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BASKETBALL

Why Is March Madness Mark Armstrong's Favorite Sporting Event To Cover?

Last year Mark Armstrong who is the Sports Anchor for ABC 11 interviewed me via zoom for a story about my website www.hearthustlesports.com where I share my thoughts on college and professional sports that include Basketball, Baseball and Football and it went live on election night!

During the interview I changed the course of our conversation!

How?

By asking him a couple questions!

One of those questions was what is your favorite sporting event to cover?

His response was March Madness!

Recently, I got a little more in depth into that conversation!

How?

By conducting an email interview with Mark Armstrong where I learned why March Madness is his favorite sporting event to cover and some other things along the way like

How he is going to conduct interviews with coaches and players during March Madness this year?

How did not having the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament as well as the NCAA Tournament affect you personally as well as professionally last year ?

What are you looking forward to the most about this year's College Basketball postseason?

The NCAA Tournament is going to be in Indianapolis and like the NBA Playoffs were last year in Orlando they're going to be in a bubble. With that being said, Do you think the bubble format for this year's NCAA Tournament is going to be as successful as the NBA bubble was last year in Orlando? Why or why not?

His responses   I love the drama of each game, where an entire season is in the balance. You see the entire range of emotions on the court because of the stakes involved and you see who can rise to the occasion when the game is at its most crucial moments. Afterwards you get to see players at their most joyful or most downtrodden. It’s obviously much more fun to cover happy locker rooms, but you can’t appreciate one without the other.

     All interviews are done via Zoom

  I was personally disappointed to not be able to cover the ACCT and March Madness in a personal sense because it’s my favorite time of year professionally. However, I was most disappointed for the players and coaches who missed out on chasing those championships. I and everyone else was obviously aware that the pandemic was a much bigger deal than sports and the world needed to focus on the crisis at hand and other, more pressing issues.

 All I can say with certainty is that I hope it works out. Someone deserves to win a championship this year, given the sacrifices all the teams and players have made to make it through the season. Just today we learned that Duke’s season has ended prematurely because of a positive COVID test, so there is no bulletproof system. We just have to hope for the best.