It's March Madness Time! Otherwise Known as "Pretend You Enjoy College Basketball in Order to Appear Normal!"

Looks like someone's got March Madness!

It's March Madness time again! That means it's time to print out a crap load of brackets on the printer at work and guess which teams are going to win in the NCAA Basketball Tournament based on which school names sound funniest (Gonzaga). The weird thing about March Madness is it's a time when EVERYONE and their dumbass grandmother acts like they're really into college hoops. I know 60-year-old Filipino ladies who are talking to me about who I've got in the Sweet 16. It's ridiculous.

I don't totally understand the "madness" surrounding March Madness. Yes I know college basketball is exciting when we up the stakes for everyone involved, but that's true for anything. You can get hyped about the Westminster Dog Show if you've got enough money on it. The fact of the matter is NCAA men's basketball is technically a step below the NBA Developmental League. We could be filling out women's college basketball brackets for all most people care.

It's like how people get really interested in swimming and track when the Olympics rolls around or the Little League World Series. No one gives a rat's ass otherwise and no one expects you to be interested in little league baseball because that's highly suspicious behavior, but when it's the hip thing to watch all of a sudden it's everyone's favorite pastime. NCAA basketball is popular enough without March Madness so why don't we all choose to make March Madness about college lacrosse and make those sad bastards feel important for once in their lives?

It seems wrong to get really into something you don't normally take interest in just because everyone else is. You're saying, "But it's just fun, idiot! Nobody gets hurt!" Well that's where you might be wrong because some study has estimated that America loses 9 billion dollars in productivity during March Madness. Of course that number is clearly pulled out of someone's ass because there's no real accurate way to quantify time and resources collectively wasted on college basketball, but I think it's safe to say being consumed by televised basketball can't be helping people focus at work. If it were up to me I would replace March Madness with "Special Olympics Madness" and give those brave, inspirational athletes some much deserved attention. Call me crazy, but I might feel a little better about pretending to care about legless basketball than Duke or Syracuse.