The NCAA Tournament Might Be The Best Thing America Has To Offer

WJFK-FM / 106.7 The Fan

The NCAA tourney is here, and it is simply perfect. What makes it so amazing?

Transcript

00:00So let's get back into the tournament, kind of the reason you and I are here at TAP Sports Bar

00:04at MGM National Harbor, and this thing that captures our attention every year. I've referenced

00:10this a couple times, Tobes, but I'm going to wax poetic if I may. This is one of the most unique

00:16things in the whole world, and that's not hyperbolic. No other country has this. No other

00:22sporting obsessed public has this. There are certainly things that stop the world's attention,

00:29the World Cup, the Olympics. There are certainly things in individual countries, you know, a regatta

00:35in England between a couple of, you know, famous colleges. In Japan, their high school world series

00:41sort of deal that they have that sort of stops the country, and everybody kind of is captivated by it.

00:46This thing where there are a couple obsessed folks, and I used to be one of them. It's kind of

00:51cooled off now that I'm, you know, 30 years older than some of these guys almost, but you don't know

00:57much about High Point, and now you're living and dying with every bucket or, you know, or miss.

01:02You don't know much about Montana, and next thing you know, we're going to have an experience like

01:08a Florida Gulf Coast or a Valparaiso, and you know exactly who, what, where, when, and why I'm

01:13talking about as soon as I say those names. There wasn't a George Mason until there was. There wasn't

01:18a, you know, the Cinderella team that really only played a couple of games, but that's all

01:24anyone would talk about for two days is they got either to the Sweet 16 or got bounced after one

01:28round. I mean, it's so special. It's so crazy. It's so unique. We love our tournaments. We love our

01:35gambling. We love our brackets. We love finding a vested interest in this thing. I don't know why

01:41it captivates us the way that it does, but I know that it does. Well, sometimes simplicity is the

01:46best, right, Danny? Like, there are other sports that have tournaments of sorts. The World Cup,

01:52specifically soccer, has a lot of these, right? The Champions League and different stuff,

01:57but they're a little bit more complex. There's groups, and then you get thrown into a bracket.

02:00This is no frills aside from the first four. You are who you are. You play if you, you keep going

02:05if you win. If you lose your out, there's no frills about it. It's literally just as plain

02:10as could be what it is, and you throw all the teams in there, and the beauty of it too is

02:15it'd be one thing if you didn't get every year the excitement, the pageantry, all of that stuff in

02:21there, but you get upsets every single year. You get just incredible stories every single year,

02:28and so the fact that every year you know that you have no idea who's going to be that year,

02:33but you know for a fact that some double-digit seed is going to make a run to the Sweet 16,

02:37and you have no idea who, we love filling out our brackets. There's just something about the

02:41simplicity, the fun, and even though college sports has kind of taken a change, where

02:47if you listen to us talk about the college basketball about two months ago, we're complaining

02:51about the transfer portal, NIL, and all this stuff. You know what? You're not going to hear

02:56any of that today, because this is still the best spectacle there is in all sports. So years ago,

03:01there was this, you know, before NIL, and before, you know, these, these, what do you call it?

03:06The fancy name for them was collectives. What they really are is legal slush funds to pay players.

03:11Correct. Not to like endorse a car dealership locally, but just, hey, you're basically paying

03:16guys to play the sport, and a lot of folks don't care, and they're fine with it. The logistics to

03:21me are not great, but that's, put that as to your point, put that aside. The, the chaos that is now

03:27the NCAA with transfer portal, and everything else that all kind of goes out the window,

03:32but years ago, before players got any kind of money other than their scholarship, and

03:36their stipends, and their dues, and, and, and the free food, and lodging, and training staff,

03:40and all the other kind of stuff, but before they got their money, some people who were sort of

03:45basketball snobs, or NBA snobs would go, I can't believe you guys like it, it's inferior basketball,

03:51uh, and you, you just like the fact that these players don't get paid,

03:55and this very sort of like demeaning kind of accusatory sort of, sort of vibe about that,

04:00and my answer to the last part was, yes, there's a reason, yeah, I watched Court of Gold,

04:08there's a reason when you put USA on the jersey, and you get the dream team, the redeem team,

04:13or dream team part two, whatever you want to call these different guys, and if they're not making a

04:17red cent off at Tobes, it is quite literally about pride, and these are pros doing this.

04:23What the, what everybody misses about the NCAA, and again, this is my high horse moment here for a

04:28second, so I apologize as I'm kind of doing this, you're monopolizing me, but most of the NCAA,

04:33of the NCAA, and I'm not talking about the organization, I'm talking about college athletes,

04:38I'm most of them, most of them are me,

04:42very little pro prospect, maybe a tryout here or there, and a week at extended spring training until

04:48they tell you no thank you, because some 16 year old kid, uh, signed, who's got a loose arm,

04:53and we can see you're going to get, your metasomes are going to slow down, you're going to get fat,

04:57but majority of these guys from SIU Edwardsville and Montana are not playing pro basketball,

05:04they're not going anywhere, and 99% of athletes that tee it up in college sports are not the

05:10lottery pick, are not the draft pick, at the majors there are, but they're playing because

