Water Cooler Fodder

Well, last night I spent a valuable portion of my evening making sure I got my portion of reality T.V. If you have a wife, girlfriend, or any female friends at the office, or even if you just know a female, you know that Molly and Jason just got married in front of probably around 10 million people on ABC’s The Bachelor. I’ve actually been blessed by the Lord, because my wife is not into that sort of stuff at all. Weddings, yes. Happily ever after, yes. Drama, absolutely. Romance, of course. Just not all of those things rolled into one and fabricated for the idiot masses who honestly believe that everything is “real.” Trust me, I know. I’ve just gotten out of a reality show, not everything is “real.” The only real reason my wife was watching this sort of thing was because “everyone at the bank will be watching and I won’t have anything to talk about.” This got me thinking. As you may be now aware, I’m pretty critical of the whole “Reality T.V.” genre, should I be equally critical of my own interests?

After asking a question at the end of a paragraph, I’ll irk my 12th grade AP Lit teacher once again by asking another at the beginning of the next, why do you think the March Madness NCAA Basketball Tournament is such a big deal? Could it be that we all love college basketball so much that we just can’t get enough of it as a nation? No, it can’t be that, because college basketball’s regular season ratings are near-atrocious, and the March Madness ratings rival the biggest events in sports, like the Super Bowl and the BCS National Championship. And it’s certainly not because people love to watch the “true” form of the sport as opposed to the false basketball played by the NBA. That’s ridiculous, NBA basketball is much more entertaining and you know it (shows itself in the ratings by the way).

If we’re honest with ourselves, there are two reasons the nation turns out to watch March Madness: Gambling and something I’ll call “Office Relevancy.” Gambling is pretty obvious, tons of people gamble on this tournament whether it’s legal or not, and if you don’t think so you’re lying to yourself. According to a report by ESPN, “Nationwide, the estimate for illegal betting is as high as $380 billion, according to the most recent congressional study.” The only other event that rivals March Madness for amount wagered is the Super Bowl. Let’s move onto the second item on the agenda. “Office Relevancy” would essentially be the same reason my wife watched The Bachelor. You’ve got to have something to talk about at the water cooler.

How many people in your office/circle of friends fill out a March Madness bracket? The secretary in my office who’d never even seen a game of college basketball filled one out last year. If we’re honest with ourselves sports fans, this is the real reason why March Madness is so popular. Let me clarify that I’m probably preaching to the choir. To us real fans, March Madness is beautiful because it’s the closest thing to pure competition as we can get. On any given day, any given team can beat any given powerhouse. It truly is awe-inspiring on its elemental level and I love every minute. But to the average American, they could truly care less who wins the Siena-Villanova game in the first round. They just want to be able to talk about it tomorrow with the guy who parks by the coffee pot everyday who thinks he knows everything about sports. It’s one of the few times every year where it’s acceptable to say to just about anyone, “did you see the game last night?” So I sit here and sigh at the overlooked beauty of this marvelous month of hoop poetry, and accept that I like talking to that pompous guy by the coffee pot too. Mostly because that’s usually me anyways.

In conclusion, if you’d like to join my bracket, I’m setting one up. Let’s see who can take me on. I’ll admit I’m not great at filling out brackets. So don't get too excited about knocking off some giant. I tend to over analyze things. But I’m usually in the top 2 or 3 of 15-20 deep brackets. Although I did win last year. So come out and beat me and I’ll give you an inter-web pat on the back. By the way, the receptionist who’d never seen a basketball game almost took home the trophy last year. So don’t tell me it’s all about skill, because it’s not. Most of it is just about having a bunch of dern luck. Look to later posts about joining my bracket.