PAC-10? Punk-Ass Conference.

As the tournament selection committee prepares to wow us on Sunday with its field of 65 teams to compete for the NCAA men's basketball championship, let me ask a question: what are 7 or 8 PAC-10 teams doing in the projected field? And 3 teams from the WCC? Are you fucking kidding?? San Diego has to get in; it won the conference tournament. It is a shitty team, but whatever. Those are the rules. Gonzaga, having lost to said shitty team in the championship game, should stay home and cry in its collective hippie, white-boy frizzy afro because it blew its chance to go to the Big Dance. Fuck Gonzaga. They ran the risk of being the big fish in the small pond and when the big fish loses to a vastly inferior team at the wrong time, it forfeits any claim to the postseason. Move to a better conference. And then, St. Mary's is also projected to get in from the WCC? Isn't that a punchline to every joke you've ever heard about college basketball? St. Mary's...men's basketball powerhouse! Excuse me? Suck it.

But back to the PAC-10. Some of its presumed postseason teams are pathetic. Arizona State? 19-12, 9-9 in conference. Lousy (even more lousy: outside the conference, ASU has sterling wins over 13-18 LSU and Xavier. Xavier, people!). Arizona: 19-14, 8-10 in conference. 8-10? 8-10?? That's a record worthy of the NCAA tournament? And Virginia Tech, a team from the ACC most people don't think will make it, has a record of 19-13, 9-7 in conference. Is this bizarro world? Oregon is supposed to be a bubble team: 18-13, 9-9--the definition of mediocre (and, the Ducks lost to the punchline, St. Mary's!). Recall, please, that Florida State missed the tournament 3 times in 4 seasons with 1: 19 or more wins and 2: a winning record in the ACC.

My theory is that, beginning a few years ago, a handful of sportswriters got tired of covering east coast teams. Looking westward, they found that the once-venerable Big Ten conference had become pretty lousy. At the time, Kansas was the only team in the Big 12 worth watching play basketball, so nothing doing there. But, on the west coast, there were a few schools beginning to play well: Gonzaga in the WCC, Utah in the Mountain West, and in the PAC-10, a glamour conference with history that had been very average for decades, there were resurgent programs at UCLA, Stanford, Arizona, and Oregon. Plus, the sportswriters found, not many people on the east coast or in the midwest stayed up late enought to watch west coast games, even if they were on TV, which they often were not.

Thus, a snotty little cult was born. In sports journalism, as in any kind of journalism, the fewer people care about something, the more awesome and worthy it must be. So, the PAC-10, it was determined, was fucking incredible and the fact that no one watched the games was proof of this. Sort of like when most people dismissed George Bush as a total joke, and so the media had to prove to all us dummies how brilliant he was. The PAC-10 is the new George Bush.

But unlike Bush, the NCAA tournament can't be rigged for the west coast teams. Every one of them, save perhaps UCLA (if referees continue to job UCLA's opponents in close games), will get rolled before the final 8. Then, we'll see.

And, one more thing, this time regarding location of the early games in the tournament: Beano Cooke was on TV yesterday complaining about the possibility that North Carolina might play 4 games in the state of North Carolina. Aside from the fact that I never, ever listen to people who call themselves "Beano," yes, if UNC gets the top seed in the East bracket, it will play 2 games in Raleigh and then 2 games in Charlotte. I hear a lot of bitching about this.

But, you may recall that, the last time North Carolina won the title it was a similar situation--for the other team. Illinois played its regional games in (wait for it): Indianapolis and then Chicago. And then, the Illini took on UNC on a neutral floor in St. Louis, Missouri! Talk about your home crowd! And, guess what? The Tar Heels won pretty easily (hint: they had a better team). Flash forward to now, and you may know that UNC barely won this afternoon over Va. Tech, in Charlotte, in front of a UNC crowd that made no difference whatsoever to the outcome. Jesus Jumpshooting Christ.

North Carolina, the state, likes college basketball. It has built lots of arenas (monuments, if you will) for playing college basketball. When the NCAA schedules showcase games for college basketball, it often chooses to put those games in North Carolina--without checking first to see how good UNC is. Shocking!

I need more hobbies...