Spring's Maddening Sickness of NCAA College Basketball

With swift and unapologetic fury, the same sickness attacks me every March.

Rendering me nearly powerless, this early Spring malaise - far worse than any cold, virus or flu -devours my energy, cripples my logical thinking and negates any thought of normality in my life for nearly 30 days.

This month the same invisible power has wielded its ugly head and smitten me once again. In the past family, friends and colleagues pleaded with me to seek a cure for the insanity this unseen force wreaks in my life during March.

Reluctantly, I followed their beckoning calls and sought professional care. Eager to help, these experts offered little hope for recovery while others lamented that I simply didn't want to be cured.

Neurologists from John Hopkins Medical Center diagnosed severe, but not terminal, brain abnormalities. Psychiatrists and sociologists from the University of California at Berkeley detected extreme shifts in emotion coupled with rabid anti-social behavior. Even celebrated theologians from the Vatican speculated about some overpowering spirit requiring an exorcism.

However, two budding Bracketologists out of Bloomington, Indiana diagnosed my condition immediately. These pimply faced, 15-year-olds instantly recognized my symptoms and pinpointed my acute abnormality. Why? Because they, too, experience the same condition every Spring. Their revelation mystified medical experts and stupefied both theologians and behavioral scientists alike, yet their simple findings brought me a major sigh of relief. Peace descended upon me instantaneously, soothing my soul to its core.

I know now what slays me every Spring and I relish - embrace - this sickness.

This Maddening Spring Sickness is also known as March Madness, and boy, did I catch another baaaaad case! But instead of prescribing drugs, recommending group therapy or offering up endless prayers, these kids from Indiana told me to enjoy the disease, allow the sickness to fully run its course and be grateful I was chosen to endure the illness. More than that, these high schoolers recommended that I, by no means, attempt to hasten my recovery. They confidently assured me that this extreme malady would miraculously disappear by midnight EST the first Monday in April . . . as it faithfully does every year.

As further proof of their diagnosis, the same pubescent basketball junkies claim that my condition is no different than that of thousands of other cases. These boys shared similar stories of other Bracketologists beset by a strikingly similar springtime condition. As empirical proof, they cited cases popping up in Durham, NC; Lexington, KY; Spokane, WA; Lawrence, KS; and northeastern cities like Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Philly.

Again this year, major hot spots for the disease were coming from every conceivable socially-economically-geographically-racially-educationally unbiased demographics across the country. Growing in intensity, this Maddening Spring Sickness is not only striking across the USA but also around the globe where fans are equipped with the proper satellite and Internet access. Roundball experts have cited the sickness as a worldwide epidemic, challenging the likes of the CDC and even the International Red Cross.

Yup! March Madness has once again gripped me, pulsating uncontrollably through my veins. Symptoms like sleep deprivation, strong bouts of euphoria, irrational guttural screams and obsessive-compulsive behavior have overtaken me. I'll soon be uttering an endless array of scores, stats, pregame analysis and RPI ratings. I'll even debate conference strength of schedules and prognosticate regional brackets.

Like a zombie, I'll hypnotically trudge through mid-March and into early April never parting with my remote. I'll divide my time between the big LCD screen on my TV, the smaller LCD screen on my WiFi notebook and the even smaller LCD screen on my iPhone. Forget about regular, normal relationships.

Like some co-dependent alien, I'll only be able to communicate coherently with others who share the same physical and psychological condition. Sweating profusely and biting my nails incessantly, I'll be texting and mumbling phrases like Sweet Sixteen; Another Cinderella Advances; Buzzer Beater; Raining 3's; Diaper Dandy; Box Out; Shooting Out the Lights; and my personal favorite - Double Overtime Barn Burner!

Wow, what a sickness! I say, bring it on every March. Give me a double dose and don't ever try to cure me.

Please don't stop this March Madness. Don't ever stop this Madness.

Thank you, young men from Bloomington, IN for diagnosing my condition.

