March Madness is officially here. Another three weeks of college basketball filled with upsets, pageantry, and a bunch of players many will never remember for the rest of their lives. One shining moment is what every player dreams of when lacing up their sneakers over these next three weeks. A moment that will live on in eternity.
Monday following the release of the NCAA bracket is also the biggest day when most sports radio programs turn into bracketologists. They try to prove their bullet points are the guide to a successful bracket, despite barely watching much regular-season college basketball all year long. Watching and listening from afar, it’s fun to hear how programs approach the tournament and fill out a bracket using any sort of system imaginable.
But do listeners care? Do they care about the tournament itself and how trustworthy on-air talent can be in assisting them with their bracket? For everything March Madness frames itself as being, it’s not an opportunity to simply pick up the subject matter because games are coming. That’s why talent should avoid being bracketologists this week and instead focus on being entertainers.
Here are three unique ways sports radio talent can approach March Madness while potentially welcoming new audiences in creative ways.
Let’s start with a basic truth: most sports radio hosts have spent the last five months talking about the NFL, the Olympics, baseball free agency, and which player just unfollowed his team on Instagram. Suddenly, the bracket drops and they’re expected to know the defensive rebounding rate of a mid-major program from the Missouri Valley Conference.
Instead of pretending otherwise, lean into the ignorance.
Hosts could treat the bracket reveal like a cultural expedition rather than a scouting report. What exactly is a Gael? Where is Oral Roberts located? Why does every small-school mascot look like it was created by someone who lost a bet?
And can you name a player who ever played for the California Baptist Lancers? The 13th seed in the East region.
Listeners actually enjoy that exploration because it mirrors their own experience. Most people filling out brackets are not studying Utah State’s backcourt or watching Tuesday night games on streaming services that require three passwords and a sacrificial goat just to log in.
They’re Googling schools, texting friends, and saying things like, “I think I’ve heard of them before.”
Make the show about discovery.
Turn each unfamiliar program into a segment. Look up the town population. Read the most absurd Yelp reviews for restaurants near campus. Call a random local sports bar and ask if the bartender believes the team can beat its competition.
Suddenly a random 12-seed becomes an entertaining story instead of a statistical talking point.
The NCAA tournament has always been about underdogs and schools most fans never think about until mid-March. Sports radio hosts can tap into that spirit by making curiosity the bit instead of expertise.
Because the truth is listeners aren’t tuning in for advanced scouting reports. They’re tuning in to laugh at a host thinking Queens University is in New York City. It’s not.
Every sports radio station in America runs a bracket challenge. Everyone fills one out. Everyone swears this is the year their system finally works.
By Friday afternoon, half of those brackets are already obliterated.
So instead of doing the same predictable segment where hosts explain why a No. 6 seed has “great guard play,” turn the bracket into something completely unrelated to basketball.
Build a “Bracket of Life.”
Best fast-food fries. Best sports movie. Worst sports takes of all time. Greatest sports radio drops. The possibilities are endless, and listeners will engage because they actually have opinions on the topic.
For example, imagine a 64-team bracket featuring sports movie characters. Rocky Balboa vs. Ricky Bobby. Roy Hobbs vs. Happy Gilmore. The debates practically write themselves, and callers will argue about it with more passion than whether a Big Ten team can survive the first weekend.
The best part is it doesn’t even have to be a field of 64. Why not 32 or even a Sweet 16?
Another variation could involve local flavor. A station in Tampa might run a bracket of the best local restaurants or beaches. In Chicago it could be the best deep-dish pizza spots. In Cleveland it might be the worst sports heartbreaks, which could probably fill a 128-team field.
Sorry, Cleveland.
The genius of this approach is that it keeps the tournament format while giving hosts a playground to be creative. It also encourages audience participation in ways traditional bracket talk rarely does.
Listeners will vote, tweet, call, argue, and defend their picks. Meanwhile, the actual NCAA games provide a natural backdrop to the show.
Ironically, by ignoring the basketball bracket, hosts might create segments that are far more entertaining than breaking down a matchup between schools most people couldn’t locate on a map.
March Madness is less about basketball analysis and more about the strange social rituals surrounding the tournament.
Every office has a bracket pool. Every office has that one coworker who insists they have a “system.” And every office has someone who picks based entirely on mascot strength.
Sports radio should treat those stories like gold.
Instead of pretending to analyze games, open the phones and invite listeners to confess the weirdest things happening in their office pool.
There will be no shortage of material.
Someone will have a coworker who fills out five brackets and claims whichever one survives is their “real” entry. Someone else will reveal that their boss banned bracket talk during meetings, which immediately caused the entire staff to start whispering about upsets like they’re trading classified information.
There are also the people who pick teams based on colors, uniform combinations, or which mascot would win in a hypothetical fight.
These stories are funny because they’re relatable. They capture the absurdity of March Madness better than any statistical breakdown ever could.
Hosts could even take it a step further by revealing their own terrible strategies.
Maybe one host picks winners based on which school has the better nickname. Another chooses teams from cities they’ve actually visited. A third host might rely entirely on the coin-flip method, proudly declaring it their “advanced analytics model.”
The more ridiculous the method, the more entertaining the conversation becomes.
And when that random 13-seed inevitably beats a powerhouse on Thursday afternoon, it validates every nonsensical bracket strategy imaginable.
Which, if we’re being honest, is basically how most people win their office pool anyway.
March Madness works because it’s unpredictable, emotional, and occasionally absurd. Trying to sound like a basketball savant during a tournament filled with chaos misses the point entirely.
Sports radio is at its best when it embraces personality and fun over expertise. The hosts who succeed during the NCAA tournament aren’t necessarily the ones breaking down pick-and-roll coverage. They’re the ones turning the madness surrounding the tournament into great entertainment.
Explore the weird schools. Build brackets about anything but basketball. Let listeners share the chaos happening in their office pools.
Because in three weeks, most people won’t remember who the fifth-leading scorer on a Sweet 16 team was.
But they will remember the segment where a radio host spent ten minutes trying to figure out what a Billiken is — and whether it could beat a Blue Devil in a fight.
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John Mamola is Barrett Media’s sports editor and daily sports columnist. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. He is a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Medi’s Top 20 series and has been honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL) by iHeartMedia. Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
