Right call to let the "Big Dance" begin
By By Tony Krausz / assistant sports editor
March 21, 2003
The NCAA has done the right thing.
The same organization that was barraged with so much flak over the last three weeks.
From school's cheating to coaches' repeating improper cycles to a team just up and quitting to the standard argument about the seedings in the "Big Dance," the NCAA has been kicked around quite a bit as of late.
Heck, just a few days a go this scribe took a few shots at the college basketball season that seemed to be nothing but scandals.
But there is something magical about the short memory of sport fans.
When an entertaining product is produced on the floor, and fans can see all that is good and pure about sports, we forget a lot of transgressions.
This is the NCAA Tournament to a T.
Sixty-four teams battling it out on the hardwood, with really no idea how it is going to end.
The NCAA Tournament is great for so many reasons from the office bracket pools to the countless upsets and Cinderella stories that it produces each year, and really the tourney produces the best basket in the country.
But as great as the first day of the tournament was on Thursday, the games are not what the NCAA got right.
Sure it was exciting to see Holy Cross almost pull out another huge upset, after the team's attempt to be the first No. 16 seed to win last year against Kansas.
And the overtime finish between California and North Carolina State, where the teams traded three-pointers at the end, was great.
Then there was Southern Illinois slipping on its glass slippers again narrowly losing to Missouri by one point.
But for all the intense and intriguing action on the courts, the best part of the tournament and what the NCAA needs to be applauded for is simply playing the games.
This year's "March Madness" has taken on a different meanings from years past.
As the 18-to-22-year-olds play for the men's and women's titles, there are 18-to-22-year-olds half a world a way trying to protect the world from the threat of Saddam Hussein.
As new tournament heroes, who will be immortalized in slow-motion replays, are being forged in arenas across the country, the really heroes will be out in a desert fighting for the ideals that allow these games to be played.
There was a knee-jerk reaction of postponing the opening round games if the country was at war when the tourney started on Thursday, that while the rhetoric was sound, the idea seemed a bit misplaced.
The war in the Persian Gulf is far and away more important than any basketball game can ever be, and young men and women putting their lives on the line for their country is more important than young men and women trying to hit a buzzer-beating three-pointer.
But sports serves an intangible purpose in this country.
These games are played not just for enjoyment, but they serve as a distraction.
So don't feel bad that over the weekend, you may have one eye on the war and the other eye on the score in the fourth quarter.
That is what the games are there for.
Sports is never a life or death situation.
When a team wins or loses, the moon will still set and the sun will still rise the next day, but sports does capture the imagination like very few other things.
And the NCAA Tournament is a great thing to have during a time as scary and uncertain as war.
When the images of bombing raids and the thought of young men and women battling for their lives seem to overload the senses, it is okay to want to escape for a few minutes or hours in a college basketball game.
The war is more important, and everybody knows that, even the players and coaches who get so much flack about knowing nothing but basketball.
But the NCAA made the right call to let the games go on, because in the end, the battle in the Persian Gulf is about being able to continue our way of life without any outside threat, and the tournament has become one of the more enjoyable parts of the U.S.'s sporting lives.
