March Sanity?
THE NCAA TRIED to sell its play-in games as the "first round" when the field expanded in 2011, a rebranding that was fully abandoned this year, restoring some truth-in-labeling to March Madness, which is really a March-and-April Madness, but why nitpick?
Then again, when there are 14 teams in the Big Ten, 10 teams in the Big 12, and a Big East that includes Creighton, of Omaha—a city that calls itself the Gateway to the West—is it nitpicking to want a little common sense in sports? Saint Louis and Dayton are among 14 members of the Atlantic 10, a conference that is neither Atlantic nor 10. Discuss.
Common sense is a beautiful thing. America was founded on it. Thomas Paine's pamphlet urging independence from Great Britain was called Common Sense, a sentiment that has occasionally prevailed in the 240 years since. After all, we got a much-needed playoff in college football. The NCAA has finally given each basketball court a different accent color this March, so that the tournament games on television no longer look as if they're being played on a night watchman's bank of security monitors. And Kraft—after decades resting on its laurels—has finally introduced a sharp-cheddar version of Velveeta.
But there is so much more to be done in the name of common sense. The NFL still holds tight to its smoke-wisp, shape-shifting definition of what a catch is (and isn't). And basketball announcers continue to say "second-chance opportunities" when chances and opportunities are the same thing. And those last five Pringles are always shattered, so that you have to surrender your dignity and drink them from the can, dammit. These are problems we can fix.
Let's start with English. George Orwell said that political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and ... to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." NCAA overlords knew this when they invented the phrase "student-athlete" in the 1950s to avoid paying worker's compensation to injured football players who might otherwise be considered employees. We accept that sports will always be full of Super Bowls that aren't super, and foul poles in fair territory, and "play-in games" with delusions of grandeur.
Some of these are harmless enough. It hardly matters that football's defensive secondary—behind the down linemen and linebackers—is really tertiary. Or that a nickel package has five defensive backs but a dime package doesn't have 10. After all, this is American football, played with the hands. Not that such nonsense is exclusively American. In European football, played with the feet, the fourth-place finishers in England's Premier League and Spain's La Liga go on to play in the "Champions League."
But only in America do the winners of national championships call themselves world champions. Our World Series has been, with two exceptions, an intramural contest between American teams. This is what happens when hype conquers common sense. The Harlem Globetrotters, despite their glorious name, always seem to be playing in an armory in Scranton, Pa.
Anything that sets off your b.s. detector is an affront to common sense. Ultimate Frisbee was never even the finest example of flying-disk competitions, and ought to have been called, at the very most, Penultimate Frisbee. Instead, the sport doubled down and changed its name to just plain Ultimate, placing itself at the apex of all human endeavors—better than sex, art or spaghetti Bolognese. For a sport played without balls, Ultimate certainly has a pair.
There is hope. Restoring the phrase first round to its rightful place in the tournament is a good start. If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the same is true on the road to the Final Four, which isn't really a road (teams will fly to Houston) and isn't really Final (they'll play it again next year) and is always punctuated by a montage of Several Shining Moments that we call, with our usual imprecision, "One Shining Moment."
But if they can take the Atlanta Falcons out of the NFC West and put cup holders in cars—our forefathers drove with a scalding mug of coffee squeezed between their legs like a Thighmaster—then surely common sense will prevail at the buzzer. Which is usually a horn, but whatever.
When there are 14 teams in the Big Ten and 10 in the Big 12, is it nitpicking to want a little common sense in sports?
Golf
Arnie Watches
18
Extra Mustard
20
SI Edge
Vadal Alexander
22
Faces in the Crowd
28
Dan Patrick
Mark Sanchez
30
The Case for
Power Points
32
GO FIGURE
$58.73
Performance-based pay—a bonus based on playing time—that QB Matt Cassel received for playing one snap for the Bills in Week 1, the lowest amount given out this year in the NFL. Cassel, who spent most of the season with Dallas, handed off to LeSean McCoy for a six-yard loss in Buffalo's win over the Colts.
7--5
Score of Ohio State wrestler Kyle Snyder's win over N.C. State's Nick Gwiazdowski in the NCAA heavyweight finals on Sunday. Snyder won on a takedown in OT, handing Gwiazdowski his first loss after 88 straight wins and two national titles.
31--1
Record for Benedictine, which lost the Division III national title game to St. Thomas 82--76 last Saturday. The Eagles were looking to become just the second undefeated champion in men's basketball since 1998.
ILLUSTRATION
ILLUSTRATION BY MACKENZIE SCHUBERT
PHOTO
BILL WIPPERT/AP (CASSEL)
PHOTO
DON PETERSEN/AP (BENEDICTINE)