A Modest March Madness Proposal

Every year at this time I go nuts.  It’s March Madness, almost literally.  I’m not talking about seedings, snubs, or 2/15 upset possibilities.  I’m talking about simple geography.

Presumably the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, must be populated by individuals who, you know, went to college.  And presumably a few of those people didn’t go on an athletic scholarship, and therefore actually learned something.  Yet every March the complete ignorance the NCAA selection committee has of United State geography is revealed to be staggering.

Who is in the “West” bracket?  The University of Louisiana at Lafayette.  Because when I think of the western United States, I immediately picture bayous and gators.  What school isn't in the West?  UCLA, which is in the South region.  Because being 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean doesn't mean you are in the West.  Cal Poly also isn't in the West bracket but in the Midwest, because apparently someone thinks that California is located between Indiana and Iowa.

Colorado and Pittsburgh meet in the first round in the South bracket, because both of those places were in the Confederacy during the Civil War.  Albany is also in the South, but not North Carolina State, which is in the Midwest.  Ohio State is not in the Midwest region, but in the South.  Iowa State is in the East, while Manhattan is in the Midwest (because when you think of Manhattan you think of tall buildings, Broadway, and fields of wheat).  Duke is in the Midwest, Milwaukee in the East and so on ad nauseum.

Look, if the regional brackets don’t mean anything, why give them geographical place names?  If teams from California play in the South bracket, why call it the South?  If a team from New York City is in your bracket, it shouldn't be called the Midwest.  Let’s come up with an alternative.

Here is my proposal: instead of naming the brackets after geographical regions, name them after historical figures from college basketball.  You could still maintain some semblance of regionalism, but make it a little more non-specific.  Then the stupidity of saying Duke is in the Midwest isn't quite as glaring.

My suggestion?  The West bracket could be known as the Wooden bracket.  The Midwest bracket should be renamed the Knight bracket.  The South could be transformed into the Smith bracket (if naming it after Dean Smith is too generic, you could always call it the Rupp bracket).  And lastly, the East could be called the Summitt bracket (okay, Tennessee isn't exactly the East, but there isn't a retired basketball coach with her pedigree from a school in the “East.”

Can we please stop destroying the map of the United States every March?  Let’s honor NCAA basketball history and get rid of the geographical brackets that clearly mean nothing.  Now let me get back to my bracket; I can’t decide if North Dakota State is likely to upset Oklahoma in the West.