The Stace Sports Paradox
Why is it that I find it so easy to dismiss fans of March Madness, The BCS, or any other big college sports playoff, while at the same time recognize the equal irrelevance of professional sports, and still be a fan of it?
I sometimes pontificate on how I don’t understand why someone who isn’t in college or have a relative actually playing cares about college sports, but how do the Packers or Bears winning a game enhance my life any?
Still. I don’t get March Madness.
I followed march madness a lot more closely back when I played basketball. There is the usual hoopla about crowning a champion for the year common to any other end-of-season playoff. What makes the NCAA tournament exciting is that first weekend where, what, 8 games are going on at the same time. If you like basketball, you can’t ask for more.
Then there’s a separate debate over NBA bball vs. college ball. Do the more-frequent screwups and dumb plays make college ball more realistic or is it just shoddy? Are NBA players ball-hogging showboats who put their appearance on the highlight reel above the team or are they the pinnacle of human athletic achievement on the court?
Anyway, that’s what i remember about my basketball days. That all seems so long ago….
As somebody who doesn’t really care about sports but grew up in Nebraska, I can definitely see where a lifelong attachment to a college football team can come from. There are no real professional teams of any sort in the entire state, so there’s nothing to Nebraska residents from the good ol’ NU football team. And since it is so easily latched upon, the entire state will go wild about the team. It’s the common rallying point for the whole state and something that previous residents can easily take away with them.
Compare the populations of the three largest cities in Nebraska:
Omaha - 425,000
Lincoln - 225,000
Grand Island - 42,940
to the size of Memorial Stadium, where the Cornhuskers play:
Memorial Stadium: 81,000
On game days, the stadium is the third largest city in the state, all because people can go there, tailgate, watch a football game, and then cause a traffic jam on I-80 at the end of the day. It holds the state together.
But yeah, I don’t get March Madness either.