March Madness: Who's going to win it all? Oh wait, no one knows.

Mid-March marks one of the most exciting sporting events in the year: the Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament, consisting of a field of college basketball's 68 best teams. Actually, it might not be the sport's 68 best teams, as smaller conferences get one automatic bid which is awarded to the conference tournament champion. However, that just adds to the appeal of the event, with upsets galore.

With the games beginning this Thursday, it made me think just why March Madness is so compelling to America, as well as myself. After reading an article about the tournament by Eddie Pells of the Associated Press, it made me think about the tournament on a larger level of importance. Professor Michael Magazine of the University of Cincinnati sheds some light on why the tournament is so much fun: "'The life lesson is that we make a lot of decisions that are the right decisions, but the outcomes don't always come out the way we planned.'"

What I take from this is that America loves to "make a lot of decisions," and the unpredictability of those decisions adds suspense and entertainment to the games that follow. Magazine's ideas also made me think about how American's like to have the control of making their own decisions, even if the outcomes "don't always come out the way we planned."

The tournament is just a microcosm of the many choices we have to make every day, some decisions more important (who you pick as your champion), and some more obsolete (picking a #1 seed to beat a #16 seed, where a #16 seed has never won a game in tournament history). One can look at the many decisions in this existentialist way, but for the average fan it is just a time of the year to fill out brackets, making you personally invested in every game played. Because as my classmate Jeremy says in his blog post, Americans love to win. We even claim to have never lost a war, when this is probably a false statement. But it is fine that Americans have the drive to win, because no one complains about someone motivated to be the best, even if on the global scale.