We are in some weird times right now. No sports whatsoever, meaning no March Madness. Why couldn’t corona virus pick a different time to do this? Why did it have to happen to March Madness? These are the questions that we will never get answered. Life goes on.
With no March Madness, or sports in general, many of us are looking for something to watch. There is only so much Netflix that you can watch before you want to scream at your TV about #Messica or that lady who fed her husband to a tiger. Luckily, there are many podcasters and fans around the college basketball universe that have created March Madness simulations as a last hurrah, if you will. Now, these simulations do not give you the right to go bragging about if your team won, because there’s no reason to do that. This is all in good fun, and that’s where you should leave it.
I researched many of these simulations over the past week to give you the best ones to watch or at least keep an eye on if you are like me and are having some serious withdrawals from college basketball. Here are my rankings from some of the main ones you may have seen out there and maybe a few that you have yet to know about.
1. March Madness 2K20 (@March2K20)
This is probably the most realistic that I could find on the twittersphere. The guys from St. Bonaventure have created everything from the team jerseys, courts designs, music, commentary, and live YouTube channels with the games. They even have gotten some school chants on there from the crowd. I’m not sure if that was an accident, but it is still awesome. They post live updates on twitter, but if you want to watch in awe at how cool this simulation is, this is for you.
2. NCAA March Madness 2020 (@NCAAMadness2020)
Another one that put in all the works with creating all the teams, commentary, and players, these guys have put in a lot of hard work to make a very realistic March Madness tournament. You can find the live feed for these simulations on Twitch or by going through their twitter account (handle listed above).
2. 2020 NCAA TOURNAMENT SIMULATION (@NCAAsim2020)
If you are a statistical nerd, this is for you. This one does not have a YouTube channel for live games, but it uses advanced statistical algorithms to predict the winners. This one seems to be the most popular on twitter with 20K followers, which gives it good credibility. This simulation is currently in the Elite 8 games, so check their twitter feed to see what is going on in those games!
3. Corona Madness (@CoronaMadness)
This one is already over, but these college kids put in the works to make an entire tournament bracket, selection show, and even a “One Shining Moment” Video. It is a nice, funny way to impersonate CBS and the whole March Madness cast. They used NCAA Basketball 10 for Xbox 360 for their simulations. I won’t spoil who won.
4. r/CollegeBasketball March Madness (YouTube)
You can only find this on YouTube on their channel listed above, but these are video simulations using College Hoops 2K8. The sites are the old arena floors that we grew to love, which gives a nice warm and fuzzy feeling. They are just getting started with a couple of games per day, so lots of time left to catch those simulations.
5. Mike’s Madness (@MikesMadnessMU)
This one has not gotten a lot of hype, but this guy is a sports radio host that does talk about the game simulations as well as the teams playing on his YouTube channel (you can find it in his twitter feed). The videos are about a half hour long and give you something to do. He put a decent amount of work into this, so I commend him for doing this. So far listening to his videos as a podcast, it is pretty entertaining.
Honorable Mention: Joe Lunardi (@ESPNLunardi)
Ahh, leave it to Joey Brackets to give us a small sample of March Madness. Lunardi, a friend of the site, is updating us every day on his twitter feed what is going on in the bracket. He is in the Sweet 16 & Elite 8 right now, but he will tweet out updates simulated somehow. He does not have videos or commentary since the guy is busy almost 24/7, so it is not higher in the list. However, he is still Joe Lunardi. We don’t need to ask for credibility from the best in the business. Just take his word for it.
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