Last time, I mentioned Columbia's Medellin cartel, and alert reader Joe Braeuner has pointed out that I've made a spelling error on their country of origin, unless I'm referring to the fact that several executive officers of the Columbia/HCA corporation were recently indicted for drug trafficking. The correct spelling is, of course, F-R-A-N-C-E. Speaking of France, another former Soviet republic, Armenia, is the source of a compelling story: "Levon Ter-Petrosian has rejected independence or annexation for the disputed enclave of Nagorny Karabakh, in Azerbaijan." The story, written by 1000 monkeys working on 1000 typewriters for 1000 years, is being scrutinized by the State Department.
But enough of world affairs. It is early March, which means it is time for the first annual MWC guide to the NCAA tournament, which is also known as March Madness. It is called March Madness because for some inexplicable reason, this Thursday and Friday are not federal holidays. The tournament will be broadcast by CBS, which until recent years was a television network, whereas now, it's the only large company in the country without at least three channels on your cable TV dial. What this means is that of the 16 games played on each of the first two days, three or four will be broadcast in your area. Two of these will be while you're at work. Furthermore, if you live in the Midwest, as I do, the games shown by your local "CBS" affiliate will feature teams from the "Big Ten" conference, so-named because it features teams from 11 schools in the upper Midwest. The only saving grace is that these teams are so bad, most of them will be gone by the end of the weekend. To understand the absurdity of their being invited to the "Big Dance," as the tournament is called, consider a situation in which Paraguay, Albania, Belize, Estonia, Yemen, and Laos get together for a great big round-robin checkers tournament, with the top three finishers earning a spot on the United Nations Security Council.
One of the top teams in this year's tournament is Dook University, which is made up entirely of people whose names are not pronounced the way they're spelled. The starting point guard has 2 syllables in his name: "Wo," pronounced "Woe," and "jciechowski," pronounced "joe." "Roshown McLeod" sounds like a weather forecast by Ronald McDonald, and "Shane Battier" pronounces his name as though he's from France. You know what we say about France. To round out the squad, they also have a player who was suspended earlier this year for plagiarizing a paper for dance class. The coach's name is "Krzyzewski," which is pronounced as though it has many more "s's" than it actually does, namely, "Should be beaten senseless with sticks." The team nickname is the "Blue Devils," pronounced "bottomless pit of darkness and evil," and Dook is located in "Durham, North Carolina," pronounced "Bergen County, New Jersey."
Speaking of schools filled with rich kids from New Jersey, Princeton University is also in this year's tournament. Princeton is a crowd favorite and media darling wherever they go. People enjoy Princeton's throwback style of play, which has led them to some surprising upsets over the years, and fans are drawn to them because they're so clean-cut. By "clean-cut," they mean "white." The Tigers earned their berth by going undefeated against teams so fearsome they can only be represented by colors, such as Brown, Crimson, and Vassar.
Colors do play an important part in college basketball. For example, tournament teams Clemson and Tennessee wear orange because immediately following games they have to return to the shoulders of major highways, where they pick up trash as part of their work-release programs. Historically, UT players commit nonviolent crimes like shoplifting from K-Mart, so they are fairly harmless, even if their taste is somewhat in question. Watch out for Clemson players, however, because most of them have committed assault and battery, although it's usually on the basketball court. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Atlantic Coast Conference basketball, Clemson plays a brutally physical, hard-nosed style of basketball that primarily involves shooting its opponents in the kneecaps.
On a personal note, the MWC staff would like to encourage everyone to root for the Murray State Racers, on the basis that Coach Mark Gottfried began his career nearly 20 years ago as the assistant coach for the MWC staff's team of 10-year-olds in a middle school basketball league in Carbondale. Please remember that Coach Gottfried was never implicated in the truck/bicycle accident that claimed the life of the team's star player in the summer following our second place league finish.
One other team of note is Texas Christian University, which lives up to approximately one-third of its name, in the sense that it is in Fort Worth. The Horned Frogs led the nation in scoring this year, posting an average of 623 points per game with their "run 'n' gun" offense. The name of the offense is based on an incident involving their coach (former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer) and a little problem he had at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport earlier this year.
Balancing any negative aspects in the tournament field are the top-seeded Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina. For those of you who don't know, Carolina is the best program in the history of college basketball, in any way in which you might care to define "best." These are the facts, and they are undisputed. Those of you needing further proof that they are on the side of the angels should ask yourselves why God made the sky Carolina Blue. UNC is led by 60-year-old rookie coach Bill Guthridge, who set a record for wins by a first-year coach. He was preceded in his job by Coach Dean Smith, whom you may call "Coach Smith." You may not call him "Dean."
Coach Smith will spend the tournament as a commentator for CBS. This will be the broadcast's lone bright spot. The studio host is Jim Nantz, who, since he is no longer at the Olympics, will presumably use verbs other than "toil" and "yearn." Also in the studio will be Clark Kellogg, who will repeatedly say the following sentence: "Take the orange to the hole, big fella!" This sentence is not dirty. Try to have patience when you watch the games, because the criterion CBS uses to hire announcers is "would be pumping gas but failed the verbal skills test." You will recognize George Raveling by the way he sounds like cartoon character Grandpa Simpson, except the points he makes aren't as relevant to the situation. Bill Raftery apparently reads his commentary from the discarded writings of 1000 monkeys working on 1000 typewriters. For example, last week, Raftery described a game-winning basket in the Big East tournament with the following word: "jijjbjimantamanjibikiss!jbij." To find Al McGuire, look for someone who thinks "Change your oil every 3 months" is advice from the hair stylist.
You'll come away from the tournament thinking, "This is what freedom of speech has led us to?" Sadly, it has. Freedom of speech means people are free to say any inane, moronic thing they want. This was ably demonstrated by Oprah Winfrey after her acquittal, when she said, "Freedom of speech not only lives, it rocks!" Unfortunately, all around us, this freedom is being eaten away, its edges nibbled at day by day, and that is neither an Oprah joke nor a Texas cattleman joke. For example: