With March Madness in full swing, college basketball fans across the country gather to watch their favorite teams face off. Whether they are watching to support their schools, enjoy the game, or see if their bracket picks are correct, fans have delighted in the 2026 season’s ups and downs, from North Carolina’s devastating loss against VCU to UConn’s Braylon Mullens scoring a buzzer-beater against Duke.
While basketball fans have come together to experience these iconic moments, those who follow sports editors on TikTok know there has been a new discourse occurring online: What is 2026’s “Song of March Madness?”
Every year, the NCAA chooses an official March Madness song to accompany its broadcasts and commercials. This season, Zac Brown Band’s “Give It Away” was selected. However, TikTok tells a different story.
In recent years, the editing community on TikTok has grown popular, with users creating edits of their favorite movies, celebrities, sports highlights, and more. The sports editing community, in particular, is massively popular as fans enjoy watching compilations of their favorite teams and athletes.
This March Madness season, different popular sports editors on the platform have used a variety of songs to accompany their videos, with the most popular being “Roses” by the Chainsmokers and ROZES, “Just The Way You Are” by Milky, and “Shake It” by Metro Station.
Notice, however, that none of these trending song choices are the NCAA’s official pick – fans have seemed to have forgotten all about “Give It Away” after its initial announcement. Instead, sports editors are taking matters into their own hands to find the 2026 March Madness’s anthem.
“Give It Away,” Zac Brown Band
The NCAA’s official selection, “Give It Away” by Zac Brown Band, was written by Zac Brown and Needtobreathe’s Bear Rinehart. The song is from the band’s newest album, “Love & Fear.”
Zac Brown Band has had 13 songs reach number one on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, initially rising to stardom in 2006 with their hit song “Toes.” The Atlanta country band accrued a massive fanbase and will continue to awe fans with their performance at the March Madness Music Festival on April 4 and on their world tour later this year.
Brown has shared his excitement about having his band’s song represent March Madness’s 2026 season.
“Everybody’s gonna be playing their hearts out, and I love that this song is helping people feel that energy. It’s gonna be exciting watching them throw down,” said Brown in an interview with TNT Sports.
However, the announcement that “Give It Away” would be the official song of the season was met with mixed reviews from both publications and fans.
“We already know the song that’s going to drive viewers crazy by the time they hear it for the 427th time before the first weekend is over,” wrote Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley.
Fans on social media platforms such as TikTok were more divided, with some users commenting that the song was the perfect choice, using slang to call it “aura” and “peak.” Other fans posted about their disdain for the choice, especially for the song’s country genre, with one user even saying “Give It Away” reminded them of the conservative organization Turning Point USA.
“Roses,” The Chainsmokers and ROZES
The Chainsmokers’ 2015 EDM hit “Roses” saw a recent revival this year following social media’s 2016 nostalgia trend where people reminisced on the simpler, happier time.
“We always felt the song was special. When you want to listen to it again and again after you’ve made the song, you know you’ve got something,” said The Chainsmokers in a now-archived interview with Idolator when the song was initially released.
The Chainsmokers’ sentiment holds up to this day – “Roses” is a song that seems to cycle back into the spotlight time and time again with its summer feel and nostalgic energy.
On TikTok, famous editors like @phillyjxx, @mprodz, and @halftime.prod used the song in their edits of this season’s greatest moments, with The Chainsmokers even commenting “Getting emotional” on an edit using their song over a compilation of iconic college basketball moments from past seasons.
Many TikTok users ran to the comments to claim that “Roses” is what they consider to be the official song of 2026’s March Madness. Though there was some protest from users who felt the song was lacking, the sentiment was widely credited, considering the hundreds of thousands of likes the edits had garnered and the comments from The Chainsmokers themselves.
“Just The Way You Are,” Milky
If you had never heard of the former dance music group Milky until this year, you are not alone. Despite the Italian group having prior hits in the United States in the early 2000s, “Just The Way You Are” rose to sudden fame again this year alongside a new remix of the song by Australian DJ and producer Mall Grab.
The song’s whimsical, warm timbre led to a widespread sentiment that “Just The Way You Are” would be the song of the summer. However, this designation changed after NBA athlete Jared McCain began posting videos of himself dancing to the 2002 hit. His videos gained millions of views, leading basketball fans to associate the song with McCain.
Fans posted videos on social media joking, “I love you like how Jared McCain loves ‘Just The Way You Are,’” copying the dance and tagging McCain, and even singing the song to him as he signed fans’ memorabilia.
The association between “Just The Way You Are” and the NBA player expanded to a general association between the song and basketball. For example, college athlete Braden Hausen posted videos on TikTok of him dancing to the song with both his High Point and Iowa teammates, and UT Austin’s Sarah Graves posted a video with her teammates celebrating to the song in the locker room.
As March Madness athletes hopped on the trend, TikTok basketball editors also began to make videos of March Madness clips set to the Milky song. The song’s popularity in these edits and also videos NCAA athletes themselves create has led many basketball fans to call “Just The Way You Are” their pick for 2026’s song of March Madness.
