32 Reasons To Watch 32 Games

There are a lot of days that are notable on the annual sports calendar. Opening Day, Super Bowl Sunday, the Kentucky Derby, the day that Chris Carpenter suffers his inevitable season ending arm injury, but the first 48 hours of the NCAA Tournament generates an atmosphere unlike any other.

If ever there was a totally justified reason to preempt the Price is Right on CBS (we’re pretending Bob Barker never retired), it’s when multiple single-elimination basketball games are being played simultaneously on a weekday afternoon. 

Between the brackets, the gambling, the cinderellas, the buzzer beaters, the fact that the games you’re seeing will be set to “One Shining Moment” in a few weeks, the excuse to start drinking at 11:00am, there are hundreds of reasons a sports fan should leap out of bed on the first Thursday of the NCAA Tournament. 

But just in case you’re having trouble motivating yourself to watch, we’ve pared those hundreds of reasons down to 32, one for each game being played over the next two days.

So get out of bed, pick up a Burger King Bacon and Egg Croissanwich, grab your bracket and start preparing for this afternoon.

Watch Louisville—Morehead St., if, like every other man in the nation, you’re interested to find out more about this state they call, “More head”.

Watch Ohio St.—Siena, if a No. 9 seed over an No. 8 seed was the big “upset” you had in your bracket.  You’ve got as good a chance of seeing it here as anywhere else.

Watch Utah—Arizona, if you want to watch the team that nearly caused an all-out brawl at the ESPN studios between Arizona detractors Dick Vitale and Joe Lunardi and Arizona supporters Digger Phelps and Jay Bilas.  For the record, we’d put our money on Phelps and Bilas. Lunardi looks like he took a beating on the playground as a kid. 

Watch Wake Forest—Cleveland St., if you like guys with punctuation in their first name.  Between the two teams, we’ve got J’Nathan Bullock, D’Aundray Brown, L.D. Williams, and Al-Farouq Aminu.  Sadly Ja!Ronald De@ngel.o& didn’t make the Cleveland State roster this year.

Watch West Virginia—Dayton, if you want to see a head coach walk up and down the sidelines wearing a suit that Bobby Knight says makes him look  like a giant stick of butter.###MORE###

Watch Kansas—N. Dakota St, if, like most Mizzou fans, you’ve convinced yourself that Kansas has a legit shot at losing simply because North Dakota State shares the same nickname as the Bucknell team that upset them two years ago (Bison).  Hey NDSU does have the highest scoring player in the tournament (Ben Woodside; 23 PPG).  Maybe they have a shot.

Watch Boston College—USC, if you’re a fan of teams that sign their recruits before they’ve ever played their first high school game and then celebrate by giving the recruit’s dad a job as “Director of Basketball Operations”.  Seems like its on the up-and-up. 

Watch Michigan St.—Robert Morris because if nothing else, it will be fun listening to the announcers butcher Robert Morris players’ names like Bateko Francisco, Mezie Nwigwe, and Ifeanyi Eihrim.  That last name looks like a crappy draw in a game of Scrabble.

Watch UConn—Chattanooga, if you just can’t get enough of those witty announcer jokes about UConn center Hasheem Thabeet’s last name. You got Thabeet!  Get it? It was the name of a song by the Go-Go’s.  Bet you Bob Carpenter gets it.

Watch BYU—Texas A&M, if you’re interested in supporting a school named after a guy who had 55 wives.  Sort of impressive if you ask me.

Watch Purdue—Northern Iowa, if you’re desperately hoping to see a flashback clip of Gene Keady’s hair in action.

Watch Washington—Miss. St., if you consider yourself a purist when it comes to the spelling of the name “Isaiah Thomas”. Washington’s point guard threw in the additional "a" that a certain former New York Knicks executive brashly ignored. 

Watch Marquette—Utah St., just in case Marquette decides to pay tribute to the mid-'80s MLB by breaking out their hideous powder blue uniforms with the rainbow strips along the sides. 

Watch Missouri—Cornell because Mizzou star DeMarre Carroll goes by the nickname “Junkyard Dog” and for the love of god, you owe it to the man on the right to root for Carroll out of respect for the name if nothing else.

Watch Cal—Maryland because Maryland’s Greivis Vasquez leads his team in scoring, rebounding, assists, steals, turnovers, three-pointers made and presumably love notes from coach Gary Williams. 

Watch Memphis—CS Northridge, if you want to watch Memphis score their 28th victory this season over a team ranked below No. 50 in the RPI.  Yep, everyone is disrespecting you again, Calipari.

Watch Pittsburgh—E. Tenn St. because surely E. Tennessee State’s conference schedule filled with powerhouses such as Lipscomb, S.C. Upstate, Florida Gulf Coast, and Kennesaw St. will have prepared them for Pittsburgh. 

Watch Oklahoma St—Tennessee because you never know when Bruce Pearl is going to show up on the Tennessee bench like this. 

Watch Florida St—Wisconsin if you want to see exciting end-to-end action between this season’s 156th ranked scoring offense and the 252nd ranked scoring offense.  Do yourself a favor and take the under. 

Watch Xavier—Portland St. because Portland State has a fighting chance if for no other reason than the fact that they shoot an average of 26 three-pointers a game and have six players who make them at over a 35 percent clip. 

Watch UCLA—VCU, if you want to see one of the most stunning set of negburns on any coach in the country.

Watch Villanova—American, if you want to see the school that had the stones to name itself “American” without consulting with the public first.  Did we get to vote on that?

Watch Texas—Minnesota, if, while you’re laying on your couch watching games next to a bag of White Castle cheeseburgers, you suddenly feel some sort of subconscious connection with a grown man that is called “Tubby”. 

Watch Duke—Binghamton, if, like the rest of America, you hate Duke enough to root against them even when they’re playing a team called “Binghamton.”

Watch UNC—Radford because, lets face it, you don’t want to miss out on the 458 camera shots of Ty Lawson’s toe.   

Watch LSU—Butler, if you want to see Butler win one for those who carried the same job title with pride, names like Geoffrey from Fresh Prince, Mr. Belvedere, Alfred from Batman, Coleman from Trading Places, Lurch and Wadsworth from Clue.  Butlers rule.

Watch Illinois—Western Kentucky, if you love rally towels enough to support a team that has one as its primary logo. Seriously, Western Kentucky, you couldn’t do better than a freaking rally towel? I suppose when your mascot is a giant red blob, there isn’t much else to do with it.

Watch Gonzaga—Akron because Akron has a kid who calls himself “Humpty” Hitchens.  Sorry, Gonzaga, we’ve got to root for Humpty. 

Watch Arizona St.—Temple, if you’re in the holiday spirit and feel like pulling for a dude named Dionte Christmas, who leads the Owls in scoring with over 19 points per game.

Watch Syracuse—Stephen F. Austin, if, like me, you have no freaking clue who Stephen F. Austin is or why he has a city and a university named after him.  Maybe the announcers will throw us a bone.

Watch Clemson—Michigan because, if you thought Portland State shot a lot of threes, Michigan was 4th in Division I with 859 three-point attempts. Albeit their only 11th in three-pointers made, which means one thing, tons of rebounds. Who doesn’t like watching a rebounding battle? 

Watch Oklahoma—Morgan St., if you want to hear announcers verbally fellate a college student named Blake.

If that isn’t reasons enough to take the day off work and proudly be a sports bum on this glorious day, we don’t know what will.