This time of year always turns me into a giddy little bunny rabbit, because I am a complete geek for March Madness. It's by far the most exciting sporting event on the planet, with hockey and baseball playoffs a distant second. Sure, it makes a joke of "scholar-athleticism" and generates frillions of dollars on the backs of indentured laborers who won't (legally) see a dime of it. But dammit, it's fun.
I get completely caught up in the conference tournaments, and the endless conjecture about who'll get in and who'll be shut out. Then come the first two rounds, rife with upsets and last-second-prayer shots and holy-crap-did-you-see-that?s. I watch as many games as I can, and I keep track of them all on my exhaustingly meticulous hoops bracket that I made on an Excel spreadsheet. As an added bonus, my alma mater (whose website will fry your cones) somehow tied for the best record in its conference and for the first time in a dog's age will be in the tourney. All the more reason to rev my BP into the quadruple digits.
I'm a little perplexed, though, by a new aesthetic development (brought to my attention by Uniwatch), whereby a major sports outfitter (rhymes with "crikey") has conned four schools into wearing a new uniform design for the post-season. The clingy tops make some sense, since they're aerodynamic and show off all the buffness, but the super-billowy shorts are risible enough to transcend self-parody. Granted, my perspective is a bit skewed because I grew up in the Age of Hotpants, but still. Are they trying to turn March Madness into a Highland Games?
Aye, 'tis Madness indeed.