This is one of my favorite times of the year (a close second behind the start of football season)…gearing up for March Madness and the NCAA basketball tournament. Fans start filling out their brackets, pools are created between friends, coworkers, family, etc. and once the tournament starts it seems that everything else is put on hold for a couple of weeks. And in anticipation for the tournament selection show this Sunday evening, I have a few thoughts on the college basketball season.
I like college basketball, a lot. I liked it a lot more when I was in college, in the early to mid 90’s, but I still am very fond of it now. There is no atmosphere like a big time college basketball game. College football games have a great environment but there are 80,000 fans in the stadium to generate that kind of atmosphere. However, a college basketball game will have between 12-18,000 fans (maybe 20-24,000 in some of the largest arenas) that will generate that same electric atmosphere you feel at college football games. There really is nothing like attending a big time college basketball game and there is no animal out there quite like the rabid, die hard college basketball fan.
Going to school in the SEC, I have seen up close one of the most over-the-top, passionate, die hard fan bases there is in college basketball…the Kentucky Wildcats. Those people are just nuts. They love ‘Big Blue’ and basically think it is Kentucky’s birth right to win the championship every year. In their view, any year that ends without hanging a championship banner was a failure. The Duke, North Carolina and Kansas fan bases also have the same mentality. The alumni donate millions to those programs to make sure the school has the best facilities and coaches possible, the student sections are intimidating, rowdy and down right crazy and tickets for the big games (like when Duke and North Carolina square off) are almost priceless.
However, even though I love college basketball, I’m not a die hard and I tend to think the regular season is a bit mundane, due to it’s length and number of games played. But I think there is another reason a lot of fans don’t really pay attention to college basketball until the NCAA tournament...players leaving early to go to the pros. This may be “good ole day syndrome” but I remember anticipating big time players from one school squaring off against big time players from another school just about every week. And even though that still happens, it doesn’t happen to the degree that it used to.
Just think if some of the players that went straight from high school to the pros (LeBron James, Amare Stoudamire, Dwight Howard, Tracy McGrady, Kevin Garnett, Kobe, etc.) went to college for 4 years (or even 2 or 3 years at least). As good as they are, they would have dominated the college scene but it would have been more compelling if they would have stayed the full 4 years and been able to compete against each other at the college level like Jordan, Bird, Magic, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem, etc. used to do. I’m not against players leaving college early for the pros (they have to go to college at least 1 year now) but it just takes a little luster off the college season.
But regardless of who's playing, I’ll be waiting for 11:00 am, March 20th as that’s when the first games of the NCAA tourney tip off. Go Bulldogs!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment