College Basketball

We love college basketball. For me what makes college sports so enticing is the environment. Looking at the home fans at a Duke basketball game or the college football stadiums with 100,000 people all dressed in the same color makes you feel the event as much as see it. Here in Maine we go to the Alfond and see Maine play basketball and it is a very, very, pale imitation of big time basketball. Maine hockey in its strongest times has provided a big time atmosphere, albeit one on a small scale. But any arena completely full can be an exciting place to be.

Watching the college basketball games on an HD big screen television is a brighly lit, digital audio masterpiece. Dick Vitale or Bobby Knight explaining the action and you can almost feel like you are at the game. The players are incredibly talented. Talented to a level we usually have never seen before in Maine. The best players in College Basketball are now usually freshman who play one year before they continue their progression to the NBA. I have mixed feelings about this process.

I like the idea of players going to school for an education and the NCAA insists you call these players student-athletes but it is just not the case. Traditionally players who will make the pros have no more thought to being a serious college student for the full four years than does a recent MBA graduate plan to make a career at that non profit he works for one summer. It is just a step to the big money.

College sports reeks of big money. It is not what we like to think it is. Perhaps it never was. That said when my sons and I can sit down and watch North Carolina visit Duke at Cameron and enjoy the spectacle we are not thinking about money. We are enjoying watching great basketball in a great location coached by great coaches with a great commentary ( if you like Dickie V that is.)

Like most things in life you can enjoy it for what it is or lament what it is not. In our house to this point we still can enjoy it for what it is. I hope it stays that way.