Big Dance isn't always the biggest

Last week, thousands of fans packed into the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis to watch the Final Four — a ticket many of them had probably been dreaming of their entire lives.

However, a seat in the packed stands of the biggest showdown in college basketball isn’t on my list of must-see sporting events. And that’s not to say I’m not a major basketball fan. I’ve spent my life in the stands of hundreds of games.

But nailing down tickets to the Final Four is almost impossible through the lottery system, and the likelihood a team you follow will play in it the year you have an unbelievable stroke of luck is even less than one in 65.

And even if your team does make it to April, you just can’t try to spontaneously find tickets. Not when you’ve mapped out how to take in the world’s top 10 sporting events over the next 10 years — though the time constraints and the feasibility tend to shift. And not when you realize there are far greater competitions that often occur off American soil.

So here’s the 10 reasons why I skipped out on St. Louis:

1. The Summer Olympics: The oldest tradition in sporting history. Nothing tops having the world’s greatest athletes in one arena.

2. The Winter Olympics: Same as above. Except this time it’s colder, with ice and more intriguing sports — like bobsledding. Plus, with my pre-college pastime of figure skating thrown in the mix, I’ll be able to lament that I never practiced harder.

3. The World Cup: Real futbol. At the highest level. It’s nothing like you can see on the U.S. professional soccer scene.

4. Wimbledon: I’m not a tennis enthusiast. Heck, I barely understand the scoring system. But it has such an aura surrounding it that the tournament can’t be left off, especially because it’s one of the few premium sporting events to which you can still buy tickets on the day it starts.

5. The World Synchronized Team Skating Championships: Wipe the confused look off your face and stop laughing. It’s a sport. Twenty people on the ice at once performing elements while linking hands or arms. Not to mention they’re skating at dangerously high speeds — for proof, look at the scar on my right fingers that got sliced open during a botched maneuver, just one of my injuries during my six-year tenure. Chills run down my spine just imagining the grace and flow of the world’s best.

6. The British Open: I’m choosing this only because tickets to The Masters are impossible to come by, and I’ve been to Georgia before.Plus, after a no name from near my hometown — that is Ben Curtis, who has since dropped to 217th on the PGA money list — won in 2003, anything is possible at golf’s oldest major.

7. The World Series: America’s pastime. Need I say more?

8. The Penn Relays: The United States’ largest gathering of the world’s top runners and the fastest up-and-comers. The thrill of watching a 4x400 meter relay come down to the last 25 meters is always hard to beat — especially when it’s at this caliber.

9. Tour de France: Livestrong bracelets are everywhere. Might as well see what the fuss is all about.

10. Pipe Masters: Hawaiian sun, surfboards and surfer boys. Who wouldn’t want to be there? And don’t forget, some of the world’s biggest waves. I just won’t try to get on a board myself — drowning’s not part of my top 10.

So while a card for April’s dance might be a dream, in actuality, the rest of these beat the Final Four any day.

Or maybe I’m just bitter I didn’t have a ticket.

Contact Mary Duby at duby@unc.edu.