Syracuse’s Final Four loss on Saturday was an unfortunate end to an otherwise exciting run in the NCAA Tournament. A pummeling of Indiana and a nail-biter with Marquette are both wonderful memories from my senior year.

And if I forget about them, I can always buy a 2013 “Road to Atlanta” commemorative T-shirt, a Syracuse Sweet 16 commemorative T-shirt or a Syracuse Elite Eight commemorative T-shirt. And I can even buy 11 different Syracuse Final Four commemorative T-shirts to remind me of this experience.

There’s also caps, sweatshirts, probably yarmulkes, heaven knows what else. Souvenir Final Four chia pets? At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Does every event have to be accompanied by swaths of official swag? I’m pretty sure we got an email from the University bookstore a millisecond after Selection Sunday came to a close.

We took the March Madness apparel a little too far. Come tournament time, every store in Syracuse was packed to the rafters with all kinds of ceremonial gear. Sure, having a wildly successful Big Dance is something worth celebrating, but a Sweet 16 shirt? Florida Gulf Coast got to the round of 16. So did LaSalle. Making it to the third round probably shouldn’t be that big a deal for us, right?

Do we really need a billion versions of a Final Four shirt? How much money do we need to make off of these players who see no cut of the profits?

In the past few years, it seems like the Syracuse University shirt industry has gotten a little out of hand. The low point was the “WE ARE #1” shirt, when the men’s basketball team was at the top of the AP Top 25 poll briefly before losing to the first strong opponent. And who could forget the “Beat Georgetown” shirt that was supposed to celebrate our record-breaking Carrier Dome crowd, even though we got crushed.

At least we’re not as egregious as Louisville this year, which briefly put out a shirt in honor of sophomore guard Kevin Ware’s hideous leg injury following the game against Duke last week. Retailed for $25 a pop, the garment said “Rise To The Occasion” on the front and had Ware’s No. 5 on the back.

Media uproar caused Adidas and the Cardinals to cease sales of the shirt, even though they claimed proceeds were going toward Ware’s likely astronomical medical expenses.

Right, sure.

Make no mistake, the 2013 men’s basketball season was a wonderful roller coaster with a wide variety of highs and lows. Buying a shirt is absolutely worth it — take pride in the team’s wins his year, wins that often came against pretty long odds. I have my two “Pinstripe Bowl Champions” T-shirts, too — after all, I was at both games in Yankee Stadium. Buying stuff when your team wins is fun.

But the constant bombardment of new merchandise in the past few years is starting to feel opportunistic and exploitative. I hope we reach a tipping point someday and realize we’ve gone way too far with all the souvenir-hawking. There’s got to be a happy medium we can find.

Also, can we get rid of the “Ex-Cuse Us!” shirt? That’s literally the worst pun ever. Just awful.

Kevin Slack is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at khslack@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @kevinhslack.

Published on April 9, 2013 at 2:18 am