March Madness

If you are a fan of college basketball you might have noticed one big difference in this year's NCAA Tournament, parity. Did anyone really expect the great UConn to get knocked off by CAA's own George Mason? Is this a huge upset or what? Perennial powerhouses like UConn, and North Carolina usually bring the jitters out of smaller scaled programs in the but this year's addition is like a gamblers dream. The lower seeds are winning a high percentage of games and the higher seeds aren't covering the spread. In fact this is the first year that since 1980 that none of the #1 seeds advanced to the Final Four.

Is this trend going to continue? We can only hope it does. The big schools are too fat on the hog to really pay attention to the game anymore. They get the high profile players who don't plan on staying in college 4 years. This is what is hurting the game. It is also hurting the USA's Olympic teams also. Players don't have loyalty, they only play for the money. They don't learn how to win the close games. They don't develop the toughness that the tournament helps foster. In the NBA now, there is no heart. Its all about dollars and cents. Too bad most of the kids and young men that play this game don't have a sense of urgency or a will to dig out the tough victories.