I just love this disease.

Straight Talk. No Static.

MIKE - thee American Made Voice On Sports!

www.facebook.com/theemikefans

What CBS Misses in its March Madness Coverage

Going into this weekend, the NCAA Men's College Basketball Tournament has been officially trimmed to four fantastic teams, and this year's CBS March Madness television coverage has once again frustrated the lucid, logical thinking of reasonably intelligent college basketball fans everywhere.

Big Dance diehards have fallen fast for the foolish fodder and boyish banter beaming from the CBS broadcast booth without ever questioning the corny, cliche cloaked commentary and overt omissions of CBS' celebrated basketball announcers.

At times, CBS ignores the blatantly obvious right at the tip of your nose stuff, while hypnotically hounding fans with hokey, hyperbolic play-by-play analysis, subtly sucking viewers brains right out of their cranial cavities.

So, college basketball fans, put the Panasonic plasma on pause and ponder these missing March Madness oversights, compliments of CBS' college basketball announcers.

Here are my first 4 forgettable picks:

#1. The Missed Free Throw Party - OK, so why can't we find anyone in the CBS broadcast booth with some bravado to decry the dubiously dreadful display of celebrating shooting ineptitude nearly every time a free throw shooter misses a gimme from the charity stripe?

Doesn't anybody else on the planet find it utterly ridiculous when teammates enthusiastically approach the brick-laying free throw shooter and congratulate him with high fives and pats to the butt after he just clanged an important freebie from 15 feet? Imagine if MLB infielders raced to the pitcher's mound to bask in the embarrassment of a pitcher who's last fast ball wound up 450' away as some fan's souvenir in the center field's stands!

CBS' silence on the Missed Free Throw Party makes no sense whatsoever to me.

#2. Tattoos - Once again, why doesn't someone in the CBS broadcast booth blurt out the obvious and bemoan the proliferation of butt-ugly tattoos blanketing far too much of the basketball players' exposed skin? After witnessing Northern Iowa's upset of Kansas, I'm all for lobbying for an NCAA ban barring big, beefy boys without a tan from ever sporting multi-colored tattoos on any part of their bodies.

My second petition will be for the NCAA to mandate long-sleeved, turtle necked shirts to cover any future fashion paux of all heavily inked players because it seems like inebriated frat house friends frolicked with Etch-a-Sketch art on the chiseled players' forearms, biceps, backs, necks and shoulders!

Perhaps CBS should initiate a think before you ink campaign to spare viewers at home from witnessing these unsightly tattoos.

#3. College Basketball's Teflon Coated Coach - OK, why aren't college basketball conspiratorial crazies feasting on the journalistic blackout concerning Kentucky coach John Calipari? Never heard a peep from any of the boys in the CBS broadcast booth scrutinizing this slippery and unscrupulous coaching cad from Lexington. College basketball's highest paid coach is historically a walking NCAA infraction-in-the-making with a well-chronicled resume of recruiting players with no regard for collegiate consistency, scholarship and integrity within their university's basketball program.

Perhaps the CBS boys believe Kentucky actually recruited Coach Calipari to improve its anemic 9% graduation rate or that the muck that Just in Time Johnny (getting out of the place before your sordid history catches up with you) left at Memphis and Massachusetts was merely coincidental. Duh!

#4 - There's a Lid on the Basket - Doesn't anyone else agree that this is one of the most over used cliches in sports? CBS sportscasters need to remove from their repertoire this ritualistic excuse for poor shooting. Come on, CBS, give the opposing team's defense better credit and mute any mention of this trite expression citing a metaphorical metal disk hermetically soldered to a rim. There isn't anything physical attached to the rim prohibiting the ball from going into the basket.

The only things preventing better shooting are better shooters or even better defense from the opposition..... and it doesn't require a handsomely paid former player wearing a thousand dollar suit sitting in a broadcast booth to figure it out.

