Your Guide To Enjoying The NCAA Tournament If You Don't Really Care

It is fantastic that you are all excited about March Madness. So happy for you. The rest of us are watching because little else is on the sports calendar. What follows is what the majority of the great unwashed will be doing during the tournament, or at least should be doing during the tournament if they want to properly enjoy college basketballl's turn on the Wheel of Abbreviated Attention Spans. 

Adopt a positive and vibrant hate of "One Shining Moment." Really get your ears in there and realize just how much rolling ten cent ear poison one song can contain. Horrible horns, John Tesh-y synths, and all the cornball appeal of a high school alma mater: that's "One Shining Moment," the treacle CBS has set highlights to since 1987, the year "Walk Like An Egyptian" dominated the airwaves. 

A good, aggressive loathing of the song can, if cultivated, enrich your viewing experience even more, since you'll start to anticipate the hate-buzz you'll get off it when it inevitably rolls into a broadcast like the bloated, obese anthem to vague champion-ness that it is. I like to imagine Jim Nantz listening to it and weeping to it, both because we really do imagine Jim Nantz waking up every morning to it, and because Nantz weeping just makes me happy in a way few things can. 

Gus Johnson. He goes ballistic at least once a game, and purists hate it. As an interloper this makes him your best friend, since he will not only entertain your easily distracted brain but will also simultaneously aggravate those who might resent your half-assed tourism of their beloved sport. Remember: you can kind of nap until Gus starts yelling about something. That's what makes him so helpful to you, and so loathsome to some purists who want to hear, oh, I don't know, someone as reserved and measured as Dick Vitale analyze the game. 

Turn on as many televisions as possible. That is the entire point of March Madness: overload. You can't possibly keep up with every game at once, so don't even try. Turn on three or four screens at once to turn yourself into a hopeless ant twitching in the intense magnifying glass-beam of its concentrated glory. A single college basketball game might lose your attention, especially if that game is Duke versus the play-in lamb custom designed for maximum slaughtering. 32 games all played in a blink, however, will not, much like every song on a Dragonforce album played at once. 

Care on the first weekend alone. The design of the tournament ensures that the casual fan will zone out after all the potentially interesting things happen. This is fine. All you're concerned with here is pure chaos, and most of that happens in the first weekend, anyway. It is much like a barfight: all the fun stuff happens in the first bit, and then the rest is four or five huge guys beating the daylights out of smaller people. Like the college football season, but with an actual winner and a fair and not insane way of settling it, in other words.  

Pick a team that cannot possibly win. Mine's Old Dominion, because they sound just like a brand of Malt Liquor. Old Dominion Malt Liquor would have some kind of sexy king on its logo, like a winking, half-drunk monarch, just leaning out of the label winking like Joseph Ducreux imploring you to disregard ladies and acquire currency. 

They'll lose, but at least you'll get the vicarious thrill only a hopeless bet can provide. [Editor's Note: There is actually an Old Dominion Brewing Company based out of Northern Virginia. They do not produce malt liquor. But they should.]

Exotic mascots. The best ones are the ones you can't even recognize after several sustained camera shots, like Siena's mutant kangaroodogwombatbear. 

Those children are seconds away from soiling themselves out of panic. 

Being there solely to watch someone who spent a great amount of time building their bracket collapse in frustration. "My bracket's completely screwed up!" Few stupider laments exist in sport, but you might as well be around to point out the critical lack of math skills by anyone who complains about their precious bracket being busted after week one. There are 4,294,967,296 possible variations of the first round alone, and your chances of picking even that simple run are infinitesimal.

But I did research! I worked on it for three hours! And now you're three hours closer to death without anything to show for it, and are already behind your mother in your pool. She picked them based on which state she liked better, and now both your math and time management skills officially suck. 

Don't pay attention until the last four minutes or so. Clean. Call some friends. Macrame, take a few correspondence classes, and zone out until the last four minutes of a game. Some people are giving their full attention to every squeak and dribble. They're called hardcore college basketball fans or the announcers. They're here because they really love the game or because they're being paid. Bully for them on both counts.  

You're here because of the storm of boredom, and will take any port offering shelter.  If it's not already a blowout the game will come down to the final four minutes or so, where you'll be able to duck your head in, ooh and ahh for a bit, and then leave before the tedium of the endgame and the 83 timeouts each team will call in the last minute.