It's the Basketball time of year referred to as March Madness.  Millions, maybe even billions of dollars will change hands for game tickets, colas, popcorn and hotdogs, and parking by fans.  Television will rake in millions in advertising.

Two years ago CBS promised the NCAA $6 billion for the rights to televise tournament games for 10 years.  Pretty good wad of money there.  Where does it all go?  Obviously the participating basketball teams will get some of it, depending how far in the brackets they advance.  This will allow those schools to pay expenses for participating in the tournament.  I suppose that most of the coaches have an incentive clause in their contracts, so they will get a portion.  But one thing is for sure:  The  Biology professors at the university won't get a dime of this money.

March Madness is all about education, isn't it?  Maybe every school in the tournament has a major in basketball or entertainment or tattooing or proper  use of the F-word on the court or bench area.

Why do we need a national champion in any sport?  Bragging rights?  Is a national champion school a better school academically?  Didn't I read in my newspaper that 23 of the 64 teams in this year's tournament failed the APR (academic performance rating) criteria.  This caused the Knight Commission, which is an academic watchdog of big time college sports, to publicly call for having the acceptable APR numbers as a qualification for participating in the tournament.  Where are the college presidents in supporting this proposal? 

Folks, people in this country don't care about anything but winning.  They don't care if their gladiators go to class, or commit a felony as long as MY University beats the crap out of yours.  An APR?  Who gives a s**t about that stuff.  Besides these aren't really college teams, but NBA minor league franchises that are allowed to use college names and venues.  This tournament has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with education.

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