NCAA March Madness: the new instant-gratification binge. In under three weeks you can immerse yourself in college basketball as much or as little as you like. Sixty-four teams start the dance, it tightens to the Sweet 16, and culminates with the Final Four. Jump in — women’s, men’s, or both — and binge your way through the madness.
Pick a bracket, choose your teams, grab a schedule, and watch the games. For me, this is reset season: weekend games let me sample basketball in measured doses, then — just like that — the finals happen in April and it’s over. You get the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and every surprising upset in between.
Basketball is not in my blood, it’s in my history. I was at the University of Tennessee during the Ernie & Bernie show (Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King), while Ralph Sampson reigned at Virginia. Women’s NCAA basketball didn’t start until 1982, when Pat Head Summit launched the Lady Vols. I lived in North Carolina during Michael Jordan’s UNC years when Mike Krzyzewski began the rebuild of Duke. I lived in Louisville Kentucky with the University of Louisville versus the University of K Kentucky rivalry. Basketball.
Maybe places with local NBA franchises aren’t as NCAA-focused. Northern California, for example, leans NBA—there were the Warriors when I lived in Oakland—and now I’m in Boston with the Celtics. The NBA calendar stretches eight to nine months through preseason, regular season, the In-Season Tournament, All-Star break, play-in games, playoffs, and the Finals. It’s a long, franchise-driven business. Viva my spring binge—back in two weeks.
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 