An Overindulgence of Madness

The following story is a column from the year 2047, written by a sportswriter born in 2019. Everything that takes place before 2019 is real. Everything afterward is fiction. At least, until it becomes reality…

~ Underdog Stories ~

April 28, 4:30 a.m. — Wooden Complex, Court 73

Legends often arise out of the most unlikely circumstances. For Tanner Crowley, the present situation would certainly qualify. Just weeks before his graduation, the senior accounting major double-knotted his shoes and took the court to make his college basketball debut.

Fist-bumping seven-footer and future NBA lottery pick Rashaun Tate, Crowley couldn’t help but marvel at the fulfillment of a lifelong goal — an opportunity that wouldn’t have been possible before this year. It was nothing short of a dream. And yet, despite the ungodly hour, Tanner was wide awake. More than that, he was starting for Duke with a spot in the Sweet Sixteen on the line.

A strong performance and a victory would leave Crowley a hero, someone who would be talked about for years to come. But there was no time to think about that right now. There was only time for basketball.

The #2 seed Blue Devils were set to face off against the #39 seed Blazers of Valdosta State, who were looking to continue their miracle run following an upset of #7 seed Memphis approximately 17 minutes prior. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

What an intriguing matchup. On one side, there was Crowley, finally getting his chance to play for one of college basketball’s historic programs. On the other side, a team new to Division I ball that had already made it further than anyone had anticipated and were now presented with the task of taking down that historic program. An underdog versus a team of underdogs. It’s no surprise this was TV’s featured game of the week.

There’s an unshakeable appeal to the underdog story, and TV knows this better than anyone. Perhaps we see ourselves in the guy no one believed in and want to believe that in a world driven by elites, with hard work, determination, and maybe a bit of good fortune, anything is possible. That in our everyday lives, dreams can come true.

For someone, that dream was about to end.

I should have been eager to watch the game. The storyline was awfully compelling. Yet, because of the circumstances that led up to and surrounded this moment, I felt conflicted.

When I was born, March Madness had 68 teams. There were no gimmicks and qualifying for it still meant something. Unfortunately, the remnants of that old tournament are little more than dust in the wind. Today, we have two tournaments. One is a bloated, 128-team version of March Madness. The other is a new tournament, beginning just this year. It is the ultimate gimmick — a dangerous, convoluted mess of a game I love. A de-evolution of sport driven by capitalistic greed and serialized for the world to see. The one-day, 368-team “Summer Madness”.

~ Consumption of a Rival ~

The downfall of order is marked by the perpetuation of innocent changes. Make enough alterations to a system, and slowly it will become unrecognizable. In this case, that process took over 100 years.

When Oregon defeated Ohio State to become champions of the inaugural NCAA Basketball Tournament in 1939, it was actually the separately organized National Invitational Tournament, or NIT, that was seen as the more prestigious tournament.

Predating the NCAA-sponsored event which would become March Madness by one year, the NIT’s focus on gathering the best teams regardless of region and the media attention of playing at Madison Square Garden in New York City made it a more desired invitation for many schools. Notably, in 1944, DePaul turned down an offer to play in the NCAA Tournament, ultimately finishing as runner-up in the NIT.

However, there was no explicit rule against playing in both tournaments. That same year, Utah became the first team to do so after a tragic car accident left an Arkansas coaching aide dead and two players seriously injured, forcing the Razorbacks to drop out of the tournament and the NCAA to look for a replacement. That Utah team, which had fallen to Kentucky in the NIT quarterfinals, went on to win the NCAA Tournament and defeat eventual NIT winner St. John’s in a charity game.

In 1950, The City College of New York (CCNY), won both tournaments, defeating Bradley in the finals of each. The following year, the NCAA made their first major move to seize control of postseason play by doubling their field to 16 teams, creating the first automatic berths for 10 conference champions, and requiring those conference champions to play in the tournament.

While the 1951 rules essentially forced many of the nation’s best teams to play in the NCAA Tournament, it did not prohibit them from also competing in the NIT. That changed in 1953, when the NCAA expanded once again, this time to 22 teams, and ruled that teams could only participate in one postseason tournament. With a limited pool of teams to choose from, the NIT took a back seat to the NCAA Tournament, and never regained equal footing.

