#532 March with Madness in Your Heart

Hyperion March 15, 2009

March 15 -24 - International March "With a Little Madness in Your Heart" Week

This week begins the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Teams play all season for a chance to make "the Big Dance," a three weekend single-elimination tournament that is known to all as MARCH MADNESS.

Sixty-five teams begin this tournament; only one will be standing by the end. Thirty-four teams get in just by being good. The other thirty-one have some great teams as well, and then there's the best part of the whole thing: the little guys.

All over the country, schools you've never heard of get a chance to play in the Big Dance, to be a part of March Madness. These little guys are matched up against the big boys, and the odds are great they will go down first time out.

But every once in a while.....one of those little guys wins. Sometimes they even win two games, and if we're really lucky, maybe even three. In reality, the little teams have virtually no chance of winning the whole thing; only 10-12 teams do.

But we can live with that. We understand that when it's down to the Final Four the schools remaining will be house-hold names, powerful teams that most people picked. That's okay.

BUT THERE'S A CHANCE....

Maybe it's crazy. Maybe it's part of our national psychosis to dream of "equality" when things can never be completely equal. Whatever. Those little guys have a chance, and that's all we ask. For the little guy to win just one game, or maybe even two. After that....who knows?

So, this week, whether you are a die-hard basketball fan or you can't tell a blue devil from a blueberry, I want you to March with a little Madness in your heart.

For the chance, that very small chance, the the little guy might get his day.

In some ways we're all little guys, at least some of the time, so we March for them, and we March for us.

For one shining moment maybe the little guy--and us--can be heroes too.