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" Are you the kind of man who goes to a strip club and pretends that all the girls are living out their dreams? No? Then don&amp;#039;t be that kind of college basketball fan.  March Madness is a titillating enterprise, no doubt, but it&amp;#039;s also a multi-billion dollar cash business built on forced free labor. For many years the NCAA was able to obscure that fact in the minds of fans, through a steady diet of feel-good stories and lofty talk of the untarnished nobility of the student-athlete, but word is getting out. A growing chorus has attempted to highlight the gross disparities underpinning the college sports market, from Taylor Branch&amp;#039;s epic college sports beatdown, to Joe Nocera&amp;#039;s pay-the-players treatises, to former UCLA star Ed O&amp;#039;Bannon&amp;#039;s very viable antitrust lawsuit making its way through the courts. But what about us? Can we still indulge in March Madness, even if it is sort of the inhumanely raised meat of sports? Do we go completely vegan and turn off the TV in the name of economic justice? Perhaps so. But I propose that we can still enjoy this beautifully marbled bone-in rib eye, without being completely insensitive to the degradations of the abattoir. Here&amp;#039;s how. Rule 1. Enjoy the tournament without fetishizing it. This means don&amp;#039;t go on and on about how &amp;quot;it brings husbands, wives, families, frat houses, entire offices and $10 bills together,&amp;quot; or proffer laughably dubious claims such as: &amp;quot;dogs, cats and even sea lions from the Houston Zoo can become one with it.&amp;quot;  Rule 2: Beware wanton application of the &amp;quot;I&amp;quot; word, especially when it&amp;#039;s lodged into paragraphs like this one: &amp;quot;March Madness never goes on strike and never gets locked out. Can the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL say the same? The integrity of a college hoops regular and postseason isn&amp;#039;t compromised by work stoppages.&amp;quot; (Yes, of course, the &amp;quot;integrity&amp;quot; of a suppressed and unpaid workforce.) Rule 3: Bear in mind Manti Te&amp;#039;o and all the things we learned about the athletic-media industrial complex two months ago. Just because the sports writing business rammed itself into a 50-car pile up in South Bend, Ind., chasing after a football player&amp;#039;s imaginary girlfriend, doesn&amp;#039;t mean it won&amp;#039;t tail hard after the bumper of any potential redemptive athlete narrative on the road to Atlanta. So beware the specter of Lennay Kekua, in all her mutated forms. Rule 4: Banish the term, &amp;quot;student-athlete.&amp;quot; This is not a term of endearment or nobility: it is a Newspeak coinage that delegitimizes the college athlete as a prospective wage earner. Refer instead to &amp;quot;athletes&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;players&amp;quot;\u2014it won&amp;#039;t diminish your experience; and it&amp;#039;s not nearly as condescending. Rule 5: Root for the prospective early NBA draft entrants. Celebrate an athlete&amp;#039;s ability to make some real money off his talents, even if belatedly. And hit the mute button on the television when some basketball fussbudget talks about what a shame it is to the college game that so many players are leaving prematurely. Rule 6: Relish the fact that there are so many impossibly close games.  Rule 7: Lebron James approves of Marshall Henderson&amp;#039;s shenanigans. And so should you. John Wooden can spin in his grave.  Rule 8: And the avant-garde foul calls the NCAA tourney refs would never make in the regular season.  Rule 9: And Charles Barkley, who clearly doesn&amp;#039;t watch college basketball until the second week of February.  Rule 10: There&amp;#039;s no better sports music than the CBS March Madness theme music (except for the old version, which was about 25 percent better).  Rule 11: Feel the heartfelt joy of that comes with watching Davids (Harvard, Coastal Carolina, La Salle) sneak by supposed Goliaths (New Mexico, Georgetown, Kansas State). And the sadistic pleasure of watching Goliaths (Louisville, Miami, Florida) kick the shit out of Davids (North Carolina A&amp;amp;amp;T, Pacific, Northwestern State). Rule 12: Stop bitching about your bracket. You knew it was going to get fked when you made it. Rule 13: Alley-oops (and their attempts) are always commendable. Even when they are unwise. Rule 14: Turn up the volume for Doug Gottlieb. Finally, someone is publicly passionate about moving-screen violations.  Rule 15: Savor those &amp;quot;One Shining Moment&amp;quot; bits for what they are, not what they try to obscure.  Rule 16: Most importantly, resolve to be March Mad without being March Dumb. Let that be your tournament challenge. And enjoy the show. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a20834/enjoy-march-madness-responsibly/>