March is the time when vasectomies increase by 50 percent thanks to the much-anticipated opportunity for patients to “recover” in front of their TVs.

March is also the time when workplaces do some real number-crunching: on the expected loss in employee productivity (estimated at 8.4 million hours and $192 million last year); on money bet on office pools (a hefty chunk of the $2.5 billion in total sports wagering each year); and even on the number of times workers hit the so-called “Boss Button” (computer software that instantly hides live video of games with a phony business spreadsheet), which was activated more than 3.3 million times during the first four days of last year’s tournament.

But mostly, the NCAA Basketball Championship—better known as “March Madness” or “The Big Dance”—is a time that gives us something to cheer about beyond the game itself. If history and science hold true, no matter the outcome of the three-week tournament that begins in March, most of the millions who will follow its hard-court action will emerge as winners. “That’s because in the long run it’s really not the games that matter,” says Daniel Wann, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Murray State University in Kentucky and author of Sports Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators. “Being a fan gives us something to talk about, to share and bond with others. And for the vast majority of people, it’s psychologically healthier when you can increase social connections with others.”

After conducting some 200 studies over the past two decades, Wann, a leading researcher on “sports fandom,” finds consistent results: people who identify themselves as sports fans tend to have lower rates of depression and higher self-esteem than those who don’t. Blame it on our primal nature. “Sports fandom is really a tribal thing,” says Wann, a phenomenon that can help fulfill our psychological need to belong—providing similar benefits to the social support achieved through religious, professional, or other affiliations. “We’ve known for decades that social support—our tribal network—is largely responsible for keeping people mentally sound. We really do have a need to connect with others in some way.”

But when it comes to opportunities to connect, the Big Dance may have a foothold over other sporting events. “The beauty of March Madness is that it attracts people of all levels of sports fandom—and for different reasons,” says Edward Hirt, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Indiana University who researches how fanship affects social identity.

Some watch, whether or not they usually follow sports, because they are alumni or have another previous affiliation to these “tribal networks”—the 60-plus participating college teams. Others connect on the spot, perhaps because it’s easier to form emotional allegiances with gutsy amateur athletes who compete with heart and soul (and while juggling mid-term exams) rather than for the paychecks collected by millionaire pros.

Also consider the unique nature of the tournament itself—a series of back-to-back games over the course of several weeks with little to no idle time in between during which a casual fan might lose interest. “I have not seen any empirical evidence to support that March Madness is necessarily better than other sports events” for promoting mood and mindset enhancements. “But theoretically I expect it could be,” says Wann.

“There are only a couple of events—the Super Bowl also comes to mind—that seem to transcend typical fandom into being akin to a national holiday … a reason for people to get together. But with the Super Bowl, everything leads to one game—and most of the time it’s an anticlimatic one that’s over by half-time.”

TV sports as therapy? Passionate fans tend to have lower rates of depression and higher self-esteem than the rest of us. Illustrations by Kagan Mcleod.

With March Madness, however, Wann notes, “there’s a longer, more drawn out event that provides more opportunities to engage in social opportunities and connections. And bonds tend to be stronger with a longer passage of time.”

Do the math: More games + more time = more opportunities to share for better bonding. “Because upsets are a normal occurrence, and you get runs by Cinderella teams knocking off the perennial favorites, there’s enough uncertainty and unpredictability in this tournament to get people excited—and keep them excited,” adds Hirt. “Early games affect later decisions; there’s a cascading effect, as opposed to a one-time pick … and that allows for the pride that comes with someone with no sports expertise being able to win the office pool.”

Maybe that’s why despite a short-term productivity loss many experts believe that March Madness actually benefits the workplace in the long term. Bonds formed in office pools and post-game water-cooler chatter build morale and inspire teamwork. At afterwork get-togethers in front of the tube, buddies can share chicken wings—and their emotions. “You have guys hugging each other, cursing at the ref, and bonding by sharing a sense of commonality,” says Hirt. “Where else can guys express their emotions like that?”

And those other relationships? Although studies show that two to four percent of marriages are negatively affected when one spouse is an ardent fan (think of the so-called “football widow”), sports fandom has a positive or neutral effect on nearly half of relationships, says Wann. “It gives many couples something to do together or allows one to have time to go off and do their own thing.”

