Monday,
March 4, 2002
This Week's Column:
Beware
The Hoops Of March
A
nation that never tires of getting way too excited over nothing is at
it again. The author takes a glance at the highlights of this annual
festival before contemplating a potential month of hibernation...
Another March has arrived, and you know what that means.
No, not the beginning of Spring. This time of the year is no longer
about blooming flowers and brighter days. The renewal of life takes
a back seat these days.
It
isn’t about days of fasting and penance and spiritual renewal,
either. In the twenty-first century, most people don’t bother with
Lent in our largely secular world.
St.
Patrick’s Day and the wearing o’ the green? Guess again.
No,
postmodern March is all about college basketball. The time has arrived
once again when America’s college students and TV viewers will
become utterly enamored with the NCAA tournament.
I
know these days are all about college hoops--the media have told me
so. Television and the print media have begun churning out their relentless
hype about brackets and seedings, regionals and finals, upsets and triumphs.
Even now, we’re told, the favorites are priming themselves for
a run at the national championship. Even now, some unheralded team is
out there polishing its “Cinderella” credentials, just waiting
for the “big dance” to begin.
They
even have a catchy, alliterative nickname for these frenetic days: March
Madness. Get used to those words--you’ll be hearing them a lot
in the next few weeks.
And
just how mad does March Madness get? Well, let’s consider…
It
is a time when America’s college students will set aside their
studies and devote themselves to staring at the TV and getting liquored
up in support of their favorite team—thereby providing our society
with so many more opportunities for date rapes and fatal traffic accidents.
It
is a time when a national spotlight shines even more brightly upon big-time
college athletes—that group of young men so well-known for their
modesty and restraint—and gives them even more reason to have an
over-inflated sense of their importance.
It
is a time when the nation’s gambling industry--that tenuous support
system for a multitude of simple American businessmen named Joey the
Toe--gets a much needed boost from its post-Super Bowl doldrums.
It
is a time when television broadcasters (grown men, one and all) make
a point of continually shouting into their microphones--because, as
we all know, even the most mundane event can be exciting as long as
you JUST KEEP SCREAMING!
It
is a time when well-known college coaches are lauded to the sky for
their clever zone defenses and their genius with substitutions. In the
spirit of the season, few disparaging words will be said of the days
to come, when these same coaches will spend weeks crisscrossing the
land and making promises to high school kids…before shafting their
committed recruits by ducking out for a bigger paycheck somewhere else.
It
is a time when university boosters--groups of rich, alleged adults who
inexplicably remain mentally tethered to the dissolute days of their
irresponsible youth--get to enjoy the fruits of their rule-breaking
skills, as their well-bought talent takes the alma mater’s team
to the top.
It
is a time when institutions of higher learning will trot out teams that
include young men who don’t belong anywhere near a college campus,
in order to prostitute their presumably good names on a very public
stage and rake in a big wad of bucks.
And
it is a time when one more distraction is waved in front of the nation’s
faces--one more gaudy spectacle flashing before our eyes and drawing
our attention away from this country’s crucial issues: political
corruption, environmental degradation, the impact of poverty, the erosion
of public education, tenacious societal racism, widespread inequality,
the perversion of justice…all of it pushed far away from the front
and center of our consciousness, all for the sake of a handful of silly
games.
March Madness indeed.