Let’s call them office pool assassins. They get me every time.
Each year, in what is supposed to be the most exciting month of
amateur athletics, a three-week span in March celebrated for its
‘Madness,’ a group of polite and friendly ladies I work with ruin
me. They don’t mean to make me look bad. But they always do.
Let’s call them office pool assassins.
They get me every time.
Each year, in what is supposed to be the most exciting month of amateur athletics, a three-week span in March celebrated for its ‘Madness,’ a group of polite and friendly ladies I work with ruin me. They don’t mean to make me look bad. But they always do.
I have followed college basketball for the last 18 years of my life and have nothing to show for it. Each season, I watch several games per week, read up on players that stand out and track the ebb and flow of teams entering and exiting the top 25 polls.
Selection Sunday is a holiday in my house. When the teams competing in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament are announced, I wonder two things: who will win, and is this the year all my time spent watching basketball won’t end up a complete waste of time.
And each year, it seems like a little lady who doesn’t know a thing about basketball (such as the motion offense, or coaching lineages, or that Duke ruined tough-nosed basketball by taking too many charges, etc.) walks away with the money.
I have never formulated a winning bracket. I’ve been busted by blondes, brunettes, black-haired beauties and red-heads.
It has to stop.
So this column, which will be running on Tuesdays for the duration of the tournament, is an experiment to see whether the countless hours I’ve spent watching basketball actually have some use, or if knowledge is inconsequential when it comes to March Madness. Rather than wait for them to beat me, I have taken the challenge to the ladies of The Dispatch.
If my bracket fails to be the best, there are two ways of thinking. A defeat will either validate that the tournament is immune to insight because of the craziness caused by upsets, or it will show that I desperately need a new hobby outside of watching sports. (The latter is the most likely to occur.)
To start the experiment, I spent last Friday asking ladies in the office if they knew anything about college basketball. Most gave me a look like, ‘Oh great, the sports guy is trying to make me look dumb because I don’t follow sports.’
If they answered no, I smiled. This made them hate my guts even more. Then I explained what I was doing.
I told each of them, eight ladies in total, that I spend entirely too much time following sports, but have never won an office pool. I generally lose to someone who has no interest in college basketball. It was crucial, I told them, that they have no experience filling out a bracket before. One lady showed she was up to the task by answering, “What’s a bracket?”
Again, I smiled.
I then showed each of them how seedings work, the lower the better, and that a 1-seed has never lost to a 16-seed.
After that, it was a free for all. I told them to choose any strategy they wanted, as long as it was their own.
Several picked schools at random, one picked teams that her family and friends were affiliated with, and another said she picked teams based on school-colors she knew and liked. Perfect.
The brackets will be posted online before games start on Thursday so readers can see my bracket as well as the eight ladies’ – who will hence forth be known as ‘The Elite Eight’ – and track our progress.
Only two ladies picked the same Final Four, with both taking No. 1 seeds all the way to San Antonio. While that has never happened, you can’t blame someone for playing the best odds in each bracket. All looked pretty good, though, making me more than pretty nervous.
As the challenge progresses, tensions throughout the office will run high and productivity could take a hit. But if I do indeed win this challenge, I will have some small piece of satisfaction that my free time has not been such a complete waste.
And if I lose, well, If I lose you can bet the next few months for me will be somewhere in between Nic Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas” and a haggard Will Ferrell drinking milk on the street in “Anchorman.”
Let the madness begin.
