March Mayhem Already in Full Overdrive

General Motors couldn't afford to buy ad time during the Super Bowl. It bailed on a nine-year endorsement relationship with Tiger Woods, whose almighty golf bag had been adorned with a Buick logo. The automaker is mired in doomsday hell, a symbol of America's economic crisis. But how utterly fascinating that GM is conducting business as usual with the one sports event that probably would survive the apocalypse.

March Madness.

Also known as, six overtimes in Madison Square Garden ending at 1:20 a.m.

Please understand that bookies, brackets, barnburners and office bimbos who don't know Siena from Sienna Miller are bigger than a national crisis. "People are waiting to jump out of their chairs and cheer for something," said CBS Sports president Sean McManus, who told a media conference call that advertising sales for the NCAA tournament are solid despite the recession. Long past midnight this morning, many of us were jumping out of our chairs and cheering for one of the all-time March classics, Syracuse's six-overtime victory over Connecticut in the Big East tournament. If this was a hint of what's ahead this month, every building will need multiple defibrillators. I needed one when Eric Devendorf's buzzer-beater, which would have won the game for the Orange in regulation, was a shred of a second too late.

An hour and 45 minutes later, an epic game of attrition finally ended.

The players collapsed to the floor in exhaustion after the second-longest game in major college basketball history. So did we.

"I've just got to tell you, I'm more proud of this team tonight than any team I've ever coached," said Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who won a national title in 2003. "The heart we showed coming from six points down in one overtime, the plays we made -- I've never been prouder. They would not lose this game. These kids were unbelievable."

None more so than guard Jonny Flynn, who played 67 minutes and had 34 points and 11 assists. "I kept telling my teammates, if we played this long, all we can do is win the game," he said after the 127-117 victory.

Such is the intoxicating effect of March, with the big-tournament pairings coming Sunday once we get past the mayhem -- Down goes Pitt! Down goes Oklahoma! Down goes Kansas! Down goes UConn! -- of these conference tournaments. No sporting spectacle, including the Super Bowl, connects the American masses quite like the 65-team rumble. We enjoy the fresh faces, the compelling personal stories. We watch the coaches whose personalities dominate the sport, like them or not. We root for teams that leap from the hinterlands, such as Davidson last year and Gonzaga of yore, perhaps joined this month by, well, Siena. In the end, raw unpredictability settles into power-program normalcy, with 20 of the last 28 national champions entering as first or second seeds and no champion since the 1980s seeded lower than fourth.

Yet no matter what happens and who wins, March invigorates a nation with full-syringe doses of youth and hope. Oh, college basketball remains as scummy as ever if you look hard enough -- actually, you don't have to look hard at all -- but this tournament has a way of separating the games from the garbage and never, ever letting us down. Shame on Bob Knight, in the relative calm of his coaching afterlife, for suggesting on ESPN, "It's time to expand the tournament to 128 teams.''

Why would anyone dare tinker with the ideal sports happening? And if you include the conference tournaments, which start in early March, doesn't the Madness already involve just about every team in Division I hoops? Here we have Rick Barnes, advancing a CBS-controlled conspiracy. We realized Dallas had a grassy knoll, but Austin, too? "It amazes me when everybody keeps talking about expanding the NCAA tournament," Barnes said. "They have their theories, but the theory they never talk about is that it's owned by CBS and CBS isn't going to change it. They like it just the way it is. When they paid six billion dollars, believe me, whether the NCAA wants to admit it, it's all about CBS. They like the three-week format. They like the Cinderella teams coming in early. They just want 'em gone by the Round of 16.''

Um, Rick, it only was last March when Jim Nantz was vigorously shining the Cinderella slippers of Stephen Curry and Davidson. For a while there, you wondered if CBS was overdoing the story -- and now we have Barnes saying the network wanted Davidson gone by the Sweet 16 when, in fact, Team Curry damn near beat eventual champion Kansas in the Elite Elite. Look, can we just leave well enough alone and be happy this tournament creates the same sizzle as always?


What's cool about this year is the crapshoot effect at the top. A season that was supposed to be ruled by North Carolina, with at least one nitwit (me) forecasting a flawless season for the Tar Heels, morphed into a crazy taffy pull in which teams treated the No. 1 spot in the polls like radioactive material. Be it Carolina or Pittsburgh or Connecticut or Wake Forest or Duke, no one could handle prosperity for long. Expect those teams and others -- Louisville, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Memphis and Kansas -- to be viable challengers for a championship. Most years, we can pick the winner from a pool of three or four. This year, the list has expanded because every team has a flaw that accompanies its talent. Who knows? Maybe it's a year for a fourth or fifth seed to make a long run, such as Syracuse or Arizona State.

The latest high-profile stumbles came Thursday night, creating an immediate national argument on which teams should occupy the four No. 1 regional seeds. It's hard to believe UConn will be punished by the selection committee for losing in six overtimes, but the Huskies did lose twice to Pitt in the regular season. Do they have enough to win a championship? Hasheem Thabeet, all 7-3 of him, has the wingspan and shot-blocking ability to shut down any team. But without Jerome Dyson, who blew out his knee, is there enough perimeter defense and auxiliary scoring?

