Dealing with basketball overload

Is it possible to have too much basketball?
That may sound like heresy in Indiana. For that matter, during March it may sound like heresy anywhere in America.
The men’s NCAA tournament has the nation by the ears, distracting us all from tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear reactors, and crazy Libyan strongmen struggling to hang onto power.
Those other topics are all more important, of course. And our brains know that.
But there are brackets at stake and bragging rights.
And the madness of March pushes all those other — more legitimate — concerns aside.
This year, if you are a cable customer or have the right sort of dish set-up, the feast of roundball before us is more abundant than ever.
Remote controls all over the country are wearing out their batteries as they shift from CBS to TNT to TBS to TruTV, checking out game after game after game.
But like any feast, this one sometimes requires you to push away from the table.
As I write this, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m avoiding the tournament, at least for a little while.
From the other room, I can hear a substitution buzzer and the mutter-mutter-mutter of the color commentary. Somewhere, a mascot is mugging for a TV camera and making the Number One sign. Somewhere, a cheerleader is in midair. Somewhere, an amazing play is being replayed and replayed and replayed until it blurs together with all the other amazing plays.
But at the moment, I’m taking a break.
Some sort of basketball equivalent kicked in like tryptophan after Thanksgiving dinner.
My eyelids began drooping Saturday night, and I haven’t yet recovered.
Did I pick the number 4 seed or the number 7 in this game? I can’t remember. My bracket — posted back at the office with all the others — is lost in the jumble of all these games, all these buzzer beaters.
I dreamed about basketball last night, and I’ll probably dream about it again tonight.
TV commercials repeated endlessly on four different networks have begun to grind themselves into my consciousness despite my best efforts to ignore them. (Was that Alec Baldwin struggling with gout by riding on a hybrid-powered three-wheel motor-cycle? Or am I hallucinating?)
It’s time for a break, I tell myself, time to retire to my study and get on the computer. But then there’s the temptation to check ESPN.com.
I try to read, but there’s a cheer from the TV in the other room. I wander by casually and ask who’s playing.
It’s Duke and Michigan. Duke is leading, and I’ve got them in my Final Four.
Suddenly, focusing on a book or writing a column becomes more difficult. And I begin to wonder if the cure for too much basketball is a little more basketball.
You know, sort of a “hair of the dog that bit you” approach.
It sounds like the second half is about to begin.
I know my presence has absolutely no impact on the outcome, but a voice in my head tells me I need to be there. For the team. For my bracket.
Too much basketball? Nonsense. Not in Indiana. Not in America in March.
If I wrap this up now, I can still catch most of the second half.
And then there are all those games Sunday night.
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