Basketball

It depends on who you ask. Jeré Longman at The Times writes that the team's success has inspired a backlash: Instead of being praised for their talent and hard work,  "the UConn women are criticized for winning too often, by too many points." As I understand it, people are arguing that the Huskies' accomplishment is not, in fact, good news for the sport, because if one team is winning that much, others ostensibly at the same level must be terrible -- and once you believe that, you can circle back around and conclude that the UConn team isn't really as good as it seems. Ergo, the Huskies' terrific run actually proves that women are bad at basketball -- just like we've been telling you silly ladies all along!

Longman's having none of it. "At best, that growing suggestion is ignorant of college basketball history; at worst, it is a wearying, sexist attempt to diminish the achievement of women, who were too long excluded from sports and are still too often forced to apologize for sweating." Right on, dude. He goes on to point out that women's college basketball has only been around since 1982 -- which means it's had as much time to develop as the men's version had had in 1967, "as the U.C.L.A. dynasty kicked into full swing with Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, consummating a 30-0 season and winning the first of what would become seven consecutive titles for the Bruins."

So let me get this straight. You're saying that when men's college basketball was starting up, at first there were some killer teams and breakout stars -- which built excitement and attracted more people to the sport -- before things balanced out? Kind of like...?  Yeah. "Essentially, there is zero difference in the trajectory of men's and women's college basketball," writes Longman. So why are women "held to a different standard, derided as somehow lesser or undeserving"? Take a wild guess.

As Phil Taylor wrote recently in Sports Illustrated "Sexism isn't confined to any sport or country. It's a universal language, spoken not so much with words as with action, or the lack of it." He was talking about female ski jumpers being shut out of Olympic competition and "lopsided spending" that gives male athletes an advantage, among other things, but the common denominator is a general attitude that women's sports not only aren't but will never be as intense, thrilling or important as men's. And as the uproar over the Canadian women's hockey team's celebration of their gold medal illustrated, a lot of people don't want their lady athletes acting more like men -- whether that means chugging beer, smoking cigars or, you know, winning a lot.

How can we begin to turn these attitudes around? (I mean, besides dismantling the patriarchy.) One small effort even the non-athletically inclined can participate in has sprung up on Facebook: You can take a pledge to attend at least one women's sports event in 2010. Writes Deford,

There are a lot of reasons why girls from all over the country decide to go play their college basketball in a chilly little backwater called Storrs, Conn. -- but a prime one is simply that UConn women's basketball is popular.

The home games bang out. The glass grandstand has been smashed there. The players are celebrities. They are treated, well, like men.

If people were turning out like that to support women's teams all over the country, maybe the Huskies would soon have some real competition.

This makes college basketball America’s most democratic sport, the only national stage where a real-life version of the movie “Hoosiers” is still possible. It doesn’t matter that, when the tournament concludes, a Goliath almost always ends up cutting down the nets -- North Carolina last year, Kansas in 2008, and so on. What counts is that the sport gives its many, many Davids a chance.

This empowerment of the little guy was on full display Sunday night, as the bracket for this year’s tournament -- which will tip-off on Thursday afternoon – was unveiled on CBS. Sure, plenty of airtime was devoted to the sport’s nobility. Kansas, Kentucky, Duke and Syracuse, a combined 14 NCAA titles among them, gobbled up the four top seeds, and there was much discussion of the other traditional powers that assumed their customary positions in the bracket.

But CBS also showed us the jubilant members of the East Tennessee State Buccaneers basketball team, jumping and screaming as it was announced that they’d play Kentucky in the first round on Thursday. The Bucs made the tournament by winning the little-known Atlantic Sun Conference, home to the Campbell Camels, Stetson Hatters and bunch of other teams you’ve never heard of.

Kentucky plays its regular season games before NBA-size crowds and with NBA-size television audiences watching. Around the country, Kentucky sweatshirts, t-shirts and jerseys outsell the gear for many NBA teams. ETSU, meanwhile, is lucky to draw 2,500 fans to its games. They never appear on TV. And God help you if you’ve ever spotted anyone wearing an ESTU hoodie more than 2 miles outside the school’s Johnson City campus.

Mismatches like this are simply impossible in professional sports. But in college basketball, East Tennessee State will open play on Thursday facing the exact same reality as Kentucky: Win and move one step closer to a national title. Lose and the season ends. No other sport allows a school like ETSU to dream like this. And sometimes -- not often, but enough to keep us dreamers dreaming -- the little guy actually does send one of the heavyweights to the canvass.

I’ll never forget when I became one of the dreamers -- 21 Marches ago, when my dad yanked me from school for the day and took me to nearby Providence, where four first round games were being held. The two afternoon tilts were snoozers, and in the break before the evening session, my dad gave me some bad news: The 9:30 game (between Notre Dame and Vanderbilt) was too late for me. We would have to leave after the 7:00 contest, between Georgetown and Princeton. Or we could leave on the spot.

