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March Melancholic Mystery

 For the first time in decades, I haven't filled out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket. (Last year doesn't count, no tournament). For the first time in decades, I didn't watch the NCAA selection show on CBS.

For one of the few times in decades, I didn't write a prediction piece immediately after said selection show. I even did it for free on a blog, which is just nuts.

I couldn't do any of those things because the tournament that starts tonight is meaningless to me. I have not watched a college basketball game on TV from start to finish or even for just its stretch, all season long. The sport just vanished from my consciousness in a decision almost totally subconscious.

This is a big deal in my personal development and/or regression. While by no means a College Hoops Knower on the level of a Charles Pierce or Bob Ryan, I was a diligent, nay, enthusiastic follower of the sport both as a professional, where I covered eight Final Fours, and amateur before and after my sportswriting career, dating back to my teenage years. And yet this season I just could not get into it or even summon the desire to try.

My retirement mental fan calendar was as regular as the actual calendar. After the Super Bowl, it was time for a deep dive into college basketball. After the tournament, it was time to gear up for Opening Day of baseball and the NBA and NHL playoffs. A little February viewing of those last two was in order as well.

Looking back on this winter, an amazing thing happened. After the final gun of Super Bowl LV, I haven't watched much sports at all, at least, not indoor sports. No college hoops, one or two NBA games, a few periods of the NHL, that's it. I did watch some PGA Tour events but was that fandom, or a nap aid?

Chalk it up to covid-19 and to a quirk in my sports brain I now recognize but will never understand. I can and have watched OUTDOOR sports held without live spectators since the pandemic began. Baseball, pro and college football, golf, auto racing, soccer, I immersed in them all with little disruption to the pleasure/addiction fix they provided. But indoor sports without fans, I just can't. To me, an empty gym or rink looks more like practice than the real thing, and Allen Iverson said it all about practice.

Live spectators add drama and spectacle to even such a sedate pastime as golf (every hacker has known the added stress/excitement of standing on the first tee with a crowd of onlookers waiting for their tee times). Basketball and hockey are melodramatic by nature. They need the chorus a full house provides to generate the proper amount of catharsis -- at least for me they do. Outdoor sports have enough space to allow clever television producers to avoid showing the absence of any/many fans. Indoor ones do not. To this viewer, that makes all the difference.

I assume there will be some spectators at tournament games. Otherwise, why hold them all in the same state? I might even watch a game or two. But I won't really care what happens. How can I? I know nothing about any of the 68 teams and probably wouldn't be able to name more than half of them. The only team I scouted was Virginia, and that's only to have read how more than half the team's in quarantine as of now.

College football and basketball are the most money-hungry of all sports, a considerable accomplishment in a world where there's European soccer. I'm past caring about that, just as I'm past caring about how TV rules all sports with a merciless hand so the college hoops show went on minus fans and on any given game day, some teams as the virus did its thing this winter.

I just can't watch indoor sports without a crowd in the arena. I know sports are meaningless and I love them anyway, but there's something about an empty gym that rubs my nose in that meaninglessness to a point I cannot tolerate.

That's almost surely a healthy reaction for my mind to have. I hate it anyway.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:42 AM