Raw Appeal of March Stronger Than Ever

General Motors couldn't afford to buy ad time during the Super Bowl. It bailed on a nine-year endorsement relationship with Tiger Woods, whose almighty golf bag had been adorned with a Buick logo. The automaker is mired in doomsday hell, a symbol of America's economic crisis. But how utterly fascinating that GM is conducting business as usual with the one sports event that probably would survive the apocalypse.

March Madness.

Apparently, bookies and brackets and office bimbos who don't know Siena from Sienna Miller are bigger than a national downturn. "People are waiting to jump out of their chairs and cheer for something,'' said CBS Sports president Sean McManus, who told a media conference call that advertising sales are solid despite the recession.

Such is the intoxicating effect of the NCAA tournament, which announces its pairings Sunday once we plow through the tedium of these ever-greedy conference tournaments. No sporting spectacle, including the Super Bowl, connects the American masses quite like the 65-team rumble. We enjoy the fresh faces, the compelling personal stories. We watch the coaches whose personalities dominate the sport, like them or not. We root for teams that leap from the hinterlands, such as Davidson last year and Gonzaga of yore, perhaps joined this month by, well, Siena. In the end, raw unpredictability settles into power-program normalcy, with 20 of the last 28 national champions entering as first or second seeds and no champion since the 1980s seeded lower than fourth.

Yet no matter what happens and who wins, March invigorates a nation with full-syringe doses of youth and hope. Oh, college basketball remains as scummy as ever if you look hard enough -- actually, you don't have to look hard at all -- but this tournament has a way of separating the games from the garbage and never, ever letting us down. Shame on Bob Knight, in the relative calm of his coaching afterlife, for suggesting on ESPN, "It's time to expand the tournament to 128 teams.''

Why would anyone dare tinker with the ideal sports happening? And if you include the conference tournaments, which start in early March, doesn't the Madness already involve just about every team in Division I hoops? Here we have Rick Barnes, advancing a CBS-controlled conspiracy. We realized Dallas had a grassy knoll, but Austin, too? "It amazes me when everybody keeps talking about expanding the NCAA tournament,'' Barnes said. "They have their theories, but the theory they never talk about is that it's owned by CBS and CBS isn't going to change it. They like it just the way it is. When they paid six billion dollars, believe me, whether the NCAA wants to admit it, it's all about CBS. They like the three-week format. They like the Cinderella teams coming in early. They just want 'em gone by the Round of 16.''

Um, Rick, it only was last March when Jim Nantz was vigorously shining the Cinderella slippers of Stephen Curry and Davidson. For a while there, you wondered if CBS was overdoing the story -- and now we have Barnes saying the network wanted Davidson gone by the Sweet 16 when, in fact, Team Curry damn near beat eventual champion Kansas in the Elite Elite. Look, can we just leave well enough alone and be happy this tournament creates the same sizzle as always?


What's cool about this year is the crapshoot effect at the top. A season that was supposed to be ruled by North Carolina, with at least one nitwit (me) forecasting a flawless season for the Tar Heels, morphed into a crazy taffy pull in which teams treated the No. 1 spot in the polls like radioactive material. Be it Carolina or Pittsburgh or Connecticut or Wake Forest or Duke, no one could handle prosperity for long. Expect those teams and others -- Louisville, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Memphis and Kansas -- to be viable challengers for a championship. Most years, we can pick the winner from a pool of three or four. This year, the list has expanded because every team has a flaw that accompanies its talent. Who knows? Maybe it's a year for a fifth or sixth seed to make a long run, such as James Harden and Arizona State or Johnny Flynn and Syracuse.

Take Carolina. No team is more gifted or fluid when its offense is purring, yet why don't the Heels bring top effort every night? Why does the defense lag? Why is the perimeter an issue? Doesn't Roy Williams scream a little bit much for comfort? More urgently, will the jammed toe of Ty Lawson -- the most important player, gasoline for a turbo engine -- end up stubbing their hopes? They don't have the appropriate swagger right now, in part because Tyler Hansbrough had a down year when domination was expected. After UNC beat Duke last Sunday, the players actually appeared to welcome the tournament's anything-goes theme, not what anyone expected when the season started.

"I like the way it is now," guard Bobby Frasor said. "When you're out in front as the leader of the pack, everyone is gunning for you. Now there is parity with a number of other teams rising to the top. It should make for an interesting March and April."

"You never know who the best team is week to week," Hansbrough said. ``We'll see what happens at the end of the year."

Not exactly rousing self-appraisals.

My guess is, Carolina won't be posing for a triumphant team picture on a Monday night in Detroit, where the championship game will be played in the middle of a football stadium and somehow feel lonely. Something isn't right. "It wasn't unfair (to rank Carolina high) because we were in the Final Four last year and everyone was coming back and there was a lot expected of us," Lawson said. "The way the media portrayed us was that we were a giant and we wouldn't lose a game. That's tough to stand up to. We did our best and we still won the ACC championship."

Like most, I like Pitt's toughness, personified by DeJuan Blair. But before we declare this team a title favorite, don't the Panthers have to reach the Final Four first? If they've never been there as a program, it's hard to make the quantum projection as champions. Their top three players -- Blair, Sam Young and Levance Fields -- are money. And they have no problem with swagger. "I have a picture of Detroit in my room," Blair said at one point. "That's all I think about. We won the Big East last year. Now I want to win a national championship."

Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun wouldn't doubt it, either, which is quite a mouthful from a man who has a contender himself. "They're going to be tough," said Calhoun, who twice lost to Pitt when his team was ranked No. 1. "Pitt has all the components of a national championship-caliber team. I think Jamie Dixon has developed one of the best offensive teams. They're fun to watch."

UConn likely will join Pitt and Carolina as No. 1 regional seeds. Hasheem Thabeet, all 7-foot-3 of him, has the wingspan and shot-blocking ability to shut down any team. But without Jerome Dyson, who blew out his knee, is there enough perimeter defense and auxiliary scoring? Oklahoma also might be a worthy No. 1, a breathtaking force with the tournament's premier player in Blake Griffin and best freshman in guard Willie Warren.


Yet I could see Louisville, in a month when coaching might matter more than usual, winning it all. Rick Pitino is ridiculed for a white suit straight out of "Saturday Night Fever,'' and he's dealing with the indignity of a new VitaminWater ad that relives Christian Laettner's killer shot when Pitino was at Kentucky. But tell me his team isn't playing as well as any, that Terrence Williams isn't as good as any player in the tournament, that the Louisville defense won't shut down opponents the way it shut down Pitt. The Cardinals won the regular-season title in America's meanest conference, edging out Pitt and UConn. Shouldn't they also be a No. 1 seed if they go far in the Big East tournament? "I don't know how the seeding works. But to win the best conference in the country outright, it should speak volumes to whoever is doing the picking,'' Williams said.

These are the debates that make March quiver. We also like the quirks -- a 7-1 center named Grlenntys Chief Kickingstallionsims Jr., Chief for short -- so keep rooting for Alabama State in the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament. All I know is, President Obama never will complain about March Madness the way he mopes about college football's idiotic Bowl Championship Series, even though his brother-in-law, Oregon State coach Craig Robinson, lost in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament on Wednesday night.

In a world that never has been more imperfect, it's still the perfect sports event. GM, wobbly as it is, gladly will write a check as a proud sponsor.