The NCAA tournament just proved — once again — that chaos is the best thing about March Madness

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Michael Sykes. 

I have two non-negotiable rules for March Madness every year.

First: one bracket per tournament. I can’t do the whole multiples thing — for one thing, I just don’t have the bandwidth to keep up. I also mix up my picks, which is never a good look.

Second: Just…pick whomever. Matter of fact, maybe let the dog pick? She probably has just as good a chance of picking an excellent bracket as I would if I toiled over my picks for hours and hours.

Anyway, my bracket is already busted. I had Arizona going to the championship game and, well, we see how that went. I also had Virginia in the Sweet 16 — that’s done. My champion is still intact with UCLA, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

Joe Biden and I are in the same boat right now in that our brackets are complete garbage. And there’s plenty more where that came from considering there are more games coming Friday and the women’s tournament is tipping off too. The bracket challenge is already over for most of us.

But, you know what? Good. Honestly, I’m thankful.

You know what a busted bracket is? It’s freedom. Sure, we’ve failed. We won’t win the long-shot cash prizes that everyone hopes to just stumble into. But now we get to root for the greatest March Madness team of all-time.

Chaos.

It doesn’t matter who wins or loses. Nobody is here looking for good — or particularly skilled — basketball. We can worry about that when we get to the later rounds in the tournament. Right now? It’s just about watching Cinderella set the world ablaze after trading in her glass slippers for some red bottoms and strutting to that pumpkin carriage.

We want the upsets. We want the stories. We want the one shining moment to be the moment no one thought was possible. And the only thing that’s going to give us that is Team Chaos.

So, join me, folks. Burn that bracket down. You weren’t winning that cash prize anyway.

Quick Hits: UMBC remains the pettiest…The Lakers are out on Kyrie Irving…defending the WBC…and more

— UMBC’s Twitter account has trolled UVA since upsetting the Cavaliers in 2018. Now, here we are again, and UMBC is rubbing it in.

— The Lakers say they’re out on Kyrie Irving this summer but we absolutely do not believe them.

— Edwin Diaz’s knee injury has sparked debate about the World Baseball Classic, but Mike Trout and Mookie Betts aren’t here for it.

— A Survivor Vibe Check from Blake Schuster and Bryan Kalbrosky.

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