March Madness is one of the biggest sporting events each and every year. It is the highlight of the college basketball season, and basketball fanatics and casual fans alike get involved in the excitement. The single loss elimination tournament starts with 64 teams and continues on to the final round in order to name a champion. This year’s tournament was full of the usual stories of upsets, Cinderella runs, and close scores. Like with most sporting events today, many people took to social media to express opinions and interact about the tournament. Now I will look back on social media use during the NCAA tournament, both my own and other’s.
Biggest Stories:
The biggest story of the tournament, no matter what else transpires, is always who comes out on top. This year, UConn controlled the headlines, taking victories in both the men’s and women’t tournament.
Some other big stories included major upsets, as well as surprising runs by teams that weren’t expected to win much. Syracuse and Duke were both strong contender that were surprisingly bounced from the tournament early. Dayton was seen as the biggest Cinderella story this year, making it to the Elite 8 before being eliminated by top-seeded Florida.
Another big story that is important in the discussion of social media is the Bracket Challenge. Each season, millions of people compose brackets online, hoping to win a million dollars in the perfect bracket challenge. The challenge has people pick each game from the round of 64 all the way to the finals. It is such a difficult task that even out of millions of brackets, nobody even comes close to picking a perfect tournament bracket.
Interesting Trends on Social Media:
One of the biggest moments of March Madness comes after the final game, when a video known as “One Shining Moment” is played, highlighting the season, the tournament and the winning team. The video is also a major topic on social media, as made evident by the trending topic.
Social Media is a great way to learn interesting things that you might not know. Reporters, fans and media sites are constantly tweeting about different and obscure statistics, including new records that were set by a victory.
My Social Media Usage During March Madness:
With the Olympics, I was familiar with some of the sports, some of the athletes and I followed it pretty closely. I write this post coming in with a different perspective. I am not a basketball fan, and I had never really put a lot of focus into following the NCAA tournament in the past. This year, I made a point to pay attention to what was going on during the tournament so that I could keep up with social media. I made a bracket for the first time (which went very poorly), and I watched more basketball than I normally would have. I did not post as much on social media, because of my lack of knowledge about the players and teams. I instead chose to observe the social media use of others.
Following March Madness and engaging in social media use was very different for me than my use of social media during the Olympics. This was helpful in writing this blog post because I was able to look at social media from the point of view of someone that is very involved in what is going on, and also from the point of view of someone who takes notice of what other people are saying on social media. It has showed me that no matter what form of participation one takes in social media, it is clearly becoming a major factor in both professional and collegiate sporting events.
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