tThank you Hubert Davis for one day picking Western Kentucky to upset UCLA in the round of 16, the next day saying that “Western Kentucky will give UCLA a tough game but the Bruins will go to the Final Four” and 24 hours later declaring that “UCLA will have a very tough time with Western Kentucky and then will lose to Xavier in the Elite 8.” Bases seem to be covered. Davis must be one of those guys that fills out 12 brackets and then brags excessively when he picks one improbable upset. I hate those guys. And by the way, Davis was 0-for-3.

Thank you Andy Katz for suggesting that Butler didn’t deserve a seven seed because of their membership in the Horizon League. In case you didn’t know, every Division I coach participates in a conference lottery prior to each season. Butler, unfortunately, got stuck in the Horizon League this year. And heaven forbid, they played a great non-conference schedule to accommodate.

Thanks Bobby, Hubert and Andy for giving me hope that I might be able to succeed in this field one day. And thanks Dick Vitale for moving your hands so much when you talk I swear you might hit the cameraman.

But we listen to these guys religiously. You listen to them so much that they fill out your bracket. How many times had you seen UCLA play prior to the Elite 8? Hardly at all, I’d imagine. So you turned to Digger Phelps, Jay Bilas and the like for so-called expert analysis about a team that plays late (10:10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) and a team that is a member of a conference that doesn’t contract with ESPN (based out of Bristol, Conn.). Of course, these guys know more than the average fan, but to pretend that they have seen every game of every team is ridiculous — yet we treat them as such. And to allow them the prestige of filling out your bracket is perhaps a prestige that they don’t deserve. Digger is in bed well before 10. I promise.

The media circus surrounding the Road to the Final Four is growing at a faster rate than consumers can manage — and new media only allows for an unlimited amount of coverage. From podcasts, to streaming live video of practice from San Antonio to constant coverage from said experts to live blogging … there’s as much content as ever, to the point that it is repetitive as ever. How many times can you articulately say that Memphis’ backcourt is pretty good?

And thank YOU, Los Angeles Times, for reporting this story in today’s Los Angeles Times. Thanks for forgetting that we fans have feelings too, that we fans build (quick and diluted) relationships with these athletes, that we fans might rather not have to swallow a story about a source “that preferred anonymity” about a player we learned to “Love” and trust. It’s like the middle school relationship where the girl tells her 9 million friends not to tell ANYONE about the guy she has a crush on, yet that “friend” goes and tells 9 million other people. Thanks for this. Thanks for reporting inaccuracies, as said by Ben Howland today at his press conference.

This year, the Opening Day spectacle is better than ever: Johan Santana and his first win in a Mets uniform, Joe Torre doing the same in Dodger Blue, international play, no Roger Clemens, no guy by the name of Mitchell, no Bryan McNamee.

This day is about hope. This day is about waking up and dreaming, even if you’re a Royals fan. This day is about possibility.

Yet, as great as this Day is, how am I supposed to be engrossed in it, put my all into it, look up how Vladimir Guerrero has historically fared against Pet Neshek, just in case they’d happen to face each other in the bottom of the eighth of the first of 162 games. There are 161 games after this one.

And how am I supposed to transition from the climatic, exciting, dramatic NCAA tournament to a game with Gus “I Need A Sedative Even In a Blowout” Johnson calling a game (”and the slipper stillllllll fitsssss!!!”) to Bert Blyleven, who could feed a Third World country if he was given $1 for every time he said “at the Major League level” or “innings of work.” It just doesn’t compare. And couldn’t they allow some sort of recovery period? I’m just coming off of Davidson-Kansas here.

We like different sports for different reasons. I like college basketball for its excitement and variety. There are enough games where it is possible to recall fantastic finishes, incredible highlights — but adding those to our always-evolving Sports Fan Timeline. When I watch a college basketball game, especially one in March, I won’t be on the couch, I’ll be off it, clapping, cheering, leaping.

Baseball is different. Unless you live in a place like Minnesota before the year 2009, your games are in the outdoors, many after dark. The ballpark is illuminated, that little glowing ball has eyes, and people sit around for two-hours-plus. For fifteen minutes, you might stand, if your team happens to be winning in the top half of the ninth. Baseball is routine, day in, night out for 162 games. There’s some comfort in this.

Garnett showed up when it mattered during a standing ovation lasting a good minute-and-a-half, although the former Wolves MVP didn’t give media members the time of day, nor did he sit on the Celtics bench. KG bowed, hit his chest a couple of times, and waved before departing into the frigid Minnesota night. Many, I’m sure, had goosebumps, including me, but the whole escapade reminded me of the passive-aggressive sports culture that Minnesota fans so voluntarily participate in.

