Tarnished

One of the greatest yearly television events is the NCAA basketball tournament. CBS typically puts on a great show for every game, capturing the emotion an excitement of the tournament. The tournament itself is perfect. 65 teams playing to be the best. Are they the best 65 teams in the country? No. But the best teams that have a shot at winning the tournament are there.

There has been talk of expanding the tournament to 96 teams. This is a pure profit move. All they want to do is create more revenue. They're not interested in making a better tournament, or giving other teams a shot. It's a pure money grab. Think of the NCAA football mess. The reason they use to not have a tournament in that sport is that it would take the student-athletes away from class too much, and that they are students first. Never mind the fact that a football tournament would take place when most schools are on break. The student athletes are already missing potentially 3 weeks of classes during the hoops tournament. Adding another 32 teams makes that number 4 weeks.

If you want to add some more mid-majors, why not add 3 more teams. That would take care of most bubble teams that could possibly have a case. If you expand the tournament to 68 teams, you get an additional 3 games- all "opening round" games played on the Tuesday before the main tournament starts. This would determine who plays the number 1 seeds in each of the brackets.

As for CBS' "One Shining Moment", it too has been commercialized. This year they had Jennifer Hudson sing the song, and we were treated to video of her stylized singing during the video. Showing her of course means that there was less time to show the kids who were playing in the tournament.

Over the past few years, the quality of the final piece has steadily gone downhill. I had some people over a few years back to watch the final game, and we all had the same thought "Wow, that was bad". A few months later, I had some others over to watch NHL playoffs, and the subject came up, and it turns out that he was the one who edited the NCAA piece. I was shocked when he admitted to that. If I had done something that bad, I would never want my name associated with it. Needless to say, that was good compared to this years. That song is so perfect for the tournament, yet instead of seeing more shots of kids playing their hearts out, we get to see an artist trying to sell a new album on iTunes.