Come this week, four televisions will assemble in my living room, because once March Madness arrives, neither one nor two nor three TVs is enough to capture all of the simultaneous magic of America’s greatest postseason sporting event.
I’m happy to know I’m not alone.
“Love those first-round games. Those are my favorite two days the entire year, those first two days. We have four TVs set up,” Troy basketball coach Scott Cross told me after the Sun Belt Tournament championship.
March Madness predictions: One of these teams will win NCAA Tournament
Except Cross can skip the TVs this year. His Trojans will be playing in March Madness for a second straight season. That means they’ll be on one of my four TVs.
When I think about what I love about March Madness, I think about that four-TV setup, including one TV I keep in a closet for 11 months, purely to use each March.
March Madness region breakdown: South | East | Midwest | West
Here are six more reasons why we love March Madness, with the NCAA Tournament nearly upon us:
The bracket is ubiquitous to the tournament, so much so that the NCAA even embraced it into its March Madness branding.
Four regions with 16 teams apiece. No byes. No bizarre seeding rules. Perfectly symmetrical. Neurologically pleasing. Win and advance. Lose and you’re out.
So easy to understand that everyone from your 90-year-old grandma to your 9-year-old son can fill out a bracket without much need for explanation of how this works.
2. The March Madness upsets
Pop quiz!
I’ll give you the underdog, and you provide the opponent it stunned in the first round.
Ready?
Here come the answers . . .
How’d you score? Pretty good, I’m guessing.
The Cinderellas stick with us, decades after we’ve forgotten who won the national championship in a long-ago year.
Cinderellas cause the bracket-busting havoc that adds that layer of unpredictability to level the playing field in your office bracket pool. Nothing’s more satisfying than knowing you called the 14-over-a-3 upset all your buddies were sleeping on.
The Final Four tends to belong to top seeds and blue bloods, but we owe the thrills of the tournament’s first two rounds to the Cinderellas.
3. The gambling
People who’d otherwise never bet on sports, who might otherwise never watch sports this side of the Super Bowl, throw down $5 for the chance to enter a bracket and earn potential bragging rights over friends, family and coworkers.
More ambitious gamblers have the chance to bet on 48 games across four days. The tournament is a degenerate’s paradise.
4. The NCAA selection show
The College Football Playoff selection show specializes in team-specific outrage and faux drama. Fact is, we could predict most of the football bracket without needing to tune in.
The NCAA Tournament selection show, on the other hand, is legit entertainment, as we see the bracket slowly revealed.
Who slipped in? Whose bubble burst? Which first-round upsets catch our eye? Which region is toughest? Who’s your knee-jerk Final Four?
The selection show lubricates each of those conversations.
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5. The broadcasters
I can still picture where I was when I heard Gus Johnson holler: “The slipper still fits!”
Or Steph Curry drilling a 3-pointer for Davidson, followed by Gus: “Ha, haaaaa!”
Johnson works for Fox now, so we miss him on the NCAA Tournament, sadly. But CBS and its TNT Sports partners still have a great lineup of broadcasters.
Kevin Harlan and Ian Eagle headline my favorites.
Then we get halftime laughs served by America’s favorite comedy trio: Ernie, Chuck and Kenny.
6. The music
Is “One Shining Moment” a tad corny? Yes.
Do I watch it every year? Yes.
Do I try to guess which clutch shots, goofy moments or epic cutaways will make the reel? You bet.
The music, paired with the scenes, hits us right in the feels, every dang time.
Oh, and don’t get me started on the iconically peppy March Madness intro music.
Chills, the first time I hear it each NCAA Tournament. Maybe the second and third time, too.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: March Madness bracket, upsets make it America’s greatest postseason
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