It’s Leap Day! Yeah! One extra day to delay the inevitable. March Madness.
Yep, March Madness will just have to wait so that the world does not spin off its axis. So that the bracketologists don’t lose their jobs one day earlier. February’s extra day gives us all one more day to catch our breath before the dizzying, frantic pace of the Big Dance.
March Madness is an interesting phenomenon. Certainly in the world of big time college athletics, it proves you can have a tournament to crown a champion. A novel concept considering many believe you can’t do the same thing at the big time level of college football.
The playoff system comparisons aside, basketball is very different. It gives big schools and little schools a chance to win it all. Something that simply can’t happen in football. On the court, a number 15 can beat a number 2. Number 16’s don’t beat number 1’s, so we will skip that thought.
Boise State will never play for a football national title unless there is a playoff system. Yet, a school like Gonzaga has captured the imagination of the nation with its big play from a small school, just as the Broncos have. This is what makes the basketball tournament so exciting.
Four brackets, four number one seeds and rarely do those number ones square off for the crown. That’s what makes this event so exciting. Just about every team in the field has a chance. It doesn’t matter what conference you came from, as long as you’re playing, you’re contending. It doesn’t matter if you won more games than anyone else during the regular season or got really hot and won your conference, if you’re dancing, you’re dancing.
And what better place to dance than New Orleans, the host city for this year’s Final Four. The same city that gave you the BCS Champion will give you the NCAA’s National Champion, once again proving what I wrote about in January, New Orleans: The Sports Capital of the World.
Enjoy your extra February day. Save your energy, because you’re going to need it. When they cue the music and the bass starts to thump, the Madness will not end until they crown the champion. There certainly isn’t a better city to hand out head wear like that than The Big Easy.
It’s not easy to win The Big Dance, it truly is maddening.
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