Column: Get your brackets ready for March Madness

It’s all about the brackets in March. 

Bracketology, to be precise. No, it’s not about shopping  hints from the fix-it folks at your local hardware store. And these brackets will definitely not  be sold on the Home Shop- ping Network. 

The brackets that come to the  forefront this month are all basketball induced. College basketball to be precise.

 For the uninitiated, brackets refer to a 68 team tournament, involving the top college basketball teams. Now  famously known as March Madness, it has become all the craze the past couple decades.

The cool thing about the tournament is that it brings in even the non-sports fans. Chicago residents who may  never glance at a college basketball score during the regular season, and who may think the “three second rule” has  to do with picking up food that you dropped on the floor, suddenly become fans. 

Office pools, family and friends lotteries, posted brackets everywhere. Just the general buzz of conversation can  bring the most remote of fans into the frenzy.

Often we have a favorite team. Maybe it’s the college we  attended. Maybe it’s a local school (not much here in Chica- go with only Loyola University a contender to make the “big  dance”), or maybe it’s a team you just happened to pick out of the selection hat and if the piece of paper said “Duke”— lucky you. My pick is often a school that ends in “Technical Institute,” which usually means my players will graduate with great jobs but my team loses in the first round.

All the fun begins with Selection Sunday on March 15. Once it begins, the games come at you in waves. It is a three-week whirlwind that culminates on Monday April 6 with the National Championship.

Finally, one of the 68 competing teams will be crowned as Champion.

And then March Madness quietly recedes.

John Cohn is a New Eastside resident.  

Cover image courtesy of PNG Tree.