Put What You Can on Hold Becau...

I’m gonna put it out there right now. This is a warning. A major announcement of Biblical proportions. For the next three weeks I’m not gonna talk about football, I’m not gonna mention the NBA. Major League Baseball means absolutely nothing to me. Red Socks Nation? Let it burn I say! Hockey? What is hockey? European soccer? Never heard of it. And I dont even want to hear about Formul One because thats not a real sport anyhow. For the next 21 days or so there will one and only one topic discussed in my articles and that topic is The NCAA Basketball Tournament, both men’s and woman’s. There will be no compromises, there will be no straying from the path. We will eat, sleep and live college basketball. We will mind-meld with it like Spock and Captain Kirk on Star Trek. You and I will become one with the sport. We will agonize over our tournament brackets, ponder our selections and watch what is arguably one of the top 5 sporting events on planet earth, The NCAA Basketball Tournament. There is nothing quite like it anywhere. If you haven’t seen it, if you haven’t participated in a tournament bracket challenge you’ve most likely been living in a cave with wolves beating two sticks together for entertainment. Hold on folks, the tournament has arrived and for a few weeks it will appear the world is finally healing (as long as your teams win!!). 

The week leading up to the tournament is always an emotional one. There’s been a lot of cheering, a lot of tears, a lot of grown men and woman crying as schools both big and small punch their ticket to what many call The Big Dance. For a few short weeks schools like James Madison University, The University of Oakland and Samford will share the national spotlight on television and streaming video with the heavyweights like Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina and Gonzaga. If you’ve ever been on a college campus when you’re team is in the NCAA Tournament you know that it is a very, very big deal. The tournament galvizes the student body like no other event. Players become superstars for a brief period, some for the first time in their lives as the competition heats up between teams from places we’ve never heard of against teams from national basketball Meccas like Lexington, Chapel Hill and Austin, Texas. Teams and players that have never been on tv are now on CBS, ESPN and FOX sports front and center at all hours of the day and night and even in prime time. A chance at greatness and immortality awaits even the smallest schools from the most obscure areas as upsets can literally be smelled like a roasting steak on a spit. 

The tournament begins on Sunday with “Selection Sunday”. Teams that win their conference tournaments get automatic bids as other teams with strong records await “at large” bids, a selection into the tournament based on some kind of mumbo jumbo boy-math equation that ranks basketball teams by their schedule strength, much like the FBS championship selection process(and we all know how we feel about that process right?). The bottom line is that 64 teams end up in the tournament and it’s at this point that the bracketology begins. We all fill out our brackets by picking the winners of each game. You whittle down the pairing to 32, then to 16, then to 8 and in the end The Final Four (remember, it’s boy-math). Finally we end up with a National Championship in both men’s and women’s NCAA Division 1 College Basketball after a weekend event called The Final Four. Believe me, it might be a bumpy road getting there but the result will be worth it. Upsets will occur daily(and they always do). Powerhouse teams like Houston and Perdue will fall pray to the Fairfield’s and Radford Colleges of the world. Teams that were once considered a favorite will fade into the distance and be forgotten. The Tournament never fails to inspire greatness and excitement yet never gives us quite what we were expecting. In many ways The Tournament is much like life these days, joy and disappointment all rolled into one. But hey, it’s just a game so relax!!

As for me I’m reading up on my analytics, sharpening my pencil and preparing my game plan for filling out my bracket. I’ve had both winning and losing years but always enjoyed the competition, the subtle trash talking and in the end the thrill of victory my bracket gets posted on the office leader board(or ends up in the trash bin)Sometimes I’ve even managed to win some cash. 

So sit back boys and girls and enjoy the show. Look for my weekly tournament picks in my audio podcast right here on www.sportsbookstuff.com and remember to expect the worst and hope for the best so as to not be disappointed!! It’s Tournament Time!

Kev

Kev's Corner Our Staffs Weekly Sports perspective

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