Part II: Sunday, March 23, 2008

It’s Sunday night, and the Sweet Sixteen is all set. Here’s what I can tell you:

1. I totally missed the last second game-winner by Western Kentucky over Drake on Friday. In fact, I haven’t even seen an adequate replay, either on TV or online. Somehow, the play of the tournament has eluded me. So, in the interest of not bullshitting you, I will not wax poetic about it.

2. I complained about Wisconsin playing boring, defense-only basketball, and they went ahead and dropped 71 points in a victory over Kansas State. Not only that, but they held the Wildcats to 55 points. I’ll never be allowed in Madison again.

3. I lauded CBS for its coverage of multiple games, many with simultaneous, exciting finishes. I must admit, the Eye made me nervous today, as it jumped back and forth between Georgetown-Davidson and Tennessee-Butler. Both games were undecided going into the final minute, both featured multiple timeouts and nailbiting conclusions. Tennessee-Butler went into overtime, and with 26 seconds left and the Vols leading by four, CBS cut to the other game, leaving me confused and concerned and with my eye on the little scoreboard on the top of my screen. I had nothing to worry about. Whoever is sitting in the control room for the national feed kept a deft eye on each game’s timeout and clock-stoppage situation, and swung back and forth seamlessly between as the action dictated. The producers, understanding the home viewers’ mentality in ways rarely seen in sportscasting, even eliminated the need for any Greg Gumbel cues (“We take you back to Birmingham…”). It was almost as if there were two great games on competing networks, and someone was doing the channel-flipping for me. It was a thing of beauty.

4. A recurring commercial during the tournament, for Axa Equitable Insurance, features an animated gorilla proclaiming itself to be “the 800-pound gorilla in the room.” This ad campaign has been around for some time, and its continued existence pisses me off. The men and women responsible for copywriting the catchphrase for this gorilla are guilty of mixing metaphors. The term “800-pound gorilla” is used when describing a large or dominant version of something, e.g. “Coca-Cola is the 800-lb. Gorilla of soft drinks,” or, “California is the 800-lb. gorilla of the electoral college.” People referring to the proverbial “elephant in the room,” however, are referring to something omnipresent that no one wants to discuss, like retirement planning. It’s an elephant! It’s not a gorilla! What really upsets me about this isn’t so much the mistake; we all mix metaphors and screw up proverbs sometimes. It’s that this campaign obviously went through a lot of stages of planning and presentation, and somewhere along the way, there must have been at least one lone person in the meeting room who knew this was an egregious error, and he or she never spoke up, probably for fear that he would insult whomever wrote the damned thing. Well, somebody has to have the courage to stand athwart this gorilla and say, “Enough!”

5. I ridiculed Belmont and its fans for thinking it had a shot to beat Duke on Thursday when it lost by one point. I figured that this early test would propel the Blue Devils into the Final Four, but I forgot one thing: Duke barely beat BELMONT by one point. So it stood to reason that they were going to have their hands full with West Virginia. Every team brings its A-game against Duke (though it hasn’t even won a title since 2001). Belmont took its best shot and nearly got past them. When a Big East team brings it’s A-game and you shoot .380 from the field, well, like Al Pacino said in Heat, “brother, you are goin’ down.” In retrospect, probably shouldn’t have called Belmont’s fans “sorry bastards.” “Hopeful and proud students and alumni” might have been more appropriate.

What we have now is a terrific set up for next weekend. All the number one seeds (North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, Memphis) remain. A ten seed (Davidson) and two twelves (Villanova, Western Kentucky) have somehow survived. In between are the usual middling teams, the Michigan States, the Xaviers, the Washington States). If I were a betting man, and I usually am not, I would count on three of the four number one seeds making it to the Final Four. One of those three heavy underdogs should make it past the Sweet Sixteen. And, quite honestly, after what I’ve seen from Wisconsin, I will disavow my earlier trashing of them. The Badgers are on a 25-2 run, including 12 in a row, the Big Ten regular season title, and the Big Ten tournament. They’re headed on a collision course with tiny Davidson on Friday, the team that upset the Georgetown Hoyas. But, perhaps if any team is prepared to handle a surging Cinderella, it’s these quiet Badgers. I’m not great with predictions (see: Adam’s 2007 NFL Preview, Cincinnati Bengals), so I’ll just say I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Badgers get to the Final Four. I just hope it’s more exciting this time around.