Show College vs SA hoops Tony Pizza Special to tl the e Chronicle At first I thought it was wa just me I usually get pump pumped d up uI for March Madness the way waya a kid or Steve Young does before a trip to Disneyland I print out several brackets and make a a. a friendly yet healthy competition between family and friends I go so far as to to build a Web site with up-to-date up standings and projections based on current results However this year hasn't been the same for me Initially I chalked this up to the fact that the tournament was starting during Spring Break It would be hard to track down workers co-workers and friends at friends at least enough to make things interesting Still till I went to Las Vegas for opening weekend and stood in line for an hour just to place a few parlay bets for the tournament I even watched shows and got angry when everyone predicted Utah as the lock No 5 seed to bow out of the tournament early Almost equally disturbing was that everyone said No 9 seed BYU could be the first team to knock off offa a No 1 seed Even though I was in Vegas with a youngster which meant that my time wasn't primarily occupied by free drinks and overpriced 15 20 tables watching the tournament wasn't at the top of my agenda list In fact I l spent more time on Spring Break catching up on homework than watching the tournament The last ditch effort to explain my apathy was when I tried to watch the Utah-Arizona Utah game but kept getting live look-ins look on Louisville throttling Morehead State I even filled out a bracket and was doing fairly well but couldn't figure out why I didn't care Maybe I was sick Watching the North Oklahoma Carolina game I finally figured out what my problem was Ive I've been watching alot a alot alot lot of basketball this season I went to just about every Jazz home game up until a week ago when the company I worked for went out of business Ive I've tried to catch just about every Jazz road game and have even managed to watch a lot of the TNT TNT this year which have actually been quite entertaining Plain and simply the stock has gone up while college basketball has gone down In both the Eastern and Western conferences theres there's theresa a tight race for playoff spots and seeding The l league ague has reached such a phenomenal balance that even first- first round playoff match ups are more exciting than your average college basketball game Setting aside the rare Villanova Pittsburgh-Villanova finish this season the drama and the fact that Cinderella has spent more time at the party after-party than at the ball has made college basketball like your neighborhood Applebee's Applebe kind Applebee's kind s kind of bland The NB has LeBron James Dwight Howard Chris Paul Kobe Deron Williams and about 90 other athletes who are much more exciting to watch than some year old who throws up a steady diet of head- head and ill-advised ill shots with the hope of one of those prayers going in With the ability to play zone and clog up the lane without restriction college basketball is no longer the equal younger equal younger brother maybe College basketball is to the as high school basketball is to the college game Im I'm more interested to see if the women can run the table than if their supposedly superior male counterparts can win a championship Like the economy college basketball is having a down year Watching the is like putting your money on the Dont Don't Pass Bar line on a cold craps table Not much comparison |