March Without the Madness

Originally published on FOXSports.com.

A little over two years ago this month, I was officially smarter than 98-percent of the country. The symmetrical code of my NCAA Tournament bracket was only three games away from being broken and I was going to bank $10,000.

This year? I’m not even filling one out.

Back in March of 2005 I had used my superior basketball savvy to divine the following: Wisconsin-Milwaukee was most certainly a Sweet 16 team, Syracuse never really stood a chance against those scrappy sapsuckers from Vermont and Louisville was going to beat North Carolina in the championship game.

Throw in Illinois and I had correctly tabbed three of the Final Four. I was acing the sports fan’s standardized test.

And then Louisville lost. It was over. There were at least 47,568 people who knew more about basketball than me that year.

In 2006, the number grew. Some guy who mistook George Mason for George Washington won ESPN’s Tournament Challenge but I was less surprised by that than I would have been to hear that some seedings savant, a poor man’s Joe Lunardi, had come out on top.

If you call yourself a sports fan, you’ve been beaten in your pool by someone using the jersey, mascot or color method. Their bewitching techniques belittle the hours you’ve spent following the sport, watching games, reading articles. All your “work” can be undone in less than two hours because someone absolutely loves that Brad Paisley went to Belmont.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m not running in the rat race this year, I’m holding my own tournament on my terms and you can too.

I suspect it won’t be easy. It will be extraordinarily difficult to abstain from an event that will dominate the collective consciousness and sports coverage in this country for the next three weeks. But it might be worth a try.

Imagine your own personal morality play being acted out before your very eyes. There are some advantages:

--When Southern Illinois inevitably loses in the first round under the “upwardly mobile mid-major exception” (See: #5 Nevada ’06, #4 Dayton ’03, and #6 Tulsa ’85), you don’t need to worry whether or not you saw it coming. I will personally delight in the fate of my team’s biggest rival, but maybe you, like Billy Packer, are simply tired of the Valley or perhaps you just hate sight hounds. These are all valid reasons for determining your rooting interests in a bracket-free March.

While my buddies are weighing Butler’s tournament resume against their recently spotty performance, I only need to know one thing: the Bulldogs play in gym with 10-foot hoops and a 15-foot free throw line and you can find those exact same measurements at Hickory High School. Go Butler.

--Unless you’re a fan of one of the Goliaths, having your team in the tourney can only cloud your judgment when it comes to handicapping. If, say, Davidson or Winthrop is your team, how far do you take them? Dent your bracket or dent your team pride? That’s essentially the question.

I would hate to be the dyed-in-the-wool Winthrop fan that had to watch the team race to the Elite Eight while you had them exiting early.

Of course, if you simply abstain from the insanity, you can continue to follow the tournament in the same way you’ve followed sports your entire life: cheer for the good guys and come up with wholly irrational reasons to love or hate everyone else.

--The great line about poker players goes something like this: Chips (sometimes representing entire mortgages) are just a means to keep score.

The same can be said for brackets. As much as we want to revel in the upset and soak in the sappiness of “One Shining Moment,” it’s mostly about proving that you know more than all your friends and co-workers.

Normally, I’m entirely in favor of such endeavors. Fantasy sports? Company softball? Good and great. These people should be aware of your prowess.

Still, I’m sitting this one out. I’m not some March Madness martyr. I loathe people who are consciously contrarian more than most things, but I hate Ohio State even more and now I’m free to root against them with all my heart.

My personal worth is no longer directly proportional to the depth of Creighton’s bench, and this is liberating. This is madness.

There will certainly be withdrawal symptoms. You may find yourself silent during office scuttlebutt. Simple words like “upset” and “spurtability” might leave you grinding your teeth. This is a normal part of the purification process.

Simply stay the course and realize that there are 65 teams that await your highly personalized analysis.

What could possibly be wrong with Wright State?

That's for you to decide. This is your tournament.