March Madness

Welcome, unhinged reader, as we talk about the symptoms of March Madness. I was first exposed to this illness back in 2005, when on a March business trip to SF I was astonished to find that the only thing on telly appeared to be a continuous basketball game. This, in essence, is what March Madness is all about.

Officially, March Madness is the end-of-season tournament for college basketball. Despite the teams playing all season long, an awful lot of them make it into this stage, which consists of a series of knockout games to see who's the eventual champion. The expansive geography of the country means that teams will travel to some venue where a couple of rounds are played over a weekend, with the overall winners then travelling somewhere else the next weekend for the next round.

And so it was that last weekend, where a few teams gathered at Stanford for two rounds of the women's tournament: one on Friday and one on Sunday. Stanford have a pretty good women's team (the telly keeps telling us that coach Tara VanDerveer is the "winningest coach in history", which as a departure from the accepted conventions of the English language, sets my teeth on edge every time I hear it), who were crowned champions last year, so hopes for a home victory were high.

We went to the Sunday game, where Stanford faced Kansas Jayhawks. Kansas brought their highly impressive band and cheerleading squad with them: they were well-drilled and made Stanford's slightly more homespun efforts look a little unenthusiastic. But in the part that really mattered, the game itself, Stanford were clearly a better team and ran out fairly easy winners:

In contrast with how such a thing would work in the UK, this is a massive production and was televised live. In winning this, Stanford qualified for the next round, held this weekend in Spokane, Washington, which of course we were able to catch on the telly last night.

Well, at the very least I've learned that it's not one continuous game of basketball: it does actually have different teams in it, and of course the Americans love a bracket (the chart which shows who's playing who and how they progress to the next round). I've still yet to work out why Stanford's theme song is "All Right Now" but perhaps someone will enlighten us. Let's hope they stay the winningest!