My dog ate my March Madness bracket
My March Madness bracket didn’t survive the first day. Not because of the many upsets that may have thrown off a fair few others (luckily, my faith in Purdue, Arizona and Virginia hadn’t been overly high), but because I never saved it in the first place.
Almost every year, the turnaround between the time the brackets are announced to when the first games are played is much faster than I think it should be and I’m often scrambling to put together something at the last minute. This year was slightly different in that I had filled out my bracket last Monday, but I thought I would stew it over for a little while before locking in my choices.
What I hadn’t really considered was that I wouldn’t really have the time to revisit my bracket over the next couple days. Tuesdays are generally pretty busy for us here at the paper, and last Tuesday was no different. The start of a cold hit me Wednesday evening and pretty much wiped the bracket from my thoughts. The same cold caused me to not even realize the tournament had started until after Virginia had already been knocked off in the week’s first big upset. When I finally saw the news, I realized that I had never finalized my bracket.
Which was only slightly disappointing at first. It was a bummer that I wouldn’t be able to compare my score with the rest of the brackets on ESPN.com, but not a huge loss. It’s more fun to compare it to people you actually know anyways. I’d just print out the draft of my other bracket, even if I hadn’t had the chance to make any adjustments. But when I tabbed over to the “My Brackets” tab, I realized that my draft had been deleted, as it was obviously past the submission date. I stared blankly at the screen for a moment, my illness-hazed mind still scrambling to catch up with a dark reality. As my predicament slowly started to dawn on me, I scrambled up and down the page, searching for any sign of my bracket.
Of course, there was none. And for the first time since middle school, I had no March Madness bracket.
In the whole scheme of things, this isn’t really that bad. It’s not like my bracket was going to be anything spectacular or win any prizes or anything like that. And yet, I still felt strangely hollow without it.
It’s definitely a silly thing to get bent out of shape about, and honestly I think I was feeling too sick to care too much about it in the moment, but it still does feel weird to not be marking off the wins and losses as the tournament progresses. I’m still kind of keeping track of what I can remember and I’m actually not doing too horribly. All four of my Final Four teams are still in it and six of my Elite Eight teams remain (thanks for nothing, Marquette and Kansas). But with no bracket to prove it, who knows if I’m telling the truth!
Which, again, who really cares? The answer is apparently “me,” which I find somewhat confounding.
I think the reason I am being thrown for a little bit of a loop is because, whether or not I was aware of it, filling out a March Madness bracket has become a tradition for me. Some years, I would be keeping track of twelve different brackets, other years I would have just been doing it as I would have done this year, just for myself. But regardless, ever since I can remember my dad marking out his wins and losses in highlighter on his own bracket and wanting to make one myself to see if I could beat him, I’ve always had one filled out.
It’s funny how such a seemingly benign tradition can throw you off if it’s suddenly gone.
On the other hand though, the whole situation has kind of given me an opportunity to take in the tournament from a different perspective. With no horse in the race, so to speak, I’ve just been able to enjoy the games for what they are. I think I’ve written before about how not playing fantasy football allowed me to enjoy the games a little bit more, and while the effect isn’t as extreme in this case, I do believe that there is something similar happening. Upsets are even more exciting if they also aren’t simultaneously destroying my bracket and I felt more free to cheer for players or teams for reasons other than what team I had thought would win. It’s been fun, just maybe in a different way.
And hey, Wisconsin won three games in the consolation tournament, so I guess that’s something too.
A C ertain Point of V iew
