It's NCAA Tourney Time

 Beginning tomorrow when the NCAA tournament selection committee announces the teams that qualify it is one of the best times of the year. I'll miss the crowds and pageantry due to the PanicDema but the Show will go on.

Some teams will get in and some won't. As is usually the case one of the so-called Big Boys with a record of 17-12, can you say Wisconsin, will get in while others like Drake Univ. out of Des Moines sporting a 26-3 record won't. Such is life.

The Show is more than a tournament. It signifies what America is supposedly about----amateurisn. Oh, I know there's an industry of giving money and cars to kids under the table but in my mind I still believe it's going to be like the days prior to agents and opting out for the NBA after a freshman year.

The games are as big or bigger than the Super Bowl. Everybody alive grew up in a State and everyone has their loyalties. Women who don't know a basketball from a piece of fruit hear of a school from their State and break out clothes of their school colors. Proof in point: This morning The Queen asked me if Iowa won in the Big Ten Tournament last night. Folks, this is huger than huge. You'd have to have lived with her for 51 years to understand.

I have a newly found friend from high school. He grew up in Iowa then matriculated at Michigan State. He's a Sparty for life. One of my longtime friends and high school buddies went to Iowa State but now the traitor lives in Kansas and has become a fanatic Jayhawk fan. I asked him why. He said it was because his son went there. I say it's because he wants a perennial winner. I wonder what he's going to do when that school is going to be, finally, put on probation for cheating. Alas! It won't happen. I've always maintained the NCAA works this way to protect the big boys: They were so mad at Kansas for cheating they put Cleveland State on probation for ten years. That's the way it works when TV money is involved.

But I digress. The Iowa Hawkeyes are in the semifinals of the Big Ten tourney. It's gearing down to the end for a real amateur named Luka Garza who is a 'horse'. This past week Iowa retired number 55, his number. That, in itself, is enough to throw a tournament party.

Enjoy the next month. It only comes around once a year.