Even if you watch in solitude, March Madness and other sporting events provide a diversion from the woes of everyday life—if only for a few hours. “Older people, especially when widowed or physically incapacitated, are more likely than others to relate to televised events,” says Stuart Fischoff, Ph.D., senior editor of the Journal of Media Psychology and a California State University, Los Angeles, professor emeritus of psychology. “Watching sports helps us get outside ourselves.”

With the thrill of victory, many fans experience bona fide joy—complete with hormonal and other physiological changes such as increased pulse and feelings of elation. And with defeat, the overwhelming majority may initially feel sadness and disappointment, but usually rebound within a day or two, studies show.

However, lest we present too rosy a picture, it must be said that sports fandom can also be a health hazard. In a 2008 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that on days when Germany’s soccer team played in the World Cup, cardiac emergencies more than tripled for German men and nearly doubled for women. Of course, European soccer fans are an extreme bunch; but even in the U.S., although visits to hospital emergency rooms tend to decrease during a much-anticipated sports game, there’s a higher-than-usual surge immediately after the game ends. The explanation: To see a game’s final outcome, some die-hard fans delay making that trip to the ER.

And, of course, no story about March Madness would be complete without mention of gambling. The odds of predicting all game winners are about 9.2 quintillion to one. Yet when it comes to sports betting, nothing turns John Q. Fan into Jimmy the Greek more than the NCAA tournament. Workplace camaraderie is one reason. But there’s another important factor.

Bragging rights.

With Super Bowl pools there’s just a series of boxes with different scores. If you’re lucky enough to pick the right one, you win. “But it’s a more complex task in filling out all the March Madness brackets, and a seductive pleasure in trying to predict the upsets,” says psychologist Edward Hirt.

Another reason why nearly twice as much money is wagered on March Madness than the Super Bowl: More than in other events, NCAA tournament fans simultaneously root for more than one team, triggering a greater likelihood of making multiple bets.

With other sports championships you have to wait a week or at least several days between games, but this sports soap opera—with its David versus Goliath battles—continues night and day, providing a stronger hook.

So let the games begin. Whatever the final outcome, odds are good that the overall advantage—for mind, body, and spirit—is definitely in your court.

Are Sports Fans Happier? The Saturday Evening Post

Butler University has played in the NCAA tournament several times, but this is the first time they have advanced to the Final Four. To get this far, they defeated—against general expectations—top-seeded Syracuse and Kansas State. Now Butler (with an enrollment of 4,500 students) faces Michigan State (with an enrollment of 45,000).

The situation has reminded many fans of another Indiana basketball miracle: the 1954 Milan-Muncie Central game that inspired the movie Hoosiers. Several points underscore the parallels: the Milan-Muncie Central game was played at Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse, and Bobby Plump, the Milan guard whose last-second basket lifted his team to victory in that game, is a Butler alum.

In 1987 Post writer Hank Nuwer interviewed Plump for an article on Hoosiers and the events that led to its creation. The former guard thought it “an enjoyable movie,” having seen it four times despite its loose grasp of the events.

“The final 18 seconds were the only thing factual in the movie … From the time the ball was inbounds after the final time-out, the movie was accurate.”

March, 1987, The Saturday Evening Post

“Hoosiermania”

by Hank Nuwer

Back in 1954, Milan High, a tiny southeastern Indiana school with 161 students, survived a 751-team tourney to meet the Muncie Central Bearcats in the state basketball finals. Such an improbable matchup between a backwater school and a powerful giant could happen in only a few states, such as Indiana; nearly all other states place schools in divisions according to enrollment size. And, as you might expect, some Goliath from Indianapolis, Marion, or Muncie has invariably claimed the Hoosier basketball title every year—every year, that is, except 1954, when a youngster named Bobby Plump zinged a last-second jump shot that made Milan a household name in Indiana.

Milan’s team was led by four boys from Pierceville, population 45. The quartet—Bobby Plump, Glenn Butte, Gene White, and Robert Schroder— were tough farm kids, unintimidated by physical contact. All were short, even by 1950s standards: the tallest was White, at 5 ’11. ” The boys were dirt poor but proud. Plump, for example, came from a home that lacked electricity, telephones, and plumbing. They were also painfully shy everywhere but on the basketball court. Because there was nothing else to do in Pierceville but work and shoot buckets, the boys learned to hang hook shots about the time they learned to wield a pitchfork. When the time came, they teamed up with feisty Ray Craft of Milan to give Milan High the best squad it ever had or ever would have.

