Whether you’re mad it’s not short season or mad about March Madness, spring time brings out the crazies. As long as you haven’t been living under a rock the past week, you probably know that March Madness is in center court (basketball references, nice). If you’re someone who is ontop of their game and knows that the Irish won today and are cursing Iowa State, great! You know your basketball as well as Air Bud. For those of you who are on the struggle train when it comes to March Madness and only know it’s hapening because your boyfriend won’t go get Chipotle with you since he’s too busy stressing over his bracket, here’s the low down.
What exactly is it again?
The holy grail of basketball. March Madness is the NCAA tournament that decides the national champs of college basketball. Usually the focus is on on men’s division 1, but the women’s tournament starts tomorrow. The men’s have been going on since St. Patricks Day, but today is when your man threw his bracket across the table as the games actually started to matter.
I hate basketball and could give two sh*ts.
Unfortunely for you, most of the U.S. does. According to Forbes, over 20 million people watched the final game last year and there was over 1 millon hours of live streaming online. AKA, it’s a big deal.
If I can’t Bye Felicia March Madness, what else do I need to know?
There are 68 men’s college teams lumped into 4 groups. Before you pull out the calculator on your phone, thats 16 per group. Cosgrove, Betchel, Davis — totally kidding. East, West, South and Midwest. This turns into 3 weeks of being ignored by anyone with a bracket. There are 6 rounds in the tournament; well 7 if you count the play-in games but no one really cares about those anyways. Whoever named them must have liked alliterations: Round of 64, Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, and then the Championship on April 6.
Do they just pick teams from a hat?
Although some people argue otherwise, technically no. 32 teams made it by winning their respective conferences and the NCAA picked the rest on selection Sunday (another alliteration) using the sorting hat — kidding again, but you get the idea.
Am I going to find my prince?
No Cinderella, hang on to your shoes. You’ll only hear that term when an underdog team comes out on top.
If you love it or loathe it, you may as well hop on the bandwagon because most of the guys in your classes will catch the “spring flu” for the next month while breaking hearts and brackets along the way.
And the credit goes to: