I’ve always loved this time of the year. The start of March Madness always signals to me that spring is here. I used to take the Thursday-Friday off from school or work and watch the tournament with my dad. When I was younger, he had to explain to my mom why I needed to take the days off, but it was something special to him and it was something that was very special to me.
Thursday morning, I would always go out and buy the USA Today because they would have a 12-16 page special section that focused purely on the tournament, complete with bracket and a breakdown of every single team. I would research that section right up until the first tip at 12:15, so I knew as much as I could about the Iona Eagles or Hampton Pirates as I did the Duke Blue Devils or the North Carolina Tar Heels.
I would carefully cut the bracket out from the newspaper and put it up on a part of the wall that was visible to everybody. I knew that only my dad and I really cared about it, but just in case my mom or my sister wanted to know anything, I wanted to be quick on the draw to tell them anything they needed to know.
I had a routine where I would only write down the winner of each game when the game has officially finished. I didn’t care if a team was ahead by 50 with 2 minutes to play, I still waited. I wanted to write in the name so bad, but I stayed disciplined and waited. It felt so good once the game was over.
The games on Thursday and Friday would go from noon until midnight and I didn’t care because I would watch every single minute. I would catch my dad falling asleep from time to time because he always felt so comfortable in his favourite chair. I would let him sleep during the games that were lopsided or were just in the first half, but if there was a game that was close with only a couple minutes to go, I made sure to wake him up and we would watch the finish.
Just like everyone else, all we cared about was watching the upsets. For one day, I could say I was a big fan of the Harvard Crimson Tide or the Butler Bulldogs. Any team that made it past the opening round as a seed higher than 10 became our favourites and we cheered them all the way. I don’t know how much energy we wasted over the years on 16 seeds trying to knock off top seeds. I hope to see it sometime in my life and I’ll always cheer for it to happen.
By Saturday or Sunday, my dad would have to go back to his work duties, but I would have the weekend off at that point so I could continue to watch the games. It wasn’t the same without my dad and I would always go through some basketball overload. By Sunday, I was glad that CBS fit all the games in to accommodate for CBS.
The rest of the tournament always wasn’t as special as those first couple of days, but upon reflection, it had nothing to do with who was playing or what the final scores were, it was the fact that I got to share it with my dad.