The NCAA is smothering the fun out of March Madness

This is objective truth: the two best sporting days of the year are the first two days of the NCAA tournament. Forget baseball’s Opening Day, forget the Super Bowl, forget Sunday at the Masters—there’s simply nothing finer than these two days on the sports calendar. It is as close to a foolproof profit-and-joy-generating enterprise as exists in America today.

So naturally, the NCAA is doing its best to smother the joy while preserving the profit.

The tournament isn’t even two days old yet, and already we’ve seen the NCAA cracking down on so many of the elements that make college basketball so much fun. Let’s run them down:

Butler Blue III, Butler’s bulldog mascot, was not permitted into the arena to watch his team. Come on. We’re not talking a live badger or wildcat here:

VCU’s famed band, The Peppas, wasn’t permitted to bring its electric guitar and bass. Seriously. That’s like telling a team to play without a center. Check out how the band absolutely destroys Toto’s “Africa.” You’re saying they need to turn this down?:

Add that to the NCAA’s infamous ban on any cups that don’t carry the proper NCAA logo:

This is March!!!! pic.twitter.com/yXtxn007M3

— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) March 17, 2016

And the decree that the women’s team from Florida, which freaking invented Gatorade, can only consume that Gatorade when it’s in Powerade bottles:

Due to NCAA sponsorships, Florida has had to place an asterisk on Powerade bottles that actually contain Gatorade. pic.twitter.com/s41Anv0vM0

— Paul Schwedelson (@pschweds) March 17, 2016

Doubtless, there are calm, reasonable, you’ll-understand-when-you’re-older explanations for each of these restrictions: live animals, excessive noise, corporate branding agreements, blah blah blah. Don’t care. What the NCAA is doing is crafting a slick, seamless, prepackaged entertainment endeavor … which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what a sprawling, rowdy, uncontrolled, hope-this-doesn’t-show-up-on-the-Internet college sports experience ought to be.

Look, in the grand scheme of life, the NCAA being a stickler for inane, nitpicky rules not only isn’t a big deal, it’s not even close to the worst sins the NCAA itself commits. (The same entity that cashes gargantuan rights contracts had to be guilt-tripped into allowing players to get an extra taco when hungry.) What all these restrictions on celebration and pageantry do is further lock down the atmosphere of college basketball, inexorably pounding the NCAA tournament into a homogenous, soft-edged, “family-friendly” mass of sporting goo … brought to you by your friends at Buffalo Wild Wings, of course.

Never underestimate the NCAA’s ability to wrench even the most popular of sporting events out of the hands of the fans and into the clutches of its corporate partners. Think March Madness is too big and too popular for even the NCAA to screw up? My friend, I’ve got six words for you:

New Year’s Eve College Football Playoff.

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