Reflections on March Madness 2010

It's Wednesday and it's the eve of March Madness. The next four days starting tomorrow is one of my four favorite days of the year, especially Thursday and Friday. I love watching the tournament and the excitement that comes with it. I have filled out brackets but before breaking down the brackets, here's some random reflections on college basketball.

*I'm not the first to say that the selections committee did a not great job and I won't be the last. It's a tough job but they could've done better than stacking the Midwest region with the overall #1 seed and the East with the #2 seed and making the South and West lighter. Also, Tennessee should've gotten higher than a 6th seed in the Midwest, you beat the #1 and #2 overall teams in the country and that gets you only a 6th seed in the toughest region?

*With all the talk about raising the amount of teams to 96 and such...I'm neither for nor against that yet. I will say this, if I was running the show this is what I would do. I would make the 31 automatic bids the top seeds (so roughly 1-7 or 8 seeds). That way A) it doesn't penalize the teams that won their way into the tournament like the mid-major schools and B) you still have the top teams in the top conferences as the 1 or 2 seeds because typically if they're that good they'll win their conference tournament. You then have your remaining 34 at large teams be the lower seed 8-16 with the last two "bubble" teams play in the play-in game. Of course that will never happen but it's a nice thing to think about.

*One thing that I have been reminded of in recent weeks is something that I talked about a while back in one of my video posts. I talked about how at least I am trying to talk positively about the teams I root for and not talk negatively about teams that are rivals or those I don't necessarily like. And for the most part, I've done a good job. If my team has won, I was excited and said great things about my team but I didn't denegrate the other team. If my team lost, I said they put up a good effort and gave the winning team their due. What has disappointed me is that I've seen, read and heard those friends of mine who haven't done that. They have made it a point to say bad things about the other team for no reason it seems like. Case in point. I have several friends who root for Kentucky. In the last few weeks when Tennessee played them in basketball, they made it a point to make snarky (a word I use sometimes that means like a sarcastic putdown) comments both when Kentucky lost and when they won. I don't know why they felt they had to say those things, maybe they're around Tennessee fans who make those kind of comments around them and they feel they need to respond in kind, I don't know. I know my tendency deep down is to respond like that if people are saying those kind of things and I kinda wanted to respond to them like they were responding but instead I thought about what good that would do and instead chose to say good things both about my team and theirs. I think definitely those who are pastors and ministers like myself need to be reminded that our words do mean something and they have an impact like our actions, and that includes being a sports fan. One cannot separate being a fan and being a follower of Jesus, because it's all wrapped into the person God has made you and called you to be. I'm not perfect in this but I'm trying and hopefully that will end up being edifying to God.

Now...onto the brackets. Just like last year I filled out 14 brackets (10 on ESPN, 3 on Facebook and 1 on Yahoo). I went with a variety of ways of filling out the brackets. Some were scientific (Strength of Schedule, Average of RPI and Strength of Schedule, Records vs. Top 25) and some were simply not scientific (Mascots, Numbers out of a Hat, Completely Random, First Impressions). Here are some thoughts on the brackets:

*I'm not buying some of the easy upset picks that a lot of the "experts" are going with, and not just because I'm a Tennessee guy. I don't think Tennessee or Vanderbilt will be upset. In fact, I think Vandy will be a sweet 16 team. Some sleeper teams I'm picking are Utah St., Washington, Minnesota and Cornell.

*I have seen a lot of Big 12 games living in Kansas City. It is a tough conference and Kansas is a very tough team. They have talent + experience which to me is a deadly combination. I think a lot of people think that Kentucky is the top team like a lot of other people think Kansas is the top team. I've seen both teams and there's no question, Kansas is better. Kentucky does have talent but Wall is too much of a kamakaze point guard who has a propensity to turn the ball over and have a Kobe Bryant mentality of shooting shots. Cousins is a player who could just as easily take his team out of a game as well as keep them in it with his attitude. Their best player to be honest is Bledsoe. When you're top three players are all freshmen, I do think that's not a formula for tournament success (see Michigan in 1993 with Fab 5). Kansas has the depth and talent with Collins, Aldrich, and the Henry twins. Along with that talent they have experience with Collins and Aldrich being seniors. That will play a factor to me as the tourney goes on.

