College Basketball is NOT Little League
By mattsmallbone. Filed in Sport |Tags: College Basketball, FIFA, NCAA, Todd Stepp
My mate Todd Stepp blogged this about the NCAA Basketball Tournament yesterday.
All this talk about the NCAA expanding the national championship field to 95 teams is crazy.
First off, why should teams like North Carolina (16-16), Texas Tech (17-15, sorry Chuck) or Illinois (19-14) be rewarded by an invitation into the most prestigious basketball tournament when their teams this year are average at best? Who wants to watch average basketball? Not me. Teams like Vermont and Richmond are ecstatic to be playing in this tournament. They may be average, but they earned their right to still be playing.
Secondly, at what point do we need to stop treating everyone like we’re in Little League? Expanding into a 95-team tournament is essentially like advertising a job and then feeling bad that you can only hire the right person, so you hire everyone. Sports is about teaching you life’s lessons, not proving everyone’s a winner.
Right?
I love it when someone understands the importance that sport has on our society. Some even claim that it is a display of a nation’s strength in the the absence of war.
Who wins the FIFA World Cup in June is way more important than most of us think.
You should follow Todd’s blog at toddstepp.wordpress.com
Dude is a genius (with cool hair).
Thursday, March 18th 2010 at 5:47 pm |
Sorry guys I have a slightly different view on this one. Sport is not about teaching life’s lessons, if it were life would be easy. I’m sure we have all played some sport, admittedly not at an elite level and it teaches us some great personality traits, all of which we can use in our journey through life. Life is much harder than sport – THE RULES CHANGE ALL THE TIME, the games doesn’t start at the same time, you can’t study the opposition & so on. The lessons outside the arena are much harder & taught with sometimes what seems no answers to the lesson. No sport can prepare you for watching a loved one die in their bed, but certainly watching some sport can allow us to dare to dream or get excited by some excellent athletes doing their thing. Lets face it watching an average team overcome the odds & beating a team they shouldn’t have -cant beat that. A great lesson for us all. If you only ever allow the best to participate what a boring arena sport would be, and what hope does that give the ordinary man to overcome the odds.
Sunday, April 4th 2010 at 11:36 pm |
Finally after 62 games, Cinderella stories and buzzer beating heroics we finally have our final set.. and who in their right mind had Duke vs Butler… man Butler is such a great story but they definitely have their hands full (not that they haven’t done it before).
This game is a toss-up though the way Butler is playing and if you want a in depth preview and prediction go to: http://www.lionsdenu.com/march-madness-2010-national-championship-preview-prediction-vs-butler/ … I really hope Butler can do it, but its going to be SOOO tough.
Singler, Scheyer and Smith are so good, they score so many points in Dukes victory.. at one point they had 57 of the Blue Devils 69 points.. Insane, I can’t wait for the madness to begin Monday night but I am not looking forward to it ending… best tourney EVER!
Thursday, April 15th 2010 at 6:32 pm |
Thanks for sharing, great site and keep it up. I will be back!