Bernie Lincicome: Oh, the Madness ... the brackets are a racket, at least to some
Madness has been built into this month ever since the March Hare tried to stuff the dormouse into the teapot, since Julius Caesar ignored the Ides, and never mind that nothing important happens until April, month of fools.
In the grand tradition of nonsense verse, gibberish is spoken amid the Madness of March and, what is more alarming, it is understood.
Terms, such as Bubble Team and Selection Sunday, not only make perfect sense but are given their own television show where touts in suits read lists of names and viewers in remote places scream or moan or sit stunned when their name is not read.
Selection Sunday is not to be confused with the NFL draft, although the resemblance is creepy. That, too, is a list of names read aloud that generate emotions from strangers who have no say in any of it.
College basketball teams are props for Selection Sunday. They are told where to go and whom to play and when to play, the purpose being to find a national basketball champion.
This seems to be a worthwhile goal, much more orderly than in college football but a whole lot less fun. Football still has an active amount of guessing which allows the debate to rage the whole season, not just on one Sunday in March.
Sweet Sixteen. Elite Eight. Final Four. These are registered trademarks of the Madness vocabulary, legally known as intellectual property. But the strangest term of madness has to be Bracketology, one of those ESPN words, like Boo-yah! and En Fuego, as far as I know neither property nor intellectual.
Bracketology is much like political election coverage in which hours and hours are spent predicting what the news will be instead of just reporting the news when it happens.
This is called pomposity, a much older activity than Bracketology.
It has been estimated that twice as much money will be wagered on March Madness as on the Super Bowl.
Why this has happened in college basketball and not to as great an extent in the football and baseball playoffs, the NBA and NHL postseason, even the Oscars, is quite clear: Because it is so easy to do.
The NCAA provides the framework for easy gambling, and that is why folks who have no idea whether Gonzaga is a team or an ointment are willing to spend three weeks watching other people's tall children.
The look of March Madness is not dissimilar to the glazed fixation of someone feeding coins into the dollar slots.
What is special about college basketball is nothing else matters, neither my opinion nor that of the Selection Sunday's committee, since all of this will be resolved on the basketball court.
What is curious is the contradiction that the NCAA offers by seeding its teams according to expectation. This is a bookmaker's word. This is also the essence of the tournament and what is largely responsible for its great popularity.
We shall know by Sunday evening, not yet known as About Time Night, which teams will be allowed to become betting chits, which is what this madness is truly about.
Teams will be arranged neatly opposite one another in brackets. At that point all those Bracketologists, expert, amateur and fool, will fill out who should win and will back up the opinion with money. Even Presidents do it, though I don't know about the last one.
These brackets will be available on hand and online, wagers will be made and the law will wink, as will college basketball itself, otherwise loudly and firmly against gambling.
Establishing regional seeds is the same as making a point spread, and the NCAA so wants to avoid the obvious connection to gambling that it once considered withholding media credentials for any organization that provided point spreads to its audience.
But if it walks like a duck and bets like a duck, it's a ...
Because so many teams are involved over a fairly compressed run of time, no bet is lost immediately, even as choices fall. Almost everyone is alive into the second week and depending on how many sheets are bet, all the way to the Final Four.
And whoever wins in the end is a lot less important than whether you had the team in your pool.
Madness? Absolutely.