05:17this is their window, this is the only chance they get to have this level of meaningful stuff,

05:21and they're going to be selling insurance for some of these guys for the seniors in a couple

05:25of weeks, seriously, that's what makes it special, it's not a money thing, right, I mean,

05:31the money for the schools, and there's some pride, I'll give you one example,

05:34and I'll turn it back over to you, again, I apologize for monopolizing, I'm from the DC area,

05:39growing up at the time that I did, you know what was a big deal, Georgetown, you know what was a

05:43big deal, Maryland, you know who wasn't a big deal, GW, where I went, until I'm turning on

05:49the television as a college sports obsessed kid, and I watched the George Washington University

05:56give the fab five at Michigan in the sweet 16 all they could handle, they're going back and

06:03forth and back and forth, and I'm going, wait a minute, this school is two miles from my high

06:09school, it's right down the road, I never go to Foggy Bottom for any reason, I don't have any

06:13business down there, but I'm, you know, it's right here, maybe this is something I need, you know,

06:18not considered, but as I was just a kid, but it's like, now they're on my radar, that is magical,

06:23you can't replicate that, so the sinister version, or the, I don't know, the word I'm

06:29looking for exactly, but the cynical version maybe is, oh yeah, they just made some money

06:34for the university and the kids don't get any, well, nothing did more for a school and its

06:39reputation for VCU going to the final four, for Mason going to the final four, for all these

06:43schools, you know, the Grand Canyon Universities that nobody's ever heard of, well, they're part

06:49of them now. Yeah, and I think too, you brought this up yesterday, and I think it's a really good

06:53point, it's single elimination, I don't know if it's something to do with our primitive, you know,

06:59medieval selves that, you know, when you're playing to the death back then and everything,

07:02and all this stuff going on that is literally life or death, this obviously isn't life or death,

07:07but if you lose, you're out, and so, you know, if you're Duke and you show up tomorrow and you're

07:12not ready to play, you could lose, if you're whoever it is, and they've got NBA prospects

07:17all over the place, you mentioned the Fab Five, if you don't show up to play that day, you could

07:21be done, and the cool part about this, too, is every year it creates heroes that we'll never talk

07:27about again outside of the context of March Madness. Jack Golke, right, with Oakland University, dude that

07:32just knocked down all those threes. I'll go all day, dude, Ali Faroukhbanesh, Harold Arsenault from Weber

07:37State, I mean, these guys become household names. And it's dudes that you would never care about

07:42outside of the context of March Madness, and they make names for themselves, and it's just so cool

07:47that every single year there's so many games, and also I think the reason it's so popular, too, it

07:52fits into what a lot of consumers love. I mean, how many people watch football normally anymore

07:59versus how many people watch Red Zone? Right. This is like basketball's version of Red Zone, it's

08:03one game ends, another, and it's always high drama, that's why the NFL's so good, it's always high

08:08drama, everything's close at the end, that's what this is. If there's a game that's a blowout, you've

08:13got another choice instantly. Now when you get to the higher, or the further weekends,

08:19and you're down, it's one game at a time, and you're hit and miss, but that's the beauty of

08:23that kind of frenzy that is the tournament. I mean, for all the season to build up, and again, I

08:31understand most of you guys aren't consuming college hoops in that like, you know, voracious way

08:35that I certainly used to as a teenager, starting with the opening tip in October,

08:42and Midnight Madnesses, and all those other kind of things, and you know, who's going to win the

08:45Duke Carolina matchup, and where's Virginia going to finish, where's Maryland going to finish in the

08:49ACC? I know it's different, but all the build is for this, and within 24 hours, really, I'll say 48

08:57hours, you're down to half, and within 96 hours, you're down 75% of the teams that made the

09:06tournament, and we won't think about them again. Now individually in each market, they'll go have

09:10their press conference. The coach said, you know, we fought hard, man, we did everything we possibly could.

09:13I don't know why this guy's a football coach in Texas. We did everything we could. I mean, I'm proud of

09:17them kids. I mean, all those guys did was everything I asked them to do, and it's a great group, and

09:22you know, but we didn't coach well enough, we didn't play well enough, and credit to

09:27Creighton, credit to whoever we're losing to, you know what I mean? Like, they'll do that business,

09:33but it's out of our conscience, and it's on to the next thing. It's on to the next crazy story, the

09:37next buzzer beater, to your point, the next hero. Well, and what's hilarious too is, obviously, a big

09:41part of this is filling out your brackets and being in pools with people, and what's

09:45hilarious is, I called my grandma last night. She lives with her twin sister. I called her.

09:50They haven't watched a single minute of college basketball, and I bet you they beat my bracket.

09:55I bet you they beat my bracket. So even people that don't care about college basketball at all

10:01are going to tune in for this, and it doesn't matter how much you know. I mean, some of these

10:06experts, they know every single name in college basketball, seemingly. They're geniuses, and then

10:11you look at their bracket at the end, and they've missed half of it. It's just, it's so crazy.

10:15It's so unpredictable. It's really a lot of a encapsulation of what us Americans love, all in a

10:21couple of days. There's nothing like the Thursday and Friday to open up the first round of the NCAA

10:26tournament. It's just perfect.

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