Editor’s note: During the coronavirus shutdown, Arizona Daily Star staffers and contributors are answering burning sports questions.
Today’s question: If you could watch only one sporting event a year, what would it be?
BRUCE PASCOE, UA basketball reporter
The Olympics, especially the winter ones. The meshing of culture, pageantry and competition always makes up for whatever controversies there are. But if we’re talking about annual events, probably the Pac-12 Tournament.
It usually has little NCAA Tournament implications but is arguably more fun because it’s more economically accessible. It’s in Las Vegas every year, so fans can plan on it, and either drive there or buy cheaper advance-purchase plane tickets.
As a result, crowds are rowdy and enthusiastic — more so even than at the NCAA Tournament, where crowds can be up to half-neutral at times and create a sterile environment.
On the court, players and coaches are so familiar with each other that it’s interesting to see what adjustments are made.
JUSTIN SPEARS, sports producer
March Madness is practically a religious holiday in Tucson. If you’re into great storylines like me, Cinderella stories are always entertaining to follow.
I mean, what other sport has a 98-year-old chaplain as the most popular mascot? How many times will we ever witness a No. 16 seed upset a No. 1 seed?
Before UMBC stunned Virginia in 2018, No. 16 seeds were 0-132 against No. 1 seeds. Give me March Madness every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
ALEC WHITE, sports producer
From November through March, my life as a sports journalist revolves around college basketball and currently it’s the sport I enjoy watching most. The NCAA Tournament is the best sporting event, period. Nothing captivates the country for three weeks straight quite like March Madness.
The four-day agony of filling out my bracket from Selection Sunday until the round of 64 tip-off produced more stress (albeit, it’s a fun stress) than any test I took in school. The first four days of the tournament often aligned with my spring break as a kid, so I could just watch games all day. And of course, my bracket is usually in the trash by the end of the weekend, but I love every second of it.
My sophomore year of college, I traveled to Boise as the sports editor for Daily Wildcat for the Arizona vs. Buffalo game. That was my first time being at the tournament, and it was a surreal experience.
The unpredictability of March and rooting for a random mid-major like it’s your favorite team because you picked them in your bracket is why I’d choose the NCAA Tournament every time.
MICHAEL SCHMELZLE, sports producer
The national championship basketball game. The first title contest I was allowed to stay up to watch the entire game was a classic: Eighth-seeded Villanova shocking defending national champion Georgetown in 1985. The first Monday in April has had a special place in my heart ever since. The Monday night classics since then far outweigh the stinkers. For several years, the national title game was also held on MLB’s opening day, a 1-2 punch unmatched for any other sports day. And the best postseason in sports even goes out with a bang each year (well, except 2020) with “One Shining Moment.”
MICHAEL LEV, UA football and baseball reporter
My younger self would have said the NCAA Tournament. I’m tempted to say the Super Bowl, but the so-called “ultimate game” is often anticlimactic compared to many that precede it. You can’t beat playoff hockey for pure intensity and suspense, but that’s not a singular sporting event.
So I gladly settled on the Masters. It never disappoints. Although the visuals don’t have quite the same spring-is-finally-here effect on those of us who reside in warm-weather climes, it still warms the heart to see the azaleas blooming and hear the birds chirping.
Masters devotees know the course at Augusta National as if we were members; that familiarity adds a dose of nostalgia to the drama that unfolds on the back nine every Masters Sunday.
Sometimes when the final putt drops on 18 it’s sheer elation (see Sergio Garcia, 2017). Sometimes the putt drops and the tears flow.
When Tiger Woods won his first Masters in 1997 and bear-hugged his dad, I choked up. When he won last year’s Masters and hugged his kids and his mom, I choked up. I know I wasn’t alone.
The Masters is one of our last shared experiences. Unlike the current situation, it’s a joyful one.
GREG HANSEN, sports columnist
FILE — In this April 4, 2011, file photo, golf fans watch practice on the par three 16th hole during a practice round for the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga. Augusta National decided Friday, March 13, 2020, to postpone the Masters because of the spread of the coronavirus. Club chairman Fred Ridley says he hopes postponing the event puts Augusta National in the best position to host the Masters and its other two events at some later date. Ridley did not say when it would be held. (Tim Dominick/The State via AP, File)
I was fortunate to get to attend the 2005 Masters, the one where Tiger Woods’ Nike golf ball dramatically stalled on the lip of the No. 16 cup before gravity turned it into a birdie and, ultimately, another victory for Woods on the sacred Augusta National turf.
As much as I worshiped being at Augusta — as much as I loved being chosen in a media lottery, walking down Magnolia Lane, golf bag on my shoulder, allowed to play the course the next morning — I would rather watch the Masters on TV. The crowds at Augusta are overwhelmingly large. You miss almost all the action.
On TV, it is my one can’t-miss sports event of the year, every year. Four days of bliss. The commercial interruptions are infrequent and somehow, CBS’ Jim Nantz’s voice works far better at Augusta than in any other golf setting. The chirping birds and the dawn of spring and all of those flowers at Amen Corner are irresistible viewing.
