The Bernstein Brief: No Rooting Interest Means Easygoing NCAA Viewing
By Dan Bernstein-
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Being in school in March and living and dying with every squeak of every sneaker was fun at the time. Exhilarating, even. Also completely exhausting, and a young person's game. College basketball fandom is for the students.
Even later on when mercenary loyalty was determined by predicted brackets, the nominal investment was still enough to raise blood pressure a bit when things got tight between two mostly anonymous teams, aware that a 10-dollar outlay could hang in the balance of the front end of a one-and-one.
But this is the way to do it, now, letting the best part of the tournament -- the wild first two days -- wash over you in waves of cheers and buzzers and snapping rims, with the TV hyperventilating over images of tight-smiling cheerleaders, weeping trombone players and frothing, apoplectic coaches. It's perfectly nice to not care who wins and who loses, having no emotional investment.
Except for harboring the desperate hope that UCLA coach Steve Alford is at some point eaten by a pack of feral housecats.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.