Organizers hype the annual NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament as “March Madness” to exploit the suspense inherent in people watching to see if low-seeded (aka Cinderella) teams upset top-seeded ones – ideally with buzzer-beating three pointers.
Well, so much for the hype. After all, three of the four teams that made it through to the men’s Final Four, which will play out on Saturday, were the No. 1 seed in their respective regions – with matchups as follows:
Kentucky Wildcats (1) vs. Wisconsin Badgers (1)
Duke Blue Devils (1) vs. Michigan State Spartans (7)
And all four of the teams that made it through to the women’s Final Four, which will play out on Sunday, were the No. 1 seed – with matchups as follows:
UConn Huskies (1) vs. Maryland Terrapins (1)
Notre Dame Fighting Irish (1) vs. South Carolina Gamecocks (1)
Surely this would be enough to justify my decision to become a bracket pooper. Never mind that outcomes were still such that 99.9 percent of those participating had their brackets blown on the first day of the tournament.
Mind you, if I were still an indentured servant at a big law firm, I would’ve welcomed the camaraderie, to say nothing of the respite from drudgery, that comes with the generally accepted revelry of office pools. Besides, the aim is clearly not to guess the correct outcome of each game; it’s to see whose bracket survives in the end with the least number of casualties.
But the reason I no longer buy into the hype is that it’s just so brazenly sexist – as I’m on record duly decrying in “UConn Routs Louisville to Win NCAA (Women’s) Championship,” April 8, 2009.
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One can be forgiven for thinking that North Carolina winning the NCAA (men’s) championship on Monday was the biggest story in Basketball this year…
[But] the biggest story … is the way UConn crowned a perfect season by winning the NCAA (women’s) championship last night in a rout over Louisville 76-54. Because UConn not only ended its season 39-0, its players were so dominant that they won each game with unprecedented ease by double digits.
Now just imagine the hoopla if North Carolina had won its championship in such convincing fashion…
[Meanwhile], instead of commanding network coverage in primetime, like the men’s championship, the women’s was relegated to cable last night, which guaranteed only a fraction of the viewership. TV executives wonder why they can’t get better ratings for the fledgling women’s professional league – the WNBA. Well, it might have something to do with the way they keep dissing women’s college Basketball in this fashion.
Moreover, what does this disparate coverage say to female college athletes, as well as to young girls, who we encourage to have the same interest in sports as young boys…? Frankly, it says that male chauvinism, sexism, and discrimination against women in sports not only still exist but are blithely tolerated.
Sorry girls….
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Of course, the irony is not lost on me that the biggest story in Basketball this year is Kentucky’s quest to complete the first perfect season, with a record of 40-0, since Indiana went 32-0 in 1976. What’s more, you no longer have to imagine the hoopla. Because, sure enough, the way the media are covering Kentucky’s quest, you’d never know that several women’s teams have had perfect seasons since 1976.
But UConn has five perfect seasons in the past two decades, including back-to-back perfectos in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons. As for Kentucky’s bid to be the first men’s team to go 40-0? UConn finished with that exact same record last year.
(The Week, March 31, 2015)
Enough said?
Still, to avoid being a total pooper, I’m pulling for the Kentucky Wildcats to win. Not because I want to see them complete their historic season on Monday night with a national championship. I really couldn’t care any less. Rather, I am pulling for them because I’m an opportunistic advocate for college athletes (who are decidedly not “student athletes”) getting paid for their services – as this excerpt from “Reggie Bush Forfeits Heisman Trophy,” September 16, 2010, attests.
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There’s nothing amateur about college [Basketball]. It’s a billion-dollar business for Christ’s sake! More to the point, the people generating its revenue are not the university presidents, athletics directors, or coaches (who, incidentally, make millions of dollars in salary and endorsements). Instead, they are the poor Black athletes whose raw talents colleges exploit…
I have always felt that it’s tantamount to modern-day slavery for universities to recruit poor and all too often uneducated athletes just to play football and not compensate them for their services, especially considering they rarely get an education. But this indentured servitude is made much worse by branding these poor players as cheaters for accepting a little cash on the side. Mind you, those offering the cash are often boosters just trying to make life easier for the players to enable them to perform better … out on the [court]…
The hypocrisy inherent in this is beyond shameful.
Colleges should compensate student-athletes in direct proportion to the way [NBA] compensate their players. They could then reallocate the scholarship money they spend recruiting jocks to fund financial aid for black students who aspire to be more than professional athletes.
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Given this context, Kentucky coach John Calipari deserves honorable mention, and his team my grudging support, for coming as close any NCAA coach to enabling this cause.
It’s just too bad the post-game talk was more about the way Coach John Calipari recruited the players on this national championship team than about the way they played. But I see nothing wrong with Calipari recruiting standout players who he knows are committed to no more than one year in college before heading to the NBA – the so-called ‘one-and-done’ trend.
(“Kentucky Wildcats Win NCAA Basketball Championship, The iPINIONS Journal, April 3, 2012)
As for the women’s tournament, I’m pulling for the Maryland Terrapins to upset the UConn Huskies for the women’s championship the following night. And I’m going with Maryland only because it’s closer to my home state of Virginia than Connecticut – a reason, I suspect, that is as good as any most people had for choosing teams in their brackets, where they have no personal affiliation.
In any event, I fear the country will be too busy celebrating Kentucky to even notice, let alone celebrate Maryland’s feat.
Which compels me to note that most people (men and women) seem to think that there’s no way women’s Basketball can match the excitement of the men’s game. But, to disabuse you of this notion, I don’t mind confessing that I used to think there’s no way women’s tennis can match the excitement of the men’s game. I still watch a lot of tennis, but I haven’t watched men play in years.
Accordingly, I urge you to give women’s Basketball a try.