Have Mercy

As many of you already know, I watch the NCAA tournament pretty religiously. It's my favorite time of the year (yes, I rank it even above the Super Bowl). There's nothing better to me than filling out a bracket then sitting down in front of a TV screen and laptop to watch every single game. That being said, a couple of games this year have me wondering if we can, in the words of Jesse Katsopolis, have mercy.

The first blow-out loss of the season was a short handed Akron team versus VCU. Prior to the conference tournament Akron had their best player suspended, then as if that wasn't enough, the team was decimated by a flu bug just hours before their first round match-up. These two factor led to the Zips being handed a crushing 46 point loss. The Zips actually managed to lose by more point than they were able to score (42).

The same could be said for our next unfortunate team, the Montana Grizzlies. They ran up against a devastating Syracuse team, coming off of a heartbreaking loss in their conference championship game to the overall number one seed Louisville Cardinals. The Montana team didn't have the bad luck of being riddled by illness, they were just severely over-matched and could only muster 34 points to Syracuse's 81.

These two games have forced me to ask, can we institute some sort of "mercy rule" in these games? At some point, shouldn't we say that enough is enough and let these schools leave with some sort of dignity? The NCAA tournament is supposed to be a point of pride for these schools, something they can brag about during their next recruiting season. But how proud can you really be coming off of being blown-out by nearly 50 points?  And this isn't even mentioning the 68 point victory for the UConn women in their first round match in the NCAA Women's tournament.