Brackets, No Gators, and the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

Last year at this time, bracket fever had swept into Gainesville for basketball's NCAA Men's Basketball Championship tournament, which comprises 68 teams in single-game eliminations for the next few weeks until only the champion is left standing.  I would hear conversations going on around me like "Have you done your bracket yet?" and people discussing which teams they thought would upset others.  There was then (and most likely now) a prize offered nationwide to whoever had filled out their bracket perfectly.  That possibility ended very early in the tournament in 2014 with some highly unlikely upsets early on.  Oh, maybe you're unfamiliar with the concept of "filling out a bracket".  Basically, it involves taking the initial games in the first round, picking the winners of those games, and based on that, go to the next round and pick those winners...and then the next round...and then the next, this way until you are left with the last two teams...setting up the championship finale, for which of course you pick the winner.  In the end, you have a sheet of paper predicting exactly how the 67-game tournament will go.  So "bracketology" was such a big deal with many people in my good ol' home town of Gainesville last year.  Why doesn't it seem very popular this year?

In 2014 at the start of the NCAA Tournament, the University of Florida was ranked #1 in the nation and was on a long winning streak, so enthusiasm and interest for college basketball was at a peak in its surrounding community of Gainesville.  This year, though, the Gators not only weren't ranked highly: they didn't even make the tournament!  Moreover, they didn't even get invited to the "runner-up" National Invitational Tournament with its field of 32 teams.  Probably ending up with a 16-17 win-loss record had something to do with that.  So Florida wasn't in the running this time around...and the area's interest in the tourney dried up, with only the regular basketball fans carrying on with the brackets.  As for me, I began following the NCAA tournament in earnest back in the early 1980's when Florida didn't have a very good basketball program, so my enthusiasm wasn't based on what kind of season they were having.  I enjoyed the Atlantic Coast Conference back then, with my favorite teams being North Carolina and North Carolina State, and over the years I've tended to root for them tourney-time...as well as a few others I've picked up along the way.  This year, Kentucky, Florida's arch-rival in the SEC East Division, is undefeated...and that is unacceptable to me.  Somebody, anybody, must knock them off in the tournament!  They'll have six chances, for that is the number of games the Wildcats will have ahead of them to win in order to finish the season at an unprecedented 40-0...

The tournament begins today and Wednesday with the field being whittled down to 64, and then on Thursday and Friday 32 games will reduce it further to 32.  By Monday they will be down to the last 16 teams left, hence the "Sweet Sixteen".  In the meantime, basketball will dominate television.  Incidentally, UF may not have made the tournament this year, but my son's alma mater, the University of North Florida, did!  Go Ospreys!