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Gyms across the country are filled with the sound of squeaking sneakers and wailing whistles. Coaches holler and players scramble. Let the mad dash for 65 begin!

Other than the ceremonial blood-lettings of the 2K Sports Classic (benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer, a worthy and admirable cause), the season has yet to truly jump-start.

As many authors across the web have discussed over the last week or so, the college basketball season doesn't open with quite the bang as its football brethren. (But then, basketball ends with a much more significant bang than college football, which for its part generally just makes everyone angry, so we'll call it even.)

What is needed is a marquee opening tournament. What about taking the Final Four from the previous season and matching them up in two tipoff games? That would spark interest early on for the mass-media types who seems to think that the season starts once the Super Bowl ends.

Just to keep things interesting, you could mix up the semifinal matchups from the year before. Doesn't North Carolina-Michigan State and Villanova-UCONN sound a lot better than California-Murray State or Syracuse-Albany?

Alas, this makes perfect sense, so it won't be adopted by the NCAA or big-school schedule makers, who would prefer to rack up the crowd-appeasing wins (or not) over lower division teams with ambiguous names like Youngstown State and Gardner-Webb.

Nevertheless, games are games, and we will soon be entering into a full set of pre-conference tournament fixtures and ESPN's annual Feast Week to tide us over until the scintillating beginning of conference play at the turn of the New Year.

After all, who doesn't like eating a turkey leg while devouring the Maui Invitational, complete with all of those awkward cutaway shots of coaches surfing and roaming the sidelines in over sized Hawaiian shirts?

So rev up the pep bands , the rowdy student sections , the controversy , the buzzer-beaters , and the gaudy uniforms. Let's play some hoops!

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