One on One Author Jamie Harrow on March Madness, The Bachelor and How Fandom Can Keep Friendships Alive (Exclusive)

For most of my adult life, two things have gotten me through the dreary slog of winter: The Bachelor and March Madness.

They have more in common than you might think. Both are fun ways to connect with friends, especially when it’s too cold to leave the couch. Winter is the least social season, but getting invested in a drama-filled reality show or sports competition makes for a lively group chat (“Did you SEE that?!”). I’ve always filled out a bracket for March Madness and dedicated myself to a little friendly trash talk, but did you know you can fill out a Bachelor bracket too? By the time we’ve all grown attached to our favorite Cinderellas, survived the emotional roller coasters and watched the winners be crowned… spring is here.

For me, a blank March Madness bracket has always felt like a world of possibility contained in one 8.5x11 inch piece of paper. This could be the year I pick the right underdogs. This could be the year I beat my brother and get to lord it over him for the next 12 months. 

Some years, I take my bracket seriously. Others, particularly when work or a new baby has kept me from following basketball throughout the season, I’ve used different, um, “strategies.” Like picking all the blue teams. And because the tournament is so unpredictable, sometimes I have better luck that way! Choosing teams based on the silliness of their mascots, for example, is a totally valid approach — and if it leads you to victory over one of the bros in your office, wait until you see his face when he realizes the reason you beat him is because Peacocks are funnier than Wildcats. 

What I love most about March Madness brackets, though, isn’t winning — and not because I hardly ever do.  Getting a group of people together for a bracket competition gives us something to do with each other — whether it’s watching the games or just discussing the results — even if we’re physically far apart. 

I’m not always the best at communicating regularly with long-distance friends, and I tend to retreat into my shell over the winter. But if I’m in a March Madness pool with someone, and there’s an incredible buzzer-beater or a nonagenarian nun going viral, we’re going to talk about it. And that’s beautiful, even if our conversation begins with “haha you suck at this.”

For years, The Bachelor has served a similar purpose for me. When I was in law school in Boston, spending frigid nights cuddling my casebooks for warmth, a group of friends and I started a weekly tradition of getting together every week to watch the show. We were busy, tired and broke, but those two hours a week — on a Monday, no less — were our time to connect. 

We spent most of those hours talking over the show about our own lives, but the show gave us a concrete reason to set aside the time (a luxury, with how much reading we had to do), regardless of how invested we were in actually watching it. That said, by the end, we were always invested. All good reality TV shows have a siren-like way of sucking in even casual watchers so they develop their own opinions, favorites, and predictions.

The only reason Bachelor brackets weren’t part of our routine back then was that I didn’t know they existed until a few years later. And methods vary: Some work like a traditional March Madness bracket, where points are awarded based on how far your picks go. Others operate more like a fantasy league, where you choose contestants for your “team” and rack up points based on things like whether your “players” get a date, or accuse someone else of not being there for the right reasons, or perform the classic Bachelor run-and-jump hug. 

If The Bachelor’s not your thing, the same concept works for The Traitors, Love Island, The Circle, or any of your other favorites. My law school friends are scattered around the country now, but I’m tempted to revive our old tradition with a bracket for the next season of The Great British Baking Show.

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A game that originated with sports fans almost 50 years ago works perfectly for fans of reality TV — and how fitting that this year’s Bachelor is a former basketball player himself. March Madness and reality shows like The Bachelor are two of a kind: fans of both love to get pulled into a spectacle where they can cheer and boo, make predictions and get caught up in the stakes. Both are built around competition, of course, but also around uncertainty. Sure, there are predictable elements — higher ranked teams usually win, the Bachelor and one of his dates slow-dance while being serenaded at least once per season. 

But then there are the surprises, the shocking-yet-safe rush of something unexpected that has no actual impact on your life. I still remember how I felt when 16 seed UMBC beat 1 seed Virginia, and when Pilot Pete dumped Hannah Ann for Madison. And I remember running to grab my phone so I could talk about it with friends I knew were watching. 

Fandom is community. It connects us to other people, whether we’re watching a game in a crowded arena, sitting in front of the TV with a group of friends and a wheel of brie or on the couch with our phones in hand. By ourselves, but never alone.

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One on One by Jamie Harrow is available now, wherever books are sold.