March Madness is truly something special that comes once a year. Most sports fans don't keep up with college basketball because there are so many teams, tournaments, and players. Not to mention the fact that every rememberable player is gone the next year because they go to the NBA. No causal ESPN viewer really keeps up with college basketball but, once march comes along everyone is a fan and an expert in the crazy world that is March Madness! That is true beauty of March Madness.
Amazing movies don't come along too often but they all have the about the same two things. They put their viewers through a whirlwind of emotion and give the viewer an ending of a lifetime. College basketball has its own amazing movie and it's called March Madness. It comes every year and brings nearly every emotion a human being with a heart can have. Every game in the tourney brings nail-biting stress along with it. Lose one game and the team's whole season is finished. Every late night practice and morning lift would be all are nothing if you lose in the tourney. The seniors on the team have now played their game of basketball if they aren't apart of the lucky few of that will be drafted into the NBA. All that hard work and now they are finished unless they win the game. That is the beautiful suspense of March Madness. There is no redo and no one can predict what will happen. A last place small school can come into the tournament and beat a college basketball powerhouse. Just look at what happen last year; Michigan State has always been great in the tourney and has been dominating in the past decade. Middle Tennesse, on the other hand, has only been in March Madness eight times and won only three games in their short history. Michigan was the second seed and Middle Tennesse was a mere fifteen seed. Noone in the right mind saw Middle Tennesse leaving with a victory but that's exactly what they did. That's when March Madness turned into March Sadness for fans. The heartbreak for Michigan students and alumni plus the feeling of millions of brackets being busted was heard from the Cape Cod to the Space Needle.
The best part of March Madness is the feel good story of the underdog. The one no one sees going very far. These are the teams that break the brackets of fans and still get those same fans to cheer for them. They leave experts with their jaws on the floor trying to explain the madness of their victory. Just look at the 2014 UConn Huskies led by Shabazz Napier. They were a seventh seed that came in and won the whole thing. Even though they crushed the dreams of anyone trying to get a perfect bracket, the fans couldn't help but hope they prove everyone wrong and win. It even got Mr. Napier draft stock to skyrocket because LeBron James fell in love with the cinderella story that was Shabazz and the Huskies.
The best part of any movie is the ending. It ties everything all together like a present. There are no better endings than the final minutes of the March Madness finals. Almost every year the championship game is a sitting on the edge of your seat game. Just last year the game came down to a game-winning shot twice. Agrubablely the top teams in the tourney met each other for the last game. Both played their hearts out with the whole country watching. in the last five seconds, The University of North Carolina made an impressive three-pointer to tie the game. With no time-outs, Villanova threw the ball in the rushed down the court. With a second left, they fired off a three-pointer and made it. In that short amount of time, the world either had their hearts tragically broken or a celebration of a lifetime.
Sports bring people together, however, a lot of the time people are rooting against each other. March Madness is the only event that brings people together to celebrate the wonderful sport of basketball. March Madness is not a holiday but it is pretty damn close. People of all kinds sit and watch the games together. Schools that have never seen the spotlight get to hear thousands cheer them on. Students athletes that never made it past their local news stations are all of a sudden the star of Sportscenter. Every college campus comes together to watch their team and pray to play for another day. Currently, the United States is stuck in a bad place and we are on the path of splitting our country up based on race, religion, gender, and so much more. March Madness to some might just be basketball tournament between universities but, it is so much more. It takes up the media and gives us a break from the cruel world around us. Now more then ever we have earned a break and once this magical month ends will all have to go back to the real world. For now, let's enjoy the magic of March Madness.
