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Bracket Busting the Association
Tuesday, 27 June 2006
The NBA has failed to keep pace with the fervor of college hoops in recent years, and sports aficionados, and the casual fan alike, are drifting away. For years, college basketball has reveled in popularity, chiefly with its 65 team playoff mania known as March Madness. Recently, this collegiate phenomenon has forced its professional counterpart, the NBA, to the sidelines in the American sports scene. To all you NBA fans, your league is in turmoil. But what is fueling this demise of professional basketball?

Let's start at the base of every sports determinative success factor: the patrons. When a basketball fan attends or watches a basketball game they trust that the bout will be diverting and spirited. They want a sense of complacency alongside fellow spectators. They desire hearty chants roared up and down the seats, fanatics with body paint and eccentric outfits, high flying mascots, and a packed house. Few things are more significant to a fan than a sense of unison in the stands. This is the very feeling that hundreds of thousands of fans experience every year upon entering college arenas like Cameron Indoor, Allen Field House, and Chapel Hill. After all, there is nothing more invigorating than tens of thousands of spirited youths stuffed in an auditorium together for two and a half hours bashing their heads, pounding their painted bellies, and chanting their team to victory. This is the fan intensity that the NBA lacks.

What is the appeal of the actual game itself? College hoops is about a group of 10 impassioned youths caught in a two and a half hour melee for the right to slam a ball through a hoop. It is about shut-down defense, the fast break, and the big shot. There are no professional egos; there are no multi-million dollar salaries; there are no 125 point games; there are no $20 million Nike endorsements; and there is no second chance, best-of-seven series. There are Cinderella stories, like George Mason's 2006 Final Four run; there are bitter and classic rivalries, case in point Duke vs. UNC; there is floor pounding; there is heart and hustle; there is defensive discipline. These players are battling for the right to play another day, not for pay day.

The NBA is not pure basketball anymore; it's a spectacle of scoring and lackluster defense. It's the frantic inane search for the heir apparent to Michael Jordan, and every year it's someone new. First it was Vince Carter, then Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady,

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