Final Four: What's the Big Freakin' Deal?
I begin with the following caveat: I have nothing intrinsically against NCAA college athletics. I happily cheered my football Ohio State Buckeyes to their national championship in 2002. I am happy that their basketball program is on the ascent, and feel the college game, in most disciplpines and instances, offers a level of honest competition that pro leagues can only fantasize about--more substance than style.
But, at the end of the day, I am poised to wonder: why in college basketball is getting to the semifinals of the NCAA tournament so bloody noteworthy? I understand that "Final Four" has an alliterative and marketing value, but I defy anyone to find another forum in which coming in fourth is something to paste on the resume. (Since there exists no Bronze Medal game in March Madness, I assume both semifinal losers to be in fourth place.)
Assume we apply this standard to any other sport, team or individual. Are the 2004 Yankees a great team for reaching the ALCS (and tanking away a 3-0 lead to the Red Sox) before being defeated? Will posterity look kindly on the Astros for taking the Cardinals to seven before losing in the NLCS? Are the Cleveland Browns a great team for dropping the AFC Championship game three times in the '80s? Do the Pittsburgh Steelers add to their storied history that they lost to the New England Patriots in last years playoffs? Of course not; these are failures. Spirited and competetive failures, and better than most other teams did, to be sure, but ultimately failures nonetheless.
I have heard it suggested that reaching the semis is extraordinary in the NCAA tourney because of the large field. But do tennis players (who typically come from a field as large), rejoice in not reaching the finals of any Grand Slam event? What other tournament, of whatever size, features hyperbolic praise and rejoicing for teams two wins away from accomplishing anything? The post-season NIT, college basketball's consolation tourney for those not quite good enough for the NCAA's, certainly doesn't make such a distinction: you win the tournament, or you don't. Do you know what they call the semifinals? That's right...the semifinals. Fairly simple.
Being number four works like this: you are out of the money if you are a racehorse; you are out of the medals if you are an olympian; you are out of honorable mention if you are a team in anything other than March Madness. The way our understanding of sport works in the US tends thus: win the show, and you are remembered by athletic history as great; come in second, and you get a "good effort" prize for playing for the whole shebang; lose a semifinal, and you are an also-ran who plans next year's strategy. Only in NCAA basketball do the Dean Smiths and Mike Krzyzewskis of the world get to beg props for failing to reach a championship game, to claim bragging rights and Hall-of-Fame fodder for not winning anything besides four games in a row. It's a ridiculously downgraded standard by which Marty Schottenheimer is a premier football coach and Anna Kournikova is among the legends of tennis. Coming in fourth is not admirable; no golfer or race car driver boasts of it. I am etrnally puzzled as to why the sports media has complicitly abetted a system in which NCAA basketball coaches and teams may.
posted by JPS at 3/25/2005 10:23:00 PM
4 Comments:
There are over 320 Div I teams eligible to play in the NCAA tournament of 64. So if you are in the Final Four then you are 1 out of 80 teams. 1 out of 80 is a hell of a lot and more then any other professional sport. There aren’t even 320 teams in the bloody World Cup.
And yet, true to my criticism, the World Cup, which is a hell of a lot more important worldwide than the NCAA tourney, makes no distinction whatsoever for the four teams that make it to the semis, nor does any other international event. Grand Slam tennis tourneys have qualifiers, races have qualifiers, etc, in which the original field contains very large numbers. And there are probably close to that number in the World Cup, anyway. I don't know off hand how many countries don't send teams to qualify. Find another event that gives such ridicilous hype for reaching the semifinals, as if that is in any way, by itself, an accomplishment. Admit that it's a silly marketing ploy and not a real achievement.
Okay, there are 205 teams presently in the World Cup. I can't recall when a single one of them described reaching the semis as the gold standard of international football. And by the bye, as you well know, typically a one-seed plays two consecutive stiffs, the first of which probably has no business being there. So beating two tough opponents before losing is significant again why? Again, nobody else measures success this way.
Given: It's markerting.
Also true: 316 other temas didn't make it that far so it is still something.
World Cup: You don't hear jack about the final four cuase it's always the same small group of teams. If the US or Japan or someone else not in the "club" got that far they'd make a big deal out of it. They'd say it was the mark of having an elite program to have got that far, and they'd be right. Which is the same thing NCAA teams say about the final four.
I can agree it's over hyped but I won't say it's meaningless.
Post a Comment
<< Home