I have two brackets in which I'm thinking are my best. In my first bracket I have in my final four: Kansas, Kansas State, West Virginia and Villanova and in my second bracket I have the same with the exception being Baylor instead of Villanova. I have in the championship game in both brackets Kansas and West Virginia with Kansas taking the title.

Good luck to everyone filling out the brackets and hope you enjoy watching some basketball!

The Latest Incident of Arguing/Fighting in Minor League Baseball

It's become almost a cliche now in sports. You watch Sportscenter or local sports or even see on the internet the latest incident that goes on in minor league baseball. Most of the time, it's the manager throwing a fit and upstaging the umpire. But this time, it was in my mind ridiculous. During the first inning of a game between Dayton and Peoria (two Class A teams), the managers for both teams got into an argument with the umpire. They then started pushing each other which then led to a brawl. In the midst of this brawl, a pitcher for Peoria threw a baseball intending to hit a player from Dayton. Instead it went sailing into the stands and hit a fan who was there with his wife and kids. The fan was taken to the hospital and the player was later charged with assault. It was so bad and involved so many players that there were 15 players ejected but were reinstated just so they could finish the game.

Here's video of the incident:


My take on this: it is sad that is what minor league baseball has come to be known for. Growing up, I didn't live in an area with a major league baseball team. So if I wanted to go to a baseball game, it was to a minor league game. The team in Nashville (the Sounds) were a Class AAA organization (affiliated with the Reds when I was little then later the White Sox and now the Brewers) that me, my dad and my brother would go and watch. It was fun and the games were good. There was none of this nonsense of trying to shock or do crazy things like there seems to be today. It was about the game. That's something that has gotten lost and should be looked at again. I hope that the players involved learn a lesson from this. Playing sports at a professional level is a privledge and not a right. If they continue to have an attitude like, they will not have that privledge for long.

Random Sports Reflections

Here's some quick reflections on some recent sports news items:

*First, the Shaq/Kobe deal. For those of you that don't know, last week Shaquille O'Neal was at a New York club and was taped doing a freestyle rap. The tape ended up on a tabloid website and then became headline news. In the rap, Shaq trashes Kobe and made some off-color remarks.

Now, anyone that knows me knows I don't like Kobe Bryant. I'm not a fan of his at all. However, I was totally disappointed in Shaq's behavior. Besides the fact that their feud was supposedly over with like two years ago, there really was no reason for Shaq to go off like that. To give credit where credit was due this year, Kobe's team did go farther in the playoffs than Shaq's (much to my disapproval). In my mind, this puts a tarnish on Shaq's reputation and in some ways elevates Kobe's.

*Next, the Jose Guillen situation. Last Friday, Guillen talked about how he was booed for not running out a grounder that was nearly an error in the previous game. He said, to put it mindly, to forget the fans and that he doesn't care what they think (he did throw in a few choice words in that). He has since apologized for that remark.

Me personally, I didn't take that remark seriously. I thought he was just frustrated and did what most people do when they're frustrated, lash out. So I don't necessarily fault him for that. It was nice to see that he apologized. I will say this, he's been way more vocal this year than he was last year in Seattle. I don't really remember him saying anything at all the whole year. It might have been that team was better than this one or there was more veteran leadership with the Mariners. I don't know. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the year plays out with him and the team.

Finally, football (aka soccer). Yesterday was the final of Euro 2008, the championship for all of soccer in Europe. The match between Spain and Germany was a good one which ended 1-0 with Spain on top. I watch that match and several others that led up to it when they were on TV. I'm in the minority I know but I do enjoy a good soccer match, even on TV and this was a good one. If you didn't see it, you missed out.