If your March Madness bracket is not already busted, then you should either be hired as an ESPN analyst or you should play the lottery. For the rest of us who are wallowing over the losses of Villanova, Virginia, Kansas and Iowa State, we at least have some entertaining basketball ahead of us to watch.

Every year in mid-March, basketball fans pull out their hair and watch in amazement as small, upstart basketball teams like Davidson College or George Mason University pull off upsets against college basketball royalty in the NCAA’s annual end of the year tournament. March Madness is the perfect combination of parity and dominance. It pairs story lines like undefeated Kentucky bulldozing through the tournament with narratives like University of Alabama Birmingham beating Iowa State, one of the top teams in the country. 

What makes March Madness so exceptional is that it is nearly impossible to predict each year. Compared to the NBA playoffs, where seven game series are played between teams to determine the best team the NCAA tournament pits 18, 19 and 20 year old kids against each other in a one-game elimination style that leaves the door open for, as CAS junior Kevin Zhao says, just about anything to happen.

“I like March Madness because there’s a lot more on the line,” Zhao said. “If you lose one game, your season’s over and for some players that means their entire basketball career.”

This season, the goliath Kentucky Wildcats, have steamrolled the competition on their way to what is now a 36-0 season. Most people believe that the Wildcats will go on to win the competition easily, and by all means, it is their tournament to win. But there is something magical about March, when Cinderella stories are anything but uncommon. Wichita State, a solid program with not nearly the amount of assets of Kentucky, could get hot and hit 10 threes in a half to knock off the Wildcats. Kentucky could go completely cold on their way to being ousted by West Virginia or Maryland in the Sweet 16. The beauty of it is that fans just do not know, and as evidenced by a year of exceptionally poor brackets, have only a faint idea of how to guess what might happen.

The college competition has a whirlwind of problems that needs to be addressed. The game is slow, plodding and filled with sloppy offense and unappealing defense. There are countless moral debates going on about the validity of the NCAA. Should college players be paid? Should they get the profits from sales of their brand and their name? Only time will solve these debates. In the meantime the NCAA tournament offers fans a moment’s reprieve from all this. If the game as a whole is improved, the viewing experience of the tournament will too. However, March Madness will never grow dull as long as college basketball players show the desire to pull upsets, stay focused and go further than anyone expected.

With a near-perfect postseason tournament as it is, so long as the NCAA does not tear it down and try to rebuild it, it can only get better.

A version of this article appeared in the Monday, March 23 print edition. Email Bobby Wagner at [email protected].