Ever get invited to a party where you don't know the host too well -- but one you never miss when it comes around because it's just too much fun?
Well, if you have, you've got a vague idea what it's like for me every year around the end of March when the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament comes around.
Don't get me wrong, I love the tournament. Every year I watch, and every year, I dutifully join at least one bracket pool. Heck, I even managed to win when Duke won the national title back in 2001 -- which more than made up for losing to some 8-year old kid by a point the year before.
And back in 1998, the first time the NCAA Tournament was held at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., I put my name in the lottery with all the other Washington Caps season ticket holders, and was elated when I found out I had won the chance to buy four seats to all the games.
I even ditched work to go watch that first daytime session -- I think I saw Washington upset Xavier.
Is there any better kind of hooky than taking the day off work to watch the NCAA Tournament? I still remember looking at my boss and telling him I was going to be gone for the next two afternoons. He looked a little perplexed.
I wonder what kind of hit the GDP takes the first day of the tournament?
But then again, March is really the only time I bother (with the exception of the year Wisconsin made it to the Final Four and my roomate at the time was an alumni. I must have seen the Badgers 15 times on ESPN that year). How my old buddy Yoni Cohen manages to get it done all year long, I'll never know. But as far as I'm concerned, there really isn't any reason to pay attention until there's about 2 minutes to go in the finals of the ACC Tournament.
Why is it this way? Well, get an education at a Division III school, and the whole college game loses a lot of heat and light (though the Michigan-Seton Hall final in 1989 was huge at a school where about 35 percent of the student body hailed from Northern New Jersey). And the last time I really cared about regular season college basketball was back in the mid-80s when the Big East was at its height, and I went to high school only about a 10-minute ride away from St. John's University in Queens.
And as the Big East slowly deflated, so did my interest in the regular season. And with the program at St. John's imploding earlier this year, I just tuned out about completely.
But here we are again in the middle of March, and I'm filling out my brackets and paying my entry fees. No, I won't be playing hooky this year, but I will have an eye on the scoreboard just like millions of others around the country.
So thanks for inviting me back. even though I've been out of touch for the last year or so. It's always great to show up just when the party is warming up.
