For those who don’t know me, baseball is my No. 1 sport and my bread and butter. However, college basketball has a special place in my heart — it’s the reason why March is my favorite month of the year (though I’m an avid fan throughout the entire season).
Sixty-eight teams make the darn thing, so the odds are that your team’s got at least a shot at getting there, and it makes it easy for even the nonsports fans to want to get a slice of the madness.
The tournament is full of incredible highs and devastating lows. I went to my first ever March Madness game as my Michigan State Spartans took down the No. 2-seeded Marquette Golden Eagles — an incredible high.
Four days later, I geared up for the big Sweet 16 game against Kansas State, and the Spartans wiped everything away with a terrible defensive performance and allowed Markquis Nowell to have an all-time night with 20 points and a whopping 19 assists — a devastating low.
And yes, Purdue fans got knocked out of the arena again by a double-digit seed. So, the tournament might not be as fun for you guys, and that’s quite the low, sorry.
There’s just something about those brackets, whether you filled out just one every year or 15 as I did. It’s entertaining calling your shot at the upset picks, the Cinderellas that come out, and seeing the road to the Final Four.
To anyone that shares my joy in filling one of those pieces of paper that will end up in the garbage, I hope you didn’t have any No. 1 seeds advancing past the Sweet 16.
Every season, I roll my eyes at people saying, “This year has been crazy for upsets! More than any other year!”
My response: “No, it’s always this chaotic. Hence, the ‘Madness’ part of ‘March Madness.’”
Somehow, though, this year does seem different — because it is. This is the first time ever that all the No. 1 seeds have been eliminated before the Elite 8, creating unbelievable chaos and a wide-open Final Four setup this year in Houston.
That’s what I love about the tournament, the unpredictability. My favorite to win is, of course, the No. 4-seeded UConn Huskies, but we’ve seen how the bracket has gone so far, March might still be mad.
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