Kvelve's Comments: Real sports at home

The names are familiar for sure. I know I’ve seen these teams on TV for years.

And yet this year, not really sure why, I have not watched a minute of what was always one of my favorite sports events of the year, the NCAA basketball festival known as March Madness. 

It dawned on me the other day that I was missing something in my sports world. 

And then on one of the Roku channels I watch, sometimes too much, it occurred to me that the missing something was men’s college basketball. 

No afront to the women basketball teams; I like watching that too. 

But this year, I have had no interest in March Madness. I found out just this past Saturday via a promo commercial that the four teams who made their way to the Final Four were Duke, Florida, Houston and Auburn. 

They were all top seeds in the four-tournament regional qualifying games. And by the time this column gets delivered on Tuesday, a winner will have been crowned among those four. 

As I think about it, I have not watched other big American sports in the past year, at least not to the extent I used to glue myself to the TV screen. 

I missed the World Series this past year. I watched most of the Super Bowl this year, but not the college national championship, other than the FCS championship game which featured my beloved MSU Bobcats v. North Dakota State. 

And, mostly and sadly because of woke and political issues, I did not view more than a few minutes of this past Olympics. 

Then it dawned on me. 

My missing these events was for three main reasons: 

“Yankees” win syndrome. This condition was big several years ago when the Bronx bombers were wrapping up World Series after World Series in such dominating fashion that they became boring to large numbers of fans. Duke is a constant participant in the Final Four to the point of creating that same ho-hum feeling. 

Changes to the games. I did not like the fact college athletes are being paid. Don’t get me started on that one. 

And the most likely culprit of all in my apathy to TV sports, other than too much money in these events, is my deep dive into local high school sports as a sports writing dude for these two newspapers (the Valley Press and Mineral Independent). 

Since I began covering local sports played by athletes who participate because they love playing the games and feel it’s cool to represent their school, I have been consumed by this last bastion of “real” sports. 

I most likely did not watch the NCAA final this past Monday evening, likely because I was covering the Plains-Thompson Falls softball showdown in Thompson Falls. 

Priorities, sans politics and mounds of cash. 

Enjoy it now kids. You will have these memories for the rest of your lives, and no one will have paid you insane amounts of money to play.