48 hours.  32 basketball games. If NCAA basketball were a religion, these truly would be the high holy holidays.  Within a 4 day span 75% of the original teams in the tournament will be eliminated.  It’s absolute intoxication with college basketball for 2 days.  A rigorous schedule of basketball from noon till near midnight tests the patience and rear ends of even the most devout of college basketball fans.  Beers will be spilt in last second elation.  Nachos will be broken in rage over missed free throws.  Pizzas will be consumed at alarming rates and their boxes used as surface to face missiles; for friends who taunt your elite 8 pick losing in the first round.  So the only question left is, where are you watching the games? 

Dayton, Greensboro, Jacksonville, Salt Lake City, those are just a few of the locations that these college crusaders journey to for the opening to the greatest and grandest tournament in all of sports.  Say what you like about the Super Bowl, the college bowl season, and the World Series; but the fact remains, there is no other major sport that decides their champion with an all out free for all tournament.  At least theoretically, Albany has a shot to beat Connecticut and go on a miracle run to the national title.  That Hoosiers style free for all is what helps give March Madness its magical charm. 

The tournament has a strange effect on people from all backgrounds, very similarly to the Super Bowl.  Young, old, male, female, it doesn’t matter all that much who you are, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll enter at least one bracket in somebody’s pool.  As much as it pains me to say so, all those random guessers probably have just as good a shot at winning the prize as I do sitting down and doing a comprehensive statistical analysis between questionable match-ups.  In fact, twice in the 5-year history of my personal NCAA bracket pool, I’ve had to give cash away to girls.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just goes to prove how insane this tournament is. 

What is even more special about the NCAA basketball tournament is its’ duration.  The entire event from selection to championship lasts nearly a full month.  From Selection Sunday up until the games begin on Thursday, the tournament is still top news, even though not a single minute has yet been played.  The scale of the tournament is so large it requires an effort of biblical proportions to make it all work perfectly.  The sports directors at the networks have to be trusted to take us to the correct games at the correct times. The announcers have to be quick and sharp all day long for a marathon triple-header in front of them.  The pizza guy has to be able to get here before the start of the second half. 

It truly is a phenomenon across the country when we see this many people attempting to predict the future.  It’s as if everyone in America that follows college basketball suddenly possess ESP.  Your Kent State run out to the elite 8 makes perfect sense to you, and you need no stats to back it up for...you’re feeling it.  There is almost as much pleasure in hitting that one impossible Cinderella team as there is to running the table in your pool. 

The tournament can have downsides though.  A condition that I’ll call “Basketball Burnout” can occur if the proper precautions are not taken.  Common symptoms of Basketball Burnout can include but are not limited to: decreased interest in later rounds of the tournament; inability to feel the energy of an unlikely upset; loss of appetite for wings, pizza, nachos, chips, or beer; desire for activities unrelated to NCAA basketball or basketball in general. 

Thankfully though, there’s help out there.  First and foremost, your friends are your first line of defense.  Friends don’t let friends quit basketball.  With a good support network of other people to watch the games with, even you can survive a tournament where your bracket has become irrelevant after day 1.  Here are some tips for avoiding Basketball Burnout:

1.      Don’t watch alone—they say alcoholics drink alone, so don’t watch basketball alone.  If need be go to your local watering hole or BW3 before relegating yourself to the couch all-alone.

2.      Vary your food selections—while the book of March Madness officially recognizes only pizza, wings, and nachos as foods of the tournament.  You can take some liberties with things like hot dogs, different flavors of pizza, and other Mexican Nacho variants. 

3.      No mixed drinks—unless you’re doing shots that you bet on a game, stay away from liquor.  Beer is the nectar of the basketball gods, and its prolonged consumption throughout game days is necessary for a fully realized March Madness experience. 

4.      Try actually “playing” the game—if you’re like me then you’re not all that good at basketball, but all this continued watching can inspire you to go out and play a bit.  If the physical activity is too much for you, fire up the PS2 and let it rain with your sharp shooter of choice. 

If you can manage to avoid the side effects, and manage to keep your bracket alive, then you will be able to gain what is probably the most coveted of all NCAA tournament prizes…the chance to run your mouth and be able to back it up.  For one year the rights to belittle your friends into thinking you are some sort of collegiate clairvoyant.  And they money isn’t too bad either.

Beyond the gloating, beyond the nachos and beer, beyond all the little things that make the tournament so much fun for us, the fans; there is so much about the tournament to truly be thankful for.  The unbridled emotion of teams and players who are performing on the biggest stage of their lives, the breakneck pace of the opening rounds of the tournaments, the challenges to continuously come to play at such a high level for 6 straight games against the highest caliber opponents in the country, they’re all special and completely unique to the NCAA tournament.  Call me a nut, but there’s no better way to determine a champion than this.  Now if only Gonzaga could make that charge…