War on floor turns to grim reality
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
One night Dick Vitale is bellowing hyperbole from our television sets about the perceived injustices perpetrated by the NCAA Men's Basketball Selection Committee.
The next night President Bush is there grimly attempting to prepare the nation for war, warning of the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein and Iraq's hidden weapons of mass destruction.
Suddenly, under the cloud of war and amid threats to the homefront from al-Qaida, it doesn't seem so important anymore what bracket Arizona is in or whether Tulsa, at 22-9, got a bum deal as a No. 13 seed.
The NCAA Tournament starts soon and, as the clock ticks toward conflict with Iraq, there are ominous signs that we could be at war before the nation ever finds out who IUPUI is.
When the White House warns "the diplomatic window has closed" and United Nations inspectors are shown on the highway hurriedly heading out of Iraq, the drumbeat of hoops hype slows and even some of the most absorbed participants can't help but take note.
Normally this time of the year sports fans — and those who annually dive into the office pool with their bracket sheets — have their eyes focused and TVs turned to basketball with barely an ear cocked to the goings-on of the real world. And, indeed, the escapism into bracketology is part of the lure.
Even in the Kuwaiti desert and Arabian Sea, where many of this country's 250,000 fighting forces are assembled, we're told the buildup to the Big Dance has been a major topic of diversion for days.
Now, however, violent reality threatens to intrude on March Madness with the deadly rumble of artillery and bombs.
Soon, CBS, which has a $6 billion, 11-year contract to exclusively show the games, warns it might have its cameras focused on developments in Baghdad and Basra instead of Salt Lake City and San Antonio. Some have wanted to get Billy Packer off TV, but not this way.
It may well be developments in places like Kirkuk and Mosul that eventually compel us to shift away from the upsets in the East or West brackets. All too soon it may be the deeds and sacrifices of brave young adults who don't play power forward or point guard that come to dominate our thoughts and the headlines.
If so, it will be their safe return, not an ability to make clutch free throws, for which we compose prayers.
In the meantime, go ahead and fill out those brackets in the hope that Troy State's penchant for 3-pointers will be the only kind of "bombs" that we hear about for a while. Even in Vitale's breathless tones, it sure beats the kind CNN is apt to be showing.
