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Long before NCAA basketball, March has been known for madness

Posted at 12:09 AM, Mar 17, 2017
and last updated 2017-03-17 00:33:14-04

RICHMOND, Va. -- Long before NCAA basketball, March has been known for madness.

It's the end of winter and the beginning of spring, the breeding season. It's the month of migrating birds, including the nuthatch, and head-butting by wild rams.

Have you ever heard of the expression "mad is a March hare"?

Rabbits aren't the only things that get wacky in March. It is the month of crazy weather - March just can't make up its mind.

So NCAA basketball fits right in. Everyone gets to imagine themselves a basketball genius, only to frequently discover they're b-ball dodo birds.

Roughly 70 million brackets were filled out. That's more than the number of votes cast for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

This year's bracket gambling is expected to exceed $10.2 billion dollars, nearly all of it illegal.

Can you get busted for it? It's happened. But only if you're profiting off of running your pool.

Usually brackets get busted when favorite teams fail to perform, which happens enough to emphasize the madness moniker.

By the way, that $10 billion is more than the gross domestic product of 65 nations.

In fact, our mad March gambling is worth more than the gross domestic products of Greenland, Somalia, Grenada, Belize, Liberia, Tongo and Antigua - combined!

Distracted employees watching the games cost businesses in estimated $4 billion a year.

(I'll finish this column right after the game.)

March on!

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