Let The Madness Begin
Many who know very little about college basketball will spend the next couple of weeks debating the merits of the Crimson Tide, Cougars, Boilermakers, Jayhawks, Zags and Blue Devils…that is if those teams are still around. The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament officially tipped off Tuesday and Wednesday but the action really heats up today and Friday with 16 first round games played each day…it’s like Christmas for college basketball fans. Millions of people are likely still filling out brackets which for many are funny-looking pieces of paper with lines, boxes and the names of colleges they know like UCLA, Texas and Duke and ones they may have never heard of like Kennesaw State and Grand Canyon…that’s the university and not the national park.
So here’s how this thing which has been dubbed “March Madness” works. The 64 teams that begin play today are broken into four regions…East, West, South and Midwest with the 16 in each ranked based on how good they are going into the tournament. Number one seeds were awarded to Alabama, Arizona, Purdue and defending champion Kansas and those four teams would be considered the best of the 64 and given a good chance of advancing to the final four in Houston more than two weeks from now in
The only two things that are guaranteed is there will be upsets and I won’t predict them correctly. The key to winning your office bracket pool is to not have your final four teams lose early and to try and find those surprising schools who make unexpected runs…maybe Memphis, Creighton or Texas A&M.
I’ll still debating on some of the pools I am playing in but in our Townsquare Media company one I like a Final Four of Alabama, Kansas State, Texas and Gonzaga. The only certainty is that won’t happen and the winner of the bracket contest will be an account executive from New Hampshire who knows nothing about basketball.