On the 20th of the month of March comes the start of the spring season. The long, cold winter is finally over and life reappears with the coming of the leaves and the emergence of hibernating animals. To us, spring symbolically represents many joyous things.
The Native Americans would give offerings and hope for a plentiful season. Followers of witchcraft recite the Spring Equinox Chant. Personally, I think a haiku from thirteen year-old Leslie Silva says it best: “The crisp spring morning, scents of the blooming flowers, and lovely bird songs.” It is the end of harsh settings, and a renewal of a lively beauty to the world we live in. And how do we, nature’s most advanced and beautiful creatures, the very essence of evolution, possibly the highest form of intelligence in the universe, celebrate our very existence during this season of life? With March Madness.
It’s the guy saying, “Yeah baby, it’s March Madness! Take my money and gimme a bracket! I can feel creative and special if I pick my own teams to win it all. People care what I think, cause I’m a part of something that seems cool!”
March Madness. Oh no. Oh God, no. I want to tear up every bracket I see. It seems to be the only thing on earth that people really care about. Everywhere I go, the guy with the backwards/upside-down visor will be handing `em out, looking at `em, holding onto `em as if it’s the holy scripture of his religion. Even Saddam Hussein has March Madness fever. He paid his 9000 dinars (equates to $5 US) and is picking his sleeper teams as we speak. What a nightmare.
According to the United States Census Bureau, there are approximately 96 million Americans between the ages of 10-34. To get my point across, I will leave out all the other age groups who suffer from this horrible disease. Then from that 96 million, I shall take out those without enough money to consider gambling $5 on a bracket. Keep in mind that $5 is nearly a minimum, typical of college students. The current mean poverty level is about 11.8 percent. I’ll give you 15 percent, a generous estimate. That gives us 81.6 million people with the means of participating. Let’s say only one half of those are sports fans and then one half of those people actually participate in March Madness gambling. This leaves 20.4 million people who pay their $5 for the bracket to get into the pool. So, by my calculation for just the people between 10 and 34, roughly $102 million dollars are spent every year on these little bracket things. Even if you think my assumptions are wrong, give or take ten million, this is a lot of money. Realistically, I have to think that the actual figures are far greater. Some people fill out upwards of ten brackets. Office pool entries can cost $25. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is not March Madness we’ve got on our hands. It’s March Sadness.
So many better things can be done than uselessly tossing away money on these pools. Sure, somebody wins it, so it’s not a complete loss, but the fact that the person was playing in the first place indicates to me that (s)he doesn’t really need the money.
Now let’s look at what I find to be the most obvious alternative. Take the Save the Children Sponsorship. We have all seen it on TV. You know, you get a specific child’s photo and statistics, and then for $24 a month, you feed the child and provide vaccinations, etc. Summing these payments for a year gives a figure of $288 dollars per child. Then, dividing this into the $102 million a year spent on brackets, yields the figure of 35,416 children who could benefit with the money that annually goes into March Madness.
In addition, The Save the Children Sponsorship helps kids all over the world, not just in the US, and so they have to pay the cost of transporting these goods to third world countries. That doesn’t come cheap. I would think that far more than 35,416 children could go to bed with full tummies if that money was specifically allocated to the United States. Whether or not this should be the policy of our country is open to discussion. Still, with another calculation ($288 per child/$5 per bracket) it would seem that 56.7 brackets equal an annual amount of food and medicine for a human being who is far too hungry and sick to think about March Madness. Yeah, it’s March Sadness.
Considering the Washington University community (approx. 22,472 students and employees) by the same assumptions-minus the poverty restriction-leaves 5,618 people on campus who will be playing this year. If you do the math, then 98 third-world children will go without food and medicine for a year because people at this school care that much about NCAA Basketball.
You wanna be part of something cool? Then how about helping another human being survive? Who cares about Shane Battier’s wrinkled head in the face of all this starving? I mean, really. I bet it would leave much more of an impact with you than picking the right teams and winning some tournament pool against your friends. Now you have been told, and there are no more excuses: 98 children verses that bracket. He shoots, but who scores?