Albert Einstein once said that insanity is defined as, "doing something over and over again and expecting a different outcome." If that is true, then millions of Americans suddenly become insane around the beginning of March. No, it is not from the news of Beiber being sent to jail or Britney Spears shaving her head again, it is from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Basketball Tournament. An annual spectacle where you can watch friendships dissolve, hair being pulled out and many, many beers consumed. All for a lousy piece of paper. For those of you who may have been living under a rock for the past couple of months, the NCAA tournament consists of 64 teams who compete until the very end in order to climb to the top and become national champions. Representing this tournament is a piece of paper that consists of each team within a bracket. For many, they ultimately become consumed by this paper and are determined to pick THE perfect bracket, whether their personal life or digestive tract likes it.
Do I pick a #3 losing to a #14? Will a #8 go all the way to the Final Four? Decisions, decisions. And no matter the amount of time you put into research and how confidently you write down your answers, you will tragically fail, like a lead balloon trying to out-fly the Hindenburg (provided it does not explode first). The final scores that you should have seen coming happen, but you did not pick them. So after only the second week, all of your Final Four picks have headed home.
But why, mind you, do we waste our time and sanity on attempting to create perfection? Perhaps it is just our want for a thrill, a run of luck in a way, like gambling. Where the consequences of too much March Madness will leave you with a headache, instead of being tied to a chair having a baseball bat to the kneecap. Whatever it is, every March we still end up doing it again and again.
Maybe we really are just insane.
