I normally don't care about Kentucky.
I know that it's the Bluegrass State, that it hosts a big derby every year and that I sometimes confuse it with Tennessee.
Clearly, it's not a place I usually give a lot of thought to.
But Friday night, crowded around the television with my family, I found myself screaming, "Come on, you stupid Kentuckian! You should NOT miss that shot!"
Apparently March Madness has made me very mad indeed. (That is, until Kentucky won and shot me ahead of all those poor souls in my pool who picked Villanova. I'm sure the game made all of them very, very mad.)
Whomever came up with the term "March Madness" hit it right on the money. According to my favorite Web site, www.diction
ary.com, "madness" can be defined four major ways. And in my opinion, every one of them applies directly to the NCAA men's basketball tournament:
1. Madness: The state of being mad; insanity. What isn't insane about trying to guess the outcomes of 63 college basketball games? Why do we do it? Do we just love to torture ourselves? Do we actually think we have a remote chance of getting all – even most – of them right? According to ESPN.com, only four out of more than 3 million brackets submitted to the Web site last year correctly named the Final Four. (Damn that George Mason.)
2. Madness: Senseless folly. March Madness must be incredibly senseless in order for me, attendee of the occasional Marquette game but general basketball malcontent, to be beating my brother, fantasy sports extraordinaire, in our family pool. I constantly hear sports fiends, usually men, complaining that their mothers, sisters and girlfriends win the pool after choosing teams based solely on "who has the prettiest colors." Hey, apparently it works. Like I said, senseless. But we fill in our brackets in spite of the senselessness because we enjoy the folly.
Whether you love college hoops, hate them or just couldn't care less, you probably filled out a bracket. And you probably check how it's doing every day on Facebook.
3. Madness: Frenzy; rage. Ah, the definition that speaks to my own heart. In addition to yelling at Kentucky, which many people have informed me does not actually help the team, I have spent the past week dictating "Stop sucking!" to Marquette, "Get it in! Get it in!" to Washington State and "No one here cares about you, Aaron Gray!" to Pittsburgh. I think we enjoy getting all riled up for teams we normally don't care about, especially after our favorite team gets smoked in the first round. Thanks for screwing up my bracket, Marquette … see, rage.
4. Madness: Intense excitement or enthusiasm. This is the reason why we suffer through the insanity, senselessness and rage. March Madness is incredibly fun. We cheer as our choices sail through round after round in hopes of winning that glorious prize money. (Not that I or anyone I know at Marquette would gamble. That would be illegal.) Winning the money would be great, though I wouldn't actually know about that. Ultimately, it's throwing things at the TV with your friends, scolding people who call halftime "intermission" and bonding with your family that make March Madness so fantastic.
So this weekend, while watching the Sweet 16 teams battle, let's appreciate bracketology for what it is – madness. Laugh at your friend who doesn't know what "three seconds in the lane" is; then watch her laugh at you because she's beating you anyway. Banter a little bit over picks with your dad. Yell things at the evil teams.
I plan to relax and enjoy all the madness.
Now just don't do something stupid, Ohio State!