The NCAA's Basketball Final Four: The Cultural Phenomenon

The men's NCAA tournament sneaks up on me every year. Even its name reminds us that March is set aside as the insanity month, but I always feel unprepared for the coming bonanza of premier competition. Perhaps I don't watch enough college basketball before March because of my enthusiasm for the NBA, and with the NCAA and NBA seasons running simultaneously, it's hard to find time to begin learning the huge field of teams. With so many lopsided games in the college season, it's also difficult to find the good match-ups, and instead of being overwhelmed by all of the unknowns in college, I watch the NBA with all its familiar faces.

Then, suddenly, after the first few weeks of March hit, everything changes. The scraps are removed from the field and are set aside for the NIT, whatever that stands for. I throw together an uneducated bracket, and I start watching and learning, figuring out which offenses share the ball, which star players have the mindset to lead their teams to victory, and which players find the big stage all too daunting, collapsing in failure that they'll never forget. It's a once in a lifetime chance for some to show their abilities in relation to the next level, making names for themselves and, as a result, finding big paydays in the pros. The beautiful thing about the college tournament stage though, is its demand for teamwork.

As the 2011 NCAA tournament gets ready for tomorrow night's championship game between Butler and the University of Connecticut, I fondly consider this year's March Madness to be one for the ages. Early upsets grabbed my attention, number one seeds started falling one by one, until we're left with the highest sum of team seeds a final has ever known. Following the NBA all season, I've heard over and over that this summer's draft will be about as weak as any, but with players like Kemba Walker, Matt Howard, and a handful of others who are now at home watching the tournament on TV, the incoming class of NBA rookies might not fill the stat sheets like some recent draft picks, but they'll definitely be worth following into the next level of basketball. And as the tournament's finale concludes on Monday evening, the odds are that I'll be telling my friends that this was the best tournament I've ever watched, which seems to be my sentiment every year.