March Madness Interferes with Schoolwork

As my roommate Adam Schwartz put it, "Just when NBA basketball starts to drag and just when hockey's ice starts to melt, it's time for March Madness!" Though official March Madness is really a little less than a week away, Tournament Week serves as more than the shrimp cocktail or the pigs in a blanket for March Madness' Filet Mignon.

At any moment of the day, I can turn on ESPN, ESPN2, MSG, TNN, and even NY1 to catch the last two hyper minutes of some tournament final game. Maybe it is the increased energy shown by almost everyone on the floor, maybe it's the loser-seriously-goes-home mantra of the mid-major tournament championships, or maybe it's just the fact that squads want to put in a full effort for their last game. Either way, I have no choice but to flip on any random channel and see the best basketball games of the year.

You can have your Duke vs. Maryland rematch at Cole Fieldhouse. I'm sure that game was okay to watch.

Instead, give me an Ohio Valley Conference championship nail-biter between three-seed Murray State and top-seed Tennessee Tech. The game, the only one of this conference's tournaments featured on ESPN2, ended with a game-winning jumper by Murray State's Justin Burdine with 9.9 seconds left. Unlike the other, more meaningless conference games in the ACC, SEC, and Big 12, the loser simply cannot take solace in a good effort. The loser, Tennessee Tech in this case, just walks back to its team bus and takes a terrible trip home. Murray State, on the other hand, played itself into the biggest tournament in America and can officially take part in the Dance. How much bigger can a tournament game get?

These two long weeks of exciting conference tournament games set the scene for the sports fan's most eagerly anticipated two weeks. Once the NCAA Tournament is upon us, there will be non-stop basketball everywhere I look. Athletes will be playing on TV, fans will fill out brackets, and newspapers will discuss even the most random teams' chances of making it to the Final Four.

There are plenty of days when I can't wait to come back from class to watch some random NCAA Tournament action. This, however, gets me thinking.

Why is it that whenever I've come back from class in the past week, or whenever I will come back from class in the next two weeks, college basketball players are still playing? How is it possible that these "student-athletes" can be playing every time my friends and I come back from class?

Don't the college basketball players participating in their conference and NCAA tournaments have any classes?

Don't get me wrong; I understand what a strong showing by an athletic powerhouse does for a school. Recent surges in the national oll by the football program of Virginia Tech, for instance, have put a previously invisible school on the map. Duke, Boston College, and Georgetown have ridden a wave of national exposure due to athletics. Georgetown and Boston College have distinguished themselves from a bottleneck of similar-leveled institutions with Final Four appearances and national television exposure. Duke has allowed its basketball dominance to help transform the school from a pretty good Southern academic institution, like Vanderbilt, to one of the most desirable schools in the country, rivaling Stanford.

I understand the benefits of playing big-time basketball. But the constant barrage of games played by college students screams of hypocrisy in big-time sports.

How many times do you hear about a coach suspending his player for not going to class? How many players have been forced to sit out a year for unsatisfactory grades?

Arkansas school officials fired Razorbacks Coach Nolan Richardson after graduating zero percent of his past six recruiting classes (not to mention his ridiculous outburst). While there really can be no excuse for players not graduating, the athletic department gives the athletes no help. With a solid month of non-stop, daytime basketball full of travel and distractions, how can athletes attend class? A player from Villanova misses at least three days of classes; I'm sure he learns a lot from Madison Square Garden's Big East Tournament. Schools require their players to miss class for tournament games but not for any other reason. Someone should suspend the schedule maker.

The phenomenon of scheduling games as if classes don't exist is not restricted to big-time basketball either.

Last night, Columbia baseball players took a nine-hour bus ride to Ohio University to play two meaningless doubleheaders against the Wildcats. They could even spend Monday in Ohio, depending on the weather. Columbia is a school emphasizes education. But sending players nine hours away from school, only to come back Monday morning of midterm week, is plain hypocritical. I feel bad for those players who have to take an exam on Monday. The school has really handicapped them. But then again, maybe Columbia is just following the national trend.