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For those who are passionate about college sports, the month of March is synonymous with March Madness, the college equivalent of the NBA playoffs. March Madness provides a stage for peer athletes to showcase their talent on.

“Students and professors should care. This is the most exciting sporting event in college sports,” said student Jacob Tacher, performance in jazz major.

“I love college basketball because of the strong sporting fundamentals and work ethic of players who are yet to be paid and hoping to enter the next level in the NBA.”

Created in 1939, March Madness, also known as NCAA Basketball Championship, is a single-elimination tournament in which 68 college teams compete to win the title of national champions. Schools such as University of Texas-Pan American, where alumni ChaRunn Jones recently transfered to, are competing in the Championship.

Teams are divided into four different brackets: East, Southeast, Southwest and West.

They are then ranked within these brackets based upon many different criteria such as conference and road records, number of wins versus ranked opponents, rankings in national polls and more.

College students should take joy in watching fellow students play with such remarkable talent.

Over the first two days of the tournament, usually beginning on the third Thursday in March, the 64 teams are whittled down to 16 teams, referred to as Sweet 16.

From there, the Elite 8 compete to make it to the Final Four. The four top ranked teams at this time are Kansas State, Ohio State, San Diego State and Duke University.

“I think that students and professors should care about March Madness because even if they don’t like basketball it gives their school more exposure and, mainly, more money if their school does well in the NCAA tournament,” said Spencer Stuppi, history. “I like Jimmer Fredette on BYU, that guy is a baller. Also, even though I don’t like Duke, I like Nolan Smith a lot.”

All college students and alumni, even those uninterested in basketball, can enjoy March Madness tournaments due to the energy and passion these players exhibit.

The Sweet 16 face off against each other beginning this afternoon.

The match-ups are: No. 1?Ohio State against No. 4 Kentucky, No. 11 Marquette against No. 2 North Carolina in the East region, No. 1 Duke against No. 5 Arizona, No. 3 UCONN against No. 2 San Diego State in the West region, No. 1 Kansas against No. 12 Richmond, No. 11 VCU?against No. 12 Florida State in the Southwest region and finally No. 8 Butler against No. 4 Wisconsin and No. 3 BYU against No. 2 Florida in the Southeast region.

A student experiences the dizzying effects of predicting the winner of the 64-team NCAA basketball tournament, March Madness. (Louis C. Cheung)

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