NCAA Football March Madness

Hat tip to Awful Announcing on this one.

ESPN's Jay Bilas was a guest on Dan Le Batard's radio show and they got into it. The main topic of discussion was race in basketball (mainly at Tyler Hansbrough's pro prospects).

It didn't seem to be what Bilas wanted to discuss. I mean, it is only the national championship coming up and I'm sure that Jay was prepared to talk about that. Le Batard instead hit him up with weird questions about scenarios if Hansbrough was black or Michael Beasley was white.

After a heated exchange, Bilas got off this classic blast -- "Take offense ... it's stupid"

"I really think basketball, we're the only sport where a player is penalized, and put out of a game with a whistle. And you take your star player who you prepare all week with, you work, you develop your offensive, defensive schemes, all of a sudden, boom boom, two fouls, he's out of the game.

"Hibbert played 16 minutes in the game. Vital player for Georgetown. I'd like to see a rule where a player can stay on the floor, at the coach's discretion, and every foul after the fifth is two shots and the basketball if he fouls, you get two shots and the basketball. ... Think about it. Basketball is the only sport where a guy is disqualified because a guy blowing a whistle controls the whole scenario."

Worst promo. Who's the genius behind the lame promo during CBS's coverage of the tournament Saturday and Sunday about Britney Spears' appearance on How I Met Your Mother? In the clip from tonight's episode, Spears' flirty receptionist asks Neil Patrick Harris' character if they can have sex, then go shopping. Cute. We know Hollywood loves to outrage the squares in Middle America. But there are kids watching these games.

Maybe it is best that Dick Vitale wasn't in the studio during the ESPN's bracket shows.

In the clip above, Vitale throws out what many people have been whispering: Bobby Knight to Indiana.

The problem is that when Vitale mentioned it, Knight (who is working for ESPN) was obviously ... something. Pissed? Embarrassed? Ticked? Emotional? Nervous? Shaken? Maybe all of them.

As Vitale kept on rambling, Knight just sat there -- quiet ... with a red face and glazed eyes

I do give Dickie V some credit for kicking that elephant in the room right in the backside. You knew that Reece Davis, Hubert Davis, Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas weren't going to touch that one.

On ESPN's coverage of the release of the NCAA tournament's bracket, Bobby Knight made a proposal that the tournament should be extended to 128 teams so that we could weed out the pretenders and then have a sure-fire best 64 team tournament the next week.

Look, I'm one of those people that thinks the tournament should be expanded (to about 96 teams) but I have to disagree with Coach Knight's thinking. He said that as they were talking about teams that were close to getting into the dance but didn't. He was arguing that if there were no automatic bids then the best 64 teams could be selected and there would be limited debate.

I've said this from Day 1 and ESPN's Dick Vitale mentioned it: If there were 128 teams in the tournament, then #129 would complain about not getting in. If there were 300 teams in the tournament, that the 301st team would bitch about not making it. Throw any number out there and there will be someone left out and complaining. It's the way the world works.

I mean, this tournament has expanded before and we still get this argument.

Some new guy on ESPN named Bobby Knight was on SportsCenter chatting about the conference tournaments.

Knight's point is that if he knew his team was a clear cut lock to enter the NCAA tournament, he would rest his starters and play his bench guys more. He wants his team fresh for the NCAAs ... especially the second round.

Of course, he did turn it around when talking about his time at Texas Tech. Then, he argued that his team never was a lock for the NCAAs and used the Big XII tournament to get his team that bid.

To me, conference tournaments mean different things to different schools. There is pride from winning it, no doubt, and you'd like that have a hot team enter the dance. However, it isn't worth getting the small prize in spite of the bigger one. To me (well, in the major conferences), winning the regular season title is more important that a four day event. Take more pride in that. We can name last year's champ and most of the Final Four. Not many can reel off all the conference tournament champions.

However, it is a tool for those bubble teams to make a final statement on their candidacy.