Method to the March Madness

There is a beautiful thing in college basketball called "March Madness".

If you love basketball and don’t watch college hoops, slap yourself in the face right now. I know it might be hard to turn away from the NBA, which is currently enjoying unparalleled success not seen since the early to mid 90’s. But understand this, all your favourite superstars (minus the occasional LeBron or Kobe who make the jump from high school) all learnt the game, honed their skills and developed into professional athletes by playing in the NCAA college system.

Here’s a quick background if you’re just joining us. The NCAA stands for National Collegiate Athletic Association. Back in 1952 a bunch of jocks from Harvard and Yale University met to challenge each other to a rowing race. Inter-collegiate competition was born. Rowing remained the pre-eminent college sport through the back-end of the 1800’s and very early 1900’s until other sports such as football (gridiron) and basketball started to emerge. However a string of serious injuries and deaths on the football field prompted many colleges and universities to discontinue the sport. In stepped President Roosevelt who sought to reform football practices and college sports in general. In 1906, 62 institutions became charter members of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS), which was eventually changed to the NCAA in 1910.

These days, college sports are BIG business. From basketball to swimming, from lacrosse to wrestling, college scouts are out in force everyday of every year looking for the next marquee name playing high school sport to join their University. For many underprivileged teenagers this means getting the opportunity to attend University on an athletic scholarship which can cover some of their tuition, or if they’re super talented, a ‘full ride’ athletic scholarship which is only offered to the sports of football, basketball and volleyball.

So back to the reason we’re here. There is a beautiful thing in college basketball called "March Madness". Each year in the quest to find the National Champion of college basketball, the top 64 teams in the Nation fight it out in a crazy, do-or-die, knockout finals competition. Automatic qualification is gained for 31 teams if you win your respective conference title, the remaining spots filled by teams who receive nominations from an NCAA selection committee based on your regular season performance. Once the tournament begins in Mid-March each year, all hell breaks loose. Unknown teams knock of major college powerhouses, dreams are crushed, buzzers are beaten, and stars are born. 64 teams become 32 in the blink of an eye. 32 teams become the ‘Sweet 16′. The ‘Sweet 16′ do battle and give birth to the ‘Elite 8′. The ‘Elite 8′ produce the ‘Final Four’, and before you know it we have the National Championship game, the second most watched sporting event on the planet behind the Super Bowl.

This year has produced one of the most even fields in recent history. With the ‘Sweet 16′ set to take place this weekend, the playing field is still an even one. The favourites still remain; Louiville, Kansas and Indiana. A couple of Cinderella stories have emerged in La Salle and Florida Gulf Coast, who if you’ve watched any of the latter’s previous two games, you’d think you’d pressed play on an And 1 Mixtape. And of course the ever present and consistent teams like Syracuse, Michigan State and Duke. For what it’s worth, my money is on Duke. That’s a tough thing to say given I’m a North Carolina fan (we bombed out last round), but you can never count out legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski this time of year. And with players like Ryan Kelly and Seth Curry who has a shooting touch similar to his brothers (Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry), they may just cause a major upset if they meet Louisville in the Elite 8.

Do yourself a favour over the next couple of weeks. Log out of NBA.com, turn off NBA.tv and log onto NCAA.com where you can watch all the games for free (Foxtel also screens plenty of the games on the ESPN channels). This is a team oriented style of basketball, very distant to the NBA’s ‘pass to the superstar and let him do his thing’ style. See what kind of basketball is produced when players play for pride and not fat pay checks, when they dive on every loose ball like their life depended on it, when one missed free-throw can be the difference between glory and life-long regret. There’s a reason why Michael Jordan wore his Carolina blue basketball shorts under his Bulls uniform every game of his career. It’s because college hoops deserves respect. And now it deserves your attention.