This is March, right? The time for March Madness and its requisite total and obsessive focus on NCAA basketball?
I ask because, on the eve of another flurry of college basketball games that make this time of year and this particular tournament one of the grandest in sports, it’s a little hard to tell.
Mike D’Antoni, who resigned Wednesday as the head coach of the New York Knicks, is the first casualty of the shotgun marriage between Linsanity and Carmelo Anthony. Peyton Manning is on the verge of deciding which NFL team he’s going to play for — and in the process turn into an immediate and fascinating Super Bowl contender.
Calvin Johnson just became a very rich man after signing a new contract with the Detroit Lions. The Chicago Bears’ new star wide receiver, Brandon Marhsall, reportedly had some dust-up at a New York night club involving his wife, a bottle, an alleged punch and a lot of differing stories on what actually happened. And Orlando Magic superstar Dwight Howard has steered well into LeBron-James-leaving-Cleveland territory.
Wrapped up in all of these stories is Tebowmania, the future of franchises, the next champions of both the NFL and NBA, the hopes and dreams of fans following teams in some of the biggest markets in America and the legacies and immediate futures of several future Hall of Fame players in both sports.
To say nothing of the onslaught of information, gossip, anger, fascination and frustration of general sports fans everywhere.
So like I said: What happened to March Madness?
On Tuesday night, the first two games of the NCAA tournament featured absolutely amazing comebacks. BYU erased the largest deficit in tournament history by storming back from 25 points down to stun Iona. Earlier that night, the only team in the tournament with a losing record — Western Kentucky — notched one more win in its own furious comeback, giving the Hilltoppers their own poignant moment of glory.
Not that you were likely to notice any of it. But these games pulled just a 0.9 overnight rating, meaning few folks watched either BYU’s brilliance or Western Kentucky’s rally against Mississippi Valley State for the right to, most likely, get slaughtered Thursday against No. 1 overall seed Kentucky.
Speaking of whom ...
We have what is most likely John Calipari’s most talented team ever (and rumors he may bolt for the NBA if they win it all), blue-blooded programs like Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Syracuse and Michigan State ready and loaded with No. 1 and 2 seeds and mid-major programs that have proved deadly and difficult to gauge sharpening their knives for their bigger-conference brethren.
There are so many interesting games and brackets that worker production across the country should already be plummeting just in preparation for skipping out at the office to watch the action.
Still, I get it. The NFL rules the day, every day, that it has sports news. The NBA is as interesting as it’s been in a long time, and there’s nothing like watching stars like Howard and snake-bitten organizations like New York stumble in slow motion through failure, frustration and ego.
The question is whether or not all the storylines bursting from the country’s sports scene will obscure the beauty of this week’s games. There’s still Howard to be dealt (or not), the Knicks to answer questions about what comes next, Peyton to make a decision, the Redskins to wrestle with the coming of Robert Griffin III ... on and on it goes.
Is there room left over to watch a few No. 12 seeds knock off a few fives, to watch teams like VCU or Wichita State or Creighton try and make a run, to see which No. 1 stumbles and falls first?
I, for one, hope so. The news coming from the NBA and NFL is awesome, attention-grabbing stuff. But the NCAA tournament comes once a year, and this week’s games are among the most captivating sports moments of the year.
Too bad we can’t TiVo life the way we can television. It’d be nice to pause all the other news, enjoy March Madness live and find out about Peyton, Dwight and all the rest on Monday morning.
You can follow Bill Reiter on Twitter or email him at foxsportsreiter@gmail.com.
