Didn't we do this last year?

This is the week when the casual sports fan can pretend to be the biggest know-it all out there. He can pontificate on defenses, offenses, match-ups, coaching and other intangibles. He can shout all of this with such alacrity and conviction that everyone must listen and nod their head in agreement not because the shouter is making valid points, but because they want the guy to shut up.

In other words, life imitates sports talk radio. And, yes, the NCAA Tournament is about to begin.

That means everyone has their bracket filled out, checked twice and if that doesn’t work, they complete an “upsets” sheet. You know, because it’s all so scientific.

But make no mistake about it, aside from the Super Bowl, the NCAA Tournament is the one sporting event where even the casual observer or worse, the non-sports fan, can have an opinion and participate. All they have to do is fill out one of those brackets and turn it in to the sketchy guy running the office pool who always seems to win the damn thing every year.

The best part about the NCAA Tournament is that you don’t have to watch the games to be involved.

What? Don’t have to watch the games? Such sacrilege! What about the upsets and the last-second shots, and the Cinderellas, and the corny song they play at the end with all of the hightlights….

!

Yeah, well, whatever.

As one of those folks slowly morphing into a non-sports fan, I believe that the NCAA Tournament is beginning to become a parody of itself. Or a cliché. Or worse. Oh sure, the last-second shots are exciting and the upsets are cool, but it’s getting to the point when it doesn’t occur every time, the drama gets forced. Not every ending can be NC State beating Houston or Freddie Brown passing the ball to James Worthy.

Worse, the whining and complaining about what team got into the tournament or improperly seeded has reached such a pitch that it’s become completely unwatchable and unlistenable. So Drexel didn’t get invited to “The Big Dance.” I guess it shouldn’t have lost to Rider and I doubt Drexel as a bastion of academia will figure out how to trudge on even though the basketball team has to play in the NIT.

Now don’t get me wrong, I used to go crazy like everyone else about the NCAA Tournament. In fact, it’s really interesting to me that Georgetown has John Thompson as the coach and Patrick Ewing as a star player. It makes me feel like it’s 1984 all over again.

Better yet, for the last 20 years in a row, I spent the second Sunday in March in front of the television with a legal pad and a pen and marked down where, when and who each of the 53, then 64 and now 65 teams were going to play. There was no so-called bracketology involved, no whining about who was left out or wrongly seeded (though Temple’s No. 4 seed in 1994 was wrong), or no hand-wringing, boisterous and hyperbolic rants about which team was going to go to the Final Four. Simply, it was an annual ritual in its purest form.

The result was what mattered. It was that simple. There was an air of mystery about the teams and the players because the only time we (I) saw them was on TV. I didn’t know anything about Ewing, or Bird, or Sampson, or Jordan, or Bias other than what they offered during a basketball game.

Somehow, though, that mystery and pureness soured and was ruined and those old notebooks have been moved from a box in the garage to a big green plastic receptacle at the end of the driveway. Was it the corporatization and greed that has pervaded big-time athletics? Have my priorities changed that much? Has it just gotten so boring? Whatever the reason, this year I decided that all traditions must come to an end. Sure, the fact that the only reason I paid attention in the past few years was because it related to work and the Big 5 teams were a threat to make it past the first weekend of games. Then there is the fact that I haven’t watched an entire college basketball game since… gee… when was that?

I guess that’s the way it is when one gets older. Maybe those priorities and interests change because they find their proper perspective? Memories shift, too. I can still recite the Final Four from the late 1960s to about the early or mid 1990s. As for last year or the year before that I have no idea.

And this stuff used to matter – relatively speaking, of course.

Here’s the point: I’m old, and who wants to listen to Billy Packer whine or Dick Vitale get tangled up in the lies of the mission of college athletics? Not me.

But man oh man those games used to be a lot of fun. I’m sure they still are to a lot of people, so excuse this old man as he steps aside to let others have fun without another know-it-all boring everyone to tears.

And if you’re looking for help on the bracket, try this Final Four: Oregon, UCLA, Georgetown and Memphis with Georgetown and Oregon going all the way to the end.