NCAA Tournament: The Blessings and Curses of the Bracket

You have to admit, when you go to submit your March Madness bracket, you have a little smirk on your face.

You think you know who will rise and who will fall with the pressure. In your head, you know the formula, and subsequently who will advance throughout the month. Ah, and then the speculation is over and the ball is tipped. Game on.

If anybody has ever completely gotten a bracket correct in the history of the NCAA Tournament, it was only by chance. The beauty of college basketball is that the will to win can not be documented on paper. Any team can win on any given day, and March always reminds us of that phenomenon.

So while your bracket is screwed up, it is impossible to not be loving the 2012 tournament. Cinderellas rise and the elite fall. The bracket is a blessing and a curse for all who fill it out.

Blessings

It is inevitable that the brackets will get messed up in some fashion.

The beauty of that statement is that fans get to root for underdogs. The top seeds are bound to lose to some mid-majors. As a fan, picking an underdog team and rooting for them throughout makes the tournament that much better.

Your bracket will benefit, and the tournament will be much more fun to watch. Everybody loves an underdog. Even if you picked a "safe" bracket and it is screwed up, it is a pleasure to root for upsets.

So while pretty much everybody is disappointed with their selections, enjoy the upsets. Enjoy David clobbering Goliath. It is a beautiful thing to see small schools outperform major universities. At the end of the day, the bracket should not interfere with who you root for in March.

Curses

I understand that filling out brackets usually involves money. Most people can care less how certain teams do, as long as they are making money. It is unhealthy for casual sport fans to be rooting against a team like Butler, because it ruins their brackets.

However, fans are selfish. I guarantee you that thousands of fans were rooting against Lehigh because they had Duke going far in their bracket. Is that a good thing? A bracket should not get in the way of fans enjoying a game.

The college kids already have enough pressure on them. They are also producing and playing at a high level. At the end of the day, respect them for going out and competing on national television. Don't be like the thousands of people that only care about their brackets.

Having said that, root for your bracket, but respect and appreciate the value of the enormous upsets.

This has been quite the March so far. Mid-majors have not only shown that they can compete with the big schools, but they can beat them too. So enjoy all of the excitement that it brings.

Hopefully, your bracket is in decent shape and you can walk away with some money. However, root for the underdogs and appreciate the special things these young men are doing when they "shock the world" and ruin your bracket.