On NCAA finals night, S.D. humorist Dorothy Rosby has a one in 9.2 quintillion chance of madness in March.

I’m always a day late and a dollar short. And in this case I’m many years late and a billion dollars short. You may have heard that way back in 2014 Warren Buffet offered a billion-dollar March Madness prize to anyone who could successfully pick all 64 team brackets in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. You can’t win if you don’t play, and I didn’t play … or win. Of course, sometimes you can’t win even if you do play, as everyone who played found out.

Estimates vary but some mathematicians say your chance of picking all the tournament brackets correctly is one in 9.2 quintillion. That’s a nine with 18 zeros. Put another way, Warren Buffet had nothing to worry about.

March Madness “grips the national sports psyche from the second week of March through the first week of April,” or so I read on a sports website. No offense sports fans, but many things grip my psyche during March but basketball isn’t one of them. I sure wouldn’t spend a lot of time guessing tournament brackets when I have a better chance of winning the lottery and then being struck by lightning, which would really take the fun out of winning the lottery.

My chances of choosing all the brackets would probably be even worse since I don’t even follow the sport. The last basketball game I watched was between the Harding County Ranchers girls basketball team and a team I can’t recall even though I had a bird’s eye view of the action from my spot on the bench.

I’m not even sure what tournament fans mean by “bracket.” In my world a bracket is a seldom-used punctuation mark or the doohickey that holds a shelf on the wall, either of which can drive me mad in the right circumstances.

Here’s what I know after going to that well of all sports knowledge, the internet: March Madness refers to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments which decide the national champions of college basketball. I can see how that would get you all worked up if your psyche is gripped by that sort of thing.

But if I’m going to go mad in March, and there’s a better than one in 9.2 quintillion chance that I will, I can’t blame basketball.

I go a little mad every time I want to return something and can’t figure out how to fit it back in the box it came in. Or when my cling wrap clings to itself instead of the bowl. Or when I think I smell fresh-baked cookies and find out it’s one of those cheater cookie-scented candles.

But those things drive me mad year-round. March does have more than its share of crazy makers. How about  having to set the clock ahead or getting pinched because you didn’t wear green back on St. Patrick’s Day or calling something corned beef when there’s no corn involved? And what about Pi Day on March 14? Pie grips my psyche, even when it’s spelled wrong.

The Ides of March, March 15, corresponds to the date on the Roman calendar when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. I think that was followed by a bit of madness, but I haven’t read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar since I was forced to in college and my memory of 44 BC is a little rusty, as anything from 44 BC would be by now.

There’s national If Pets Had Thumbs Day on March 3 and Extraterrestrial Abductions Day on March 20. If anything could grip a psyche, I think it would be space aliens and poodles with thumbs.

Fortunately, if we non-sports fans make it to March 30, we can celebrate I Am in Control Day which will be refreshing after a month of madness. We may have a slight relapse on April Fools’ Day but then we’ll return to normal, whatever that is for us. Meanwhile the psyches of basketball fans will still be gripped for a few more days.

Dorothy Rosby is an author and humor columnist whose work appears regularly in publications in the West and Midwest. You can subscribe to her blog at www.dorothyrosby.com or contact at www.dorothyrosby.com/contact.

Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons