You can find more sports’s Coverage of the men’s NCAA tournament is here, and coverage of the women’s NCAA tournament is here. Follow live coverage of the first round of the 2024 Men’s NCAA Tournament
On Wednesday, I boarded a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas with the express purpose of attending a college basketball game.
Not participating in an actual basketball game, mind you. These flights go to Omaha, Nebraska, and Charlotte, North Carolina. In my case, I spent hundreds of dollars for the privilege of sitting (or standing) at various sportsbooks and watch parties watching NCAA tournament games on the TV in my living room.
If high hotel prices and $250 reserved-seat tickets are any indication, hundreds of thousands of other sports fans are doing the same thing.
Gambling may be the draw for many, but these days you don’t need to fly to Vegas to bet on sports. Drinking alcohol might be another reason, but it’s also much cheaper than airfare.
The appeal of March Madness in Las Vegas is roughly the same as the appeal of the millions of people filling out brackets and cheering for schools and players they had never heard of two hours earlier. That’s because the NCAA tournament is one of those increasingly rare public experiences in our country.
New audio!
Special Guest @rodje Replace Bruce. We’re mostly talking about football, but the man is also an expert at picking NCAA Tournament upsets. https://t.co/HzE5HbUqnf
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) March 20, 2024
In this polarized era, where even the most innocuous topics can cause outrage, people across the country still enjoy one thing equally: rooting for the underdog. No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson There are no two teams that can beat No. 1 seed Purdue (unless you’re a Purdue fan). There is no political agenda behind St. Peter’s disturbing Kentucky.
It was pure pure joy to spend two hours watching a completely unknown team play most of its game in front of 800 people, against a bunch of future pros from a power conference, and ultimately win. Or when a team’s season hangs in the balance and a 19-year-old sophomore sinks a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, etching himself into the legend of “one shining moment” for the rest of his life.
No other sporting event offers so many indelible moments year after year. Of course, there are also “uneasy” things in professional sports. But the New York Giants’ Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots ended up being one team with a multi-millionaire beating another team. Not exactly Oral Roberts beating Ohio State.
College football has its Cinderella moments, like Appalachian State beating Michigan or Boise State beating Oklahoma. But when it comes to the most important game at the end of the season, it’s almost always one Alabama, Georgia or Michigan State beating another Alabama, Georgia or Michigan State.
The NBA has LeBron, Giannis and Jokic. But it doesn’t have Sister Joan.
But the bottom line is that in all of these sports, there is no team that the entire country is lagging behind. Once the NFL playoffs begin, people won’t suddenly become Philadelphia Eagles fans. But if you’ve ever been in an arena where a No. 13 seed lingered in the second half, you know all too well that the crowd of 20,000 suddenly turned into rabid Furman fans for the rest of the game.
The only things that can be compared are events like the World Cup or the Olympics where U.S. teams or athletes participate. But even the women’s national soccer team has become politicized, while the men’s team has mostly stoked collective anxiety with mediocre performances. Chances are you don’t even remember the names of most of the gold medalists from the last Olympics.
And every college basketball fan will always remember the likes of Bryce Drew, Tyus Edney, and Kris Jenkins.
Which brings me back to Vegas. Although it doesn’t have to be Vegas. It could be your local Buffalo Pheasant Wings. Or a dive bar near you. Or a sports bar close enough to sneak in during your lunch break.
March Madness is a sporting event best enjoyed in the company of others. In a room filled with other fascinated spectators, ride the roller coaster of scoring droughts and momentum swings as your Final Four players try to survive the scares of the first round. If Vermont hits a 3-pointer over Duke to go up by nine, random people around you will be high-fiving.
Or if some kid from Long Beach State takes a shot at Arizona State at the final buzzer, they’ll be running around the room screaming and hugging strangers.
Enjoy flying—wherever it takes you.
Get ready for March Madness:
(Photo: Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
