A few days ago, I was on a wire service looking for the perfect story about this year’s NCAA tournament .
A few clicks and national championship picks later there sat a column by Eric Edwards of the Orlando Sentinel.
In his hilarious piece Edwards “thought March Madness referred to the mental state most women adopt when college basketball wrests menfolk from their control.”
In years past, I would have stopped reading the article after that sentence because it could not be further from the truth.
However, this March was no ordinary month, in the NCAA tournament or in my life.
Usually the first weekend of the tournament is a mini holiday for me.
Class, The Famuan or anything not involving family or my bracket does not matter.
That was last year, when I correctly selected the Final Four and felt ESPN should replace Dickie V. with Willy B.
This year my cute couple of “holiday” worries, took somewhat of a backseat as I tried to become just that: A cute couple.
(Editor’s Note: The word cute is as much of my vocabulary as an expletive around my mother at church.)
The games, and my sequential bloody red bracket were nerve racking, yet fun.
However, something, or someone, seemed to be missing, and it wasn’t my homeboys, but her.
Unlike Edwards’ column where he told the world he was dating a woman named Pam, I am not as brazen so this person will remain nameless.
It did not help that this special girl liked basketball as much as I like sorority girls, which is to say she doesn’t.
Yet, somehow in her semi-profane monologue about her hatred for basketball and all things athletic, I found a bond with her that brought a smile to a normally melancholy face.
Her “darn” tournament is finally over.
No longer does she have to hear me rant about my beloved Gators’ annual choke job.
No more lame excuses for not calling her, and her personal favorite, the phrase, “Hey, let me call you back, the game is on,” is now obsolete.
With the tournament over, and my weekends as open as too many relationships on campus, its inevitable that the comedy of a first round game will be replaced with romantic comedies that are far too lame.
The dictionary has four definitions for the word madness.
Only two were needed to describe the two things that have occupied my mind the past three weeks, my bracket and a special girl.
My bracket had “the quality or condition of being insane,” and my “enthusiasm” can hardly be contained.
Madness, isn’t it?
Will Brown is a junior newspaper journalism student from Rocklege. He is the sports editor for The Famuan. Contact him at wwbrown19@yahoo.com