That’s not to say teams never turned down NCAA bids for the NIT. In 1968, Bob Knight’s Army team rejected a tournament bid in favor of the NIT, which Knight thought they had a better chance of winning. Knight and the Black Knights fell to Notre Dame in the first round, and Army had to wait until 2024 to make their first March Madness appearance in school history.

As late as 1970, Marquette coach Al McGuire chose the NIT in protest of his team’s placement in the Midwest Regional rather than the Mideast Regional closer to home. Luckily for McGuire, his team had more luck than the Army team of two years prior and won the NIT.

There would be no repeat performances by future teams looking to play in an easier or more local tournament, though. In 1971, the NCAA further hammered the nail in the NIT’s coffin by preventing teams selected for the NCAA Tournament from playing in other postseason tournaments.

In 1975, the NCAA Tournament again expanded to 32 teams and began allowing each conference to receive one additional at-large bid, which had previously been restricted to independents. By 1980, the tournament had reached 48 teams and allowed conferences an unlimited number of at-large bids. Any team the NCAA wanted in its tournament played in its tournament. So much for the NIT.

Over time, the National Invitational Tournament became known by a plethora of other names, including the Not Important Tournament and the Not In Tournament. The NCAA eventually purchased the NIT in 2005, completing the consumption of its original rival.

~ Intentional Foul Play ~

April 27, 11:00 p.m. — Wooden Complex, Court 18

Kansas coach Austin Ratliff came to a realization. His team entered Summer Madness as tournament favorites — they were just weeks removed from a 37–4 season capped off with a National Championship. The Jayhawks, along with 143 other teams, would receive a first-round bye, but that still meant they would have to win eight games in less than a day’s time to capture both titles.

This whole tournament was designed to induce chaos — how do you prepare for something like that? Surely, there would be no way to guarantee victory. In the real tournament, the favorites are no more than what — 15, 20 percent at winning the whole thing? There are a million more variables here. Finding any ways to control the randomness would be valuable.

One way to do just that would be to extend the tournament as long as possible. Since his team had the best roster in the country, Ratliff figured that any additional rest he could get his main rotation would increase their overall championship odds.

Creating that rest just required making use of some of the new rules implemented for the one-day, 368-team tournament. Namely, those stating that any student of a university with eligibility can play for that university and that players do not foul out at five fouls but are instead given fifteen fouls for the duration of the tournament.

In context, both of these rules make sense. Summer Madness is a marathon, not a sprint. There’s almost no way a team could make it through the whole thing with just their normal roster, so they’re allowed to bring extra manpower as they see fit. Kansas wasn’t looking to play it close — they brought an extra 30 reserve players — more than any other school, giving them 45 total bodies to use at their discretion.

Giving players 15 fouls each was designed to add an extra strategic element to the affair. Players can stay in the game past the normal five-foul limit, but they risk limiting their availability for future games. As a coach, do you even play your stars in early games at all?

For Coach Ratliff, the answer to that question was easy, at least in terms of their second-round matchup against Jacksonville State. The opposing Gamecocks, who would’ve been at least 20-point underdogs under normal circumstances, had just come out of a tight 64 vs. 65-seed matchup, prevailing against Bryant by just a bucket. They were exhausted, and after making the half-mile trek from Court 107 to Court 18, arrived for their matchup with the National Champions just six minutes before tip-off.

Kansas leaned heavily on their subs and reserves yet were still able to open up a substantial 64–35 lead by the end of the third quarter. Then, in the fourth, Coach Ratliff put his plan into motion. Five of his 30 extra players took the court and proceeded to intentionally foul five times, sending Jacksonville State into the bonus.

When they got the ball, the “Jayhawks” took the first good look they could create, and immediately went back to intentionally fouling. Over and over, this repeated for the entire 10-minute period. Jack Yarbrough fouled out of the game with two points and fifteen personal fouls in seven minutes of action. Even some of the Jacksonville State players got in on the intentional foul fun. The fourth quarter lasted an entire hour. At its conclusion, Kansas had prevailed 102–91.

