The Most Wonderful Time of Year

For me the most wonderful time of the year is March. You can keep Christmas, you can keep opening day for the Reds, you can keep Monday night football, you can keep the first day of spring, give me March in all her glory. Cornell is the first official entrant to the Madness and tradition always tells us the Ivy League will give us the first because they award the regular season champion with a ticket to the 'Big Dance'. All the rest of the conferences are money driven and therefore have their own postseason tournaments which I am so very grateful for. Now through Selection Sunday we will have all the basketball we can stand. I would watch every game if I could of all the tournaments but alas I need to go to work and the family deserves some of my attention. I look forward to the announcing of the NCAA brackets like a young child looks forward to Christmas Eve. It is great knowing your team is in, but the suspense of being on the bubble and getting in is great too. What is more fun is analyzing your team's matchup and trying to figure out who the Final Four will be. I am not a big bracket filler out guy. I am always away from the office so I do miss that aspect of March Madness. But I generally do a few with friends and family and usually I don't do well. I let my heart get in the way too much. The first four days of the tournament, nothing matches it in sports. I bunker down in front of my selected television with coolers of beverages and mountains of salty snacks. I take extended vacation (no crap) every year to watch the tournament. I use the first few days of the week for the 'honey do's' around the house and I warm up with the NIT in the evening. Noon on that Thursday of opening round though is what college basketball is all about. You can throw rankings out the window, the talking heads can finally prove how little they do know, and just pull like hell for all the Cinderella's out there unless your team is playing against Cinderella. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.