March Madness, the Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament
held every year (in March), is addictively chaotic. Sixty-four equally hungry teams from across the country throw their
hats into the battle royal to end all battle royals. After more
than two weeks of exhaustion, buzzer beaters, net-trimmings, happy tears, sad tears, thrown chairs, confetti deluges,
sextuple-overtimes and busted brackets, a champion of this test of the human spirit’s indomitability is crowned.
Over the course of decades though, some tournaments
stand out from the rest. All March Madnesses are mad,
but some March Madnesses are madder than others. And
for one to be in the business of sports, as I am, one must
be competitive. So, given my competitive nature, it was inevitable that I would do this.
I have narrowed down the most maddening March
Madnesses in history and pitted them against each other,
head-to-head, in a Meta March Madness tournament to find the maddest March Madness of them all.
After much research, I whittled down the 40-50
tournaments to 16 particularly memorable years. From there,
I chose the following eight years as my tournament’s Elite Eight. I seeded them in order from earliest to most recent,
and the match-ups reflect the NCAA guidelines of coupling highest vs. lowest seeds.
1973 • 1975 • 1979 • 1981 • 1985 • 2005 • 2006 • 2011 MARCH 2016
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