Hoops euphoria returns for sports fans

March Madness -- it turns normal people into zombies, with furrowed brows, wrinkled foreheads and grim facial expressions one moment and euphoric zealots jumping up and down the next.

For true basketball fans, there's not much better.

It's the time of year when college basketball reigns supreme, when teams from all across the country converge on a handful of locations and begin a playoff countdown for the national title.

It's that time of year when the little guy, the Davids of the basketball world, can pull off the upset.

And while this year's tournament doesn't really have any of what I would call true underdogs, teams from schools that few have heard of before now, it's had maybe even more than its share of nailbiters and close games, Thursday's night Kentucky blitz of West Virginia not withstanding.

Yet each year, for most of these smaller schools, many of which don't have football programs, it's a magical ride that may just include a first-round upset. Even more stunning, teams can play their way into the round of 16, maybe even more elusive -- reach the Elite Eight, the Final Four, or heft the title.

The exposure can vault the schools, their coaches and their players into the national spotlight and for a handful, elevate their careers.

Many a coach has leaped from his or her small-town niche to the next level on the back of that opportunity. And players get the chance to improve their professional chances or, at the very least, bask in the limelight that may not come again.

It's a time of endless debate about which teams should have, could have, would have, made the NCAA field.

Fortunately for the real basketball fanatic, there's not only the men's NCAA field and the women's NCAA field, there are the men's and women's NIT.

The oldest established tournament still running, at one time the National Invitational Tournament was the event and drew the premier teams in the country to New York.

Today, the NIT serves as the also-ran tournament. Yet, many teams use the NIT as a springboard to NCAA success the next year.

If you start watching from the beginning, it's a lot of basketball, an almost endless string of games played over the course of the month.

The madness for us normal people knows no bounds as we pick our alma mater, our sentimental favorites, and the odds-on choices to win out.

I've known people to pick their favorites based strictly on the school's mascot.

There are office polls, final 16 draws, even fantasy versions. With the advent of classic channels, you can even watch games from yesteryear.

This year, you can watch four games simultaneously (depending on your TV or TVs) and stay up until 12:30 at night, so you can come to work the next day bleary eyed.

For some of us, that finally exceeds even the most fanatical limits.

Even so, the college basketball postseason marks several hoops-filled weeks when it gets harder to find something other than roundball dominating our thoughts.

Schedules are rearranged, behavior patterns are altered.

As the men and women wind down play in the NCAAs and the NITs, the net result will be four teams that will hoist the trophy and cut down the nets.

Stories will be written and pictures will display the emotion.

But eventually, the madness will subside. Normalcy will return.

And we'll wait again until next year -- when the whole process will start again.