#78

With their sixth title since 1995 tonight, the UConn Huskies women's bball team is now only 10 wins away from tying the legendary 1970s UCLA Bruins men's bball record of 88-consecutive wins.

Is Duke Popularity a Symptom of American Anti-Populism, or Vice Versa?

Progressive columnist David Sirota hypothesizes on the country's love/hate relationship with the Blue Devils:

[I]n the Great Duke Debate, I side with the Nation's Dave Zirin. Combining all the leading explanations, then adding Duke's status as an upper-crust, ultra-expensive private school, I subscribe to his theory that says our penchant for hating on the Blue Devils reflects America's larger, more complex relationship with privilege.

This makes sociopolitical sense. A country founded on anti-royalism and defined by anti-aristocrat political rhetoric will naturally profess disgust for, say, Ivy League presidential candidates and incumbent congressmen — just as it will loudly claim to despise Duke basketball (and Yankees baseball and Cowboys football and ... you get the point). In short, purporting to abhor inequality, advantage and dynasty has long been as red-bloodedly patriotic as loving mom, adoring apple pie and, yes, booing teams like the Blue Devils — teams that seem to wear their privilege on their jerseys.

And yet, evidence suggests our righteous inveighing against privilege is depressingly shallow — and possibly fraudulent. Note this recent New York Daily News report:

"When considering why Duke was conveniently placed on a fast track to (the Final Four by NCAA bracket makers), the power of the Blue Devils as a TV attraction must be factored into the equation," wrote the paper, adding that, simply put, "Duke has a history of juicing TV ratings."

This cannot be explained away as a mere product of Duke's alumni fan base or the watch-'em-because-we-hate-'em crowd. Those die-hard audiences, however passionate, are too small to account for such inflated national viewership figures.

We can hence conclude that a large segment of basketball fans who say they detest Duke — and who may consciously believe they detest Duke — actually secretly or subconsciously adore it and its privilege.

I suppose populists should root for mid-major Cinderella-story Butler, then. After all, Butler was founded by and named after an abolitionist, whereas Duke is named after robber baron James Buchanan Duke of the American Tobacco Company monopoly.

Go Bulldogs!

March Madness: Pie vs. Cake

Yeah, yeah, it's Final Four weekend. Whatever. Maybe Duke wins another title and everyone in college basketball fandom who didn't go to Duke or grow up near Duke or date someone who went to Duke or have a law school roommate went to Duke or has Reggie Love as a bodyman will be pissed/irritated/generally unconcerned. Or maybe Duke loses, and only those people listed previously are heartbroken, and the rest of us who had our teams get prematurely destroyed in the first round will laugh and say, "Now you know how it feels."

But insofar as "March Madness" perversely enters into April (I know, madness!), it isn't all just about men's basketball, or even the Huskies pursuit of 88 consecutive victories (they can only get to 78 by winning their sixth title on Tuesday, so you'll have to hold your breath until next season). No, my dear friends, March Madness is about much more. It is about the epic struggle between good and evil. Yes, it is about a clash of the titans that does not involve CG giant scorpions and an embarrassingly ethereal Zeus portrayed by Qui-Jon Ginn... I mean Ra's Al Ghul... I mean Liam Neeson. It is about:

Pie versus Cake.

"But hsuper," you complain, "This has nothing to do with sports? Why are you blogging this?" To which I reply with this video, which demonstrates nothing, but may make you hungry:

One Shining Moment: March Madness, Cakes vs. Pies from Jezebel on Vimeo.

Voting concludes Monday 4/5 at 1:55pm EST.

Go Cheesecake!

Say it Ain't So Jim Delany!

In an interview on Wednesday with USA Today, Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany told the newspaper that he thought expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams was "probable."   An expanded bracket would mean 31 additional tournament games and lots and lots of money for the NCAA and the broadcast network(s) that secures the rights to broadcast the larger tournament.

Is expansion good?  Me, I'm pretty indifferent.  I like the tournament the way it is now, but at the same time, I wouldn't mind more action, excitement, and heartache.  I do worry, however, that rather than allowing more "Mid-Majors" to battle with the big boys, expansion will just give mediocre teams in power conferences more of an opportunity to blow-up our brackets.  (Also, I would kinda miss the NIT... GO MSG!)

Does Domination of A Sport Help or Hurt Popularity?

The L.A. Times profiled the UConn Huskies Women's Basketball team, the overall top seeded team in the women's Final Four and three games away from their 6th national championship in 15 years. They are also 13 games away from tying the all-time winning streak record, established by John Wooden's UCLA Men's Basketball team.

The story poses and interesting question: does too much winning hurt a sport's popularity?

Are the Huskies good enough to be considered America's most dominant team? "They're making a case for consideration," Burke said.

But their success raises another question: Are all those blowout victories hurting a women's game that must fight for respect and attention?

Even [TV sports analyst Billy] Packer, who admires their style, concedes: "To be quite honest with you, because so many of the teams they play have no opportunity to be competitive, I don't watch many of their games."

[UConn Coach Geno] Auriemma offers a different perspective. He talks about Microsoft's dominance of the computer software market.

"Eventually, other people have to catch up," he says. "You either compete or get out, so everyone will compete."

It's hard to think of teams that have been as dominant in recent history, but I'd tend to think that assigning low-popularity to over-dominance is a pretty flawed claim. It's not like people stopped watching the NBA during the Bull's two Jordan-led three-peats from 1990-93 and 1995-98. And the dominance of Tiger Woods clearly single-handedly exploded the popularity of golf-as-spectator-sport.

Kentucky's Center: Basketball is "not a spelling bee"

On the mismatch that is 1-seed Kentucky vs. 12-seed Cornell.

DeMarcus Cousins, the star Wildcat freshman big man, said the game would not be determined by “who can read the fastest.”

Cousins added: “We’re here to play basketball. It’s not a spelling bee.”

It's funny because Cornell is an Ivy-League school, and as we also all know, the Ivy League has dominated NCAA Division I Spelling Bee and Men's Speed Reading for the last several seasons.

Women's Spelling Bee has notably been dominated by Pac-10 schools since the 1995-96 season.

Bracket Busters.....Do they really indicate parity? Update

So #12 Cornell just finished "upsetting" #4 Wisconsin.   This win comes on the heals of #9 Northern Iowa beating #1 (and #1 overall) Kansas, #10 Saint Mary's over #2 Nova, #11 Washington over #3 New Mexico, and #5 Mich St. over #4 Maryland.

As my bracket is already busted (as are many others...thanks Big East), and I went to Cornell (GO BIG RED),  I am all for the "upset." 

Here is my question.  Does this year point to incredible parity in college basketball, or is it that the Committee did a terrible job?  I have to lean towards a bad job by the Committee.  It is crazy that this year there were probably 5-10 teams who were favored (or almost even money) to win in the first two rounds as the lower seed.  I understand that (1) the Committee sees less of the "mid-majors" and (2) the Committee has to finalize these brackets in only a few hours, and they do the best that they can. This year, however, not such a great job.

And why do they have so little time to finish the bracket? Why doesn't the NCAA make all conference tournaments end on the Saturday before selection Sunday.  That would give the Committee almost 24 hours to put these brackets together (and hopefully watch more tape of mid-majors).

But hey, maybe the NCAA would rather have it this way.  Bad brackets means more upsets. Upsets mean interest and gambling.  Interest and gambling = money. And as we all know, that is the only thing the NCAA really cares about.

Thoughts?