It’s finally here.
As winter ends and spring greets us with warmer weather, a week that all sports fans yearn for arrives in the form of a 64-team bracket.
On Sunday night, CBS aired an egregious two-hour selection show that was blatantly drawn out to maximize commercials during what should’ve been an easy process. While basketball fans everywhere waited for what they really wanted — a viewable bracket — social media came through with a leaked release before CBS had revealed the 64 teams.
Of course, CBS and the NCAA weren’t happy about this. Due to so many people seeing the original tweet that showed the bracket, viewership likely decreased, which CBS wouldn’t like. Since they have exclusive rights to first showcase the bracket for the tournament, the NCAA will likely be responsible for the leak. Despite the details that no fans cared about, the bracket was out, and millions of fans were able to finally care about a sport they barely watch for the majority of the season.
I’ll admit myself that I watch less and less college basketball every year. My definition of less and less is probably still a ton of college hoops to other people, but the style of play isn’t nearly as attractive as the NBA in my eyes. So when I have the choice between the two, I choose the NBA. But when I do watch college basketball, I always have my mind set on one thing — March Madness.
No matter how little you pay attention, March Madness has the ability to draw in even the most casual fans to attentively watch the single-elimination tournament. It manages to combine most fans’ favorite characteristics in sports — the underdog, the favorite, the local team, and the winner-takes-all format of every single game. The sport of basketball is incredibly fast-paced and can change in the blink of an eye. Combining that with the high stakes of the NCAA Tournament creates an atmosphere and finishes that fans could only dream of.
And perhaps the best part of March Madness is the underdog — the Cinderella story that everyone loves to love. The NCAA Tournament allows every single conference champion to participate, which brings on a set of schools every year that many people have never heard of. Thanks to that, we get our Florida Gulf Coast and George Mason type of tourney runs that shock the world.
We all know what people care about the most though. It’s the bracket. Every Thursday at the beginning of the madness, millions of people hold hope, hope that this is the year they magically filled out the perfect bracket. Whether it’s because of groups you joined with high stakes, or just a challenge between you and a friend or family member, there’s nothing quite like holding that clean bracket while games tip off all across the nation.
So go and fill out those brackets. Gather all of your devices around you and watch the 32 games aired between Thursday and Friday that inevitably destroy all of the research you did to create that once unblemished bracket. The doom is almost always imminent for the selections you worked so hard on, but in the end it doesn’t usually matter. We’ll all enjoy it because there’s nothing quite like the thrills provided by March Madness.
