Why does everyone go mad in March? Welcome back
to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching
English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk a little bit
more about some American culture things and in
particular a basketball tournament that starts
in the month of March and is very popular here
in the United States. The name of this tournament
is March Madness and it doesn't actually end
in March. It only starts in March, but it is
incredibly popular. And I don't know if any other
country has something similar. It might be just
one of those things that is very American. So
on today's episode, we're going to discuss what
this is, how it started, and how you could take
part in it if you are interested. If you're interested
in learning about this while practicing your
listening comprehension and building your English
vocabulary, then follow along because we're about
to begin. Before we get started, I want to remind
you to look at the description of this podcast
episode. You will find helpful links like how
to take a lesson with me, and you'll also find
the vocabulary list that I used in the episode.
You can take this list, study it, and use it
to build your English vocabulary. Now let's talk
about March Madness. This is a basketball tournament
that occurs every year here in the United States
and it is a college basketball tournament. This
is for teams that have college basketball teams
at the very highest level. They get selected
and they're able to go into this tournament and
that tournament determines the winner of the
national championship. Now I know from talking
to my students who have been learning English
online with me that college sports is not really
as popular in other countries as it is in the
United States. The United States has a very strong
college sports program. It is overseen by something
called the NCAA which is the National Collegiate
Athletic Association. They are the ones who oversee
college sports in general and they are the ones
who put on this tournament every year. When you
do play sports in college, there are different
rankings. Think of this in terms of leagues about
how good a particular team is or a particular
university is. There are three divisions, Division
3, Division 2, and Division 1. Division 1 is
the highest tier. Those are for the best teams.
And this tournament is for those Division 1 schools,
the best teams in the country. It consists of
64 teams. It didn't always have that many teams
when it first started in 1939. It only had, I
think, eight teams, but it has continued to grow
and expand, and now it is at 64 teams. These
64 teams get selected, and they get seeded for
the tournament. Seeding is when you determine
what the ranking of a team is. Are they number
one, number two, number three? This occurs for
four different areas of the tournament. So you
seed these teams into these four different areas,
which means each area has 16 teams. So they are
seeded one through 16. The number one seed would
be considered the best. team in that particular
area for the tournament and the number 16 team
would of course be considered the worst they're
not a bad team because obviously they made the
tournament that is a big step a lot of teams
don't even make the tournament every year but
it is considered to be the weakest team in that
particular part of the bracket this tournament
is a single elimination tournament, which means
that if you lose, you go home. This might be
different from other tournaments. Think of the
World Cup or the Euro Cup or America, for example.
Those, you have that group play stage where you
get out of group play first. This is not like
that. This is single elimination, which means
you do go home if you lose a game. It is exciting
to see your college make the tournament. Of course,
people start cheering for whatever college or
university that they went to. And then it's exciting
because you're really hoping they win. If they
lose, they go home. So you want them to win.
You want them to keep going on further and further
in the tournament. Another reason why it is so
popular is because of this whole bracket idea
and the different matchups between the teams.
There are a lot of people who at the beginning
of a tournament make a bracket and they try to
select the winners. So the first round of matches
is set once the teams are seeded. You know exactly
who is going to play who in the first game. But
after that, you don't know. You're just trying
to hope and see who wins and think of who will
eventually make it to the final and become the
national champion. It has become part of the
culture here in the US to make a bracket at the
beginning of the March Madness tournament. Of
course, not everyone does, but if you are a college
basketball fan, if you're someone who likes to
watch the tournament, or if you're someone who
just maybe wants to make a little bit of money,
you can make one of these brackets. When Barack
Obama was president, he would actually come out
in front of the media and show his bracket and
explain why he was selecting one team versus
the other. That helped popularize this idea of
making a bracket. And there's also some giveaways
or prizes for people if they are able to correctly
predict who is going to win. For example, there
is someone here called Warren Buffett. He is
a billionaire. He is one of the richest men in
the world. And every year he has a prize for
his people who work for him for his employees
if they are able to correctly predict a certain
amount of games they could win 1 million dollars
That is a huge prize. I would love to win that
prize. And one year, I think maybe a decade ago
or so, Warren Buffett made it a public thing.
If you had a perfect bracket, if you were able
to correctly predict every single game, you could
win some crazy amount of money. I remember I
entered, my cousin entered, a lot of people I
knew entered because, you know, there's nothing
really to lose. You could win some really big
prize that would be amazing and change your life.
