
So I was talking with my brother Reid, trying to suss out why I love March Madness more than any other sporting event. It’s the speed and the passion, certainly. College ball is way less bloated than pro; the players don’t stroll back up court (an NBA outrage!); entitlement hasn’t fully set in. Underdogs triumph. Fans go nuts. I also love the bracketology, the dance marathon feel of those three crazed weeks.
Something else explains the thrill, though. I couldn’t nail down just what, but Reid, a star on our high school’s team and a big Madness fan too, took it straight to the hoop: “For many of the players, it’s their last game ever, so they give it all they’ve got.’’ Yes, that’s it: So much talent, adrenaline, and heartbreak distilled into epic finales.
And it starts Tuesday! So let’s inbound with “The Perfect Game: How Villanova’s Shocking 1985 Upset of Mighty Georgetown Changed the Landscape of College Hoops Forever’’ (Thomas Dunne, 2013). Sportswriter Frank Fitzpatrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer cuts it several ways: We get rousing play-by-play (in the second half, Villanova had a stunning 90 percent shooting percentage) and big personalities. This includes Georgetown’s phenom center Patrick Ewing and legendary coach John Thompson, plus Villanova’s earthy courtside general Rollie Massimino. Bonus David v. Goliath tie-in: It was the first year that 64 teams were invited (otherwise Villanova wouldn’t have made the cut).
The game also reflects racial dynamics of the day: Villanova’s squads were so historically white, it was dubbed “Vanilla-nova.’’ Georgetown was an overpowering black team with a black coach that didn’t make nice. At the Hoyas’ road games, crowds unfolded banners that called Ewing an ape, and people even threw banana peels on the court. How repellent.
John Feinstein, the ace sportswriter, follows the staggered fates of nine teams over one season in “A March to Madness: The View from the Floor in the Atlantic Coast Conference’’ (Little, Brown, 1998). This southern conference is especially dear to Feinstein (Duke ’77), and he had full access to seven coaches, partial to the other two. So there’s some serious heft of detail; we learn how Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was on the verge of burnout, that Georgia Tech’s Bobby Cremins took a job elsewhere only to repent (“I felt like Judas’’), and that UNC’s Dean Smith, in his 36th season and then the winningest coach in history, was the epitome of stamina.
Land in Vegas during March Madness, and you’ll spy this T-shirt slogan: “Good Coaches Win, Great Coaches Cover.’’ Cover, as in cover the point spread, forget winning and losing. That’s one of the little nuggets I panned from “The Madness of March: Bonding and Betting With the Boys in Las Vegas’’ (University of Nebraska, 2009). Northeastern communications professor Alan Jay Zaremba plays it Hunter Thompson-lite, hitting Bally’s, the Flamingo, etc. to chat up all these Madness men.
I also learned that bets spread beyond the spread; you can gamble on the halftime score or “parlay’’ a combo of several games at once. Weirdest of all, though, are the “proposition’’ bets, i.e. “Will Stanford take more foul shots than the total rebounds gathered by the top rebounder of Louisville?’’ With all these wagers going on at once, a roomful of bettors “are bedlams of cheering and grousing.’’ Interesting anthropologically, but it made me kind of sad for the sport.
I prefer the betting strategy of my friends’ son who, at age 5, won his dad’s 2010 March Madness office pool; he picked Butler for the Final Four because it had the word “butt’’ in it. A similar humor and hell-why-not quality also infuses “The Ultimate Book of March Madness: The Players, Games, and Cinderellas that Captivated a Nation’’ (MVP, 2012). It’s by a young journalist named Tom Hager, and it’s a real belly-up-to-the-buffet affair, the outcome of major mania and 180 interviews.
The first half parades a juicy essay on each season, beginning in 1939. My highlights? How, in 1945, Oklahoma A&M brought on Bob Kurland, the sport’s first 7-footer, who swats away so many shots they had to invent the goaltending rule. And how, in 1974, N.C. State’s David Thompson pranked his teammates by pretending to be possessed (they’d all just seen “The Exorcist’’), and then rising to do a double-pump dunk.
In the book’s second half, Hager ranks his Top 100 Greatest Games (Number 1 is from 1963, Loyola Chicago 60, Cincinnati 58). His criteria: 1) excitement of the finish; 2) an upset or comeback; 3) “any backdrop that made the game more intriguing.’’ How will this roll for 2016? I’m writing this before Selection Sunday, so who knows. Even so, put me down for Monmouth for its fantastic bench dances (I mean, they recreate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!) and Oakland, for the dazzling assists and scoring of 5’9’’ point guard Kahlil Felder. But enough columnist hot air: I have to go fill my brackets.
Katharine Whittemore is a freelance writer based in Northampton. She can be reached at katharine.whittemore @comcast.net.