Bubble Trouble

"When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them."


Having trouble reconciling Confucius's quote w/ my own situation: Should I abandon my faulty Sony computer, which has been enduring some serious "faults" recently, or go with a new computer that will last me until the bar next year? I'd gladly abandon my old computer if it wasn't for the $900 price tag that came with it. Decisions, decisions.


Anyway, the title of the post refers to a popular March Madness term, "the bubble." Each year, a good handful of teams fall right on the "bubble" of the NCAA tournament, meaning they could go either way, either in or out of the tournament. Basically, they're standing in line waiting to get into a club that houses 64, and they're not sure how many spots are left. THAT's the bubble, and millions of sports fanatics are obsessed with it every year, more than even the best teams in the land.



First of all, March Madness is amazing in and of itself: The rest of the year, only the most ardent of college basketball fans follow the sport, the preseason rankings, the incoming high school recruits, the RPI rankings, and conference breakdowns. Most people ONLY tune in this time of year, and (this analogy taken from Colin Cowherd), college basketball is like the scholarly college girl of the family of sports who comes home to visit every year for a month or so, and then leaves without being heard from until the next March. But when college basketball is here, everyone knows it. It mixes the tradition of old-school powerhouses Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, with crisp sounding names like Cornell, with original Cinderellas Gonzaga and Davidson, with your state (insert state here)'s best team.



But why are people so enamored with teams being on the bubble? To me, it's the excitement of not knowing whether you're in or out, comparing your resume with other teams' resumes, sharing signature wins, bad losses, RPI ratings, and strengths of schedule. It's the risk of every game knowing that your bubble might pop, that the next loss will be your last, that your season could be over at any over. It truthfully makes your team relevant, a team to cheer for, a team that people care about, as opposed to a team that is comfortably in the big dance but isn't a superior team: there's less intrigue about those teams. When you're on the bubble, Joe Lunardi, Andy Katz, and Jay Bilas and a host of ESPN writers talk about you all the time; they literally have a screen of 4 teams that you're a part of all the time, and you're in the national spotlight; it probably helps with recruiting and national exposure too. Seriously, if I were an athletic director and my school was a 8 or 9 seed, I'd want them to drop a couple spots to become a bubble team to make them a juicy team.

And so that's where I segue to the BIG matchup tomorrow, Illinois v. Ohio State, part III. My Illini woulda had to go home early with a loss today v. Wisconsin (they would have been 18-14 and really not justified of a bid), but a 20-win season with recent wins over Ohio State and Wisconsin would surely allow them in........but a loss? Don't know. This is the game that's been building up all season, the one that the Illini desperately need, the one that puts them into the dance for sure, or else they'll have to sweat it out on Selection Sunday. With Ohio State looking beatable (barely beat Michigan on last-second Evan Turner prayer today) and the Illini's backs against the wall, I say the boys from Illinois get it done and pull out a stunner, en route to the Big Ten Championship game. I-L-L! I-N-I!

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan