Busted brackets or not, NCAA Tournament is top-notch entertainment
Sports have always given an endless supply of compelling theater. Michael Jordan’s final shot over Bryon Russell in Game 6 to win the 1998 NBA Finals, Kirk Gibson’s walk-off home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, and Malcolm Butler’s interception … Well let’s stop there, it’s a little sensitive. However, no other sporting event provides such lasting drama as the single-elimination NCAA Tournament, especially the first weekend.
No other sporting event supplies viewers with 32 games in its first 48 hours. Those who fill out tournament brackets have a dog in every fight, even when their brackets become irrelevant after the second day. How many of us plan weeks in advance to stay home and hop from game to game between four channels to watch those first two rounds of the tourney? Just me? It’s ok, your secret’s safe with me.
Don’t get me wrong, the Super Bowl is a fantastic event, but the two weeks of media coverage before the game can cause event fatigue if your team isn’t in it. The World Series is always exciting after a long season, but the cold weather can make the series anticlimactic.
Every year urology clinics all over the country offer vasectomies at a discounted price around the time of March Madness to allow men to sit at home kicked back for a few days “under doctor’s orders.” No other sporting event provides such an opportunity!
This year the NCAA Tournament provided exceptional drama as 12 lower-seeded teams won in the Round of 64, including No. 15 Middle Tennessee over No. 2 Michigan State, and three more upsets in the Round of 32. The finale went down to the very last second, as Villanova’s Kris Jenkins knocked down a picture-perfect 3-pointer from 25 feet as time expired to give the Wildcats a 77-74 win.
The drama surrounding the five-round, single-elimination NCAA Tournament cannot be matched. The level of play may not be what we see on the professional level, these are college students after all, but with the grind of a tournament any team can win in any given round. After all, TNT knows drama.
