Armed with a pencil, a large eraser, and the NCAA bracket cut out from the Dallas Morning News, I’m as prepared as I possibly could be for the daunting task of filling out my bracket.
The chatter around the halls all week has been about whom they have making it to the Final Four, and, most importantly, which team is going to bestowed with the honor of cutting down the nets on April 8.
While I may be overly obsessed with the NBA and the Dallas Mavericks, I really struggle to get into watching college basketball besides the Big Dance. There are so many games and I really don’t have any team that I care for, besides Illinois, but none of their games are televised, so I usually opt to watch something else. And every year at this time of year I come to regret that decision.
Since college basketball had so many upsets this year, I decided that I would flip a coin for my entire bracket. However, I decided that was a REALLY bad idea after I had Louisville losing first round to NC A&T.
My next idea was to take a tip of advice from Sports Illustrated and consider the defensive rankings of the teams. About halfway through looking that up and filling out my bracket solely based off that, I realized that I was ignoring the complete spontaneity of the game and the fun of looking at the mascots and seeing which is more ferocious.
After sleeping on my bracket for another night and listening to ESPN for a while I pulled out my big eraser and changed Gonzaga from my National Champion to not even making it to the Elite Eight.
The reason for the widespread popularity of March Madness is the brackets. It draws in the casual and non-fans because it allows them to cheer for team that they have no vested interest in and watch random games that are crucial for their bracket’s success.
A major source of division in the filling out of brackets comes with how many variations people choose to make. Most people put brackets in multiple pools. Some people, and those I tend to disagree with, put different brackets in those pools. They have their good bracket, their upset bracket, their favorite team bracket, etc. I, on the other hand, have one bracket: the bracket of integrity. Making various brackets takes away from the point of the tournament, which is to make people root for teams they otherwise wouldn’t. If you have one bracket with North Carolina beating Villanova in the first round and another with them losing first round, who do you cheer for? I understand that because the tournament is so erratic you really can’t rely on teams to do what you would expect, but that’s the point of trying to figure out exactly how you think it will go down.
Furthermore, it’s a chance for schools to get some free publicity. When I was applying to college I took last years NCAA bracket and found all the schools on the National Common Application and the schools that did not require a supplemental essay and decided to apply. And that’s why I’ve now been accepted to Villanova, Xavier, and Ohio State.
Not everyone goes as far as I do, but, it’s safe to assume that the competition with filling out a bracket and proving you know more than your friends makes not even sports fans enjoy the thrill of the tournament.