A lot of smart people project Pitt to win it all, but one lingering bugaboo -- DeJuan Blair and foul trouble -- struck again in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament. The Panthers were ousted by West Virginia, done in by two early fouls on Blair that sidelined the muscular bulldozer for the final 16 minutes of the first half. Their top three players -- Blair, Sam Young and Levance Fields -- usually are money. And they have no problem with swagger. "I have a picture of Detroit in my room," Blair said weeks ago. "That's all I think about. We won the Big East last year. Now I want to win a national championship."

But this is a program that never has reached the Final Four. If Pitt loses a No. 1 seed because of the loss -- no worries, I say -- it would make their geographical journey more difficult than a convenient Dayton/Indianapolis jaunt the first two rounds. Like most, I like this team's toughness, personified by Blair. Yet losing so early in Madison Square Garden, where the Panthers were 23-8 since 2001, is a reminder of vulnerability ahead for all so-called powerhouses.

"Of course you feel down right now, the next couple hours, the next couple days. You're going to feel down watching the Big East, watching everybody," said Blair, who fouled out with 1:17 left after managing 14 points and five rebounds. "We weren't prepared. The foul trouble -- and we just didn't grind it out like we usually do."

"We were outplayed," Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. "It's just one of those games where you have to do a better job. West Virginia is a very good team. They only lose to good people." Seems a lot of good people are out there.

Then we have Oklahoma, which clearly is out of top-seed contention after a shocking loss to Oklahoma State -- this is where we're supposed to scream, ``Bedlam!'' -- in the Big 12 tournament. Blake Griffin might be the best player in college hoops, and Willie Warren might be the best freshman, but the Sooners can't be committing 19 turnovers -- five by Griffin -- and shooting 3-of-19 from three-point land and expect to go far. Griffin didn't get the superstar call at the end, when he was whistled for a foul against James Anderson with 2.3 seconds left. Anderson made both free throws for the 71-70 win.

"I went and I grabbed the ball. They said I fouled James Anderson," Griffin said. "There's not much you can do about that. It didn't go our way."

"The game was not won or lost (there)," Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel said. "The game was lost for us throughout with the 19 turnovers. That's where the game was lost. The game was lost because of our inability to make shots, because we were weak with the basketball. The game was lost because we didn't have movement on offense at times. We were very, very stagnant." Can't be stagnant in March. Hear me, Carolina? No team is more gifted or fluid when its offense is purring, yet why don't the Heels bring top effort every night? Why does the defense lag? Why is the perimeter an issue? Doesn't Roy Williams scream a little bit much for comfort? More urgently, will the jammed toe of Ty Lawson -- the most important player, gasoline for a turbo engine -- end up stubbing their hopes? They don't have the appropriate swagger right now, in part because Tyler Hansbrough had a down year when domination was expected. After UNC beat Duke last Sunday, the players actually appeared to welcome the tournament's anything-goes theme, not what anyone expected when the season started.


"I like the way it is now," guard Bobby Frasor said. "When you're out in front as the leader of the pack, everyone is gunning for you. Now there is parity with a number of other teams rising to the top. It should make for an interesting March and April."

"You never know who the best team is week to week," Hansbrough said. ``We'll see what happens at the end of the year."

Not exactly rousing self-appraisals.

My guess is, Carolina won't be posing for a triumphant team picture on a Monday night in Detroit, where the championship game will be played in the middle of a football stadium and somehow feel lonely. Something isn't right. "It wasn't unfair (to rank Carolina high) because we were in the Final Four last year and everyone was coming back and there was a lot expected of us," Lawson said. "The way the media portrayed us was that we were a giant and we wouldn't lose a game. That's tough to stand up to. We did our best and we still won the ACC championship."

I could see Louisville, in a month when coaching might matter more than usual, winning it all. Rick Pitino is ridiculed for a white suit out of "Saturday Night Fever," and he's dealing with the indignity of a new VitaminWater commercial that relives Christian Laettner's killer shot when Pitino was at Kentucky. But tell me his team isn't playing as well as any, that Terrence Williams isn't as good as any player in the tournament, that Louisville's defense won't shut down foes the way it shut down Pitt. The Cardinals won the regular-season title in America's meanest conference, edging out Pitt and UConn. With losses by both those teams, a No. 1 seed should be theirs. "I don't know how the seeding works. But to win the best conference in the country outright, it should speak volumes to whoever is doing the picking," Williams said.

These are the debates that make March quiver. We also like the quirks -- a 7-1 center named Grlenntys Chief Kickingstallionsims Jr., Chief for short -- so keep rooting for Alabama State in the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament. All I know is, President Obama never will complain about March Madness the way he mopes about college football's idiotic Bowl Championship Series, even though his brother-in-law, Oregon State coach Craig Robinson, lost in the first round of the Pac-10 tournament.

In a world that never has been more imperfect, it's still the perfect sports event. GM, wobbly as it is, gladly will write a check as a proud sponsor.