Christmas has been described as the most wonderful time of the year – for me, March Madness feels the same way.

College basketball is by far my favorite sport to watch, so being able to watch 64 games in a period of two-and-a-half weeks is heavenly. The raw talent and drive from the players is infectious and makes you want to get up and shoot some hoops.

The tournament is controlled by one thing – upsets. With the Final Four already determined, no one would have predicted Duke would be the only one seed left.

It seemed as if a lot of brackets started changing drastically when St. Mary’s upset Villanova and Northern Iowa defeated Kansas, and it all went downhill from there.

I am a die-hard Kansas Jayhawks fan, and they were going to win the tournament. Not only I thought that; so did all of the top sports contributors, including the president himself, and he doesn’t even know a whole lot about basketball. My point it – Kansas was the favored team.

The NCAA tournament is a like a whole season shrunken to fit into two weeks. Rankings don’t necessarily matter in the season. All that matters is getting your team to appear on that bracket come Selection Sunday.

Of the five million brackets entered on ESPN, roughly 200 predicted this Final Four. With Duke, West Virginia, Butler and Michigan State as the chosen four, my prediction for the championship game is going to have to be West Virginia and Butler, with West Virginia being the champion of it all.

It saddens me that my team can’t win the title; however, this year has been just as exciting as the rest. With only one of my predictions in the Final Four, it seems like this year would be a waste of time. Yet, regardless of the outcome, this is still my favorite time of year. To me, the tournament beats the Super Bowl, the NBA playoffs, the World Cup and even the Olympics.

So, come April 5, you’ll know where to find me.