Once the AMCA realized Kansas’ plan, they quickly changed the rules, banning intentional fouling in future rounds by the leading team for what the referees deemed stalling. It may have only been good for one use, but the intentional foul strategy worked like a charm.

~ Spindletop ~

By 1985, the NCAA Tournament had expanded to 64 teams and adopted the moniker of March Madness. It was a period of time that modernized the sport of basketball. In terms of rules, 1985 saw the introduction of a shot clock, and the NCAA officially added the three-point line the following year, although some conferences had used it as early as the 1980–81 season.

As more regular season and tournament games were shown on TV, fan interest in the sport grew. Unlikely National Championship winners like Jim Valvano’s 1983 NC State team, a #6 seed, and Rollie Massimino’s 1985 Villanova Wildcats, who as a #8, are still the highest-seeded national champions to date, helped popularize the Cinderella story, and the notion that anyone could win the tournament. College basketball certainly wasn’t the same as it had been in the 60s and 70s when John Wooden and UCLA won 10 titles over a span of 12 years.

An expanded 64-team field provided more opportunities for upsets that created excitement. Being a power of two, it also meant there was a clean-looking tournament bracket with no byes or play-in games, which made filling out a bracket much more appealing from a fan perspective.

The proliferation of bracket pools is what really turned March Madness into a cultural phenomenon. Tens of millions of people, even those who weren’t fans of the sport and didn’t pay attention to the regular season, started filling out brackets annually — competing with friends, family, and coworkers.

And not just competing — betting. Billions of dollars would be wagered every year on the tournament. That interest led to exponential growth in broadcast deals between the NCAA and TV networks, and massive advertising and sponsorship revenues. March Madness had everyone seeing green, becoming the NCAA’s dominant source of revenue and the biggest annual sporting event in the United States.

The power to completely captivate a country for a few weeks a year. All from one 64-team tournament. A true pinnacle of sport, from the players, leaving it all out on the line for their One Shining Moment, to the coaches, school bands, and broadcasters. The excitement was unparalleled. The tournament was perfect. All the NCAA had to do was not change it.

Alas, nothing gold can stay.

~ Winning’s Lament ~

The founding of the Mountain West Conference was the first domino. In its inaugural season of play in 2000, the new eight-team league formed by parting members of the Western Athletic Conference did not receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The NCAA did not want to eliminate an at-large bid to make room for the 31st conference. To solve this dilemma, the NCAA decided the following year to expand March Madness to 65 teams, creating a play-in game for the two lowest-ranked teams to earn their spot in the Round of 64.

Outside of denying one #16 seed each year from a chance at taking down a #1, the move to 65 teams changed essentially nothing about the tournament. An innocent change, one might say. However, it did set the precedent that play-in games and expansion beyond 64 teams were okay.

Ten years later, the tournament would grow once more, to 68 teams. Another innocent change. The newly branded “First Four” in Dayton would pit the bottom four auto-bid teams against each other for the final two #16 seeds, while the last four at-larges in the field battled for what were usually #11 seeds. Adding a few extra at-large teams made it a little easier to make the tournament, but outside of talk of a “weak bubble,” March Madness looked basically the same, and only continued to become more popular.

Just as with the 65-team field, things continued for some time. But by the start of the 2020s, expansion was on the NCAA’s mind once again. Division I basketball had kept growing, now to over 350 schools, compared to just 282 in 1985, the start of the 64-team era. As many would note, for the same proportion of teams to make the tournament as did back then, the modern field would need to climb to 80.

The first official movement to expand beyond 68 came from the ACC in 2018, which proposed a 72-team tournament. Over the next few years, most conferences recommended the change — power conferences saw an opportunity to get more money from having more teams in the Big Dance, while mid-majors just wanted a better shot at an at-large berth.

In 2022, the NCAA made the change, adding four more at-large teams, and creating a second site in Salt Lake City to host the other half of the “Initial Eight” games alongside Dayton. Then in 2025, Buffalo and Oklahoma City joined the mix, and each site had its own First Four. Proportionality to 1985 had been achieved with an 80-team field.

