Apologies for the recent drought. Chalk it up to some recent travels and Nils' propensity to completely vanish for weeks at a time. Which reminds me, several people have asked if Nils and I are, in fact, the same person simply operating this site under two psuedonyms. This is not the case, but now I am also starting to wonder if Nils is a real person....
In other news, March Madness is one of my favorite times of year, but it doesn't seem to lend itself to the usual amount of humorously poor sports journalism. Fortunately, baseball season starts next week.
Nonetheless, here was a quality facts-be-damned piece on the tournament from Jim Litke in the Boston Herald.
The focus for the first weekend of the NCAA tournament may have been on fresh faces, but next weekend it’s back to familiar ones.
[OK.]
The NCAA tournament is miles ahead of the BCS when it comes to crowning a real champion, but they have this in common: Nobody wins it on the cheap. There are 330-odd Division I basketball teams competing for 64 spots and the median program runs a yearly operating loss approaching [the] million figure.
[Did he write this in the cab on his way over to meet his deadline?? 330-odd? You couldn't look up the exact number? And where are we getting these "median program" operating loss numbers from? You couldn't type "number of ncaa division 1 basketball teams" into Google, but you went through the balance sheets of all 330-odd programs? P.S. It's 65 spots now.]
Money is the short answer to the question of why a real mid-major still can’t win the NCAA tournament.
[After the previous paragraph, we were supposed to be expecting the *long* answer?]
The [Siena] Saints still might have been good enough to topple another No. 1 seed most nights, but not Louisville on this night.
[Huh? What?]
It took nearly all 60 minutes for that slight edge to prove decisive, but it usually does.
[Actually, this is a good point. Louisville really showed why they are superior to Siena in those 20 minutes that immediately followed their FORTY MINUTE BASKETBALL GAME.
Solid editing job.]
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2 comments:
"That’s 13 spots for the six major conferences that just happen to control college football’s Bowl Championship Series. Of the remaining three teams, when it comes to basketball, Memphis and Gonzaga are "mid-majors" in name only and Xavier is on the verge of joining them."
Fact: 13/16 remaining squads come from major conferences.
Fact: 3/16 remaining squads came from mid-major conferences.
New Fact: Those 3 teams aren't REALLY mid-majors, because it discredits my premise.
Brian-
Nice catch. I would have loved to see what other random school would have been "on the verge of joining them" if they had gotten into the Sweet 16.
Also, the other point I heard from a few people (including The Guy Who Knows Things) is how a lot of the same people that are complaining about the BCS not putting the "best" teams in for football, now also complain that all of the top ranked teams advancing in basketball makes the tournement worse. Gotta love it.
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