SPORTS: I Miss Jack

Part of the delight the past few years in watching March Madness has been the always entertaining presence of Jack Armstrong on the simulcasts for SportsNet. The various hosts SportsNet used for their broadcasts weren't any great shakes, but the Happy Irishman, ex-coach of Niagara University and current Toronto Raptor analyst, always seemed to make the interludes when cutting to the studio interesting and informative. And if you smiled a bit, so be it.

Cut to this year and the new home of the Canadian rights to the NCAA Basketball Championships, The Score. Instead of Jack, we have one day of Rick Majerus. Some Sherm Hamilton, too. But negating any value they might provide is the idiotic talking head known as Tim Micallef. I'm told he's a good guy. But his performance just sets my teeth ajar.

It's silly of me to criticize anybody else's appearance, since I'm hardly Paul Newman myself. But come on, a soul patch? He's 20 years too old to try that desperate cry for attention. It looks silly. Add that to a voice that's annoying enough to cause epileptic fits and a patter that he stole whole clothe from Van Earl Wright, and then screwed it up. Given to double entendres and tortured puns, he can't JUST give you the information. I imagine he considers himself quite the poet. It's a lonely place, his mind.

And tonight, they even gave up on Majerus and Hamilton. Result? Lots of mumbling to himself, wrong information and the hope he's too tired to come back on the weekend. I don't much like Adnan Virk, but he knows basketball and he's only one-quarter as annoying as Micallef.

Actually, it's been a bad tournament for the broadcasters. Dick Engberg's been wrong a record-number of times already (two, I think). Jim Nantz hasn't performed up to par. And the CBS studio crew has been ... wrong. Seth Davis spectacularly so.

Which is too bad, because this had been an entertaining tourney to date, helped in no small part by the unprecedented sweep of the Tampa sectional by lower-seeds (12's and 13's at that) today (well, Friday). I'm gone in my pools. Even if I hit the final eight, the damage done Thursday by the USC and Arizona losses have me with no chance to win anything. Place? Sure, but there's only one prize. Still, I'm enjoying the roundball, now that the pressure is off.

You HAD to love Stephen Curry's bravura performance in leading Davidson past Gonzaga. And Roger Pelphrey did the best job I've seen in coaching in a long time, shepherding the Arkansas Razorbacks past the Indiana Hoosiers. Later that same night, Jay Wright, a normally outstanding coach, almost cost his Villanova Wildcats an upset win over Clemson. His kids bailed him out. No wind sprints for them, next practice. Seth Davis DID get the Siena upset correct, which was the biggest surprise of the day to me. It wasn't close against a Vandy team that blows hot and cold. And how sad for UConn that A.J. Price bunged up his ankle, leading to defeat at the hands of upstart San Diego. Still, the Toreros took advantage and good for them.