Caught up in bracket madness
I don’t know much about NCAA basketball. Actually, I am not
really sure what NCAA stands for. I worked at San Jose State
University a few years ago when the March Madness tournament came
to campus and I didn’t know what all the hype was about
– and the extra traffic just annoyed me.
Caught up in bracket madness
I don’t know much about NCAA basketball. Actually, I am not really sure what NCAA stands for. I worked at San Jose State University a few years ago when the March Madness tournament came to campus and I didn’t know what all the hype was about – and the extra traffic just annoyed me.
I watched an NCAA game once at a sports bar in Gilroy. I think Berkeley was playing, and the guy I had a crush on was a Berkeley alum, so I kind of used the NCAA to score a date with him. I don’t remember who won that year, and the guy was more interested in the basketball players than me so that didn’t work out so well.
When a coworker printed out a bunch of brackets – just for fun, of course – I didn’t think much of it. But then the guys in my office started surfing the Internet and talking about what teams they thought could make it to the Final Four, and I thought, what the hell.
One of my coworkers who I usually help out with stuff around the office – like filling out his expense reporting, spelling, you know, little things like that – said now he could finally teach me something since he understood all about how the bracket system works.
First, he pointed out that picking my alma mater to go all the way to the Final Four just because they had a really good football team four years ago, doesn’t mean their basketball team is any good now. He was right. The University of Southern California players lost their first game. He said for people who really don’t know anything about college basketball – people like me – there are several ways to go about choosing winners for each bracket. He said I could read about the players stats and their season history. He said I could choose winners based on mascots – like say the Trojans play the Bruins, the bear would probably win.
In the end, I decided to play it safe and pretty much choose winners based on rank. The photocopy of the bracket I had included the ranks of all the teams. Some of the choices were easy. Like, I guessed that fifth-ranked Notre Dame would beat 12th-ranked George Mason, and I was right. but some of the match-ups in the earlier rounds were harder to pick. Mississippi State and Oregon were ranked eighth and ninth, consecutively.
Then I quickly learned, there are the upsets that throw everyone for a loop. When some of the guys in an office next door had the television on during the first round of games, we could hear the disappointed shouts as the final buzzer approached. Fourth-ranked Duke threw a game to Davidson, ranked 13th. No one was happy about that, not even me since I had them winning three games.
Even participating in the bracket pool, hasn’t been enough to get me to watch any of the basketball games. I watched casually one night when I was out at a bar with friends and I have been checking in on the scores every once in a while to see if my final four teams are doing well.
So far, the coworker who helped me fill out my bracket says I am doing way better than him and the team I chose to win the championship still has a shot. There is another week to go, so we’ll see if my random picks hold up to the end.
Maybe when the summer Olympics roll around I can talk the guys around the office into starting another sports poll for a sport I might actually watch. I hear Paul Hamm is training hard to make the U.S. men’s gymanstics team again…