“Shake It,” Metro Station
Metro Station’s pop-punk song “Shake It” became the band’s first charting single in 2007. Its vulgar yet playful lyrics made it a danceable hit.
“Despite a certain immaturity in the words, the sound itself is likely to lure you out onto the dancefloor. It won’t be long before ‘you move like this,’ and she’ll ‘move like that,’” said About.com reviewer Bill Lamb.
The song’s official music video was uniquely ahead of its time, inspired by original music videos made by fans. Metro Station even posted a playlist of 63 of the fan-made music videos on their YouTube account at the time, similar to how many artists today repost their fans’ TikToks and Instagram Reels set to their songs.
TikTok sports editors like @lucaprod_ and @arshdipss have garnered hundreds of thousands of likes for their March Madness edits set to the 2000s hit, making the song yet another contestant for March Madness’s song of the season.
Edits and Their Implications
As the songs TikTok editors use have become more synonymous with 2026’s March Madness than the official NCAA-chosen song itself, there lies a question as to who gets to decide what music fans will associate with the season.
Music and basketball have always been closely connected in the past, as both March Madness and the NBA keep a tradition of choosing music for each year’s season. In the past, the songs they chose always became synonymous with the season – for example, try imagining the NBA’s 2004 season without thinking of The Black Eyed Peas’ iconic “Let’s Get It Started.”
Now, with the rise of basketball edits on TikTok, different, unofficial songs have a new potential to become the songs of the season. Furthermore, the “songs of the season” no longer have to be new songs either, as seen with this year’s March Madness’s association with songs from 2002, 2007, and 2015. This is symbolic of a general trend today of social media reviving many older hits, whether it be Chris Rainbow’s 70s ballad “Be Like A Woman” finding new popularity on TikTok or Connie Francis’s 60s love song “Pretty Little Baby” being used in countless Instagram Reels.
Additionally, the issue of disputing official songs is not unique to basketball. As FIFA unveiled its official song for this year’s World Cup, many soccer fans were disappointed, stating that Jelly Roll and Carín León’s “Lighter” is not remotely comparable to previous World Cup songs like Shakira’s beloved hit “Waka Waka.”
Fans online were so disappointed that they turned to songs from other countries made for this year’s soccer tournament, with an AI song used in videos of Brazil’s national team gaining millions of likes on TikTok.
As sports fans become increasingly disappointed with officially chosen anthems, they turn to TikTok’s sports editing community to find new music they feel they resonate with. This new phenomenon comes with both pros and cons: fans get to choose a new song when they do not like official songs, but now, there will be less unity looking back.
When people think back to this March Madness and the song they associate with it, everyone will have different answers, as opposed to the many years in the past when there was a shared memory of one well-loved song.
However, this division of TikTok sports editors creates a trade-off for the community they have built. After suffering declining viewership in recent years, this year, more people are watching college basketball than ever. It is fair to say that the edits these creators make help shape the hype and the music surrounding basketball today.
“I truly think Sports Edits have become a sector of sports media, and give viewers and enjoyers of them to see sports in a different and more creative light. Edits can provoke emotion, tell a story, or give you a shorter version of what happened in a game,” said Sports-Editor Jordy (@ndgo.jordy) in an interview with Trill Mag. “They are easily accessible on any social media app, and a lot of times I see people learning about a player’s performance, story, or even a trade or transfer for the first time through a sports edit.”
Jordy also noted how the popularity of sports and music is symbiotic — music featured in edits can make sports moments go viral, and viral sports edits can similarly make new songs popular.
In an interview with Trill Mag, Sports Editor Jake Zadroga (@playbook.sportz) echoed the sentiment that editors have some of the biggest influences in sports media nowadays.
“Anyone can have influence now; the media is kind of open to anyone who can create. Like some random kid could make a video that blows up that can have way more influence than the media of March Madness,” said Zadroga.
Zadroga also described how, in his own process for creating edits, choosing a song is the first thing he does, as sports and music have more of an impact than ever before.
“There are songs where I hear them, and I literally think back to a moment of an edit that I saw where that sports moment happened,” he said.
This new phenomenon is the modern equivalent of having a unified memory of sports seasons. Today, instead of mass media companies choosing one song for everyone to look back on, editors online create shared memories in their videos of moments they choose to highlight and songs they pick themselves.
When people look back on 2026’s March Madness season, they may think of “Roses,” “Just The Way You Are,” “Shake It,” or any other song they’ve seen used in edits this year. And it will all be because of edits that fans created.
While the “real” song of March Madness 2026 may be forever disputed, it is clear that the TikTok editing community has transformed sports viewership as we know it.
“Sports and their storylines are evolving every day, and so are the edits,” says Jordy.
Fans have more power than ever, and when it comes to March Madness’s official song, the NCAA doesn’t decide; fans do.
