Prior to last night, I had never taken the time to watch Midnight Madness when the time came. I was more interested in diving into college basketball previews and glossing over last season's statistics.
To be honest, Midnight Madness never really interested me, probably, because my home team (Georgia) has never had a program relevant enough to pull off such an event. So, from a fan perspective, there really wasn't much of interest for me.
The only reason I had any interest in watching "The Madness" this year, was because I, like many, have an interest in seeing the best teams in action, even if they are playing themselves.
First of all the broadcast team of Adrian Branch, Andy Katz, and whoever the other guy was, was horrible. They offered little to no actually insight, just rambling on about the best player on each team.
The antics were equally bad. I, for one, had no interest in seeing UNC's players dress up as Elvis, or Tom Izzo ride in on an Indy race car (even though is was a good pun, seeing as the Final Four is in Indy this season).
In addition, the scrimmages had even less substance that I had envisioned. They were virtually no-contact, and jump shots where rarely contested, not to mention the amount of run out dunks, that got the students excited, but just made the game even sloppier.
By watching these practices, there is no way to tell if one of these teams is more prepared than the other.
Kentucky's Big Blue Madness was probably the most entertaining, seeing as the people in Lexington are completely nuts. Kentucky sold all its tickets to the event in less than 2 hours, and Calapari looked like Obama when he addressed a crowd full of his supporters.
It wasn't all bad, there were some nice touches to the program, like when ESPNU went to Fargo, N.D., to see the Bisons' Midnight Madness and some of the dunk contest dunks I saw were pretty exciting.
All in all thought it still wasn't satisfying. Sure these universities can get 20,000-22,000 people to show up for a bunch of cheesy skits and dance numbers, but for the college basketball purists, there is not much offered when it comes to Midnight Madness.