A Requiem for Madness: First Movement

March Madness, how I've loved you--ecstatically, faithfully, selflessly. When little in life could bestir a solemn boy's heart, you never failed to quicken my pulse with the first electric whisper of your siren song: I proclaimed, in great earnest, Selection Sunday my favorite day of the year. Tip-off of that first game in the early sweaty minutes of Thursday afternoon offered both glorious release and heavy promise--March Madness, like the tulips, had returned. And that first portentous flip of the ball presaged a later toss, when only two teams would remain to vie for the grandest of titles, on the grandest of stages, for the undying esteem of a nation of transfixed boys and girls, aged 1-92.

Earliest memories: 1987, I am seven and for the first time in my young life have assumed the athletic loyalties of my father. I have become, indivisibly, an Indiana University basketball fan. They are luminous this season, led by Steve Alford, their All-American guard. Entering the tournament as a number one seed, they play Duke in the Sweet Sixteen. We watch at home. In the first half, angered by a referee's call, my dad throws an old, blue-bound Oxford dictionary at the television.

Two days later, having vanquished Duke, IU is matched against an inferior LSU team, a berth to the Final Four in New Orleans at stake. Indiana plays poorly and trails by a significant margin late in the second half. It appears they will lose. My sister and I decide to escape to the outdoors to avoid the suffocating pall that settles over our family room. Some minutes later, we attempt to return and are driven back at the door by strident voices: Get out! Get out! We obey. Our mother joins us in the garage after a time, brimming with excitement. Indiana has won! With the team having embarked upon a stunning comeback at our departure (later, legendary Indiana coach Bobby Knight says that with five minutes remaining he worried that the game was lost: "Then I looked down the floor and saw Dale Brown (LSU's coach), and I knew, well, we had a chance."), our parents superstitiously, and to great effect, barred us from the premises.

The following Monday, Indiana plays Syracuse for the national title. On spring break, the Gaff family is visiting an aunt in St. Paul, Minnesota (sunshine little succored us). We watch the game from our Red Roof Inn room. I spend many minutes of the second half in the bathroom, door closed, too nervous to watch. With five seconds left in the game, Indiana guard Keith Smart hits a fade-away jumper from the left baseline to give the Hoosiers a one-point victory (I emerge in time to witness this splendid, improbable wonder). Pandemonium! The kids leap vertiginously on the disheveled hotel beds. Go ahead, our parents say. Just this once, go ahead.

March Madness, it was love at first acquaintance.

What ever happened to us?