When the trade rumors began, a common theme emerged: Inevitably, it must get done. Garnett was 31, and a player no longer regarded as one of the NBA’s 10 best players. Start over. Fresh legs. Hope. That was the theme.

No one suggested that Garnett showed up to work counting the days until Kevin McHale made his inevitable deal, one that looks decent on paper but not nearly as good on Randy Wittman’s chalkboard. The point is, fans were frustrated that Garnett failed to put up MVP-like numbers. Fans hated the idea of him leaving, too, because well, he was the Big Ticket in a town with very few big tickets.

Again, we’ve been hit by a bus on the two-way street of Minnesota sports. Traveling one way, we have the thousands of fans at Target Center and the thousands of others who wanted to be at Target Center reveling in the Kevin Garnett era. Traveling the other way, the same fans sing the praise of Al Jefferson, who certainly has the potential and talent that Garnett did in his 2004 MVP year. And by golly, how about the Jefferson-Garnett comparison? While any attempt at this justification in this regard is the sign of another downfall of this bandwagon culture, all you have to do is realize that Jefferson didn’t make it to midcourt in Friday’s buzzer-beater loss to Garnett’s current team.

Garnett came home, no question. Minnesota and its fans put Kevin Garnett on the map, and for that, the 6-11 forward out of Faragut Academy High School was thankful.

But the real issue, I suppose, is that Garnett put Minnesota on the map.

We hear stories about John Wooden. We see his 97-year-old self interviewed time and time again (“I’d like to see them go-away with the dunk.”) We see the legendary coach perched behind the UCLA bench for nearly every UCLA home game.

But the frustrating part is this: What was the “Wooden way,” for those of us that weren’t around during his generation? How do we experience tradition, and not just talk about it?

Simple. Watch the current group of UCLA athletes that are striving for a 12th banner and third-consecutive Final Four.

They do it the way Wooden would have taught it: attention to detail, hard-nosed defensive basketball. Basketball that revolves around the extra pass above individual glory. Basketball that stresses rebounding, smart decision-making and discipline.

I’m biased as a lifetime UCLA supporter, but tradition spans across all fields of sport. Tradition, it seems, is what makes sport transcend across generations. It is fun to see the Boston Celtics succeed, only because that’s the way Red Auerbach would have taught it. You see Celtics coach Doc Rivers reference Auerbach’s legacy, you realize you’re part of a larger sports (and cultural) landscape. Vince Lombardi? Bill Walsh? Dean Smith?

Fortunately, our media paints these personalities in a positive light, but unfortunately, these coaches seem to be remembered for their legacy only after their death.

You can’t mess with tradition, and for that, remember those that make our sports the way they are today, even though our games are painted in an increasingly negative light. A game is supposed to be a game, pure and innocent.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are one of Bob Knight’s student-athletes at Texas Tech. And imagine, that one day, you just decided to call it quits.

How comfortable would you be strolling into your coach’s office to reveal the news?

Your answer suggests that Bob Knight is a nasty hypocrite, one that unfortunately is Division I’s all-time wins leader, and one that walked into A.D Gerald Myers’ office just because of a “loss of passion.”

Over the years, I have attempted to justify Knight’s behavior, over and over again. In fact, I tried as recently as Saturday, during Texas Tech’s win over Oklahoma State. During moments of screaming and awful body language, I came up with this: Knight is a man that preaches discipline before anything and a coach that would rather die than see his team not fight. He is a coach that preaches dedication, loyalty and passion. He teaches team basketball. He recruits players that could care less about individual statistics, honors or gasp, a recordbook (hmm…900 occurred coincidentally quite recently).

He was quoted as saying that his current Texas Tech team isn’t where he had hoped them to be (12-8, 3-3 in the Big 12). So ‘The General’ quit and abandoned his team.

We could easily dismiss Knight’s behavior by saying “that’s just his style on the bench,” but how can we dismiss this if he’s not even on the bench? Great coaches fight and claw until the finish, and we shouldn’t dismiss Knight simply because he happens to never have had a recruiting violation. Congratulations, Coach, you followed a rule that so many of your counterparts failed to.

You’ll note that I not only predicted a Patriots triumph, but hoped for one. In actuality, I didn’t just hope for a triumph, I hoped for an embarrassment on the part of the Giants. This was the next best thing. My reason for hoping for a Patriots ‘W’ was that I desperately wanted Spygate allegations to hide in the midst of history; well, this type of victory — one that included gameplan execution to perfection and a quarterback who defied every bit of negative press — did just that.

