March ends an unmercifully long season

By By Stan Torgerson / sports columnist
March 2, 2004
This coming Sunday Florida will play Kentucky and mercifully bring the 2004 regular basketball season to an end. It started Nov. 4 with a series of silly, meaningless games such as Kentucky vs. Team Nike, EA Sports at Tennessee, Global Sports at LSU, Sioux Falls at Mississippi State, somebody's All Stars at Ole Miss and others of similar trivial interest.
The first game which did not have the magic letters (Exh.) next to it was Alabama vs. Pittsburgh, played Nov. 14 so ESPN2 would have some kind of game to fill up a couple of otherwise empty screen hours.
It took until Nov. 21 for the games to have some semblance of meaning but, in truth, not really much then. Each SEC team has played 26 games more or less, including those against the outside world and those against other family members.
A month from today nobody will remember. Regular season basketball games and division finishes, including championships, are of little or no consequence. Heck, Mississippi State didn't even cut the nets down when they cinched the Western Division title a week or so ago. It wasn't worth the effort.
You see basketball has become a tournament sport. That's the only thing that counts, the tournaments. The regular season is merely a warmup. It's like shooting marbles. These past 26 have been for funsies. Now we're going to start playing for keepsies.
Even the conference tournament is only a baby step. The winner, whichever that team may be, will proclaim it holds the championship and the players, coaches and hangers-on will get championship rings, most of which will be placed in a drawer somewhere.
The first really and truly important event of the 2004 college basketball season comes on Selection Sunday March 14. That's when the NCAA committee in charge of living or dying as far as coaches and players are concerned will announce who goes and who does not, which teams will play in their tournament and which will be shuffled off to the NIT. I've been to both and the NIT is strictly minor league, but it's better than nothing at all.
Not only will the 65 NCAA teams who will bite scratch and claw their way through the tournament be named on that day, but their apparent talent levels will be analyzed and publicized for the world to see. It's called seeding, best to worst in the opinion of that same committee. Seeding is second only to being selected. Teams are seeded from 1 to 16 with one being the best in that bracket and 16 being the worst. Since 1 plays 16 in the first round, 2 plays 15, 3 plays 14 and so on, it is important to be highly seeded so you can get over the jitters against a first-round opponent that the committee didn't think was nearly as good as you are.
From Selection Sunday until the first round of games March 18 and March 19 is only four or five days. Every coach in the country will spend those days gathering film of their up-to-now unnamed opponent and calling every coach who played Team X during the regular season for information on strengths, weaknesses and how to beat them. Somewhere in that time period coaches will draw up a game plan (as if action in a basketball game follows a plan) and then drill his kids on the plan based on information he received from somebody else who probably isn't even in the tournament.
College basketball is very sentimental about its tournament. Why else do you think it has been given such charming non-de-plumes as March Madness or The Big Dance? The regular season has been forgotten. The conference tournament has slipped into the background somewhere. This is it, the NCAAs. It is what we live and breath for. You want to say your school has a successful basketball program? Then tell me, did they make the NCAA Tournament this year? They did? Good for them. They didn't? Pity.
Did someone mention studies and college homework during tournament time? The only college homework that counts between March 14 and the tourney's end on April 5 is how to shoot 3s and free throws.
Yes, April 5. To win the national title your favorite team must win six straight games, playing two each weekend for three weeks, going on if they win, going home if they don't.
Tickets get to be golden, well, at least worth their weight in gold. Office pools are concocted with chances ranging from $1 to whatever the traffic will bear. Betting parlors oil the hinges on their front door so it will swing open more easily because the suckers, oops, forgive me, the basketball lovers are coming, as if most of them ever saw a college game in their lives, except on television.
Only the Super Bowl is bigger than the NCAA Basketball Tournament. The World Series is Mickey Mouse compared to the interest in the road to San Antonio where the finals will be played.
And the teams which won 16, 17 or 18 games during the regular season, enough to justify calling it a good year but not enough to hear their name called on Selection Sunday, will quickly be forgotten. They're nobodies because they didn't get to "The Big Dance."
A pot of gold lies at the end of the NCAA rainbow. And beginning in two weeks, 65 college teams are going to be doing their best to find it.