For some people, the madness is barely registering.
WASHINGTON โ In East Lansing, Michigan, college sports often dominate conversations โ especially in March, when everyone seems to be filling out their NCAA brackets.
Jessica Caruss would know; she has lived in the area for most of her life. She loves sports, and she’s a Michigan State fan, but she won’t be drawing upย a March Madness bracket that shows her team (or any team) winning it all.
โOh, Iโm aware. I just donโt do brackets or anything,” Caruss said. “I donโt gamble; I donโt see the appeal of it. For me itโs not a rush. Itโs stressful.โ
She’s far from alone in bypassing the brackets. As the annual tournament kicks off, some Americans skip the madness โ or at least they don’t try to predict who will win. A new poll fromย The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they โneverโ fill out a bracket for the NCAAย menโs orย womenโs basketball tournament.
This group leans more female: About 6 in 10 bracket avoiders are women.
โI’m probably not going to watch. I have not really been into it in quite some time,โ Caruss said. โIโve never understood the March madness.โ
Other bracket avoiders plan to watch tournament games but won’t predict winners. Chris Lara lives in Belvidere, Illinois, but supports UCLA because of his California roots. Both the UCLA womenโs and menโs basketball teams will be competing in the NCAA tournament, and he plans to cheer them on. But he doesnโt feel confident in his ability to determine the winners for every match-up in a bracket.
โI donโt have the knowledge to pick the teams correctly or to know the ones that are the best,โ Lara said. โI would just go with my heart and pick teams. … And then it wouldnโt work out well.โ
For some people, the madness is barely registering.
Justin Campbell, a 29-year-old from Brookhaven, Mississippi, said heโs never followed sports closely. Heโs not tracking the NCAA tournament, let alone making a bracket. He might tune into a game if itโs on at a restaurant heโs at, but basketball takes a back seat to football in his corner of southern Mississippi.
โIโm sure if I was in a different town where it was all we talked about, it might be different,โ Campbell said. โBut where I am, football is more the big thing.โ
Even among the sliver of U.S. adults who fill out a menโs or womenโs bracket at least โsome years,โ about two-thirds of that group say the fact that other people were doing it was a โmajorโ or โminorโ reason for their participation.
In the suburbs of Seattle, Laura Edain said sheโs not interested in March Madness, either, and does not plan to seek out any games. Edain, 55, used to work in an office that may have had more discussion of March Madness and brackets as it happened โ or she would overhear references to Gonzaga University’s many tournament runs โ but the bracket predictions have never appealed to her.
โI donโt think I would have participated, even then,” Edain said. “And now, I just am not in any kind of circle that really talks about it at all.โ
Visual Storytelling News Editor Panagiotis Mouzakis in London contributed to this report.
The AP-NORC poll of 1,112 adults was conducted Feb. 6-10, using a sample drawn from NORCโs probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
