The un-madness of the Madness

And now -- as soon as a couple weeks, perhaps -- we get the answer to a question over which philosophers have puzzled since time immemorial.

In other words: If the NCAA Tournament falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?

Or, you know, something like that.

Something like that is the worst-case scenario, apparently, as March Madness looms in the shadow of COVID-19. Our Only Available Impeached President may be soft-soaping the looming coronavirus epidemic in the interests of political expediency (Sure, you vulnerable old folks, hop on that airplane, because heaven knows we can't have OOAIP's re-election, or the airline industry, jeopardized by some measly lil' bug), but if this thing spreads the way it has elsewhere, containment measures may be necessary.

In Italy, that has meant quarantining the entire north of the country. Here in the U.S., that could mean quarantining March Madness -- i.e., having Da Tournament play out in empty arenas and testing every member of the competing teams, assuming enough accurate tests are available.

This is the NCAA's worst-case scenario plan, according to a Wall Street Journal interview with the NCAA's chief medical officer Brian Hamline. That there is currently no contingency that would actually cancel the tournament should surprise no one, because no matter how bad this gets, there's simply too much money at stake. And college athletics are almost solely about the Benjamins, being as corporate an enterprise as the NFL or the NBA or Microsoft.

So full speed ahead with Da Tournament. Farcical as it would be.

That's because the Madness without full-on human-generated madness is no madness at all, as anyone with an ounce of common sense understands. What it is, is noon hoops at the Y. You can stay home and watch it on TV, and the TV suits would be fine with that because they're paying goo-gobs of dough to air it. It's why canceling the whole deal is not even a last resort.

To heck with that. Play on, you worker bees, and let 'em eat the esthetics.

After all, what's One Shining Moment against a whole pile of shining coinage?