Time to fill out your brackets

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COM CIN Web Basketball1March is my favorite sporting month of the year. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the college football bowl season and I love October (especially when the Red Sox are in the Fall Classic), but the craziness of March Madness cannot be equaled.

The buzz beaters, bracket busters, Cinderellas, net cutting and “One Shining Moment.” It’s the greatest reality show on TV because you can never count a team out until the clock reaches 0.0. March Madness provides the drama I enjoy about sports – the kid who comes off the bench and hits the game winner because the first option was defended, the upsets and the inevitable heartbreak and unbridled joy.

We root for the Butlers and other David’s taking on Goliath – and unless it’s our team they beat, we delight in seeing the less talented group of players that play as a team defeat the more talented, individual driven teams. Both VCU and the Bulldogs proved last year that any team that gets in the tournament has a chance to win it.

I’m sure my family is like many in Noblesville. Every person fills out two brackets (generally everyone uses one to pick North Carolina every year) are chips in $1 for each. While the winner takes home a whopping $14, it’s really all about family bragging rights. And anyone who has a younger sibling – I have three – they make sure to remind you as often as possible they won this year.

We all have our own ways of picking teams and through my years of filling out brackets I’ve learned there are four types – the coin-flipper, the chalker, the scholar and my wife. The coin flipper is pretty self explanatory. The chalker is the annoying person who picks the higher seed to win each round. I consider myself a scholar – I watch games throughout the year and every one leading up to Selection Sunday. I look over records, check how teams matchup and pick the sleepers I like.

My wife, who hates the fact she has to fill out a bracket, uses seeding to a point, but when it comes to close matchup’s the team colors and mascots become her determining factors. It may be her alma mater, but I won’t be surprised to see Purdue make a deep run in her bracket. That is until some D-I team renames itself to the Supermen because it’s hard for Wildcats, Orangemen, Bruins or Spartans to compete with a speeding locomotive.

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