WBRS Sports Blog

Hello friends. My name is Ted, and I'm not Mini-Me. In fact, I'm closer to 6-5, 300 than Mini-Me might ever hope to be, and I don't normally write down my thoughts, feelings, and innermost desires here. Rather, I write them here. If that link doesn't work for you for any reason, the direct is "priceabovebiproberts.blogspot.com," albeit without the quotes. I hope you knew that anyway.

Today, as the ertswhile amongst us know, is the true beginning of March Madness, leading to the inevitable: you have to find a way to call out sick from work a week from tomorrow, when there's wall-to-wall basketball, corner-to-corner announcers discussing the Big Sky Conference with the same reverence some lend only to religion, and hoop-to-hoop catch phrases and cliches flying around like so many gnats in the summertime.

But it's March Madness, baby. And it's glorious. And we say it begins today because as I type this, in my cold West Hartford, CT abode, warmed only a recent draught of Guinness, the Big East Tournament hath commenced. The Pac-10 will tonight. Major conference "Sadie Hawkins' " are underway (that's my lame way of comparing a conference tournament to a "Big Dance," although it really makes no sense, since do girls really invite anyone to dance in an all boys-tournament? I guess not).

Some would claim conference tournaments don't matter, ESPECIALLY major college tournaments. Here, though, is why they do:

I covered the Georgetown Hoyas for one of two student newspapers during part of my tenure as a student in the nation's capital. In the spring of 2002, I was up in New York (where my parents live, so it's not necessarily that far-fetched of a notion that I would be there) and had press credentials for the Big East Tournament. Some of my friends were also in town. Vainglorious, I thought.

Alas, in some ways it wasn't. If memory serves, we won on Wednesday - Providence? - but lost on Thursday that year. The issue for me was, while I got some cool access for a 21 year old punk (I saw Jim Calhoun feverishly down a tuna melt in the backstage area, for example), I wasn't near my friends. I had to sit all the way up, essentially in the nosebleeds, nowhere near the actual, vaunted "press row." Maybe twice during the course of both games, a young intern came by and handed us some stat packs, now long since outdated, without much conversation taking place.

Meanwhile, my friends were right behind one of the baskets, courtside.

I was jealous.

Now, you might say - many might, in fact - that I shouldn't have been jealous. After all, it's just a Conference Tournament. What does it really mean, anyway? Unless a team makes a 'Cuse last year-esque run and wins the entire shebang when they had previously been on the bubble, isn't the entire thing predetermined? You generally know how it goes: a few of the first-round games between teams usually unappealing to watch are basically "elimination games," or so say the bracketologists. Then, maybe 1 semifinal is dramatic, and in the end, the team that ran the table for the entire regular season probably wins; if they lose, it's probably to a team that was making the NCAA Tournament anyway.

That's conventional logic, and many times, it's true. But here's why you should care about Conference Tournaments; why I did, and still do: it's the definition of passion. Only one team is going to run the table in late March and win the six straight necessary to raise the trophy in Atlanta, or New Orleans, or Indy, or wherever the Final Four is. Chances are, unless you go to school in one of maybe four places, it's not going to be your school.

But a conference tournament features familiar foes, rivalries you implictly understand as a student of one of the schools, players you love to haze and love to love, a history richer than anything you can wrap your beer-saturated 20something brain around, the representation of a last chance at glory for many of the players, and a final frontier for you and your friends. I mean, regardless of the size of the conference - if you went to Oakland, or if you went to UCLA - a run through a Conference Tournament is something that can never be removed from you and your friends. For years, you'll discuss it with hushed awe: "Remember that three we buried in the Big 10 quarters back in '06?" And suddenly, everyone will add a moment: "That was insane!" or "Jeff was so drunk by the time that shot was launched, I don't think he even realized we were playing anymore!"

Now, sure, a NCAA Title run is something you can never have taken away from you either, but as noted, chances are that ain't happening to you. And even if it does, in some ways it might be even sweeter to run off four straight against teams you've come to hate for no other reason than their vague geographical positioning within our fair country.

And if, for some reason (you communist pig) you can't understand the above, consider this: a few years ago, at a conference tournament, a young girl from one of the schools was in town to see the action. She may or may not have defined "action" differently from everyone else in town, because she engaged in a few couplings with male members of other schools, specifically one school. When that school was eliminated from the conference tournament, and had to do their walk of shame from the hotel to the bus, flanked by students and alums of other schools chanting "Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Hey" at them, they unfurled a banner: "We suck," it read, "but so does ----," with ---- being the name of the girl in question.

Now, if that isn't an anecdote that should make this week matter to you, I don't know what is.

I can always be reached at tedbauer2003@yahoo.com if you have concerns, criticisms, feedback, or are in need of bootleg copies of Jose Rijo's pitching performances from the 1990 World Series.