Madness! College Basketball Players Excited To Get Rings After Winning Conference Titles

I can not believe a college basketball team would celebrate winning a regular season title, with the NCAA Tournament upcoming! 

No, this is not an attempt to troll, it's time to make fun of the folks who think players shouldn't celebrate after grinding through a regular season in one of the toughest conferences in basketball. If you weren't paying attention to college basketball on Wednesday night, you missed another heavyweight fight in the Southeastern Conference. 

Thankfully, we've been getting these types of matchups all season long in the sport, not just in the SEC. Whether it's the Big Ten, ACC, WAC or even the OVC, college basketball has delivered this season with countless games that will play a huge factor in the upcoming NCAA Tournament. 

Put aside what happened around the country last night, and let's focus on Columbia, South Carolina. After a thrilling game in Tuscaloosa on Saturday night, all eyes were on the Vols and Gamecocks, playing for the conference championship. 

An arena filled to the brim with fans from both teams, this had the makings of another great Wednesday night on ESPN. And guess what? It delivered, with Tennessee once again winning a monster game on the road to capture its first regular season title since 2006. 

Pretty monumental moment, right? Sure, for most fans of college basketball, winning the regular season title is a perfect way to start March Madness, while also having the players celebrate the win, knowing they would get a title ring in the process. 

Oh, the humanity! A title ring. This can't be happening, right? These players certainly wouldn't celebrate a season's long goal, which is one of many, by pointing towards their ring finger. 

Ok, Here's Why We're Talking About Tennessee Celebrating SEC Title

I'm sure you're starting to wonder why i'm being so sarcastic right about now, so let's get to the culprit of this conversation. If you're a fan of the Dan Patrick show, which I certainly am, then you remember Andrew Perloff, also known as ‘McLovin’ before getting his own show. 

It turns out Perloff was not a fan of Tennessee players celebrating the win over South Carolina on Wednesday night by pointing to their ring fingers. The outrage! I know, it's hard to digest, but here's what Andrew had to say. 

You can see why I've been laughing at this tweet for the past sixteen hours. 

Does Andrew not think Tennessee's Dalton Knecht has bigger goals than winning the conference championship? That's up for you to decide, if he was either trolling or being serious, but it honestly read as if he was upset that Knecht was celebrating the win over South Carolina that clinched the regular season title. 

It could be that Dalton Knecht and the rest of the Vols' roster had gone through a grueling schedule, winning back-to-back games on the road to win. Or, maybe this was a guy who had started his career at the junior college level, made it to Northern Colorado off his skill, which then led to him playing for a Power-5 conference. 

Tennessee's Zakai Ziegler looks at his ring finger after beating South Carolina. Courtesy of Tennessee Athletics

I'm not going to act like Andrew doesn't know that grind of a college basketball regular season, which is why his post on social media was confusing. Who cares if a player is excited to get a championship ring? I guess Andrew is, and thought it was too much celebrating at the time. 

The outrage continued on Thursday, after college basketball and Tennessee fans went at Andrew for his opinion, leading the CBS host to throw this beauty of a tweet into the social media stratosphere. 

What's the difference between a player celebrating by pointing to his ring finger and a team cutting down the nets following the win? Because if that game was played in Tennessee, I can promise you the team would've climbed a ladder to cut down the net. 

I've seen some interesting takes when it comes to celebrations in sports, but this one is up there. I can only hope that Andrew was joking around, but he'll need to elaborate further. 

For the time being, this is one interesting opinion that was too funny to pass up. 

I'm actually rooting to see more players point to their ring fingers over the next few weeks of conference tournament time, just to see how far this goes.