Making sense of March Madness
Beware the Ides of March Madness, for there is madness upon the land at anytime, though never more than now.
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity,” Edgar Allan Poe once famously explained, and we all know how difficult sanity can be this time of year. How’s a sane man supposed to pick?
Duke or Kentucky? Syracuse or Tennessee?
Get a grip. Tennessee?
This we know: In the next two weeks, almost anything can happen and probably won’t. Some upstart will stage an uprising – Lehigh? Sienna? -- then wilt like drugstore tulips. March belongs to the big dogs, the ones with All-Americans coming off the bench -- places where even the student trainer wears a size-14 shoe, God bless her.
Why is March so mad? I think it has something to do with setting the clocks forward. If there is any nation that cannot afford to lose an hour of sleep, it is this one.
Why is March so mad? It is the cumulative frustrations of winter in places where the sun never fully rises -- Columbus, East Lansing, Milwaukee. Right now, March Madness fits them like a blood pressure cuff.
As always, March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a chair-hurling psycho-coach making $5 million a semester. Over the next two weeks, reports will go unwritten, girlfriends will go unkissed. It doesn’t hurt that this is spring break for many schools. Can you say “road trip”?
Hey Mom, can I have 100 bucks? No? How about 200?
In March, everybody plays, especially the fans. “How do I find a reputable bracket?” people always ask. It’s easy, I say. Just look for the types of people who steal presidential elections or put sawdust in bad transmissions. Make your picks. Kiss your cash goodbye. Larceny like this is such a tradition, you could plant soybeans by it.
And, no, your losses are not tax-deductible, though I urge you to go ahead and try.
Sure, there is plenty wrong with college hoops -- saggy shorts and saggier graduation rates. Coach Wooden must sit in the stands and wonder “Is nothing sacred? What happened to my dear game?”
Explanation(s) 1 through 100: College stars never make it to drinking age anymore. Now the season ends, and it’s a jailbreak for the pros -- a jail all its own, though the cribs do tend to be better. In college, rebuilding now means one can’t-miss player and 100 grand in the trunk of a new Lexus ... shhhh, don’t ask.
In the good old days, and I’m talking 1891 to roughly 1995, you used to see these kids grow up. They’d come in as freshman phenoms, slump as sophomores, grow some sideburns as juniors and play like men in year four (or five).
Back then, you came to recognize the players, know their parents and their hometowns. You knew how they preferred to wear their socks -- floppy or high, yellowed or alumni white.
Now, except for the die-hards, college hoops makes most fans scratch their heads and wonder, “Who are these fresh-faced dudes?” It’s hard to scream “man-up” to a kid who just had his first pimple.
But in the next two weeks, all that is forgiven -- well at least mostly. The next two weeks will be face paint and tubas, pompoms and seas of colored T-shirts. At this time of year, college basketball has a sense of bonhomie like nothing else, a quickened pulse, a hormonal recklessness.
It’s March, and Cinderella’s feeling a little naughty.
Just remember, nothing clouds our sense of good behavior like a winning streak, and I fear periods in this tournament when sportsmanship might go a little adrift. Of course, sportsmanship is like pizza: There is more bad than good. But when you get the good, it makes all that other tasteless stuff worthwhile. It keeps the quest alive.
In fact, that’s March Madness to a T. It makes all the other tasteless stuff worthwhile. It will make you scream and drink to excess and question the existence of a benevolent sports god.
It will test marriages and couch springs and floor joists. It will bond fathers to sons, moms to daughters, Capulets to Montagues, janitors to college deans.
The best reaction to all this madness? Like Poe, sometimes it’s best to just embrace it. Drink, scream, pray (repeat).
Then take two free throws and call me in the morning.
