Nothing Compares To March Madness

Nothing Compares To March Madness

  

If you’re a basketball junkie, you’ll find your fix starting today. March Madness begins.

The screen-in-screen splendor. Programing your remote to cruise the cluster of networks that dip their yearly beaks into the NCAA waters. When else would you pinball between CBS, TNT, TBS, ESPN and TruTV in one day?

The template titans still seem to have their mail forwarded to the Final Four. If Duke and Kentucky aren’t the chalk, then Kansas and Michigan State will pick up the slack. And while we love a Butler, George Washington or VCU breaking the group hug of aristocrats, empires are good for sports.

There’s a reason the 2015 tourney was the highest rated in 22 years. Kentucky and Duke were there, Coach K and Coach Cal pacing and cussing their way to April. Kentucky won its first 38 games, and seemed destined to supplant Bobby Knight’s 1976 Hoosiers as the last team to go undefeated from whistle to gun.

We want the underdog to make that yearly cameo, as long as they’re gone before the trophy is hoisted. When Butler heaved that ball from half court, as the nanoseconds dripped off the clock, and rolled around the rim, it was a pristine ending to a perfect final. Those who loved and loathed the Blue Devils’ basketball monolith got everything they wanted, challenged to the end. And order was ultimately preserved. We pretend to abhor dynasties. But if there were no Wildcats, Jayhawks, Tar Heels, Bruins and Blue Devils, there would be no beacon in the storms of spring.

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