As a sports fanatic, I love watching all kinds of sports. Whether it is a meaningless regular-season baseball game or game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, I can find a way to get myself psyched to watch.
But no matter how many Super Bowls there are or the number of NBA Finals series that involve Michael Jordan, there is nothing quite like the month of March Madness.
To me, March Madness is like a religious holiday, a siesta, if you will. For one month, I am glued to my TV watching the likes of Illinois and Michigan State fight it out for Big Ten supremacy.
While watching the major conferences play in their respective tournaments is great, we all know that at least four or five will be playing in the NCAA Tournament.
The real beauty of March Madness is that in the smaller conferences like the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference or the Big Sky, they know only one of their teams will represent the conference in the \Big Dance.""
I try to catch as many of these games as possible because they are teams that one does not get to see very often. (Plus they help you out when filling out your brackets and looking for upsets.)
After all of these conference tournaments finalize the field for the NCAA Tournament, the real fun begins.
What is my favorite day of March Madness? It is not the Final Four, even though that is when most of the best basketball is played.
Rather, it is the first Thursday and Friday of the Tournament.
Why?
Simple. CBS has wall-to-wall coverage of college basketball from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., both nights. (I actually feel bad for those people who watch ""The Young and the Restless"" or any of the CBS afternoon soap operas, but I think they can live for two days without them.)
Normally, the first four hours of coverage'literally two games'are when students are in classes. Yet, in high school, I saw everything. How did I manage it?
I faked being sick. Yep, that's right, I played ill so my mom would call school and get me out of class for the day. I always made sure I had sick days for use during this time period.
For tips to your younger siblings, use a stomach problem that will not go away. This allows you the luxury of being relatively healthy to walk around in your house without feeling too guilty about missing class.
Actually, it was just the ""Madness"" that made me sick. So sick, in fact, that I would go to my room, drag my television out to the living room and watch two games on two different screens. I could do this because I am from Janesville and we could receive television feeds from both Madison and Rockford giving me two separate games to watch simultaneously.
Needless to say, I found snacks and soda to help me get ""sick"" the following day.
This plan worked for all four years of high school, but I never needed to use my ""sick days"" in college because of spring break. Until this year, that is, as spring break falls a week later than usual.
So if you see me at a bar at 11 a.m. March 14 and 15, do not be alarmed.
I am just taking a ""sick day"" to cure my March Madness.
James Wold is about to go into his basketball cocoon for the next three weeks. If you are too, send him a response via e-mail to sports@dailycardinal.com and tell him your ""sick day"" story.
