The fact of the matter is I do not like the NCAA basketball tournament. There is no March Madness for me. Maybe it’s just because I don’t get into basketball. I only get into basketball when the Bulls are about to win a championship, oh yeah, and they should also have Michael Jordan on the team. I say this because they have been to the playoffs the past couple of years and I have yet to watch a single game. I just don’t care about basketball players anymore. I don’t find any of them interesting and the game itself is just boring to me. This is coming from a guy who loves baseball, saying that the game is boring.

I say this because this means I cannot just watch any basketball game that’s on television. There are very few sports I can watch no matter who is playing. I can watch almost any baseball game but, even then, I prefer to just watch the games from the teams I care about. So, really, that means the only sport I can watch anytime and with any team is football. I think football is just fun to watch no matter who is playing. I love watching the plays developing. This means when it comes to college football I have an entirely different view. I greatly enjoy college football. The same just cannot be said for me and college basketball.

Of course I made a mistake by going to a small school where sports just weren’t on anyone’s radar. I went to a school filled with film students who were all too cool to care about sports. In fact there were few, if any, actual athletes. There was no football team at Webster University in St. Louis. We had a soccer team that no one cared about. We had some other sports like baseball and we did have a basketball team. I have no idea what division the Webster University basketball team is in. What is the lowest possible division for a college or university to have? Well, Webster is probably just one notch below that.

What I remember is that, when I first got there, the basketball team did not have a home gym. The team played at local high schools. Eventually the school built a student center with a gym and a workout room and a snack bar and then there was at least a home court. Of course one has to wonder if a home court is really a home court if none of the home-team supporters actually show up. What I also remember about the team was that it was composed mainly of Asian exchange students. Since no one at the school really cared and no one wanted to try out for the team the coaches would pretty much take anyone who showed up at the door and appeared to know how to tie their shoes. This was the same disciplined recruiting and coaching techniques that were applied to the school’s baseball team.

That being said there was never even a remote chance that the Webster University team would ever be in the NCAA tournament. This meant there was never and will never be a team that I have any connection to in the tournament. As I have already stated, when it comes to sports teams I cannot really watch any game in any sport unless I have some vested interest in them. Therefore it is very hard for me to get worked up over North Carolina, Duke or Oral Roberts University. Other than knowing North Carolina University is somewhere within the borders of North Carolina I have no idea where any of those schools are. I have never met a single graduate of these universities. Therefore, I have no home team to root for so when I see one of those brackets it’s just a meaningless bunch of names. You might as well be handing me a page out of the phone book.

It was a slightly different story a couple of seasons ago when the Illini from the University of Illinois made it into the finals. I only cared because, well, it seemed everyone else cared and I have a very good friend who graduated from the school. So, he had a party to watch the final game. It was an exciting game but the Fighting Illini lost and we ended up watching some strange television biopic of Robin Williams on another channel most of the time anyway. I went back to my life and promptly focused my attention on the baseball season.

I loved last year when the Winter Olympics were going on. I know Bryant Gumbel wrote an op-ed piece were he said he hated the Winter Olympics because it was mostly white. He said it was nothing but a thing to do until March Madness started. For me, it was at least a distraction from the vast sports wasteland that is February and March.

There are those who insist that the NCAA Tournament is the greatest spectacle in sports. I have, many times, been asked to participate in those office pools. I absolutely hate them. I have even tried to participate a few times because I figured it would make watching a few games more interesting. In the end it was only just an exercise in frustration because, after the first round, there usually isn’t a single possible way for you to win. If, after the first round, the two teams you predicted would be meeting in the final games are out well then you have little incentive to watch the rest of the damn thing.

So, for me, March Madness is really just March Boredom. I cannot get excited about baseball’s spring training because in Chicago not a single time has the spring training been an accurate predictor of how the season will go. In 2005 I do not recall being overly impressed with the White Sox’s record after spring training. I remember being rather underwhelmed and concerned that the season was going to be a long and boring one. Then the team ended up winning the whole damn thing.

Of course Arena football has started and the Chicago Rush are the defending champs. However, the problem is that it just isn’t quite as exciting as the regular football. There are just some games that are more exciting to either play or be in the stadium to watch. The first of these, for me, would be hockey. I know there are people who love the NHL but I cannot watch the games on television. I don’t care how many special effects you put on the hockey puck or if you use that thing that John Madden uses to draw on people to put funny faces on the goalies I still have a hard time watching the games on television. Hockey is meant to be watched in person in a stadium and that is that. I think the same must be said of Arena football. I have been to a few games and loved them. I have tried many times to watch games on television and never found myself interested.

So, you can have your March Madness. If you are a college graduate perhaps you can spend time with your old college buddies remembering your fun college times and getting drunk. I will be patiently waiting and hoping for baseball season to start so I can start living and dying by what the White Sox are doing and, as of right now, it is not looking good there. Happy March everyone.

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.