You may not even know what March Madness IS, bless your heart.
If you are American and work in a 9-5 office that has even the smallest percentage of male employees, chances are you've at least seen the flurry that happens when the first games of the men's college basketball tournament begin. With football season well-over and baseball season only just beginning, the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship is the perfect opportunity to greet spring by sitting indoors, glued to flat-screens of Dick Vitale yelling about bracket-busters and Cinderella stories.
This year, I want to get my friends involved in the fun. I want all the ladies (not just the single ones, either) to see that March Madness can be a good time for everyone.
So this is what I'm thinking:
1. Email female friends and solicit their participation in my March Madness pool.
2. The buy-in to participate in said pool is a $20 gift card* to any retail store or restaurant of your choosing. Popular choices might include: Anthropologie, J. Crew, Starbucks, Mi Cocina, Zoe's, Amazon, etc.
3. Ask everyone to fill out their brackets and submit their gift cards before the start of the first game, which will be played March 16, 2010.
4. Enjoy all-girls college-basketball banter via reply-all emails over the course of the tournament.
5. Host a championship-watching party for the final game (there will be food involved, which should be implied), crowning a winner** with lots of great cards to use to eat out and go shopping. (Also do something fun for the second-place winner and the girl in last place.)
I figure that first and foremost: everyone likes to win. Close behind winning, women enjoy shopping and eating, so this would combine all of those things AND college basketball. Obviously some girls would have the help of husbands/boyfriends/brothers should they so choose, but in all reality, the chances of picking the perfect bracket are something like one in 9,000,000***, so I doubt there would be much of a competitive edge.
All-in-all, I think it seems like a great way to get my predominantly female friends interested in March Madness. I may be luring them in with food and prizes but I think they'll actually enjoy the games as well.
There are really only two plays: Romeo + Juliet, and put the darn ball in the basket.
-Abe Lemons
(Please let the record show that I tried looking for a cute picture of my friends and I from a basketball game in college to no avail, but I found plenty of hilarious shots of us from date parties (which all had themes.) Call me conservative, but I just couldn't bring myself to post anything from pirate, hippie, cowboy or gangsta-themed events. It wasn't THAT long ago, after all.)
*Another option for the buy-in would be for everyone to submit a bottle of wine, so the winner would take home 10? 20? 30? bottles of wine. Is that a better idea?
**In the event of an unlikely tie, I would motion for a 100-yard dash between the winners to determine the tie-breaker. Pure entertainment.
***Completely bogus statistic, but something like that. You get the idea.
2 comments:
I'm in! And I'm hell-bent on getting Gonzaga all the way to the championship this year - go Zags! :)
that is a completely awesome idea! the gift cards are a great prize!
i can't wait for march madness, especially since i'm in the states and can watch games! except my team isn't going to be in this year... which is a first since i've been following them!
in college my friends and i used to do brackets and i love doing it!
Post a Comment