Madness

Now it starts to get fun.

The Sweet 16 round starts tonight – 8 games in 2 days – and our own University of Connecticut Huskies play in the first game.

I really love the Madness of March. It’s a beautiful, pure, perfect tournament. There are no rounds, there are no wild cards, there are no A groups or B pools. March Madness is single-elimination. You win, you advance. You lose, you go home. One team and one team only goes 6-0.

And for me, it’s all about the hoops, and only about the hoops.

Although I’m pulling like crazy for my UConn Huskies to prevail over the Boilermakers (puh-lease) of Purdue, I never join March Madness pools, not anymore. I did join one, once, in 1999. That year, UConn made it to the Final Four, and then the final two. The game was on Monday night – coincidentally, The Dowd’s birthday – and he joined Billy and me – all 3 of us UConn grads – at our house in Fairfield, as did MB, although she and The Dowd were still years away from being the sassy, fabulous, long-time item they’ve become.

UConn vs. Duke. It was an incredible game, and UConn did what Khalid El Amin predicted they would do: they shocked the world, and they won.



We drank Champagne and sang and danced and stayed up really really late, and in the morning I dragged my sorry ass out of bed, walked to the train station, and got on a train to New York.

As I got close to the City I called my assistant to say I’d be, um, really late. She said, “Bill just called; he said the paper’s sending him to the airport to cover the team coming home.” It was like a scene from a movie: I took the phone away from my ear, everything got quiet, and I let out a long, loud, one-syllabled bellow from the depths of my being, which echoed throughout every car of the Metro-North train: Nnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

I should have told my boss Deborah if UConn won, I wouldn’t be in. I should have called in sick. I should have done anything I could to be in the car with Bill on the way to Hartford to greet the plane, instead of being on a godforsaken commuter train to a godforsaken corporate job in New York City.

But the worst thing? About the whole day? When I got to work, I discovered who’d won the pool: my colleague and friend Georgiana. Who I really liked. And who had chosen Duke to win. “But, but, but, but,” I articulated, “she chose Duke! She was wrong!” “Yeah, but she had enough points from the earlier rounds blah blah blah.” Blah blah my ass. I was really mad. I’m still really mad. If you can win an NCAA pool even if you choose the losing team – especially if that losing team is Duke – and especially if the winning team is UConn – well, that’s just crap. I don’t care how many Gonzagas and Western Kentucky Hilltoppers you get right. You need to pick the winner. In my world, you do. So I swore off NCAA pools forever, then and there.

Now I torment my friends with my tragic bracket tale of woe every year instead………

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In 2004, when the UConn men's and women's team were the first – and, so far, only – men's and women's teams to win the NCAA Division 1 tournament in the same year, we were in San Diego. Jacquie is not the world's most, ahem, enthusiastic college basketball fan, and we tormented her with incessant game-watching, day after day after day. And the games were on at the kids' bedtime! Every night! Yippee! Actually, we went out to a bar a couple of nights, to give poor Jacqueline and her poor kids a break from all the screaming. We were at their house when the UConn men beat Georgia Tech to win it all, though.
..
Emeka Okafor was a stud that night.



Hmmmm. Some things, apparently, never change.

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And now it's 2009 and we're back living in Connecticut, of all things, and UConn actually has a chance – not a huge one, mind you, with the crumbs from Louisville and Pitt and North Carolina (sorry, Colleen) lurking out there – but a chance nonetheless – to go all the way and win the whole enchilada again.

It's just so exciting. And nerve-wracking. And excruciating. And exhilarating.

It's Madness.