March Madness is a great time for anybody who loves basketball. Like many sports, people pick teams they believe will make a run to the final and try to predict the outcome of every game. A lot of sports have fans who try and guess the final score of games, but college basketball takes it to a whole new level.
During March Madness, people fill out brackets and bet money on how far certain teams will advance which is not that different from betting on other sports. The big difference is that ESPN’s Tournament Challenge issues a challenge for these brackets in which people can win big money if they get within the top 1 percent of all participants.
The challenge works just like a typical March Madness bracket where you pick what team you believe is going to win in a given round. You get points for predicting the correct team and the further along in the tournament you accumulate more points for correct predictions. For example, round one predictions is only worth 10 points, but the round two is worth 20 points. Then when the tournament ends the person with the most points wins $10,000 in gift cards to Amazon.
This tournament gets a lot of people excited for the March Madness season because it allows them to participate in the action aside from just watching the game. The added stake for some is what makes the game fun because it adds a personal investment to the game.
Even students at Seton Hall are finding excitement in the tournament outside of SHU’s match-up with Wofford. “Obviously I want Seton Hall to win,” said Seton Hall student Joe Wheatland. “But when I watch other teams play I like having a motive to watch. It gives me an investment that I would otherwise not have.”
Now this type of tournament might not be for everyone because knowledge of the game is required. Without this understanding, at best you are just making random guesses as to who will win and while luck can be a factor, typically those that do well understand standings and the potential of each team.
“Yeah, I do not know anything about March Madness, I just want Seton Hall to win.” said Seton Hall student Matt Walsh.
While this event is not for everybody and can seem like purely guessing at times, it does take some amount of knowledge. The ESPN Tournament Challenge can provide fans with a way to interact with the game that allows them to be a little more in the action. Definitely not a contest for casual fans, but if you think you have what it takes this challenge can be a great way to be a larger part of March Madness. The top prize of $10,000 is a lot to win and this year some basketball enthusiast will get to take home that money based on his/her bracket. With little time left in the challenge, the winner will soon emerge marking the end of yet another successful March Madness bracket challenge season.