No one gave this group a chance, and you could tell that it didn’t bother Eli Manning or the rest of the Giants team. But we also learned that a recordbook can sometimes get in the way of reality, demonstrated by the media leading up to Sunday’s game. Hindsight is 20/20, and I’ll be the first to admit that I fell in this trap too, but why were the Giants such an underdog in the first place? New England had barely escaped in games since Thanksgiving, they barely beat the Giants in December, and only squeaked by a San Diego team that was missing their franchise player in the AFC Championship. Or how about the pass to Jacksonville’s Ernest Wilford in the Divisional Playoffs that was dropped? If one more guy gets to Manning on that last drive and wraps him up, or if Manning’s pass, god forbid, didn’t stick to David Tyree’s helmet, we’d sit here and praise the Patriots — at least I would have.

This leads to a few conclusions:

a) Wins and wins only matter in a “dominance” discussion. Find me a media outlet reporting skepticism about the Patriots’ dominance (before Sunday, of course) and untouchable-ness, and I’ll find you a drug-free Macauley Culkin. Deal?
b) Reality hides in the shadows of a recordbook.
c) Breaking up perfection is as fulfilling, from a fan’s perspective, as achieving it.

I just have to mention Tom Coughlin. Have you ever seen him grin from ear to ear? This spectacle was a sign that he changed his ways. He instilled confidence in his quarterback and prepared one of the greatest gameplans in recent memory. Brady was on the ground after 23 plays, from every which direction. You have to wonder why the Pats’ previous opponents didn’t show up with such precision and determination with that very goal in mind.

In any case, my prediction as well as the predication of the other 12352356346 media outlets across America was dead wrong.

And that’s why Sunday was so enjoyable.

Me: Did you see the game last night? (It probably wasn’t necessary to say ‘the’ versus ‘that’ — If he broke out singing the World Figure Skating Championships theme song I was prepared to put on my headphones like Kevin McCalister did in Home Alone (the second one; who likes the first anyways?). The point is, he know it was the game I was talking about. For you figure skating junkies, that’s Super Bowl XLII I was referring to.

67-year-old (and 15 times retired) man:: You know what? You’re not going to believe it. I was on a plane last night, much to the dismay of myself and every other man on that plane. (Okay, the guy missed not only the greatest Super Bowl of all-time, but also one of the greatest game plans and execution.)

Me: You must have seen the play.

67-year-old (and 15 times retired) man:: Fortunately, I got home to see the last two minutes. Wow, talk about a great catch.

Me: Actually, 67-year-old man, the catch was great, but the most overlooked play of the game would have to be on that very same play. Don’t get me wrong–fantastic catch — and one that probably ranks in the top-10 Super Bowl catches of all-time (velcro to helmet?) — but the way Manning escaped the pocket was incredible. Talk about poised.

67-year-old (and 15 times retired) man: And his laser of a pass…

And so on.

Did I have to detail a) what this game was; b) what this game meant; c) why society mandates that the entire male population be off a plane on this particular night; d) the play?; or e) the implications of such a game? No, no, no, no, and no.

A man I never met, never will see again, and all it took was a Eli Manning and David Tyree connection to have a connection ourselves. Where else does this happen? Politics maybe, but two Barack supporters have a connection only in a “we both want out of this mess” sorta way. Sports, in this particular instance, were a connection because we both knew exactly what happened, where it happened, why it happened and why that particular moment mattered. No need to waste time re-hashing these seemingly minute details — well, because if we didn’t already know them, a scowl would be etched across society’s gleaming (because of last night’s contest) face.

One last thing, airport-related: Try this sometime. Just start a conversation, but make sure to bring sports into the conversation, somehow, in someway, on the airplane to the person you are sitting beside. If you’re lucky, you’ll be besides a “of course I watched” guy (or girl — if you get one of these, and all seems right in the world). If you’re by a a) “I used to be a sports fan, but salaries … ticket prices … steroids…”; or b) “I don’t so much care for sports” guy, find it in you to get a reply like this: “You know what, I’m turning on ESPN before I unpack.” It’s a fun game. Talk about the fun. Talk about the memories. Talk about the journey. Talk about passion. That’s what it’s all about.

I choose to do this because it makes me feel like a sports radio talk-show host. You must establish yourself as someone that knows what you are talking about — or at least make it seem as such — and all of a sudden, you get a lot of “I never thought of it like that” or “Wow, you’re right.” It’s rewarding. Then the questions come, and it’s like I’m taking questions from callers. Try it.

