March Madness

Way back in the year 1939 an Ohio State university coach Harold Olsen had the big idea of an NCAA Men's division 1 single-elimination basketball tournament. It is held each spring in the United States to determine the national collegiate basketball championship. The tournament begins in the month of March, and concludes with the final game in April. Today it's become known as March madness or even the Big dance, and is now one of the most popular sporting events in the United States.

All of the college school teams are divided into four different regions with a grand total of 64 teams. Then after a quarter of those teams are eliminated, the tournament moves on to the sweet sixteen. Then it moves on to the elite eight, then to the final four teams, and after two of those teams are eliminated there's the National Championship game. Sounds simple enough, but there's a whole lot of broken hearts in between all of those games.

Filling out all of those brackets has become a national craze! You'll find these basketball brackets in the local newspaper, on the internet, and being handed out by co-workers every year at the end of March. I was first introduced to my first set of brackets years ago, and I look forward to them each and every year now. I even had a co-worker one time ask me to watch his job for him, because he had "Brackets to fill out". Some people do it just for fun, and others do it in hopes of winning extra money through betting, however that usually works the opposite way for them. A lot of business's have policy's against making wagers and betting in the work place, but that's no deterrent when March Madness rolls around every year.

Now you may believe this or not, but you'll find every single year at this time, that a bunch of construction and factory workers have all of a sudden turned into self proclaimed sports analyst. These guys claim to have known all about basketball ever since coming out of their own mother's womb. If you dare to ask them, then these folks will tell you that they feel they have missed a calling in life as a sports analyst. Some of these same fellows have been making their own predictions from way back in February like either Kansas, or Missouri, or University of North Carolina, or Clemson, or Miami, or Duke, or Kentucky, or even Syracuse will win it all with nothing but net. Talk about being a Monday morning quarterback! Now this all might sound funny and humorous to you all, but these guys take all of this very very very seriously to say it at the very least. To these men these are fighting words, and to offer a different opinion to the outcome of the big NCAA tournament may at best lead to an unwinable argument which might not be a very good idea in hindsight.

At the start of this tournament, which was officially announced on Sunday March 11th 2012 and called "Selection Sunday", UCLA holds the record for the most national championships with 11 national titles. Colleges in the Great State of North Carolina come in second with a combined 9 wins, and the University of Kentucky rounds it out in third place with seven wins. I'm going to make this BOLD Prediction now before the first game is ever played, that at least one school from the Great State of North Carolina will be in either the Men or Woman's Final Four this year! However I also can assure you that just about any resident of the state of North Carolina would certainly expect and tell you the same exact thing. There's no other state in this entire country that has a college basketball base like North Carolina. You'll even find March madness posters in day care centers throughout the state, where basketball is a rite of passage and a birth right. Basketball is almost a religion here along tobacco road. If you don't believe that then just ask anybody in the state of North Carolina. The state of North Carolina also has some of the most fierce and meanest college mascot names in the big four schools, like the Wolf Pack, Demon Deacons, Tar Heels, and the Blue Devils. You can make your own prediction below in both the poll and the comment section. Just remember there will be a lot of broken hearts again this year, and don't be surprised if your heart is among them, especially if you don't live in North Carolina. The excitement is now upon all of us once again from coast to coast, and let's see who will be the college team to come out on top for 2012!

This poll proved to be both very interesting, and accurate. Out of the 68 teams voted on, one out of the four teams with the top votes ended up in the "Final Four" - which was Kentucky with 8% of the votes. The poll rounded out with the other three teams with the top votes - The University of North Carolina with 10% & Syracuse with 14% making it to the "Elite Eight", and California not winning it's first game with 8% of the votes. (On a brighter note for the state of North Carolina - The #2 seed Duke Ladies are still playing strong in the "Elite Eight" in the NCAA Woman's Brackets.)

But I decided to go ahead and comment about the results. The interesting thing that I found about the "Final Four" poles were that both of the winning teams were selected. For the men it was Kentucky with 32% of the vote, and for the women Baylor was selected with 45% of the vote. That was some good pickings! The Baylor women also became the first team ever in the history of men's or woman's college basketball to go the entire season unbeaten. They had a winning record of 40-0.