Out of touch?
I have to admit, that I just don’t get it. Perhaps it is because I would rather play non-professional sports than watch them. Maybe it is because I have 2 pro football teams (Jets, Giants), a pro basketball team (Nets) and pro hockey team (Devils) about 8 miles from the house, and if I am willing to drive for say an hour, I can add 3 Professional Baseball Teams (Yankeees, Mets and Phillies), another pro football team (Eagles), another basketball team (Knicks… although do they still qualify as professional these days?), another 3 more Hockey Teams (Rangers, Flyers and Islanders.. although Islanders may fall slightly outside the hour range with traffic on Long Island). Within that range as well, we have a far too many to list number of semi-pro and minor league teams (though NJ, can’t seem to hold onto an Arena Football team).
So with that perspective, is it all that odd that I just don’t get all that worked up or interested in College Sports? I realize in some places (OK, let’s be honest most places), there is not the myriad of professional sports teams to choose from and watch locally, so I can only assume that college sports helps fill that void.
Twice a year, I get entertained by all the talk that people (OK mostly men… but not exclusively) put into these events. The BCS and “March Madness” seems to take even the casual sports fan, and turns them into raving lunatics of stats and even a bit of trash talking with those that disagree with their choices.
For all the talk about the College Football BCS, most people (if not all) that are familiar with it, hate the system, pick out it flaws, and talk about how it is slanted against “their” team. I have been blissfully unaffected by this for a good many years as Rutgers University has been so amazingly awful, that a ranking was never even a remote possibility. That is until this year, when they stole the budget from all the other athletic teams (more on that another day), sank some major money into the program, and actually were in the top 10 for the first time ever. All of the sudden, everybody in NJ is a BCS “expert” screaming about how Rutgers wasn’t getting due credit (until they crashed and burned with some bad losses)… but I am getting away from the subject here.
Now we have come again upon the season of March Madness. 64 teams from 64 deserving (or not so deserving if “your” team is number 65 – 70, and you are crying foul) teams with chances from NONE to “likely” play out the now infamous “brackets” I love these few days between when the brackets are announced and when the tournament begins. All across this country, office pools are created to see who can guess the best. People study teams, charts, histories, and so on looking for hints that might give them the leg up on everybody else, to pick out this years “Cinderalla Story” team that wasn’t supposed to go as far as in the tournament as they did. Me, I admit to joining in these pools at times, for the sheer fun of it. However, I will spend about 15 minutes filling out my chart, sticking with the perinnial favorites and teams I know (that admittedly has come back to bite me a few times), and usually wind up with teams such as the Tarheels, Blue Devils, Huskies, Jayhawks.
For the record, I have UNC defeating Kansas for the chapionship. (And since I seem to have more people visit here from TN than any other location, I will point out that I have the Vols making it to the Sweet 16 before getting picked off).
Now, I had a point, where the heck did it go? Oh yeah. So am I the only person that doesn’t take College Sports to be “seriously”? Seriously… am I?
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Go, Vandy!!!
People here in Indiana seem to be crazy for college sports, especially basketball even though they do have a pro football and basketball team. I don’t know, not a huge sports fan so the whole thing, college or pro, is lost on me.