But by now, the cracks in the format had shown themselves. With the 72-team field came the first .500 team to ever receive an at-large bid. Then, in 2027, under the 80-team format, a 16–17 Oklahoma team got in despite a losing record. It was a decision that seemed to go against the fundamental belief that winning was important. Advanced metrics shouldn’t mean everything, but at some point, you just run out of better teams.

The admittedly impressive success rates of First Four teams in the Round of 64 was used to justify the addition of more play-in games, but this logic was always flawed. Upsets will always happen, no matter how many teams are in the tournament. Even the worst team in the nation would pull out a victory eventually. Just because a team wins a March Madness game doesn’t mean they deserved a spot in the field.

Once it was time to renew the March Madness television deals in 2033, the tournament hit its biggest growth spurt yet. 96 teams had been on the table, but the NCAA instead decided to go the whole nine yards, creating the 128-team field still in use for the main tourney today.

32 conference regular season champions, 32 conference tournament champions, and 64 at-large selections comprise the monolithic event. An extra week had to be added just to play out all 64 opening-round matchups. Certainly, no one deserving would ever miss out on the fun again.

But is this even fun? For one thing, the 128-team field killed bracketology. People used to try to predict which teams would make March Madness, tracking projected seedings as the year went on. Now, it’s largely pointless, as any team worth discussing is a shoo-in. Entire conferences get in and no one even blinks.

It feels like if you’ve beaten just about anyone, you can make it. Once upon a time, making the tournament was an accomplishment. Now, even the teams that were once considered “bad losses” are going dancing.

There was never a need to grow this big. It doesn’t matter how many teams make the playoffs in pro sports leagues. It doesn’t matter how many college football teams make bowl games. March Madness should contain as many teams as deserve to make it. 64 was that magic number. College football figured that out when they expanded to an eight-team field.

Modern March Madness is simply too much for most people to keep up with. The tourney lasts more than three weeks. Brackets can’t even be printed or filled out on a standard sheet of paper. Good luck with trying to research every team. Maybe it’s a dream come true for some hoop heads, but you won’t convince me this has been a positive change.

Gone are the NIT, the CIT, and the CBI. How can any other tournament possibly compete, or even find teams worth inviting? What good is scraping the bottom of the barrel?

We could have returned to the glory days. When corruption scandals took down the NCAA, and the Association of Major Collegiate Athletics (AMCA) was formed to take its place, there were questions about if any changes would be made to postseason tournaments. I campaigned for a return to a 64-team March Madness. You know what happened instead.

~ Constructing the Absurd ~

Once something is financially stable, good luck making it smaller. Growth is just an extension of supply and demand. Take a look at any of the leagues that have started up and folded over the years. When things look good, they add teams. Then, when the tides turn, the league gets smaller, usually ceasing operations shortly thereafter.

March Madness, regardless of its issues, remains huge, so there were really only two options: keep it as is, or make it even bigger. The AMCA’s conclusion pulled from both. Keep the 128-team field, but also create a separate tournament entirely, one where everyone gets a shot at the trophy.

The notion of a 368-team tournament is utterly ridiculous. But that’s only where it starts. A 368-team tournament played entirely within 24 hours? That’s unfathomable. It just doesn’t seem possible from a travel perspective, logistics perspective, or physical limitations of the human body perspective. In no universe does this seem remotely safe or doable. But you can’t just have another normal tournament. So, enter the behemoth.

For one weekend at the end of April, just before finals season, the basketball teams for all 368 AMCA Division I schools meet up in St. Louis, most arriving by Hyperloop. There they find the Wooden Complex, a basketball mecca years in the making, designed specifically to host the nonsense about to take place. In the center, an Olympic village of sorts houses the well over 10,000 players, coaches, and trainers for their stay. Surrounding the lodging are 150 basketball courts in 10 separate facilities, along with numerous restaurants, medical centers, and resting areas.

Friday night and Saturday morning are designated for the media to conduct pre-tournament interviews, and then Saturday night, the marathon gets underway, running non-stop until only one team is left standing.