Hoosiers, the feel-good movie that’s spread Hoosier hysteria around the country, is the brainchild of two Indiana natives and inveterate basketball fans, David Anspaugh and Angelo Pizzo. The movie, they say, was inspired by the famous Milan-Central game, although the script departs widely from the real Milan story. In the movie. Hickory’s coach, Norman Dale (played by Gene Hackman), is a middle-aged man given a chance to redeem himself for punching a player years earlier. Milan’s coach, Marvin Wood, on the other hand, was a quiet man, a relative babe of 24 who had inherited the team from a volatile but successful Milan character named Snort Grinstead. Wood instituted a slow, ball-control game at Milan called “cat and mouse”—an affront to fans long used to Grinstead’s run-and-shoot offense.

After coaching Milan all the way through the tournament field, Coach Wood angered fans of his underdog Indians by freezing the ball late in the final game as the Muncie Central Bearcats led by two points, 28-26. Plump actually stood near center court with the ball tucked safely away like a football and held the ball for four minutes and 13 seconds while 15,000 fans grumbled and squirmed. But Wood’s gamble paid off. When the score was tied at 30, the coach called a time-out. The ball went in-bounds to Plump, who exchanged passes with Craft and then dribbled down the lane while the crowd counted down the remaining seconds. Seeing an opening. Plump went high in the air and lofted the ball over the fingertips of Muncie’s James Barnes. The ball seemed to take forever to reach the basket, but when it did, the ending was made for Hollywood- Milan 32, Muncie 30.

Wood—now the women’s basketball coach at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana—says he devised the ball-holding strategy by accident in an earlier game. “We played a local team that was big and strong on a large floor in a small gym building,” Wood recalls. “We didn’t want anyone to get hurt, so I said, ‘Hold the ball.’” The scheme worked so well that Wood called the play again in the championship game to rest his winded team.

Coach Wood—who held down a night watchman’s job to supplement the $4,000 he was paid to both coach and teach—had more than just a handful of boys turn out for the team, as Coach Dale does in Hoosiers. On the contrary. Wood’s problem was finding a tactful way to cut some of the untalented players who swarmed into the gym his first day of practice. Of 73 boys in the school, 58 showed up for tryouts.

Despite the discrepancies, members of the real Milan team have enjoyed the movie based upon their heroics, as well as the recent national attention lavished upon them. Plump calls Hoosiers “an enjoyable movie.” He’s seen it four times already, and he won’t deny he may go again. “I think I know all of the roles in the movie,” he says. “You have a good feeling during it—especially when you leave the theater.” But he stresses that key elements in Hoosiers—such as the drunken scene with Shooter (played by Dennis Hopper), the romance between Coach Dale and Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey), and the reluctance of the team’s star to play—are all figments of a Hollywood imagination. “The final 18 seconds were the only thing factual in the movie about the Milan- Central game, and Angelo Pizzo told me he tried to make that [scene] as true as possible,” Plump says. “From the time the ball was in bounds after the final time-out, the movie was accurate.”

Bob Plump celebrates the basketball shot heard from Milan, Indiana, to Hollywood by cutting down the net. (Photo courtesy of W. M. Krider/Lawenceburg, Jr.)

The movie has brought back memories for Plump, now an Indianapolis insurance executive, yet much of that night 33 years ago remains a blank. He simply cannot remember what he was thinking during those crucial final seconds.”I don’t know,” he says, adding, tongue-in-cheek, “I guess we were a bunch of dummies out there that didn’t have any thoughts.” Later, he theorizes that the Milan players were too busy concentrating on their jobs to worry. Roger Schroder, a Milan player who spent much of the afternoon on the bench, had a good view of the four Indian players flooding one side of the court to give Plump a chance to go one-on-one against Barnes of Muncie. “What I saw happen was just what was planned during the time-out,” Schroder says. “I looked at the clock, and it went from three down to two and one. It was all over and the impossible had occurred.” Milan had won.

As a result of that win, nine of ten poor boys from Milan received college scholarships. Plump admits he never could have dreamed of attending Butler University, an expensive private school, had he starred on a lesser team.

The Milan players insist the movie hasn’t changed their lives, but they also say they can’t wait for the team’s annual reunion in late spring to tease Ray Craft, the only Milan player to have a bit part in Hoosiers. (He welcomes the Hickory team to the site of the final game.) “We will talk about Craft’s delivery of lines,” Gene White says. “We’ll help him improve his acting for his next movie.”

Hoosier Hoops: Butler Among the Big Dogs The Saturday Evening Post