i keep going back and forth in my head about whether i think it's good or bad, fair or unfair, that a team from a mid-major or minor conference who rolls through the regular season still must win its conference tournament to make the dance. on the one hand, it seems like the regular season means nothing, and patently unfair any upstart team who catches fire for a few days is able to go to the dance. on the other hand, teams from these conferences know the deal going in - it's not like having to win their conference tournament to get in is a last-minute surprise, sprung on them as they're making travel arrangements for boise. on the one hand, it gets the minor conferences one more game of national tv exposure than they've had all year. it also lends an air of legitimacy to the monmouths and the farleigh-dickinsons of the world - instead of being anonymous sacrificial lambs, we may have actually watched them win their conference, and thus feel a tinge of emotion toward them when they lose to UCONN by 50.

i guess the bottom line is that conference tournaments don't do a lot to help, but can do a lot to hurt. i know there's the rare aberration, but seldom is the major-conference tournament winner not going to have been invited anyway. and the 12-18 team from the minor conference that catches fire and wins their tournament takes a spot away from a team that deserved it, and the 12-18 team has absolutely zero chance of winning a game. so what's the point? is the revenue raised even relevant?

i guess the major point is that every single team is part of the ncaa tournament. the conference tournaments serve as regional qualifiers. thus, even the most pathetic, awful, ridiculous excuse for a team can't make the claim that they weren't given a chance. everyone gets a chance...that's the one saving grace of conference tournaments.

I applaud you, King, for using the word "small" to describe George Mason and/or the CAA. Because just about every other pundit has taken to using the pleasingly alliterative, yet dead wrong "mid-major" to characterize the Colonial Athletic Association (or to characterize Mason itself), and I'm a little sick of it. Aside from diminishing the true wonder of what the Patriots accomplished, it's completely incorrect to call the tiny CAA a mid-major. The MAC is a mid-major. The Missouri Valley is a mid-major. The WAC is probably a mid-major (it's definitely not one of the power conferences). The CAA is NOT!

So please, to all you drive time sports radio jockeys in this great land, please STOP CALLING GEORGE MASON / THE CAA A MID-MAJOR!

Thanks, that felt good.

i love the idea of miking up coaches, players, refs - everyone involved in a game. however i think there's a problem that goes beyond the obvious issues with our culture's fear of broadcasting profanity despite everyone's everyday usage of it (the children! what if the children hear it!).

the problem is the proprietary or private information that would be revealed if sound were made available. that conference on the mound? they're not talking about recipes for potato salad - they're talking about their strategy, with what could be considered "trade secrets" about how to pitch to the other team. you always see nfl coaches going through great lengths to protect their playcalling - even putting a shield in front of their mouth out of fear of the possibility that the opposing team is employing a lip reader! if you could hear the play call on tv, you think a coach wouldn't be in the box watching the live broadcast? or even if you could just hear the players talking - if you're an opposing coach, wouldn't you want to know what brian urlacher is telling his d-line in the huddle?

inside the nfl does a great job of giving sound clips from the bench and during the game - but i would be confident (i don't know this) that teams give clearance for the types of clips that are played. this is because they're usually of the "let's go" variety and not "when tomlinson leans to the left, it means a sweep is coming."

the other reason it would never happen is that on the field is where the players can be themselves, safe from their public image. i think a lot of opinions would change of a lot of players if you could hear what they were saying during a game/match/etc. athletes have a vested interest in only being heard when being asked a question, not during the heat of battle. phil mickelson, for example, has pulled one over on the world - a fan favorite, he's actually a raging dickhead that is pretty much universally despised by the other players on tour. if his whining, primadonna comments were actually broadcast, he may stand to lose some public capital.

in fact, maybe we should ferret out some of these public darlings/private bastards.

For some reason, I got sucked into ABC's hourlong pregame coverage, rife with the obligatory puff pieces about Mark Cuban's shenanigans, Jason Terry's route from the mean streets of Seattle (is there such a street?) to his superstition-filled NBA career, and a little thing on Dirk Nowitzki. For a few years now, everyone has been pronouncing his last name with the "W" as a "V" sound, as one would imagine a good Euro should. However when Dirk introduced himself, he used the contraversial "W" sound to pronounce his own last name, leading me to wonder if we have all been pronouncing his name wrong in the hopes of proving how internationally cultured we are.

A similar situation exists with Anna Kournikova, where pundits insist on pronouncing her first name "ahh-na" instead of her preferred "ann-a." Is Nowitzki the new Kournikova of mispronunciation?