At 7 p.m., the opening round begins, with matchups to determine the final 112 spots in the Terrific Two Hundred Fifty-Six. I kid. Numbers that big do not deserve alliterative monikers. Simultaneously, all the locations for the second-round matchups are announced, allowing all the teams with first-round byes to make their way to warm-ups.

As a rule, locations for each round are announced once the preceding round begins, just to keep everyone on their toes. In the earlier rounds, unlucky teams could be forced to travel nearly a mile in between games, which could get dicey as once the final game of a round ends, there are only 15 minutes before all games of the next round begin. Any team that isn’t ready to play at tip-time is immediately disqualified.

To cope with the physical toll of playing eight or nine games back-to-back, a rule was made to allow any student of a university with remaining eligibility to compete, allowing deeper-than-usual rosters. The AMCA also decided to experiment with the actual rules of the game, similar to how the NIT once did. Among the changes for the inaugural tournament were the rule giving players 15 fouls to use at any point during the tournament, the inclusion of a four-point line 30 feet away from the basket, and a 5-on-4 power play as a result of technical and flagrant fouls.

Why would teams decide to partake in this fiesta after the season has concluded? Partially because the AMCA says they have to. But really, like most things, it’s about money. For each game a school wins, they earn a greater share of overall tournament revenues. The whole effort takes a ton of coordination and manpower, but once a year, everyone is more than happy to unite and embrace the occasion.

~ Ws, Ls, and Zs ~

April 28, 6:00 a.m. — Section 4 Rest Area

Notre Dame senior forward Dante Collins was in for a rude awakening in the literal sense. After leading a successful comeback in the fourth round that kept the Irish in the tournament but well exceeded his intended minutes restriction of 15 per game until the Final Four, the plan was to allow him to rest a game and return, at least somewhat recharged, for the Sweet Sixteen.

It was a roll of the dice — not necessarily a required course of action, but a forward-looking decision. The sort of gamble it takes to come out on top of a 368-team field. Unfortunately, it hadn’t paid off. At halftime, Notre Dame found themselves down 15 points to Belmont. That’s when a trainer was sent to put an early end to Collins’ snooze and escort him straight to the court. But despite an impressive effort, Notre Dame failed to cheat death for the second straight game.

To say winning eight or nine games in just one day is grueling would be the ultimate understatement. The ideal scenario is to reach the championship game with your typical rotation fully rested and ready to go. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible, which means teams with title aspirations need to come up with strategies to manage rotations and balance minutes played.

Each real contender attempted to do this in a different way. Some played their regular starters at the beginning of games, hoping to build an early lead before sending in the reserves. Some always tried to have at least one starter on the floor at all times. Others attempted to rest their starters entirely for the first couple of rounds.

Many teams made use of the designated rest areas to give players short breaks, especially when an outcome seemed to be decided early. Even a significant number of coaches made time for naps, as the energy required just to stay awake and mentally focused provided a major challenge. Teams utilized everything from energy drinks and coffee to meditation and yoga as ways to stay alert. Trainers worked overtime trying to make sure players stayed as limber as possible.

No matter the team, though, those who felt they had a chance to win it all shared a common philosophy of trying to preserve themselves — not go all out early on. But as these teams quickly learned, that would prove troublesome.

Naturally, we like to focus our attention on the power conferences and high-profile programs, especially when there are a dizzying number of schools to follow. However, that ignores hundreds of teams, most of which just aren’t equipped to go the distance. They don’t have the talent or the numbers to make it all the way. This holds especially true for schools with smaller student bodies, without the large pool of reserves to bring along.

For these teams, there is no “rest for later”. Wins are money, and because they aren’t supposed to go deep in the first place, they’re all-in from the get-go. As a few top teams learned the hard way with stunning upset defeats, you can’t just bank on getting by with guys you practically pulled off the street. The big names are going to have to play.

As the tournament goes on, opponents get tougher, fatigue sets in, and games become harder to win. You need your stars but are forced to rely on everyone else as well. It’s impossible calculus. Let the science experiment begin. How many minutes can the human body handle? How long can one play basketball?

