The middle of March brings us to the annual NCAA basketball tournaments (both men’s and women’s).  Sixty-four of the nation’s Division 1 schools compete for the title of national champion.  It’s a time of emotional highs, crushing lows, and thrilling basketball action (especially if your favorite team is participating).

Part of the annual tournament is the fun (and in some cases, high stakes) of trying to pick the eventual winner of the event.  You’ve probably seen these brackets floating around this past week.  You may be participating in a big, nationally advertised contest, an office pool with a few dollars on the line, or just a friendly game between family members.  No matter how you take part, if you’ve got a bracket, for a few brief days in March and April, your eyes are glued to the sports pages, news websites, or TV to see the scores and mark off the winners and losers as the tourney progresses.

For the uninitiated, teams are ranked and seeded according to their regular season play (and in some cases, their performance in the various league tournaments), which sets up the excitement (and stress) as teams vie to move from sixty-four teams down to the final two to play for the national championship.  Filling out a bracket means guessing which team will win each contest, first culling the field from sixty-four teams down to thirty-two, then to sixteen (the “Sweet Sixteen”), then eight (the “Elite Eight”), then four (the “Final Four”), culminating in the national championship contest.

One of the most exciting things about the tournament is that any team could win a single game and change the entire outcome of the tournament.  It’s one of the beautiful things about college sports.  If a team is playing well and can peak for just forty minutes, they can beat anyone in the country, no matter how big or small the college institution is.  Upsets occur when a low ranked team (say a team ranked in the 10^th or 15^th spot in the tournament) beats a highly ranked one (like a #1 or #2 seed).  As most brackets are filled out favoring the higher seed over the lower seeding, these upsets are also called “bracket busters”, as very few will pick the upset (which has implications for the remainder of the tournament).  Some upsets become famous.  My old alma mater, UMBC, made history in 2018, when their 16^th seeded team defeated #1 seed Virginia in what many sports enthusiasts call the biggest upset in college tournament history.  (Go Retrievers)!  Needless to say, unless you were a diehard UMBC basketball fan (with a lot of hope and prayer), UMBC wasn’t picked as a winner in your bracket that year, which blew up your choices for the remainder of the tournament.

These bracket busters are already occurring in this year’s tournament, which makes the hunt for the national championship so exciting to watch.  I would even argue that college tournaments are better – by far – than any pro championship (including the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA championship, or Stanley Cup).  A low-seeded school that is playing well in the tournament (often dubbed a “Cinderella”) and knocking off better teams is fun to watch (unless of course, the victim is your favorite squad), and for one brief moment, these unsung players get their fifteen minutes of glory and fame.

So for the next week or so, enjoy the excitement, the pomp and circumstance, and all of the college basketball action.  Hopefully, your bracket does well (mine certainly isn’t).

Oh well.  There’s always next year.