Quill Ink

In my family, March Madness is less a sporting event and more a seasonal personality disorder.

Every year, brackets come out, and suddenly everyone becomes an expert. There are stats being thrown around, injury reports being studied, seedings being debated like somebody’s mortgage depends on it, and at least one family member acting like they personally discovered a sleeper team from a mid-major conference. It is aggressive. It is loud. It is deeply unnecessary. I participate every year.

Not well, but enthusiastically.

Fantasy football already proved that I am not exactly a model of athletic vigilance. I rarely checked my lineup, forgot who was even playing half the time, and still somehow came in fourth out of twelve. It was so bad that after the draft, I had 7 running backs and that’s it. Just my 7 running backs, the New Orleans Saints defense, and Matthew Stafford as my QB. It wasn’t intentional – I was multitasking. Unsusccessfully needless to say. Two years ago, I had Christian McCaffrey in for half the season, but he was injured and missed the whole season. This year, with minimal to no effort, I couldn’t believe I finished in fourth.

I consider that one of my most impressive accidental achievements. It says less about my sports knowledge and more about the possible incompetence of the other eight people, but a win is a win.

March Madness has always required a slightly different strategy. In years past, mine has been highly scientific. I would choose teams based on colors first. If the uniforms looked sharp, that mattered. If two teams were evenly matched in my mind, which is to say I knew almost nothing about either one, I would go with the school from the city that had the better food. This is how rational adults make important decisions.

Still, I remained loyal to my usual top three: Michigan, Purdue, and Duke.

Yes, I know. Me and five million other people.

Michigan always had my heart. Go Blue. Purdue felt dependable, like a good Midwest casserole: not flashy, but solid. And Duke? Look, sometimes a villain wears nice colors and knows how to close a game. I am not proud of everything, but I am honest.

This year, though, I’m changing it up.

This year I’m going orange and blue.

Illinois gets my loyalty this time, and not because of rankings or projections or whatever terrifying spreadsheet real bracket people are staring at right now. This one is personal. My husband and I both graduated from UIC with our undergrad degrees. That’s where we met: Burnham Hall lecture room C3 (I think), Intro to finance. Our middle son spent a couple of years there (ultimately graduating from DePaul, but do they even count??). Our oldest graduated with his undergrad and master’s at U of I, sister school territory, and now he’s finishing his PhD at UIC, which feels like the family has earned the right to become emotionally overinvested in all things orange and blue.

So that’s where my bracket heart is landing.

Not with the experts.
Not with the analysts.
Not with the people on television speaking in dramatic tones about momentum and defensive efficiency.

No, mine is based on family ties, school pride, irrational loyalty, and the general belief that numbers do not always tell the whole story.

Because they don’t. Sorry, Stephen A!

At some point, rankings stop mattering. Records stop mattering. The favorite stops mattering. What matters is who is hungrier, who wants it more, and who refuses to fold under pressure. That’s the part that makes March Madness fun. It is chaos dressed up as competition. It is hope with a buzzer beater. It is heartbreak in sneakers.

And in my house, it is also a chance for my savage family to roast each other in real time over bracket picks none of us can actually control.

There will be judgment.
There will be trash talk.
There will be nasty text threads.
There will be at least one person pretending their picks were based on “research” when in reality they used a two-sided coin.

That is what makes it beautiful.

By the time April rolls around, I will probably have forgotten to check half my bracket anyway. There is a very real chance I will not know who advanced until someone in my family starts yelling about it from another room. I may not fully grasp what is happening until May, which is not ideal for a tournament that ends in early April, but that has never stopped me before.

The truth is, I do not need to track every game to enjoy the madness. The fun is in the ritual. The family group commentary. The blind confidence. The petty loyalty. The completely unearned certainty that this year, somehow, my picks make perfect sense.

They probably don’t.

But they’re mine.

And this year, for family reasons and sentimental ones and maybe slightly delusional ones, I’m riding with orange and blue.

Let the madness begin.