March Madness: Playoffs done right
Marcel Russcher
Issue date: 3/15/10 Section: Sports
Media Credit: tarheelblue.cstv.comHis jersey number might be 13 but this might be his lucky year. The North Carolina Tar Heels have had a lot of success in the tournament. Will they win it all?
Ah, March Madness.
College playoffs as God intended.
How can the National Collegiate Athletics Association get the annual College Football Bowl Championship Series so wrong and get the NCAA Division I Basketball Championship tournament so right?
Each and every single March, the NCAA sets its college basketball teams against each other in a tournament to determine the undisputed champion of the league. And each and every single year, the NCAA tournament makes for exciting television. It starts with four pods of sixteen teams each, ranked from top seeded number one to lowly number sixteen. It isn't just the fun of the games themselves that makes for good entertainment. It's the possibilities! There's always the possibility of a massive and monumental upset in the first round of the tournament as the top ranked team in the bracket faces the sixteenth ranked team.
There are a whole lot of people whose favorite part of the year is March Madness. That's for good reason: some of the greatest moment in sports happened in the NCAA tournament. I have favorite moments for sure. In 1957, the North Carolina Tar Heels survived a triple overtime date with Michigan State. In 1994, underdog Arkansas beat Duke at the very last minute with a buzzer-beater. David Thompson led North Carolina State to the championship in 1974 with a bad concussion, which, if you've ever suffered a concussion, you know is a remarkable feat. In 1987, Indiana went crazy with scoring and upset everyone to win the national title. An undefeated University of Nevada Las Vegas was defeated by an underdog in the semifinals in 1991.
Then there's my favorite bad moment. In 1993, Chris Webber made an idiotic decision to call a timeout that cost his team the game. His dad later made fun of it by putting "timeout" on his license plate.
We could do a whole story about this. The opportunities for awesome drama are endless and the number of times it has played out well have been uncountable. Because of the format, you can slowly weed out the lesser teams until you get to the Final Four, where you get to the four teams that have advanced from each bracket where they face each other in the semifinals. In college football, you don't have that.
That's why people look forward to the NCAA tournament but complain every single year about the terrible playoffs in NCAA football. Whereas you can always count on a fun tournament in the NCAA basketball tournament, you can always count on a bad bad bad omission from the national championship. In recent years, a bunch of undefeated teams have played in lesser "Bowl" games than teams with sexier names playing in the so-called Championship game.
Bottom line: every sport and league in the history of the world plays to have a champion. And there can only be one. That's why the NCAA tournament is my favorite time of the year.
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College playoffs as God intended.
How can the National Collegiate Athletics Association get the annual College Football Bowl Championship Series so wrong and get the NCAA Division I Basketball Championship tournament so right?
Each and every single March, the NCAA sets its college basketball teams against each other in a tournament to determine the undisputed champion of the league. And each and every single year, the NCAA tournament makes for exciting television. It starts with four pods of sixteen teams each, ranked from top seeded number one to lowly number sixteen. It isn't just the fun of the games themselves that makes for good entertainment. It's the possibilities! There's always the possibility of a massive and monumental upset in the first round of the tournament as the top ranked team in the bracket faces the sixteenth ranked team.
There are a whole lot of people whose favorite part of the year is March Madness. That's for good reason: some of the greatest moment in sports happened in the NCAA tournament. I have favorite moments for sure. In 1957, the North Carolina Tar Heels survived a triple overtime date with Michigan State. In 1994, underdog Arkansas beat Duke at the very last minute with a buzzer-beater. David Thompson led North Carolina State to the championship in 1974 with a bad concussion, which, if you've ever suffered a concussion, you know is a remarkable feat. In 1987, Indiana went crazy with scoring and upset everyone to win the national title. An undefeated University of Nevada Las Vegas was defeated by an underdog in the semifinals in 1991.
Then there's my favorite bad moment. In 1993, Chris Webber made an idiotic decision to call a timeout that cost his team the game. His dad later made fun of it by putting "timeout" on his license plate.
We could do a whole story about this. The opportunities for awesome drama are endless and the number of times it has played out well have been uncountable. Because of the format, you can slowly weed out the lesser teams until you get to the Final Four, where you get to the four teams that have advanced from each bracket where they face each other in the semifinals. In college football, you don't have that.
That's why people look forward to the NCAA tournament but complain every single year about the terrible playoffs in NCAA football. Whereas you can always count on a fun tournament in the NCAA basketball tournament, you can always count on a bad bad bad omission from the national championship. In recent years, a bunch of undefeated teams have played in lesser "Bowl" games than teams with sexier names playing in the so-called Championship game.
Bottom line: every sport and league in the history of the world plays to have a champion. And there can only be one. That's why the NCAA tournament is my favorite time of the year.
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