The countdown to March Madness has begun. It is known as one of the best sports
months of the year. Selection Sunday is set to happen on March 15 and the championship is set for April 6 and its shaping up as a crazy month with a bunch of anticipated upsets and dreams of crazy miracle runs by 16th seed teams. This tournament has been around since 1939 and was created by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. The first time the term “March Madness” was used to describe this collegiate tournament was on a broadcast in 1982 by Brent Musburger.

Every year there is the annual March Madness pool that goes around with your
friends and you compete with each other to see who can make the best bracket possible. Sports fan or not you’re most likely going to get influenced at the lunch table by your friends to make a bracket.

In the lunchroom in March you will likely see people glued to ESPN on the TVs while
they eat their sandwich, rooting for whichever team they had picked to win that game. During
this time students will more than likely be glued to their phones or computers any chance they
get during the school day. There will be a plentiful number of ESPN alerts about a close game or
upset alerts throughout the weeks. March Madness can bring out the competitiveness of someone you never knew had it in him.

At Seton Hall Prep anytime there is downtime in class the teacher will be begged to put
on ESPN to watch the 16th seed almost upset the 1st seed in the round of 64 or watch a SportsCenter Top Ten highlight of someone making a half-court shot at the buzzer. Teachers will be cheering on their alma mater while kids cheer on the next NBA stars. The main topic of
discussion among students will be no doubt about the games that happened the night before and how their brackets are already busted or somehow are still perfect.

Every year more than 60 million brackets are filled out and we all contribute to that. Kids will spend more time researching who to pick in a match-up than the research project they have due the next day. With brackets, there are always people in your pool who may know nothing about
basketball and just pick the better mascot or their favorite color. How far can the Theology
department bracket of all Catholic schools make it this year. With this, it will sure make an
interesting hallway conversation with kids complaining about how lucky they got or how
unlucky their bracket had become.

March Madness will always bring people together cheering for players from Seton Hall Prep or create friendly rivalries and arguments during a game. I have only witnessed one March Madness at Seton Hall so far but I have realized that it is a very fun time here at The Prep with many things going on in the classroom “March Madness” is a good thing to help bring us together and be able to enjoy something with our friends during and after school. Former President Barack Obama called filling out a bracket a “national pastime.” The odds of filling out a perfect bracket are so low that businessman Warren Buffett has offered a billion dollars if someone could pull it off. This time of year always helps relieve the stress of school work because it brings us back to the thing that relates millions around the world and that is sports.

This March Madness is shaping up to be one for the ages with all the upsets that have
already happened this season. I know this March is going to be an entertaining one for all at The Prep as we watch the tournament unfold and pray for the Pirates of Seton Hall University to make the Final Four!