First of all, relax… Before you send me hate email about how March Madness is amazing, hear me out. March Madness is BY FAR my personal favorite sporting event of the year. I even use March Madness in my Statistics class, and teach about the stats of the tournament for an entire month. In my opinion, the only sporting event that could hold a candle to the NCAA basketball tournament is the Triple Crown, but trust me, you can expect an article in May about why that sucks too.

 

Despite the fact that I “watch” a few hours of college basketball a year, it is still something that gets me all in a tizzy (I say “watch” because I am usually in attendance at a few games, and watching the actual game is nearly impossible for an ADD, busybody like me, that is too worried about flagging down the beer man or plotting how I am going to pee, because I sure as hell refuse to ask the poor people in my row to move again so I can go to the bathroom, purchase more food that I absolutely do not need, or get another beer.*)

*two beers. Half of one beer is guaranteed to spill all over the kind people that let me through their aisle for the sixth time.

So, if I love March Madness so much, how is it possible that I easily created a countdown of why I hate March Madness so much? Read on, and you too, will quickly realize that you hate March Madness just as much as I do.

11. Having to Listen to Friends/Co-workers Talk About College Basketball And Pretend They Are NCAA experts.

Let’s face it, unless you are Dick Vitale, nobody gives a damn about your “expert advice,” or who you are sure is going to win each game based on their rebound percentage, or points allowed per game.
When someone at work starts talking to me about who they think is going to win, and why, I always do one of two things: tell them I don’t care, or tell them I don’t give a shit.

*edited to add that I don’t even give a shit what Dick Vitale says either.

10. When Your “Underdog” Pick That You Have in the Elite 8 Is Eliminated In Round 1.

Nothing is worse than when you try to make a big move and include a #15 seeded “Northwestern North Dakota Tech” in your elite 8 (just so you could be the only one that can brag about them beating a #2 seed in Rd. 1,) and they get beat in round 1 by 41 points.

Congratulations. Every single person on the planet just gained 1 point on you for being such an idiot.

9. When You Can’t Remember You Passwords From Last Year

I have spent countless hours trying to register for ESPN, Fox Sports, Yahoo, CBS Sports, my local newspapers, my local TV stations, my local radio stations, etc. pools, but can not remember my user name, password, or email address that I used to sign up the previous year.

I probably now have 17 email addresses registered at Foxsports.com from all the years of unsuccessful attempts at logging in.

8. When You Lose a Final Four Pick In Round One Or Two

Two words: Red X’s.

7. When You Have Too Many Brackets

Nothing is worse than not knowing if you should root for a team or not.

Me (every game): “Ohhhhhhhhhh, look at this, if Gonzaga wins, I gain four points on Johnny in Jared’s pool. But, if they lose, I have them making it all the way to the final four in Jenny’s pool, and that would suck. But, then again, Greg has them winning the entire tourney in the office pool, and I only have them making it to the Sweet 16, plus that bastard won the pool last year, and I would rather have anyone else win instead of him………..”

6. The TV Schedule

This is a two fold Whammy!

The first thing is the timing of the games. If you are on the East Coast, you have to stay awake until way past your bedtime to make sure your bracket is still thriving. If you are on the West Coast, you basically have to take a sick day from work for the first two days of the tourney to catch the first zillion games that will be over before you get out of your awful job.

* East Coast people, I recommend you take at least one day out of work as well. At the very least: leave work early. At the very most: quit.

The other thing about the schedule is that it may have an impact on your regularly scheduled programming. I once nearly had a mini stroke on a Friday night, when The Amazing Race’s Phil Koeghan announced “When the The Amazing Race returns on April 1st….” In fact, I am not embarrassed to say that I actually think I physically gasped a little when I heard April 1st, and then promptly opened my nearest calendar and frantically counted how many weeks away April 1st was. I was so pissed at the NCAA that Friday night.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: I am 100% confident that CBS moved Survivor from its original home of 8pm on Thursday nights to 8pm on Wednesday nights a few years ago, simply because of all the strongly-worded hate mail and/or death threats I sent to their offices kindly asking that they not F*%k with me and my Survivor ever again.

5. When You Lose Your Office Pool To the Old Lady That You Work With’s 8 Year Old Great-Grandson

Who the hell even invited him, lady?

