Supposedly, there was some basketball tournament going on this weekend, but that’s really all I could tell you about it. I have no idea whether or not the Badgers played well, or what cosmic significance–if any–the whole thing has.

While we do have a pool going on here at the Herald, I figured it would be a better use of my time if I didn’t bother with filling out my bracket and just donated my five bucks. I knew it would have been an exercise in futility from the moment I pulled the entry form out of my mailbox and found myself wondering if it didn’t have something to do with hockey, or maybe football.

“Fine, so you don’t like basketball,” you might say. “But who cares? It’s not like it’s actually going to hurt you, so shut up and stop your whining.”

I wish this were true, but sadly, it is not. Numerous events this year have propelled basketball from the list of things I feel completely ambivalent about to the list of things I actively dislike. Basketball, even for indifferent people like me who don’t own functioning TVs, is not something one can just decide to ignore; it makes its noxious presence felt everywhere, whether or not it is welcome.

First of all, I’ve found basketball provokes uncharacteristically strange reactions from my otherwise normal friends. There’s a reason they call it March Madness; I was concerned, confused and chagrined this weekend to find a number of my friends wouldn’t budge from their apartments for anything, not for the beautiful sunny weather Saturday afternoon, not for green beer, not even to celebrate Billy Corgan’s birthday Sunday–because they were “too busy watching basketball.” Such anti-social, catatonic behavior is both unhealthy and slothful.

If the strange demeanor of my couch-dwelling friends disturbed me, I was even more distressed when I left my house (alone).

All weekend, downtown Madison was flooded with hordes of bizarre people–and I’m not talking about the usual hippies, Taco Bell protestors or cultish sorority girls.
Some of the influx of out-of-place people may have been due to the high school tournament (which, ridiculously enough, my friends found just as enthralling as its collegiate counterpart) going on downtown.

However, the vast majority of the congestion and annoyance downtown was due to the creepy alumni and other assorted weird men that descend on downtown every time there is any sporting event going on, even if it has nothing to do with UW. I’ve sworn to myself multiple times that I will never be one of these people.
It’s both pathetic and heart-breaking that these guys are so deluded as to think they still completely fit in at whatever bar used to be cool back when they went to school 30 or 40 years ago, most likely the Pub or the Kollege Klub. On the other hand, it’s hard to have sympathy for them when you consider they also think they’re still capable of picking up attractive college girls. I think most girls will agree with me that going to the bars during a tournament weekend is gross; no one likes being leered at by yucky old alumni who are the same age as students’ fathers.

Thankfully, UW-Madison students will be spared the worst of the carnage this year, since spring break happens to coincide with the NCAA tournament fans being in town.

I don’t have any problem with basketball in and of itself; blaming an innocent sport for the world’s evils would be silly and misguided. But honestly, people need to step back and reassess their unhealthy relationship with basketball before it gets even more out of control.

Kristin Wieben ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in political science and French.