March Madness

Yup, it's the NCAA Tournament -- otherwise known as the Major Sporting Event most likely to put me to sleep. The closest I've ever come to really liking basketball was when I watched the NBA back in the early 90s, when Jordan was in his prime and when Clyde Drexler was doing great things in Portland. Now the NBA is boring, the college game has never interested me much, and so on. (It's odd to note, however, that Syracuse is the closest I've ever come to living in a town where a major sports championship was won. The Orange won the 2003 Tournament on the very day that we finished packing the moving truck and departed for Buffalo again.)

Luckily, this year in Buffalo the Sabres are actually doing OK. In fact, they're doing better than OK -- they've been playing so well, so consistently, for the entire NHL season, that they have to be conceded as being actually pretty damned good. Now, I'm no big hockey fan, either, although I enjoyed watching it on TV some years ago and probably would have become a bigger fan had I devoted more time to understanding the game. (Remember when FOX Sports would put that little dot above the puck on TV, and superimpose a streaky whooosh thing whenever a shot or aggressive pass took place? I liked that. The whooosh thing reminded me of the movie Tron, for some reason.)

So, now I've got the Sabres and next week's World Figure Skating Championships (remember, Worlds are held every year, and are the real culmination of the skating "season" -- the Winter Olympics exist as a special prestige event), as well as the Bills' free agent signing period and, if I get really bored, baseball's spring training (not terribly interesting for a Pirates fan).

I do look forward to the inevitable day, however, when a #16 seed in the NCAA tournament knocks off the #1 seed. Just as long as it's not Duke, since that would cause certain folks to shriek and rend their garments.