Jeremy Beck

There’s a compelling scene in The Dark Knight in which Bruce Wayne decides to give up. The Joker has terrorized Gotham City so brutally and efficiently that its citizens have turned on Batman, their once-unassailable protector, demanding that he turn himself in. And Wayne – exhausted, bloodied, beaten – concludes that yielding and revealing himself as the Caped Crusader is the only possible solution against a foe as demented and inexorable as The Joker. But Alfred, his unwavering, loyal butler, disagrees. “People are dying, Alfred,” Wayne laments. “What would you have me do?” Alfred’s response:

“Endure.”

Endurance has been the defining characteristic of New York Knicks fans for more than a decade. Ever since Jeff Van Gundy abruptly resigned in 2001, rooting for the Knicks has been a singularly grueling experience, a twisted Orwellian experiment in which the sports overlords sadistically push a fan base to its limits just to discover how much pain it can tolerate in the name of devotion to a fucking sports team. We’ve endured Isiah Thomas running the franchise like a nine-year-old hell-bent on acquiring the overpriced green properties in Monopoly (Steve Francis! Jalen Rose! Quentin Richardson!). We’ve endured Larry Brown browbeating rookies and shelving young talent in favor of “veteran leaders” like Qyntel Woods and Malik Rose. We’ve endured Jerome James’ contract ($29 million, or $130,000 for every point he scored as a Knick). We’ve endured Renaldo Balkman’s draft selection, Stephon Marbury’s meltdown, Eddy Curry’s Shawn Kemp-esque weight gain, Walt Frazier’s insipid commentary, and countless other indignities. Read More

This year, the NCAA Tournament committee is finally disclosing its “Seed List”, in which it ranks every team that made the tourney from 1 through 68. In terms of generating Internet traffic, this won’t exactly be the Starr Report or casting news from The Hunger Games, but it’s still guaranteed to get thousands of basketball nerds salivating. Yet the mere acknowledgement that such a list even exists reveals a grave problem with postseason collegiate basketball: March Madness is deeply unfair.

Look, I love March Madness – it’s unequivocally my favorite sporting event of the year. And in terms of amateur athletics, I probably shouldn’t be griping about basketball’s system given that college football could have a Planet-of-the-Apes-level uprising on its hands at any moment. But that doesn’t change the fact that the current bracketing system, while numerically satisfying and visually sexy, is prone to wildly illogical results. Read More