Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
"Utah, 25-3; New Mexico, 23-7!" blurts out one of my sports staffers.
Who was the worst team IU lost to?" another asks. "Probably Northeast Louisiana," someone answers.
"They didn't play Alcorn State. Northeast Louisiana was the only team under 500 they played all year, well, except for Notre Dame."
This is the kind of stuff I've been hearing all week long. It's amazing.
They call it March Madness. March Obsession would work. Or March Fanaticism.
The sports guys have completely immersed themselves in this NCAA tournament stuff.
They live it. They breathe it. They drink it.
The "drink it" part is literal. Mountain Dew has this promotion where each cap has the name of a team. If your team wins, you get put in a drawing to win $100,000.
Two of my sports guys have consumed so much Mountain Dew that they're starting to turn chartreuse.
They don't realize it, but they're becoming addicted to the caffeine right along with the basketball.
They grind their teeth as they stare blankly at NCAA tournament brackets, pondering the myriad potential outcomes.
Tiny beads of perspiration form on their brows as they pore over team records, rosters and schedules.
They wrote columns this week that would rival any analysis put forth by any basketball analyst anywhere.
These guys each know more about college hoops than Dick Vitale and Billy Packer combined.
We had an office pool where everybody got two random teams.
Not good enough. One of the sports guys started a second pool. In his you have to fill out the entire bracket.
Another staffer burns a couple vacation days so he can be home for the tournament.
He has this satellite thing going so he can get the maximum number of games.
"Their RPI is only 71," somebody says about Ball State.
So I had to ask, "What is RPI?"
"That's the rating percentage index," I'm told. This is the way the NCAA tournament selection committee decides which teams get into the "big dance." (I never fully understood that "big dance" euphemism. It would seem those fiercely competitive basketball players wouldn't care to be involved in a "big dance." But what do I know?)
Anyway, this RPI thing is determined as follows: 25 percent is based on your winning percentage; 50 percent is based on your strength of schedule; the other 25 percent is based on the strength of schedule of your opponents.
There are 308 Division I NCAA schools. The tournament committee puts the top 64 in the "big dance." So if your rating is 64 or lower, you're in. Yippee!
Of course this whole strength of schedule business is pretty subjective. The selection committee has to make a lot of judgment calls.
This is evident when I listen to the banter around the newsroom.
Like this:
"To get into the tournament, UNLV beat teams with a combined record of 85 and 29 in their last five games."
Or this:
"What cost Ball State was the two wins they had against non-Division I schools - Quinnipiac and Montana Tech."
Two wins cost them? But of course.
"That was in their own tournament that they played that Quinnipiac.
"They had an easy game the first round. The other teams in the tournament were Mississippi and Long Island. Ball State plays the winner of that and has a tough game.
"But it was that first game against Quinnipiac that killed their RPI.
"You can't play weak teams. If they'd even played a weak Division I team they'd have been all right."
So there you have it. If Ball State plays somebody better than Quinnipiac, their RPI might have gotten up to that magic 64, allowing them into the "big dance."
Remember, Ball State's RPI was only 71.
Wow.
Iowa was another team that was at the heart of controversy. With an RPI of 73, they didn't make the "big dance."
"So what?" you say. Well, Iowa beat Indiana - twice - during the regular season. But the tournament selection committee says Indiana is a better team and put them in the "big dance."
Iowa, who plays in the same Big Ten (which has 11 teams, by the way) conference as Indiana, played a weak schedule at the beginning of the season. So even though their season record was better than Indiana and they beat Indiana twice, Indiana gets in and Iowa doesn't.
Indiana made it because of a better RPI, although we don't know what their RPI was. We don't know because the NCAA keeps RPIs secret. Well, sort of secret. They only tell us the RPI if a team didn't get in. It must be some sort of rationalization process.
So they released RPIs of teams like Ball State and Iowa. But the RPIs of teams that made it are kept secret.
Of course, this all makes perfect sense to those who understand this stuff.
And of course there are hundreds - no thousands - of little subplots running through the entire NCAA tournament process.
Things like:
"If you're favored, you don't want to play Princeton. If you're an underdog you want to play Princeton. That's because their such a slowdown team."
Or:
"Indiana and Oklahoma have a combined seven straight first-round tournament losses."
And, of course:
"All four of my pool picks are nine seeds. I'll be lucky to go 2 and 2 in the first round. Well, maybe 3 and 1."
Sounds like a foreign language, doesn't it?
But that's OK. The sports guys work hard all winter covering dozens of events. I think March Madness is a rite of passage for them.
It signals the change of sports seasons.
So all in all, I guess March Madness is a good thing.
One of the sports guys said it best: "There are a lot worse things you could be obsessed with than watching basketball."
