Written By Sam Ekstrom
As far as sports viewing goes, the NCAA tournament isn’t all that different from the Olympics. Sure, there are obvious differences: one is annual while the other is biannual, one is domestic while the other is international, one features Bob Costas while the other features Greg Gumbel. But from a water-cooler-discussion standpoint, the two are synonymous. ‘Dude, I’m so excited for (insert event here). I’m going to watch it all day on, like, four screens.’
Like the Olympics, March Madness requires a large time investment – 63 games, in fact … well, 67 if you count the play-ins – and frankly, most of the big talkers will bow out by halftime of the evening session on Thursday (or earlier if three of their Final Four teams have already been eliminated). The tournament is three weeks long and requires stamina. Far too many people get burnt out before the second weekend – Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games — which is really when the best matchups take place.
Don’t let this happen to you. There are ways to combat this buzzkill of a condition that we in the business cutely refer to as March Sadness. The mistake that most people make is that they wake up Thursday morning, plop down in front of the TV and expect to last for the next four days. That’s poor planning. You must be in proper condition to watch four consecutive days of wire-to-wire basketball, and the process begins the instant that brackets become available on Sunday evening.
GETTING READY
· There is a tremendous temptation to fill out your bracket in real time as the CBS Sports panel rapidly analyzes the matchups with astounding detail for supposedly not having seen the bracket yet. Don’t fall into this trap. If you fill out all 63 games within 30 minutes of the announcement, you will never last through the following Sunday. Premature-bracketology can have crippling side effects. You’ll experience fitful, sleepless nights on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday – four days! – if you have finalized your bracket right away. That means you’ll be second-guessing yourself for the next 100 hours:‘Did I pick the right 12-seed upset?’ ‘Did I research the 8-9 matchups enough??’ ‘Am I too biased against the teams I watch on TV the most????’ ‘WAS IT REALLY A GOOD IDEA TO PUT NORTH DAKOTA STATE IN MY FINAL FOUR????’
The solution here is to reduce stress by waiting until Wednesday night or Thursday morning to finalize your picks. This gives you ample time to research your bracket and also watch the First Four games on Tuesday and Wednesday night. Who knows? You might be watching the reincarnation of the 2011 VCU team that made the Final Four.
· With brackets, less is more. Don’t think you are a more avid fan if you have 18 different entries. Just like when you have too many fantasy football teams, over-bracketizing will, in effect, create apathy. You can’t win. If you have a perfect region in one bracket, you inevitably have another that you’ll soon be crumpling up into a paper airplane. If you have the urge to fill out a few corporate brackets for $10 million prizes that you probably won’t win, go ahead. But hold one bracket with higher esteem than the rest. Your best bet is to enter said bracket into a pool of family and friends; people you can watch the games with and give crap to throughout the tourney. You’d also be foolish not to raise the stakes with a small cash incentive. It’s like the $0.10 superfecta bet in horseracing – even the smallest possibility of monetary gain can generate interest.
It’s all about creating internal investment. You’re far more likely to have more game-watching fuel if you have one bracket to focus on and a few dollar bills at risk.
· When you fill out your bracket, by all means pick a few Cinderellas … but don’t have them advancing more than two rounds if they are a double-digit seed. In all likelihood, your initial upset pick will fail anyway. No. 13-seeded Harvard may get destroyed by 4-seed North Carolina, and if you were indeed on that Harvard bandwagon, don’t let your entire bracket be shattered because you wanted to ride the Ivy League school to the promised land. Stick to your big guns making deep runs. I’m talking 5-seeds or better. Don’t mortgage your bracket on an infinitesimal possibility. If you do, you’ll lose interest much faster.
· Steer clear of SportsCenter. Just like Super Bowl week, you’ll only be annoyed by the excess coverage. Thanks for your bold insights, Dan Dakich and Dick Vitale. That’s really groundbreaking of you to pick all no. 1 on no. 2 seeds in the Final Four. You say Kentucky’s going to win it all, Joe Lunardi? What a novel opinion! Oh, and I simply can’t fill out my bracket until I see who Barack Obama included in his Elite Eight.
