Why We Love March

People jump on the NCAA train each March

Each year come mid-March, it seems as if everyone from your grandmother to the Prime Minister of Malaysia is a college basketball fan.  By the morning after Selection Sunday everyone has analyzed the brackets to determine their Final Four picks, and everywhere you go there are debates over sleeper teams and potential first round upsets.  The office bookie is more popular than ever, and come Thursday at Noon, it seems employee production is down about 80%.  Most of us relish in the predictions, betting, and game-watching that comes along with being a fan of the NCAA tournament, but unfortunately there are a few people out there who think the rest of us are crazy.  Have you ever tried explaining the essence of March Madness to someone who just doesn’t get it?  There’s nothing more frustrating than when your non-sports-fan wife/girlfriend/Mother/roommate walks in from work on that first Thursday afternoon to see you sitting on the couch amid empty pizza boxes, five brackets and two TVs, and asks, “What’d you do today?”  As if there was any question what you did, you reply, “watched games,” and then proceed to tell her about all the upsets and buzzer beaters you just witnessed as she rolls her eyes and walks out of the room.  You think to yourself, “she just doesn’t get it.”  (Wait till you tell her about the full slate of games scheduled for tonight, tomorrow, and all weekend).  That’s because March Madness is not just a sporting event, but an intense experience that is different from year to year.  If you’ve never taken off work to watch the afternoon surprises of the first two days or witnessed the intensity of the Final Four, then you won’t get it.  You won’t understand what compels so many people, including some non-sports fans, to throw money away so easily, to take whole afternoons off work, and to agonize over games between schools with which they have no affiliation.  But, let me tell you, you’re missing out on all the reasons that so many of us love March Madness. 

First, as a hardcore sports fan, you can’t beat the schedule.  With 32 games in 36 hours that first Thursday and Friday, followed by 16 games in 32 hours the following two days, it is simply the best sports weekend of the year.  The Super Bowl?  Please, that’s only one game and four hours.  Topping it off is the fact that this event is the most unpredictable, intense, and exciting playoff system in all of sports. 

Part of the draw to this tournament is that it feeds our natural desire to root for the underdog.  We love watching the David and Goliath nature of the first round games, and that David always seems to win a fair share of them.  In fact, a #12 seed has beaten a #5 seed in this tournament so often that fans now debate which #5 seed will lose in the days leading up to the tournament, as if it were a foregone conclusion.  I think there’s a little bit of underdog in all of us that somehow enjoys seeing the look of terror on the faces of the players and coaches of a top seed when they realize they are about to be upset by a Weber St.-esque team.  In this tournament, no team is safe from a potential upset at any given time.  Even #1 seeds sometimes struggle, such as when Georgetown was nearly upset by #16 seed Princeton in 1989, barely pulling out a 50-49 win.  For some reason, there is something satisfying about jumping on the bandwagon of a school you had never heard of the week before.   You most likely cannot locate the school on a map or even name a player on their team, but all of a sudden you are their biggest fan.  Likewise, it is so easy to get caught up in the drama and intensity when a team like #15 seed Hampton manages to hang tough all game long and eventually knock off #2 seed Iowa State.  Speaking of underdogs, is there anything better than watching the bench players of a #15 seed jumping up and down like 4th grade school girls after their teammate hits a clutch shot?  No other sporting event inspires this level of excitement and activity for the guys on the bench.  This reaction is only topped by the storm-the-court-pile-up celebration that erupts when a Hampton-esque team upsets a top seed.

Adding to the appeal is the fact that the tournament always manages to introduce us to something new.  An improbable Elite Eight run always seems to uncover a Jimmy Chitwood-esque folk hero, the underdog’s best player that seems to carry the team on his back through the tournament (see: Bryce Drew-Valpo’98, Brett Blizzard –UNC Wilmington’02, Harold Arcenaux-Weber St’99, Wally Szczerbiak-Miami(OH)’99).  And whether you pick your Cinderella teams based on the fact that they are directional schools (see: Southwest Missouri State, Northern Iowa, Eastern Washington, and East Tennessee State) or the fact that you have no idea what their nicknames mean (see: Salukis, Jaspers, Ragin Cajuns, and Catamounts) it is always a learning experience.  For example, if you didn’t watch this tournament, how would you know that there is a school called Murray State…and that its nickname is the Racers? 

Perhaps the greatest thing about this tournament is that it is single elimination, one and done.  If you lose, you go home, which makes the intensity of each game second to none and produces an uncanny percentage of close games that come down to the last possession. Some of the Pro leagues should take notice.  Fans love watching games like last year’s 2nd round back-and-forth double overtime thriller between #1 seed Arizona vs. #9 seed Gonzaga, in which players from both teams collapsed on the court in exhaustion at the final buzzer.  A game like this wouldn’t have that same intense feeling if it were simply the first game in a best of 7 series.

