Ro's Recz

Since this blog represents the things I enjoy the most and would recommend to others, I am going to write about the topic I love most in the world. While I do love to travel, eat, and learn new things, there is no hobby greater for me than watching sports. If you do not care about sports at all, feel free to skip all of these articles; if you do read them, hopefully you learn something about sports.

I do not intend for these upcoming blogs posts to make it sound like I am going through any sort of hardship because sports are cancelled; this current coronavirus situation is crazy, and people around the world are going through much worse things than not being able to watch sports. I am hoping everything can go back to normal as soon as possible, and I hope everyone stays safe in the meantime.

March Madness

Out of all of the sporting events that have and will be cancelled, March Madness is probably the one I am most bummed about. For those who are unfamiliar with March Madness, it is the college basketball championship tournament. 64 teams enter, and you have to win 6 consecutive single-elimination games to win the tournament. It is called March Madness for two reasons: it takes place in March, and there are always significant upsets that cause “Madness” in the tournament.

March Madness is unlike any other sports tournament because of the unpredictability. While most other sports tournaments end up with the best team winning, this rarely happens in March Madness. This randomness makes for the most exciting two week sporting event of the entire year.

Most people’s wish when March Madness starts is either to get a perfect bracket or to see your personal favorite team win. Even though I know that I will likely never get a perfect bracket (the odds of getting one are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808), before the tournament I always dream that this will be the year. I think picking a perfect bracket would be the greatest achievement I could ever have in my life.

Once your dream of a perfect bracket ends and your favorite team is eliminated though (if they were lucky enough to make it in the first place), the whole sports nation begins to root for upsets. Cinderella stories, when teams who were not supposed to win keep winning, are some of the coolest things to watch. Especially in a time like this, March Madness would have given something everyone could root for.

Finally, I think one of the coolest things about March Madness is the equal opportunity. There are teams like Kentucky, Duke, Virginia etc. that have entire rosters full of future professional basketball players; however, there are also teams such as Stephen F. Austin, Florida Gulf Coast, UMBC, etc. that have no one on their roster who will play basketball professionally. On any given day though, such as in 2018, when #16 seed UMBC beat #1 seed Virginia (the biggest upset in college basketball history), the little guys win. While the story often doesn’t continue very far into the tournament, just one win for a very small school can sometimes feel like a championship.

While the 2020 March Madness was already cancelled, this just means it will be even more special than usual the next time it is played.