March Madness, not Sadness.

   March: A month of rebirth. Flowers and trees return to color and all seems to be right in the world. Unless you are my grandmother. 

   Leanne Bowen, long time Steelers/WVU fan who happens to be my grandma, hates this month. All of her life she has had trouble with Soap Opera Addiction. SOA is very serious and for the longest time she had to go cold turkey because she watched them all so much. She was off the shows for a few years, but she was not out of the game for long. When my mother and aunt got into high school, I guess soap operas were the "thing" for teenagers to watch after school and my poor grandmother got sucked in once again. So when the NCAA tournament comes around every March, all you hear is the complaints. 

EXAMPLES:

   1."My shows got pushed to next week because of all this basketball. This is not March Madness, it is March Sadness!"  

   2. "How am I supposed to watch Young and the Restless! I HATE THIS!!"

     The list goes on. For days my grandmother's routine is destroyed. Her favorite repeating storyline of someone dying and their ghost haunting the current cast with have to wait till the next week. I hope she does not hate me for my next sentence.

   I have so much trouble feeling sorry for her. March Madness activates a gene inside of me that never comes out in any other month. A gene that allows me to be absolutely consumed with something even if my favorite team is knocked out in the first round. 

   It has something that football currently lacks. In the BCS, Cinderella stories do not exist. Everybody knows that Boise State has to win all their games by 50 points to even have a chance to play in the championship game. But in basketball, teams like George Mason, Richmond, and Morehead State have a chance to win it all if their cards fall in the right place. I love that aspect of the tourney: Let's not just have two teams, how about 68!? The BCS should take some notes, but it probably won't help much.

  The tournament has something about it that football cannot achieve. The upsets, the back-to-back non-stop games, Gus Johnson's incredible screams, I could list things for days. Football could make a really awesome playoff system with sixteen teams and I would love it, but it would never replace the feelings of March Madness. 

   I was at Buffalo Wild Wings last week for a lot of the first round and you could see why it is so much better. Guys in suits coming in on their lunch break just to catch some of the games, children filling out brackets with their parents with no knowledge of the games, and men and women alike jumping and screaming when a certain team wins at the buzzer.  

   So I am sorry to the die-hard football fans reading and that tend to disagree, but I am not too concerned with you. I have a grandmother that I have to hide this post from. I hope I can still come to her house for dinner sometimes.