~ The Revolution Will Be Televised ~

In today’s age, basketball is ubiquitous. The most popular sport in the nation, James Naismith’s game can feel like the center of the universe sometimes. But why settle for sometimes when you can have all the time?

The AMCA didn’t decide to create a second tournament just because. Nor would they be able to generate much revenue from a 24-hour event, much of which takes place while most people are asleep. No, it was made to fill a gap.

Collegiate athletics is held together by two sports: basketball and football. Football season starts late August or early September, with basketball picking up in the middle of football season and through early April.

But after that? Baseball does its best to carry the torch through its World Series in June, but July and August present a dead zone while students are on Summer break. And without the playoffs of any major professional sports going on either, that’s time for the taking, and an opportunity the AMCA looked to seize.

The tournament might be played during the last weekend of April, but it is not broadcast until July, hence the name “Summer Madness”. For fans, Summer Madness takes place over eight weeks, one round per week with the Final Four combined into one.

Each week, the marquee matchups and best overall games are shown on television and streamed online, along with highlights and analysis shows. Special subscription packages allow every game to be seen in its entirety, along with exclusive team cameras following each school for every minute of the tournament, even conducting interviews during the move between games. Talk shows discuss the events and storylines as if they just happened because it’s the first time anyone who wasn’t there has seen it.

During the playing of the tournament, security is extremely tight. The only people allowed in each arena are the teams, referees, camera crews, scoreboard operators, and the small media team assigned to each school. No fans, bands, or cheerleaders. No commentators — they see it when the rest of the world does.

As the tournament progresses, eliminated teams and everyone working at gyms which are no longer in use are quickly filed out of the Wooden Complex and forbidden to discuss what they’ve seen in order to preserve gambling markets, which predictably go out of control.

Months-old footage presented, watched, discussed, debated, and bet on as if it was happening live. A blending of reality commanding hefty rights fees and lucrative sponsorships. The future in the form of the past brought to life — just another unique aspect of the most idiosyncratic competition to hit the mainstream.

~ Fifteen Minutes / Empty Gyms ~

A 368-team tournament requires 367 losers. You’d be hard-pressed to find another event that crushes dreams at such a ludicrous rate. However, few also create so much hope. Nowhere is that hope stronger than in those who aren’t student-athletes at all, the more than 2,000 players who were added to their school’s rosters specifically for Summer Madness. Single elimination takes on a whole new meaning when this tournament is the only chance you’ll ever have to play collegiate basketball.

Remember Tanner Crowley from earlier? He was the Duke senior making his first appearance in the Round of 32 against Valdosta State. Crowley was an intramural champion — a scrappy player and tenacious defender from the point guard position; a real hustle and heart guy. He could run for days, a particularly valuable skill in this tournament.

Suiting up for the Blue Devils allowed him a chance at greatness. To be, if only for a moment, the player he always thought he would become. So, what happened? Crowley played the first five minutes of the game, missed his only shot, and then returned to the bench, where he spent his team’s first three games, to watch Duke become another upset victim. Tanner Crowley’s college basketball career ended nearly as quickly as it started, a blip in the history books of a game Duke fans would want to forget.

This is the reality of Summer Madness. Despite how stories are cherry-picked to try and convince us otherwise, most reserves will not do anything of significance. The majority will never even set foot on the court. They never get their fifteen minutes of fame. Instead, all that awaits them is a lonely transportation back to their normal lives.

Perhaps knowledge of how rare success is, especially for a reserve, makes it all the sweeter. When Valdosta State knocked off Duke, they did so with heavy contributions from reserves, including an unbelievable team-high 24 points from Quentin Murphy, whose first career action had come in the game before. Murphy’s outburst came practically out of nowhere and turned him into a sensation for the week after the game officially aired.

There are two sides to every coin, though, and the Cinderella run of Summer Madness 2047 reached a painful conclusion two hours later in the Sweet Sixteen when Murphy’s game-winning three-point attempt against Michigan rimmed out. Heartbroken and exhausted from another herculean effort, Murphy passed out on the hardwood, his body a portrait of fruitless exertion.

