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For a few months we were living the dream, watching all of the enlightening cable TV we could handle for the bargain price of free. Apparently the cable company didn't see the situation to be as much of a godsend as we did though, and a representative showed up one day not too long ago to speak with our JA and suddenly the cable was gone. FOX is gone, leaving us (gasp) without "The OC." As if that wasn't enough to drive people to fill out transfer applications or start the latest chapter of the crazy Kool-aid club, ESPN is also out of commission, depriving us of countless Texas Hold'em tournaments and World's Strongest Man re-runs.
In the name of survival, a set of bunny-ears has been donated to the common room and is perched halfway out a window, desperately flailing for any sort of signal we can pick up. In spite of our efforts, we have been left with only a single channel as we enter the second half of the semester. This would ordinarily be heartbreaking, but proving yet again that there is a God, that one channel is CBS.
What's so cool about CBS, you ask? Well, without even going into the value of being able to watch "Survivor," "Joan of Arcadia" and a slew of "CSI"'s, the answer is college basketball's March Madness. No sport bombards its fans with more dramatic finishes and instant classics in a single month. No matter where you're from, there is a national contender in your general vicinity, the bandwagon of which you can scramble aboard once they clear the first two rounds. No tournament offers its fans such tremendous opportunity for bragging rights and saying "I told you so," since a successful run in a March Madness pool is easily the most satisfying low-stakes gambling victory a person can experience. On top of that, the legendary and elusive "perfect bracket" is the absolute Holy Grail for the know-it-all in every sports fan.
Browsing CBS's sports schedule for the upcoming Championship Week and then the NCAA tournament, I couldn't help but feel like we'd conquered the cable company. They can keep TBS's non-stop comedy block, ESPN's games of trick shot horse between two pool players in tuxedos, the Lifetime network as a whole and the rest of the cable empire. For the next month, we have the only channel that we need. The greatest spectacle in sports has arrived (admit it, Pats fans…you don't get fired up for Super Bowls anymore) and we can watch it in its entirety. This is an inspiration to cheapskates everywhere. Looking forward to this month makes me want to never pay for cable, knowing that once March rolls around, those twelve bags of peanut M&M's are worth being reduced to one channel. The bottom line is: if you aren't yet, you'd better get fired up for March Madness - there's nothing else on.