Basketball: 'The Onion' has fun with bracket-busting

There has been some back-and-forth in the comments section and between the site's writers over what is truly an upset ... in that vein, it is worth pointing out The Onion had some fun with all the lingo about Cinderella teams and bracket-busters that basketball fans hear in March.

"Cornell's basketball team had on Wednesday squandered most of its underdog goodwill by using every opportunity to explain that, given a finite set of possible outcomes and a sufficient period of time, the sheer quantity of opportunities available to accomplish an improbable outcome makes its achievement likely if not almost certain. "It'd be foolish to ascribe any of the properties of a pan-dimensional function space to the NCAA Tournament,' said Cornell center Jeff Foote, who has averaged 14 points per game in the first two rounds. 'However, bear in mind that we're not talking about a null probability space. With eight teams in the Ivy League and 65 in the tournament, you eventually run out of possible permutations. One could even make the case for historical inevitability; we won, so we were always going to win.' "

Any objection to people reflexively saying "upset" comes from despairing at how many CIS sports are covered fleetingly and superficially by traditional media (hence the term "drive-by media").

For instance, after eventual men's Final 8 champion and No. 5 seed Saskatchewan ousted No. 1 seed Carleton in the national semifinal, Huskies coach Greg Jockims was asked, "Is this the classic case of a team which doesn't know it's not supposed to win?" Professional courtesy forbid yelling, "Did you watch the game, pal?" given the Huskies had shot the ball better than the Ravens and come out slightly better than even in rebounding and loose balls. Jockims politely answered that his coaching counterpart had called the Huskies "the best team here" one night earlier.

Point being, sometimes traditional media devalue "upset" or "Cinderella story." They also go a little heavy on a particular team's reputation, but everyone is a little guilty of that sometimes. Never in a million years was "drive-by media" intended as a shot at anyone who's blogging on this league.

Related:
Cornell Drains Fun Out Of Cinderella Run By Explaining How On A Long Enough Timeline The Improbable Becomes Probable (The Onion)