Bruce Springsteen, the patron saint of sportswriters, for his debut album in 1973 penned a lyrically bewildering song called “Blinded By the Light” — later a much bigger hit for British prog rock band Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
One of Springsteen’s lyrics reads: “With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground.”
And that, college basketball fans, is an apt description of tens of millions of March Madness brackets loudly imploding into worthlessness as the upsets mount and the powerhouses in both the men’s and women’s tournaments find themselves turned back into midnight pumpkins. Cinderella gets to keep partying while the ball literally is over for others.
And while perhaps brutal for personal pride or desperate gamblers, the NCAA Tournament chaos has helped make for solid television viewership.
The men’s first round, featuring literally diminutive Fairleigh Dickinson shocking top-seeded Purdue on Friday to become only the second No. 16 seed to knock off a No. 1 in tournament history, averaged an aggregate 9.2 million viewers on CBS, TBS, TNT, truTV and March Madness Live, per the NCAA.
Fairleigh Dickinson’s upset averaged 4.37 million viewers, a first-round record for Turner’s college hoops broadcasts on cable since…