And so that adds... to the excitement other companies
do similar things with having people submit their
brackets for a chance to win their prizes might
not be as crazy as a million dollars but you
might win something it's very exciting I can
say that no one won when Warren Buffett made
that thing public when everybody had a chance
to win and I also don't think his employees have
won I might be wrong on that Now those are some
free prizes, but of course there are also some
things that are not free. There are a lot of
people who make brackets and then bet money on
them or bet money on just individual games. Sports
betting is legal in a lot of the United States
and you can bet online in a lot of different
states. We can't do that here in California,
but in a lot of states you can. And there are
a lot of people who do bet money on this tournament.
It is estimated that about $3 billion will be
gambled during the course of the tournament,
and that is for legal betting. Of course, there's
bets that people might make with their friends.
That's not recorded or tracked by anything. Maybe
you and your friend have a bet who's going to
have the best bracket, and maybe you bet a few
dollars. There's also some illegal betting. Like
I said, California has some restrictions, so
sometimes people want... to get around those
restrictions and bet in some illegal means. Those
are all things that do occur. So the number of
bets and the total amount of money is definitely
higher than $3 billion. But that just gives you
an estimate of how popular this tournament is
and how much money does get bet or get wagered
on the tournament itself. now for march madness
there are actually two tournaments there is the
men's tournament and the women's tournament both
have had increases in popularity though traditionally
the men's tournament was the one that was most
watched that got the most amount of viewers but
the women's tournament has become increasingly
popular in the last few years Overall, the men's
tournament averages about 10 million views per
game. The women's tournament averages about 2
million, a little over 2 million. However, for
the finale, the final game to actually determine
the national championship last year, the men's
tournament got 14 .8 million views, while the
women's final got 18 .9 million views. That means
that the women's national championship game actually
got more. viewers than the men's and it was in
part due to some really big stars one in particular
her name is Caitlin Clark she was a senior which
means it was her last year she was going to be
playing college basketball before she became
a professional when we have someone who goes
from college to the professional leagues we call
that turning pro so it was her last year before
she turned pro and that's a lot of excitement
she is considered to be the best player she has
the scoring record she's a very popular player
last year she was in the final game with her
team and it got a lot of views because people
really did want to watch her Now, when we talk
about the teams that are playing, there are always
the favorites. The favorites are the teams that
are very highly seeded. Maybe the number one
or the number two team in the country. And these
are usually teams that make it every year that
have a very strong basketball program. And every
year they make the tournament and they're expected
to do very well in it. These teams are called
Blue Bloods. And this is limited. There's only
maybe six to eight. teams that are in that pool
but if you hear that term blue bloods that's
what they're referring to these very strong programs
that are expected to always do well The opposite
of that is the Cinderella team. The Cinderella
team is referring to that fairy tale. Think of
that Disney movie Cinderella, this girl who doesn't
really have very nice clothes, who doesn't live
in a very nice way. She has to clean up after
her family. People don't really think much of
her. And then she goes to the ball and she has
this beautiful dress and she's gorgeous, right?
That's what the Cinderella story is. So the Cinderella
story is the team that... doesn't really have
the best stuff maybe doesn't have the best players
is not expected to do well maybe the 16th seed
the 15th seed and they are expected to really
just lose in the first round and go home when
they win though when they start winning and they
continue on in the tournament and they are causing
all these upsets that is when they become this
cinderella team and that's called a cinderella
story if you want to relate this to the world
cup think of South Korea or Morocco for example
teams that start beating teams that they weren't
supposed to and people start cheering for them
because they weren't the team that was expected
to win they were the underdog so the underdog
is the team that is expected to lose to the favorite
and so when the underdog starts winning they
get called the Cinderella team now sadly Cinderella
has to leave the ball right when the clock strikes
midnight she has to run home because the magic
wears off And that's also part of this, the Cinderella
story. Eventually, the magic will wear off and
the team will lose and they'll leave the tournament.
I actually don't think a Cinderella team has
won a very low ranked team. I could be wrong.
I don't know everything, but usually they do
leave after a couple of rounds. Now, when we
talk about the rounds. Every time they have a
game, half of the field leaves, right? Half of
the teams in the tournament leave. So it starts
with 64. And then it goes to 32. And then it
goes to 16. When it gets to 16, they call that
round the Sweet 16. You'll hear that a lot. Which
teams are making the Sweet 16? Which ones are
expected to make the Sweet 16? Which ones do?
