This March Madness video game sim has upsets, live streams and even a bracket challenge
On March 14 in the real world, the Florida State Seminoles won a fictional national championship. A day after the NCAA canceled all winter and spring national championships, Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator representing parts of Sarasota and Charlotte counties, introduced a resolution to declare the Seminoles the national champions. By a 37-2 vote, the Florida Senate declared Florida State the national champion.
On Saturday in an alternate universe, the Seminoles suffered a stunning defeat in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. The No. 15 seed North Dakota State Bison topped No. 2 seed Florida State, 71-64, in a College Hoops 2K8 simulation streamed live on YouTube to more than 5,000 March Madness-starved fans.
“I hate that this actually bothers me,” wrote Florida State fan u/22chainz in a Reddit postgame thread for the fake game.
“Me 3 hours ago: This is stupid,” Florida Gators fan u/wichita_gator wrote. “Me now: Y E S.”
Since Tuesday, Reddit user u/JaniSWFC — an Oklahoma college student, who asked to only be identified as Logan — has been simulating an imaginary NCAA Tourney on a YouTube channel he created to help fill the void of our March Madness-less existence. In less than a week, the CollegeBasketball YouTube channel, where the roughly 90-minute games broadcast live, has gathered nearly 5,000 subscribers and has drawn nearly 200,000 total views.
On Saturday, the channel streamed a game with live commentary and commentary is planned for the later rounds of the Tournament, too. NothingButNylon.com, a basketball blog, is writing game stories off every game. DraftKings even created a bracket challenge for the simulation with cash prizes.
For at least one not-so-small segment of the college basketball world, coping with a Tourney-less existence means watching two computer-controlled teams duke it out in a janky college basketball video game from 2007, embracing cult heroes like Vermont Catamounts guard Everett Duncan, who hit a last-second shot to upset the No. 4-seed Louisville Cardinals, and Xavier Musketeers guard, who inexplicably committed four backcourt violations in a play-in game loss to the No. 11-seed Texas Longhorns.
On Thursday, the second round of simulations will begin. Logan talked to the Miami Herald about his extensive simulation.
Miami Herald: Where did this idea come from?
Logan: “I’d always just play sports video games and do something similar to this, just on my own. I always wanted to take it to a bigger stage, but I never really had the platform to build it off of. I actually tried to do this by myself, I would say probably the day the Tournament was officially canceled. I tried to do it on my Twitch channel and stuff, and we had about 10-15 people watch it. The moderators on the college basketball subreddit came to me and they said they need something to sort of fill the void programming wise in what was supposed to be March Madness, and I pitched the idea that maybe we could run some sort of simulation on there.”
MH: This is a game from 2007. How did you get modern rosters?
L: “There’s a roster set I found on this website called Operation Sports that, after looking into it really, I would say it was like 60-70 percent updated, and then I went in and made a bunch of changes before and I’m going to be spending the next couple days because there’s no games making more changes to make sure rosters are even more accurate, trying to at least have some realism factor.”
MH: Are you a “College Hoops 2K8” enthusiast?
L: “I managed to find a copy a year ago somewhere for like $25 because I always wanted to play it and then once I found it I played with it a little bit and then I quit playing it for a little while and then like a week ago I thought, well maybe I can do something with this to try to fill the void and try to put my name out there and stuff.”
MH: What have you thought of the reception?
L: “It’s been insane. I didn’t think it was going to be this huge, honestly. It’s just insane to me. I figured maybe we’d probably get maybe 500-600, or even 1,000 or 2,000 people. I didn’t think people were going to be that interested considering the age of the game, but it’s really shocked me how much people have gotten into the games and really tried to take this somewhat seriously.”
MH: What has been the highlight so far?
L: “I think the highlight maybe is probably the Vermont upset because that one was pretty much decided on a buzzer beater. Just watching the reactions in the live chats just go insane was probably one of my favorite parts of this whole thing so far.
“I think another one of my favorite parts is obviously it’s not 100 percent realistic or accurate, or anything, but what I find funny is people embrace the crazy stuff that happens. ... That was probably my favorite part was watching somebody post a meme of the player who made all those backcourt violations.”
MH: What have people been saying to you?
L: “A lot of people talking about how it gives them something to do with all the quarantine stuff going on in the real world.”
