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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Love Letter to the Greatest Month

People throw around "love" like so much pocket lint, or perhaps a little brass button to be exchanged for sex. People love their couches. They love your haircut. The grand existential explosion that is love detonates in our midst, but we still love that our cars have auto-up drive-through windows.

Not me, boy. I love March.

This is my Waterloo, my Super Bowl, the Madness of Sir William runneth over. Neil Armstrong loved the moon, Napoleon loved himself, Kipling loved India, Dick Cheney loves.hmm.anyway, I love March. I love nets and keys and balls; five seconds, three seconds and thirty-five seconds; brave little teams, bubbles and mighty juggernauts. Basketball does not love me back, but I do not care. I love basketball and I love March and if there were no more basketball, I would still love March because muscle memory is a bitch goddess.

The glory of March usually starts in January, when Penn wraps up the Ivy League title, and continues to April, when March's champion is finally crowned. Just like many well-meaning people wave love around like one of those giveaway pompoms at a hockey game, so do many people claim to "love" the "Final Four." The Final Four is a fascist behemoth, a dance of exclusionary minimalism. That's not March.

March is the glorious time when all things are possible. When the late winter sun rises crisp and cold on March 1, almost everyone is still alive. There are 11 independent college basketball teams. They are not going to the tournament. There are seven Ivy League teams who are not Penn and have therefore been eliminated for a month. There are a handful of teams who are mathematically eliminated from their conference tournaments, important to perverse conferences like the Big 10, which improbably has eleven teams. But, those rarities aside, more than 300 college basketball teams can still win the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship as of March 1.

That's democracy.

In 1994, San Jose State made it to the big dance after winning their conference tournament. They were 13-18. No less an authority than Danny Sheridan published their odds of winning the championship at "a gazillion to 1." OK, but they still had a chance.

The first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament are glorious baths of excess wherever you experience them. 48 games in 42 hours over four days. I have been to Salt Lake City and to my own living room, but I have also been to Vegas and New Orleans. I have cared for my small son during the tournament and I have been recklessly drunk and unsure of where I was except that I had a television to watch. I have experienced it with dozens of friends and completely alone.

And, you know, I have never had a disappointing tournament experience.

When I was nine, I had certain expectations for my life. I was wrong, with the exception of this single blessed event. People might die, the polar ice caps might melt and we might continue to elect low-IQ jerk-offs, but March will always deliver.

I love March.

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