It's A Massive Week For Dudes Everywhere Who Don't Watch A Lick Of College Hoops All Season But Are Still Going To Get Pissed Off About Losing Their Bracket Challenge
Jacob Kupferman. Getty Images.There's nothing quite like it. The group chats are getting fired up. The invites to the bracket challenges are getting sent out. The shit talk is already starting up. You haven't watched a goddamn second of college basketball all season long, but that's not going to stop you from looking at your completed bracket before tip-off on Thursday and think to yourself, "this might actually be the year I get it done".
You might not be able to name a single player in the tournament outside of Cooper Flagg. You may not have known that a school called "Lipscomb" ever existed in the first place. Is that going to stop you from seeing if you can sneak a 14-over-3 upset into your picks? Not in the slightest. Because for about 5 days out of the year, you are convinced that you know ball more than anybody else out there. You know everyone else is going to sprinkle in at least one 12-over-5 upset. You know everyone else is going to have a couple of 10-over-7's. But you need to zig where everyone else is going to zag. You need to find the Cinderella of all Cinderellas, and you're going to pick it based purely on vibes alone. Because, again, you don't know shit about the actual program itself.
It's a wild phenomenon in American culture. It's like every single year, you are required to take a test to prove to your friend group who knows ball and who doesn't know shit. You can't be the guy who doesn't fill out a bracket because those guys are the worst and constantly feel the need to tell everybody about how they didn't fill out a bracket this year. About how strong and brave they are to not write 63 winners down on a sheet of paper. You are socially obligated to fill out a bracket, and maybe you'll be lucky enough to feel good about yourself until Saturday afternoon.