Bubble Boys

March, and the so-called, accompanying Madness. This is the time of the year when all kinds of teams have their dreams of making the NCAA tournament, even though they have put up a basketball season, that at best, was only good enough to be called marginal.

Teams that win their conference, or are rated in the top 25 or so teams all seasons, they don’t have to worry about making the field of (now) 68 teams. Everyone knows who these teams are and there is no doubt that they will be in the tournament and seeded high.

And the schools from the small conferences know that whoever wins their conference tournament will be the only teams from their leagues to advance to the tournament, so there is a March kind of excitement that they experience, where the winning of the conference tourney, and the subsequent invite to the “big dance,” turns into some of the highlights of those players’ lives. (Of course, these small school teams have zero chance of winning this tournament, or even advancing very far, but that’s another story)

The teams I’m talking about are the teams on the so-called bubble. The ones that have lost so many games during the regular season that they really shouldn’t even be in the tournament, but they won just enough games to still be in consideration. And they showed just enough potential (maybe they were good enough to knock off an elite team or two earlier in the season) to be “in the pool” of teams that were ultimately going to fill out the last remaining spots needed to fill out a field of 68.

“March Madness” experts have created a unique, seasonal job for themselves as Bracketologists, or people who try to explain to the television audience their ideas on WHO might be those eight to ten teams that end up qualifying, and WHO are the teams that just missed out.

They used to have a word (and a place) for all of these fourth, fifth and sixth best teams of their respective conferences, those marginal teams that weren’t good enough to win their conferences, win their conference tournaments or to win the bulk of their games during the season. It’s called the NIT.

But, because the NCAA wanted their tournament to be the be all end game of college basketball, they kept adding all of these extra teams to the brackets to bolster their field. The NCAA was getting paid all of this money to put on this tournament, and the more teams and games they could feature, the more money they could charge the TV networks for the broadcast rights. So, the NCAA Tournament became March Madness.

All of the news relating to the tournament field became big, big news. All of the marginal teams were kept on a suspenseful “bubble watch,” to try to wait and find out if they made the tournament. The announcement of who would comprise the final 68 teams became its own television program, with cameras in the gymnasiums of all of the “bubble teams” so the TV people could get their excitement from the teams that reacted when they made “the big dance.”

And so we arrive at today. Today was NCAA selection day. 68 teams were announced. All of the teams that got selected were happy. The ones that were NOT selected were not happy.

To everyone that was on the bubble and did not make the tournament, you should have played better. To all of those teams that made it, but were really not any better than the ones that did not make the tournament, you are lucky to be there. Lucky because of politics? Lucky like the winner of a beauty contest who just so happened to be the one who was selected? Whatever. But no one has any doubts that you bubble teams will likely be eliminated sooner, rather than later in this tournament.

And none of you bubble teams (in the tournament or not) could beat Kentucky if your life depended on it.