Maybe CBS should put lids on the lips of some of their basketball broadcasting boys in the booth before they blurt out any more corny cliches or totally overlook the obvious.

OK, college basketball fans, email me your selections of slack CBS sports casting and blatanly obvious omissions from this year's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

Straight talk. No static.

MIKE - thee American made voice on sports!

Can You Say Ali Farokhamesh?

Can you say Ali Farokhamesh (Ah'-lee Fa-rook'-ha-mesh)?

After this past weekend, absolutely! Even if you're only a casual college basketball fan, you're probably proclaiming the name Ali Farokhamesh everywhere you go.

As a matter of fact, with unabashed confidence you're more than likely repeatedly rattling off the tongue-twisting name Ali Farokhamesh, but you're also spelling it, properly syllabicating it, and quickly correcting the butchery of those who stutter when they can't make it past the first three letters of this stellar guard's last name.

Ali Farokhamesh. The Rook to his team mates - is arguably the number one story in this year's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament and the one player mostly responsible for manufacturing America's first bout of mania during this Spring's March Madness.

Expect Farokhamesh-a-mania to flourish for at least another five fabulous days until the Sweet Sixteen resumes next Saturday in St. Louis. Little Ali's created the kind of Big Dance buzz that rivals the likes of Cincinnati's Big O's scintillations of the early 60's, Michigan State's Magic's mesmerizing moves of the 70's, Jimmy V's vanquishing the vaunted Phi Slamma Jamma in the 80's, Duke's dazzling Laettner turn-around in the early 90's and the Cuse's Freshman Phenon Carmelo's captivation of college fans earlier this decade.

Ali Farokhamesh. The only thing wrong about him is his six foot height generously exaggerated on the Northern Iowa Panther basketball team roster. However, in spite of this one accepted abberation, everything else is soooooo very right about this thick, hairy-legged, under-sized, midwestern kid with the receding hairline and barely pronounceable last name willing to take crazy, calculated, career-defining shots on the biggest stage during the biggest game of his life against heavily favored opponents before a national television audience.

Ali Farokhamesh. A name never to be forgotten for a lifetime of Big Dances. Forget the March Madness Heroes of NCAA Tournaments past. Move over, Magic (Johnson), Michael (Jordan) and Manning (Danny). Wipe Wilt (Chamberlain) and Walton (Bill) off your list. And don't even challenge me with the name of Kansas' Mario Chalmers. Ali has emerged as the Hero of Heroes and Prom King of the Big Dance.....even if he never makes it past the Sweet Sixteen.

Ali Farokhamesh. Get used to hearing and seeing a lot of this alphabet soup of a name. Ali's two tournament game heroics will be constantly replayed, analyzed, dissected, fawned over and endlessly enjoyed in our living rooms for all of America . . . at least until he and his Panthers lace 'em up again next weekend.

Ali Farokhamesh. The reason why teams play the game . . . any game . . . is because even the number 1 seeded, more highly touted, athletically gifted, tremendously talented teams on PAPER must show up every night to take on unknown, over-achieving underdogs. But when the nationally ranked titans don't show up, little-known Goliath-killer mid-major teams like Northern Iowa with unheard-of players like Ali Farokhamesh rise up, seize the moment and write their own chapter in NCAA Basketball Tournament history.

Ali Farokhamesh. Yup, I love writing this name as much as I love saying it. Thanks to this Iowa City native and Kirkwood, Iowa Junior College transfer guard for making my March Madness so memorable already.

Ali Farokhamesh. All the best to you in St. Louis next weekend, Mr. Fearlessly Firing Shooting Guard with the twin fire hydrant legs, when your Northern Iowa squad squares off against another heavily favored team for a spot in the Elite Eight.

Trust me, at tip-off, sports fans across America will know who you are and will eloquently and effortlessly be able to say your name - Ali Farokhamesh.

Straight Talk. No Static.

MIKE - Thee American Made Voice on Sports!