Top 10 Reasons to Love March Madness

So by popular demand, I’ve decided to give this blog thing another try. This time around, I am not going to pigeon-hole myself into one topic (i.e. sports), but will try to comment on anything and everything that I find in my little universe. This will likely include sports, music, movies, upcoming events, and even a little politics. You will also be privy to some of the intimate details of my life (won’t that be exciting!), for example, my continued job search.

I will do my best to make it interesting, humorous, and informative. In order to get a steady readership going, I am vowing to post every 3 days for at least the first 2 months, even if its just a short one. That way you don’t keep checking back thinking, “No post in two weeks…I wonder if he died? Should I inform the police? Wonder if I can have his computer?” Well, you can’t, because I will still be alive and need it for writing the blog (hope I didn’t just jinx myself there). So let’s get this show on the road, and if you enjoy these rants, please pass the link on.

Top 10 Reasons to Watch the NCAA College Basketball Tourney

Wanted to start with this very relevant sports topic because the NCAA Men’s Tourney is one of the most fun events of the year, and, like the Super Bowl, it is often enjoyed by both men and women, sports fans and non-sports fans, senior citizens and babies...alright so the babies don’t know what’s going on per se, but research would suggest they are intrigued by the bright colors and quick movements. So here’s why I think you should be watching:

10. Dick Vitale – College basketball announcers tend to be some of the most enthusiastic of any sport, and Dickie V is the Czar of the Energetic Sportscaster. As an added bonus, he’s a Tampa resident and huge Rays fan. Even if you don’t like basketball, you probably recognize his shouts of “Awesome, Baby!” or “We got a Diaper Dandy here!” Which apparently is a complement, even though it compares an 18- or 19-year-old man to a toddler that can’t control his BMs.

9. Mascot Fights – OK, so it doesn’t happen too often, but there is always a possibility. Just look at some of the potential matchups just from teams in the tourney this year: Tigers vs. Bears, Saints vs. Blue Devils, Mountaineers vs. Hilltoppers (Appalachian schools are weird), Spartans vs. Trojans, and of course, the epic Zips vs. the Mocs (what?).

8. “Favorite” team – Maybe you went to school there and attended every home game. Maybe you grew somewhere nearby and caught the occasional game on TV. Maybe your cousin’s best friend went there, and you visited once, and had so much “fun” you woke up on the steps of their Education building. It doesn’t matter! Just latch on to one player’s name, scream at your television, and no one will question whether you’ve been a Lumberjack fan since birth!

7. Household names (sort of) – Every year a few players will make themselves household names for the few weeks that the tournament is running. I still remember following West Virginia’s run a few years ago because of the play of one Kevin Pittsnogle (solid player, more solid name!). Despite numerous tryouts, he has played a grand total of zero NBA minutes. Last year, it was Stephon Curry, and the jury is still out on what kind of player he will be. However, this is your only chance to follow their 15 minutes of fame before the draft gurus get their hands on them and start picking apart all the reasons their game isn’t suited for the NBA…

6. Draft preview - …on the flip side, thanks to the new-ish age limit in the NBA, this is your only chance to see how far the superstars can take their teams (I’m looking at you Blake Griffin). Kevin Durant (Texas) and O.J. Mayo (USC) couldn’t produce deep runs for their teams, but Melo got Syracuse a championship. Will Sooner fans be so lucky?

5. National Tourney Day – Granted, I don’t have a real work schedule, and can take days off whenever I want. However, someday I will have a “real” job, and that is why I have been pushing for the first Thursday of the tournament to be national holiday for years now. 16 games on TV, spread out almost perfectly throughout the whole day (I still don’t understand the break in games from 5-7ish), with everyone’s brackets still intact for most of it. Sure, there are just as many games on Friday, but a little bit of the shine has worn off since then. So come this Thursday, get yourself a 12-pack and a good seat in front of the TV!

4. Upsets – You don’t have to have any interest in either team in a game to turn it on and root for the underdogs. If you come across a #4-#13 matchup, are you really going to root for Wake Forest, a perennial powerhouse, who make the tournament every year, usually as a #1-#6 seed? Or are you going to root for Cleveland State (I know I will!), who hasn’t been to the tournament since 1986 and that one win would make their century as a basketball program? Obviously, I like this example, but this scenario works for any game with a seed #3-#7 playing in any game against a seed #10-#14.

3. Super-upsets!?! – For those of you that don’t know, a #16 seed has never beaten a #1 seed in the 96 games played between them since the tourney expanded in 1985. In fact, only 5 of those teams came within 5 points! But the law of averages would say that some little team is going to get hot, run into the perfect storm, and knock off one of the big boys. Don’t you want to say you were watching when that happened? Plus, imagine how much “fun” it would be for the fans of the #1 (for example, if it was UNC) to hear the stat that they were the only team to ever lose like that….EVERY…SINGLE…MARCH.  Don’t like those odds?  4 #15 seeds have beaten #2 seeds out of the 96 matchups (4%)…slightly more likely and would still make for an exciting game.

2. Deep runs – Upsets are great for all the reasons mentioned above. But let’s take it a step further. That plucky little #12 seed knocks of the #5 in the first round on pure adrenaline, and then they get hot from three and pull off another upset against the #4. Now, they suddenly have a sweet 16 game with a week off for the whole country to discuss why they were underrated and why they have a chance to pull off another one. The whole country is talking about them, how they ruined their office bracket, and whether they could really make the Final Four. No big pressure for a team that won the MEAC and hadn’t ever beaten a Top 25 team until last week. Anybody who remembers the George Mason run from a few years ago knows how cool this can be.

1. Brackets – It’s the one sports gambling pool that everyone can get into. Billions of dollars of productivity are lost every year while people research, fill out, and follow their brackets. Your average sports fan will read every article he or she can find, analyze the teams and matchups, carefully script how the tournament will play out, and fill out 2-6 brackets just to cover the extra bases. And you know what…every single one of those brackets will be destroyed by this Sunday! We all know the person who is going win:  your buddy’s girlfriend, who has never watched a basketball game for more than 2 minutes, has never heard of the Dayton Flyers, and figured American University would have to have a deep run since they had a whole country behind them. But at least when you head to the bars with them in April, you can take solace in knowing you helped pay for the new shoes she’s stepping out in. Or maybe not… but it’s all part of what makes March Madness so great!