From the time football season ends, to the time baseball season begins, there tends to be a lull in the major sports world. ESPN starts chasing stories like LINsanity and the Saints bounty scandal, and there are still NBA and NHL games being played. However, in the midst of it all, the greatest time to be a die-hard or fair-weather fan of sports comes to fruition for three weeks, making for some of the most glorious few weekends of the entire year. This is March Madness.
The beauty of March Madness is the fact that you do not need to have been following the NCAA basketball season at all to find this entertaining. People of all sports and non-sports backgrounds fill out their brackets, some with immense precision, and some blindly out of a hat. Nonetheless, once that opening tip of the first game begins, every bracket has a chance to succeed. And even if you have no plans to fill out a bracket, there are still upsets and underdogs, buzzer beaters and cinderella stories, for people of all kinds to enjoy. Men and women, old and young come together to see which team can inch out a victory on a neutral court in the most fun-filled, unpredictable tournament known to man.
But really, one of the best parts about this whole event is that ESPN can't get it right. Oh, they'll try. And they'll cover. And they'll bring experts and clipboards and coaches to break down each and every aspect to a teams' offensive and defensive strategy to prove who can pull out as the victor. But every year, none of that matters. That's what is so hard to get through their skulls. Four #1 seeds have been in the Final Four once in the history of this great tournament, and yet every year, Dicky V and Digger Phelps have all the #1's back there for the glory. Get some balls. Take a risk. Last year, VCU (#11 seed) and Butler (#9 seed) were in the Final Four fighting for a chance to go to the national championship, and you know what, it was fucking awesome to watch. And only two people out of two million predicted those schools to be in that position together. Does that make them experts? No. But they are just as likely to get these teams right as those who live and die by guessing which team has the most high flying talent every night.
This year, when those brackets come out, I will fill mine out with the same routine as always, in hopes of getting every game right. And even when my bracket has gone to shit, I will still be sitting on my couch, smiling and cheering for some team I have never watched or cared about before that game, because that is just the amazement that is March Madness.
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