So the Final Four in the 2018 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is all set. Congrats to all of the teams and players who made it to San Antonio. I don’t want to take anything away from them. It’s a remarkable accomplishment and they should all be proud of themselves.

With that being said…

It’s actually not even remotely close to as impressive as making it Memorial Day Weekend as a college lacrosse player. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that March Madness may be a little bit of a bigger “draw” in terms of notoriety and popularity. But it’s the truth. Making it to the Final Four in basketball just doesn’t take as much as it does to get there as a lacrosse team. And that’s for a couple of reasons.

Primarily #1) let’s think about when these two tournaments take place. The basketball tournament starts in March. For at least one week during the tournament, these schools are on spring break. So we’re in the middle of a semester with a week-long break at some point in the middle of the tournament. All I’m saying is that these kids don’t necessarily have to think about their classwork while they’re on the court balling out. But the lacrosse tournament? Well that shit doesn’t even start until May. You’re at the end of the semester there. At the beginning of the tournament, all of these kids are in the middle of taking finals. They are STUDENT-athletes. As you’ll see, the student comes before the athlete. So they’re either studying for exams or writing thesis papers or whatever. Regardless, for every minute they’re on the field for their tournament game, they’re probably spending at least an hour in the library grinding away on their schoolwork.

Right off the bat, you can see that lacrosse players are at a much higher disadvantage when it comes to performing at their highest in the most crucial time of the year. Secondly, you need to remember that college lacrosse isn’t as popular as college basketball. And with that lack of popularity comes the lack of players getting paid. In the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, pretty much all of these kids are getting paid. They’re getting cars. They’re getting shoes. They’re getting whatever they want. But college lacrosse players? They’re not getting paid shit. They just have to struggle through the season as poor college kids who don’t have boosters lining their pockets with stacks on stacks on stacks. It’s so much easier to focus solely on sports when the rest of your life is taken care of financially. College lacrosse players don’t have that luxury.

So yeah. Getting to the Final Four in March Madness is impressive. Don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s not. All I’m saying is that these kids have zero distractions outside of basketball during this tournament. Meanwhile, college lacrosse players have to get through finals weeks and they’re not getting paid in the process. You tell me who has a harder road to the Final Four. I’ll sit here and wait.

@BarstoolJordie