March Madness: Half-Mad, Half-March

We’re past Valentine’s Day, we’re quickly moving through February and the month of March will be upon us quite shortly. So, what does that mean? It means the NFL lockout will commence very soon but it also means that college basketball is set to take the center stage.

Yes, March is the month that many sports fans refer to as March Madness, but let’s evaluate this: how mad is this month?

The college basketball tournament that everyone gets excited about is the NCAA Tournament, which in 2011, will begin on Thursday, March 24th. And we won’t determine a winner until we are all the way into April.

So why all the madness?

Let’s face, March Madness is only really one week of madness in March this year and that’s the way it is pretty much every year. And more so, it doesn’t even start and end in the entire month of March, so how can this be considered solely “March” Madness?

Maybe they should think of reworking the title.

The only thing that makes this tournament even more mad this year than other years is the fact that there are now four play-in games, which means eight teams will battle for four spots to be in the tournament for the right to be slaughtered in the first-round by a No. 1 seed.

In previous years, there was just one play-in game and that team would play the overall No. 1 seed but now all four No. 1 seeds will get a chance to play a team that definitely doesn’t deserve to be in the tournament.

So technically, the NCAA tournament has expanded to 68 teams and very soon it will probably be expanding to more – maybe 96. Then we’ll truly have some madness and it will truly take up a bigger chunk of March.

For now, it’s just one week of March Madness and it starts on the 24th this year.