The Final Four is college basketball’s one shining moment

As usual, this has been a thrilling March through March Madness.

There weren’t as many great games as we reduced the field from 68 to 16, but the four contests last weekend to decide the Final Four was enough excitement to last for an entire year—which is the whole point of college basketball.

The season has been reduced to a couple of thrilling weeks in March. For blue blood teams like North Carolina and Kentucky, the real excitement doesn’t begin until a single tournament loss renders the season a failure.

College football is headed toward that same model, going from just the bowl system to the BCS to the current four-team playoff. If the sport goes one step further, teams such as Alabama and Ohio State won’t worry about what happens on any given Saturday during the regular season.

Come Monday night in Phoenix, college basketball will experience its spectacular one shining moment. Let’s hope college football is never reduced to that.

For Threaded Fasteners, I’m Randy Kennedy with the Nuts and Bolts of the Game.