Fill Out ONE March Madness Bracket

The following is a Top Level Sports Public Service Announcement:

Listen to me.  This is important.  I need you to hear this now before Selection Sunday rolls around and you find yourself swearing at the printer for acting up whilst printing enough March Madness brackets to satisfy the gambling needs of a small army.  My advice is simple, yet surprisingly not common sense.  Your friends will thank me for it.  I hope that eventually, you will too.

This year, fill out ONE, and only ONE March Madness bracket.

“BLASPHEMOUS!”, I hear you cry.  (Alright, you probably aren’t quite that enraged.)  Still, a large portion of March Madness fans will fill out more than one bracket, with some completing up to a dozen or more.  Don’t be that guy.

Filling out multiple brackets takes away from the excitement and spirit of the NCAA Tournament.  What’s the point in watching a game where you’ve picked both teams to win?  Sure, maybe you’ve got one team picked in more brackets, but you can’t have the same kind of rooting interest as someone who’s committed to just one team.

Whenever an upset occurs, you’ve probably picked it somewhere, but can you really say you called it?  Oftentimes, you don’t even remember which bracket you guessed the upset in.  No one wants to see you flip through your clipboard of brackets until the eventual boast about nailing that #13 seed in Bracket C – it just makes you an annoying person to watch the games with.

If you’ve got 10 brackets, of course you’ll end up with a great bracket or two – you’ve got all the combinations covered, genius!  And I don’t want to hear the excuse of “oh, but this is the bracket I really care about.”  Why am I supposed to believe it’s not just the best in the bunch?  Also, enough with the “well, this is my work pool bracket, and this is my family pool bracket”, etc.  NEWSFLASH: you can submit the same bracket to multiple pools!

Now, I understand the allure of having multiple brackets.  It removes the risk of having your bracket busted if your champion gets bounced early, and can also allow you to keep the dream of having a perfect bracket alive for a few more games.  But let’s remember what makes picking a March Madness bracket so special in the first place.

For me, it’s the research and the laboring over picks.  Which teams are upset prone?  Who’s this year’s Cinderella?  When it’s all said and done, which one of those 68 teams is going to cut down the net?  Other people might not take it as seriously, but there is something special about having one bracket.

Every team you choose becomes a small part of you, if only for a couple weeks.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of them before – you can cheer them on just like they’re your alma mater.  When you get a pick right (especially an upset), nothing beats circling or highlighting that name, giving the checkmark, or seeing it turn green online.

If you still want to fill out multiple brackets, here’s a suggestion, something I started doing myself a few years ago: fill out a first impressions bracket.  Whenever the tournament field is announced, immediately fill out a bracket and keep it somewhere safe.  Then, after the tournament’s over, go back and see how your gut instincts fared in comparison to the final bracket you came up with.

At the end of the day, your March Madness experience is whatever you want it to be.  Make as many brackets as you want, but if that number’s more than one, I don’t want to hear about it.

 

Footnote: it should be stated that any online “Perfect Bracket” or “Best Bracket Challenge” serves as an exception to the rule.  If you can enter multiple brackets for free for a chance at a grand prize, go ahead – after all, it’s not cheating.  Just know which is your true bracket, and enter that one in any of your real pools.