The yearly passion that is the NCAA Basketball Tournament is just around the corner. I have been anticipating this moment since North Dakota State (my team and alma mater) kicked off the season in November. They have the players (4 seniors:  Woodside, Winkelman, Nelson and Moormann), performed the upsets (#13 Wisconsin, #9 Marquette) and are eligible for the first time to win an NCAA bid. If you are an extremely loyal fan and look forward to creating your bracket every year on ESPN, Facebook, CBS and Yahoo!, you know my excitement.

However, I noticed one problem. Throughout the NDSU Bison's schedule some games were not available on TV (We aren'tNorth Carolina or Duke!). You can purchase a video stream, listen to the radio or watch live stats when TV isn't an option, but I needed something more...

I went to Twitter to fulfill my needs. NDSU and GoBison.com, NDSU's sports site, had not created accounts! I normally love NDSU advertisements because of how creative and intuitive they are, but NOT ON TWITTER!?

NDSU has fan sites on many social networks (e.g. Ning, Facebook, Squidoo, YouTube, Forums and LinkedIn), but no Twitter.

So I did what any motivated fan would do; I created a Twitter account for NDSU to blog the university news and sports (maybe a little heavier on the sports).

I received great feedback from all the Bison loyals out there and I even started to give updates on games in real time, sharing my basketball emotions with other tweeters.

Once again, Twitter has brought together people of the same blood (in this case I bleed Yellow and Green).

In reflection, I believe that it doesn't matter how small or big your university is this NCAA Tournament season. Get out (or stay in... on the computer) and use social media to spread the good word for your team this march madness. Join Facebook brackets and recruit your friends. Create a lens on Squidoo and post updates. Blog about your team and join the sports forums. No matter what your flavor, social media is where it's at during the 2009 NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Go Bison!

This post was originally published by Tristan Pollock on Blogger.