Mad Hatter

March Madness. That’s what they call the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Madness is used here as positive reference to the frenzied attention paid to the tournament.

A tournament where young men going to college try to put a ball through a hoop for our enjoyment.

I don’t think people realize how mad they have gone. Let’s review some ballpark figure here about the amount of time spent just watching these games.

As you might guess, as the tournament progresses more and more people watch each game. The championship game will probably have around 24 million viewers. The first rounds have a couple million people watch each game. The viewing time of a game is about 2.5 hours. There are 6 full rounds starting out with 32 games and ending up with 1.

The rough math tells you that viewing hours stack up to just under a billion. A billion hours spent in America watching a college basketball tournament. And that doesn’t even include the millions of hours reading about it, talking about it, watching others talk about it.

The NCAA and sports fans will tell you this is obviously a resounding success.

I am not one of those people. I’m appalled. What is wrong with you, America? Religion wasn’t a good enough opiate so now you’ve turned to sports?

You’ve been effectively distracted from your lives for a billion hours. You’re living vicariously through college basketball players. Congratulations. You’re just observing life, not living it.

A billion hours of not spending quality time with your children, not reading a book, not being active, not volunteering, not just being you. What’s wrong with you?

Take your life back. Turn off the Madness. You’ll thank yourself.