4. Having To Drink on Thursday and Then Having to Drink on Friday

Within 7 minutes of leaving work on the first Thursday of the tournament I am sipping on a cold beer, with a folder containing my 73 brackets, a blue highlighter and a red pen. I am cheers’ing with my co-workers, high-fiving that Dayton won the 12:15 game, and congratulating ourselves at still having a perfect bracket, even though only two games have finished.

At least, that is always what I imagine is going to happen, as I am driving twice the legal speed limit to rush to the crowded bar that is already full, and has nowhere for us to sit. We have to stand behind 6 burly construction workers, awkwardly exchange beer and money with the bartender while making sure to not disrupt the scary construction men, and not having a place to rest my 64 oz. Bud Light mug that I instinctively ordered.

Couple that with my highlighter typically dying after three games, and me losing my pen, and I am one miserable NCAA college basketball “fan.”

Then, I wake up on Friday feeling like shit. I promise myself that I will come home and watch the games in bed when I get out of work. By 9:20am I have already made plans to watch the continuation of round 1 at the exact same bar we were at the day before, and end up being double hungover on Saturday morning.*

*Afternoon

3. The Anxiety During the Final Seconds of Nearly Every Game

Everyone may say they love a “good game,” but that is really just bullshit. If I have Marquette in the final four, I want them to win by 91 points, every game, and I will not be happy if they are letting their opponents within 20 points at any point throughout the game.

Washington Redskins aside, if I ever drop dead during a sporting event, it will most certainly be during the final seconds in a semi-meaningless #12 vs #5 seeded game in which I have the underdog making the Sweet Sixteen in one of my 37 pools.

2. When You Are Doing Great But Someone Else is Doing a Little Better, But You Can’t Catch Up To Them No Matter What Happens.

When you are crushing the office pool, nailing upset after upset, and convinced that you have a victory in the bag. Then you find out that someone else is doing one point better than you, but has the EXACT SAME FINAL 4, FINAL 2, AND CHAMPION AS YOU. You have all been there, and know how devastating it can truly be to one’s mental health.

 

1. Risking Jail Time

I don’t know what state you are from, but in most states, participating in an NCAA Tourney office pool is technically “illegal” if you play for money. (Not that any of us at my workplace play for money, State, we just play for fun.) This may be the stupidest, most ridiculous law ever, and if my place of employment ever got questioned for participating in a “fun only” NCAA office pool, (and they are looking for “the ringleader”), everyone’s fingers will snap off of their hands for collectively pointing as enthusiastically as humanly possible at my face.

If you are anything like me, today and tomorrow you will be prancing around your office building looking more professional and important than you do all year. Carrying folded up papers, envelopes, binders, like 5 pens, and whispering into co-workers ears, as if you are inviting them into an underground tunnel that leads to the lost treasure of the Sierra Nevada…. Is that something, or am I just naming a beer? It sounds so right and so wrong at the same time, but I am literally too lazy to Google it.

I went into a co-worker’s room today, one of which I have not been in all year. I actually think the last time I spoke to her was when I barged into her room on March 14th, 2016 demanding her to stop what she was doing, fill out my bracket that she knows nothing about, and order her to have her completed bracket for me BY NOON on Thursday. The sooner the better.

If you include all the other office pools I may or may not “ring lead”:

– Celebrity Death Pools
– American Idol Fantasy Leagues
– The Voice Fantasy Leagues
– Survivor Drafts
– Big Brother Drafts
– Big Brother Canada Drafts
– Big Brother UK Drafts
-Superbowl Squares
– Ink Master Drafts
-The Bachelor/Bachelorette Drafts
-Over/Under on how long the newest Bachelor/ette couple will stay together
–Amazing Race Drafts
– Power Ball “Gr

oup Buy-Ins”
-Mega Millions “Group Buy Ins”

I would be in jail for life without the eligibility of parole, if, indeed, money was at stake, which it is not. Because that would be unlawful.

 

… fine, and Project Runway Drafts 🙁

So, those are the reasons why the next two weeks are going to completely suck. But, also the reason why I am going to hopped out of bed this morning like a giddy middle school girl getting dolled up for her first Justin Bieber concert.

 

Best of luck with all of your pools, and enjoy the Madness.

-Ryan

P.S. If anyone would like to participate in a Dancing With the Stars: Season 24 Fantasy League, hit me up by Monday.