At least Murphy had his moment. What he and that Valdosta State team accomplished was nothing short of incredible, but I imagine it’ll be soon forgotten as well. Inflation of tournament size brings opportunities but makes it harder for any specific team to be remembered when similar stories are bound to happen most years.

History remembers the victors. Not so much everyone who had to fall for them to claim the throne. For every dream that continues in a tournament like Summer Madness, another must meet its demise. But eventually, nearly everyone is the unlucky one, and shattered hopes haunt the empty gyms left behind.

~ Pyrrhic Victory ~

April 28, 3:50 p.m. — Wooden Complex, Court 1

Nearly 21 hours and 366 games after it began, what remained of the Michigan Wolverines and Central Florida Knights basketball teams took the court for one final clash to decide the fate of the inaugural Summer Madness tournament. The path had not been pretty — both teams had sustained injuries to key players and narrowly avoided defeat on their collision course with destiny. Across the tournament, especially in the later rounds, injuries had occurred at a tremendous rate.

There was no time for advanced scouting reports; there never had been. Even if some assistant coach had managed to put together a game plan, I’m not sure anyone would have been alert enough to follow it. Some players had fallen asleep. Others’ bodies were shutting down, like Michigan’s Justin Simmons, who by this point had been awake for 30 hours straight and played 154 total minutes, the equivalent of nearly four entire games. Nothing was left in the tank. Even those who had played very little struggled to stay energized.

Still, both teams were able to field five-man squads, fueled by caffeine and playing on instinct. The game was competitive, although the quality left something to be desired. It played out something like one of those “so bad it’s good” movies. Mandatory viewing of a different sort. You couldn’t blame the players, though. Everyone was giving their all; there just wasn’t much all to give.

At 5:42 p.m., the final buzzer sounded. By a score of 57–52, UCF had emerged victorious as the first champions of Summer Madness. Reactions were a mixture of joy and relief. There would be no celebration that night. Only sleep.

~ An Overindulgence of Madness ~

The AMCA got their wish — a 368-team college basketball tournament played over the span of one day. It ran as smoothly as they could’ve hoped and became a massive commercial success. But at what cost?

To me, Summer Madness felt almost like a scam. The tournament itself isn’t scripted, but the way it was created — entirely for money and ratings — made everything seem hollow and fake.

In a way, it might be our fault. The AMCA knew that if they created a second tournament, even with the most ridiculous premise imaginable, we wouldn’t be able to get enough of it. As humans, we are never fully pleased. Everything good must become bigger, better, crazier. That mindset can lead to innovation, but also a perpetual state of dissatisfaction. In today’s age, more content has only made us less content.

So, we tune in every week to watch as young men push themselves beyond their limits, to the point of exhaustion and injury, for an arbitrary title. Summer Madness is the Hunger Games, and we are citizens of the capitol. When players go too far and end up hurt, we are partially responsible for supporting the machine.

Yet, to do otherwise would be to deny every single participant a chance at a dream. The athletes are all good people, just being taken advantage of by the system. When combating corruption means crushing dreams, what are we supposed to do?

This story is not just about basketball — it is about consumerism, excess, and the guilty feeling of overindulgence. The 64-team March Madness was perfect. At 128 teams, it is heavily flawed but still manageable. Summer Madness is the extra bite that makes you sick.

I can’t help but wonder what John Wooden would think. The venue for Summer Madness was named for the legendary UCLA coach, yet the tournament seems to go against everything Wooden stood for.

After all of this, what’s next? When is the expansion to 512 teams? When do we bring in Division II and III schools? How about international teams? It’s only a matter of time before talks start on the next big thing. Sometimes I wonder if we could have been warned. But what’s the point? No one would have listened.

This is the first story in the Asher Raines “Future Basketball” trilogy, followed by “The Loophole Owner” and “For All-Time’s Sake.” Links to all Asher Raines stories can be found below.

Asher Raines Stories

An Overindulgence of Madness
Taysom Hill Plays Other Sports
The Loophole Owner
Asher’s Radio Interview (a follow-up to The Loophole Owner)
For All-Time’s Sake
A Grand Goodbye