March Nihilism

March Madness starts tomorrow morning. This 2-3 week stretch has been my favorite time of the year for as long as I've been basketball-conscious. 

I don't think there's a better possible name for the tournament than 'March Madness'. I'm a sucker for alliteration, and I appreciate how much effort is put into making it a real brand rather than just a few short weeks of basketball. Sure, the 'madness' in question applies to the on-court product; last minute buzzer beaters, shocking upsets, Cinderella stories (Sorry, I'll spare an explanation of what makes the tournament good. I figure there's no one reading this that doesn't already know it. I also figure there's no one reading this anyway). 

What's there not to love? I get to throw myself into the trenches with teams and players that I've never heard of, know nothing about, and will likely never hear from again. Besides a few offhand hours spent "researching" these teams and weighing stats vs gut feeling, I'm completely clueless to the whole matter. 

Yes, there's always a sect of college basketball obsessed sickos that keep up with this nonsense throughout the year. They know all the trends, coaches, playstyles, etc. 

• They know that Purdue's Zach Edey, a 7'4 305 pound behemoth and one of the nation's best amateurs, is too slow and lumbering to continue his basketball career in the NBA. Maybe he'll be a star in China or the Australian NBL. All the more reason to capture his last chance at a great American sports moment.

• They know that Gonzaga's Drew Timme is playing his last season in college, exiting as the sport's posterchild for nearly four straight years with one un-straight mustache. 

• They know that Brandon Miller from Alabama was an accessory to murder, and shouldn't even be allowed to play in the first place. They also know that his ability to continue playing well in spite of his serious legal charges speaks to his resilience and mental-toughness, definitely not to the NCAA and our country's tendency to sweep atrocities under the rug once they start affecting our precious entertainment. 

Do they know that none of their knowledge matters anyway?

While madness certainly ensues between two hoops and the hardwood, real madness is knowing that those college basketball sickos do no better in their predictions than Linda from HR who just wanted to be included in the office bracket pool. True madness comes from American sports culture getting riled up to chase an impossible dream of a perfect bracket. 

There's no event like it,  so many people get so very excited to lose so very bad. March Madness is one big loser-fest. We all lose money, time, energy; all for this stupid basketball tournament that we don't know anything about in the first place. 

Even as I write this, I'm flipping back and forth between tabs comparing the free throw rates of Indiana and Kent State, who play each other on Friday night. I don't even know where Kent State is, and my Indiana knowledge is limited to Hoosiers and Hoosiers exclusively. Hoosiers came out in 1986..

There's no way I'm the only person in way over their head with this. If anything, the obsessive useless research is just as much of March Madness tradition as everyone losing everything on day one.  

Even our motivation to chase that white whale in the form of a perfect bracket is silly to begin with. There's a 1 in 9 quintillion chance of getting all your picks right. All we're really after here is mathematical immortality. The ceiling of a perfect bracket might just be a late night show appearance and a perennial answer to a trivia question. No one's life is getting changed from that. 

"True madness comes from American sports culture getting riled up to chase an impossible dream of a perfect bracket." 

Eliminate "sports" and "of a perfect bracket" from that sentence and you've a pulse on what ambition in this country feels like (hopefully you'll look past me not only quoting myself, but quoting myself from the same article you're reading).

As serial entrepreneurship, destigmatized gambling and increased social hostility invades the mainstream, March Madness has morphed into a perfect microcosm of American society. We get wrapped up in these superficial moments that we know nothing about and that mean even less. Are we going to war with Russia? Will AI replace our jobs? It's no different than debating Michigan State vs USC. What do we know? How many players can you name on either team? How many Russian policies? 

News hypotheticals and 12 seed upsets mean the same, and that's just about nothing. There's a beauty to the intersection of meaning and the lack of it.  For as long as we keep participating and putting energy into nothing, it remains something. 

March Madness is something, whether you're a college basketball sicko or Linda from HR, or somewhere in-between. We have to glamorize and package nothing as something to make life worth living. Otherwise we'd be mindlessly treading water in a world where nothing means anything, which it doesn't. 

Whatever, I'm rambling. 

I've got Purdue, Alabama, Texas and Gonzaga as my Final Four with Bama beating Texas for the championship. What about you?