The Madness of March Madness

Question of the day: Now that Tony Parker is back for the Spurs, will they have the ability to stop the Miami Heat's 25 game winning streak?

For those of you who do not know me on a personal level, I have an anger issue. I have a very short fuse. ESPECIALLY when it comes to sports. So whenever the NCAA March Madness tournament rolls around, my fuse is about the length of a match stick. For example, after an extremely long day at work, and an extremely frustrating day of upsets that didn't go my way; I threw away my bracket and swore to not watch a game for the rest of the tournament. I lost all sense of hope in it after La Salle beat Kansas St. University and also when Georgetown lost to Florida Gulf Coast University. There was no need to save it because I had Georgetown, like many others, advancing to the Elite 8. There is no doubt that this is an exciting tournament this year but it truly is maddening. 

I love upsets. I like rooting for the underdog, and I seem to have a knack for going against my gut and NOT picking them to win their match up against a higher seed. For example, I second guess myself in picking 12th seed Ole Miss beating 5th seed Wisconsin today, and same with Harvard beating New Mexico last night. Out of 8.5 million brackets that were sent into ESPN's bracket tournament 0 remain perfect and only 1% picked Florida Gulf Coast University to beat the Georgetown Hoyas. And because of the unpredictable  SUPER surprising upsets, March Madness is one of the greatest sporting events in the country. 

Watching small time colleges take on the big boy in a basketball game is as good as it gets for me. You can see the little guys playing with so much dedication and heart, while the big guys are taking it easy; UNTIL, the game slips away from them and BAM. A Cinderella story is born. That is what everyone expects to see in March. The Madness ensuing around them. People like me, flipping back and fourth, channel to channel watching the games and looking at their brackets almost every thirty seconds to see if you've made the right decision.You see, I am so into March Madness that, even though I threw away my bracket in anger and swore to never watch a game for the rest of the tourney, I memorized my picks. I memorized my picks, I know which teams I think are going to upset, which teams are going to dominate and which teams will fall short of glory. 

As annoying and frustrating and actually maddening this tournament is, I love it. Every game has an unexpected outcome. Every game is hard fought, to the final second and never disappoints. And while it seems like I am a sore loser, I continue to follow my picks until the very end, when a national champion cuts down a net, and I will be doing so long as the tournament continues. 

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