March madness replaced by craziness
Published September 16, 2016
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, September 14, 2016.
March Madness is overrated. Just a bunch of attention on some of the best college athletes in the country playing NCAA championship basketball games in our state, with a bunch of screaming fans and their money following them. Ditto, albeit to a lesser degree, for NCAA soccer golf, tennis, lacrosse and baseball championship games.
The news that the NCAA is pulling those games for the 2016-17 season in protest of House Bill 2, the law that Gov. Pat McCrory says keeps our public bathrooms safe, should not worry us one bit. Like Kami Mueller, the state GOP spokeswoman, said: “This is so absurd it’s almost comical. I genuinely look forward to the NCAA merging all men’s and women’s teams together as singular, unified, unisex teams. Under the NCAA’s logic, colleges should make cheerleaders and football players share bathrooms, showers and hotel rooms.”
Yes! We meet the world with perfect logic, or at least our own logic. Like the governor says about those phantoms creeping into the wrong bathrooms: “Not on my watch.”
And not on his watch will we worry about the loss of a little March Madness when we’ve got our perfectly fine madness game right here, one that began, coincidentally enough, this past March with a pace faster than any of those NCAA players we don’t need anyway. McCrory and legislative leaders pushed HB2 through in a day, and now we’re reaping the madness of his new game, one meaner, louder and with a longer season than NASCAR even.
So what that all those businesses, rock stars, states and other organizations have cancelled events in our state? We don’t need them anyhow. Nor did we need the NBA All-Star Game in the governor’s old ’hood of Charlotte.
Eggheads say the final tally could hit the billions of dollars, but we know they’re wrong because the governor’s administration has said so. It has said the economic impact will be minimal. So there.
In the meantime, we’re loving our own game of madness, howling back at our critics. It’s us against the world, but the governor has our backs. Really.
