This month marks the start of the notorious “March Madness”. Every March, 68 teams compete to take home the championship and be crowned the kings of college basketball. March Madness got its name from CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger used that name during the coverage of the 1982 tournament. However, the tournament has been played since 1939.
March Madness is such a polarizing sporting event, even with college basketball viewership during the regular season down recently, because of the set-up of the tournament, and how anyone can win as long as they make it to the bracket. The expansion of the field to 64 teams gives chances to smaller schools to make their way into the tournament. For example, in 2016 Stephen F. Austin made it all the way to the elite 8, despite being one of the smallest schools in the entire tournament. This upset rich environment is what draws fans in and makes them tune in to every single game, regardless if they watched a minute of college basketball all year up to March Madness.
The NCAA does a remarkable job of marketing this tournament to make it into what it is. Everyone knows the March Madness name and what it means. This tournament is what keeps college basketball alive, and can help put certain schools on the map if they make some noise and upset some of the heavily favored teams. The 2018 NCAA tournament saw the first ever 16 seed (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) upset the 1 seed (Virginia), stunning the entire country and putting UMBC on the map. With major upsets every single year, everyone wants to tune into March Madness to see who is going to be the underdogs who beat the heavily favored team.
Another thing that has been extremely successful for March Madness is the gambling that goes on with the tournament. Nationwide, people will fill out brackets and create groups with their friends and bet on who will have the most correct bracket when the tournament is over. Networks like ESPN and Yahoo will have brackets for the entire nation to fill out and the person who gets it most correct gets a cash prize. Last year Warren Buffet even offered to pay $1,000,000 a year to anyone who could predict a perfect bracket, without getting a single game wrong. The odds of getting a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion.
I personally think that March Madness might be the best marketed and one of the most well-known sporting events in the United States. With the way that the tournament is formatted, and the widespread popularity of filling out brackets every single year, March Madness might be the most exciting playoff system in all of sports. College football has tried to follow basketball’s lead a little bit by adding in a playoff system of their own in 2016, but I still think that system has a long way to go. With upsets every single day, and Cinderella story teams making deep playoff runs, March Madness is an absolute can’t miss for sports fans. Happy March Madness, and good luck filling out your brackets this year!
John Marrs Sports Blog 