And so begins perhaps the greatest 48 hours of our sports year. Sixty-four teams, 32 games. In the next two days, we’ll have basketball for 24 hours. It’s wild, it’s chaotic. Your bracket will be busted, but it matters little right now, because you think this is it: the year you pick ‘em all right.
(Um, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you won’t pick them all right – well, unless your bracket looks like mine, of course.)
To quote Seth Davis, “I love the smell of Madness in the morning!”
Let’s be honest, we’re all just swimming in giddiness right now. Like a kid on Christmas morning. I’ve got that Bill Cosby smile happening at the moment, the one where your head bounces from side to side, with a permanent smile plastered across your face.
I don’t know if it’s because of the pools, the actual filling out of the brackets, the madness, the sound of the buzzer, the anticipation, the fact that every team has a chance to have One Shining Moment or something else entirely, but there is always – always – something magical about this Thursday and Friday in March. It’s a way of life, really.
As a kid, I’d sneak into school with a hand-held radio, run the headphones up through my sweatshirt and listen to the games all afternoon in class. Trick was to appear as though I was intently listening to whatever was being said by the teacher. He or she sounded like the teacher from Charlie Brown, but I nodded like I understood – and appreciated – the insight. In truth, I was in The Pit, or in Dayton or San Jose or wherever the game I was listening to was broadcasting from.
Oh yes, I’ve used the “Boss Button” – the button you would hit that would pull up a fake Excel spreadsheet at your desk in case someone walked by while you were watching the games. I’ve called in sick. I’ve gone to the games (when they were local).
I’m guessing many of you have done the same. There’s just a palpable hue in air, a feeling of great expectations and anticipation. What’s this year going to be like? Who’s going down? Who survives? Who advances?
Watching the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary Sunday on Jim Valvano’s 1983 NC State team was a reminder of this logic. Survive and Advance. The Wolfpack had to win the ACC Tournament just to get in – then went through a ridiculous stretch of overtime thrillers to keep surviving, keep advancing. They had to beat Ralph Sampson and Viriginia a second time, not to mention Houston and Phi Slamma Jamma, which was the 1989-90-91 UNLV of the early 80s.
There have been Cinderella’s, like NC State, and there have been years of total domination, too: UNLV in 1990, Duke seemingly every third year, Kentucky in ’96. Nearly every year memorable, every year magical. For the longest time, I could tell you every Final Four team in each season beginning with 1980.
The point is, people from all walks of life, from all over the country, young and old, get into this tournament. Maybe it’s the all-inclusive nature of the Big Dance. Maybe it’s the drama or the vulnerability of rooting for 18-22 year olds to be perfect for three weeks when they can barely keep themselves organized for three hours. Perhaps it’s the fact that really, every game is a Game 7 in the NCAA Tournament. There really is no tomorrow if you lose.
Today, my daughter’s school celebrates the life and writings of the great Dr. Seuss. And my favorite book is, has and perhaps might always be “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” The very real message in the book still rings true. About life’s ups and downs, the fact that you control your own destiny, that sometimes you’ll be going so fast in life you are out of control, and other times, you’ll realize you’re going down a dark and dangerous path. Sometimes there will be negativity, others people will be essentially singing your praises and rooting for you to win.
The message: you can do it, you can accomplish it, because you control your fate due to your ability to steer and guide yourself anyway you choose.
And really, isn’t that just a microcosm of what the NCAA Tournament is? Isn’t that really what life is? It can be done. You can survive and advance.
We choose and chose the lives we lead, the families we have (or don’t), the significant others, the jobs, the cars, the clothes, the house, the city we live in and the friends we surround ourselves with. We chose our the college we went to, the classes and major, whether or not to study for an exam.
These are our picks. Life is our real bracket.
Really, we fill out the bracket of life as we go along our own tournament. Sometimes there are upsets, sometimes the favorite wins by 30. And maybe that’s why March Madness resonates with us just a little bit more, because it’s comparable, relatable in ways we don’t even realize. The only difference is, we can change our picks as we go.
Some days we are the No. 1 seed, others the 16. One moment, we’re a mid-major, at times, we feel like we’re from a power conference. We’re tournament-tested and prepared, then suddenly, we don’t look like we should even be in the field. One day, we’re sponsored by Nike, the next, we look like we’re sporting homemade uniforms and our name is misspelled. We’ve hit game winners, we’ve been blown-out. We’ve accidently called a timeout with none left. We’ve hit a shot as the buzzer sounds.
And truthfully, we like it this way. It’s unpredictable, just like this tournament. We never know what’s going to happen. And the options are endless. Each day, we survive and advance. Sometimes, it’s a struggle, other times, we look like we’ll run the table.
We’re all really just playing our own Tournament of Life, looking for as many Shining Moments as we can create for our highlight reel. We just have to keep filling out our bracket each day.
Surviving. Advancing. Hoping. Dreaming. Competing. Playing the game.
Let’s just enjoy the madness of it all.
worldbetweenlines.com 