This time of year is always the same. I don’t eat or sleep; I forget about class and school work. I fake illness to avoid going out with my friends and sit in my room, hovelled up. It’s complete madness — March Madness.
The NCAA’s Road to the Final Four has become a staple in any sports junkie’s year. We all know the rules — don’t book anything important for those three weeks, print out your bracket early, and get to the gym so that your heart doesn’t give out midway through triple overtime, where the 15th seed is about to overthrow number two, your personal pick to win the whole thing, in the first round.
March Madness, for those of you unfortunate enough not to know, is a basketball fan’s mecca. It takes the top 65 college and university basketball teams from across the United States and puts their players in the most intense tournament of their lives.
For some, it’s a chance to put a few extra $100,000 on a contract when they head to the NBA; for most, it’s a chance to prove themselves on the big stage before they fall back into obscurity.
For fans like me, March Madness offers competition at its purest, better than anything the bigwigs of professional sports can produce despite their fat bank accounts.
The NCAA’s recipe for success is unbeatable primarily because the players care. Sure, every year we watch the NBA finals and hear about how LeBron James is such a competitor or no one is as hungry for the title as Dwayne Wade, but season after season we watch big name players blow their team’s chances because they can’t see beyond their own success. Hoop fans cringe when remembering the Kobe Bryant/Shaquille O’Neal feud during the 2002-03 season, when the two would not even pass to each other, fuelling Shaq’s 2008 nightclub rap, “Tell me how my ass tastes, Kobe.”
March Madness makes players check their egos at the door, or at least in the locker room. Every game forces players to play for their lives. There are no best-of-seven series that see star players slog through the motions for games one and two — it’s a one-shot deal and it’s win or go home.
The do-or-die playoff approach of the Road to the Final Four brings an excitement the NBA is sorely lacking. It means favoured teams can’t have an off night, and schools previously not on the map can come out with guns blazing and upset the number-one-seeded powerhouse whose roster is jam-packed with next year’s NBA all-rookie team.
With March Madness, nothing is a sure bet. Every year thousands of dollars are won and lost, brackets are torn up, and minds are boggled because of the sheer unpredictability of every game.
Hell, a couple years ago my mom won the family pool after picking teams solely by the prettiness of their uniforms.
It’s also a great chance to jump band wagons. I bleed Michigan State University Spartans green, but with 64 other teams in the hunt, I can pick teams I love or hate on a daily basis, and unless they’re up against MSU, you can bet your bottom dollar I will scream myself blue for the underdog.
And as we watch and yell at the TV, we see athletes play in the fiercest competition of their lives. For most of the players on the court, this is the pinnacle of their basketball career.
The buzzer sounds and hearts are broken, you see 6’11’’, 250-pound men break down and cry on the court on national television. You see fans swarm the court, players embrace after a big win, and beer-bellied coaches hoisted into the air by men twice their height.
During March Madness, players epitomize leaving it all on the floor.
When was the last time you saw that kind of emotional investment in an NHL or NBA game?
Anyways, half time is over and I have some serious basketball watching to get back to.