It’s March again, and if you’re a sports fan, you know that means yet another year of March Madness.  2+ weeks of some of the most exciting sports you’ll see.

But where does this nickname come from?  Why do they call it Madness?

Consider inter-league competition.  Calculated matchups between teams that know each other inside and out.  Every offensive and defensive set scrutinized to the finest detail, and on top of that, teams typically play each other at least twice in the regular season, year after year.  They’re more than familiar opponents.

That’s not Madness.  Those games have a different label, usually something involving the terms “Rivals” or “Tradition”, and they have all-time Win/Loss records against each other that are innumerable.  We know what we’re getting; a hard-fought, rivals-hate-each-other type game.  Great games, but in a way, predictable.

Then comes the NCAA Tournament.  Real March Madness.  And you find that the reason they call this stretch “Madness”, is because you have teams that have never heard of each other facing off.  There is no familiarity, no rivalry, no history — it’s raw competition.  Games turn frantic when they come down to the wire, and adjustments need to be made, on the fly.  It’s do-or-die time.

Sure, believe it — there’s more scouting and preparation being done for these games than any other.  And for good reason.  The past shows that there’s no such thing as an Underdog in these games.  No team is a sure-win.

Maybe it’s the seeding that throws us off.  We assume that the top-seeded teams will breeze through the brackets all the way into the Final Four, but in the history of the NCAA Tournament, only 1 time have all four #1 Seeds made the Final Four.  In fact, the Seed-by-Seed matchup Win/Loss breakdown can be a little surprising in some cases.

11th-Seeded George Mason beat Top-Seeded UConn in 2006 to go to the Final Four

It’s difficult to say whether the outcomes of the games are due to a lack of preparation on one team’s part, or ultimate preparation for the other.  Or maybe it’s more about which team can take advantage of the opportunities given to them.  There are any number of swings of momentum over the course of a game — turnovers, forced bad shots, foul trouble, rebounding, you name it.

The question becomes, “Is my team going to rise to the occasion when we have the opportunity to take over the game?”

You won’t have to wait long before hearing folks claim a “lucky” win for a supposed “Underdog” in this year’s tournament; but as one or two of my co-workers reminded me recently:  Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

At HomeField, we give you the opportunity to be prepared.  Even for Madness.