And So It Begins...

I've written plenty of nonsense leading up to today -- previews for the East, West, South and Midwest especially -- none of which will help you fill out your bracket or win you any money. I've done a lot of deliberating leading up to today, pouring over this silly piece of paper, hoping that it will all come together in some way or another. It hasn't. I thought that despite not releasing any sort of important analysis to the public, that the abnormal, probably unhealthy amount of basketball I have watched this year -- the game that I've spent my entire life obsessing over -- that I could decipher both rhyme and reason for this thing. And when I ultimately couldn't, I expected to be pissed, soured on this year's tournament because it had mediocre teams that refused to differentiate each other, thus making my bracket useless, thus making all that basketball I watched useless.

But I wasn't pissed. The thing is -- and this is something I am realizing for the first time, mainly because I have never seen a season that has left me as perplexed as this -- I don't give a flying fuck about how my brackets do this year.

Will I complain about the unfortunate circumstances that doomed my picks? Yeah. Will I cry BS if I come a few points short of winning money? Probably. I know these things will happen. But I am still really, very much, bunches and bunches filled with excitement, even if the outcome of these games have absolutely no meaning to me. I guess that's probably why I write a blog on this sport and probably why I care more about basketball than anything that is not human. Because if there wasn't any such thing as an office pool or a Bracket Manager, the simple fact that 32 FREAKING BASKETBALL GAMES, replete with the best teams the amateur game has to offer -- a beautiful collection of styles, stars and glorious match-ups and the opinions and reactions that come with all of it -- will be on two days in a row is seriously the greatest thing EVER. And it took that utter bracket confusion for me to totally realize this: For those that love basketball, this tournament isn't a competition, it's an exhibition. Or a celebration, or an adventure, or all the cheesy descriptions Jim Nantz can think of, except true and genuine. This is the one sports event where overstatement does not exist.

Come 12:15 Thursday, I will have my brackets in hand, rooting for whoever the meaningless hours of examination have led me to arbitrarily write their name on that line and if they lose, I'll be pissed and complain to whoever I'm watching the games with and pound the table. But I won't really be pissed. I'll be surrounded by basketball, without an office or classroom in sight, and I'll be filled with more excitement than I will be all year. Any emotion, whether it appear negative or positive, is finding a way to get release that excitement without bursting through the damn roof.

Announcers aren't allowed to care who wins, so I suppose, this year, I finally know what it's really like to be Gus Johnson. And I don't see how anyone can act differently.