March Media Madness

March madness has begun, and while I'm spending my spring break frantically working on two chapters of a book I'm writing (well, co-writing), my wife is dragging me into the strange realm of NCAA "March Madness." My wife, like so many people who live and work in an office environment in the United States, has gone and joined a March Madness office pool. And now someone who typically pays little attention to basketball--baseball and football are more her things--is sitting glued to CBS hoping that her first and second round picks make it to the next stage. (Too bad, Syracuse!) As she says: "I know exactly nothing about college basketball. As I was doing my picks, I found myself favoring colleges that I had attended conferences at, or that had offered me graduate assistantships in the past. That's how I ended up with an all Washington state championship game, which has as much chance of happening as I have of being named Queen of Spokane." And because she's getting sucked in through the power of the office pool, I'm getting sucked in too! Maybe the final will be between The Huskies and Gonzaga! :-)

This state of affairs isn't all that uncommon. At this time of year millions of people get sucked into the National Collegiate Athletic Association Men's Division I Basketball Tournament--an event and a sport they often know little of, but which manages to build up the sort of buzz of excitement that any Hollywood movie studio exec would kill to have for their big summer tentpole release. Sixty-four (well, actually 65) college teams are playing (many are already out), and even though four games are on at roughly the same time for the first few days, viewers get to see most of them for at least a few minutes as CBS frantically switches from game to game. But now, for the first time, the games will be available free over the internet on CBS Sportsline. The media have run some stories about employer anxiety over lost productivity (here's NPR's take on a story that's essentially a media creation.) In fact, March Madness facilitates a powerful centripetal media effect on society. That's a fancy way of saying it's one of these great sports events that can bring people together--in offices, in clubs, in families, and across the whole country--through the power of a media spectacle. People, even those who normally care not a whit about basketball, get caught up in, bet a few bucks on (and for most people, it is only a few bucks), and feel they're part of something special that's bigger than they are. It gives people something to talk about, something to riff on, something to get excited about. It's like the Super Bowl but it lasts for 20 days. It gets lots of people through the dreary month of March, and by the time it's all over the weather will be getting warmer--and baseball season will be upon us!

Now, ahem, back to writing that book!