The best postseason in American sports kicked off in brilliant fashion Monday night, when a pair of buzzer-beaters (one to force overtime, one to win it) punctuated the Southern Conference championship. Chattanooga’s 30-foot game-winner produced the type of spontaneous joy that spawned the “March Madness” moniker (that the NCAA trademarked because, you know, there was money to be made) and whetted the appetite for more postseason pandemonium.

Who knows how many more moments like that will captivate viewers and race around the Twittersphere between now and April 4. Wright State erased a 16-point second-half deficit to punch its ticket with a one-point win in the Horizon final, and the All-Dakota Summit final was a war that ended with the South Dakota State Jackrabbits leaping into the bracket. Sports Nation latches on to college basketball in March, jumps all in for the one-and-dones and rides the fun for a month.

Unbelievable. Does it get any better than this? Seriously.

This. Is. March. cc: @JonRothstein @Nothing_ButNet x #GoMocs pic.twitter.com/60U8pFA2xE

— Chattanooga Mocs MBB (@GoMocsMBB) March 8, 2022

College basketball has created a postseason where almost all 358 teams are eligible for the national championship when conference tournaments begin, yet the manner in which it pares things down is not clumsy or confusing. People understand the automatic bid concept, the conference tournament set-ups, Selection Sunday and then the avalanche of NCAA Tournament games for three weekends as the field dramatically narrows to a Final Four and then a Final One. It is a calendar that builds to a dramatic conclusion as the regular season goes right into the postseason.

It is interesting to experience this blitz of college sporting goodness every year just two months after the most unsatisfying postseason on the American sports landscape. College football has been trying and failing to figure out a way to…