March Madness, Baby!

This is the opening weekend of the 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, and we're just moving into the second round games.

Each year I'll print out bracket sheets for Shannon and me, and we'll both fill one out. Neither of us follows the regular season closely, and Shannon doesn't even like basketball, but we've each filled out one of the sheets for the past several years just for the fun of seeing who can guess the most correctly. I suppose it's that little competitive streak in each of us.

Anyway, here are my picks:
(One, please excuse the advertisements - thanks, Yahoo!. And two, "I May As Well Play The Lottery" is the chosen title for my bracket because I've got about the same shot at being right in either.)

It's funny how so many people aren't college basketball fans or don't follow the season, but jump onboard for March Madness. Or how people who don't follow the NFL or even like football will go to Super Bowl parties. Maybe it's the massive media push behind these events that pulls people in. Maybe it's the social phenomena they've become; it just woven into the fabric of US culture. Maybe it's not about the events at all, but the people / friendships / community around a SB party or the competition of who guessed the most games correctly.

So, why do people jump on a bandwagon like this? Does anybody else fill out one of these brackets?

Technorati tags: ncaa tourney, social phenomena