The Girlfriend/Wife’s Guide to March Madness: A Sports Nut’s Month Long Holiday

Here’s a little something I wrote a few years ago for some of the ladies in my office who were buzzing around this time with questions about how to “play along” with their boyfriend/husband’s slight obsession with March Madness. Some of the stats haven’t been updated but their relevance still remain true. I guess it was a bit of a glimpse into what would eventually become this site for me. Enjoy and get ready for some great basketball!

P.S. For those of you who don’t know, CBS March Madness on Demand is the greatest thing ever invented. You can keep up with all of the games and watch live from your computer. This will include you in the statistic that make today and tomorrow the least productive days in the United States in each year! I especially enjoy the “Boss Button” which brings up a random Excel sheet in case the bossman happens to walk by.

The Girlfriend/Wife’s Guide to March Madness: A Sports Nut’s Month Long Holiday

Forward

Mid-March every year, every sports fanatics favorite three weeks come to fruition. For the average sport enjoyer, it is simply more of the same in what seems like a never-ending basketball season, for those above that unsavory line, it is much more.

I have never claimed to be a woman, have the mind of a woman, or UNDERSTAND the mind of a woman, but in an effort to appease those of you who are asking, “What is this all about?” I am here to help.

In an effort to bring together the bond between the love of competitive sports and the love within a relationship, we will try to use this manuscript to help the average female find joy in their partner’s excitement for the sweaty man heap that is March Madness.

The Layout

On the Sunday before the tournament begins, the NCAA championship committee

gets together to decide who will “make” the field of 65 teams known as “The Bracket”.

To completely understand the process, one must understand how Division 1 colleges and universities are split into conferences.

Separate areas throughout the country play host to certain “conferences” of schools. Basically speaking, there are anywhere from 8-16 schools in a conference and it is like a division within the NCAA Men’s Basketball realm. Simply put, it resembles the NFL’s AFC East, North, South, West, etc but are not named by directions on a map. They are named such things as the “Atlantic 10”, “Pacific 10”, “Big East”, “Conference USA”, etc.

Knowing this, the week prior to “Selection Sunday” is spent defining the champions of each individual conference in a playoff format. The champions of each conference are given an automatic “bid” to the tournament, or “big dance”. This will take care of 31 of the 65 available bids to the tournament, except for the Ivy League, who sends their regular season champion but that is a whole other story and they’re probably not going to win any games anyways. The remainder of the teams that will be selected will receive “at large bids”. These are teams that did well throughout the year but did not win their individual conference championship. Teams’ performance vs. ranked opponents throughout the year, as well as their play in the conference tournament will sway the minds of the committee who chooses the final field of 65, which are then announced on live telecast on Selection Sunday.

Now, the mathematicians out there may say, how do you play an even number of games with 65 teams? Well, the last two teams to make the tournament will play one another on the Tuesday after Selection Sunday to earn the right to make the bracket and play the top seed. Phew… ya got it all?!

The layout of the tournament is laid out to have 4 branches of the bracket that will come together bringing the top team from each branch together as the Final Four who will compete for the National Championship.

Each branch will host 16 teams, ranked 1-16 with the 1 seed playing the 16, 2 playing the 15, etc. Each branch will have the eight first round games played over two days in three separate stadiums, not necessarily anywhere near each other in the country. First round games will be split between Thursday and Friday, and the second round games being split between Saturday and Sunday. The games will start at 12:30pm each day and run until about midnight, so if you like coffee, get it brewing, or just take frequent half-time naps.

After the first round games are completed, the teams continue on through the tournament, single elimination (you lose 1 game, you are out of it) until we have a winner. This is known as the “light at the end of the tunnel”, well, not really but sounds nicer than National Champ if you ask me.

“Picking the Bracket”

One of the biggest draws to the tournament is the inevitable gambling that comes a long with it. Almost every office, school hallway, and lumber yard will become the site of numerous people nervously scribbling their picks of each game and handing it to the organizer, along with a certain amount of money, generally $5-$50, more for the high rollers. The entire brackets worth of picks must be handed in before the tournament starts. A “perfect bracket” is the sports world’s Loch-Ness. Every website from ESPN to Facebook.com offers million dollar prizes, brand new corvettes, etc to anyone who can submit a bracket that picks every game correctly throughout the tournament, nearly unheard of.

Important Things to Know

If you want to be in on the tournament speak, or are dragged into it by only owning one television, you are going to want to know some things about the tournament itself and some random factoids that you can throw at your significant other in order to impress and possibly get him to flip to American Idol or Gilmore Girls for a couple minutes during a commercial.

There are numerous small pieces of info about the tournament that will make you look like you have been a UNC (University of North Carolina) fan all your life. Just remember these things, and you will be doing just that.

Dick Vitale - Remember that. Besides being a TB Rays fan, he is the effing man.

1. Remember that in the past 19 years of the tournament, 17 of those a 12 seed has defeated a 5 seed in the first round.
2. Number 1 seeds are 92-0 in tournament history in the first round, probably because they play the 16 seed but whatever.
3. Never bank on all four #1 seeds making it to the Final Four, it almost never happens.
4. They say no matter how much researching you do, it will do very little to help in picking the teams but I do it anyways.
5. There are always a couple of “Cinderella teams”. These are teams that are ranked poorly but make a run through the tournament and make it through a couple of rounds, thus making them a “Cinderella” team… kinda like how you used to run around your house dressed up and pretending to be Cinderella but then you took off the dress and were “just you” again. That’s what happens here, they are dressed up, looking good, making upsets, and then they lose eventually and they are just another victim to March Madness.
6. Dick Vitale is the effing man. “Dickie V” will be the excited old guy that will be dancing around on your television screen for the next 3 weeks. He looks kind of like the creepy guy from the Six Flags commercials but he is real and has his own lingo that your significant other will understand, such as:
   1. PTPer (Prime Time Player)
   2. Diaper Dandy (Impressive Freshman)
   3. “IT’S AWESOME BABYYYY!” (IT’S AWESOME BABYYYY!)
7. The tournament is on CBS, that’s channel 4. I know nothing good comes on that channel but make sure you know.

Conclusion

I think that this will provide a decent enough guide to how to understand the ins and outs of the March Madness, NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Make sure that plenty of snacks are on hand as well since he won’t be moving from the couch and you will probably either leave him to go shopping or spend most of your time in the kitchen, either way, good snack foods are most important on the first weekend.

ENJOY!

A little eye-candy for the ladies!

AFTERWARD

Please note that this piece is not guaranteed to make you understand the tourney or win a bracket, but it is in an effort to help you become more knowledgable about the subject, Any info you forget to show that you know after this is purely on you.

Oh yea, and yell at the tv a lot. Bad plays, horrible calls by the ref, great plays, all great reasons to scream random profanity at the television.

One Response to “The Girlfriend/Wife’s Guide to March Madness: A Sports Nut’s Month Long Holiday”

1. Mike says:

   March 18, 2010 at 10:41 pm

   Funny. My fiance still doesn’t give a shit