March Madness Bracket Busting

I thought I'd use as many buzzwords as possible in the title of this post because I have a specific point to make about filling out brackets and watching college basketball games.

I discovered a connection between fantasy sports, a phenomena that I've resisted entirely, and watching the NCAA basketball tournament games, a connection about why I resist fantasy sports and almost don't enjoy the bracket deal (besides losing and having your mistakes highlighted).

I'm not involved with fantasy sports for two main reasons. The first is that I don't want to spend that much energy dealing with paying that kind of attention. I like reading about it, hearing about it, but I like being able to miss time, to not pay attention, and to not have it matter in a contest I'm engaged in with friends or strangers. The second reason is that I don't want to be forced to have players on my fantasy team that are going to need to succeed for my fantasy team to do well, and that success would have to come at the expense of my favorite team, my emotional team. I fundamentally have a problem rooting for a player who's playing against my favorite team for the sole sake of my fantasy team.

If I know a player, if I'm related to a player, if I know a player's siblings or family, or they grew up in a vicinity to me or mine, I have no problem rooting for them against my team; those reasons satisfy whatever sports morality criteria I have inside.

The connection with the NCAA brackets I realized last night. I was watching the Duke-Arizona match. Arizona took them apart in the second half, winning by nearly twenty and knocking Duke out. I learned while living in New York City that I have affinities to west coast teams, conferences like the Pac-10, Big Sky, Big West and the like. In New York, I found myself rooting for USC even, blasphemous in my family, when they played Ohio State. I rooted for the Giants in the World Series this past year (also blasphemous). While watching the Pac-10 men's basketball finals between Washington and Arizona, I rooted for Washington because they were more "western" to me.

Don't get me wrong, this is easily the most college basketball I've ever watched in a fortnight in my life.

In the Duke-Arizona game, I was rooting for Arizona...partly because Duke is like the Yankees, and you either love them or hate them, and I'm not a fan (my friend Imai went to Duke, so I'm softening up for them), but mainly because Arizona was from the West.

Corrie was rooting for Duke because she had them in her bracket moving on. I didn't, and realized that if you have an interest in winning a bracket contest you'll have to root for plenty of teams you may hate and against plenty of teams that you may have a regional and/or emotional connections with.

I'll be involved in the choices and brackets next year, more than likely, as while it does irritate me, it doesn't really bother me, like fantasy sports. I enjoy helping others with their fantasy teams, I just can't invest my own energy into it.