Brassil: All the games that I went to [on Sunday] were in the Alamodome. I was there from noon until 11:30 p.m. covering the different teams. They are long days because they need to be.
There must be more attention than normal to the news off the court.
Blinder: Our coverage this year is really unusual because we’re writing about basketball, and players and coaches, and a public health crisis, and a reckoning with the N.C.A.A. in how it treats its players. The morning after the Elite 8, the Supreme Court is hearing a case involving the N.C.A.A. So the morning after the games, I’ll be listening to oral arguments in the Supreme Court. You wake up and you feel like you’re already spinning plates, and you go to bed at night and you’re still spinning plates.
Witz: I’m writing about the virus through this basketball event, rather than covering this basketball tournament and seeing if it’s impacted by the virus.
Do you go into a three-week event with a list of story ideas?
Blinder: Everyone who has ever covered March Madness shows up with a list of stories in mind that gets blown up. This year, we’re playing it really loose.
Witz: Even more so than normal, you have to keep your eyes and ears open to everything that is going on around here. It’s a little bit of a man on the moon experience. Look, observe. There is this enormous 18-story banner of a bracket on a hotel down here. I just looked at that and said, “Are they going to do this, fill this in and update it?” They’re going out on scaffolding each morning.
One weekend in, what will you be watching for the rest of the tournament?
Witz: This is the year to see Cinderellas. It’s been such a chaotic season. I think they played 80 percent of the scheduled games. You think, “that’s pretty impressive., but that’s how normalized this has become. N.C.A.A. officials are patting themselves on the back for getting in 80 percent of the games. How is it normal that 20 percent were canceled? Iona had a 51-day pause during the season. What that’s lent itself to are these really unpredictable moments.
Brassil: I don’t think all the story lines are based on the games themselves. In San Antonio, I think a No. 1 seed is probably going to win it all, based on seeing Connecticut, Stanford, and South Carolina. The biggest thing that has come to light, since these tournaments were set up in controlled environments, is the inequity between men’s and women’s sports. When the teams got here, the weight room in San Antonio was a few weights and yoga mats. In Indianapolis, it was a full weight room for a team. The men got PCR coronavirus tests, and the women got rapid antigen tests, which are less accurate and produce more false negatives. They’re playing the same game but receiving different treatments.

Source: New York Times

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