The goal here is to NOT fill the void you are feeling with meaningless rhetoric. You want to fill it with real basketball, so be patient. Wait until there are actual games being played. Over-stimulation early in the week will burn you out faster than watching three hours of Olympic luge.
FINALLY, THE TOURNEY BEGINS
· Congrats, you made it to Thursday. Now, your conditioning gets put to the test. With modern streaming technology, there is no longer any excuse to miss the action if you are simply at work or if you don’t get cable. All the action can be viewed on your smartphone, tablet or laptop, which means you can always be connected. Just a few words of advice for the 9-to-5ers: keep your computer volume down, always have an alternate computer window open with some sort of spreadsheet, and don’t attract a crowd around your cubicle.
Now let’s say you’re at home. If you have all the aforementioned modern technology, you can go for the jugular and watch all four games at once if you add your TV to the mix and have incredible bandwidth with your at-home Wi-Fi. This is what you call “Basket-Valhallah.” But let’s pretend that you don’t have that luxury; that it’s just you, a La-Z-Boy and a remote control. Then it all comes down to your use of the Previous Channel button.
Odds are, you don’t automatically know the station number for TruTV, and with HD channels usually being in the triple digits, it might be best to print off a large-font sheet with all four channel numbers (CBS, TNT, TBS, TruTV) and tape it above your screen so you don’t get confused in a dire moment and flip to a game that’s still in the first half. You MUST be proactive about cueing up your Prev. Chan. button to anticipate two games coming to an end at the same time. Make sure you are always a quick toggle away from the next best game. If a game has under 10 minutes remaining and is separated by single digits and for some reason you’re not watching it, your thumb should be stationed above the remote to get to that channel the instant your current game enters a media timeout.
· Give more value to games with good announcing crews. Turner Sports is forced to stretch out their pool of broadcasters to accommodate eight different locations, so there is a great discrepancy between the top tier and the lower tier. A top tier announcing team can take an average game and make it exciting, while a lower tier team can fail to capture a great moment when it’s happening right in front of them. Here’s the announcing hierarchy, from best to worst:
1. Kevin Harlan: The best basketball voice in the country, hands down.
2. Ian Eagle: Always enthused; perfect for opening round games.
3. Jim Nantz: The steady, consistent, professional voice of the Final Four. Easy to listen to.
4. Verne Lundquist: A veteran with a flair for the dramatic.
5. Marv Albert: Weird to hear him away from the NBA, but his “YES!” call can still send shivers.
6. Brian Anderson: Best known for being the voice of the Brewers. Lame.
7. Andrew Catalon: Who?
8. Spero Dedes: You’ll be asleep by the first media timeout.
· You know that Kenny Rogers song The Gambler? “You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table. There’ll be time enough for countin when the dealin’s done.” That should be your mindset on a March Madness day. Don’t be an obsessive bracket checker. A watched pot never boils. Your bracket’s success after session one is never as good as it seems or bad as it seems. What’s more important than hitting on the tricky 8 vs 9 game is whether or not you have your Elite Eight teams remaining. Take inventory after the day is over, and use a wide-angle lens to view your bracket. After all, first round games are always worth the fewest points in your pool.
· Build in time to get away. There will certainly be moments during this impending four-day stretch when you need to leave the comfort of your man cave. That’s OK. Let your wife ask you to run some errands. Go to your in-laws for dinner if you have to. Do yard work if it’s nice out.
The caveat: Keep your phone nearby.
One of the thrills of March Madness is scoreboard watching – constantly refreshing your iPhone app to see if your upset pick is turning things around a 12-point halftime deficit. It’s OK to pump your fist when you’re standing in line at Cub when you see your 7-seed hang on for the victory. It’s totally cool to knock over the pitcher of lemonade that your mother-in-law placed next to you at dinner when you see the 14 vs 3 matchup is going to overtime. There’s no shame in public displays of fandom. It’s March Madness; not March Melancholy.
Now you’re equipped. You’ve received 1,700 words of instruction. Don’t mess it up. Don’t be the square who missed the Thursday night late game and has to fake nod their way through a work conversation. These are the best four days of the sports calendar, and you deserve to enjoy it.
And if you’re going to invest all this time, you may as well win $1 million at 105TheTicket.com while you’re at it.
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-10 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.” Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.