If you're not a huge college basketball fan, the next three weeks may truly seem like "madness."
While you stare with bewilderment, people will be furiously scribbling on "bracket sheets," some might scream for no apparent reason in your office, and the talk around the water cooler might revolve around the Hoyas, Blue Devils, Fighting Irish, and Razorbacks.
And if you live in San Antonio, site of the Final Four, you might see people with painted skin and colored wigs walking toward the Alamodome on the 5th and 7th of April.
Rest assured, the pod people aren't invading, it's just the yearly occurrence of the NCAA's Division I championship basketball tournament.
The Method
Dubbed "March Madness" by many, it is the culmination of the NCAA basketball season, which began in November.
The regular season gives way to NCAA Division I conference tournaments, and the winners of the 32 conference tourneys (yes, there are 32 conferences in college hoops) win automatic bids.
The other 33 bids are handed out by invitation by the NCAA Selection Committee, and all the teams were announced last Sunday, a.k.a. "Selection Sunday."
The NCAA tournament format only allows 64 teams to partake so the 64th and 65th teams play what amounts to a wildcard game to see who gets in. The Opening Round, as it has been referred to, spells the official beginning of the March Madness tournament.
The tournament begins in four regions—the East, South, Midwest, and West—with each region getting 16 teams. As this is a single elimination tournament, teams are disposed of quickly with the field whittling down to 32, 16, eight, the Final Four, and then the two championship teams.
The Madness
The March Madness tournament's popularity isn't based on America's passion for college athletics alone. There is always a lot of intrigue in the tournament, as well as the opportunity to make some cash through office bracket pools or otherwise.
As David Tarrant says in the Dallas Morning News, "Whether it's five bucks in an office pool or a high-dollar auction where the bidding for the best teams reaches into the thousands, millions are expected to bet on the tournament."
The intrigue of the tournament comes in the form of top seeded teams being upset in the early rounds by the Cinderella teams who play beyond expectation.
Last year in the West Region, the perennial powerhouse Duke Blue Devils suffered a monumental upset at the hands of the Virginia Commonwealth Rams, losing 79–77. While the Rams lost the following game to Pittsburgh, some lower seeded teams had a longer sustained run of luck.
Much like Virginia Commonwealth, the 11th-seeded George Mason Patriots pulled off a first-round upset in the 2006 tournament beating the sixth-seeded Michigan State Spartans 75–65.
They proceeded on a run that saw them beat a worthy adversary in the third-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels, the seventh-seeded Wichita St. Shockers, and upset the D.C. Region No. 1 University of Connecticut Huskies before losing to eventual champion Florida in the Final Four.
Nonetheless, some analysts are predicting a rather vanilla tournament with few upsets this year. As Sports Illustrated's Stewart Mandel says, "Don't be afraid to turn in a highly conservative Final Four."
That said, don't be surprised if some lower seeded teams give the higher seeds more than they can handle.
It isn't called March Madness for nothing.