If April is the cruelest month then March is the most frustrating. My favorite sport -- basketball -- is still in full swing but, at the same time, mercilessly pushed out of public view in favor of the NCAA Tournament. College ball is, simply put, basketball played badly, and America's obsession with that game's absurd method of determining a national champion is the true madness.
Even if you're not a basketball fan, you probably see some of the tournament games. Thanks to the ubiquitous office pools, the tournament is broadcast constantly -- everywhere -- for a few mercifully brief months. And if you're not a fan, you probably don't appreciate exactly what it is you're seeing. In all college sports, the athletes are, naturally, not up to the standard of their professional peers. They're younger, inexperienced, and physically under-developed. Basketball, however, differs from football in the crucial respect that the most promising professional talents almost never play a full four or even three seasons at the amateur level. Indeed, until the NBA changed its rules last off-season, it was by no means uncommon for the very best players to turn pro straight out of high school. Thus, many of America's brightest basketball stars, including at least three of the top five players in the world -- Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Garnett -- never graced the floors of college competition at all. Other top talents -- Dwyane Wade, Gilbert Arenas, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony -- graduate early. And yet another set of superstars -- Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Yao Ming, Manu Ginobili -- don't play college ball because they're foreigners and cut their teeth in the pro leagues of Europe, Asia, or even Latin America.
This has two consequences for the college game. One is simply to deprive it of talent. College football isn't up to the NFL level, but the Bowl Championship Series really does offer the best 18- to 22-year-old players in the world. The best college-age basketball players don't play college basketball -- they're in the NBA. The other, more insidious problem is that in college, as in elsewhere, experience matters. Seniors have an advantage over sophomores -- they've had more time to learn the game, their teammates, and the coach's system. As a result, the savviest college hoops programs don't actually want to recruit the very best young players available. A top talent will come to your school, play for a year or two to show off his stuff, and then move on to bigger and better things. You're looking for a player who, while skilled, has sufficient deficiencies as a player -- typically a lack of height or speed -- to compel him to stick around as an amateur.
Topping that off, this thin pool of talent is stretched even thinner by the relative cheapness of running a Division I basketball team. The NCAA Tournament, allegedly a competition between the very best teams, features an insane 64 squads. The NBA, drawing on a much larger pool of talent that includes a wide range of ages and players from all around the world, has less than half as many and could probably stand to drop a franchise or two.
Consequently, the college game bears only a faint resemblance to the real thing. The dominant big men who can transform a pro game are entirely absent. Strength, speed, quickness, and athleticism are radically diminished, and the quality of the defense is consequently laughable. Yet, despite the poor defense, virtually nobody in the college game has what it takes to penetrate into the lane and make a strong move to the hoop. So the rules need to be altered -- a 35-second shot clock instead of the proper 24 and a short three-point line -- to give the offense some hope. Consequently, players dribble in circles and pass, pass, pass around the horn endlessly, taking advantage of defenders who lack the quickness to snatch the ball. Eventually, someone will wind up open and fire off a shot -- which more often than not they miss anyway. At the pro level, this is called "settling for jump shots" and it's distinctly frowned upon. You take jumpers as a last resort, when you can't make it into the paint, or else you do it as a threat -- and you'd better nail them -- forcing teams to defend you on the perimeter in order to open up the inside game.
To watch the world's best basketball teams -- the Miami Heat, the Phoenix Suns, the San Antonio Spurs, the Detroit Pistons, the Dallas Mavericks -- is to distinctly put oneself in the presence of greatness. The feats on display are not quite super-human -- Shaquille O'Neal and Shawn Marion and Tim Duncan are still members of our species at the end of the day -- but they certainly appear to be. That one could run the floor like Steve Nash or charge the paint like Allan Iverson or crash the boards like Ben Wallace seems absurd. These men are not just better than you or I, they're way better, qualitatively different, exhibiting physical skills that neither you nor anyone you know nor anyone you'll ever meet can even hope to approach. The sheer speed and ferocity of the games is astounding -- even mentally you'd be overwhelmed, lost, driven to tears or insanity amidst the flying bodies, flailing limbs, and zipping ball. Key moves in the game -- the dunk, the alley-oop, the tip -- are just things you could never accomplish, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how long you practice, no matter how weak the competition.
There's something reassuring about the college game. The players are, obviously, better at basketball than any mere fan could dream to be. But unlike basketball on its highest levels -- or even at the intermediate levels of the Euroleague, the CBA, or the Olympics -- it bears a superficial resemblance to what you might do at the YMCA or have done on the JV team in ninth grade.
It's reassuring, yes, but to take refuge in such reassurance -- to thus celebrate mediocrity -- is ultimately somewhat abhorrent. It's of a piece with the same blinkered anti-elitism that led not only millions of voters but a shockingly large suite of pundits who should have known better to conclude that it didn't matter that George W. Bush wasn't up to the job of running the United States of America. It's the athletic equivalent of the blinkered anti-intellectualism no respectable person would endorse in other walks of life.
The very structure of the tournament reinforced the mediocrity inherent in the sport. A six-round single-elimination tournament is crazy. Even a truly dominant team -- one that wins 80 percent of the time it plays -- will lose such a tournament three times out of four. The defense is that this makes the tournament better for gambling purposes. And, indeed, it does -- if what you're interested in is a structure that rewards mediocre gambling. The high level of randomness ensures that even a bettor with a sophisticated knowledge of the game has only a small advantage over someone equipped simply with the fact that a one seed is better than an eleven seed.
Skill and knowledge will get you almost nowhere, so the whole office can pitch in and a good time can be had by all. But this is merely the same problem all over again -- a weak-minded desire to construct a competition that fails to reward excellence.
If your alma mater is in the mix, or if you, like most everyone, has some money riding on the outcome, then by all means watch and root. But know that you're watching a kind of farce, a competition between players who can't quite hack it designed to ensure that being the best team is no guarantee of victory. Or, you can wait 'til April and May and check out the NBA playoffs if you want to see the game played properly.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
