Greatest Hits: November 2004 Archives

It is designed to do a lot of things, but it certainly is not designed to break your heart. The game begins in the late autumn, when everything else has shriveled and fallen and died. Its blossoms come slowly in winter's course like crocus starts popping through icefields. And when it does stop, it leaves you to face the bursting glory of a fresh spring. What the hell's wrong with that? (apologies, Bart)

Each November, college basketball fades in slowly, takes its dutiful place in the blurry background of the American sports landscape. Only in recent years have the the Men In Charge decided that the season's opening stages needed to be sexed up to compete with the dominant late-year sports stories - the national pastime that is the NFL, convoluted college gridiron bowl jostlings, the annual start of the increasingly ridiculous soap-opera/freakshow that used to be a pro basketball league. They've done this by staging made-for-television invitationals, power-conference challenges, and sham tournaments with worthless trophies.