Diving in the shallow end

Each year full of optimism, corned beef and cabbage I dive into a March Madness pool.

And each year, within 24 hours of the start of the college men’s basketball showcase, I wash up on the beaches of the national championship tournament a bundle of wet rags.

Another $5 squandered.

Perhaps you, too, get excited about the tipoff of the 64-team tournament. Unlike in football, where a hypothetical champion is named and everyone goes home slightly perplexed, in basketball the title is determined on the court.

The tournament is famous for drawing out crazed acolytes. To promote their academic institutions, and the values of book learning, these super-fans paint themselves as Blue Devils, Spiders or Owls.

Other fans watch on TV. These fans defy the laws of physics by sitting countless hours and eating chips, dip and sometimes crow.

Most of these fans don’t mind that their own athletic careers were derailed by the laws of trans fats and gravity. The highest accomplishment for most of them in school P.E. class was to successfully do a burpee.

I know their pain. I have the raw jumping ability of a ’65 Studebaker, and became too short for basketball by the ninth grade. Never mind that I was within a tick’s whisker of 6 feet tall and built like an Abrams tank.

With few exceptions, basketball is a sport of giants.

Playing in the office pool you don’t have to be a giant. You do need a strong heart. A lot of profuse sweating and palpitations occur as chosen teams perform with all the energy of a slug on valium and unchosen teams perform with a vigor not seen since the UCLA Wooden era.

The TV coverage can be exhilarating. The network shows the dramatic conclusion of multiple games across the country, giving fans no chance to fall into the classic couch-potato stupor.

March Madness is a good anecdote to the last week of winter and the first weeks of spring. In these times when the wind needs anger management counseling, when late snow storms can pummel us senseless, it’s good to have an indoor entertainment option.

March Madness is also a nice break from ordinary TV. The afternoon soaps, the chick flicks, the world premiere movie events, the Tiger Woods specials, the latest Duck football player in trouble with the law along with coach Chip Kelly’s latest “one-year suspension,” the evening sitcoms — all are replaced by young men in shorts chasing a dream.

The ratio of players to suit-wearing coaches is about 1:1. There is a coach for everything, even tying shoes, it seems.

Maybe that’s the secret. Five coaches — an East expert, a South expert, a Midwest expert, a Southwest expert and a West expert — could advise me on the science of bracketology.

Maybe then I’d wake up Friday morning, the second day of March Madness, still hopeful.

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