Bruce Springsteen, the patron saint of sportswriters, for his debut album in 1973 penned a lyrically bewildering song called “Blinded By the Light” — later a much bigger hit for British prog rock band Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.

One of Springsteen’s lyrics reads: “With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground.”

And that, college basketball fans, is an apt description of tens of millions of March Madness brackets loudly imploding into worthlessness as the upsets mount and the powerhouses in both the men’s and women’s tournaments find themselves turned back into midnight pumpkins. Cinderella gets to keep partying while the ball literally is over for others.

And while perhaps brutal for personal pride or desperate gamblers, the NCAA Tournament chaos has helped make for solid television viewership.

The men’s first round, featuring literally diminutive Fairleigh Dickinson shocking top-seeded Purdue on Friday to become only the second No. 16 seed to knock off a No. 1 in tournament history, averaged an aggregate 9.2 million viewers on CBS, TBS, TNT, truTV and March Madness Live, per the NCAA.

Fairleigh Dickinson’s upset averaged 4.37 million viewers, a first-round record for Turner’s college hoops broadcasts on cable since picking up the NCAA contract in 2011, per Sports Business Daily.

The 9.2 million average is for all games on March 16-17 and made for the most-watched first round since the tournament began in 1939, the NCAA said. Caveat: Nielsen measurements didn’t begin until the early 1950s, and the men’s tournament wasn’t televised nationally until 1969. It’s been a CBS mainstay since 1982, with all games broadcast live nationally starting in 2011 when the tournament began the first year of a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal with CBS and Turner.

The networks inked an eight-year, $8.8 billion extension taking the relationship through 2032 under a deal signed in 2016. So that’s nearly $20 billion for CBS and Turner since 2011 through the end of the deals.

And the networks appear to be getting their money’s worth in 2023.

The second round, played over the weekend and on the same channels, was led by Michigan State’s win over Marquette late Sunday afternoon on CBS that averaged 10.91 million viewers. That’s the best single-game viewership of the men’s tournament so far. Following closely was Arkansas-Kansas (9.5 million) and Kentucky-Kansas State (9.4 million). An overall average for the men’s second round wasn’t immediately available.

A year ago at this point in the tournament, the top men’s tournament audience was 11.22 million for Michigan State-Duke.

This all bodes well for the upcoming rounds to sustain viewership — not always an easy feat in the age of cord-cutting and overall TV usage being down (and it helps to have upsets and thrillers rather than boring blowouts, in most cases).

The Sweet 16 games are scheduled for Thursday and Friday (beginning with K-State versus Michigan State at 6:30 p.m. Thursday on TBS) and the Elite Eight matchups will be aired on Saturday and Sunday.

CBS will air the men’s Final Four begins starting at 6:09 p.m. April 1 at NRG Stadium in Houston, and the championship game is 9:20 p.m. April 3.

On the women’s side, the first round across ESPN platforms averaged 257,000 viewers per game, headlined by a couple of routs: Tennessee beating Saint Louis, 95-50, on Saturday averaged 639,000 viewers on ABC and UConn beating Vermont, 95-52, averaged 636,000 earlier that afternoon on the same network.

ESPN, which has the women’s tournament rights through 2025 as part of a 14-year, $500 million multi-sport bundle sold by the NCAA to the network in 2011, said the first round was up 27 percent year over year.

The women’s second round started on Sunday, and Iowa’s 74-66 win over Georgia averaged 1.45 million viewers for an afternoon tipoff on ABC. Earlier that day, the network averaged 1.45 million for top-seeded South Carolina, the defending champion, blowing out South Florida, 76-45.

The rest of the second round, including top-seeded Indiana upset by Miami, wrapped up Monday afternoon and evening, and that viewership data won’t be available for another day.

The women’s Sweet 16 is Friday and Saturday, with the Elite Eight set for Sunday and Monday. The Final Four games are at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. March 31 on ESPN at American Airlines Center in Dallas. The title game is scheduled for 3 p.m. April 2 and will air for the first time on ABC.

BASEBALL: The knockout stage of the World Baseball Classic is getting some nice domestic audience numbers atop an explosion of excitement across social media in recent days.

The United States’ 14-2 semifinal romp over Cuba on Sunday at Miami’s LoanDepot Park, powered by Trea Turner’s two home runs, averaged 1.94 million viewers on FS1, while the U.S.’s 9-7 quarterfinals victory over Venezuela on Saturday averaged 2.26 million on Fox. Both games were in prime time.

Viewership is not yet available for Japan’s bonkers walk-off win over Mexico that was played Monday night.

The championship final — pitting Japan’s megastar Shohei Ohtani against his Los Angeles Angels teammate Mike Trout (no slouch himself!) — was scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday between the U.S. and Japan on FS1 and Fox Deportes. That game’s viewership won’t be available for a day or two after it wraps up.

The final likely will have a larger overseas audience, if past WBC games this year are any indication. Japan’s 13-4 win over South Korea at the Tokyo Dome in group stage play on March 10 averaged 62 million viewers on Japanese television, per Front Office Sports. MLB said the game averaged a 44.4 rating on Japan’s TBS Television (which is the percentage of total Japanese TV households tuning in).

That’s bigger than any World Series audience, ever.

Prior WBC rounds aired on Fox, FS1, FS2, Fox Deportes, and Tubi (the Fox network’s free ad-supported streaming service that it bought in 2020).

Prior World Baseball Classics aired on ESPN and its platforms, and MLB Network.

The last World Baseball Classic final, in 2017, averaged 3.1 million viewers on MLB Network, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes for the U.S. victory over Puerto Rico, per Sports Media Watch, and the Dominican Republic-Puerto Rico final in 2013 averaged 1.1 million combined viewers on MLB Network and ESPN Deportes.

The tournament, created after the Olympics dropped baseball as a medal competition, began in 2006 and then was played again in 2009. It’s since then scheduled for every four years, but the 2021 event was postponed by the global pandemic to this year. It’s scheduled next for 2026.

(Photo of Fairleigh Dickinson’s Joe Munden Jr.: Andy Lyons/Getty Images)