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March Madness may be the last, best vestige of American monoculture
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🔥 The last campfire
Once upon a time, we all watched the same shows, read the same magazines, and listened to the same albums. Culture was a shared thing — not because we chose it, but because there wasn't much of an alternative.
Fast forward: The internet blew all of that apart, creating a world with something for everyone… and nothing for everyone. We're all still watching, reading and listening. In fact, we're consuming more than ever. Just rarely the same stuff… rarely together.
Streaming gave us infinite choice but took away the water cooler. Social media brought us together, then algorithmically split us apart.
You're out of the loop on the shows your neighbors are watching, let alone your own family. That new podcast your friend was raving about? It's a Spotify exclusive, and you're on Apple Music.
Movie theaters and public spaces? In decline. Loneliness? On the rise. The monoculture is dead. Long live the monoculture.
One major exception? Sports still has the power to bring us all together. I was reminded of that this past week during the height of March Madness when I filled out brackets with family, entered contests with friends, watched games with colleagues, shot baskets with neighbors and exchanged takes with strangers (Texas is not a "Cinderella," stop it!).
Halina Bennett, Slow Boring ($):
Americans are increasingly sorting themselves — whether by geography, by education, or by media consumption — into communities of the like-minded. Into this landscape arrives, every March, a 68-team single-elimination basketball tournament. Roughly a quarter of all American adults participate by filling out a bracket.
March Madness is one of the last mass cultural moments that genuinely cuts across the fragmentation. You cannot watch the tournament on your own schedule. Games happen live, simultaneously, and the results land in the world in real time.
A buzzer-beater on a Thursday afternoon cascades across group chats, offices, every social media feed at once. Either you saw it or you didn't. Either way, you are talking about it.
These moments are increasingly rare. The Super Bowl is another example — one game, one night, watched by roughly 125.6 million people at the same time. But March Madness sustains it for three weeks across dozens of games, and it does it with a form of engagement — the bracket — that pulls in people like me who would never watch a game otherwise.
The last campfire: The beauty of sports played out this weekend on the hardwood. Underdog stories. Buzzer-beaters. The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. But the best part was this: for four straight days, a significant portion of America showed up for the same thing (hoops), at the same time (12pm ET and on), in the same place (CBS, TBS, etc), and felt it all together.
March Madness:
🇺🇸 Photos across America
Los Angeles, California — Saturday's Fanatics Flag Football Classic posed an intriguing question: Could a team of current and former NFL players defeat a USA flag football squad that has won the past five world championships and figures to make up most of the 2028 Olympic roster?
The answer: A resounding no. Despite facing Tom Brady, Luke Kuechly, Joe Burrow, Saquon Barkley and other big names, Team USA showed how valuable experience with the rules and strategy of flag football is en route to winning the round-robin tournament.
Miami Gardens, Florida — 29 years after his dad, Petr, defeated world No. 1 Pete Sampras, Sebastian Korda defeated world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz at the Miami Open… and celebrated the same way his father did.
Déjà vu: At No. 36, Korda is the lowest-ranked man to beat Alcaraz since No. 55 David Goffin did so last year… in the same round of the same tournament.
State College, Pennsylvania — Wisconsin beat Ohio State, 3-2, on Sunday to win their second straight women's hockey national championship, and fifth since 2019. Four players on the team also won Olympic gold last month. Not a bad few weeks!
One tourney ends, another begins: The men's hockey bracket was revealed on Sunday. No. 1 Michigan, No. 2 North Dakota, No. 3 Michigan State and No. 4 Western Michigan (defending champs) earned the top seeds in the 16-team field.
Columbus, Ohio — Penn State captured its fifth straight NCAA men's wrestling national championship on Sunday. Four individual Nittany Lions won national titles during the three-day event, resulting in a championship-record 181.5 points.
Speaking of streaks: Virginia did one better, winning its sixth consecutive NCAA championship in women's swimming and diving. That broke a tie with Stanford and Texas for the sport's longest such streak.
🚴 Can Pogi complete cycling?
Tadej Pogačar, the best active cyclist and arguably the greatest of all time, added yet another signature victory to his growing tally this weekend in Italy.
Conquering La Primavera: The Slovenian overcame a late crash on Saturday to win his first Milan-San Remo in a photo finish over Tom Pidcock, out-sprinting the Brit to capture the title by half-a-wheel.
Such a win in any race would be remarkable; fighting through the peloton after ending up on the pavement, bloodied and bruised. But Milan-San Remo isn't just any race.
The Spring Classic, or La Classicissima di Primavera, is the longest of the five Monuments, the most prestigious one-day races in men's cycling. And Pogačar's crash came after nearly six straight hours on the bike, 18 miles from the end of a 185-mile race.
What he's saying: "It's quite a relief to finally win it," said Pogačar, who'd raced the Milan-San Remo five times before, never finishing better than third. "If I come back to San Remo it will only be to eat focaccia," he jokingly added, satisfied that it's finally been checked off his bucket list.
This is what a photo finish looks like…
Can he complete cycling? Only one male cyclist (Belgium's Eddy Merckx) has won all five Monuments, all three Grand Tours and a World Championship. Pogačar, still just 27 years old, is now one step closer to becoming the second.
