Well the NCAA Tourney has finally arrived and I couldn't help but think about how truly great it is. I mean seriously, there are fewer things in sports that rival how great the road to a national champion is in college basketball. The funniest thing about it is that I've spent the better part of my life not realizing its greatness.Yeah, that's right....I said it. I didn't get into this whole March Madness thing until I got to college. Which no one needs to tell me is very sad and pathetic, especially for as big a sports fan as I am. I mean, I have my reasons (as unexcuseable as they may be), which mainly revolve around the fact that I'm just a pro guy. Some people are college fans, some people are pro fans and I am definitely the latter for the most part. Anyway, I'm on board with it thanks to my alma mater and only college team I care about winning, which is Xavier.
But, I digress. All of this greatness surrounding March Madness really got me thinking........is this the best playoff/way of determining a champion there is? Not just in college sports, but in every sport? I'll start off by saying that it is the most intense and wide open of any sport which is it's main attraction. No other sport can offer as many games in a short period of time with as many teams having a chance to win it all like college basketball can, but how does it stack up overall against all the sports that people give a shit about.
Now when I say sports people give a shit about I'm only going to include the big 4 in the pro sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL) and college basketball and football. Other sports don't generate enough interest or converstation and basically these are the only ones I care to involve because I could give a rat's ass about any other sports and this is my blog entry. Each one has its pros and cons and I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on the NHL because it made the conversation by the seat of its pants, but let the debate begin.
I'll start with the NHL because like I said, I don't know all that much about it. What I do know is that playoff hockey is the most intense hockey you will ever see. I can count on both hands how many hockey games I've actually witnessed in my lifetime, but the ones that I have seen have generally been of the playoff/finals variety and they are very fast paced with extreme tension. The knock on hockey comes in the form of the length of the playoffs and eventually champion being crowned. I mean the damn playoffs start sometime in the spring and take about 3 months to wrap up. Entirely too long to be sitting around trying to have someone raise the Cup.
Moving to the NBA, we have a system very similar to the NHL. The games are much more intense than anything the regular season can offer and teams actually play defense for the first time all year. It makes for really exciting basketball by some of the best athletes in the world. Like the NHL though, the playoffs are WAY TOO FUCKING LONG! Not to mention, just about every team in the damn NBA gets into the playoffs. It's not a good thing when its easier to rattle off teams that didn't make the playoffs than it is to name those who did.
Then theres the MLB playoffs and the World Series. Similar to the previous 2 in that there are mulitple game series, but unlike the other 2, things fit into a nice little one month package and you aren't subjected to watching series after series after series. The problem with MLB though, is that the season is so damn long that many people are burned out by the time the meaningful games begin and have less patience when football games overlap.
The last pro sport up for conversation, the NFL, has arguably the best championship game of any sport. The Super Bowl is unmatched in popularity and really seems to be ultimate way of determining a champion. Of course there is the downside of it being a 1 and done format throughout the playoffs and Super Bowl which lends itself to a team not having a good day and losing an entire seasons worth of goodwill on one night. More often than not, the best teams win, but there's always the chance they might not.
Moving to college sports we have football. This system is fucked. Period. The BCS is more confusing than honors level calculus on some days and it leaves itself open to be questioned by the fans and media, which is never a good thing when you are trying to determine a winner that everyone can at least say they were the best team in a legit world. I really can't defend much of what goes on in college football because more often then not, the system screws everything up......add to that the fact that you can have a "co-national champion" and yeah, basically that just can't be tolerated.
Finally there is college basketball. A 65 team single elimination tourney. No lack of exitement here as it allows for the most upsets of any of the other sports. The one knock that it does have though is the fact that the exitement is all stored in the opening rounds and actually goes down after that. By the time the national championship rolls around, unless your school is a participant, it is a very lackluster ending to an exciting road getting there.
Really each of them has their own flaws and clearly none of them are perfect. Being the bias pro fan that I am, I will have to give the final nod to the NFL as playoff football is both intense and leads up to the grand daddy of them all, the Super Bowl. The NFL regular season also adds to the excitement as just about every game means something and winning games in the NFL is arguably the hardest thing to do in sports. All that being said, March Madness is a beast all its own. Even though it tails off to a somewhat anticlimactic ending, the involvement of so many teams and the ability for seemingly anyone to win it all make it one of the best. I'm just glad that even though I got on board late, that I did get on board.
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