Outside Oberlin

March drives me mad yet again
By Brad White

What is the single greatest month in the world of sports? March. If you just asked yourself “why March?” then please stop reading right now. Whenever this time of year comes around I am brought back to moments of euphoria that live on in my mind.
It’s 4 p.m. (during March 2000) and my boys and I are speeding home from school so that we can catch the end of Florida’s first-round match-up, which we figure should be a breeze. So we arrive at my friend’s driveway, run out of the car and turn the tube to CBS all in a matter of about five seconds. (Did I mention that we are big Gators fans?) To our utter dismay and bewilderment the score at the bottom of the screen reads Butler 62, Florida 59.
What? I swear there was at least a ten-second pause while we all tried to reorient ourselves in a world where a team like Butler (who the hell is Butler?) was beating our beloved Gators. Anyway, even though it took us a couple of seconds to get warmed up, we took to the rally caps and were cheering much louder than we ever had before.
The game came down to the final five seconds and Florida was still down by one. Florida coach Billy Donovan gave the ball to star forward Mike Miller and told him to do what was necessary to win the game. Well, Miller went coast-to-coast and finished with a finger-roll right through the middle of the basket as time expired.
The next few moments are, to say the least, hazy. I remember running straight outside and jumping up and down and beeping my car horn incessantly. Then I remember someone tackling me and a giant pile-up ensuing. It was one of those moments of complete happiness that are ever-so-rare. I doubt I have experienced more than five in my life. Three of them are due to sports and the others are due to girls. In some way, I will never understand those people who are untouched by the emotional intensity of sports.
To make a long story short, Florida went on to the national championship to lose to a Mateen Cleaves-led Michigan State team. Watching their run was one of the greatest months of my life.
Of course these moments of euphoria are rather tempered by many losses and much heartache. Take last year, for example. The Gators are once again in a last-second battle in what should have been a walk-over first round game. This time the team is Creighton. This time Florida is up by two with about seven seconds to go and some player for Creighton (whose name I have blocked from memory) hoists up a three from about ten feet behind the line and what do you know? Swish. The only thing I can compare to the feeling that went through my stomach during that moment is being dumped by a girl. You now how your stomach all tenses up and you feel it trying to come through your throat? To the say the least, it was not a good time.
But that is the nature of sports. For almost every sports fan and every athlete the tragic losses will surely outweigh the glorious wins. In a lot of ways it is like life. There seem to be so many lousy days and so few great days. So many girls go and so few stay (all right, I’ll stop with the girl analogies).
I do not expect everybody to be able to relate to my stories about the Gators because, frankly, most people from around here do not give a crap about any team from the South. The point is that everyone has his or her team. With 64 teams in the tournament every fan is bound to be able to find one to root for.
The purpose of these anecdotes was to bring back those last-second wins and those last-second losses that have been forever burned into memories of so many sports fans.
You know the time last year when Duke got knocked off by the Hoosiers? Or the time UConn outworked a seemingly unstoppable Duke team led by Elton Brand and Shane Battier? (Can you tell I don’t like Duke that much?) Or maybe the time when Bryce Drew sunk the three that eternally forged the tiny school of Valparaiso into our minds and into the sports lexicon? Not to mention Hampton or Coppin State who were able to pull off unprecedented upsets of number two seeds.
Sometimes I really do think that some of these schools are best known for their basketball teams’ Cinderella stories rather than for anything to do with academics. Oh yeah! I just have to ask, remember the year Webber State had that ridiculously good player that everyone called “the show”? That was the year they knocked off UNC in the first round. Oh, how the mighty fall come March!
This year’s tourney is perhaps the most wide-open in the last decade. There are so few teams that really stand out. Sure, Arizona and Kentucky are obviously the favorites to win it all. But they lack the “unbeatable” stigma that so many schools have had in the past few years.
This year at least a couple mid-major schools should get at-large bids. For sure Butler deserves one and so does Southern Illinois. Will they get them? Only the selection committee knows. Which is another great part of March Madness — getting to argue over who got hosed and who got a gift entry.
One of my favorite parts about the whole thing is watching the selection show and seeing the live video feed of a team waiting to see whether or not they will garner a birth. It’s great when the bubble team gets seeded 11th or something and then they all go crazy in some nice hotel lobby and start tearing up all the catered food on their way to making a huge pile-up.
In the end, I am not going to believe that this article will convince anyone who is not a basketball fan to start watching the tourney. But I hope it got all of you who live and die by the days of March just a little more pumped up.
March Madness has it all: young guys wearing their hearts on their sleeves, eccentric coaches, plenty of Cinderella stories, and probably the best drama that anyone can find (and I don’t just mean in sports)! I hope everyone enjoys the month — I know I will.
Hopefully, I won’t miss too many classes.