March Madness is an annual NCAA Division I basketball tournament featuring a “one and done” elimination style where one out of the sixty-eight teams will be declared the winner after the national championship game. The term “March Madness” was first used to describe a high school basketball tournament in Illinois that substantially grew in popularity, leading to a state-wide phenomenon. Books were written and movies were made about this special event, where eventually broadcaster Brent Musburger heard “March Madness” used on car dealership commercials, inspiring him to use the phrase when covering the high school tournament, before translating it to CBS when he announced the college tournament. 

The use of “brackets” has become so popular that it is even included in the design of the March Madness official logo. The purpose of the bracket is for anyone to attempt a prediction of what teams will win each game, even if they lack knowledge of college basketball. This idea began in a bar called Jody’s Club Forest in Staten Island, New York. Jody Haggerty was “just sitting at the bar with friends” when they decided they would predict which teams would make it to the Final Four. Today through social media, around 70 million brackets are submitted in an attempt to win cash prizes.

March Madness is a great way for people to unite and bond as the long haul of winter finally ends and the spring season arrives. Families and friends often have friendly competitions over their brackets while roughly 600,000 people attend the tournament in person and 10 million people tune in from their homes, offices, or school cafeterias. This year the tournament has included a variety of “upsets” where an underdog team defeats a top-seeded team that is expected to win, including the sixteenth seed Fairleigh Dickinson University defeating the top-seeded Purdue, while the unexpected Princeton University has advanced to the third round, better known as the Sweet Sixteen.