Women’s Hoops, the NIT or The History Channel

I’m so sodding depressed.

As has been abundantly evident on this blog, I had to check out for a while, which included more than simply not posting. In the process, I completely lost track of sports. So when I finally decided it was time to permanently emerge from the ether and plug back in to world, I couldn’t have been more excited. You see, spring is always the most exciting season in sports. What better time could there be to throw myself back into the fray?

Spring is the season that makes the world go round, as the Super Bowl leads into March Madness, which rolls right into fantasy baseball drafts and Opening Day. Soon after, the EPL and Champions League are rolling to their conclusions, Roger Federer is spiraling out of the French Open, I’m lamenting the Yankees’ early gaffes and missteps, Phil Mickelson is choking away another major and even the NBA starts getting interesting. Every day, there is something new to behold and though basketball is something like my 8th favorite sport these days, I live and breathe hoops when the tournament comes round. A self-admitted neurotic, I usually study, research and waste hours of my life on box scores, articles, team pages, stat sheets, and pictures (I don’t know why pictures, actually). And at the completion of these fruitless efforts, I fill out my brackets, run my mouth, put some money on the line, down a sixer to ease the nerves and tune into CBS and CSTV when it all begins. Not a moment is missed and I suck in basketball like crack from the pipe from Thursday at 1230 until Sunday around 10.

This year, it was a slightly different process. I’d been mentally checked out for so long that I didn’t catch much college basketball. So I filled out my picks the night before and transferred my neuroses for other exercises in futility like finding a man that will make me fluffy pancakes with crispy edges after a long night of getting down (Is that really so much to ask? It’s not like I’m high maintenance – it’s just one prerequisite, dammit. COME ON).

But after receiving an injection of what amounted to a 96-hour speedball, I’m now left with no reasonable form of entertainment. I didn’t have enough sense to DVR real sports over the weekend and came home around 8 all ready to enjoy an athletic event – something, anything. National Championship of Darts, Pinochle, whatever. It wasn’t gonna take much to feed my need. So I tuned into CBS fully expecting to see more basketball. Logically, I knew it wouldn’t be on but that didn’t stop me from watching The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother in some "maybe the Sweet Sixteen will magically pop on!" fog. Eventually, I snapped out of it and hit ESPN, only to find the also-rans of the Not In Tournament. So I moved on to ESPN2 and caught a disappointment larger than having my bracket destroyed by Stephan Curry and Davidson: women’s basketball – the last refuge for girls that want to be athletes but aren’t agile, flexible or fast enough to hack it anywhere else.

Why doesn’t ESPN just send Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas to my house to my house to take turns slapping me around and kicking me in the ass while we watch JJ Redick highlight films. It’d hurt less. Watching the women’s tournament during the Final Four is one thing, as UConn, Tennessee, LSU and Rutgers/Duke/No Chance University might actually produce 7 – 10 athletes on the floor at one time. But not this Monday night bullshit. Not these first and second round shenanigans where a girl getting fouled on a "drive" to the hoop looks like a slo-mo video with crash test dummies.

But enough on that. What I actually want to know is what jerk is sitting in an office saying, "Scheduling? Well, how about we follow up the greatest weekend in American amateur sports with women’s basketball. That’ll keep the fires burning in the hearts of Joe and Jane Sports Fan!"

No, corporate suit! It does not keep my fire burning! It is destroying my spirit! I don’t appreciate getting all manic over 32 games of basketball only to be punched in the mouth by 3 days of the great shooter with an ugly stroke that wouldn’t know true agility if it goosed her; the tall, semi-mobile forward that uses her elbows to free up space for her 4-foot banked shots; and the girl that’s slow as molasses but has a great body for collecting ticky tack fouls and turning the ball over. 

A sport that opts for fundamentals over a base level of athleticism found in every other women’s sport is NOT okay with me. I get that the women’s game is basketball in its purest form but damn. I don’t want to spend 2+ hours seeing which team can make the most consecutive layups, fall down the least and seal it off with a 1-and-1 at the line with 8 seconds to go!

If you’re going to advertise this tournament as March Madness, then that’s what you need to give us – straight up madness where we get all basketball all the time until the last team standing needs a crane to hitch them up to cut down the nets. No more of this three week wanked schedule that is supplemented on the weekdays with a “tournament” that fields 56 teams too many. Eventually something has to give. Being driven away from sports to watch countless episodes of “Walking with the Dinosaurs” on Discovery is an absolute shame.