Best thing about ESPN ... tournaments

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Right now Virginia Commonwealth is playing George Mason on ESPN2 and College of Charleston is playing Chattanooga on ESPN. There is a desperation about the basketball being played, unadulterated passion. There is a higher pitch to the cheerleaders’ voices, a sweatier intensity to the coaching, and ties get discarded quickly. Every mistake brings anguish to a player’s face, to the coach’s foot-stomping, and it is still the first half.

Because ESPN is showing all of these college conference championship games, you get to see sports when winning or losing does mean everything. It means a chance to live in wonder for another two weeks, to have an NCAA Selection Sunday where the players will sit in a meeting room on campus waiting for an announcement about getting to play UCLA in Boise, or something equally glamorous.

Chattanooga just took a 29-27 lead, by the way. Later tonight Siena and Niagara will play for an NCAA bid. Cool.

The big conference tournaments all start later this week and even in those places, where five or six or seven teams will probably get automatic bids, there is always a chance that a non-NCAA invitee (USC, anyone?) might get hot.

And since we’re here on the West Coast we get a break. We can watch these games and still tune in later to see ‘Dancing With the Stars’ start a new season, without wearing out the remote control.

-- Diane Pucin