The Best Month For Sports - By Jeff Bailey

The great month of March is upon us and that means just one thing…madness. Word madness and March have become synonymous with each other. When any sport fan thinks of the month of March they immediately think of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament.

The NCAA basketball tournament has become more of a religion over the past years with millions of people, some who don’t even watch basketball, trying to create the perfect bracket. Almost every company around the country has some type of “office pool” with brackets, and the games instantly become water cooler talks. Looking over the past 20-30 years, some of the most infamous games, plays, and players have all come out of the tournament. What other sporting event can take a team from a school with no more than 3,000 students and instantly turn them into sporting celebrities, and take no name players and turn them into household names over night. Every year there is at least one Cinderella team that gets hot at the right time and makes an unseen run at a national title.

The tournament itself is an image of the American dream. If you make the tournament, no matter how big or how small the team is, if you’ve won 15 or 30 games, or if you are the #1 or #14 seed you have a shot at making history and winning a national championship. The tournament is the classic story of David vs. Goliath. Time and time again the little teams prove the David vs. Goliath story is true. Many sports analysts, and fans, agree that the NCAA tournament is the best postseason of any sport.

However, March is not just about the NCAA basketball tournament.

For all other basketball fans, the second half the NBA season is in full force with teams vying for playoff spots. On top of that, the top players are stepping up their games to win the MVP race. For hockey fans, the NHL season only has about 20 games left. Teams are fighting and putting their blood, sweat, and tears into making the playoffs and winning one of the most coveted trophies in all of sports; Lord Stanley’s Cup. The actual playoffs for the NBA and NHL might not be until April, but the playoff push is a lot more exciting to most fans.

This great month is just not about basketball and hockey, but can also be a month of madness for football, baseball, and soccer fans. Sure the college football bowl season is over, and the Super Bowl is in the past, but that does not mean football news stops. The month of March is just off the heels or college football’s biggest offseason news; National Signing Day. College fans are drooling over their newest recruits, and starting to bash other teams on their forums about how their team is going to go undefeated and win a national championship next year. Spring practices are still about a month or so away, but fans are already putting together their “ultimate” starting lineups.

NFL fans are in the middle of free agency and only weeks away from the NFL Draft. The NFL combine just happened, so fans are rethinking their teams’ needs and who they should draft. College players vault themselves from being unknowns to being first round picks with just running a 40 yard dash. This offseason has added another wrinkle in the NFL madness with the labor talks and the possibility of a season long lockout. With or without a lockout, the NFL will stay have their draft next month.

For baseball fans, spring training is just beginning and fans are finally getting to see their teams for this season. After all the trades in the offseason, fans are seeing their newly acquired players and are getting ready for nonstop baseball for the next 7-8 months. The dreams of winning it all are still alive at this point and with the season just weeks away. As for soccer, the MLS season is only two weeks away while the European leagues started just a few weeks ago.

March might come in as a lion and leave as a lamb in terms of weather, but in the sports world March comes in like a freight train and leaves with just as much power. The NCAA basketball tournament is the heart and soul of March, but almost every single sport has something going on in March. March is the greatest month of the year for sports, hands down. What other month has Cinderella stories, upsets, unknowns becoming household names, fresh starts to seasons, ends of seasons, and playoffs spots being won and lost? Only one word describes the month of March - madness.