We were so close to caring about this game. Four days of the weeklong coverage focused on the Giants pass rush and secondary as well as Brady’s “probable” status. Three days, however, focused on Spygate, the ever-so-timely tale of Bill Belichick’s possible involvement in a videotaping scandal. Again, we were so close … Again, our media attempts to prove the unprovable in lieu of one of the greatest Super Bowl games of all-time.

If you think about it from a grassroots perspective, it is odd that football is the chosen sport — or religion — in houses across America on this very day. Baseball is America’s game (Please don’t tell me it’s too boring), but the World Series doesn’t get nearly the attention. Soccer’s World Cup is thrilling, many would say (Excuse me, this is America.) Basketball can be slow (Who wants to watch the playoffs for four-straight months, anyway?). Hockey? I don’t even know — it just doesn’t fit.

So we are left with football, a game that should seem barbaric but is entertaining and captivating. A game that is played by 300-pound men. A game that more resembles war than sport. Maybe that’s why American’s tune in in excessive numbers.

Barbaric or not, here’s my prediction for Glendale’s Super Bowl XVII.
New England 27
New York Giants 17

I have the utmost respect for the Patriots and what they represent, and envy the way they carry themselves. They have ran over the worst and the best (Giants, Washington, Dallas, Jacksonville, San Diego 2x), and done so in the midst of a scandal that provided little distraction.

Tomorrow, I hope that New England trounces New York. I hope it’s one of those games where you are tempted to turn off the television eight minutes in due to a 21-0 score. Keep in mind that this type of yearning goes beyond my typical intuition, but here’s why: I want their to be conversations about how the Patriots did smething that no other NFL team has ever done (i.e. perfect). I want their to be praise for Brady, and how he’s possibly the greatest quarterback to ever take the field. Or how about the cohesion, focus and unselfishness that Patriots football represents.

If the Patriots blow out the Giants, then the latest Spygate mess will hopefully hide in the shadows of a perfect, as in undefeated, as in 19-0, season. I was enjoying this week of coverage of the big game, until today, when a republican senator had to (Giants fan?) inquire about the possible dstruction of tapes by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and his staff. Right now? Really? 48 hours before a game in which the general public cares more about the game than Tom Petty’s halftime performance.

I’d be remiss to mention the cultural impact of this game (which was supposed to be the focus of this post, but I got sidetracked). No other sporting event draws such an attention than the Super Bowl, and no other event draws people that don’t know the spectacle that is on display (Was that a kickoff or a field goal?). Nowhere else in mainstream American culture is there a combination of such an intense, real event (football) with fake, conspicuous images driven to excess (advertising). Every social class participates in some way, and the advertising provides a sense that goods and services, no matter the price, are available to anyone watching.

…To be continued.

In the Midwest, there are games … and as the title of this blog suggests, we enjoy games, we enjoy competition, to the point that games become much more to us than simple diversions. In this Nascar culture, you’d be nuts to call Nascar a “game,” and any attempts to do so or even put it on the same “playing” (more on “play” in a bit) field is an attempt to justify Nascar’s existence. Imagine that you were to say “I’m going to the game” referring to a Nascar race. No one would know what you’re talking about.

This guy, or the next, could do this.

Step back for a moment and look at Nascar for what it really is: loads of corporate sponsorship, people that love repetitive activity and well, people that apparently enjoy the concept of acquiring a sunburn. For those that are at least half-sane, but enjoy the former, they sit on their couch watching non-athletes count on others (their pit crew) and equipment (their cars) to determine their success.

“Well, drivers risk their lives!” This mere fact does not determine athlete status. I could ask the guy that served me a muffin this morning to do what (insert driver here) does. You shouldn’t be given credit a. for being a risk-hungry person; and b. success based on others.

Somewhere along the line, some heavy brainwashing occurred in this region, and we can probably trace that to corporate sponsorship and heavy marketing. We watch sports to see incredible accomplishments or team feats; not to see one guy get the credit, and sit in a car for gosh sake, because of a machine or a crew that knows how to change a tire. Maybe the crew should be considered athletes–their pulse is beating beyond a resting rate.

I seriously heard this argument once: “Nascar drivers have to sit in a car for 4-5 hours making split second decisions in 100-degree plus heat.” I don’t think simply being a little warm is a qualifier for sport. Also, I make split second decisions everyday when I drive a car on the freeway, albeit not at 200 mph speeds. I’m not that crazy. I also don’t think “crazy” is a qualifier, either.

Nascar enthusiasts would tell you that golf isn’t a sport, and they couldn’t be more wrong. The hand-eye coordination, strength and strategy makes Nascar look like Monopoly in comparison.