I chose to leave. Georgetown-Princeton was the worst game on the schedule. The Hoyas were the top seed and a favorite to win the entire tournament. They were stacked with future NBA talent. Princeton, meanwhile, was seeded 16th, the lowest possible seed. I knew none of their players by name and had read on the way down that their odds of winning the tournament were two million to one. (“I’d put a dollar on them,” my dad told me.)

Somehow, my dad persuaded me to stay. And I’m thankful he did, because what followed remains -- by far -- the most unforgettable sporting event that I’ve ever witnessed.

At tip-off, the Providence Civic Center was as lively as a mausoleum. But Princeton slowed the game down and began picking apart the Hoya defense one backdoor cut at a time, building a lead that stretched to an unfathomable ten points early in the second half. By then, the building was rocking. Georgetown managed to claw back and the game ended with the referees refusing to whistle the Hoyas for a foul on Princeton’s last shot. Georgetown survived, 50-49.

I wanted to cry, and as we walked out to the parking lot, I saw a grown man who actually was crying. He probably hadn’t been a Princeton fan for more than an hour, but I don’t think his tears were for the Tigers as much as they were for the idea that the Tigers represented that night: that anything really is possible.

That Princeton-Georgetown game remains the closest that a No. 16 seed has ever come to knocking off a top seed. There’ve been a few more near-misses. Western Carolina almost took down an overrated Purdue team in 1995, and back in 2006 Albany somehow led mighty UConn by 11 in the second half before choking down the stretch. And last year, ETSU actually took Pittsburgh to the wire. But since seeding began in 1985, No.1 seeds are a perfect 100-0 in first round games.

But that’s why I love the tournament. As much as history says it can’t happen, every year four new teams get a chance to engineer the ultimate upset.

Some fans live for the NCAA tournament that produces an “all-chalk” Final Four -- with the four top seeds all making it to the final weekend. Not me. Sure, college basketball needs Duke and Kansas and North Carolina and all of the other blue bloods. But it needs ETSU and Vermont and Arkansas-Pine Bluff  and their no-name brethren, too. And every year around this time, I’m happy to adopt all of those no-name schools as my own -- and to dream along with them.

The tension was enough to make Charles Barkley break up awkward economic conversations, deeming them "inappropriate" displays of "millionaires arguing with billionaires." When Barkley thinks a conversation uncouth, we must be hurtling toward apocalypse. If a work stoppage isn’t looming, this is a pretty good act. I’m a child of divorce who’s consumed unhealthy amounts of NBA media -- let’s just say I know the signs.

This year’s All-Star game set a record for most folks at a basketball game, drawing 108,713 to Jerry Jones' Cowboys Stadium. A resplendent affair that Mark Cuban bragged would make the Super Bowl look like a "bar mitzvah," the stadium shots delivered a jarring visual that evoked something deeper than mere novelty. Mazel tov, Mark, mazel tov, it looked like something out of "Devil in the White City." The actual game was fast-paced fun ( (the East beat the West, 141 to 139) and I especially enjoyed Shakira's NSFSB (Not Safe for Super Bowl) performance. The contest's fluid atmosphere was a reminder of why I find the basketball artistry life affirming -- or at least entertaining

But the pall was impossible to ignore, especially when TNT mysteriously cut to commercial as Mark Cuban uncomfortably fielded questions about the league’s economic future (When asked if he was optimistic about labor negotiations, Cuban bluntly said "no"). Oddly timed decisions turned this into the world's biggest pity party. Over a week before, David Stern publicly offered a new collective bargaining agreement that was jokingly called a "middle finger" to the players union. In another effort to squeeze the players into large salary reductions, Stern warned that the NBA had a projected loss of $400 million next year.

Can you host a decadent parade, gush about the league’s health, while simultaneously shaking the "End is NEAR" sign?

And again, where's the sports media? David Stern is smart, charismatic, and seems to genuinely care about the NBA. His greatness shouldn’t be an article of faith, though (especially when Stern uses his own $400 million failure as an ultimatum validation). Sportswriters have often been criticized as timid, authority-worshippers who save shots for low-hanging fruit. As they piously lecture athletes for moral or professional failings I wonder: Why are NBA Finals ratings half of what they were under the reign of Jordan? Who’s at fault for these until-now secret money losses? I accept this laziness from my political media, but from my sports Web sites, it's just unacceptable.

The news that the NBA’s percentage of Mexican-born players plunged from 2% in 2008 to 1% in 2009, was hailed by CNN television personality Lou Dobbs as proof of the efficacy of tall border fences.

“Mexicans can’t jump,” said Dobbs, a longtime anti-immigration activist, who attributed the new, higher fences along the Mexican border for the reduction of Mexican players in the NBA.

I'll leave a few jokes to the parody itself -- just know that President Obama makes an appearance, too, and it's pretty great. But I did have to share my favorite part of the story, which I like because, based on my experience, it rings very true:

An emotional CNN spokesman, when Dobbs' statement was read to him by a reporter, said, "Oh no, not again," before abruptly ending the telephone interview. CNN is currently last in cable network news ratings.