Drake players warm up during practice for the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Wednesday, March 19, 2025, in Wichita, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)2025-03-20T11:12:45Z WASHINGTON (AP) In East Lansing, Michigan, college sports often dominate conversations especially in March, when everyone seems to be filling out their NCAA brackets. Jessica Caruss would know; she has lived in the area for most of her life. She loves sports, and shes a Michigan State fan, but she wont be drawing up a March Madness bracket that shows her team (or any team) winning it all. Oh, Im aware. I just dont do brackets or anything, Caruss said. I dont gamble; I dont see the appeal of it. For me its not a rush. Its stressful.Shes far from alone in bypassing the brackets. As the annual tournament kicks off, some Americans skip the madness or at least they dont try to predict who will win. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they never fill out a bracket for the NCAA mens or womens basketball tournament. This group leans more female: About 6 in 10 bracket avoiders are women.Im probably not going to watch. I have not really been into it in quite some time, Caruss said. Ive never understood the March madness. Other bracket avoiders plan to watch tournament games but wont predict winners. Chris Lara lives in Belvidere, Illinois, but supports UCLA because of his California roots. Both the UCLA womens and mens basketball teams will be competing in the NCAA tournament, and he plans to cheer them on. But he doesnt feel confident in his ability to determine the winners for every match-up in a bracket. I dont have the knowledge to pick the teams correctly or to know the ones that are the best, Lara said. I would just go with my heart and pick teams. ... And then it wouldnt work out well.For some people, the madness is barely registering.Justin Campbell, a 29-year-old from Brookhaven, Mississippi, said hes never followed sports closely. Hes not tracking the NCAA tournament, let alone making a bracket. He might tune into a game if its on at a restaurant hes at, but basketball takes a back seat to football in his corner of southern Mississippi. Im sure if I was in a different town where it was all we talked about, it might be different, Campbell said. But where I am, football is more the big thing.Even among the sliver of U.S. adults who fill out a mens or womens bracket at least some years, about two-thirds of that group say the fact that other people were doing it was a major or minor reason for their participation. In the suburbs of Seattle, Laura Edain said shes not interested in March Madness, either, and does not plan to seek out any games. Edain, 55, used to work in an office that may have had more discussion of March Madness and brackets as it happened or she would overhear references to Gonzaga Universitys many tournament runs but the bracket predictions have never appealed to her.I dont think I would have participated, even then, Edain said. And now, I just am not in any kind of circle that really talks about it at all. ___Visual Storytelling News Editor Panagiotis Mouzakis in London contributed to this report. ___The AP-NORC poll of 1,112 adults was conducted Feb. 6-10, using a sample drawn from NORCs probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. LINLEY SANDERS Sanders is a polls and surveys reporter for The Associated Press. She develops and writes about polls conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, and works on AP VoteCast. twitter