I’m not a rabid college basketball fan, but I do like March Madness, the college basketball tournament with 65 teams playing for the national championship in a single elimination format. It’s been a big deal for 30 or so years with office pools the norm.
The advent of cheap, ubiquitous network access has really sent this already popular event through the stratosphere. Consider this: There are 640,840 players in the Yahoo Pick’em ranked ahead of me in the competition, with only pride on the line, no official money. Tremendous participation.
Even though the team I picked to repeat as champion, North Carolina, was knocked out and the Ohio State Buckeyes got blown out, I remain keenly interested in the outcome. Not a great weekend for results…Here’s my pathetic bracket if you’d like to damage your retinas with poor picking.
Events like these really highlight the power of the participation age. Good news for Sun, participation drives demand for network computing infrastructure. Long live March Madness and I can’t wait for the World Cup!
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The term March Madness, today, is synonymous with the College Basketball Tournament, but the nickname was first used to describe another basketball tournament — the annual Illinois High School Association tournament. Henry V. Porter is credited with coining the phrase in his 1939 article for the Illinois Interscholastic magazine, “March Madness.”