March MADNESS!!!

My Tribute to Bracketology!
March Madness is officially here! This is one of my very favorite times of the year – Not only is the weather usually great in the Spring, but my favorite sport to watch, College Basketball, is at its finest! Many of you are probably not big sports fans, and may not even know what I am talking about, but I love the intensity of the National College Basketball tournament and seeing the underdogs prevail and cheering for whoever I happened to pick in my bracket – It is great fun! I am always in for anything competitive and so I will get into picking a bracket. When I used to work at the Hilton, I would fill out a football pick them card every week and actually won a buffet dinner one week when I came in 2nd among all the employees. (This was not the big of a treat as the buffet food VERY closely resembled what we were served in the employee cafeteria every day. And just this year, I beat all of my brother-in-laws in Fantasy Football! As the only girl, I came away with the victory! Of course, none of them even acknowledged my win but I think it is pretty impressive! (It was probably just beginners luck, but I like to think there is some skill involved.) So, I do have a reputation to protect when it comes to this kind of thing!!!
Filling out a bracket is always something I look forward to each year. If you were to look at my fridge right now, you would see my magnetic bracket all filled out with all the winning teams circled and ready for tomorrow’s games. (I found this wipe board bracket at Target in the dollar section last year – It might be the best $1 I ever spent!!!) Ever since I was a little girl, I remember the bracket process. I remember my dad awaiting the newspaper for the bracket so that he could fill it out (back in the pre-internet days!) I remember watching him spend lots of time filling it out and then erasing and re-erasing until he got it just right – A ritual that now involves a click of the mouse. I then remember him lamenting over his losses and celebrating the picks of the successful underdogs as the games unfolded! And, I am proud to carry on the bracket tradition in our home! The Webber family tradition started the first year Darren and I were married, we created a little pool for our friends, and I won! It was mostly his friends, and I don’t think that he enjoyed losing to “a girl”, much less his wife and having her beat most of his friends as well. I have to say that I am not the typical wife, who watches just to spend time with her husband. I actually enjoy watching as much as Darren most of the time. Since having children though, this has changed. It has become very challenging to sit down and really watch much of anything, much less a 3 hour basketball game. So, this year’s bracket was a bit of challenge to fill out since I had not seen any of the teams really play and based my picks on pure luck!
Filling out a bracket, however much I enjoy it causes me a HUGE amount of stress. It is not like there is much on the line, besides bragging rights, but being the competitive person that I am, that is a lot to put on the line! Darren or I have won the little bracket pool with our friends almost every year (one of my friends even named his bracket Robb Vs DW and BW this year!) Everyone wants to beat us and we have a reputation to protect at the Webber house! This gives a little added pressure - AND Darren has beat me the last 2 years, and it is time to redeem myself! But for a person who struggles to make any little decision, asking me to sit down and make THAT many decisions (there are 63 games in the tournament!) in such a short amount of time, and on which my sports knowledge reputation will depend for the rest of the year, is quite intimidating! I am one of those people who feel like they need all the information possible before I can make an educated decision, so I read way too many people’s opinions and confuse myself even more. Then there are those ones that I can’t decide on and change over and over and ultimately, get them wrong! Case in point – UNLV vs. Kent State! I changed this a lot and finally decided that picking UNLV would just be dumb. I was only picking them since I feel some loyalty to them (although I mostly resent them because of the large amount of money they have taken from us!!!) and so I decided to go with Kent State! And, of course, UNLV wins! Also, I read several articles talking about how great USC is and they did beat UCLA, so I not only picked them through one round, but 2 and they lost their first game! You shouldn’t listen to the experts, I guess! And of course, I picked BYU as I am somewhat of a Cougar fan, but they lost too! I know you can’t get them all right (well, I never have…) but I hate missing the ones that I changed or even thought about changing! However, filling out a bracket makes watching the games much more fun. Especially if Darren and I are cheering on opposing teams- It makes it much more interesting! Even if you are not a basketball fan, March Madness can be quite fun! You can pick teams based on things like team colors or mascots. (There is a team in this year’s tourney that are the Governors … That strikes fear into any opponent’s heart, right? Actually…Political leaders can be quite frightening…) So far, I have not had as much success as I hoped. I am currently beating Darren though and in a 6-way tie for 1st in our bracket pool! We’ll see how long it lasts…
Today had some great games that came down to the last shot and were very exciting! This is the part of March Madness that I love! I was screaming and yelling and Logan even got in on it – He was chanting “DAVIDSON! DAVIDSON!” (That was an upset I picked that did happen!) Being at home is great because I can watch EVERY game (when I used to work, I was always checking scores on the internet…) I love college basketball because those players aren’t getting huge paychecks and play for the pride of their team and school. There is much more team emphasis, emotion and strategy than the NBA. I love it! If you haven’t watched a game, I would recommend it! You might catch the March Madness yourself!