Bracketbustin' George Mason

Wow, do I look like a fool . . . The only good part is that I'm far from alone: according to ESPN's Tournament Bracket Challenge rankings, only four people out of a possible three million something correctly picked this year's NCAA Final Four of LSU, UCLA, Florida and George Mason. And remember, that includes the entire student body of George Mason University, which begs the question: where's the faith, oh ye Patriots' supporters?

But honestly now, how you could possibly discount any of the sheer excitement or high-level athletic drama that is being created on NCAA college basketball's biggest stage year after year? It feels like each Dance tops the previous year's enjoyment factor, and this tourney has obviously been no different. George Mason's run to the last weekend as a #11 at-large seed out of the Colonial Athletic has been a thing of beauty. Unexpected wins over Tom Izzo's Michigan State Spartans (a Final Four club from a year ago), Roy Williams' North Carolina Tar Heels and the Shockers of Wichita State (another underrated mid-major) were mind-boggling enough, but none could have prepared us for the magnitude of the Patriots' 86-84 overtime victory over #1 ranked Connecticut. That single game was probably the biggest upset in NCAA tournament history, when you take into account the pre-tournament expectation for both clubs: the Huskies were the odds-on favorites to win it all, while the Patriots were deliriously happy to avoid the NIT. And yet, by the time Denham Brown's three-point try from the wing at the buzzer proved strong, a #11 seed had advanced to the Final Four for only the second time in tournament history (the last time it happened was LSU in 1985, but the Tigers hail from the SEC, an unquestioned power conference then and now) and no #1 teams were in the last weekend of the Dance for the first time since 1980.

To put it in an easy metaphor, what George Mason's win did from here on in was it tossed NCAA bracket "logic" and "theory" permanently out the window. No longer can you count on anything when filling out your field of 64 (or 65, or whatever it'll become in the future). And why is that? Because of a single, solitary word that starts with a 'p': parity. That's right, say what you want about the level playing field in the NFL, you football fanatics . . . But the NCAA Division I men's college basketball tournament has now officially become the most wide open sporting event in the United States. And I'll confidently make the argument that it has also become the most popular event in our country as well. Of course, popular is a a pretty arbitrary word, but it means exactly what I want it to mean here: more people in this country watch and follow the NCAA tournament than anything else in our sports world, thereby making it the most popular. And obviously the Super Bowl is just a one day event, compared to the two and a half week run that is the NCAA tournament, but that just furthers my belief that more people have a chance to follow it.

Will George Mason win the whole thing? Probably not. But at this point, I'm not sure if anything would shock me.

Two SEC schools, one Pac-10 and one Colonial Athletic comprising this year's Final Four? No Big East? No Big Ten? No Big Twelve? No ACC? Get outta here. I'd never have believed it heading in.

But then again, I'm a fool like everybody else except the divinely-inspired four.

At this point, I'm gonna go All-SEC on the final: Florida over LSU in a good physical matchup.


-JAB