Making Sense of March Madness

by Justin McCord

The Big Dance. The Sweet Sixteen. The Elite Eight. The Final Four. With all of its quirky nicknames, it’s easy to see why this annual basketball tournament can be maddening. But maybe you don’t know much about March Madness, the NCAA, or basketball in general. Then, we've got all the info you need!

About the tournament
The NCAA Basketball Tournament (or March Madness, as it’s commonly called) is a three-week, single-elimination tournament. About half of the teams win automatic invitations to the post-season tournament by winning their conference championship tournaments. The conferences, which are generally arranged by geographic areas, all have their own monikers, like the Pac-10 (a conference made up of 10 teams near the Pacific coast) and the WAC (the Western Athletic Conference). Other teams are invited to participate in the NCAA Basketball Tournament after a selection committee sizes them up based on the highs and lows of their season. The teams and their seedings in the tourney are generally announced on a Sunday afternoon—las Sunday, actually. When the dust settles, there are 65 teams, ranked first to last. Those teams are broken into four equally weighted regions to fill the bracket, and that’s when the madness begins. (Well, for some of us, it begins earlier, when we realize that our favorite team didn’t make the cut!)

How to celebrate March Madness
Here are a couple of ways that you and your friends can enjoy the madness this March:
• Host a watching party. Invite your friends over for one of the games. A good option is opening weekend when more than 30 games are taking place simultaneously. Order some pizzas, pick up some chips and salsa, and encourage each person to wear the colors of a team playing that night. Create a themed invitation on www.evite.com to tell each of your friends about the party.
• Fill out a bracket. Check out sites like www.yahoo.com, www.espn.com, or www.cbssports.com. You can create a group specifically for you and your friends and challenge each person to fill in his or her own bracket, predicting his or her picks for which team will win each game. Keep track of the results on the same site so you can award someone bragging rights at the end of the tournament.

Tips about picking your bracket:
There are plenty of resources available to help. You can learn about each team on sites like www.espn.com. You’ll find in-depth analysis and insights on why each team is destined to win or lose. There will also be discussion about timeless trends that fans of March Madness have come to expect. (For example, watch out for a 12-ranked team defeating a 5-seed, a common occurrence during the opening days of the tourney.
If that seems a little too intense, you can always pick your bracket based on the team mascots. Yes, team mascots. What’s more fun than deciding who would win between a Blue Devil (Duke) and a Terrapin (Maryland), or the Cardinal (Stanford) and a Minute Man (UMASS)?

The truth about teamwork
Teamwork isn’t just a concept for the basketball court. It’s also part of living for Christ. We’re all called to have an impact on the people around us, non-believers and Christians alike. And we’re not in this alone.
After having risen from the dead, Jesus appeared to His disciples and commanded them to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). Jesus didn’t speak just to Peter, John, or Matthew. He wasn’t addressing James or Thomas only. Jesus spoke to the entire group, telling them to go and work together to make disciples. As a team of Christ-followers, we can work together to encourage each other through rough spots and help one another share what we believe with the people around us.

March Madness shows us the power of a united team working toward one goal. Remember, too, that Jesus called you to a goal (sharing your faith and making disciples), and you have teammates all around you to help achieve it. And that’s something that can help you get through the madness—of life, that is.

© 2008 LifeWay Christian Resources
Justin McCord, "Making Sense of March Madness." ec magazine, March 2009, LifeWay Christian Resources: Nashville, 2008, p. 6.

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