Let's Go Dancing: A Girl's Guide To March Madness

So it’s that awkward time of the year between Valentine’s Day and Easter that some people like to call Lent but I prefer to term “the 40 days where I attempt to give up all fatty foods, fail within the first 38 seconds and then swear off boys for good because it’s easier than trying to impress them.” Basically, life’s not really looking up right now. But I’m here to tell you, ladies, that there is something to look forward to on the horizon, and that something is March Madness. The NCAA Basketball Tournament has everything to get you out of that mid-winter slump: drama, excitement, upsets, jacked-sweaty men, and, if nothing else, something to chat up that cute boy in your math class with.

The Big Dance
It all starts on Selection Sunday, March 14th. They call the tournament The Big Dance because, in my opinion, it’s a like a guy’s late night endurance test to outlast all the other competitors so that he can go home with the really hot, potentially-a-little-too-drunk girl in the corner at DKE’s. Just like a team has to close the hold everyone off through the Final Four, he has to seal the deal on that last slow jam. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the selection. This is when the committee decides which schools, out of the 347 teams in Division I basketball, deserve a spot in the initial round of 65 spots. They create a bracket, of which 31 of the spots are given to the winners of individual conferences (like the ACC). The remaining 34 teams are a combination of shoo-ins and teams who are “on the bubble,” and whose spots in the tourney are up in the air. I guess it’s kind of like rush, but with many more tears of disappointment….no worries, I never thought that was possible either, but trust me, google “Adam Morrison Crying.” It is.

Bracketology
So the bracket. Everyone’s seen it, divided into four regions, each with seeds from 1 (the best) to 16 (questionable and probably from a school you didn’t even know existed). The best teams play the worst teams, and the mediocre teams meet in the middle and play each other. Seems pretty self explanatory right? Yeah, not so much. The bracket is the most volatile and, arguably, the most exciting part of March Madness and to many people, filling them out and competing in pools has become a religion. Now this is usually where us girls get the short end of the stick. Guys always say we don’t know enough about basketball to make ‘educated picks’ and win it all in bracketology. Once again, for the 789,683,895th time, guys are wrong. Shocker, right? I know a ton of girls who pick their brackets simply by examining their color preferences in uniform matchups. For the record, they all ended up with much higher scores than all those tools who sit in their rooms for hours creating mathematical algorithms to predict success and tell themselves over and over how many girls they can bag once they win, because they’ll be so cool. Again, not so much. Go ahead and make a bracket, it doesn’t matter if you guess, it’s still awesome to watch the tournament progress and to see how your picks faired.

Somethin’ To Talk About
The Road to the Final Four has five rounds, with the first two producing the most upsets and the final three presenting the most impressive competition. Oh and when you hear about the Sweet 16, no they’re not doing a ‘best shows of MTV’ countdown, those are actually pretty important games. Just as a heads up. So pick a team (I like to choose based on a combination of three point percentage, defensive strengths, and a high number of attractive starters) and get ready for the most exciting month of the year. Matthew McConaughey is a huge Texas fan. Maybe you and he could bond over your fandom on a romantic date sometime in the near future? Hey, it never hurts to dream.