As fans, we love great storylines and this tournament has provided plenty of them over the years.  Whether it is Bo Kimble and the 1990 Loyola Marymount team playing inspired basketball despite heavy hearts after their leader, Hank Gathers, collapsed and died days before the tournament or Michigan’s Fab Five in 1992 making the Final Four as freshmen, March Madness never seems to disappoint.  Every year the tournament produces great finishes that are enshrined in history and need no description for the knowledgeable basketball fan: Grant Hill to Christian Laettner (Duke ’92), Danny Ainge (BYU ’81) and Tyus Edney (UCLA ’95) coast-to-coast, Derrick Whittenberg to Lorenzo Charles (NC St. ’83), Tate George (UConn ’90), Bryce Drew (Valpo ’98), and James Forrest (Georgia Tech ’92) just to name a few.  While these moments seem to define the tournament for years to come, the more subtle things, much like role-players on a championship team, complete the March Madness experience.  There’s something that just seems right about hearing the CBS March Madness theme music that first Thursday and Bill Raftery’s raspy “The KISS off the glass,” call in mid-March.  It’s also fitting that the first round sites are often in smaller cities (Welcome to Birmingham, Boise, Dayton, Greenville, Lexington, Raleigh, and Spokane) where the whole city seems to stop everything to go the arena and cheer on teams from all over the country.  And does anything define the intensity of March Madness more so than watching everyone from the 6th man to the walk-ons at the end of the bench clasping arms and praying as their teammate attempts a game-tying free throw in crunch-time?  While these subtle things help define our March Madness experience, it is fulfilling that when it comes down to the Final Four, it is still the fundamentals of good basketball, that win games.  No matter how talented your team is, you'd better block-out, hit your free throws, and avoid turnovers or you’re going home.

As if there aren’t enough reasons to love this tournament, someone invented the office bracket pool.  Einstein and Edison aside, I would suggest that this person is a genius.  Whether this individual intended to or not, they have given the NCAA tournament widespread appeal and have turned non-fans into avid, betting fans.  Without the office pools, even most hardcore basketball fans would genuinely be interested in only five or six of the 32 first round games.  Yet after the brackets have been filled out and the money has been collected, all of a sudden even non-basketball fans are watching and rooting hard in games like the #6 vs #11 matchup between Vanderbilt and Western Michigan.  It makes it that much more exciting knowing that you have something riding on #13 seed VCU knocking off #4 seed Wake Forest, whether it be the $5 you put into the office pool or just bragging rights.  It also makes it a requirement for any hardcore fan to follow each of the 64 games in the tournament as closely as possible, which is why so many people call into work/school sick on that first Thursday.  And if forced to be at work, there is always that alt-tab function that I believe was invented just for March Madness, so that you can toggle back and forth from the ESPN.com game tracker to that spreadsheet when your boss walks by.  But perhaps the most fascinating (some would say frustrating) aspect of the office pool is that the most knowledgeable college basketball fan rarely wins the pool due the tournament’s unpredictability.  Despite knowing the RPI, records in overtime games, and free throw percentage of all 65 teams, my brackets are usually busted by the end of the first round.  Meanwhile, the office secretary, who chooses teams based on the color of their uniforms or which mascot she likes better, ends up winning the pool, the money, and the bragging rights. 

Each year, on the Monday morning after Selection Sunday, after studying the brackets all night long, I pay my $5 and submit my first doomed brackets in the office pool.  After quickly realizing that I didn’t pick enough first round upsets, I submit another sheet, picking all four #12 seeds, a couple #13 seeds, and a #15 seed for good measure.  By Tuesday morning I read a few more tournament previews and find out that #14 seed Austin Peay has good senior guards and has won 12 straight, and that Kentucky is 15-1 in games decided by 3 points or less, so I submit yet another one.  This goes on all week.  By the time I am done, I have 5 completely different entries, I’ve wasted $25, BUT…I’ve convinced myself that I’ve got a great shot to win the pool (I’ve never won).  This hope is quickly shattered when one of my Final Four teams loses to #15 seed Coppin State on the first day of the tournament.  Sound familiar?  It’s an annual tradition for me.

This whole experience makes up the reason we keep coming back for more year after year.  And each March we have new benchmark moments to remember and we get sucked into the experience even more.  I actually feel sorry for the people that don’t watch this fine event and don’t get to have the same thrilling March that I do.  Here’s hoping more people finally “get it” this year.

Gear Up for the NCAA Tournament!