by Andrew Piskai
March 24, 2010
c/o A. T. Piskai
1600 Franklin Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19104
CBS Headquarters
51 W. 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019-6188
To Whom It May Concern,
You should be ashamed of yourselves for the harm you are causing through your shameless promotion of March Madness. If you were unaware, March Madness is an annual epidemic that is similar to the seasonal flu and spring fever. Through recent scientific studies conducted here at the University of Pennsylvania, it has been proven that your television station is the number one cause of March Madness spreading nationwide. Before I state my purpose of writing this letter, however, let me explain the history and severity of the disease.
If you check the history books traces of March Madness date back to 1939, but it was not a widespread problem until Brent Musburger of CBS Sports discovered it and brought it national television exposure during NCAA basketball tournament coverage in the early 1980’s. Mr. Musberger single-handedly promoted and facilitated the spread of the disease. Thousands of teens, college students and adults who desperately needed to escape from a world filled with Pat Benatar and Prince inevitably turned to March Madness. To this day millions of people worldwide have experienced the effects of it.
Our recent studies have shown that while the cause is still not yet completely certain, overexposure to people with March Madness greatly increases the likelihood of contracting the disease. Symptoms include chest painting, violent screaming, spontaneous fits of jumping up and down, and generalized hysteria for which doctors have been unable to find a cure. Urges for compulsive gambling have also been noted in many cases, and alcohol further enflames these symptoms. College campuses have been the hardest hit demographic, especially in schools that have recently been exposed to the first seed, considered by ESPN analysts to be the most potentially dangerous. As of this year, first seed, or type 1, March Madness has been discovered at the Universities of Kansas and Kentucky as well as at Duke and Syracuse Universities. Medical professionals have thus far only been able to quell the uprising of March Madness at Kansas.
An odd phenomenon has been observed regarding alumni contracting March Madness when outbreaks occur at their old schools. It would appear that merely having attended afflicted schools prior to widespread infection has been enough exposure to increase susceptibility. One can conclude the March Madness bug has a dormant stage which masks the symptoms and allows the disease to be spread untraceably. In some cases, the effect can be witnessed over a thousand miles away. Schools like Duke and North Carolina have notoriously had a long history of March Madness but the disease is hardly contained to the southeast region; alumni of schools in every major power conference, as well as mid-majors and small conferences, have been detected to have March Madness.
But I have wasted enough time. The purpose of my writing this letter must be made clear. Having been diagnosed with child-onset March Madness, I have suffered for over a decade and can personally attest to the sense of hopelessness it instills in a person. All a person is able to do is watch March Madness consume its defenseless victims.
Furthermore, your television station has done nothing to combat this plague it has unleashed on the world. In light of the recent proof of responsibility obtained, I, along with the millions of Americans who suffer from this disease, am filing charges against CBS for gross criminal negligence, entrapment, and attempted homicide as part of a class-action lawsuit. You will be hearing from my lawyer.
Stark raving mad,
A. T. Piskai