FIELD DAY COULDN’T come soon enough when I was a wee grade-schooler.
Foot races, long jump competitions, tug of wars against the teachers . . . that sort of stuff was right up my alley.
I reveled in the competition and delighted in the opportunity to display my athletic talents to my classmates, especially curly haired Crystal Callahan.
Having peaked physically, mentally and socially at age 10, I dominated most of the events like a pint-sized Bruce Jenner (sans plastic surgery).
It was all so glorious and great, right up until the part where they handed out the awards.
After all of my athletic achievements, all of the dramatic victories, what was my reward?
The same “participant” ribbon that the kid who spent the whole day eating his own boogers got.
What a disappointment.
I’d imagine that’s the same thing Nebraska must have felt when it was thrown onto the same field as Washington in this year’s Holiday Bowl.
The Huskers finish 10-3 after spending most of the year ranked in the top 20, and their reward is a bowl game against the same team it destroyed 56-21 months earlier?
A 6-6 team that needed to win three straight games at the end of the season just to qualify for a bowl?
Thanks to the over-saturation of bowl games, and the ease with which teams can now qualify, that ended up being the case.
My point: The college football postseason has been watered down to the point that only eight of the 35 bowl games this year featured two ranked teams.
There was a time when such bowl matchups were widely ridiculed.
Now, it’s just par for the course.
First Four?
That brings us to the NCAA’s decision to add three more games to the men’s basketball tournament this year.
In an effort to squeeze three more teams into the tourney — a play-in game added in 2001 put the field at 65 — the NCAA gave us the First Four.
These four games are played on the Tuesday and Wednesday preceding the tournament, with two games coming between 11 seeds and two others between 16 seeds.
Thus, qualifying for the tournament has become easier, albeit by a small increment.
Unfortunately, it seems only a matter of time before the same thing that has happened to the bowl season over time happens to the NCAA tournament.
Talk of expanding to a 96-team bracket has already been bandied about the past few years.
Once that happens, regular season achievement — done over the course of several months — will lose even more weight.
And soon enough, everyone will be getting a “participant” ribbon.
Sorry, but 64 is where I draw the line.
It’s a big enough number to give access to all of the smaller schools, and a small enough one that inclusion is enough to validate a genuinely good team.
That’s why any pool I run — provided gambling were legal, of course — would not require brackets to be turned in until Thursday morning.
That, my dear Peninsulites, is when the NCAA tournament starts.
Everything else? Just a bunch of play-in games.
Some predictions
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, here’s a few (not so) bold predictions for this year’s tourney:
■ Elite Eight: Kentucky vs. North Carolina; Duke vs. Connecticut; Pittsburgh vs. Michigan State; Kansas vs. Notre Dame.
■ Final Four: Kentucky vs. Duke; Pitt vs. Kansas.
■ Championship: Duke over Kansas 81-74.
I can’t remember a year where I felt so lost picking the games.
Somehow, I’m going with three top seeds to reach the Final Four, but none of them are overall No. 1 seed Ohio State.
Part of that might be wishful thinking, since I harbor a deep-seeded disdain for all things Buckeye, but I also think Kentucky is a big-time sleeper vastly underrated by the selection committee.
As for the other three: Pittsburgh finally has some shooting to go with all that defense, Kansas has weapons all over the court and Duke is about to add one of the top 10 players in the country (Kyrie Irving) to a lineup that was already good enough to win the ACC tournament.
I’ll go with Duke because of its depth, experience and ability to score just about every way imaginable.
________
Matt Schubert is the outdoors and sports columnist for the Peninsula Daily News. His column regularly appears on Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at matt.schubert@peninsuladailynews.com.