Which ones don't? When you play that round, half
of the teams go home again. And so you have the
Elite Eight. These are the eight teams that have
made it to this part of the tournament. They
are, of course, really, really good teams by
now. because there's only eight left, and that's
why they get called elite. Elite usually means
better than the average thing, right? Very prestigious,
very good. So these are the elite eight. Then
from that, you get the final four. The final
four are the four teams that are now in the running
for the national championship. You play one more
round to get to the semifinals. And then the
final two teams play for the national championship
in April. Now, everything isn't perfect when
it comes to these tournaments and the college
association in general. Up until very recently,
college athletes did not get paid, but there
was a lot of money that went into college sports
and that was made from college sports. Like I
said, college sports are very, very popular in
the U .S. These national championship games sell
out for basketball, for American football. is
extremely popular. The coaches would get paid
millions of dollars. In most of the states in
the U .S., the highest paid public employee is
a football coach or a basketball coach. They
get paid millions of dollars. The school makes
millions or even billions of dollars. And up
until very recently, the college athletes didn't
make anything. About a decade ago, one of the
college players who was in this tournament said
that he was in this tournament, millions of dollars,
billions of dollars were being made, and he did
not even have enough money to buy food. He could
not go buy lunch. And that brought a lot of attention
to this issue about college athletes not being
paid and really not having money to eat when
there's so much money that's being made from
them being in this tournament and just in general
employment. There were lawsuits to try to change
this and in 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that
athletes could make money from their image. That
means that they could have sponsors, they could
do commercials, they could do sponsored posts
on social media like on Instagram. And since
then, a lot of athletes have started making money.
Of course, the best athletes in the country were
the ones who started making money or maybe the
best looking athletes were the ones who were
able to make money. to be in commercials but
at least it was something some way for them to
get some type of income when they were involved
in this Because when it comes to the actual broadcast
companies, CBS is the one who airs the tournament.
You can watch the CBS channel and watch these
games. They pay about $1 .1 billion to the NCAA
just to show the games. And if they're paying
that much, you know that they are making more
money than that from selling ads during the game.
So you can really see how much money is around
this one. tournament that's not even just the
regular season that's just this particular tournament
and you can see how much money is being made
versus how much the athletes were not making
before 2021 another controversy around the tournament
is always seeding people always complain about
which teams make the tournament versus which
don't maybe some People thought were good enough
to be in the top 64 and they weren't. Or people
thought this particular team should be the number
one seed, the number one team, and maybe they
got ranked the number three. And people will
complain about the seeding. You'll see some controversy
every time the brackets get announced, every
time the seeding comes out. There's always people
who are angry, but I feel like that's just what
sports fans do, right? They kind of complain
about what's happening and thinking that their
team was not given what they should have been
given. And the final controversy really has to
do with the gender differences. Up until very
recently, the two tournaments were not seen as
the same. The men's team got all of this money,
got all of this revenue, and that meant that
they got really good facilities. What we mean
by facilities is their locker room, the gyms,
the courts that they practice on, the things
that they have access to. A couple of years ago,
there was a picture posted by people who were
in the women's tournament. it showed their facilities
and it showed just how sad those facilities looked
how cheap how they didn't get the support or
financial resources that they needed in order
to have these really nice facilities that the
men's side did and that caused a lot of controversy
people complained like I said the women's side
has become much more popular in recent years
and women's basketball has just become way more
popular in the last five or six years so that
has been getting better the women do have more
access to the same facilities so there has been
some issues with that some attention brought
to that and it definitely has gotten better in
recent years if you want to watch march madness
of course you can start right now the tournament
has already started but we're really in the middle
of it there are games going on right now if you're
interested in watching and seeing what all the
attention is about, what all the fuss is about,
as we would say. And the actual championship
games themselves are not until April. So the
Women's National Championship will be on April
6th. The Men's will be on April 7th. So if you
are interested, you can watch those games. And
that'll be the end. That'll be the end of the
tournament, which I know is a little bit funny.
We say March Madness, but it ends in April. Of
course, all of the seating and the brackets and
all the excitement. Enlightenment starts in the
middle of March and takes over the end of the
month, which is why we call it March Madness.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you found
it interesting and learned a little bit about
this part of American culture, learned these
things that Americans do that maybe people in
other countries don't. And I also hope you learned
some new vocabulary terms. A reminder to look
at the description of this podcast episode so
you can find that vocabulary list so you can
study it and hopefully start using it. these
terms in conversation yourself. If you enjoyed
the episode, if you liked learning about American
culture, if you want more episodes like this,
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