For some sports fans, Christmas is not the most wonderful time of the year, but instead it is the month of March and the madness it brings.

From spring training position battles in Major League Baseball to playoff races in the National Basketball Association and free agency deals and trades in the National Football League, all four major North American professional leagues have something going on. National Hockey League regular season action and European soccer league matches coinciding with the Champions Leagues tournament.

However, I think there is one event that unites the have and have-nots of collegiate athletics, divides households and galvanizes the viewing audience of America for three weeks every March.

If sports are poetry in motion, the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament is a drama in four acts writing it as the game unfolds. Records, conference affiliation and enrollment mean nothing because the players in real time decide the game. Every possession, mistake and decision is amplified to the 10th degree by the importance of a single elimination format, and that makes for riveting television.

Since its inception in 1939, the NCAA Basketball Tournament has decided the best collegiate basketball team in the country. After expanding its field to 64 teams in 1985, fans from tiny private schools that win their conference tournament have the same opportunity in a single elimination tournament as highly ranked larger schools to be the national champions.

The tournament is broken down into four regions of 16 teams each. The teams are ranked 1-16 and matched up in opposite order. This means 1 will play 16, 2 will play 15 and so forth.

The teams are seeded by a committee that removes team name and evaluates them based on a bevy of criteria including strength of schedule and overall records. A team is also penalized and rewarded for losing to bad teams and beating good teams.

After the seeding is set, the records are thrown out the window and the teams determine the rest on the court. Winning the championship no longer has anything to do with what a team has done all season long and has everything to do with which team is willing to compete harder that night, or who is willing to sacrifice the most for their team to win.

This weekend in the first two rounds of play, there were 10 upsets, which include a pair of 14th seeds beating the 3rd seeds and 11th seeds beating the 6th seeds.

Two of the underdog teams featured father/son combinations, providing basketball fans and families with tears of joy and sadness. Joy for Coach Steve Alford and son Brice Alford from University of California Los Angeles for bringing the historic Bruin program back to the Sweet 16 despite a 13 loss season and failing to win back to back games all season.

Pain for Coach Ron Hunter and son R.J. Hunter of Georgia State University who, after R.J. hit a game winning three pointer at the buzzer, sent coach Hunter hurling off the chair. Coach Ron was forced to coach from his seat after he tore his Achilles tendon celebrating the Panthers improbable conference win earlier this month. The Panthers were bounced out the tournament in the next game, leading to an emotional and tear filled postgame press conference where Coach Hunter was barely able to put sentences together when asked how it felt to be in this situation with his son.

Without the tournament, we would never have gotten any of these beautifully human moments, or the story of University of Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey, who lost his mother the day his Fighting Irish had their second game of the weekend. The game went into overtime, where the Irish outlasted the Butler University Bulldogs. After the game, Brey told his team of his personal loss. I couldn’t imagine trying to think straight, much less coaching in an overtime game that held the fate of the season in the balance.
The 7th seed, Wichita State University Shockers, finally got a shot at in-state basketball Blueblood University of Kansas after 22 years of being denied a game. The Shockers relished the opportunity, smashing the two top seeded Jayhawks by 13 points.
It’s stories like these that put the madness in March and turns sports fans into fanatics.