Every year, CBS plays a one-hour special of Jack Nicklaus’ unforgettable 1986 Masters victory. I watch almost as if I don’t know the outcome. And every time CBS analyst Verne Lundquist says “Yes Sir!” to match Nicklaus’ heroics, or Nantz declares “The Bear has come out of hibernation!” I get the same chills up and down my back.
RYAN FINLEY, sports editor
Opening day. For years, baseball’s opening day — not the made-for-ESPN night game, but the full slate of action the following day — fell on a Monday, one of my off-days. I treated it like Christmas, opening a new cap in the morning (a tradition I started in college) and watching games all afternoon and evening.
When opening day moved to later in the week a few years ago, I’d took the day off work. Why? Hope. Opening day is the most optimistic day on the annual sports calendar. Every team is 0-0, the pace of baseball is new and appreciated, and summer is just around the corner.
For one day, anything seems possible.
PJ BROWN, contributor
The Arizona bench doesn’t like the call on their batter in the late going against Alabama in their elimination game on day three of the NCAA Women’s College World Series, Friday, Saturday, June 1, 2019, Oklahoma City, Okla.
That’s an easy one — the Women’s College World Series. This is my favorite event all year, and it’s on my bucket list to attend. It’s the best of the best competing — and even if your team isn’t in it, it’s easy to find a player and team to cheer for within the first few games.
BRYAN ROSENBAUM, contributor
There are certain sporting events that feel familiar and resist changing too much with the times. A game that keeps its traditions alive, but also its importance on the crowded calendar.
For a Midwestern kid, there was something special and depressing every New Year’s Day. College football season was nearing its completion, the festive season was on its final leg and the winter days were about to become dark and bleak.
And then, ABC would whisk you to this faraway land — Pasadena — where Keith Jackson would describe this incomprehensibly sunny and green locale “in the shadows of the San Gabriels.”
And many of us would think, what is this place?
For my money, there is no better — and more consistent — visual in sports than the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day, especially the twilight as the game drifts into the fourth quarter.
What other sporting event could have something like a purple sunset reflect so magnificently in Oregon’s chrome helmets like it did in this year’s edition?
Now, let’s be clear: “The Granddaddy of Them All” doesn’t overflow with too many happy memories — or any at all — for me, a Michigan fan and Arizona graduate.
There’s the story of my dad throwing his shoe at the TV when Charles White scored the “Phantom Touchdown” for USC in 1979, the year I was born. Or later, feeling helpless inside the stadium as Vince Young willed Texas down the field with his legs and Dusty Mangum sealed it with his foot.
Except those weird years in which — gasp — someone like Georgia or Oklahoma ends up there for the playoffs, the Rose Bowl typically features the best teams from the Pac-12 and the Big Ten conferences.
Just getting there is often all that matters for most of them — hello, Darnell Autry and the 1995 Big Ten champion Northwestern Wildcats.
Getting there was often all that mattered to me, too. Now no longer Midwesterners by locale, my parents and I mastered the trip in and out of that stadium, skirting parade traffic on the way in and gridlock on the golf course lot on the way out.
Usually, our day went much smoother than Bo Schembechler and Lloyd Carr’s did (insert Jim Harbaugh joke here).
And after every Michigan loss, we’d say “never again,” go grab a late dinner and have a laugh about why we do it. We’ll watch the next one on TV, we’ll say.
But who are we kidding? There are still memories out there to be made. We’re waiting on you, Jim.
BRETT FERA, contributor
In the “my first wish would be for 100 more wishes” region of the bracket, does the entirety of the NCAA men’s/women’s basketball tournament(s) count as “one” event? If so, done. No contest. Truthfully, I’d be just fine watching nothing but the Elite Eight, if forced to pare it down. Blue-bloods putting on clinics. Cinderellas inserting their schools into the public lexicon. Watching the fan bases of four teams practically explode over reaching the pinnacle of their sport (and maybe any sport) — the Final Four.
But, OK, choosing a month-long nationwide kermis that sports more than 130 total games between the men and women might just be cheating here, so I’ll go off script: My not-so-secret sports love affair with tennis has me sticking with the Wimbledon final.
Men’s or women’s? Surprise me. Both are great.
CAITLIN SCHMIDT, sports enterprise reporter
Season opener for the Indianapolis Colts, hands down. I love opening day in the NFL the way some people love MLB opening day. When my team isn’t playing, I’m flipping back and forth between as many other games as I can, trying to gather intel for upcoming Colts games.
I’m not a fantasy football person because I want to give the Colts my full focus throughout the season and never be tempted to root against them. The years when Peyton Manning went to the Broncos were difficult, to say the least. It felt odd to be a two-team woman, but not as odd as the 2011 season, when Manning didn’t play at all.
JOHN MCKELVEY, contributor
The Super Bowl. Duh.
