March Madness 2014: Gators and Shockers and Bairstows (and Jabari Parker)
There’s a great throwaway scene in Major League when the immortal Bob Uecker is growing increasingly frustrated by the combination of the Indians’ poor play and the city’s utter disinterest in the team. He’s doing his solo radio show, and he knows nobody’s listening anyway, so when he struggles to locate the sponsor he’s supposed to be plugging, he just gives up: “Christ, I can’t find it. To hell with it!”
Well, that’s pretty much how I feel analyzing this year’s March Madness bracket. I didn’t watch quite as much college basketball in 2013–14 as in years past—which is to say that the number of hours I spent glued in front of my television dipped from “coma-inducing” to “merely socially unacceptable”—but I’d like to think I’m fairly knowledgeable about a fair number of the 68 teams competing for the national title. Yet at no point during this season did I watch a team and think to myself, “That squad is definitely making the Final Four.” Well, that isn’t strictly true, but the one team that did inspire those thoughts recently lost its second-best player—who has been repeatedly compared to Hakeem Olajuwon—to something called a “spinal stress fracture”. Thanks a lot, Joel Embiid; you just robbed the Manifesto of its one surefire Final Four pick. Read More