I picked the University of Virginia‘s basketball team to win the men’s NCAA Tournament. Yes, you read that right. Virginia, the very same No. 4-seed that lost to No. 13-seed Furman University on Thursday in the first round of 2023’s Big Dance.
My bracket is now entirely busted.
And I am free.
Look, I realize how stupid my picks were. A UVA win would have — in the fantasy world I created with my bracket — included beating the juggernaut Alabama in the round of 16, something that few people thought the Cavaliers would be able to do. And in the championship, I had UVA beating No. 1-seed Houston at NRG Stadium. A stadium that, you might be aware of, is in Houston, and would therefore award Houston home-court advantage.
No one besides me and UVA fans wanted that. Virginia basketball is defined by trying to force shot-clock violations, the least sexy form of basketball that has ever existed. You have to be a real weirdo or a dad who’s obsessed with defense to want that in the championship.
And yet, perhaps because of past loyalties, I blindly believed that the Magic of March would rub off on the Cavaliers. Yes, I knew that the team recently lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament. And yes, I had read the injury reports and knew UVA wasn’t playing at full strength.
And maybe worst of all, I chose UVA this year despite the fact that I picked them to win the championship in 2018, when the team was a No. 1 seed. You might remember that UVA lost to No. 16-seed UMBC in the first round in one of the biggest upsets of all time.
I didn’t learn my lesson.
BUT IT’S MARCH! This is the whole point of March! That we don’t learn lessons! That the thing you think is least likely to happen will, in one form or another, happen! The joke is firmly on me, because I bet on the wrong unlikely thing, and UVA is out of the tournament, as is my bracket.
To quote the good witch Stevie Nicks, “Oh, I am a fool.”
Or am I? What if this has all been a grand scheme to save my sanity? Hear me out.
I find March Madness enormously stressful when I fill out a bracket. If you’re a sports fan reading this, you probably consider yourself a competitive person, so maybe you’ll relate when I say that I care too much about winning when it comes to these brackets. And I should be clear, I have at most $20 riding on them. This is strictly about principle and pride for me (if you’re betting the farm, well, that is a different article altogether and this one probably doesn’t apply to you).
All of this means that when my bracket does well, it ruins my experience of watching basketball. Because when my bracket is still alive, I want to succeed so badly that I can’t delight in the glorious upsets and the chaos that defines this tournament.
It’s an enormous relief to lose so badly that there was never even a chance of winning. It’s sort of depressingly comforting to set the bar low and keep it there. Because I can now root for absolute chaos: I hope Alabama loses as soon as possible. Under no circumstances do I want any No. 1-seeds in the Final Four.
I know this is a controversial opinion. Most people want to see the best, highest-quality level of play. They want competitive games. And it’s widely accepted that the best chance of that comes in the form of the highest possible seeds playing each other each round.
But that’s not fair to the St. Peter’s of the world. Do you remember that glorious run? When the No. 16-seed BEAT PURDUE in the SWEET SIXTEEN!?
Sure, they went on to get shellacked by UNC in the Elite Eight, but baby, at least they made it there.
I remember reading angry tweets from fans and commentators saying things like, “This is why Cinderella stories actually suck, because then we get horrible games in the later rounds.”
What an absolutely awful outlook on life. First, the whole point of college basketball in March is mayhem. Let’s be honest, we’re not watching this sport for the product, we’re watching it for the heart these players play with, for the crazy outcomes, for the marching bands and memes. That’s what college sports are: rough around the edges and full of passion.
So we must embrace the chaos. We must root for the unimaginable. Ninety percent of brackets were busted after that UVA loss, so there’s a nine-out-of-10 chance (you see that quick mental math I just did?) that yours is too.
Consider it a blessing. You are delivered from the guesses of your own mind (there is a psychological lesson in here somewhere, but I’m not going to get into it because this article is already too long). Let’s hope we all chose as poorly for the women’s tournament as we did for the men’s, and that for the rest of March, bedlam reigns.
Watch with clear eyes and an open heart, because it’s now purely about the journey. And as for just how much I’ll be able to enjoy March Madness now that I’ve blown it so badly, let me quote the great Michael Jordan:
“The ceiling is the roof.”
