The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is better than Christmas.
The first reason is brackets. As ESPN Radio host, Colin Cowherd said, “brackets make everything better.”
For this half-hour or so it takes to fill out a bracket, the person filling out the bracket feels like an expert. Whether or not they have actually watched a game this season is another story.
Brackets would make Christmas better, but there really isn’t anything to bracket during the holidays. No matter what Jesus would always be the No. 1 overall seed and win the tournament, and you can’t root for the underdog because if you did you would go to Hell.
Christmas get-togethers are usually agonizing. I usually spend more time dreading them than at them.
You know the drill. Everyone packs into someone’s house, usually Grandma’s or somebody’s grandmother’s, and sit talking about things they really don’t care about because the silence is too awkward. That is until the loser uncle shows up, then the topic of conversation changes to backstabbing the uncle about how he and his wife are no good and are going to suck Grandma dry.
I hate walking around, pretending to want to be there and talking to people I haven’t seen in a year, and I probably won’t see for another year unless somebody dies or gets married.
But when I get together with friends to watch the tournament, I am with people I chose to be around rather than around people who I don’t even think about before Thanksgiving.
The topics of conversation range from who is going to win the tournament to who is the hottest woman on the planet instead of how much we hate our crackhead uncle.
Usually the group is not packed into a small house watching a 19-inch television that doesn’t even have cable. We are watching the games on our LCD high definition televisions. If the party outgrows the venue, you simply move it to a sports bar.
Every Christmas seems relatively the same, pretty much as I described earlier.
This is not the case with the NCAA Tournament. Every year the tournament is full of surprises. It is always interesting to see who is going to be the Cinderella of the dance the first weekend of the tournament. Then in the second weekend the big boys take center stage as the Final Four is formed.
Another reason the NCAA Tournament is better than Christmas is the food.
By about the fifth Christmas party, the sight of turkey repulses me and the smell makes me vomit a little bit in my mouth.
The cuisine for NCAA Tournament parties is usually along the lines of chicken wings and cheese fries and nothing is better than that.
When this column runs the Final Four will be set, so for the record, here are my Final Four picks: Michigan State, Missouri, Pittsburgh and North Carolina, with UNC winning the championship over Missouri.
Eric McGuffin
Editor
demcguff@ius.edu