Minutes after the 68-team NCAA Tournament field was set -- even before it was complete, actually -- the impossible, silly generalizations started. And, moments after that, the mindless contradictions followed.
It was an epidemic of cliches and contractions.
No matter the network or the outlet, everyone seemed to agree the Midwest Region was: "loaded," "stacked," or pick some powerful adjective. The message was clear and unanimous from almost every analyst and network: the region provided the most challenging path for its No. 1 seed, Wichita State, to reach the Final Four.
Clearly, there a many top teams in the region. That includes Michigan, Duke and Louisville as top four seeds behind the unbeaten Shockers. That's a group of national championship caliber teams, so there's no doubt about the quality in the region.
What college basketball fans heard most after that was just illogical and wrong, though.
Yes, it's an apparently strong region, but continually overstating the difficulty of Wichita State's potential path was silly. Sure, surging Louisville might have been under seeded at No. 4, but implying that the top seed would have to defeat every other team in the region was dishonest. It's not a round-robin tournament. No team needs to beat every other.
In fact, Wichita State could only face, at most, two of those other three top seeds if advances to the Final Four … and that's only if all the seeds hold.
Who knows, Kentucky (another strong team that does indeed make the region seem imposing) could upend the Shockers in the third round. Or maybe the top seed could lose its first game. Maybe one of those other top teams will falter.
No matter who advances, or how they advance, they will not do so by playing every other team in the region or tournament -- and the analysts know that. By overlooking the obvious, they do a disservice to listeners and viewers, and they do it constantly. Despite all the compelling and interesting information they do share, that bit of overstatement hampers their message.
Worst of all, in almost the next breath, those same analysts and same networks (and, really, pick any one of them), stress the urgency of the tournament and it's one-and-done format. They'll point to that as the attraction of the tournament -- any team could lose at any time. It's not survival of the fittest. It's simply survive and advance -- one game at a time, one team at a time.
Simply standing that, focusing on teams and trends and offering opinions about who could win and why would be spot-on analysis. Generalizing more than that, though, is not good analysis.
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