March Madness rapidly approaching

For fans of, and those who write about, sports, the period of time that takes up the space between the end of the NFL season after the Super Bowl and the beginning of the baseball season and the NBA playoffs is very slow going. This year, Tiger Woods has provided the scribes with something to write about and the talk show radio hosts with some fodder for conversation, but for the most part this stretch has been all about waiting it out until the good stuff starts back up again.

However, the one saving grace during this period of major sports withdrawals is the NCAA Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness, and it all begins with the final selections and bracketing that takes place on the Sunday before the tourney actually begins. This year, “Selection Sunday” is on March 14th. There are 64 teams that will ultimately wind up in the brackets, and 31 of those bids go automatically to teams that win their conference championships. The remaining 33 spots are called at-large bids, and they are selected by a committee who then divides the entrants into four regions, assigns seeding, and places them into those famous tournament brackets that guys like Rick Neuheisel get fired for filling out.

When it comes down to the final days of the conference championship tournaments, a lot of teams who are “on the bubble” watch with great anticipation hoping that there are no upsets. When a team that has no chance of being selected to an at large spot pulls off an upset and wins a conference tourney, that eliminates one of the “bubble” teams from a place in the brackets. This is all part of the drama that begins even before the actual field of 64 are decided and the “Big Dance” actually gets underway.