This Month's Thoughts...March

  • One of the (types of) drivers that makes zero in terms of sense to me is the one that cuts you off in traffic, and then goes well below the speed limit.  
  • In one of the main routes I take home, the speed limit goes from 45 to 40 to 35 in a three mile stretch, the change happening after a stop light on each occasion.  Probably every third time this same scenario happens: someone pulls our right in front of me, then proceeds to glare in their mirror and go about 5-below the speed limit.  
  • Their look says: how dare you speed here and tailgate me!
  • (I am often about 5-8 MPH over the technical speed limit in one part of this drive). 
  • This person makes no sense to me.  Their ethics require they 'follow the law' and can glare at a 'speeder', while their common courtesy has no problem with cutting people off.  It's hypocrisy at the root.  
  • But a lot of people do similar such things.  
  • I'm very glad the college basketball season is over.  I'm giving it one more year before a complete breakup, but I've put way too much time and attention into a game that is letting me down on almost every level.  What was my favorite sport has become a free throw contest.  You'll often see over 50 free throw attempts in a game.  This is ridiculous.  The NCAA should learn from the NBA.
  • The NBA has the most talented basketball players in the world. After a great era of popularity in the 80's and 90's, with great rivalries (Lakers v. Celtics, the Jordan-Era Bulls), the early 2000's were a let down.  Common thought was that the game lacked defense, strategy, and you were basically watching scoring.  There were also fights and off-court issues where NBA players were referred to as 'Thugs'.  So the NBA dealt with it.  They started things like NBA Cares, which does a lot of good in communities. They started development leagues.  The NBA and its players are on the forefront of social issues - lead by players, followed by the league.  The rules change so the game advances, and thus the best players in the world are doing the best things on and off the court.  
  • The NCAA, on the other hand, has gone the completely opposite direction.  They've taken more and more control of the game and put it in the hands of referees and committees.  They've attempted to take all contact out of the sport, which anyone that's played a game knows makes no sense; in so doing, anything that looks like contact is called a foul, and players are incentivized to flop.  The best players can be sitting on the bench for most of the game, if an opponent can trick a ref into making a call.  In adding reviews to the game, they've slowed the last two minutes down, adding (essentially) unlimited timeouts.  They've switched up how they've done the seeding for the NCAA tournament so that the regular season is almost pointless, and winning your conference has no meaning.  But even worse is what they did to the field.  For years there were 64 teams in the tournament.  Every year, people would complain that their team was left out and call for an expanded field.  The NCAA granted this wish, expanding the field to 68.  
  • This expansion is one of the dumbest improvements I can think of.  Though they added four teams, these four teams play the Tuesday/Wednesday before the tournament in what people refer to as a 'play in' game.  So you can lose the 'play in', and still be 'in' the tournament.  
  • The practical downside of this format is that a complete bracket - which everyone fills out and looks forward to - isn't available until the morning of the tournament.  It says 'play in winner' on the bracket.  Who would choose them?  
  • What the NCAA has essentially done is take the best tournament in sports and made it average.  
  • We should all be more like the NBA.