Caught up in the Madness!

For the last two years, I've filled out brackets just to see how I would do.

I haven't done to bad, including seven of last year's Elite Eight and three of the Final Four. If only I hadn't picked UCLA to upset Florida...

This year I filled out my bracket and joined an office pool of two. At stake is a slightly embarrassing act to be carried out by the losing party for a week to be determined later.

I'm not worried about that, what I'm more concerned about are the bragging rights.

We each filled out our bracket, made copies and tapped them to the glass wall separating our desk from each other.

Everyone should have their own system for filling out their brackets. Mine's pretty simple: take each game one by one and never pick the number one overall seed to win it all.

To prepare for my bracket, I spend about ten minutes online researching all the teams. Not ten minutes a team, ten minutes total.

Then I sit down and go through the bracket one game at a time. I try to find upsets without picking something stupid to happen like UNC getting knocked off in the first round by whatever team it was that earned the right to get slaughtered by them.

After filling out my bracket, there was one pick that I couldn't get out of my mind. I picked Georgia to make the Sweet 16.

Georgia, a 17-16 team and a 14 seed. However, I told myself, this wasn't any 14 seed team, it was Georgia. The winner of four SEC conference games all season then marched into the SEC Tournament and won four in a row to steal a spot in the tournament.

Momentum's huge in sports and who had more going for them then the Bulldogs? They were an all-time high and so deeper and deeper they went in my bracket.

Then reality sent in. A 17-16 team beating the #12 team in the country with a 25-6 record? No way, I told myself. But it's Georgia! I reasoned.

So I started to check around to see what others thought about Georgia and their chances of the upset. I even called Johnny Ballgame, a sports communist for the University of Idaho's Argonaut and radio personality. He told me what I already knew: they were just happy to make it, they had nothing left.

I checked around some more and reluctantly crossed off Georgia's name on my bracket and wrote in Xavier. I even went as far as picking Xavier to beat Duke when they meet.

Then I got a text this morning from Ballgame, it seems he was having second thoughts about Georgia and I started having them too. It took me all of two seconds to pull the score up online.

With Georgia up big at halftime, I felt for sure my bracket was going to be over. I hit refresh every half a second in hopes doing so would some how show Xavier gaining ground on Georgia. Then I got a crazy idea, I clocked out, found the only TV in the office and discovered it has other channels than just CNN.

And just like that, I was caught up in the Madness. I cheered when Xavier made two three points in a row to tie the game then to go up by three.

Every missed Georgia shot and every Xavier basket was reason enough to clap, despite however foolish doing so standing by myself in front of a TV makes me look.

As I was caught up in the madness, I couldn't help feel a little sad Georgia's miracle ride was about to end. But I also knew it was the first game my foe and I picked opposite teams to win and if Xavier would loss, I'd be out of an Elite Eight team right away.

Then I realized the true beauty of March Madness isn't who wins the games. A lot of people were following that game or are about to check the score who don't have any personal ties to either school. However, just by filling out a bracket and writing in a school's name, a personal connection is made.

For one game, Xavier was my team. Their victory I share, bragging rights I've earned thanks to them will be spread around the office.

As soon as the game was over, I started following the Kentucky/Marquette game. No longer am I just a Vandal, an Eagle, a Tiger or any other mascot I have ties with, I'm a Wildcat and the process starts again.

This is what March Madness is all about.

I'm going to post my bracket, feel free to talk trash about why the teams you picked were better than mine or offer your thoughts on the Madness.