An Outside View: Sports’ greatest spectacle

news@theheraldnewspapers.com Forget the Olympics. Forget the Super Bowl. Forget the World Series. Forget the Daytona 500, Churchill Downs, the Masters, and Wimbledon. Sports’ greatest spectacle has finally arrived. Yes, it’s March and that can mean only one thing – college hoops, hoops, and more hoops known simply as March Madness. This is in no way a criticism of the other sports. Hey, I like all of them as much as the next guy. But none of the other sports evoke the kind of excitement and emotions as the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Heck, millions tuned in to CBS on Sunday to watch the selection show just to see which teams would make the field of 64 and which teams would not. Within minutes, computers were humming as crazed fans were searching the Internet for tickets and hotel rooms so they could go see their beloved teams play. Thousands of others were dragging down that old atlas in the closet to find out where Winthrop is located. Or how about Gonzaga, Xavier, George Mason, or Iona? Learning a little geography is one of the side benefits of being a college basketball fan. On Monday morning debates were raging around water coolers everywhere. How could the selection committee leave out a 19-9 Florida State team and pick an Alabama team with 12 losses? How could the Missouri Valley Conference get as many teams in the tourney as the powerful ACC? How can Tennessee be a #2 seed and North Carolina is only a #3 seed? By Tuesday, office pools were springing up everywhere and every basketball fan worth his salt had completed his brackets, predicting the winner of every single game. That’s 59 games if you’re counting. My brackets are filled in. How about yours? If I’m right, the Villanova Wildcats will be cutting down the nets in Indianapolis in a few weeks. The beauty is that it could just as easily be Duke, Connecticut, Memphis, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio State, or any number of teams. Your brackets probably make just as much sense as mine at this point. So, what is it that makes this basketball tournament so appealing to so many? The answer is the madness. It’s the unpredictability. It’s knowing that on any given day anyone can beat anybody. It’s knowing there is at least the chance some tiny school no one has ever heard of will play David and knock off one of college basketball’s Goliaths. Who will this year’s Cinderella team be? Which tiny school from Nowhere U.S.A. will capture the hearts of America? It shouldn’t happen but Penn has a chance as a #15 seed to upset Texas. Stranger things have happened. That could never happen in college football. Can you imagine Penn getting a BCS bowl and putting it on Vince Young and Company? It couldn’t happen. Can you imagine some local dirt track driver getting a ride in the Daytona 500 and dueling Junior down the stretch for the checkered flag? It couldn’t happen. Can you imagine some duffer from Creekside entering the Masters and beating Tiger on the 18th hole to win the green jacket? It couldn’t happen. But it can happen in college basketball. Let the games begin!