With the U.S. collegiate basketball season winding down, the thoughts of many a university student — and alumni as well as just regular sports fans — turn to March Madness and the NCAA Division 1 men’s and women’s basketball championship tournaments.
While the COVID-19 pandemic over the last couple of years has impacted the collegiate sports landscape, receding numbers of hospitalizations and deaths has fans hoping that this year will bring back the caucus crowds of screaming fans.
Did you know you have a 1 in 9 quintillion chance of filling out a perfect NCAA March Madness bracket?
The infographic below — even though it’s a few years old — examines some of the mad facts behind the popular basketball tournament where casual and committed gamblers alike hope to win money on picking the correct winning teams.
With my own college’s basketball season coming to an end with a great ranking, I am looking forward to learning which collegiate players will be drafted to the NBA. Only recently did I find that many talented players will go overseas to play. The sport is popular throughout the world and being able to participate in any type of professional team is a great opportunity. Throughout previous years, I have been encouraged by friends to make my own March Madness brackets. Not only did this article give me insight on the extent of option collegiate basketball players have after graduating, but also the motivation behind creating your own bracket each year. It can be a way to bond with friends and family, coming together to support similar teams or bet on something lighthearted. This article did a great job of sharing a greater depth of statistics to inform readers of the details going into March Madness.
I think we can agree that March is the time of year we look forward to the exciting moments that the NCAA March Madness will bring! Personally, I look forward to the upsets, as I am huge fan of the underdog. We as fans get the opportunity to try our luck, and fill out our brackets in hopes of obtaining the ever allusive, “perfect bracket.” Like years past, I look forward to this one, especially since the pandemic has really made us appreciate moments like this.
The statistics surrounding March Madness and college basketball has always been insane to me. Now, it’ll be even more interesting to see with the resurgence of fans after the Covid-19 shutdown. Not only that, with the new NCAA rule where athletes can get endorsements and paid for their image, I’m excited to see how this pans out. It’ll be nice for a changes now, especially because there’d be millionaire coaches yet student athletes living off food stamps at times. With all the bracket betting, it’s good to remember that the entertainment of the sport finally can have potential for monetary benefice towards the athletes, especially athletes who come from out of the state and country!
March Madness really is madness, and it is amazing to see the growth in numbers of viewers each year. Even though the chances of creating a perfect bracket are extremely low, it shows how fun the whole thing is and how people all over the world get engaged with chances to even earn money off of it. It is the middle of march madness right now, and I have already seen the growth from last year as fans are allowed to attend games and how the atmosphere has really changed.