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Home Opinion March Madness: Cliched, Commercialized and Absolutely Brilliant

by Noah Rohlfing

 

It’s March, the month where basketball magic happens, and heroes are born, when the extraordinary becomes commonplace for a three-week period. It is, quite simply, my favorite time of the year.

March Madness is incredible, as I’m sure many here on campus will agree. There is excitement in almost every moment of every game, even the 1-16 games, where a 16-seed has never beaten a 1 (although there are many close calls, most recently Southern’s 64-58 loss to No.1 Gonzaga in 2013). There are Cinderella teams, such as VCU’s incredible Final Four run in 2011 and the Dunk City craze that was Florida Gulf Coast’s record-breaking run to the Sweet 16 as a 15-seed in 2013. March can completely change the trajectory of any given player or coach’s career in an instant. One of my most vivid tournament memories remains the run Kemba Walker’s UConn team made through the Big East Tournament all the way to winning the NCAA title.

My favorite days of the tournament have to be the first weekend, when upsets happen and little-known schools make a name for themselves. But, my favorite story might just be Butler from 2010. Butler was not a plucky underdog. In fact, Butler is still one of the top 30 programs in college basketball and may very well make a run this year. Butler was a 5 seed that had made it all the way to the Final Four in Indianapolis, which was held just six miles away from the Butler campus. It was a fairytale come to life. Then there was Duke in the National Championship game. Big, bad, Duke. They’re annoyingly good, a little dirty sometimes, and there’s just something about them. Everything about that game, from start to finish, told you it was going down to the wire. With three seconds left, Butler had one final shot. A half-court prayer. The final opportunity for their One Shining Moment and immortality.

Gordon Hayward throws it up from half court with time expiring. It looks good in the air and 12-year-old Noah is ecstatic. I’m ready to run around the basement screaming when it goes in.

It bounces off the backboard, clangs off the front of the rim and out 3 inches away. Instead of history, it was heartbreak. And it was everything beautiful about March Madness all at once.

If that sounds cliche, that’s because everything about March Madness is one, big, fantastic cliche, from the moments of madness to the sometimes corny calls from Jim Nantz after the final buzzer sounds.

See, that moment is what makes this three-weekend stretch in the middle of spring so undeniably entertaining. March Madness is all about creating lasting memories. It’s about miraculous individual play and teams that have half of the talent as a Kentucky, Duke or Michigan State knocking them out with teamwork and a little luck. It’s about near-misses that leave us breathless and in tears, historic collapses that left me scratching my head and screaming towards the heavens, and maybe, just maybe, a Nebraska victory. Just kidding, that’ll never happen. I can dream, though, can’t I?

March Madness is exactly what you think it is: commercialized, cliched and absolutely brilliant all in the same breath. You can’t take your eyes off the games, or you might miss something incredible.

Which reminds me, I have some games to watch.

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