Schools
March Madness Drives Us Bonkers On Brackets: Philly Sports Chatter
The annual NCAA Tournament stirs excitement from filling out a form and watching teams like Princeton bust everyone's bracket.
WARMINSTER, PA —The Madness is real.
You bite your fingernails. You sit on your hands. You jump up and down with excitement. You stare in disbelief. You lose grasp on reality.
This is March Madness. And anyone who watches the NCAA Tournament knows that this college basketball annual event is one of the most exciting of the sports season, maybe even ahead of the Super Bowl.
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The tournament officially started at noon Thursday and the pace is frenzied with games on throughout the day and night over four networks.
What makes this event even more exciting is the madness aspect, the fact that any team at any time can pull off an upset and move ahead in the tournament.
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That happened on Day One when the closest team in the Philadelphia area this year, the Princeton Tigers, pulled off a miracle upset as the 15th seed, knocking off No. 2 Arizona.
That’s called a Bracket Buster. And now we're all going bonkers over our brackets.
For me, in filling out a bracket against my father every year, that upset is costly. I had Arizona in my Final Four.
That’s what’s great about March Madness, these Cinderella stories like Princeton.
And these cool names. Like Bracket Buster. And Cinderella. And the Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four. And they call this the Big Dance too!
But the games are the best. You don’t have to know these teams. You don’t have to like these teams.
And with this tournament, Philly sports fans don’t have a dog in this hunt for the first time in half a century.
Coach Jay Wright retired and you can watch him on these tournament shows doing analysis. Meanwhile, his champion Villanova Wildcats didn’t even make the cut.
So maybe Princeton is the tourney’s Cinderella this year.
Every tournament has one each year. You never know. And that’s what makes this so exciting. My bracket may be busted already but the festivities are just getting started. And my tournament winner UCLA made it through the first round easily.
How is your bracket going?
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