March Badness

It should go without saying by now that the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is the greatest sporting event every year. Even though this year, the Illini got a terrible draw in the seeding and were bounced in the second round with the help of some shady officiating, you can't argue with the fact that overall, this tournament has been one of the most exciting ever.

But I'm not writing this entry to complain about the Illini, or even talk about the games. I just wanted to point out one drawback I noticed to the almost nonstop college basketball coverage of the last few weeks.

How can 63 games (64 if you count the play-in game) in 3 weekends ever be a bad thing, you might ask? Well, the basketball itself is great. But listening to all the play-by-play announcers, color guys, and studio analysts has got me talking all weird now.

Before March, whenever I wanted to describe something positive, I used to only use adjectives like "cool", or "great". Sometimes maybe "excellent" or "sweet", too, but that's about it.

Now, after listening to Jay Bilas, Dick Enberg, Billy Packer, Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg, Seth Davis, Greg Gumbel, and everyone else on CBS or ESPN talk about the games for hours on end, I'm catching myself using their words like "spectacular", "terrific", "tremendous", "outstanding", or "incredible".

And no, I am not happy about it. I know it makes me sound like a fruitcake, but I can't seem to stop myself from using those stupid words. Like I got a new cell phone recently, and when someone asked me how I like it, I had to seriously fight the urge to say something like "this phone is outstanding!". Or last week on a day when it was sunnier and warmer than usual, I think I told a coworker that "the weather is terrific outside".

If any of you catch me using any of those words in conversation, feel free to kick me in the shin.