Flipping my calendar from February to March is never an exciting ordeal. At best, March means “spring is on the way; no more freezing to death while walking to the portables.” Apparently though, there is also this complete madness going on outside of the little world I like to call my head, and it’s known as March Madness.


I would call myself an amateur sports fan; I kind of know what’s going on during the different sport seasons, I have a vague sense of what the strange gestures of the referees and umpires mean and, well, I sometimes depend on my blonde hair to get me out of having serious sports discussions when I really have no idea what is going on.

However, WJ, you have taught me well and prepared me for the college basketball craziness of March. I know every tidbit there is to know about March Madness, and it’s all thanks to you. From the constant arguments over games to the interrogations of “Who’s in your Sweet 16?” I’ve learned everything.

Forgive me for crashing the party, but I think the madness is getting a bit out of control. I mean, come on, my math class had the NCAA games playing on the Promethean board when we had a substitute. Okay, I must concede that watching the Louisiana State-Butler game and a few others on a wide-screen TV-ish thing was very cool. But the only reason we watched the games’ coverage was to prevent the boys in the class from going into cardiac arrest because their Blackberries only allowed them to check the games’ scores every 30 seconds.

So, what is the all-powerful driving force behind this animal-like behavior every March? My guess is the pools that have become insanely popular. Whatever, it’s illegal gambling, but we turn our heads and pretend we don’t see it happening. I think everyone would agree with me on this point: we’d rather have our students carry “illegal brackets” in their backpacks than illegal drugs, right?

However, don’t think I’m totally defending all of the pool-ing going on in our school. I don’t really care if you make a pool, but could you at least do me a favor and not talk about it for five minutes? I’d really appreciate a periodic time-out from the sports-frenzy, testosterone-only parties. I have been getting so annoyed the past few weeks with the non-stop discussions about brackets, brackets, brackets. There’s actually more to life than who wins the Louisville-Arizona game or who’s in your Final 4. Enough already!

Considering that the tournament doesn’t end until April 6, I could potentially have to deal with almost two more weeks of this madness. . . this could get ugly.

Before our entire school becomes one big sports bar, why don’t we just chill out? The quarter is ending, spring break is coming and many more things are happening. So put down the bracket, get off of ESPN.com and pay attention to the real world.