What he's won: Pogi's list of accomplishments since joining UAE Team Emirates in 2019 is comically long, getting him most of the way to matching Merckx's unprecedented feat.
World Championship: He's the two-time reigning champion, and also won bronze in 2023.
Grand Tours: He's won the Tour de France four times (2020, 2021, 2024, 2025), while finishing second twice (2022, 2023). He also won the Giro d'Italia in 2024, the first and only time he's competed in La Corsa Rosa.
Monuments: Milan San-Remo gave him four of the five Monuments, along with the Giro di Lombardia (5x), the Liège-Bastogne-Liège (3x) and the Tour of Flanders (2x).
What he still needs: Pogačar is just two races shy of completing the set. The biggest (only?) thing stopping him may be cycling's packed calendar, which often makes him pick and choose which events to enter each year.
Grand Tours: The Vuelta a España is the missing link. He's raced it just once — finishing third in 2019 — because it's sandwiched in between July's Tour de France and September's worlds.
Monuments: The only one left is the Paris-Roubaix, a punishing race nicknamed the "Hell of the North." He finished second last year in his debut, and will give the cobbled classic another go three weeks from now on April 12.
The last word: "We have seen Pogačar at his best at so many different races, but today it was a different level," said former British champion Adam Blythe following Saturday's triumph. "We throw the term around, but he is the greatest of all time without a shadow of a doubt. There is no rider we can compare to him. He is just untouchable."
💯 Big numbers
🏀 32,294 points
Kevin Durant reached 32,294 career points on Saturday, passing Michael Jordan (32,292) for fifth on the NBA's all-time scoring list. Only LeBron James (43,241), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387), Karl Malone (36,928) and Kobe Bryant (33,643) have scored more.
More hoops records: James played his 1,612th regular-season game, breaking a tie with Robert Parish for the most in NBA history; Purdue's Braden Smith passed Duke's Bobby Hurley to become the NCAA's all-time assists leader (1,091 and counting).
🥇 17 years old
American track sensation Cooper Lutkenhaus, 17, won the 800m at the World Indoor Track and Field Championships in Poland on Sunday to become the youngest world champion ever in an individual event (indoors or outdoors).
Rapid rise: The Texas teen has become a certified star over the last nine months, starting when he broke the national high school 800m record set three decades earlier (1:46.26). Later in the summer he broke the U-18 world record (1:42.27) en route to becoming, at 16, the youngest American ever to compete in the outdoor world championships.
⚽️ 19th trophy
Manchester City won the League Cup on Sunday with a 2-0 victory over Arsenal, marking Pep Guardiola's 19th trophy in 10 years since becoming City's manager (6x Premier League, 5x League Cup, 3x Community Shield, 2x FA Cup, Champions League, Super Cup, Club World Cup.
Still alive for the title? The Gunners still lead the Premier League by nine points, but second-place City have a game in hand and the two face off next month at the Etihad. A comeback isn't out of the question for the 10-time champs.
⚾️ $540 million
Phillies lefty Christopher Sánchez, coming off a runner-up Cy Young finish, signed a six-year, $107 million extension on Sunday, meaning Philly's top four starters (Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, Jesús Luzardo, Aaron Nola) are now signed through at least 2027 for a total of $540 million.
$100M club: The Dodgers are the only other team with four pitchers signed for at least $100 million each (Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow). The Yankees and Blue Jays are just behind them, with three each.
📺 Watchlist: Monday, March 23
🏀 Round of 32
The Women's Sweet 16 will be set following today's eight-game slate, which features three of the tournament's No. 1 seeds.
Cruise control: 37 of 40 games so far have been won by the higher seed, and the vast majority have been blowouts. Where is the chaos this tournament needs?
⛳️ TGL Finals
The best-of-three series tees off tonight at the SoFi Center (9pm ET, ESPN2), where Jupiter Links and Los Angeles will compete for a $9 million grand prize.
Lineups: Max Homa, Tom Kim and Kevin Kisner (Jupiter) vs. Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood and Sahith Theegala (LA).
More to watch:
🏀 NBA: Spurs at Heat (7pm, Peacock); Warriors at Mavericks (9:30pm, Peacock) … San Antonio has won five straight games and 21 of their last 23.
🎾 Tennis: Miami Open (11am, Tennis) … Jannik Sinner headlines the men's Round of 32; Aryna Sabalenka headlines the women's Round of 16.
Got plans tonight? Gametime is the best place to score last-minute tickets to the events in your city. Get tickets now!
🏀 Sweet 16 trivia
Six of the men's Sweet 16 teams have won a national championship.
Question: Can you name all six?
East: No. 1 Duke, No. 2 UConn, No. 3 Michigan State, No. 5 St. John's
South: No. 2 Houston, No. 3 Illinois, No. 4 Nebraska, No. 9 Iowa
West: No. 1 Arizona, No. 2 Purdue, No. 4 Arkansas, No. 11 Texas
Midwest: No. 1 Michigan, No. 2 Iowa State, No. 4 Alabama, No. 6 Tennessee
Hint: Three are in the same region.
Answer at the bottom.
🍿 Baker’s Dozen: Top plays of the weekend
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Trivia answer: Arizona (1997), Arkansas (1994), Duke (5x), Michigan (1989), Michigan State (2x), UConn (6x)
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