In Like a Lion, Out Like Ezra Pound

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament starts today, and to mark the occasion, here’s a clip of some fantastic soccer highlights interspersed with thunderous slam dunks. I’m not sure what the point is, but it makes sense in a poetic way, and it’s not a bad way to spend 4:10. Which, come to think of it, is probably the point.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the NCAA Tournament, it’s an annual event in which all the best American college teams, having spent the last five months asserting their dominance over all comers, travel to a gym in Tampa where they are systematically dismantled by tiny regional schools with names like Austin Peay, Weber State, and Princeton. The combination of frenetic teenage drama, last-ditch heroics, and seeing all your most cherished assumptions go up in flames can be exhilarating. It’s like the FA Cup crossed with the Wars of the Roses. Only it isn’t as violent as the FA Cup.