeouts, the lack of offense and skilled players, and whatever other areas anyone with a computer and an Internet connection has discussed. Yet, here we are, talking about how awesome the sport is despite all of its obvious flaws because everyone is caught up in the Big Dance.
Don’t get me wrong. This is my favorite sport. There are things in college basketball that can’t be duplicated. Mostly, and certainly the most vital in this discussion, the excitement that comes over all of us when March Madness hits. Brackets get filled, production around the office goes down, and the free world is rooting for a school “Mr. non-sports lover” never heard of before to upset the brand-name school.
That’s great. Then again, it is also why we shouldn’t use ratings or any other measurable device during the NCAA Tournament to try to attempt to tangibly look at college basketball’s quality or its appeal to the masses.
People are selfish. That’s another reason why using the “But look at those ratings” tweets during March Madness is dumber than a doorknob. Every person who fills out a bracket is watching what is happening, sure, but they are doing so because they want to know how their bracket is doing. They are not watching it because they love the sport or want to see which players are excelling now to prepare for next year, or for any other reason other than looking at their picture-box to see if their picks are helping them.
It is similar to those who play fantasy football, but don’t really love the NFL to the ends of the Earth. They watch because they want to know if the running back they drafted will help their beloved Strawberry Seahorses win that week in their fantasy league. Unfortunately for college hoops, though, the NCAA Tournament is only a few-weeks-long adventure while the NFL’s fantasy football people have an entire season to play their selfish game.
It is okay, though. Keep propping up the high ratings or the cool highlights and even all those tweets to tell everyone how awesome college basketball is. I mean, it is not like a month ago everyone with a functioning brain was trashing it for all the rest of the world to see.
So, here we are again. Some people are continuing to blindly praise a sport that needs much tinkering. They do such a thing because the sport’s grandest stage is providing the greatest of moments — which is kind of the point to being with. We’ll revisit this discussion next November while we have another slew of articles bashing the sport again. (The volume of articles will depend on how many appropriate rulebook changes and policy tweaks are implemented by the powers that be in college basketball.)
See you next winter, Blind Lovers of College Basketball Who Will Hate The Sport Again In November. Oh yeah, get a shorter name please.
(In case you didn’t notice it: Nicolas Cage just ruined March Madness.)
