March Madness = pressure on athletes

By JIHAD SHATARA

That tournament in between February and April is really madness.

Every year we all fill out our brackets, choose a Final 4, and hope that our eventual champion doesn’t get knocked out in the second round. The NCAA Tournament has become a monster in itself. These 18 year old kids continue to garner more and more interest from the NBA as they want them to go pro so early.

It is actually ridiculous how much pressure these kids are faced with. For instance, schools like Kentucky, Duke and even Kansas are asking so much from kids fresh out of high school. In large part, this is due to the news media’s coverage of this tournament.

If you go on Twitter anytime there is a game during March Madness, the feed is going crazy for kids who were in high school just a year ago. ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and so many more media outlets milk the competitions.

“Get a perfect bracket and you will win a billion dollars,” they try to entice us with. When a favorite is upset by a “Cinderella” its always a nice story, but who is really happy that George Mason made the Final 4 other than George Mason fans? The news media blow it up like this large thing, but in all reality, people are upset because it costs them in the long run.

The news media are putting so pressure on young kids in college. Now, the coverage of the big dance as they call it is really phenomenal. They even have an app where you have the ability to live stream all the games. But lets take the pressure off of the kids for once. We are all here to watch and have some fun with basketball.